10/21/25: Trump Worries Bibi Will Break Ceasefire, Two Major Recession Indicators Blink Red

23:39But the law and order, so to speak, that you're raising is a really vital question. Remember what happened when Bush and Cheney decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein's government. The most disastrous decision they made on a counterinsurgency level was debathification. They fired 250 ,000 Iraqi soldiers. And I remember so clearly the late great journalist Anthony Shadid quoted an Iraqi official who had been in the Ba 'ath party as saying it was the day that a quarter of a million Iraqis joined the insurgency against the Americans. And you saw a massive uptick in the number of American bodies coming back.

24:12I predict that if they try to de-homassify Gaza's institutions, which are largely civil institutions, including the police, including domestic intelligence, including the governance of courts and jails, et cetera, they're going to be begging for those people to come back to work. Of course they will. And so it was interesting to hear Trump, although he contradicts himself the next day, but he does seem to get it. And that's why he said at the beginning, oh, we told them that they could do this for a period. I think that they're going to realize that there are multiple faces to Hamas and one of them is governance.

24:47They were the only governing authority that any Palestinians in Gaza knew for two decades. And under incredibly difficult circumstances, they managed to keep basic civilian infrastructure going. Hamas officials have told me it became an albatross around our neck. We're under siege. The whole place is locked down. Our popularity was dropping because of governance issues. It's not because of the armed resistance. That remains the number one most popular issue along with statehood for Palestinians, but on a governance level. So if they think they're just going to blow it all up, impose some foreign force, say, oh, here's a new committee, but it's not really in charge, who's in charge is this peace board that Trump said.

25:23It's going to be a disaster, and they're going to come begging those technical experts that ran the government in Gaza and also won the last democratic election and say, come back in. So I think we're going to see that if they try to impose it. One thing is clear of Palestine's history. They are not going to accept foreign occupation. It's just not going to happen. The question is, how does it get resistant? Do we have actual recognition of Palestinian rights or not? The world has never been more clear on what the Israeli project represents than now. And I think that was a key factor in why the Palestinian negotiators took this deal, even though it's a bad deal, because they recognize that the world is on their side.

26:01And that's why, in a way, it's more important for journalists and others to pay much more attention now than at any point in the past few years. I totally agree with you. The future is up for grabs. I completely agree, because this is the post-project of, you know, immediate term was hostages, negotiation, ceasefire. Now it's the hard part. Yeah. Did we win the war in Iraq after mission accomplished? That's actually when we lost the war in Iraq. That's what so many people failed to grasp. It's going to be a decade long project. Can I make one last point? Just something that you said there. On this issue of the exchange of captives, you look at the Israelis that have been released from Hamas's captivity.

26:35And they were held during scorched earth bombing, during a starvation campaign. And I think many of them, their physical appearance did not look like what people thought it was going to look like when they came out. You look then at the images of Palestinians, where medical officials are saying that organs were surgically removed, where their bodies are charred, where there's ropes around their necks, where some of them have their hands tied behind their backs. Blindfolded. You can see in the photos, the bodies are like decayed, but you can see the blindfolds around the eyes. As we sit here in this studio in Washington, D.C., Palestinians are gathered in tents in Gaza, watching monitors where medical examiners are putting pictures of the bodies of Palestinians that have been returned.

27:24And they're doing close-ups of the teeth or of the hands or of the clothing that was on these people. And they're gathering in tents to try to say, is that my son whose body part I'm looking at? The sadistic nature of this, Israel is holding at least 720 Palestinian bodies that we know of. One Palestinian political prisoner who died on hunger strike, his body's been held for 45 years. They still haven't released it. But there are current indications that there are as many as 1 ,500 bodies in addition to that that are being held in the context of October 7th and the aftermath, Palestinian bodies.

28:03Trump talks about the sickness of what kind of sick people hold dead bodies. It's a matter of state doctrine in Israel since 1967 to hold Palestinian bodies. So the whole narrative, whether you are a MAGA person in this country, or you're a Democrat, or you're a leftist, or you're a rightist, all of us should recognize there are two standards that are being broadcast here right now. And it's a question of What are our values? We're denouncing. I mean, the Palestinians are desperate to get the bodies of these Israeli captives back. This is a total liability for them. The Israelis are holding them in coolers and freezers, in some cases, for 45 years.

28:38Why don't we talk about that? And real quickly, since we have you here, I want to ask you about the West Bank, because actually there was a video just this week of a man was killed in the West Bank, And it was his wife or some family member kind of battled the IDF soldiers there to like grab his body. And Palestinians successfully prevented the Israelis from taking the body out of an ambulance and back into Israel 48. But on Monday, we also saw this viral video filmed by Jasper Nathaniel. We had him on our show yesterday. reporter who captured an image that is becoming kind of the masked face of Israel, which is this like thug settler with a giant stick over his head beating an elderly woman.

29:25And today, Hen Mazig, I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right, one of the Israeli propagandists out there, he reports, Israeli Deputy Commissioner Moshe Pinchay sent a message to other commanders ordering them to find and stop an Israeli man who had attacked and seriously injured an elderly Palestinian woman in the West Bank who had been out harvesting olives. He added, quote, an image that kept me from sleeping. We will not be like our cruel enemies, unquote. And then adds, this is the kind of moral clarity we need to maintain even through the darkest times. This is accountability. So Israel actually responding to this images of this violence, which is highly unusual.

30:06But what do you make of them getting off their tookus here and saying they're going to actually do something about this? What would you say about the moral clarity that's alleged here? The last two years of Israeli conduct has dramatically given lie to this mantra repeated by Democrats and Republicans that it's the only democracy in the Middle East. There's actually nothing democratic at all about Israeli society when you have, on the one hand, the stealing of people's land, the brutal beating and killing of Palestinians as you try to steal their land, the denial of full rights to people even that you say are your citizens who happen to be Palestinian.

30:50So the entire project has been exposed as a lie. But what I would say is even when Israel gets caught on camera and caught on film, the actual accountability when it happens is minimal. You had people who were filmed raping Palestinian prisoners and their defense in court that their lawyer offered was that they needed to rape him because it was self-defense. And the Biden administration repeatedly got played on this. They would stand there at the State Department, oh, well, Israel's doing an investigation. It never goes anywhere. There's never any actual consequences. What I would say about this beating video, though, the Palestinian woman who was getting beaten with a club for committing the crime of farming while Palestinian, is that what happens when we don't have video there?

31:36That's actually what matters. Because when you hear, if you listen to Palestinians and what happens to them at the hands of the government-enforced and backed settlers, it's an astonishing crime that has played out for decades. And, you know, this is why so many Arab and Islamic states wanted this term in the Trump plan, saying that there won't be any annexation of the West Bank. And then it was taken out the night before by, you know, Dermer and others meeting with Whitcoff, because I think that is the agenda moving forward. You know, that speech in the Knesset of Trump was like watching a reverse Nuremberg trial, where instead of facing justice, the criminals gather together and they congratulate each other.

32:16The guest of honor who should have been there was Joe Biden. The difference between Biden and Trump is Biden was a committed Zionist ideologue. Trump is transactional. Trump will pay lip service to Miriam Adelson and the agenda of Zionism. It's almost funny to him. Yeah, it's almost like he's saying, can you believe these fools? Believe me. It's sort of like the famous quote about Karl Rove talking about the evangelical right. You know, where it's basically they recognize that they could get them as a voting bloc, you know, with the radical rise of the radical religious right. In a way, I think that's kind of how Trump is toward Israel.

32:48I don't think he cares one way or the other. I don't think he's actually like a committed Zionist in a political sense. Biden's entire career was that. So Trump's like, OK, well, we'll let them burn the place down after they blow up the ceasefire. But it had to do with his own, you know, transactional, political, real estate, all of these other things. Oh, well, yeah, Mary Madelson is telling me I need to do this. Oh, yeah, well, she's got 60 billion in the bank. All right, okay, fine. We'll let Netanyahu do. Biden, though, committed Zionists his whole career defending Israel at its worst constantly.

33:19Yeah, he said a Jew in the world would not be safe if Israel didn't exist, which is a slap in the face to our country. That still enrages me. So you're the president. To this day. Yeah, I know. I mean, what? That's such an insane thing to say. Eight million people in the country not safe under your leadership. Yeah, we're not safe under your leadership. You should do something about it. Exactly. And now we have Anthony Blinken. in. I'm not sure. I'm sure you saw this. John Kirby is now at David Axelrod's Institute for Politics. Jake Sherman's at Harvard. These people had no consequence. It's Iraq.

33:49Sorry, not Jake Sherman's catch a straight. Yeah, sorry. I apologize. Jake Sullivan is over at Harvard. I mean, these people paid no price. And I think that's what's so personally blackpilling is. I saw that happen with Iraq and I said, OK, it won't happen again, right? Like in my own lifetime. but it did happen again. And again, I think that on these questions, we cannot let the Biden people off the hook. There's a huge, yes, Trump allowed the Israelis to put forward a narrative of lies to blow up that January ceasefire deal. March 2nd, they reimposed the siege. And then March 18th, they begin the terror bombings again.

34:25Now they brought it back to the so-called ceasefire. But Biden's people, including Matt Miller, the former State Department spokesperson, have acknowledged that they allowed Israel to blow up ceasefire deals because they were afraid if they were too hard on them that it would ruin their chances to get a ceasefire deal. I mean, if you think about the logic there, but I would, again, I would draw a difference between the Kushners and the Witkoffs of the world, who I think in their own way are sort of cold, callous, vicious characters when it comes to how they're approaching Palestine and the Biden people.

34:55There was ideology at the center of the Biden people regarding Israel. With Trump's people, it's kind of like a Walmart. This is just about how much crap can we sell to get what we want, to get those profits. And I think, again, we should never forget that it was the Biden people that let this go on, that facilitated the entire thing. There never would have been that January deal had it not been for Trump's intervention. No matter how much the Matt Iglesias or others of the world want to try to pretend Biden's people sealed that deal, they didn't. He should be remembered as the butcher of Gaza.

35:29Biden's legacy should be, he was the butcher of Gaza. And it was this simple the whole time, Jeremy. How did the ceasefire happen, this final one? They met with Hamas in a room. It's not difficult. Meet with them. Kushner said that he brought it up in the first Trump term. Exactly. It's one thing that I do give the Trump administration credit for. Although they kind of screwed the Palestinians on the Edan Alexander exchange, the American Israeli soldier who was released and there was supposed to be Trump calling for an end of the war and resumption of aid. But I give them credit for sitting down and talking with Hamas.

36:03And this is the dangerous thing. And it's the broader lesson we can end on, I guess. Anytime, and it's why at DropSite, we believe in speaking to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It's because anytime you speak with people that you're told are the enemy, you're going to learn something about what motivates them, What drives them? And if we really want to resolve conflict or we want to end these wars, it is imperative that you be willing to hear the perspective of the other side. Otherwise, you have what Israel is, which is just an annihilationist agenda, a serial killer masquerading as a nation state.

36:36But if we want to hold ourselves to a higher standard, it means you talk to everybody. So that strand of Trump's policy, I think is something that It should become part of the U.S. perspective on resolving conflict and war. You have to speak to people that you claim to be fighting against or that are being characterized as terrorists, particularly when it's in the service of another country. Yeah, especially those of the people you need to talk to. Absolutely right. Don't let anybody shame you. You talk to whoever you want to, even if they're literal terrorists. I mean, look, I talk to you. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

37:05You're right. I'll end on this note. Similarly, I remember I ate all the propaganda about North Korea. Then I met some of the people who were analysts who had met with the North Koreans, and they explained their perspective. I go, yeah, I'm not giving my nukes up either. I'm like, what? Of course. I'm not trusting these people for one second. I heard what they said at the negotiation table about Gaddafi to Mike Pompeo's face, and I was like, yeah, I'm on Pyongyang's side here, man. I'm never giving these up. So that's a perfect example of what you're talking about. Jeremy, thank you so much for dropping by.

37:39Always love talking to you, man. Thank you very much. Always an honor to be with you guys. Thank you.

38:10hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

38:42Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Almormata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

39:28This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult?

40:05NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits he stood trial for murder and got acquitted the biggest mind game of all nlp might actually work this is wild listen to mind games on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts turning now to the economy we've been trying to stick to this as much as we can, the two-tiered economy, where people, yes, the S &P 500, record high just yesterday, gold, record high.

40:57So if you have some of those assets, you're doing well. But beneath the surface and behind the scenes, a lot of stuff happening for people who are making less than $100 ,000. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. Lower-income Americans are missing car payments. So more Americans are struggling to make monthly car loan payments, a sign that the lower-income consumers are under growing financial pressure. The share of subprime auto loans that are 60 days or more past has nearly a high of 6.5 % and has lingered near that level. Repos have swelled. More drivers are trading in vehicles that are worth less than they owe, meaning that they're upside down.

41:31And lenders such as CarMax and Ally Financial have warned investors about auto loan performance. Quote, despite stubborn inflation and punishing tariffs, the U.S. economy on its surface appeared to hold up relatively well. The stock market has climbed, companies, executives for the most part remain upbeat, and consumers overall are still spending, but it's largely those top 10 % consumers, which are the weakness is that the auto market is one of the clearest indications that lower and middle-class income families could be starting to buckle because many Americans need cars to get around. Auto loan delinquency is a telling gauge of financial hardship.

42:03That's actually a good proxy, right? It's like one of the last things that you're going to go bust on is repossessions. I'm not sure I'm not the only one, but videos of repo men literally go viral all the time. And it does feel, maybe it's algorithmic, I'm not sure, my own personal bias, but I do certainly see them go everywhere. And I think you combine that with some of the other studies, particularly with the segment we're going to do later on with David Dayen, the real risk to our economy right now, Ryan, is that if you're already making less than$100 ,000, you're basically not bust, but you're really struggling.

42:32And if 50 % of all consumer spending, just from the top 10%, a slight pullback in that is just enough to send us into a recession. Yeah. And what you said is exactly right. If you lose your car and - Yeah, you can't do anything like you know small percentage of people live walkable enough that they can get to work etc that's not that's not the situation right like a massive portion of americans and so if so when you start struggling yeah you your rent is the thing you stop paying first maybe because it's much harder to get evicted and then then your credit card your student loans definitely You're not paying those.

43:10What are they going to do? Take your take your degree back? Eventually you. But you keep paying the things that you need and you need your car when you and then when you stop paying for that. And then now you're dodging the repo man. Yeah. And if you lose your car, then you're you're bumming rides to work. You might lose your job. You're so it's a very downward spiral. That's why the bean counters look at this number, because through all of that pain and suffering is an economic indicator, which is that if people are falling behind on their car payments, that means everything else is going really badly as well.

43:45That's exactly right. There's another metric I track very closely. Let's go ahead and put here up on the screen. When I saw this, I said sell everything, because this is the biggest indicator of impending economic disaster. the number of people who registered to take the LSAT in September 2024 was 18 ,811. The number of people who registered to take it in September 2025 is 32 ,170. So let's explain, shall we? What it is is that anybody who is my age is just old enough to remember this, is back in the Great Recession. You lived through this, Ryan. You were entering the job market at that time. If you entered the job market between 2009 and 2012, you were dead, right?

44:29You were basically entering one of the worst wage job markets of all time. So what a lot of people did, especially those who graduated, let's say in 2009, is they said, okay, screw it. I'm just going to have to go to law school. I'm going to have to business school. Yes, I'm going to have to leverage myself with some debt. But hopefully things will have cleaned up. I'll have gained a credential in the meantime. It's kind of a stopgap measure for a lot of people. It's nice if you can afford it, but it's definitely bad if you're taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans. Just to add to that, and then you go on.

44:56Let's say you graduated in 05. You've been working for two, three years. You just got laid off, and you're staring at now years of unemployment. There was this whole thing back then, what they called the 99ers, people who would exhaust 99 weeks of unemployment. And so you're like, well, I could sit around and just suffer because like there's not, you know, it's an extraordinary amount of suffering. Yes. To be looking for work. It's an assault on your dignity as well as your finances. And so you're like, well, if I'm going to be sitting around for three years anyway, might as well at least try to come out with a credential that can make me more employable down the line.

45:34Yeah, and actually what we saw is that the number of people who took the LSAT actually dropped after the economy started to get better. So it is one of those very good indications about how people are doing. And eventually, as the economy got better, let's say to 2012, it fell even more precipitously. But the fact that it has such a large spike is genuinely one of those 2009. It's the exact same thing. I'm looking right here at the statistics, substantial jump of some 20 to 40 percent in law school applications just in the 2009 to 2010 school year. So this is the same number if you look at what that is almost double, actually.

46:09So it's a very similar metric. It just goes to show you at the lower level of the job market, there is a crushing feeling of this isn't going to get better. And so I might as well just take out some debt and deal with it. I will also add, though, this may be one of the worst times to do it because not only do we have AI, which is on the horizon, but also for people who are out there, please pay very attention to the law. So there's something called a grad plus loan. Are you aware of what that is? $50 ,000 cap now. Exactly. So previously, this grad plus loan was one of the most used student loan federal programs for medical students and for law students.

46:46Now, the United States Congress in the recent legislation has capped that at$50 ,000. And so there are some schools, I recently saw a statistic that for the very first year ever, I think it's Santa Clara, I need to check. Pulling it back. Which law school? They had their tuition at$70 ,000. But then the law changed and they changed it to$50 ,000. I was like, oh, interesting. Interesting. Because the$70 ,000 was kind of a fake sticker price. It's all fake. All right. So there are two options that are right now. Is that one is that, yes, maybe law school prices will drop. I am deeply hopeful for that.

47:17Personally, I think we should make the grad plus zone zero, and then we'll really see what the market rate for a law school is. My guess is a couple thousand dollars. But the real change here could be the Yales, the Harvards, let's say any in a T15, top 25 law school, any of those, they're not going to change. People are going to get leveraged no matter what, whether it's grad plus or not. Now, that's where I get scared for people is that they'll not only even have access to the Grad Plus loan, they have to get a private loan. Private loan is going to have a user's interest rate right now. And you could really get stuck in a deep hole.

47:51And you're basically banking on an entire career that works out when you have a technology environment right now where you just don't know. I mean, again, I'm not a lawyer. I know a lot. From what I know, AI has not come yet. There's still a lot of guild checks in the system, but I can't be the only person who says, hey, especially the lawyers who I grew up with, their first two, three years in the industry, it was bullshit. It was like – Document review. It was doc review. It was working – when the partners went to bed, that's when you started to work and you have to do your research and make sure that the footnotes are – I mean it's like investment banking.

48:31It's just pure scut work, and that's one of those where – that I'm fairly certain. chat GPT could do, or at the very least, you could use it to check your work and then come, but the workload is going to be much, much less. So that's where I really start to worry, you know, for some of these people. Especially with the doc review. Oh yeah. I mean, that's the definition of automated, right? Yeah, exactly. Hopefully, I mean, I'll put a value judgment on it. There are so many like fake cases that seem to have been seeded into the world. I don't know if like a Thomson Reuters or like some other of these companies that you have to pay to get access to their cases are like genuinely like seeding the world with like fake cases the way that like hippies would put like a spike in a tree interesting yeah something's going on that is putting in all of these made up completely hallucinated cases that then ais are then writing into their memos that they're writing and judges are coming down hard on them saying like oh this is a this is clearly ai you're sanctioned, you're fined.

49:34So at least you will need humans to like read the AI briefs and then actually go and check the cases to see if it's not hallucinating. Well, you should be checking it anyways. I can't tell you the number of times I'll use chat GPT for research. I'm like, wait, that's wrong. I mean, like, I know that that's wrong. Right. It's one of those where I think it might be. And then I'll say, hey, that's wrong. And they're like, oh, you're right. It is wrong. If you work at like Thomson Reuters or one of these other places, reach out to me because, oh yeah, I actually, that would be a great story. And if I were them, I would do it.

49:58Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, why not? Protect your business. Injeti versus Grimm. This is a powerful Supreme Court case. And you can put it somewhere where the AIs will crawl it, but nobody else can find it. Yeah. My dream is to get my name attached to a landmark case on marijuana. Injeti versus the United States. Injeti versus the state of Colorado. So my name can live forever. All right. Let's go and put this one up here on the screen. I need my Injeti rights. Yeah, the Miranda rights. Injeti rights. The Injeti right to... There was actually a huge case here in Washington, D.C.

50:28where a woman sued her neighbor for smoking weed and won, actually. And won. She is my personal hero right now. Those are her. So the home sellers now outnumber buyers by more than 500 ,000. That is the largest gap ever recorded. So, yeah, you know, things are scary. And the reason why this scares me is the price still has not adjusted, Ryan. So even though the sellers are outnumbering the buyers, the law of elasticity would tell you that the price should come down. Price is not going down. All right? It's actually staying flat. And in some cases, in the big metro areas, they're going up, which I just don't understand.

51:03I don't know how it's possible. But there's something where it – I have said now this entire time it feels like it has to crack. But it doesn't. And I think that's what scares me the most is we've lived through these crazy times now since June of 2020. It's been five years, more than five years of an insane housing market. It doesn't sound that long. Let's say if you're 60. if you're my age and you're 33, that's a long time. I wasn't even married with a child five years ago, right? Your life can change rapidly in five years. Let's say you're 28 years old. You're right around that time where you're like, yeah, you know, I'm thinking about it.

51:40Oh, 7 % interest rate, terrible housing market. I can't afford it. I don't have the savings. Let's say I'm either getting laid off or I'm not getting the raise that I thought I was going to get. Inflation is eating away at my bottom line. Those are the people I think about the most right now. And I think what you're looking at there is a standoff. And I think, and this is the reason that you're not seeing the prices crash yet. You have, most of those sellers there have some type of 3 % interest rate that they're sitting on. And so their monthly payment is something that they can afford as long as they're staying employed.

52:11And so they can, they can wait out the buyers. buyers are looking at a 7-8 % interest rate, which sends your monthly mortgage costs, you know, absolutely through the roof, which changes the amount of house that you can then buy. So if you're a seller and you're selling on your 3 % mortgage, now when you go to buy a new home, you're going to have to take out this 8 % loan. So there's that huge gap. And so people are staring at that and saying, you know what? I need a lot more money to be able to get an equal house. And the person's like, well, why would I give you that much money when? No, I mean, it makes perfect sense.

52:51It's two people just staring at each other. And I think the only way this breaks, I guess eventually the force of like economic decline could do it because enough people just can't make their payments anymore. But really, interest rates have to move. Yes, That's right. But they're not. That's the thing. They're just not. This crazy world of where you have three and eight, like the buyers at eight and then the sellers at three, like trying to find a place where they can meet in the middle is proving to be impossible. Like that's why you're seeing this record gap. That's such a good point. Yeah, and a lot of people are stuck in houses that they don't even want to be in.

53:22I know a lot of them. They have like three children and they're like, I'm not moving. I can't afford it. I literally cannot afford to move. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen. This is – we wanted to bring it back to the shutdown. There is, in fact, a shutdown happening, by the way, if anybody's forgotten. It's actually the fourth week of the shutdown. Not that anybody cares, apparently. And so these Obamacare prices were the things that the Democrats really were zeroing in on. And there's been new public reporting now of these higher prices that are now actually revealed in over a dozen states.

53:52It says consumers are now facing greater costs for their 2026 ACA health coverage. as Congress continues to debate whether to extend subsidies that help people afford their premiums. So health insurance prices for next year under the Affordable Care Act now available. The annual enrollment period for Obamacare starts on November 1st. The costs are becoming publicly available piecemeal through state marketplaces. People shopping for coverage can now preview the costs they face from potentially expiring subsidies, sharply rising premiums in many markets, including California, New York, Nevada, Maryland, and Idaho.

54:26Man, California, New York, what? That's a huge portion of the entire U.S. population. Based on newly published information, a family of four making$130 ,000 in Maine would face an increase of$16 ,000 in annual premiums just next year because they would no longer qualify for generous subsidies. And that is from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. That's devastating,$16 ,000. That's after-tax income. That's one of those where you read and you're like, that can't be right. Right. That has to be wrong. That's huge. An increase of$16 ,000. And like you said, after tax income. So the family of four making$130 ,000,$135 ,000.

55:04I guess technically tax deductible. Whatever. I'm not an accountant. Still. Yeah. Yes, you can write that off. That's true. But your income is not, you know, your actual income is going to be more like$100 ,000, even though you can write a lot of that off. But that's brutal. And so what people, so what's interesting here, let me read something. from a related report, which says, so the expiration of enhanced tax credits will lead to out-of-pocket premiums for ACA marketplace enrollees, increasing by an average of more than 75%. This is the doubling that you keep hearing about. So they're guessing that won't be a complete and total doubling, which ensures, with insurers expecting healthier enrollees to drop coverage, that in turn increases underlying premiums.

55:50So just to make sure everyone's clear and what's going on here. We're going to double the price almost of these exchanges. A lot of people are going to look at that$16 ,000 price tag that they're facing for next year, and they're going to say, I can't afford that. It's not even a choice of whether or not I want to buy this. I don't have the money for it, so I'm just dropping health insurance. Insurers have already gamed that out. They know that they're estimating$2 million for next year and then increasing as it goes on. OK, so it's the healthiest people who are the most likely to say, you know what, I just I'm not family is going to have to go no insurance this year.

56:27And so if you lose the healthy people from the pool, you then have to charge everybody else more. So not only are you losing the subsidy, which is driving the price up 75 percent, they're estimating that they're already forecasting to regulators that they're going to raise the underlying price by 20 percent. But that is a year-over-year increase that is utterly unsustainable and insane. 20 % in one year? It's horrible. But I keep coming back to what Crystal said with Corbyn Trent. This is a devastating point. This is a devastating point. The whole fight is we can't afford to go back to normal Obamacare.

57:06Well, if this is normal Obamacare, this sucks. I said it at the time. Yeah, it's like this is horrible. This is horrible. The only reason people signed up were because of pandemic era subsidies for health insurance. And now that it's reverting back to people, whoa, whoa. I'm like, I didn't know that this is what the normal program was. And that's actually kind of a Republican talking point, which is not incorrect. It's like, if this was the normal marketplace, then what the hell are we doing here? I mean, I got some of these older figures. I got in Kentucky, a 60 year old couple making 85 ,000 will face an increase of 23 ,700.

57:45But they make 80 ,000 and their increase is a quarter of 23 ,700. I'm rolling the dice till I get Medicare. I mean, personally, right. If you're healthy, healthy, I'm like, let's, let's roll the dice. Don't take any buses. Don't don't go in a cross. And that's what they, that's what they expect people will do. And so costs are going to go through the roof. The best thing that people said about the ACA at the time was, well, this is a first step and they'll fill it in with subsidies. And then they did. And now they let them go. Now you have to fight to get them back. Yes, it's utterly absurd. It's outrageous.

58:15And it shows why you need universal coverage. Because without universal coverage, the healthiest people aren't in it. And then everybody else, everybody else pays more. So yeah, the politics play an interesting role here. Yeah. This is really what I want your opinion on. Because it does look like the Senate Democrats are going to cave. Right. Because so think of think of. So if you're just listening to this, this is Andrew Destorio, a little reporter saying our Senate Dems eyeing November 1st as a shutdown off ramp. Dems think they can argue it's no longer feasible to address the expiring ACA subsidies legislatively and make GOP own the resulting premium hikes.

58:52No decision yet. This idea is picking up steam. So in other words, saying, OK, well, the exchanges open up for business on November 1st, and this is what we're fighting for. So if we get past November 1st, we can then save face and say, okay, look, we tried. We tried to save Republicans from themselves. We tried to stop Republicans from doubling your health insurance costs. They refused. Now they're doubled. It's done. Let's open the government up. Like, so that's, and then you've had, um, uh, was it Thune yesterday saying, I will negotiate, you know, and what Republicans have been saying is we will negotiate around these subsidies, but we won't do it with a gun to our head, which is hilarious because it's like the exact reverse of what the party said during the last shutdown.

59:40There is no principle and process ever. If anybody claims that they believe in a process, they're lying. They don't. They just believe in outcomes. So in the previous case, it was Democrats who said, why can't you negotiate with the government open? Because Biden was president. Now it's Republicans saying, why can't you negotiate with the government? Because Trump president. Because Trump is president. And that's all that matters. So Democrats can say, all right, look, we tried. And also, from a cynical perspective, Schumer, I'm not Schumer personally, but Democrats in general, they're personally, you know what?

1:00:12If Trump wants to hurt 20 million people and let the whole country know that he's doing it to them. Then let him do it. Then let him do it. And we'll reap the political. Yeah, but then why'd you shut the government down for a to because nobody would have known otherwise like they would have gotten the their increase and be like oh this is terrible but like life sucks yeah now they can say look we told you trump was doing this we fought for you trump fights against you this that check you're writing remember donald trump's name while you're writing it so that i mean that's their theory i could see it it's it's just a little weak to me it's like if that's the political calculus then keep the government shut down.

1:00:51Okay. I mean, because again, you know, and Crystal's made this point, I'm sure you agree with it. If you ask those no Kings people, yeah, there are going to be some signs about Obamacare. That's not what they're mad about. Right. They're mad about ice. They're mad about all this other stuff going on. Right. So for them, they're like, screw you. Why should I fund you? You think these ice agents aren't getting paid? Fine by me. Right. You know, for, for a lot of them, they're saying there's no reason to fund this government and make their life a little bit more difficult, force them to do stupid shit.

1:01:17Like, I don't know, firing an artillery shell that explodes over the city of Los Angeles. I mean, if I'm a dam, I'm going to take that all day long, right? Yes, it's very painful for a lot of the, for the federal workers, et cetera. But you know, it's, it's a, you, you, pawns have to be played in the, in the field of battle. The problem for Democrats is that Republicans only have to peel off a few and they're good. Okay. So it's, it Democrats as a leadership can want whatever they want, but if Republicans can get a couple. I don't know. We'll see. But November 1st is still a ways away. Yeah. All right.

1:01:54Well, we'll see. We'll see, Ryan. I'm very curious.

1:02:10You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins. And if you can hear

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