3/27/25: ICE Arrests Pro-Palestine Students, Gaza Protests Erupt, Debate On NPR And PBS Defunding
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A Tufts University PhD student was picked up off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. We have harrowing video of what basically looks like a kidnapping. Three masked men are picking up this student and putting her in an unmarked vehicle. The guy who's filming it seems suspicious.

disturbed by what he's seeing and keeps saying, can I see your faces? How do I know that you are police officers? Am I witnessing a kidnapping here? Because it very much does appear that he is witnessing kidnapping. And frankly, he is. I guess you could call it an arrest, but there have been no charges filed. And that's what we typically understand

to be an arrest. Now, apparently last night, let's put up D3B. This is Magnad Bose, a Columbia Journalism Review journalist who also writes for Dropsite News. This is a student in Alabama, Alireza DeRudi, who is a PhD student at Alabama, picked up off the street

And as you can see there, if you try to figure out where he's being held now, it says it is currently undisclosed. No word of any charges. We don't even know what he said. Did he use the word genocide in a tweet? We don't know exactly what he said to get him thrown out. This is coming after...

You can put up D3, Yoon Seo Chung, who is a Korean-American student at Columbia University, an undergrad, who has a permanent legal resident, who has been in the country since she was seven years old, was not a leader of the protests, was not arrested, I don't think, as far as I understand, during the protests.

went to them a couple times, I guess, tweeted some things. And she has had her, according to her attorneys, she has had her permanent legal residence status revoked, and they have been hunting her. They have been using significant federal assets to try to find her. She suspected that this may be happening and apparently has been moving around, and they have

been, been unable to pick her up at this, at this point. None of these people have been charged with, with a crime. All of them, their only quote unquote crime appears to be criticism of Israel's attack on Gaza and the U S support for, for that assault, which by the way, since March 2nd, Israel has not allowed any food, water, medicine to get into Gaza.

And it is creating famine-like conditions and has slaughtered more than 300 children over the last several days. Protesting that is enough evidence

to get them thrown into the back of these cars or have to go on the land. As you can see, you know, the first person, Ms. Ozturk, is apparently, you know, she's a Turkish citizen. So apparently her crime is that she is, quote, one of several students who, one of several authors of an opinion essay published last March in Tufts University student newspaper. The

Mr. Durati, who you mentioned, Ali Raza Durati, there's not even actually any record of anything

that the guy has done. And like you said, the other one just attended a protest. This was, again, I need to talk philosophically here. Do you see the number of agents who are involved in arresting this lady? We don't have better things to do here. I mean, look, I know you disagree. I know you disagree, Ryan, but I want to see those people applied to people who are in the country illegally. Right. Cause that's what quote mass deportation was supposed to be about. Last time I checked, uh,

not, you know, facilitating the arrest of some student, PhD student. Look, fine. I mean, this is where you and I have a disagreement probably. Like, I do think people who are here in the country on student visas and all that, you should be a little careful about that.

Okay, I'm not saying you don't have rights and all that, but listen, just philosophically, when I go to authoritarian countries or other countries, I don't mouth off about whatever, whenever. When I'm in China, in Tiananmen Square, you know what I don't talk about? I don't talk about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. But think about that. But think about that. Are we an authoritarian country? Well, I don't think that we're, quote, an authoritarian country, but I think common sense would dictate that whenever you're in another country or a guest in that person's country, you should generally try not to rock the boat. I did it.

I did a home exchange in France in 2023. We had a French family stay in our house and we stayed in their house for several weeks. It was awesome. France isn't a authoritarian country. At the time, there was some...

I actually did several shows from there where I was critical of the French government for their handling of the situation in Niger. Like, should they have come in and rounded me up? - Well, they could have. No, that's the point, right? - But we have a visa process that we have established for students and for tourists. And if you go through that process, we grant you a student visa. And as long as you follow the laws of our country,

and you're following the remit of the visa that we have given you, we have invited you into our country, and you are spending money in our country. And if you don't violate that, for us to arrest you because Israel or some pro-Israel organization has put you on a list of people that they think are mean to Israel,

It breaks the contract that we made with these people. I totally agree with you. There's no reason for us to be doing this. It's stupid. I'm more philosophically, people are like, oh, they have a right to be here. I'm like, well, not really. But we gave them the right to be there by creating a visa process that they went through. And also, people may not understand this. One of the

main things that keeps our trade deficit lower than it would be otherwise is that millions of people come from overseas to the United States to study here and to do tourism here and

If you look at the trade deficit that we have with Canada, it's cut like in half by Canadian tourists and students who come here and spend. And also many of them pay like full freight to go to our state and private universities. And so they're subsidizing the American students. Like American University, it's like $85,000 a year or something for the full freight. Americans don't pay that.

You know who pays it is like the rich Egyptians or rich Emiratis. I don't disagree with the word you're saying, but that also raises a lot of questions as to then why is the student debt crisis so high and why exactly is it tuition? Because it's still really expensive. Right, exactly. Now, we can debate this foreign student thing all day long.

I think what we can both agree on is the appropriation of immense federal resources to hunting some South Korean lady who, so South Korean lady who's been here since she was seven years old and attended the Columbia University protests. It's just like not very high on, I think, most people's list of what they thought of for mass deportation. And then when you go and you look at mass deportation figures of the actual criminal illegal aliens,

who are being deported, the numbers are exactly the same as they were under the Biden administration and/or roughly the same. Now, you know- - But I also don't think she should have to watch her mouth. She's a legal permanent resident.

And the difference between us and China and us and Russia is that you don't have to watch your mouth here. You say whatever you want. As a citizen, yes. That's where I just disagree. Now, I'm not saying that, again, we're talking about should and can. Okay, but what if you're a citizen, but you previously were a naturalized citizen? So now you're a citizen. Mm-hmm.

You've had a lot of Republicans or Trump administration officials say, well, okay, yes, they're a permanent resident. But if we would have known that once they became a permanent resident that they would go and protest Israel, we would not have given them their permanent residency. Therefore, we're taking their green card and then we're taking the visa they had before that and we're gonna jail them and we're gonna send them to El Salvador or we're gonna send them back to wherever they're from. Why would that not also apply to citizens? We gave you your citizenship,

But we wouldn't have given it to you if we would have known that you were going to be critical of Israel. The case law is very different on citizenship. Stripping a United States citizen of citizenship, as I understand it, is just like— It's a little harder. No, not a little harder. It's like— It's significantly harder. I don't actually think you can strip a United States citizen of citizenship. No, you can if you can— Only if they violate— It's like in your passport if you open it.

- They say if you lie-- - It says you serve in a foreign military except for the IDF. - But they say if you lied to get your citizenship. - That's right, if you lied to-- - What they would say is you told us you support and defend the United States and here you are criticizing Israel, so how dare you? You lied.

I think the difference in particular on these student visas and these permanent residents is for me, the appropriation, like I said, of federal resources purely based on speech grounds with no criminal behavior is one that I think most people will say, yeah, that's pretty messed up.

And because if you look in the past for any of these like deporting based on support for foreign, it was like pretty extreme stuff. You know, we're going to the World War II era where you literally had to be a actual like pro-Nazi, like on the radio giving a speech being like, we need to support Hitler.

for the Roosevelt administration or others to prosecute you for treason. Actually, even on speech grounds, I was looking back, I was recently reading a book about this, even then a lot of those cases had immense difficulty getting over a First Amendment back. That's with the citizens that we're talking about here. And that was even at a time of Korematsu when you had Japanese Americans literally enslaved in a camp, you know, illegally by their government.

But in this particular case, the point is, is that they are using extraordinary measures of the United States, you know, what treaty, exactly, what is the State Department, the Secretary of State can designate any individual here and pulling their visa and then using ICE and like...

I mean, do you know how much money it costs to like arrest someone and fly them to Louisiana? I don't know what, tens of thousands of dollars just to support these type of operations. I think that's the big problem that we see right here. And most people can agree that it's obviously a stunt. And the worst is that it's on behalf of a foreign government. And these lists,

of all of these people, as you and I know, are coming from these pro-Israel groups who have sat there and scrubbed social media. It's sickening for me to even watch because there's these accounts on Twitter, stop anti-Semitism or whatever, and I'll watch them just blow up some girl who wrote on Strava that she was really upset about Zionism. No, not worried. She was like, saw some annoying Zionists. It's like, okay, whatever. People can post whatever they want on

their social media. And they're like blowing up this lady's life. Or, you know, a flight attendant who has like a Palestine flag on their lapel. You know, by the way, I've been on flights before where I've seen the Israeli flag there. Whatever. Maybe she's Israeli. Okay. Yeah, I don't care what flag you have. Give me a drink. You know, it's like, what are we doing here? You know,

Let me get the whole can. Yeah, that's right. Give me the can. I need the Diet Coke can. And pour it properly over. I'm joking. I don't ever say any of this stuff. But my point is just like, who cares with the lapel? They blow these people's up. They ruin their lives in inviting this witch hunt. And those are the people who the government is taking these lists of people from who didn't commit any crime. All they did was speak out against a foreign government. So I don't know. I just think it's crazy. And I would say to the people who are like, well...

they should be good guests and screw 'em? - No, to be clear, I'm not saying screw them. I'm actually on their side. I don't think that they should. - Well, I mean, there's gonna be people watching us who are more into screw them. - At a philosophical level, what I get annoyed by is this transnational American identity as if citizenship itself doesn't mean anything. Just simply being present in the country does not mean you are a citizen who's entitled to all of the protections that we have and that the government cannot deport you for a reason. And it is just empirically true.

If you want to argue America the exceptional country and all that, I think that's fine. But it is empirically true that in almost every country in the world, that going there and in participating in a protest, specifically like in a foreign policy against the sitting government, they're not going to let you stay. Even in Europe and many of these other places. They're not also kind and fuzzy to foreign students there. Particularly if it's an anti-Israel protest. Yeah, try going to Germany, okay? Liberal democracy, Germany. Or, I don't know.

name any other country. Like I said, even non-authoritarian ones, ostensible democracies, where if you do this type of stuff, like you are going to get deported. You can argue that you shouldn't. And you know, I would say you certainly can. That's what- And just shutting off, like you're gonna hurt tourism and you're gonna hurt-

You're going to hurt the number of foreign students who come to the United States. And I think people are going to be like, well, screw it. Who cares? I think we should have much less foreign students. I think it's completely perverted our financial system in these universities because what happens is they increase the costs for everybody. Now, they subsidize marginally the American students who are still loaded up with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. But you also make it basically a visa farm for the richest people all over the world to be able to come here.

Would they fake their SAT scores? No, but they're not. That's the thing. If that were true, Ryan, then you would not see the inflation in overall educational costs. I mean, the more foreign students, the higher that the price actually goes. And then worse is the government comes in and backstops these student loans for fake lower – oh, we gave you $10,000 in student aid. It's like, okay, but the thing is still $60,000. Right.

So they're going and they're getting some FAFSA loan. The government's doing that. It basically becomes a foreign visa farm. The PhD programs and all that, there's no particular evidence that it's all that great for the United States or that all of this money is flowing into the hands of the average American citizen. I don't see any evidence that all of this educational spending has done any or increase in education costs and subsequent dollars come in, has been distributed at all to the overall population.

It's mostly just a money laundering organization for the University of Michigan or the university, whatever, you know, all these other places, which use these dollars to just continue to prop up and justify even more overall expense. And I'm totally against the current way that it's funded. The explosion of the cost of university is, I think, a separate issue from...

foreign students coming and spending money in universities. There's a correlation there, but I don't think foreign students are causing the increase. - No, I'm not blaming them per se. I'm saying it's all part of the incentives. As in the incentive for a university when they charge $60,000,

or $70,000, what is it now, Harvard? I don't even know, 80,000 something? - Yeah, it's the same. - 85,000, let's say. Sarah Lawrence is always famous 'cause they have, like in the middle of Rhode Island, they charge them like 90 grand a year. It's like, okay, well, who's paying that? Well, foreign students, but also, even for the student who's, let's say, paying $45,000 per year, which is still an insane amount of money.

That person is taking a government-backed loan, right, that literally can't be discharged. And you watch as those two things have basically made it so that these universities can offload all the risk of participating in their financial product. If you just look at like a balance sheet, they offload the risk to the government and to the individual, and they take those profits home.

Again, we don't see much evidence that they're distributing that funding. If it were true that all this increased tuition was so great for workers, then professors would be getting paid more. Actually, their salary is going down for the overall PhD rates, right, for the adjuncts. And the way that they run it, it's actually more restrictive than ever. Really what they're doing is they're enriching themselves and a bunch of fund managers on Wall Street.

by these endowments. So anyway, that's my- No, I agree with that point. I think that cutting off the foreign students, well, I guess we'll get to find out what it does. Well, so yeah, I mean, that is the question, I guess, in terms of- Because if you're a foreign student now, like the willingness of, I would assume that you're looking around at other countries. You think so? I would be curious to see. Or maybe you just don't criticize Israel, which is also like-

America has become less America. That's fair. I think that's probably the best point. I mean, I don't think that we're going to really see. If anything, I'm not sure if you saw this, law school applications went double this year, which is usually a bad sign. That means that there's a recession coming because people can't get a job, so that means that they're going to law school. Usually a bad financial decision. Not that you need to take advice from me, but just saying. Loading yourself up with $200,000 in debt in the hopes that it might pay off in the future, usually a bad idea, but

but a lot of people seem to think that it's good. We saw the same thing in '09 for law school applications. But the problem I think is what you just said, is that the government is enforcing policy to chill speech on a issue of a foreign government. That is genuinely crazy. - It's crazy. - It's crazy. I mean, every other time in the past, we talked to Jefferson Morley,

At least our government should be PSYOPing our population to support a war that we are in. Is that too much to ask? Cointelpro for Vietnam, don't support it, but I get it, right? On the Nixon administration, this is too much. Why are we doing this? Repress us on your own behalf. Yeah, repress us for your own benefit, not for the benefit of some people in Tel Aviv who aren't even, I guess some of them are U.S. citizens, but...

We forget though, like yes, Israel is powerful, et cetera. They are our client and they benefit us. There is a reason that we're not just doing it for them. We're doing it for us. They are a fundamental part of our foreign policy in the Mideast. So in that sense, we are suppressing criticism of ourselves.

Divorce can leave you feeling isolated, like you're stuck on an island with no direction. But you don't have to go through it alone. At Hello Divorce, we guide you step by step, offering everything from legal advice to financial planning so you can find your way back to solid ground. Start your divorce journey with the support you need at hellodivorce.com because you deserve a better path forward.

This is Ashley Iaconetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. You could have lost 10 pounds already if you already started one month ago. So are you ready to start today? Find out if weight loss meds are right for you in just three minutes at tryfh.com. Tryfh.com. Try.

Hey, you're listening to On Purpose with Jay Shetty. And today, my guest...

are none other than Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco. I can't wait for you to hear this episode about their love story, about their relationship like you've never heard it before. I want to go back to the first time you ever met.

Thank you so much for this. One of the greatest. Thank you. I'm Selena, but we're watching Disney. When you're a pop star like she is, and you're a huge entity, and people set up all these walls before, and then the first second, you, like, disarmed everybody. By the way, congratulations on your engagement. What I felt for Benny, it was everything about him was honest. He'll tell me anything, anything.

that he's feeling and it made me feel like I could do the same. If we would have met each other when we were younger, it would have never worked. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Several days of protests have broken out in Gaza. Israel is already working to exploit them. You can roll this statement put out by Defense Minister Israel Katz. He's speaking in Hebrew, but he says, "The IDF will soon operate with full force in additional areas of Gaza, and you will be asked to evacuate from combat zones for your own safety. The plans are already prepared and approved.

Hamas is putting your lives at risk, causing you to lose your homes and more and more territory that will be integrated into Israel's defense formation. The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza and the second Sinwar is ready to burn half of Gaza with his own hands just to try and maintain his corrupt rule alongside his fellow Hamas murderers and rapists. They sit safely with their families in tunnels and luxury hotels with billions in foreign bank accounts while using you as hostages. Learn from the residents of Beit Lahiyah.

just as they did demand the removal of Hamas from Gaza and the immediate release of all Israeli hostages. This is the only way to stop the war. This came several days later.

after Israel Katz had put out a separate statement. Residents of Gaza, this is your final warning. Evacuation of the population from combat zones will soon resume. If all Israeli hostages are not released and Hamas is not kicked out of Gaza, Israel will act with force you have not known before. Take the advice of the U.S. president. Return the hostages and kick out Hamas.

and new options will open up for you, including relocation to other parts of the world for those who choose. The alternative is destruction and devastation." After these remarks, starting this week, you started to see organic protests, in other words, not organized by Fatah or the Palestinian Authority, which are kind of rivals of Hamas.

into the second day, the size and kind of the ferocity of the protests expanded significantly. We'll see how that develops today, which would be the third day. What has been remarkable is

about these protests is that they have included significant anti-Hamas sentiment being expressed. And so let's talk about the politics here and the material conditions

in which these are unfolding. So to be clear, Hamas took power in 2005 in this election and then afterwards, Fatah tried to take power and Hamas pulled a counter coup and there haven't been elections since. They have been in power now for almost 20 years.

Obviously, among Palestinians in Gaza, there is a range of opinions. They are by no means monolithic, but there are many, many people in Gaza who have serious objections to Hamas as a governing authority. They have...

largely kind of primarily been a an armed resistance organization in a national liberation move that is there is their identity that's what they see themselves as governing has never been the thing that he kind of animated them right and at the same time they've been operating under a 20-year siege well they've been a repressive government as well and so it

From talking to people in Gaza yesterday, they were adding, yes, people are frustrated with Hamas. People want an end to this war. They want a lifting of the siege. People are literally starving. And they think that if they go out and express opposition to Hamas...

that that can lead to an end to this war. One of the dumbest arguments I always hear is they voted for Hamas, so they support it. Okay, well, the median age in Gaza is 18 years old. Right. So that means that the median of Gazan was not alive whenever there was an election. And by the way, even if there was an election, like let's say 10 years ago or whatever, as I know this is trite almost at this point, but that's the logic Osama bin Laden

to attack the United States on 9/11 is they support their Zionist government under George W. Bush so they deserve it, right? That's why we should attack and kill the average American because they are complicit in the crimes

of their own government. It's like, okay, well, by that standard, then there is no such thing as a civilian. Now that's basically the argument that has been put in place. What's also ironic about those elections is that they were pushed by us. We're the people who basically forced them. The Israelis didn't even want to have an election 'cause they knew what was gonna happen.

The reason that we pushed it was because of Bush's brain-dead freedom agenda. And it's so funny, even in retrospect. They have the election. The election doesn't go the way they want. They're like, okay, now we've got to sanction and blockade this entire thing because they elected the wrong people. So what happened to the whole freedom agenda thing? Right, freedom as long as you pick our guys. Yeah, freedom as long as you pick our guys. Kind of like Iraq, Afghanistan. Interesting, isn't it? You remember Hillary Clinton's famous quote after that election? It's so good. You guys can Google up and find the exact quote. But she was like,

how on earth did the Bush administration hold an election where they couldn't determine the outcome of it? She's like, what kind of incompetence is that?

which just says absolutely everything about everything. That's one of my favorite things in reading history is at the Potsdam conference when Churchill lost the election, Stalin was like, I don't understand. What is going on here? He's like, why didn't you just rig it? And he's like, that's not what we did. He was mystified that you didn't rig the election. He's like, what do you mean that you're just leaving? He's like, you can't leave. And he was so annoyed. He's like, now I have to deal with new people. He's like, who's this new guy at?

He's like, "Who the fuck are you?" He's like, "I don't wanna deal with you." - And so if we put up D8 on the screen, Israel's dropping flyers over Gaza, urging Palestinians to go out and protest

Against Hamas this has kicked off obviously what you would expect which is then a rallying around of Hamas like right? Like because on the one hand people are deeply frustrated with the situation and they're deeply frustrated With you know, a lot of elements of the way Hamas is like operationally handling this the situation people are suffering on the other hand

They don't want to be seen as aligning themselves with Israel. So as a result of this, as a result of Israel trying to exploit the protests, you've had a lot of clans and kind of senior elder officials like up and down Gaza put out statements saying that the people have a right to protest. People have a right to protest Hamas.

But we stand steadfast and firm with the national liberation and with the resistance against Israel. Trying to make that clear. At the same time, you're going to have political jockeying for what may be a post-Hamas environment after Gaza. Israel tried very hard and they put their plans publicly out there that they wanted to empower clans against Hamas to...

to distribute aid. They armed some of these clans. They would bomb Hamas. They would bomb police that were connected with Hamas to try to empower these basically gangs because then it's a classic divide and rule situation. And so some of those gangs have obvious political interests

to try to fuel these. And so what is relying on genuine organic sentiment very quickly is getting pulled in many different directions. - That's what I really wanted to get at. I was like, what do we really make of these protests?

Because everyone's like, oh, it's against Hamas. I was like, maybe. It seems a little convenient. It should definitely be acknowledged that there is significant anti-Hamas sentiment being expressed at these protests. What do your dropside colleagues say about the participants and others? Yeah, that there are significant anti-Hamas elements to these protests, of course. But it's...

There is also anti-siege, anti-occupation, like end this war. We want to live is one of the main lines, main battle cries of these protests is we want to live. And then there is some frustration that the ceasefire didn't last. And it's frustration at everybody involved. But they also know who is blockading the war.

Gaza right now and they know they can in many cases you can see the trucks on the other side Abu Bakr Abed one of our correspondents there was to put on Twitter the other day that or yesterday that Children that he's seen are drawing food in the sand that like the the depth of the hunger of

is at just intolerable levels. And so part of this, I think, is just a flipping the table, like something's gotta give here. And it's being received in a very complicated way in Israel because on the one hand, the Israeli public likes to say that, look, even the Palestinians are protesting against Hamas. We told you Hamas is terrible.

But that also then undercuts their argument that everybody is Hamas and why are you killing them all? They're begging you to not kill them. They're saying they want to live. And there is a very clear path that Hamas has outlined that they will leave the government, make a deal, let a new government come in with some amount of sovereignty and open up the...

the passes so that the trucks can get back in and they'll disarm and move on. And so for a lot of the Israeli right, one of their biggest fears has always been being told yes, peace and coexistence is possible. We want peace.

because Israel does not want, the Israeli right does not want, and the Israeli right is now almost all of Israel, they don't want peace and coexistence with Palestinians in Gaza. They want the Palestinians in Gaza to no longer be there. They're setting up an entire ministry to move them to Egypt and Jordan. They want to ethnically cleanse the entire area. So peace and coexistence is a threat to that vision. So that's why it's being received in this kind of complicated way.

fashion and you're seeing a lot of Israeli commentators say we don't care if they're protesting, kill them anyway.

divorce can leave you feeling isolated like you're stuck on an island with no direction but you don't have to go through it alone at hello divorce we guide you step by step offering everything from legal advice to financial planning so you can find your way back to solid ground start your divorce journey with the support you need at hellodivorce.com because you deserve a better path forward

This is Ashley Iaconetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. You could have lost 10 pounds already if you already started one month ago. So are you ready to start today? Find out if weight loss meds are right for you in just three minutes at tryfh.com. Tryfh.com. Try.

Hey, you're listening to On Purpose with Jay Shetty. And today, my guest...

are none other than Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco. I can't wait for you to hear this episode about their love story, about their relationship, like you've never heard it before. I want to go back to the first time you ever met.

Thank you so much for this. Benny! One of the greatest. Thank you. I'm Selena, but we're watching Disney. When you're a pop star like she is, and you're a huge entity, and people set up all these walls before, and then the first second, you, like, disarmed everybody. By the way, congratulations on your engagement. What I felt for Benny, it was everything about him was honest. He'll tell me anything, anything.

that he's feeling and it made me feel like I could do the same. If we would have met each other when we were younger, it would have never worked. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

- All right, let's get over to NPR and to PBS. Last piece here, but Ryan and I, we were like, we need to debate something more. Foreign students is too much. That's not spicy enough. So what about NPR and PBS? So there've been these congressional hearings for purposes,

We still have yet to be explained. But anyway, they are there. And Republicans and Democrats sparring over whether the hearings are a joke for defunding NPR. NPR not doing itself any favors with their CEO. Hasn't particularly come across well with some of her own past tweets. So we compiled some clips from what went down yesterday to give you the best and the brightest. Let's take a listen.

A former senior business editor for NPR. How long do you work at NPR? I believe he was there just over 25 years. 25 years? Award-winning journalist? Did he win any awards? Our time to talk about... Peabody Award, that's pretty important, isn't it? That is, absolutely. So pretty distinguished journalist, right? Certainly. And he wrote a long story about what you do at NPR. Is NPR biased? Congressman, I have never seen any instance of... Never? Of political bias determining editorial decisions, no. No.

Well, Mr. Berliner, in his story last year, wrote, in the D.C. area, editorial positions at NPR...

He said he found 87 registered Democrats, zero Republicans. Is that accurate? We do not track the numbers or the voter registration, but I find that. Was award winning journalist who worked 25 years at NPR, Mr. Berliner, was he lying when he wrote that? I am not presuming such. I just don't have we don't track that information about our journalist. 87 to zero. And you're not biased.

Do you believe that America believes in black plunder and white democracy? I don't believe that, sir. You tweeted that in reference to a book you were reading at the time, apparently, The Case for Reparations. I don't think I've ever read that book, sir. You tweeted about it.

You said you took a day off to fully read the case for reparations. You put that on Twitter in January of 2020. First of all, I do want to say that NPR acknowledges that we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner. Our current editorial leadership in Wuhan, we recognize that we were reporting at the time, but we acknowledge that the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage and have covered it. So, yeah.

Didn't go so well for Catherine there. I mean, she's been a real target for quite some time now. I don't know in terms of whether this is a good idea or not. Before we get to the debate, though, let's also take a listen to the Democrats. E3, please, let's take a listen.

Free speech is not about whatever it is that y'all want somebody to say. And the idea that you want to shut down everybody that is not Fox News is bullshit. We need to stop playing because that's what y'all are doing in here. You don't want to hear the opinions of anybody else. And the Constitution says Congress shall make no law respecting or establishing

of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the free- - The gentlewoman's time has expired. The gentlewoman's time has expired. - Here's what I think we should be having a hearing about. After Trump and Musk took over the government, reporters noticed the State Department was trying to funnel 400 million taxpayer dollars to Tesla.

The State Department said it's an old contract, no news here. But because of a brave whistleblower and an NPR reporter, they exposed the corruption and the lies. Madam Chairwoman, if we want to look into waste, fraud, and abuse, why not look into that? Elon Musk, who's running cabinet meetings, who's running the White House, was trying to funnel money to himself.

So let's stop investigating Cookie Monster and start investigating how the Trump administration lied about this and was trying to funnel money to their biggest political supporter. Now, I will admit, though, the extreme liberal agenda that you're all pushing, I think, doesn't stop there. This, of course, is Bert and Ernie. Now, these two guys actually live together. They're friends. They're supportive of each other. Now, that might be triggering...

to our chairwoman and someone in this committee, and perhaps that's also why we're here today. Ms. Kerger, an important question. Are Bert and Ernie part of an extreme homosexual agenda? - No. - Thank you, Ms. Kerger, and thank you for being a good sport. Now, I'm obviously using some humor here, but the fact that we're sitting here today talking about defunding public television is actually not funny.

At a time where we can't agree on basic facts and while the free press is under attack, we need public media like PBS and NPR more than ever. So I had no idea Burt and Ernie were possibly gay. Well, that's the whole thing. There was a panic on the right for a while. I had no clue. What is up with these guys? Is this a longstanding thing? Is this a more recent development? What's up with that? I only remember it from the kind of gay panic...

2000s era. Oh, really? But I wasn't cognizant. So these are like the people who wouldn't let their kids read Harry Potter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, all right. Yeah, yeah. But maybe back in the 60s, 70s, there was some...

Okay. So, Ryan, let's talk about it. What is your case for NPR and for PBS? And why don't we split them apart? Because NPR is a news organization. So NPR News specifically, but also NPR has a lot of different programming, public interest programming. I listened to tons of NPR when I was growing up. They had great book shows, et cetera. But I don't think you can deny that it's effectively taken a pretty liberal turn in the last decade or so. So why shouldn't public dollars be funding something like that?

So I would preface this by saying that my concern for this country is like rapidly evaporating as we become more like China and Russia. But you like China. We're giving up. Right, exactly. But you like it. So let's just be China then. Okay. And China, you're going to get publicly funded media. Yeah. And you're going to get much better public benefits. You also have then no freedom of like thought and association or whatever. Yeah.

I mean, that's an exaggeration. I shouldn't say that about my good chairman, Xi. But you don't have the same level of freedom that you have here. As we're eroding our freedom here, then it's like, well, then what are we? What do we even have to offer? But it's kind of like the food stamp thing that we talked about yesterday. So if it's a taxpayer dollar, don't you have a taxpayer interest? Yes. And the democratically elected government should have.

have some say over the way that it's gonna- - I agree. And I'm fine with that. I think there should be a correction in the kind of political bias of NPR. And I think they're doing it. I think they've been chastened by the election.

And how did it get so out of control? Right. You know, because even I think I think the way it got that was the insanity. I think the way it got out of control is the the realignment of our of our politics in throughout the 20th century. You had, you know, the kind of suburban class that is going to dominate. Well, a newsrooms were more working class.

throughout the 20th century. Especially in the early 20th century, yeah. As they became more professional class in the 80s and 90s, the professional class had a lot of Reagan supporters in it and a lot of Republicans and suburbs were leaned Republican. And so, and you also had

this more of an American identity where journalism was less not seen as partisan. It was seen as, it was like, because you had NPR, NBC, you know, PBS, CBS, ABC, like that was basically it. And they saw themselves as kind of above politics. As you move into the realignment period of the 2000s and 2010s, everybody with a college education

becomes kind of a liberal. - Yeah. - And whether they're registered as a Democrat or not. - And a specific type of liberal, right? - Yes, and they're pro-choice and they're secular, and a lot of them are kind of pro-free trade, like that kind of a liberal. And everybody in journalism starts to have a college degree. So the combination of those two things just meant that everybody just that worked at NPR

even though they still had, and I know these people, like they still have, they still consider themselves journalists first, but they were just kind of personally liberals. Then Trump gets elected and they see him as this kind of assault on their sensibilities and on the American constitution. Glenn Greenwald and I have talked about this. We, from the 2000s up through 2016, we had always been saying journalists need to

you know, stop pretending that they're objective and allow the public to know what their opinion is. I totally agree. I totally agree. And then after 2016, we're like, oh, maybe not like that. Like that, wow, okay, maybe we were a little off on that. Well, no, I don't think you were. You went a little...

They went so anti-Trump. - Yeah. - It's like-- - No, but that was good. That was revealing. That actually made it, it's like, no, your impartiality is actually bullshit. I'll tell you where my jump point came for NPR news in particular. Put this one up there on the screen. I'll never forget this from the day that the Hunter Biden story came out. Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about a New York Post Hunter Biden?

Quote, we don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories. We don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions. Now, listen, am I telling you that NPR or that Hunter Biden story was the biggest story in the world? No. Do I think it should have merited coverage in the same way that any story should have merited coverage in that 2020 election? Yes. And in particular, definitely.

They didn't just not cover the Hunter Biden story. They also didn't even cover the censorship of that story by Twitter and others that were involved at the time. So to me, that was when it became an overtly political taxpayer-funded organization. And I said, I just don't think that can stand. You shouldn't be doing that. I will stand for, and this is where I disagree with the...

libertarians and others. Actually, public programming, which is educational, is great. I cannot tell you how much NPR I listened to when I was growing up. Book store, you know, book. They had all these books, shows, you know, the money one, I'm forgetting exactly what the name is. I mean, in the mid 2000s and all that, a lot of people

turned NPR on, it may have been whatever was even available. And it had just general public interest programming of highlighting stories and just thinking back to the explosion in the pre-podcast era. That was very, very useful for a lot of people. And I wouldn't even really call it political, especially in its non-news programming. But that's where you said the educational problem.

problem starts to come in because now even that cultural programming around books we're like reviewing ibrahim x kendi right as part of our show thing you're like okay well you know it doesn't take a genius to see which way all this is start trending now am i saying you can't review that no but are you also going to have a critical author on i don't think so

So that becomes the issue. And you start to really see that organization from 2014 onwards become just like overtly liberal. I think PBS is the same story where it's sad because it's not just about Sesame Street and others. I mean, PBS helped a lot of kids to learn about science and how to read. If you think about your and my childhood probably in our public schools, what did we watch? We watched a lot of PBS programming.

about how to read and cartoons. I genuinely think that stuff is really very impactful, especially in a country where you can't leave it to these privatized education companies. They certainly don't have our damn interests at heart. So I guess it's more about coming back to principles. But a lot of the libertarians and the conservatives, they don't even believe it's possible. And so they just want to blow the entire thing up. So that's really where I differ with

Right. So it sounds like we agree on the sense that in principle, public media is a good thing. And then the public coming together and deciding that they're going to use public resources to fund...

media and education is a good thing because the market doesn't do everything. And when it comes to like NPR for instance, apparently about 3% of their funding is tax dollars. That's the national NPR, that's the one they hate. The one that all these liberals on North Capitol Street. When it comes to NPR stations around the country, it's at least 10% of the funding is tax dollars. And without that funding,

The NPR station that exists wherever you live, if you're outside of D.C. or New York or Los Angeles, would probably go under. And those NPR stations, they're important to national NPR because it's cool how NPR, when there's a story in Alaska, they've got somebody in Alaska. When there's a story in Montana, they've got, they didn't fly somebody to Montana. They've got somebody that lives right there, knows NPR.

the local scene reports every day for the local NPR, but then when there's a national story, they report for national NPR. And I think that these rural areas in particular are significantly worse off without those publicly funded NPR stations. And they just, just from a commercial capitalist perspective, there's not going to be the audience there for them to survive. So

the public should step in and provide a thing that the market can't, that we consider to be valuable. And if we feel like it's going off the rails politically, ideologically, I think it's fine for the public to step in and be like, look, come on.

Get it together. Good. That's what we're doing here. Then we totally agree. All right, guys. Except the Republicans don't agree. They're going to try to cut off funding. We'll see. I doubt it will. I mean, like you said, though, what is it, 3% of their funding? And it's not like they also solicit. The only thing that's annoying me about NPR is how much they shake you down for money every time you listen. If Republicans do cut the funding, it will not be national NPR that will go under. It will be the local NPRs. That's true. That's fair. PBS, the only real thing for PBS is I love their historical program.

For anybody out there, I mean, I think it's on Amazon. It's only like $3.99 a month and you can get access to the whole PBS category. I love those American Experience ones about the American presidents. Obviously, the Ken Burns documentaries are just incredible. That's a genuine public service, in my opinion, because that stuff is used in schools to like –

I mean, it's definitely going to be better than any history teacher that you're ever going to see. To actually see this highly produced, all these interviews. That's still a war documentary. Actually, it's funny. Shane Gillis was joking about it. But I feel like he's speaking directly to someone like me when he's joking about Shelby Foote. Have you ever read his books? After I watched it, I actually tried to read Shelby Foote's books. They are impossible to read.

- He didn't. - They are written in that, the way he talks is the way that he writes. It's lyrical. So he'll be like, "Mr. Lincoln, coming up on a broad hill. Jefferson Davis, known for the scar on his face." I'm like, dude, I can't read this. - He didn't write with troops such as these, did he? The Stonewall Jackson biography? - No, I don't think he did. He wrote a trilogy, which was, I forget exactly what they were called.

Yeah, the Civil War, a narrative. To be fair, he even would tell you that he was not trying to write. That he's making this up? He was writing it in like a historical. He was writing it specifically in the way that I found annoying. I just personally cannot stomach that whenever I'm reading. So there you go. Book discussion from Sagar and Ryan. Ryan, it's been fun, man. Thank you for stepping in this week. We appreciate you. Back to regular programming next week, and we will see you all later.

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