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Behind the Bastards

It Could Happen Here Weekly 234

30 May 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 19.525 Dana El-Kurd

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

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19.505 - 23.757 Unknown

You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can you tell you not to audition for The Office or something?

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23.837 - 26.344 Robert Evans

I told him. Whoa. We were filming Anchorman.

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26.404 - 29.974 Unknown

Clearly, I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me, right?

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29.994 - 35.168 Dana El-Kurd

Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

35.823 - 56.11 Robert Evans

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy? Not quite. On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Dave Attell to David Letterman help make you funnier. On this episode, my guests Bob Odenkirk and Kids in the Hall's Bruce McCullough try and help the Kazoo Kid and Tazon Day be famous again.

56.343 - 66.054 Unknown

You know, people love alternate universe shows, right? Those are very big right now. What if there's an alternate universe show where you guys are incredibly popular?

67.075 - 77.147 Dana El-Kurd

Well, and they could travel the land doing meet and greets and solving crimes. They're constantly needed at malls.

79.229 - 82.873 Unknown

Either for signings or because that's where a murder took place.

Chapter 2: What is the significance of Nakba Day in Palestinian history?

971.136 - 992.818 Dana El-Kurd

But Rachel and her Palestinian Muslim husband somehow stayed together. At the same time, Rachel turned a blind eye to many things. And she herself hid many things. For example, she doesn't reveal the details of her children raised as Israeli. The interviewer in the Ma'arav magazine interview emphasizes that they wouldn't want their information known, especially about their lineage.

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993.819 - 1015.42 Dana El-Kurd

It seems that neither ever reconnected with their Palestinian father. And most tellingly for me in that interview, When my maternal grandmother, Rachel's daughter-in-law, complains of the Israeli soldiers in the neighborhood that she lived in, the interviewer reports that Rachel feigns deafness and returns the conversation to a discussion of the children.

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1016.241 - 1026.135 Unknown

Now, Rachel isn't abnormal. Israeli society has turned a blind eye to many things. Many Israelis pretend that the Palestinians as a national group do not exist.

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1026.993 - 1033.763 Dana El-Kurd

They prefer to think of them, prefer to think of us, as the reincarnation of Nazis or the modern-day manifestation of anti-Semitism.

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1034.864 - 1041.093 Unknown

Or at best, Palestinians are merely generic Arabs with easily severed ties to this particular land.

1041.814 - 1050.486 Dana El-Kurd

The Israeli state even grows pine trees over emptied and demolished Palestinian villages to ensure return is impossible and to hide the extent of what happened.

1050.871 - 1057.778 Unknown

In the latest war on Gaza, images and videos from Gaza are dismissed as AI fabrications. They call it Pallywood.

1058.699 - 1072.874 Dana El-Kurd

It's just an effort by Palestinians to put Israel in a bad light. And governments the world over seem to have taken this position of turning a blind eye to the oppression Palestinians have faced and assuming Palestinians would live and die never having exercised their basic rights.

1073.855 - 1091.638 Unknown

All I can say is I'm living proof that these silences prolong the inevitable, that the truth eventually comes out. And the return is inevitable. The longer we wait to acknowledge the reality of the situation, the more people will suffer. And the more this kind of intergenerational trauma will continue.

Chapter 3: How does personal family history relate to the Nakba?

1313.048 - 1321.821 Robert Evans

From iHeart Podcast, Saigon. Please allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? I should stop talking so much.

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1322.041 - 1323.203 Unknown

I like hearing you talk.

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1323.267 - 1327.7 Dana El-Kurd

One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart.

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1327.86 - 1336.365 Unknown

This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire. They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches.

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1337.645 - 1339.729 Robert Evans

I'm on a landmine!

1339.749 - 1343.195 Unknown

For freedom! Get out! Freedom!

1343.616 - 1347.342 Dana El-Kurd

Saigon, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict.

1347.362 - 1354.335 Unknown

Sting hears madness. The world should hear about this. There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything.

1354.656 - 1370.585 Dana El-Kurd

Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about going on strike and hopefully winning. I am your host, Mia Wong.

Chapter 4: What experiences did the speaker's grandmother face during the Nakba?

1403.754 - 1430.274 Dana El-Kurd

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us on such short notice. You said hot shop, and yeah, it's been a week. Very hot week, indeed. I had heard this was going on. And it was there's an attempt to go public. The next thing I heard was like the next day and there was a strike. And I was like, oh, my God, this is wild. So, yeah, not even a week ago. Yeah, it will be.

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1430.295 - 1433.641 Dana El-Kurd

I think by the time you're listening to this, it will be one week.

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1434.102 - 1434.502 Unknown

Yeah.

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1434.522 - 1462.572 Dana El-Kurd

Yeah. OK, that's fair. Yeah, I want to mention this is being recorded on Monday, May 25th. This situation is moving very quickly. There is a chance that things have changed by then. We will try to get an update in if something really major has happened. But let's roll this back to the beginning. And I think the place I want to start is, so you all are, it's real you, electrolysis workers united.

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1462.592 - 1487.352 Dana El-Kurd

So you are electrolysis workers. Mm-hmm. I know this audience specifically of it could happen here has a significantly higher chance of the general population to know what electrolysis is. But can you explain for people who don't know or only kind of familiar what electrolysis is? Of course. Electrolysis is the only FDA recognized method of permanent hair removal.

1488.174 - 1513.85 Dana El-Kurd

It is a technique that dates back a surprisingly long time where we insert a filament about the size of a hair into individual hair follicles. And with the use of electricity to generate either heat or lye, we basically kill each hair follicle at its root, and that hair, if all goes according to plan, will not come back.

1513.87 - 1527.431 Dana El-Kurd

It is commonly used in gender-affirming care, and that is one of the, if not the, specialty of real ewe electrolysis. Yeah, can you talk a bit about this in a gender-affirming care context? Of course.

1528.052 - 1551.589 Dana El-Kurd

You know, if you are a transgender person and you are undergoing medical transition, there is a variety of reasons you might want to have hair permanently removed, either in preparation for surgery, both in terms of a transfeminine or transmasculine surgical context. You will need hair permanently removed from some parts of your body that will be involved in that.

1551.569 - 1578.715 Dana El-Kurd

You also may want to have facial hair or body hair permanently removed. Again, this applies to both trans feminine, trans masculine and people anywhere else on the transgender spectrum. Because, you know, not everybody wants to have body hair or facial hair. Yeah, and this is something that, I mean, I can personally say you can get a lot of dysphoria from body hair. It can be real bad.

Chapter 5: How does the speaker's family history reflect the ongoing impact of the Nakba?

1912.07 - 1936.192 Dana El-Kurd

But Jackie Mae has just been, like, ready to go. But we could also talk about, like, the actual start to, like, okay, when did we actually start doing things to this direction, right? Do you want to take that, Jackie Mae? Yeah, so, like, light talks have been going on since I got there back in, actually, June of last year.

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1937.313 - 1964.159 Dana El-Kurd

It's always just been real light, real surface level as in, hey, do you support a union? would you like to consider being in one one day? And then I go about my day. That's as far as the conversation goes because that's all the information I need at that point. So I knew who in the building was yes. And last month, one of our members, someone who was already in talks with us, was fired.

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1965.121 - 1998.608 Dana El-Kurd

And the circumstances around that person being fired, the vibes were off, right? Like, the previous week, there was... A dirty cart that just happened to appear in her room that would be worth the write-up to get her fired. Huh. That cart couldn't have been hers because before she started school, she moved that cart to her substitute clinician's room.

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1998.588 - 2032.865 Dana El-Kurd

like could, could not be what management said it was. So it looks like something that was fabricated to clarify this, this union member, this coworker was going on a leave of absence to attend a certification training program. So that is why she had a substitute clinician taking over her equipment and I should also add that this was the first time they have ever done room inspections on site.

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2033.145 - 2064.948 Dana El-Kurd

In fact, they've only done room inspections twice, and both times resulted in a termination. Well, that's not suspicious at all. Anyway, sorry, Jackie Mae, please continue. Oh, boy. No worries. It's okay. Listen, we're allowed to rabbit trail. But we come back to... So, our friend was fired, right? It's super duper suspicious. Yeah. And I saw an opportunity.

2064.968 - 2091.607 Dana El-Kurd

And I took that opportunity to talk to people about it. And... For like a few days after this had happened, nobody knew where she was at. Nobody knew what happened. So the narrative was entirely up to me and just going, this is what they did. And we all know this person. We've worked alongside this person. We all recognize her skill and how intelligent she is.

2092.268 - 2120.496 Dana El-Kurd

She's going to go on to teach this stuff. It's true. And it made all of us scared that... one of our best could just be removed like that. Bingo. This is my understanding. This is a pretty small shop, right? Like you, everyone knows everyone else. Oh yeah. Yes. Yeah. Like maybe, maybe 15 or 16 practicing clinicians at a given time. Yeah. Thereabouts.

2121.067 - 2144.172 Dana El-Kurd

Which, yeah, I guess makes it more scary when it's someone you know and you're close to just is just suddenly fired. And I should note that most of us who have worked there are also patients there. So like a lot of these, a lot of our co-workers are not just co-workers. They're also practitioners that provide gender affirming care to us. Yep.

2144.152 - 2168.337 Dana El-Kurd

So we don't just have like a superficial sense of the clinical skill of these people. We have direct experience. And that makes it just that much more devastating when it's somebody you know is extremely good at their job is just suddenly gone under very suspicious circumstances. Yeah.

Chapter 6: What does the grand jury process reveal about public resistance?

6599.909 - 6616.344 Unknown

And given how biased grand jury investigations go, how one-sided they are, to have the grand juries come back and not return an indictment really is showing that people are resisting and they are not buying the government's slogan and lines and playbook on this.

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6616.724 - 6627.707 Dana El-Kurd

And they are saying, no, we're not going to put up with this. So while on the one hand, it's a whole new landscape, we're also seeing the counterpart of people resisting, and that includes in the federal courts.

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6628.008 - 6654.302 Dana El-Kurd

If the term grand jury is new to you, it's basically a special jury in federal criminal cases that is appointed to decide if there's enough evidence to bring the official criminal charge, the indictment, against a defendant. But they're super rigged against the defendant. Basically, they always indict. And often the grand jury process is just an information gathering tool for the government.

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6654.282 - 6668.74 Dana El-Kurd

Especially in movement cases, people get subpoenaed to testify before grand juries in a way that often seems just like a fishing expedition because whatever they say can be used against them, and only the prosecution gets to present evidence to the grand jury.

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Chapter 7: How is the Trump administration redefining terrorism?

6669.14 - 6683.135 Dana El-Kurd

There's a lot more to say there, but check out the show notes, and I'll link some really important conversations and resources about grand juries. I think that's all exactly right, Joey, but it isn't 100% new, right?

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6683.816 - 6702.177 Dana El-Kurd

What the Trump administration is doing is that they are able to police First Amendment protected identities, beliefs, and associations by trying to define those beliefs, identities, and associations as terrorism, right?

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6702.494 - 6734.375 Dana El-Kurd

And so there's a whole apparatus for fighting terrorism that they then can pull in, draw upon resources they can use and legal authorities that they can exercise as long as the thing that they're policing is something that can be called terrorism. Well, by defining all of these things as terrorism, that lets them sort of trigger all of these resources and authorities.

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6735.497 - 6741.525 Unknown

Those resources and authorities were not put in place by this administration.

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Chapter 8: What are the implications of civil lawsuits for activists?

6741.545 - 6755.886 Unknown

They were put in place post 9-11. They were put in place by Barack Obama. They were put in place by Joe Biden, right? And so this is not a problem with the Trump administration.

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6756.226 - 6783.336 Dana El-Kurd

This is a problem with the surveillance state This is a problem with consolidating federal police authority and making it easier and easier for the federal law enforcement apparatus to assert jurisdiction over what we would normally understand to be state level crimes. matters, such as garden variety protest.

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6783.777 - 6809.777 Unknown

And so the shift is not one of kind as much as it is a shift in scope, where we're seeing the federal government treating, as I said, garden variety protest conduct as though it is militant revolutionary action. No, I totally agree with that. And to underscore your point, not a single law has needed to be passed.

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6809.797 - 6829.702 Unknown

There's been no legislation that's needed to be changed in order to effectuate these prosecutions whatsoever, let alone this immigration enforcement. This all preexisted the Trump administration. His administration hasn't passed a single law. So I absolutely agree with you. I'm just saying you're right. The garden variety level of prosecutions we haven't seen. And it's the scale of this.

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6830.183 - 6847.183 Dana El-Kurd

But again, we absolutely know, for example, the Biden administration pursued the FACE Act against individuals in Florida regarding, you know, one of these false clinics. You know, it's not that these tools weren't used before. I just think the scope and scale is not what we've seen.

6847.163 - 6866.64 Unknown

Yeah, and I totally agree. And I think it's important to note that the fact that the law hasn't changed is important, not simply because the laws already existed to bring these prosecutions, but because the law actually hasn't changed, which means the First Amendment...

6866.62 - 6887.059 Dana El-Kurd

remains in effect, which means that a lot of these prosecutions, as you pointed out, Joey, are going nowhere because they actually can't really be sustained under the current regime. Yeah, the scale and the aggressiveness and the scope, I think, is something we haven't really dealt with before.

6887.039 - 6907.208 Dana El-Kurd

You know, in terms of it being not new, I mean, we know the founding of this country and it's not a just system. And I think if we just also start from that, that is the system that protects property and white nationalism and violence and power and capitalism, then I think we can sort of like see where these powers originated from and where the structure originated from.

6907.188 - 6924.775 Dana El-Kurd

And we've also seen that used against, you know, radical Black activists, against the American Indian movement. You know, so like a lot of these things that we're seeing now were tested on communities of color, you know, prior to seeing, OK, what works, what doesn't work, and then bringing this surge, I think, to our communities.

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