- 3 weeks ago
Tonight on The Cameron Journal Newshour, Cameron covers the latest breaking news headlines. We start out with covering the latest on the Sumud Global Flotilla and Israel's recent seizure of the Flotilla. Then we look into the ICE take over of a Chicago building and the resulting protests. Then we explore how American is going through a moment like the 1920s and how we dig ourselves out of our present circumstances. Then, we wrap up with some small stories about the Democratic party brand and reactions to the Kamala Harris Book Tour videos.
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03:47Oh, wrong camera. Hello. Oh, I also don't have my camera software on. That's why that
04:03camera didn't work. Too much technology. Too much. Too much technology. Too many things
04:10to turn on. Too much to get ready for. So sorry I'm late, everyone. Hello.
04:17My name is Cameron Cowan. Welcome to the Cameron Journal News Hour. If you don't know who I
04:23am, I'm the Cameron in the Cameron Journal. Every week I come together and do a wrap-up
04:30of news and headlines that is really quite exciting. We have a lot of fun. We talk about
04:38news narratives, all this type of thing. If you want to follow me online, you can catch
04:43me on social media. I'm at Cameron Cowan on X slash Twitter and Instagram and Cameron
04:51Journal on TikTok. I'm also on LinkedIn, fun things like that. I'm even on Pinterest, which
04:56is a lot more fun. But yeah, and obviously you can find all those links at CameronJournal.com.
05:01I want to remind everyone to sign up for the newsletter, CameronJournal.com slash newsletter.
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05:35Alternatively, though, if you don't want to start a new account, and I get it, and you're
05:41already on Substack, which we love, I also have a version of the Cameron Journal on Substack
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06:03have to start a new account or anything, and it's already there, and it will also be delivered
06:06to your inbox. So wherever you want to be, the Cameron Journal is there. We have a lot
06:13to talk about this week. We're going to talk about Gaza. We're going to talk about Kamala
06:15Harris. We're going to talk about how to save the American experiment from the New York
06:18Times, an interesting opinion piece, a whole bunch of things. It's fall. Welcome to fall,
06:24everyone. I was looking outside today and I'm seeing yellows and reds and all sorts of colors
06:31starting to poke through on the leaves. So if you didn't know that it was fall, you do
06:38now because it is just fall everywhere. And especially here in the Northeast, fall is always
06:45an exceptionally beautiful season. And we've, we're doing it this, we're doing it this year,
06:52um, as usual and as we do. So I don't, I'm a little late today. So, cause I was, I was talking
06:58and I didn't, I didn't do any setup or anything like that. So let me, um, let me dive right
07:06into the headlines. So let me go here and let me do this and let's do this. There we go.
07:16All right. So our first story, oh, let me get rid of these. I'm sweet. I did a live, um,
07:22I did a live show last week in support of our anthology, Fantastic Worlds over at SuitMedia.
07:28And I had tons of guests and everything. And so everything is still set for tons of guests
07:32and it's just me right now. Um, like for example, I don't need to have my name on this because
07:37it's just me. Boop. There we go. Um, we already know who I am. So, um, so we're going to go,
07:46let's go right into the headlines though. So the first story I have, this one was sent in from a
07:52listener, reader, watcher. Um, and this was about if we'll start from the beginning. If you don't know,
08:00and you probably don't, there has been a flotilla, that's these boats here, um, of boats that have
08:06been traveling from Europe to Israel in order to break Israel's blockade, um, of aid to Gaza.
08:16There have been ships with humanitarian aid sitting near Gaza, unable to dock because of the Israeli
08:22blockade. The goal of the flotilla was ostensibly to bring humanitarian aid and to also break
08:29the, um, break the, uh, embargo to break the blockade. However, not everything is as it seems
08:38necessarily. So in this story, we find out that there was no humanitarian aid on the vessels,
08:45the Samud flotilla, um, that was, that was arrived and Israel, um, intercepted as it neared Gaza,
08:55um, late last week. Now, interestingly enough, most of the narrative has been around the horrible
09:02treatment that people on the flotilla have had at the hands of Israeli officials, including Greta
09:10Thunberg, who apparently was treated very poorly. That's, if you go to CNN and all of a sudden this
09:15is what you'll read. But we, this article was sent from Will Does Real News. Now, I'm not necessarily a
09:22huge fan of this as a source, so I went hunting, as I always do, to kind of see who else is talking
09:29about this. I found this story in the Jerusalem Post. Not my favorite, because it's an Israeli
09:35publication, very pro-Israel sort of thing. Not my favorite, but better, better. However, what really
09:40clinched the deal was Al Jazeera. And it says here, Israeli forces have boarded and taken control
09:46of the marionette, the final vessel headed towards Gaza as part of the Global Summon Flotilla GSF,
09:52one of the largest aid missions to attempt to break Israel's blockade of the enclave.
09:56The flotilla, made up of at least 44 civilian boats carrying some 500 activists, was first
10:00intercepted late on Wednesday, with boats boarded and volunteers detained and taken to Israel.
10:05By noon on Thursday, the military said all but one vessel had been secured. On Friday morning,
10:10a live stream video showed Israeli forces forcing their way on board the Polish-flagged marionette,
10:15which reportedly has a crew of six and was the last remaining operational vessel of the
10:18flotilla. The flotilla organizers posted on Ex-marionette, the last remaining boat of the
10:22Global Summon Flotilla, was intercepted at 10.29 a.m. local time, approximately 42.5 nautical miles
10:29from Gaza. Israel has enforced a blockade on Gaza since Samas took control in 2007. Gaza's
10:35residents have largely been trapped in the Palestinian territory since then, with the entry
10:38of food, goods, and aid strictly controlled by Israel. It says here, Israel,
10:45has intercepted all the vessels in the Global Summon Flotilla, a convoy carrying humanitarian
10:48aid to Gaza, organizers said. The country had vowed to stop the flotilla, claiming the volunteers
10:52were trying to breach a lawful naval blockade, but organizers say international law is clear
10:56that humanitarian aid should be let through.
11:00And then down here, it says that the flotilla's voyage has drawn global attention, and the detention
11:07of activists has triggered protests in cities including Rome, Buenos Aires, and Istanbul.
11:10Those held, including climate activist Greta Thunberg, former Barcelona mayor Adu Kalo,
11:15and European Parliament member Rima Hassan. In a statement on Friday, the international
11:18community to break the siege of Gaza said some of the detainees from the Global Summon Flotilla
11:22had begun a hunger strike after being detained by Israeli forces. While the flotilla carried
11:26only a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid, organizers said their mission was to establish a maritime
11:30corridor into Gaza where nearly two years of war have left the population facing an acute
11:34humanitarian crisis. And see it shows they're leaving from ports in Spain, drone attack
11:40near Tunisia, Sicily, and then the final interception here in Gaza in the eastern Mediterranean.
11:51It says here that those detained would normally go through a legal process, but Israel is currently
11:56under near total shutdown because of the Yom Kippur holiday. That means courts and prisons
12:00are not functioning, creating a limbo for activists if they're detained.
12:02Another ministry video showed climate activist Greta Thunberg surrounded by soldiers on a boat
12:07deck. Several vessels of the Hamas and the flotilla have been safely stopped, and their passengers
12:10are being transferred to an Israeli port. Greta and her friends are safe and healthy.
12:17And it shows the arrests here. That's Greta Thunberg there. This is an Israeli IDF soldier.
12:26There she is putting on a hat and coat. All this sort of thing.
12:31And then it kind of goes through the history of it all. But yes, so the flotilla then posted
12:40that it was not about just bringing aid, but also to establish the corridor. And this was
12:46the international video where they said, here's the boat with no humanitarian aid.
12:51One of the vessels, one of the largest vessels to come in this Yom Kippur flotilla.
12:55And while we're processing this boat, there's one thing missing, guys. All this aid that they were
13:01supposed to bring into Gaza, which explains one thing to me. I'm sure it explains to you that when
13:06we and multiple other countries offered them to take this aid and bring it to the Gazans, we could
13:11facilitate a safe arrival. They flat out rejected it. And now we know why, because it was never about
13:17bringing aid to Gazans, but it was all about the headlines and the social media followings.
13:23Obviously, Israel has a very specific message that they want to send out about this. And obviously,
13:33you know, this social media account is aiding in the promotion of that narrative, all fine and well.
13:38It says that another flotilla is now heading towards the Gaza Strip, according to social media posts
13:45by the Samud Flotilla. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has confirmed that a boat named Conscience
13:50departed Italy on Wednesday, carrying around 100 people who described themselves as activists.
13:54The group claims that many of the passengers are also health care workers and journalists.
13:58Another eight boats have set sail from Italy nearly a week ago, and according to live tracking over
14:01the internet, the nine ships are currently near the island of Crete. At the same time, the Samud Flotilla
14:07X accounts report that a second flotilla of 45 boats has left the port of Arsuz in Turkey for Gaza,
14:12hosting a video to support this. However, it has not yet been officially confirmed whether the boat's
14:16shown or indeed heading for Gaza. And the National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, said that all
14:25the participants should be imprisoned. No surprise there. It says, I think they must be kept here
14:32in an Israeli prison for a few months so they can smell the scent of the terrorist wing. After all,
14:36it can't just be the Nino, it sends them back to their countries again and again and again,
14:39which caused them to return again and again and again.
14:44Now, whether you agree with their stand or not, it is an interesting, from a narrative point of view,
14:59because I always, here at the Cambridge Journal, we talk about news narratives a lot. And when you start
15:03looking and thinking about narratives, a lot of things start to make sense. From a narrative
15:07perspective, obviously Israel's trying to make the flotilla people look as dumb as humanly possible.
15:18Um, and obviously the, uh, the, um, the flotilla want, you know, is, is wanting to, you know, show Israel
15:28as the, the, the evil oppressor who's keeping aid from the Gazans as it has done since 2007,
15:35you know, and not wanting to work with Israel in transporting, in transporting the supposed,
15:42the supposed aid. Um, obviously the idea that, uh, um, you know, that they were supposed to be
15:50carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza, but weren't really carrying any aid, but instead we're trying
15:54to establish a maritime corridor, all this type of thing. The shifting narrative obviously makes
15:59them look bad. It makes Israel look much better. Like they've just gotten rid of the problem,
16:04you know, they, they've, they've gotten rid of the problem children sort of thing. And, um,
16:09that, you know, this was, as, as he said, the narrative is this was never about aid. It was
16:16entirely about social media headlines and generating a fuss. And that's where, and a lot of people
16:24don't understand this about a lot of Israeli foreign policy and a lot of the things they do
16:30and the reason why they do them. No one is more acutely aware at how they need to have
16:39public opinion, particularly Western public opinion on Israel's side. Israel is very aware
16:46that it is very important for them to keep public opinion on their side. So for them, um, fighting
16:54the, um, fighting the propaganda war is probably more important than fighting the actual war on the
17:02ground. For the simple fact that they, in order for their military to continue to thrive and have the
17:07equipment it needs and, and for the payments just to keep coming through, they need Western governments
17:11to be on their side. And so, um, so for them making, you know, the, the pro-Gaza, anti-Israel
17:21protesters, flotillas, all this type of thing, look as dumb, greedy, and stupid as possible is in the
17:28best interest of, of Israel. So obviously they're promoting that narrative. Now I have not looked,
17:35here's where I have not looked into, I don't know how consistent the flotillas messaging was,
17:40but the idea that they had to post and clarify what they were doing after being in the water and
17:47doing this for two months sort of thing, it doesn't look great. Um, I also think it's rather interesting
17:54as a side note that now that, you know, now that, uh, that, the, uh, the White House is,
18:05is occupied by President Trump and all this type of thing, all of a sudden all the Gaza protests and
18:10whatnot in this country have seemed to magically disappear. Funny how that works. Anyway, um,
18:15that's just a little, a little sidebar, a little side note. Um, but this, this is a quite, you know,
18:20interesting sort of story. Now, the reason why this person sent this to me was to kind of show
18:25how, you know, dumb and silly, um, this whole, you know, protesting against Israel thing sort of is,
18:32and you know, that the Gaza protesters are just silly because, you know, Israel's in the right
18:36and Amos is a terrorist organization, so kind of screw them and all this type of thing. And that's
18:40not my position. I think people have to remember, as strange as this sounds, the people of Gaza are
18:48held, held hostage by Hamas as much as people in Israel are, simply for the fact that while Hamas
18:57delivers a lot of services, and they've been the de facto government in Gaza for a long time,
19:01in a way that they're not in the West Bank, um, life under Hamas isn't exactly pleasant either.
19:08They were just the only real game in town. And also, the election the Bush administration organized
19:13was terrible, and I actually ended up watching a video by Bill Clinton who explained what they did
19:18and how Hamas managed to wheedle their way into power. Um, no one gives a terrorist organization
19:23political power. It's the dumbest thing anyone's ever done. But, um, the long story long is that
19:30there's, whether you agree with all this, there's a very specific narrative being promoted. And it's
19:38the idea, very simply, that Israel is in the right, the protesters are a bunch of whiners, and they,
19:46you know, just need to, you know, be oppressed and suppress themselves so Israel can get around the
19:52business of its own national security against this long-term terrorist organization type of threat.
19:57That's the narrative being put out here. I would say for all these other future potential flotillas,
20:05and there have been many before, and there'll be more afterwards, um, to be very clear on what
20:09exactly that you're doing. I understand not wanting to work with Israel on quote-unquote moving this aid
20:16and all this type of thing because Israel has even not allowed the United States military to bring aid
20:21into Gaza at different points. We had that floating dock there that eventually fell apart. Um, you know,
20:26this has been a whole thing, and, and, and Israel's whole program is to completely restrict any movement
20:34in and out of Gaza as they basically bomb it to smithereens. So it can eventually be bulldozed over
20:41and turned into something else. That's the end game here. People kind of thought that was crazy six
20:45months ago, but it's quite obvious when you look at the pictures, that's what's going to happen.
20:51It is the present population will be removed in favor of a new population and probably a lot of
21:01new resorts and other things that are, you know, great and wonderful and where the Palestinians who
21:08live there will go and what they will do remains to be seen, especially considering not one of the
21:13Arab neighbors really wants them for a whole other variety of reasons. I will not get into at this
21:19moment, but that's that story. I love when readers and watchers send in stories. So if you have a story
21:27you want me to cover, email me, email at CameronJournal.com. Feel free to send me an email or get at me on
21:34social media and we'll go from there. It's always, I always enjoy looking over stuff and breaking down the news
21:43narratives for you. In a bit of media news, Barry Weiss from the Free Press, who made a name for herself for
21:57taking her reportage from, I believe it was the New York Times, to Substack and starting her own
22:02publication, has been acquired by Paramount Skydance, who just merged together. And they have bought the
22:12digital news site Free Press in a $150 million deal. And Barry Weiss is now going to be the CBS News
22:18Editor-in-Chief because CBS was part of the Paramount Skydance merger deal. Yes, big media mergers are
22:28always a joy forever. They want to modernize content and the way it connects. Barry Weiss has been,
22:38has made a name for herself in being a little too, I wouldn't even say conservative, but maybe not as
22:45liberal as a lot of other of the media and this sort of thing. And, uh, and that has, um, that has caused a
22:54little bit of, of ruckus in, in the world. Um, and so they're kind of looking, you know, what's,
23:02what's the coverage and whatnot going to be like under the leadership of Barry Weiss, especially given,
23:07you know, 60 Minutes, CBS's flagship news program, given even things like Sunday morning, what the,
23:15what the view and perspective will be. Now, for those that are thinking that Barry Weiss is going
23:18to turn CBS into some sort of, you know, uh, liberal, you know, conservative bastion in network
23:25news, I don't think that's who she is. I mean, she's a lesbian, but I don't think that's who she
23:29is. I don't think that's what she's going for. I don't think that's what they want her to do.
23:33I think they really want to bring CBS more in line with what they think the median view is in a
23:40business that has been bleeding viewers for years. But anyway, there's a little bit of a video.
23:45Let's watch.
23:47...company Paramount Global will pay President Donald Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over edits
23:53made to his 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during her presidential
23:58campaign. Trump accused Paramount of giving Harris a better answer in the edit of her interview.
24:03The network says the interview was edited for time purposes, but not doctored. Paramount Global
24:08said in a statement, quote, they also released the unedited version apology or regret. Since
24:13taking office, Trump has teased the idea that the Federal Communications Commission could strip CBS
24:17News of its license over the matter. Trump's legal team celebrated the settlement, saying it was
24:22holding the media accountable. Amid the legal battle, Paramount Global is seeking approval from
24:27the Trump administration to merge with Skydance Media. The combined company would be worth $28 billion.
24:33The settlement comes after ABC News settled with Trump in a lawsuit over host George Stephanopoulos'
24:39comment that the president was, quote, liable for rape. His network will pay $15 million.
24:44And that is the other... I think the biggest change you're going to see, probably out of Barry
24:56Weiss, is you're going to see a lot less criticism of the Trump administration. And that's going to be
25:01reverberating across a lot of media because the... Trump is doing an excellent job of bullying media
25:11outlets, particularly media outlets with a lot of lawyers in deep pockets, into not saying things.
25:19Like, for instance, with the ABC settlement, George Stephanopoulos wasn't saying anything out of pocket.
25:23He was reading a court transcript because Trump was found liable for that in a big judgment that he's
25:30already appealed and lost once, you know, sort of thing. But the fact of the matter is that
25:37Trump is very sensitive to news narratives. He lives in news narratives. And he watches copious
25:45amounts of television. And so when he sees something that he does not like, he's definitely going to
25:53push back on it more forcefully than he did in the first term. Richard Nixon wishes he could get away
25:59with this. And this putting Barry Weiss in charge of CBS News is certainly going to, I would say,
26:07pull back a lot of criticism. It will ostensibly make the news more fair, but what we're really doing
26:15is we're exchanging one narrative for another. It's very obvious that... I don't think it's going to
26:20become a Fox News situation, but you're definitely going to see a lot less of the open criticism
26:29that we've gotten used to coming out of a lot of the news networks. And especially given, um,
26:39uh, given the merger between Paramount and Skydance and everything that's happening, it's going to,
26:45yeah, there's definitely going to be a change. I'm not a huge fan of Barry Weiss, so I'm not
26:51excited about this. I imagine there's probably going to be a pretty big exodus of people from CBS
26:56News that are not going to want to stay around to see what Barry Weiss is going to do. But it will
27:01definitely be interesting to see how she changes things around at CBS and brings it more in line
27:11with what the Free Press, um, is and, is and was, is and was doing. Um, I thought I had,
27:20no, I thought I had a, oh no, I got rid of that tab because it was paid. Um, so yeah, so that's,
27:28that's what's happening here. Um, from a freedom of the press news media news narrative perspective
27:36in reporting on the march of authoritarianism and the march of fascism, um, moving forward. Um,
27:47this isn't great. I, again, I don't think Barry Weiss is going to be in the pocket of the Trump
27:51administration. I do think there's gonna be a lot of pressure on her to, uh, tone it down a lot and
27:58keep a lot of criticism of the administration off the air. And that is exactly what president Trump
28:05wants. Speaking of that, I thought this opinion piece, this came out, came out this morning in
28:14the New York times. I thought this was very interesting. It says how to save the American
28:17experiment. And I love the 1920s. And this article compares a lot to the 1920s. And I thought this is,
28:27it also goes with a book I talk about a lot that I finished reading called The American Midnight.
28:32And it was the period between the end of World War I and about 1922 or so. And it was a very,
28:37it was an interesting deep dive into an interesting three year period in America's history. And this
28:41article kind of builds on that. We'll start reading here. Um, at the outset of the 1920s,
28:47a wave of attempted assassinations and political violence crested alongside new barriers to immigration,
28:53a campaign of deportations, and a government cracked a non-dissenting speech. Hmm, sound familiar?
28:58America was fresh off a pandemic in which divisive public health measures yielded widespread anger and
29:02distrust. Staggering levels of economic inequality underlaid a fast-changing industrial landscape
29:07and rapidly evolving racial demographics. Influential voices in the press warned that a crisis of
29:12misinformation in the media had wrecked the most basic democratic processes. Again,
29:17any of that sound familiar?
29:20Central elections eerily converge. In 1920, national frustration over an infirm and aging president
29:25helped sweep the Democratic Party out of the White House in favor of a Republican candidate,
29:29offering the nostalgic promise of returning America to greatness or at least to normalcy.
29:33A faltering President Woodrow Wilson gave way to Warren Harding and one-party control over all
29:37three branches of the federal government. Yet what is striking with the 1920s is that unlike the German
29:42interwar crisis, America's dangerous decade led not to fascism and the end of democracy,
29:46but to the New Deal and the Civil Rights era. Across the sequence of emergencies that followed,
29:50the Great Depression, eventually World War II, the United States ushered an area of working-class
29:54political empowerment and prosperity. The nation ended Jim Crow in the South and established free
29:58speech with court-backed protections for the first time in its history. The story of how Americans
30:04built a new infrastructure for modern democracy does not offer a step-by-step map for 2025,
30:09but it does just a way out of our destructive spiral. The fiery intellectual W.E.B. DuBois and the
30:14Youngest Columnist Walter Lippmann were among the first to grasp a core feature of modern mass
30:19politics. Information and a crisis of trust in the news had deformed American political life
30:24in the aftermath of World War I, just as they do in our current age of media disarray. DuBois,
30:29the brilliant black writer and editor who founded the NAACP in 1909, watched as propaganda campaigns,
30:35some led by the very newspapers that should have been the well-springs of an informed citizenry,
30:38whipped politics into frenzied race riots. In places ranging from Elaine, Arkansas to Washington,
30:43D.C., the angry rioters of what came to be known as the Red Summer of 1919 ripped through black
30:48communities, killing hundreds. Lippmann, who was emerging as America's most influential liberal
30:52journalist, understood information and propaganda to be the fundamental democratic problem under
30:56conditions of a mass population and a mass press. The crisis of democracy, he wrote, was in its
31:01essence a crisis in journalism. The distance between what he called the world outside and the pictures
31:05in our heads afforded vast power to those who managed information flows. A full century before
31:10today's distorting power of the internet and social media, Lippmann wrote that the
31:13sheer scale of modern life separated citizens from the information required for self-rule.
31:18The stream of news that reaches the public, he discerned, was democracy's most glaring vulnerability.
31:23And that's even worse now, because so much of it is communicated through a headline, a meme,
31:31a picture, something a friend told you. It's not, it's not an exact, it's not the way it was.
31:38We're not all watching the same evening news broadcast and getting a half hour news every
31:41day and that's it. No, no, it's, it's even more diffuse than that. And when you start talking to
31:47people, and you, and I do this a lot, where I listen to the bits of, and parts that people did get and
31:53did here, I'm like, okay, you have five fragments, let me tie all that together for you. And they're
32:00amazed because they haven't, if you're watching this, you're not this person, but they haven't
32:04really figured, because there's so much, and every day it's something new, it's something different.
32:09And so it's more than any normal person who has bills to pay, animals to feed, children to look after,
32:16can begin to hope to keep up with. Anyway, deep inequality came hand in hand with widespread
32:24economic dislocation for working people. Giant industrial behemoths like Ford, General Electric,
32:28and U.S. Steel promised new affluence in the mass consumer economy. But the scientific management
32:32of factories and farms produced economic vulnerabilities for workers. Old mechanisms
32:36of working class power proved as outmatched by mass production as unions today seem to be
32:40overwhelmed by virtual work economy and generative AI. In some respects, 1920s America was much
32:46farther down the road of political distrust and internal hatred than we find ourselves today.
32:50Formal state-sponsored racial subordination in the form of Jim Crow blocked political
32:53participation by most Black people in the South. Political violence reached heights not seen since.
32:58A bombing campaign by hard-left anarchists roiled the country. Mail bombs were targeted at roughly 30
33:02of the nation's most prominent figures. A horse-drawn wagon filled with dynamite and loaded shrapnel blew up
33:07on Wall Street in 1920, where its damage can still be seen. True, you can still see the pockmarks from the
33:12shrapnel in the columns in front of the stock exchange. State repression at the opening of the
33:181920s was also far-reaching. Hundreds of political prisoners, including the presidential candidate
33:22Eugene Debs, molded in federal prisons, many of them serving long sentences under wartime espionage
33:28and sedition acts for speaking their minds. States passed sweeping new laws for evading advocacy of
33:32crime, sabotage, or violence as a means of accomplishing political change, and used the laws to prosecute
33:36hundreds of people. Courts offered no relief. Until the early 1930s, the Supreme Court had never
33:41once used the First Amendment to block the imprisonment of dissenters. Many Americans
33:45simply abandoned politics in the 1920s, surrendering to the long odds stacked against decent change.
33:50A younger generation led by the Jazz Age celebrity F. Scott Fitzgerald announced that it had grown
33:53tired of great causes like war and social uplift. But beneath the surface of the roaring 20s,
33:58a generation of social innovators began experiments that laid the basis for a democratic flourishing.
34:03New organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union sprang up to defend jailed opponents of
34:07World War I and radical dissenters. The still-fledging NAACP, led by James Weldon Johnson,
34:12started an anti-lynching campaign in Congress, where it failed, and in the press, where it was
34:16much more successful. The super-lawyer Clarence Darrow threw himself into the defense of First
34:20Amendment freedoms – John Scopes in Tennessee – and black people's freedom to live where they
34:24liked – Ossian Suite in Detroit. But a second development shaped the air in a much more profound way.
34:29In 1922, a handsome Harvard dropout named Charles Garland gave away his million-dollar
34:34inheritance. Citing the injustice of vast economic inequalities including both Jesus and the
34:38Russian Revolution, Garland took money – derived from what is now the Citibank Empire – and gave
34:43it to the muck-raking writer Upton Sinclair and ACLU founder Roger Baldwin. Those two men used the
34:48windfall to establish the first liberal philanthropic foundation of the age – the American Fund for
34:52Public Service, or the Garland Fund as it was sometimes known. The modern income tax enacted in 1913
34:58created unprecedented subsidies for charitable and social welfare organizations. Garland's original
35:03million – doubling in the boom stock market of the 1920s – amounted to nearly $40 million in
35:072025. Scaled to the size of an economy that today is more than 20 times as large as it was in 1922,
35:13we might say that the Garland Fund was equivalent to a 2020s foundation with $800 million to give away.
35:19Distrustful of perpetual foundations, Baldwin and Sinclair committed to a spend-down structure
35:24that accelerated the money's impact, and over the subsequent two decades the same-length build
35:28Gates chose this past May for his own spend-down at the Gates Foundation. The fund invested in
35:32causes designed to spark democratic renewal in America. Dozens of ambitious 1920 startups
35:36received precious incubator funding. Beneficiaries included heterodox unions, innovative publishers,
35:42and media outlets, as well as iconoclastic civil rights organizations. The fund sponsored research,
35:46education, and news sources that would be outside the influence of the wealthy few. It supported black
35:51civil rights helping to start the campaign that culminated decades later in Brown v. Board of Education. The fund
35:56issued demoralizing cycles of outrage at the oppressions of the age. It aimed instead to renew
36:00the fundamental institutions that shaped everyday people's lives, structured their interests, and
36:04animated their dreams. Above all, that meant supporting an emerging new model of the economic
36:11organization, the Industrial Union, as a novel way to connect large numbers of Americans to power and
36:15prosperity in the mass production economy. And then it gets into unionization. Then down here, and more
36:21about the Garland Fund down here, down here, down here. Uh, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Nope, too far.
36:31Ah! Given the successes of change backed by conservative foundations, there are figures on
36:36the right who worry about the Trump administration's threats to stamp out foundations that have been
36:39sources of inspiration for a century. The promises to strip liberal foundations of their tax status and
36:44investigate George Soros' gifted funding, renewed after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, come out of an old
36:48playbook, one put together a hundred years ago by the Coolidge administration to eliminate the Garland
36:52Fund's tax-exempt status. Such efforts risk being badly counterproductive for reasons both
36:56conservatives and liberals understand. Civil society institutions like the Garland Fund have been a
37:00source for creative democratic renewal. Freed of the short-term constraints of state officials and
37:04of political parties, civil society organizations can exercise experimental agenda-setting power
37:09in moments of crisis for existing institutions. For all the talk of red lines and points of no return,
37:14the modern United States has had democratic crises and authoritarian turmoil before. The language of
37:18break glass, fire alarm emergencies, looks at our increasingly brittle existing modes of political
37:22organization and cannot see beyond them. But the way through will be to craft new modes of renewal
37:28adequate to the landscape of the world in which we find ourselves, forms analogous to the industrial
37:33union of the twenties, and perhaps fueled by the generative civil society engine of the now vast
37:38non-profit world. A century ago, in the forgotten history of a decade just barely out of living memory,
37:43we found pathways to a better place. The answer to how all this ends, turns and experiments,
37:49we have only barely begun to launch."
37:57This is the type of article that I knew about some of this stuff, but I didn't know it know it. Does
38:04that make sense? Like, it was one of the, like, oh, okay, that's how this works, I get that, yeah,
38:11I know about that history, yes, okay. And, but then it puts it all together in such a way that you're
38:16kind of like, oh, okay, like, yeah, I see how this could be, could be a thing, and could be a potential
38:27off-ramp to all of this. The more and more I find out about the 1920s, um, the more and more I find
38:33they're so similar to what we have now. It's actually a bit frightening and shocking. Um,
38:39I write my 1920s mystery detective series, IG Farben, and, which begins in 1925, and the more
38:46and more I learn, the more and more I try to add the more patina of that stuff, and, and I like to add
38:54in, um, more of this kind of political upheaval and turmoil and, and, and all, and all this sort of
39:00thing. Um, it's a very interesting time, it's so analogous to now, but the idea that what we really
39:07need is the hard work of civic institutions, democratic renewal, getting people active,
39:14setting agendas for how we want to live in this country is incredibly prescient, and I wanted to
39:22highlight this because this is the first time, and this is from John Fabian Witt, he's the author of
39:29The Radical Fund, how a band of visionaries and the million dollars upended America.
39:32This is the type of conversation we need to have now. This is where the focus should be.
39:40We cannot stay in this politics of division forever, and we won't forever. Eventually,
39:44we will break through, but this is the conversation that's absolutely worth having right now,
39:50and I honor Mr. Witt because I wish I had written this book, you know, sort of thing. Instead,
39:56I wrote about millennials, and America's Lost Generation is out now. If you haven't picked
40:00up a copy of America's Lost Generation, I highly recommend you do so, CameronJournal.com. Um,
40:06but, um, yeah, it's, uh, it, again, it's on the New York Times in the opinion column. Please go read
40:12this. It's so valuable and important. Um, I want to move on to the next, the big story of the week,
40:19and that is, um, the ICE agent raiding a South Shore apartment complex, um, and Trump saying
40:26Chicago will become a military training ground. There's a video. Hundreds taking over an intersection
40:33where a surge of Border Patrol agents were seen over the weekend. We saw over the weekend how ICE
40:38agents shamelessly occupied the streets of downtown and detained fellow residents.
40:46No, no debate. The group standing here down the way from Trump Tower, they say to stand up for the
40:52community. And it's ridiculous that our tax dollars are going towards these types of rates. We want to
40:57be funding health care, housing, and other issues and needs of the community here in Chicago. The
41:03emergency protest follows this past weekend's surge in immigration enforcement. Dozens of armed federal
41:09agents spotted downtown detaining multiple people. What I was learning in history class,
41:14I'm seeing it now in the streets with ICE detaining, um, legal immigrants, um, and treating them like,
41:21like, like they're nothing. President Donald Trump says the uptick in federal operations in the
41:26Chicago area is about getting dangerous criminals off the streets. The president now raising the stakes
41:31for Chicago during a meeting with military leaders and defense secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump calling
41:37Chicago an unsafe place that he plans to straighten out. It's a war from within. I told Pete, we should
41:43use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. Sending troops into cities,
41:50thinking that that's some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there's some sort of internal
41:56war going on in the United States is just frankly, uh, inane. As for the protesters here today, they say
42:06as these operations continue to increase, so will their efforts until ICE is out of Chicago.
42:12So, yes, as we know, there's been, uh, um, uh, there is been, uh, National Guard troops and ICE
42:24agents set into Chicago and Portland. It also says here, um, that video was more about the reaction
42:33protests. Uh, what really started things off is that, um, the, uh, this is, what was the date on this?
42:40Uh, from October 1st, last week. Um, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rated a South Shore
42:44apartment building overnight as the city braces for possible military deployment, which arrived.
42:48My building is shaking, so I'm like, what's that? Then look out the window, it's a Black Hawk helicopter,
42:51says witness Dr. Ali Muhammad. Wednesday morning, DHS officials said in a statement in the early
42:55morning hours of September 30th, 2025, Allied federal law enforcement agencies with CBP, FBI,
43:00and ATF executed an enforcement operation in Chicago's South Shore area, a location known to be frequented by
43:05the Trend de Aragua members and their associates. Some of the targeted suspects are believed to be
43:09involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons, crimes, and immigration violators.
43:14DHS said 37 people were arrested, in a building of 900. ABC7 spoke to Pertissue Fisher, a woman who
43:19lives in the building. She said ICE agents took everyone in the building, including her,
43:23and asked questions later. They just treated us like we were nothing, Fisher said. Fisher said she
43:27came out the hallway of her apartment complex on the corner of 75th and South Shore Drive in her
43:31nightgown around 10 p.m., Monday, only to find armed ICE agents yelling police.
43:36It was scary, because I'd never had a gun in my face, Fisher said. They asked my name and my date
43:40of birth and asked me, did I have any warrants, and I told them no, I didn't. Fisher said she was
43:44handcuffed before being released around 3 a.m., and she was told that if anyone had any kind of
43:47warrant out for them, even if it was unrelated to immigration, it would not be released. They, like,
43:51piling us all up in the back and on the other side, it was no room to move nowhere.
43:54Citizen app video captured the catexin and neighbors say there were dozens of ICE agents. As I got to my unit to
44:00stick my keel leader, I was grabbed by an officer, and I said, what's going on, what's going on? He never actually told me,
44:04he said I was being detained, said Alicia Brooks. Neighbors like Ebony Watson say they ducked for
44:09covers. They heard several flashbangs. They were terrified. The kids were crying. People were
44:12screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come
44:16around the corner because they was bringing the kids down, too, and had them zip-tied to each other,
44:20Watson said. That's all I kept asking. What's the morality? Where's the human? One of them
44:24literally laughed. He was standing right there. He said, F them kids. Watson said trucks and military-style
44:30vans were used to separate parents from their children. Other neighbors said agents destroyed
44:33property to get in the building. They had a big 15-inch chainsaw with a round blade on it,
44:36cutting the fence down, said witness Daryl Ballard. We're under siege. We're being invaded by our own
44:41military. Marlee Sanders' boyfriend was detained, Sanders said. They had the black people in one van,
44:45the immigrants in the other van, Sanders said. The FBI confirmed on Tuesday morning that they were
44:49helping U.S. Border Patrol carry out a targeted immigration enforcement operation in the area,
44:52adding that they have been supporting these efforts at the U.S. General's discretion.
44:56Direction. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovina with his officers spoke on the ground
45:01in an exclusive interview with News Nation. And then it goes into that whole thing, and that's the
45:06end of that. Obviously, there have been protests in reaction to this building being raided and a lot
45:14of attention on it as well. There was also a story today that said National Guard troops are traveling
45:21from Texas, Illinois Monday, which is today. I saw that right before I started the show this evening.
45:27I think it's going down in Chicago. I think that's where things are about to get weird,
45:32is in Chicago. I think Portland is whatever. Things are about to get weird in Chicago.
45:36And I will definitely be keeping an eye on this story.
45:41As we bring the show to a close, the former guest of the Cameron Journal podcast, Jose Nino,
45:47posted a very interesting article that I want to talk about quickly. And that is his complaint about
45:54changing demographics in Florida and Texas and why the Republican Party cannot be trusted.
46:01It says here that international migration has been the primary driver of these changes,
46:06which he goes through the lack of white people in Florida and Texas. And it says here that in
46:132024, Florida had the highest rate of international migration in the nation. Natural increases also
46:18favored younger, more diverse populations, as Hispanic families maintain higher birth rates
46:21than non-Hispanic whites. These demographic projections suggest that trends will continue
46:25for at least 2050, with Texas Hispanics to comprise 42.7% of the population by mid-century,
46:30while non-Hispanic whites declined to 28.6%. The scope of immigration, both legal and illegal,
46:35feeding this transformation, is massive. Florida hosts approximately 5 million foreign-born
46:39residents as of 2023, representing 22% of the state's population. While the majority have legal
46:43status, Florida maintains between 590 and 770,000 illegal immigrants, representing the third largest
46:50illegal immigration population nationally. Texas hosts 5.5 million foreign-born residents, 17.9% of
46:55the population, including an estimated 1.7 million illegal aliens, nearly three times Florida's
47:00illegal alien population, and 5.6% of the state's total population.
47:04The demographic transformation of Florida and Texas becomes even more damning when
47:07considered alongside the Republican Party's comprehensive political control
47:10of these states. This is not a case of Democrats implementing open borders policies over Republican
47:14objections. This is Republican-enabled mass migration occurring under complete GOP dominance.
47:19And it also goes on to say, and the main point of this is the thing I've always said about
47:30immigration. And it says here, the agriculture industry has also contributed a record 41.3 million
47:35to Republicans versus 18.5 million to Democrats. Tyson Foods affiliates alone contributed under 86,000
47:41in 2024 cycle, with approximately 80% going to Republicans. This is particularly egregious given that Tyson employs
47:4642,000 foreign-born workers, and has stated it would like to employ another 42,000 immigrants if
47:50we could find them. To say the Republican Party is fully captured by business interests would be
47:54an understatement. The evidence is overwhelming. The Republican Party cannot and will not defend
47:59the demographic integrity of America. Decades of Republican trifecta control in Florida and Texas
48:04have produced demographic transformations that would make pro-open borders liberals blush.
48:08The party's complete capture by corporate interests depend on cheap immigrant labor,
48:12ensures that the campaign rhetoric about border security and immigration enforcement remains
48:15nothing more than political theater designed to pacify electoral constituencies while maintaining
48:20the flow of foreign workers to their donors' demand. And that's why you're never going to
48:25solve immigration in this country. That's it! As long as corporate America is stuck on the teat of
48:33cheap labor, you're stuck. You can never solve immigration. Ever. And that goes for tech companies
48:40hiring H-1Bs. That goes for Tyson Food looking for people to process meat. That's the whole game.
48:46Right there. Now, it's always entertaining for someone with this name to be complaining about
48:50immigration, but still, even so, that's the whole game. As is so often the case in this country, the
48:59story is always economic. Where's the money going? Because the reality is nothing in this country moves
49:06without a dollar attached to it. Nothing. Nothing moves without a dollar attached to it.
49:13And so, you have this terrible situation where you're never going to really ever solve
49:20the immigration problem. The only way to solve this would be to have a large, inexpensive, robust
49:26guest worker program where you start tracking these people. Otherwise, they're just going to continue to
49:30come and go because the demand is there. This is basic supply and demand, something Republicans
49:35should understand because they're always lecturing the rest of us about it. I didn't want to spend a
49:40lot of time on this, but it was an interesting kind of thing. It says here that anything short
49:48of fundamental systemic change is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The time for working
49:53within a captured Republican Party has passed. The demographic transformation of America's two
49:57largest Republican states under comprehensive GOP control represents the most damning indictment
50:01possible of the party's commitment to its stated principles. Republicans can't be trusted because
50:05they have already proven through their governing record in Florida and Texas that they will sacrifice
50:10America's demographic future for corporate donor dollars. Florida and Texas prove that under Republican
50:15rule, prosperity is nothing more than camouflage for the demographic displacement of whites." If that
50:21is something you're concerned with. I'm not terribly, but he is. It's always just nice for someone inside
50:29the Republican Party to complain about something the Republicans are responsible for. Usually we always
50:33do that about Democrats. I thought it was a nice change. On top of further reinforcing the idea that
50:38immigration primarily is an economic demand issue and nothing else. And until you solve one, you will not
50:44solve the other. Now, Kamala Harris is on her book tour, which is always a lot of fun. And I wanted to, um,
50:51to play some fun videos from her recent appearance in San Francisco. So it's just basically kind of
50:58video reacts to close out the show because we're almost done. But anyway, she's so entertaining.
51:03...are out there doing national security secrets and more friends on Signal. We would get our asses out of bed
51:13and go to a skit or literally go to a secure room to talk about national secrets. And these guys are too lazy. They
51:23just want to sit there and be like this. But now that I have the phone...
51:29I think a lot of people have already forgotten about the great, you know, arranging the bombing
51:35over Signal sort of thing. And I think it's funny that she brought that, like, she brings that back up.
51:41These videos have been posted by people, like, all weekend. Um, which has been a lot of fun.
51:50And, uh, there's this other one that was also equal... Well, no, that's not that one. No,
51:55that's, mm, yeah. We're gonna sit that for next week. Um, there's been a couple of these videos kind of running around,
52:02um, of her just saying funny stuff. There's another video of her, um...
52:07I actually want people to find it on this account if they, if they have it. Um, but there's, there's several,
52:18several, several entertaining, funny videos about, um, about the things that she said on this book tour.
52:29She's not running for anything. She's not in the office. And whoo-hoo! Um, Kamala Harris uncorked is fun.
52:35But here's kind of the meta thing about this, is that really it's about, uh...
52:42Uh, I, I think the, the, the big story is, I think she's expressing the energy that Democrats want right now.
52:51They want someone who's loud, who's calling it out, who is, you know, out there doing something,
52:59saying something, being something, providing the leadership that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer
53:05cannot bother to do. Not that she says she's running in 2028, but if I were planning on running
53:12in 2028, if I were her, that would be the way to do it. And, but I think with her being able to
53:20articulate the popular Democratic rage, that puts her in a really great position.
53:26There are so many forces that are, they're full-time spreading hate.
53:30I mean, there's just so, I mean, like I said, there's, you know, obviously she already has, you know,
53:45so much of a following and all this type of thing, but there's just, there's just, so all these videos
53:50just kind of running, running around, and uh, that have been posted all weekend long from different
53:57people everywhere she goes. It's, it's, it's the early 2024 campaign energy all over again.
54:05Um, and love that for her. But I think, but the most important thing is, I think it's also
54:10what the Democratic Party needs right now. Not only is she criticizing the party through her book,
54:14which I said last week is very important, and it is, but she's also expressing the popular rage
54:18of the Democrats. And I think that puts her in a fantastic position for 2028. And she still is the,
54:25uh, the polling front runner. So not a bad position to be in.
54:30This video is super short. It's a CNN clip. Um, and I want to close on this because it is
54:36directionally correct when it comes to the Democratic Party today. And I think the fact
54:40that Kamala Harris is already leaning into this, I think is good. Let's watch.
54:45I think that, I mean, he's right that we need more unapologetic Democrats, but it's more than that.
54:54The Democratic brand is two things right now. It's a lot of things, but it's both risk averse,
54:59and it's very, very finger waggy. So all of our politicians are incredibly risk averse.
55:03So they're not out there taking risks or trying to do new things. I mean, they're playing it very,
55:08very safe. Even as much as I love Kamala Harris, and I thought she did well on her campaign,
55:12she was very risk averse during all of that. But on the other side of that, while they're being
55:15risk averse, they're also just like purity testing everybody and finger wagging them.
55:19I mean, I'm a young dude. I like a little bit of like edge in my politicians. I think most young
55:23dudes like an edgy politician, not somebody who's out there being, you know, super scripted and
55:28tested and everything. So all this comes together to create an environment where like,
55:32I had a young friend the other day who is pretty liberal say that the Democratic Party feels
55:35quote unquote suffocating at times. And I think that's a good way to put it.
55:38It's that and it's an academic. A lot of times they, the simplicity is missing in the message.
55:44What bill? He compared them to Amber Crombie and Fitch, a ghost.
55:49And weirdly enough, like I think with Kamala Harris standing up and cursing, talking about phones,
55:55talking about scandals, calling out the total administration, all this type of thing. I
55:59think weirdly enough, she is what the party needs right now. More of that. Now I agree with him.
56:07The Democratic Party is too risk averse. It is much too luxury and finger waggy. It's all of
56:11those things. And it's too academic because it tends to be ran by coastal liberal elites from a
56:16very few amount of places. It's not even location diverse. Hire some nice people from the Midwest,
56:20if you must. That was one thing about Tim Waltz, that Minnesota energy. But I mean, the reality of the
56:27situation is the Democratic Party brand is very toxic right now. And oddly enough, I feel like this book
56:33tour is the beginning of the rehab special. And I think as much as Democratic Party insiders don't
56:38like that Kamala Harris kind of called everybody out in her book, that's what the party needs right
56:42now. It just does. And I like this guy though. Adam Mockler. Yeah, I follow him. He's the guy from
56:52Midas Touch. I like him. I like him a lot. We love the energy. So anyway, that's the news hour tonight,
56:59everyone. Thank you all so much for watching. My name is Cameron Cowan. Please visit me online at
57:05CameronJournal.com. I do this show every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern time. And you also can rewatch
57:12it on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at Cameron Cowan. You can find me at CameronJournal.com.
57:17You can also find me on Substack, CameronJournal.Substack.com, um, for select things from
57:23the Cameron Journal. Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter. It's the best thing,
57:27um, because I bring you headlines and stuff every week. And you also get all the stuff that I do,
57:32interviews, the news hour, my other podcast, The Living Joke, which is like a morning zoo thing,
57:37which is absolutely insane. Um, all that stuff delivered right to your inbox. So thank you for
57:42watching. Thank you for the person that just liked. I love you forever. I will see you next
57:46time on the Cameron Journal News Hour. Talk soon. Bye bye.
57:57Bye bye.
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