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[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to the DSR Daily. I'm David Barathkov, joined by Riley Fessler. Minis Stein, we've made it through another week, a weird, weird week. And these guys will help us try and figure out what it all means.
Throwing a few of the stories of the day.
“Which one of you to News Maven is going to kick us off?”
I'm going to start us off and weird is definitely one word for it. Defense Secretary Pete Hegsev argued before Senate yesterday that the administration can bypass the 60-day War Powers Act deadline claiming the currency's fire pauses the legal requirement for congressional approval. The deadline requires today.
So Hegsev is out there saying that the allegedly $25 billion conflict is necessary to stop
Iran's nuclear program, all labeling domestic critics of the war as the militaries, quote, "biggest at Versary." Interesting. There's growing bipartisan concern over the war's cost, which we talked about yesterday. And his success firing of top military leaders, the Senate rejected a resolution to halt the conflict in a narrow 50-47 vote. So that's kind of where we stand between Congress and Hegsev.
Yeah, Hegsev was pathetic and Trump doesn't realize how much damage Hegsev is doing. Trump thinks, "Oh, Hegsev is defending me." But of course, he's alienating Republicans, he's alienating voters. This war is currently as unpopular as the Vietnam War was at its lowest point of popularity as unpopular as the war in Iraq was. And it's only two months in. And of course, as Minna points out or implies, they're lying about the cost of the war. They're lying about what their objectives are.
There is very little likelihood that they're going to achieve any of the stated objectives that they had, whether it's regime change or reducing the likelihood of Iran getting nuclear weapons or reducing the threat posed by the Iranian military. In fact, we're increasing the leverage that Iran has over the straight and at the same time increasing the power of hardliners within the Iranian regime. So this is unpopular and it's pushed, I mean, I saw somebody's morning was like the price of gasoline has gone up nine cents today.
It's gone up 40 cents this week. And the president is considering options like more bombing sending in troops to seize the straight or to seize the missile material. None of these things are going to work. If they put boots on the ground, it's going to be very costly. And the president doesn't realize that the one option he's got is to say I was wrong, really.
That's, I mean, that's literally the best option he's got, but he is just unwilling to do it. Even though he knows, you know, full well or he should have been he could just lie about it just like he lies about everything else. We've completed our goals. We're out of there. Anyway, it's, it's truly a mess. And I was thinking out loud to myself this morning of the president's major foreign policy initiatives tariffs.
Going into Venezuela, going into Iran, threatening to go into Greenland, atta...
Something relations with allies, you know, increasing our national security has the president had a missing, a major foreign policy initiative so far.
In this term that has not been either illegal, a fiasco or both. I don't, not that I can remember, I can't think of one that I was like, wow, that was brilliant. Or even legal, or even legal, right, exactly.
“Yeah, I believe that's true. I mean, he did get a bell that says HMS Trump on it from the King of England.”
I mean, that's cool. Yeah, that's cool. And from the HMS fester.
Yeah, don't me too. I wonder what the HMS fester is. Anyway, it's a mess.
It was a mess. The beginning of the week, it'll be a mess at the beginning of next week. And the next week, that's called, you know, predictive news analysis. Take it to Pauli Market, Riley. Well, sticking with defense and Pete Higgs-Seth, the Pentagon has reached agreements with seven major tech firms, including open AI Google and SpaceX to integrate their advanced AI into the military's most secure and classified networks. What could possibly go wrong, despite these expansions andthropic remains, blacklisted after their spat with the Pentagon, which prompted all of this,
though Trump has kind of recently suggested that they might be getting back in the administration's good graces.
So, good at getting more AI in the military, just whatever he wanted. Yeah, but not just AI. Pete Higgs-Seth, the AI. You know, Higgs-Seth and AI is AI without guidelines, without guardbrills. You know, AI that can be lethal and do anything. I mean, remember Pete Higgs-Seth doesn't really think anything's a war crime. And, you know, with the aid of AI, we can become much more deadly and break many more laws.
“And that's what's going to happen. And I think, you know, one of the things that the next administration's going to have to do is go in, investigate where all this AI is, and clean it up.”
And that's not going to be easy. It may not even be possible. They're really playing with fire there. But, of course, Higgs-Seth is dangerous. He's not just weird and odious and pompous. He's dangerous because he, the things he believes in, in almost every case lead to an out-of-control military that is inconsistent with how we have viewed our military or military law. But, you know, I guess this is what Donald Trump wants. I would point out, by the way, that, you know, not as much as discussion was focused at these hearings yesterday on the $1.4 trillion defense budget request as should be, because it contains all sorts of crazy shit, including Trump class battleships.
It's just to pay for a new class of ships for his golden fleet, except no one thinks we need battleships, no one thinks we need a new class, and nobody thinks they should be named after Trump. But, this is all part of this guy's edifice complex. Now, there's Chiesit, a new class of ships for his golden fleet. Now, there's a new class of ships for his golden fleet. Now, there's a new class for his golden fleet. Now, there's a new class for his golden fleet. Now, there's a new class for his golden fleet.
“Now, there's a new class for his golden fleet. Now, there's a new class for his golden fleet. Now, there's a new class for his golden fleet. Now, there's a new class for his golden fleet.”
As best as the country, I'm a goddess tested. If you ever thought about it, she said, "She's it, that she's it." Yes, some goddess tested. That's the only way to deal with it. If you ever thought about it, you'd have to do it.
You'd have to do it again. You'd have to do it again. You'd have to do it again. 1444 was the last U.S. battleship built, and it was decommissioned in 1993. So we haven't used battleships for a very long time.
Wait, wait a second.
My guess is that the last battleship decommissioned was the new jersey.
Ooh, I don't know. I have to look that up. Well, that was the last one built was decommissioned in 93. So I guess technically there could be another one that lasted longer.
“Well, no, but I'm just saying, what was the last battleship decommissioned?”
What was the net? I don't know. I think it was the, I think it was the Missouri. Oh, was it the Missouri? The Missouri.
Yeah. Last one built, last one, decommissioned. Oh, that was the. The battleship Missouri is the battleship in which the Japanese surrender documents were signed off the ghost of Japan.
All right. Well, I think that all the surrender documents that we signed on the Trump battleships uh, yeah, woo, woo, that will be plenty of surrendering. Okay, man, what are you got here? All I know is that this administration is good at one thing and it's giving people things
that no one asked for. Yes. Seems right in line with what they do. Yeah, yeah, it's true. And take away the things that they need and want it.
Exactly. Well, in a era, it's coming to you with clothes. The House approved a Senate passed bill to end a record 75 day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, funding key agencies like TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard through September, while the bill excludes new funding for ICE and the Border Patrol or Republicans
passed a separate budget resolution to secure $70 billion for those agencies through a reconciliation process that bypasses the need for democratic support. Yeah, that was, but that was a year ago, the $70 billion came out of the big beautiful bill.
So it was never open to question whether those agencies were going to get their money,
which is why this particular bill could have been arrived at any point in the past 75 date. They could have approved at any time, Democrats were fine with it, just say, you know, go ahead, just don't fund those two agencies. The whole thing was Kabuki theater, but I was especially low order because everybody
“knew how it would be resolved and, you know, the only thing that, you know, it resulted”
in was a bunch of people who worked for the government and do hard work, didn't get paid. Well, the store gave us another bit of a Navy trivia today. No, unfortunately no, it's just a story that will make me angry that we talked about earlier this week or last week. I can't even remember at this point.
The onions plan to convert Alex Jones's info wars into a parody site of itself has been stalled yet again after a Texas appeals court temporarily blocked the transfer of assets. Jones himself thinks this is a big victory, but representatives for the Sandy Hook families
can down the move as an amoral stalling tactic meant to dodge a billion dollar defamation
judgment, which as a reminder, the whole reason this is happening is because Alex Jones owes the parents of Sandy Hook one billion dollars that he has still not paid and has dodged payments and the courts are enabling him at this point. It's disgusting. I've nothing more to say than that. It's just disgusting. And, you know, it's what possible if you have a lot of money or you've got people
“willing to pay for lawyers, you can drag things out forever, that's how the rich avoid”
accountability. Well, welcome to disgusting state radio because our last story is keeping with this theme. Actually all of the stories, but no, I mean. The Supreme Court's decision to weaken section two of the Boating Rights Act has allowed Republican-led legislatures to begin redrawing congressional maps, potentially eliminating
up to 15 districts held by black Democrats. This could trigger the largest decline in black representation since the end of the reconstruction era, threatening the modern peak of 63 black lawmakers in the House. While the congressional black caucus condemned this ruling as a partisan power grab, the court's new focus on, quote, "intentional discrimination makes the significantly harder to challenge the dismantling of majority, minority districts."
And he saw other articles as I'm sure we all did about Louisiana and other southern states scrambling to redraw their maps so that they can power grab before voting starts. So yeah, although interestingly, the governor of Georgia has said he's not going to do that before the 2026 elections, he will do it before the 2028 elections. But, you know, there are also
A lot of analyses of this that have suggested that the Democrats will just pi...
seats as the Republicans. And so instead of either side ending up with an advantage, what you're
going to end up with is a system that is defective, broken, hard, you know, less representative, where certain people have less say in the outcomes. It'll mean that black people live in a bunch of southern states have less say because their votes will be effectively offset by the design of the districts that they're in. But it won't give the Republicans a big advantage or the Democrats a big advantage. Who would will give a big advantage too? And this is, you know,
why these things happen is incumbent. Because what they'll do is they'll create districts that it's impossible for the incumbent to lose it. It's un-democratic. It needs to be banned. Candidates for office need to talk about a nationwide ban against jury-mandering. Against political, politically motivated, jury-mandering. And so our trivia question for today, they were going to end with, and I'm going to say it, and then Riley can look it up,
“is what is the origin of the term, jerry-mandering? Has her to guess?”
I don't know. I'm Googling it right now. Right, and what you're going to find out is that it was named after a vice president of the United States, Elbridge jerry, of Massachusetts,
who was, you know, behind one of the, the first efforts to play around like this.
And, uh, was a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts for a long time. I once had that out. No, it was that old. 1812. Exactly. Good to know we've been dealing with this bullshit for it's an American tradition, dealing with bullshit is an American tradition, Riley. I'm surprised you don't realize that. Um, but, uh, but once we, you know, after maybe 10 or 20 years of doing this podcast, you'll say, wait a minute, there's been a lot of bullshit here. Wait a minute,
this is an American tradition. This is how we should celebrate July 4th. Anyway, we are. It's for WWE fight. No, that no, that isn't that isn't that June 12th. That's coming soon. It's May now. Happy May, everybody. That means it's next month. You know, why? To celebrate the 80th birthday of our president. Flag day, please. Also, also, but you
“think that's what Trump is thinking about. techno. I've seen when he acts around flags. Maybe,”
I don't know. Yeah, he loves him. He loves to hug him. Um, anyway, we got that talk forward to in
June, but let's get through May first, shall we? Um, anyway, it's May. So the weekend should be
nice weekend in May. Enjoy the weekend in May. We'll be back here next week. I did notice a couple of people online saying, hey, where's Norman David's words matter podcasts this week? That'll be later today. Usually it's Thursday coming out later today. And we, uh, we've even got a need to know coming out later today, which we'll talk about the state of the progressive movement in the United
“States. And I think it'll be interesting. Anyway, uh, we look forward to joining you for those things.”
We hope you're a good weekend. We'll see you on Monday. Bye bye. [MUSIC]
