your audacity so i don't have to it is recording again i stopped it in this second minute when did
you start it again oh no i mean did you pause it because like 10 seconds ago
oh perfect okay cool sorry sometimes sometimes yours like like because i have to manually like
line them up in the recording would you like assistance in doing that would you like to sync
with a clap oh yeah yeah no we definitely need to do that um all right three two one
cool okay all right let me share my screen and get that all set up now that hopefully we have stuff
kind of sort of figured out uh devices oh um
share my whole screen
cool beans all right so oh hey it's me yeah sorry yo
i wish i could just pick like multiple applications to what is making that noise
it sounded like discord but i don't know why
oh it's because discord's not detecting input from my mic maybe i just got a notification about it
but i am my computer's muted that mic yeah
yeah i i'm aware that sorry sorry i'm talking to discord right now because it's being persnickety
i i got nothing all right let's roll with it and if there's an issue we'll figure it out later
yep oh the discord sound was probably the stream coming up oh on your end okay that makes sense
so i just wanted to make sure we weren't like recording some weird ass fucking what is what is
happening oh my god okay all right um i thought it'd be nice if i actually played the intro live for
other than listening it hold on where where is it's in the lacy somewhere
i had a weird childhood what's that from uh aristocats damn aaron even i saw that and i grew up in a cult
i woke up at 6 a.m every morning and i watched the space channel until someone stopped me and
that's what i did instead of cartoons oh i know so much about black holes what's up it's done cool thank
you all right uh a chicken is done the amount of time it takes us to be able to eat the chicken
depends entirely upon me being organized so never uh we're screwed we're gonna die of starvation
um and by we i mean me and fey because uh aaron doesn't live here
okay uh where what was i doing i was looking wait maybe me too did i eat yeah you said you got coffee
i don't recall you saying anything about food well i have like eight podcasting snacks in front of me
so i think i'll be good i think you'll be good what is a podcasting snack anything i could grab
on the counter while i was making coffee i really thought you're gonna go with things that don't
sound loud on the things that don't go oh no i don't think that far ahead okay i have two clementines
this very wrinkly bag of coconut almonds
and these very fancy dark chocolate chocolates hmm my parents were just visiting and they left their
fancy snacks that's really cute
see
no stop making noise slower when i have a monitor i'm just i'm noticing that well yeah but i talk too fast
i kind of end up sounding like asmr i think no it's really easy to get very self-conscious when
you're talking especially if you can hear yourself and the only reason i'm being like this is because
i've done it enough that it doesn't bother me quite as much um it'll still like i get bothered
on y'all's behalf when i'm editing because i will literally start second guessing like is this
going to make them feel like i think this sounds objectively better but is this going to make them
feel dysphoric and i i spend an ungodly amount of time going back and forth between profiles like
is this one better or is this one better
uh
stop clicking zephyr you know better you're the one who has to deal with it later
uh yeah under yeah
sorry the as soon as for some reason when i'm live now all of a sudden i can't
fucking remember how to do shit all right cool all right my vyvanse is also wearing off
oh boy all right cool i'm gonna play the intro and don't talk about vyvanse wearing off i took mine
at 6 a.m too because that's when i get up every day because state house because i have to leave the
house by seven in the fucking morning and then drive an hour to deal with these assholes
that almost looped again i gotta figure out a better way to do that it's so it goes so hard okay and and and
like the voices layer so well i feel very validated that you're saying this because i was having like
a is it actually good because i really love it and i'm really proud of it it's really you'll know
the amount as you should be i put into it and trying to be really judicious with like you know bringing
in as many different voices as possible so my friends and i my college friends we have a demo day
every year um hi y'all this is uh if it ain't fixed don't break it but put it put a pin in that we're
talking um so um we're uh uh we have this uh james calls it demo day and so it's like where we present
things to each other um so we have a whole day where we present things and it's supposed to be like
projects and like fun things like you've done over the year and so we literally have like there's um
uh there's an in-person component although you can attend virtually as well and i attended this year
virtually but in person like there will be demonstrate demos for teaching people like
breakfast and lunch and dinner like those are all demos you can sign up for and then um liz uh james's
wife um usually does a um she does a a fashion show but of like all the things she knit over the year
and then all of us who are present we get assigned like an item to show and it's really fun um so she has
like the catwalk thing so anyway the point is for my demo you have grown up shown to tell what
no aaron what'd you say this is how cons gets started i went to a hacker con in tennessee that
was just this okay i thought you were saying like a like a like a con like a con man and i was like
aaron i know these people extremely well i don't think any of them are even capable like they don't
take enough money for like the work they do to begin with but it's funny you bring that up because james
like some of the presentations he was showing were like games that he made at like coding cons and
stuff like no this is all very much up y'all's alley like if i can somehow get my my my friend
groups now and my college friend groups in the same place despite the fact that live on opposite sides
of the country y'all would all get along beautifully well any anyway the point and why this is in any way
applicable to the episode and why i'm going to keep it in is that one of my presentations was how i made
the pot the podcast intro and they're 15 minute blocks of presentations and you know me and keeping
things on time right which i did like a pretty good job on and yeah here we are eight and a half
minutes into recording shut up shut up shut up shut up four of those were dead air while i tried to
remember where the the file was for the intro sound so um and i'm so my present so my presentation was
on how i made the the podcast intro and because i was presenting virtually right i'm sharing my screen
i can't really see people's reactions but i'm not really hearing any reactions yeah you know what i
mean i know that feeling so i had that like adrenaline drop afterwards and then i showed it to some
journalists uh uh in the state house on thursday and didn't really get much of a reaction in person
and so i was kind of having this moment of like did i just think it's good because i spent a lot of
time on it and then i remembered like i had this whole like little come to jesus thing of like
who am i making this podcast for and i was like right it's for like people like and and every like
like i don't want to say normal alabamian but people like who are not in the state house and like
people were here when they hear that they fucking love it so i'm like you know what it's fine it's
fine the people who like i made this for like it and that's what matters so i had to have kind of
like a whatever anyway that's why it's staying in so anyway there's a there's a cold open for y'all
yeah this is uh this is if it ain't fixed don't break it uh i'm co-host uh fey hobb did you just go
uh before your name yeah let's try that again this is welcome to another episode of if it ain't fixed
don't break it i'm zephyr are you not gonna do your pronouns i thought we were gonna do those okay
fine fine fine if you're gonna if you're gonna if you're gonna call me out then i'm gonna call you
out fine welcome to another episode of if it ain't fixed don't break it i'm aaron and
my pronouns are she her we're so professional it's okay we're gonna go in alphabetical order so fey
you're next hi i'm fey hobbs my pronouns are she her and i'm zephyr i'm my pronouns are they them or
he him because i'm fancy like that uh anyway all right this is another episode of if it ain't fixed
don't break it a thing we've said three times now it's okay i'm gonna leave all of this in because
another my new year's resolution way later than new year's resolutions is to do less uh cutting out
filler from this podcast because it drives me nuts to make it tight and you know what i'm tired of
pretending this is not a this is not a polish show we don't have an editor i edit it and then i go crazy
all right so today we're covering the first week of the alabama legislative session which is uh tuesday
january 13th to thursday january 15th um i put a little note in here for an out of context drop but
i didn't cut one so it's fine um we're just gonna move on um but before we get into it um please i know
folks are tight on money out there if you have a few extra dollars uh please support us at patreon uh
on patreon at patreon.com slash it ain't fixed pod um just five dollars a month gets you access to
bonus episodes things that we are recording i promise uh cool shout out in future episodes and
it keeps us ad free and independent although to be clear we're never going to run ads um but you know
hosting this podcast costs me money every month uh you know there's there's a lot of uh behind the
scenes costs that go in and also um this is my also costing me money every month what are you paying
for every time we've needed new equipment every time you know what you know what that's fair every
time you every time you've been like hey we need this thing and i go okay you're fair that's fair i
either pick it up or i give you the money to get it that's fair that's extremely fair it's extremely
fair so i i just meant like monthly expenses i was like these things auto debit for mike and then yeah you
know what forget it moving on we're holding things together with duct tape and glue over here y'all
um and then if you can't contribute um or even if you can but but if you can't please rate review
and share the podcast that helps immensely um so you don't even have to contribute monetarily to help
out anyway moving on because i i hate schlepping for stuck stuff uh do talk insert uh the cool drop
here that i will totally finish before putting this show out uh where smitherman does really cool stuff
about mountain dew um anyway moving on do talk uh our new segment about new stuff happening in alabama
it's like well there's your problems the goddamn news except i changed the name uh because
reasons um i'm glad that you said i'm glad that you put this i'm turning my monitor off it keeps
fucking me up
i can't turn it off while i'm recording okay what about the monitors no no wait wait
i just want you to know that when i'm edit it was delayed
uh fair um yeah yeah okay all right so i'm glad you put this section in because i was going to
suggest it to you it's like hey zephyr you're at the state house all the time if you hear anything
funny make a note of it and we'll like stitch together some little clips of the weird fucked up
things the the representatives say or the funny things anyway go oh no i mean you can go from
there so just just alabama news in general um i keep struggling every time we have a new episode
of like there should be slides or something and then i really feel like i'm aping different podcasts and
then also then i have to do video editing which is an extra pain in the ass uh but you know you can
just picture this in your head i also feel very dedicated to an audio only um thing and i think
podcasts have gone too far into video anyway moving on use that imagination that separates you from the
machines to uh mentally project an image of what we are talking about we'll also rotate the podcast in
your mind like a cube all right so we have uh we've got elections coming up in alabama um we have
every statewide office is actually getting re-elected in 2026 um which means that not only is the entire
state house um so all the senators and the house of representatives running for re-election but so is
the governor and lieutenant governor and kiv our current governor um is can't run for another um another
term in office she's uh she's term limited and also she's old as hell and allegedly don't sue me
allegedly senile um the droids of living under a gerontocracy yes she's she's quite up there um
although i will point out that we actually have representatives in the state house who are older
and they're fine uh so you know everybody ages differently anyway true uh trump endorse candidates
for governor and lieutenant governor both have residency problems so we're off to a really awesome
start um we'll start with tuberville who's running for governor of alabama god help us all uh if you
had told me like you know 20 years ago that the guy that most people hate because he's the auburn
university football coach to be clear the auburn folks hate him too because he
fucked over the football team i didn't i wasn't throwing shade at alabama fans i was i there are
many folks who had uh good cause to be angry with tommy tuberville for football reasons but the fact that
there that he is skyrocketed like to become senator is wild to me so yeah yeah yeah it's not it's not great
um but in particular what i want to talk shit about is that he does not live here he does not live in
alabama oh we all know this i know i should probably put an allegedly on there but like come on y'all
the the he does not stay here this man does not stay here uh and that's a problem because when he ran
for senator and and anybody runs for senator they only have to be in the state like they only have to have
a residency in the state for one day um to to be like on the ballot to run for senate but uh if you
are um a uh if you're running for governor you gotta be here for seven years now what the party and what
tommy is what tuberville is arguing is that it doesn't have to be seven consecutive years and it
doesn't have to be the seven years preceding when he runs and he lived here for 10 years when he was
a football coach this man this man voted in florida he has a residence in florida uh if a and i live in
auburn we ain't never seen this man around town not never not a single goddamn time not a singular time
as as have i seen him stick his nose out so uh we are not obviously the only the only ones to say this
um there is a lot of reporting about his residency problems and uh ken mcfeeters uh who is also running
for governor on the republican ticket uh he put forward an official challenge um to uh to the republican
steering committee the alabama republican uh steering committee uh to not and um it's not not not that
they endorse it to allow his candidacy to to move forward basically to to you know can i just say i
love every name in this race oh yeah we have good old tommy tubby we have ken mcfeeters i i need to
make the representative the the man who challenged uh wall's candidacy which we'll get to in a minute
is representative gil isbell who is the former representative in matt butler's district so like
you know everything's everything's going great um everything everything is a circular firing squad so um
so mcfeeters uh he he um he uh pulled um uh a lot of documents and stuff that show that that so
basically because tommy tupperville is currently senator he is you know he has to file travel reports
and stuff and you can freedom of information act that stuff and all of his travel to and from
washington dc he has gone through deston florida so he is like that's where he's done his car rentals
and like or like you know transportation costs or like writing off like this man saying he's
deston's a pretty little city florida huh i was saying that deston's a pretty little city i can
understand no i could hear you it's it's aaron i was i was gonna say i'd love to i'd love to hear
this man explain how he's commuting to washington dc via florida from at from alabama
yeah yeah it's great um now i will say never in my life do do not this this is a this is a um
just just a psa for everybody uh don't don't piss off kyle whitmire don't do it because this man
will will will find everything you have ever done and he will make a timeline of it oh god
so uh i love i love a petty a petty grudge enacted through data oh you don't even know how thorough
this is so this is an article that i went to be fair i mean to be clear kyle whitmire has been on
tuberville's ass about this for years this is not new he now lives in washington dc so he's on
tuberville's ass more frequently but this is this is like his whole beat um but he was covering it
before he moved to dc so this is an article that he published may 2nd 2025 so this is these are issues
that we knew about tuberville well before he ever announced his candidacy so
in 2018 tuberville's wife suzanne um and their son tucker claimed a homestead exemption on a house
in auburn tommy tuberville is not on the deed but this is what he says is his proof of residency
same year his uh he and his wife continue to vote in florida um and now tuberville has put his name
on not one but two alabama deeds one in auburn and another in madison each with their own homestead
exemptions so if a homestead exemption means residency then which one is his home
they own a 4.8 million dollar beach house in walton county florida which is where they clearly are
traveling to in auburn they own a three-bedroom home one of these is a lot bigger than the other
also would like to point out that his son who is uh i think an auburn student is thomas tucker
tuberville which is why did you do that to your son that is a stan lee steve ditko ass name that is why
would you that's awful yeah yep that's that's i don't know that doesn't say i love you to me
but that's that's neither here nor there so he he took her tuberville over yeah yeah
yeah you know so that's not you know we still have some time within you know the seven-year window i
think i'm doing math right from 2017 actually no no it's no it's not anyway so um there is a whole
very thorough timeline that kyle whitmyer has put together including multiple elections where tuberville
voted in florida um he registered to vote in alabama uh in 2019 um and then two weeks later uh announced
that he would run for senate um so and this is what several months so on november 6 2018
tommy and suzanne tuberville voted in walton county florida on march 28 2019 they uh registered to vote in
alabama um based on the other the other um uh residency um and then he told in august 3rd 2019
he told the shoals republican club quote yes i am not an everyday resident of alabama that's going to
be brought up i have been here for most of the last 20 years i have property so you'll see that on tv
so he's a carpet beggar yep i'm a carpet pecker of this country oh my god
so yeah so when jeff sessions uh uh jeff sessions called him so the former alabama senator jeff
sessions called him florida man which is why that's one of the tiers on our patreon plug for the patreon
um floribama man yep yep yep um i just thought floribama man was funnier than just florida man
because florida man could be a wide range of things um there is there's just a lot of stuff uh
so what tuberville is arguing right is that or what we think he argued actually because the
challenges weren't necessarily wasn't wasn't fully wasn't published by the steering committee
but he claimed um that the law requires him to live a total of seven years in alabama
not all seven years leading up to the election however um and this is something that
like if you ask three different lawyers an opinion you're going to get three different answers
well so the thing about this about this challenge is it's not decided by the courts
this goes to the legislature the courts very specifically in alabama code do not have the
authority to do this it's as very specifically there is no court that has jurisdiction over this
uh so this will all be decided in legislature cool
um yeah it's it's not it's not awesome it's not great um now i should note that this year um unlike
most years in alabama or most election years in alabama there's actually like a fairly full
slate of democrats running for um especially for state level um uh positions or statewide positions a
thing that we don't usually see here so people don't know there's there's rarely um a challenge or like
one that's serious you know we have a candidate running for um alabama the alabama supreme court
that's the first time in a while that adam is even attempted to run um and former senator doug jones is
running for governor on the dem side and so there is you know some consternation among republicans um
who are not crazy happy and when i say republicans i mean those in in leadership those in an elected office i don't
know how republicans generally in the state feel but again i i don't know i'm i'm not good at election
predicting i'm really not i just don't imagine that like i i think in a in a in a race where
tuberville obviously has the um the i don't want to say momentum it is more likely than not that he
wins he's the incumbent he's got name recognition he's not the incumbent he's running for a different
office oh no that's right that's right because ivy's on his way or her way out right and and he
hasn't exactly done a ton of favors for himself in the senate you know one of the biggest things he did
hates him in fact right yeah which is again why i suspect he's not running for a reelection but more
specifically i mean one of the biggest stunts he pulled in the senate was screwing up pay for military
members or not pay um it was it was pay uh in in um indirectly but holding up um the promotions uh
yeah holding up the promotions for over a year he did that for really yeah really screwed things up
for military folks and there are a lot of military bases and military members in alabama um that's not
a great thing to do that's really not a great thing to do and he also like he can't keep his foot out of
his mouth i don't i don't get the impression um that republicans in office the ones who like actually
have a head on their shoulders particularly like him the other thing to note is that alabama has a
super super majority veto proof like republican control so even if he gets into office like i i
don't know how much he'll actually be able to do that's him um that couldn't just be overridden by
the legislature i mean that that's that's way too much looking towards a lot of language in the
interviews done with other members of the republican party in office uh there's a lot of them who are
using words like coronation in a sarcastic in a sarcastic way they say he's teaching this like a
coronation rather than an election right uh which they are not happy about yes a lot of talk about
principles which is really funny to hear from the alabama part from the alabama republican party but
uh in this case it's within party lines so that they're fair game so what gets really interesting
about this um and why you know i think again it is more likely than not that he wins however i think
there is a real legitimate chance that doug jones pulls this off because of a confluence of circumstances
one is that i don't know that tuberville is going to inspire people to turn out to vote it is a midterm
election um you know this isn't trump is not on the ballot um so people are going to have to like
actually show up in november um really all i don't want to say all doug needs but like
if you just have fewer people showing out that's already going to tip the scales a little bit
you don't need i don't think republicans are going to cross over and vote for doug jones they just
need to stay home and that and even if again um doug doesn't win this is now money that tuberville has
to put into this race right to defend against residency challenges not in the in the official
sense because he's now cleared that but in the um in the press in public opinion in public perception
right because doug jones is absolutely going to run attack ads on that you know like it it opens
himself up like he has opened himself up and then because again he can't keep his foot out of his
mouth it's really easy to run attack ads against him and i think you know this is also a rematch
you know the he beat joe that was jones's seat you know that he beat um granted like he has had the
the florida allegations used against him for a while but it's different between being a senator and being
governor like it is different um you know my worries for this situation are that if he wins and then the
alabama republican party decides that he doesn't have he's not he doesn't live in this state he
hasn't lived in this state for the last seven years of this required seven years then it doesn't go back
to re-election it follows the line of that that seat is considered vacant and it goes back to
john wall it goes back to the lieutenant governor and guess who else is running for lieutenant governor
who's also had a residency challenge put against him who i personally have beef with
and that is john wall so that gets us to our second person who has the residency challenge
the lieutenant governor race now this race now unlike the governor race where tommy tuberville is
basically the only you know named there's ken mcfeeters is running against him i i truly do not
know much about that man um he's not like a i would say like a known quantity i don't think
he's gonna be able to put up the kind of money to like like actually challenge tupperville's race
but be that as it may the lieutenant governor race is different there is also another very real
very legitimate dem challenger in representative philip ensler who has a deep history just like
uh doug jones has probably maybe deeper and um being somebody who is a lawyer and is is a civil
rights lawyer and has used um his um his access and power for for helping black folks um he's also
the only jewish rep who is in the state house uh representative philip ensler was the one who was
across the mic from um mac butler uh when represent butler said um you know where the first you know
what the first textbook was oh god so that's when we previously so he's he served as a as a high
school teacher he's got a broad range of experience he's well spoken you know he's got he's got the
chops to to to put up a legitimate run so where the republican race gets interesting or in the lieutenant
governor race is that wes allen is also running for lieutenant governor wes allen is the current secretary of
state the way that y'all feel about john wall is pretty close to how i feel about wes allen i hate
this man i hate this man so much um y'all uh aaron in particular you came into like covering the ledge
after wes allen used to be a representative um you know um senator gerald allen the flat flag band from
what was that two years ago if it wasn't last year i don't really know about it i feel like it was it
it was the um uh it was the 9 11 and then rolled together into the flag band did that happen no no
no this is this is one that went through the senate and it was uh you've definitely heard me and chris
complain about it um it was a bill about uh nominating a new uh 9 11 memorial flag but hidden in the bill
was like was basically banning like every other kind of flag except the confederate flag and the pow flag
and the girl scouts and boy scouts of america
that is so specific anyway anyway senator gerald allen is wes allen's father so
senator allen in the it was obviously in the senate and wes was in the the house and they used to you
know support each other's bills all the time it was a real one-two punch of of
bullshit wes is smarter i will say that i think senator allen is is not the brightest bulb in the in the
bulb in the tree but um you know wes is is uh legitimately like
you know he is he is he is a um a political animal you know so wes
wes allen upon hearing that john wall might be getting in the race because
get this fae uh trump endorsed wall's candidacy in lieutenant in lieutenant governor race before he
had even registered to run wow yeah and then so john officially entered the race on friday which
was the last day to um get in on the race um or the last day to register to run so uh there was
some stuff with that there were some words said about john wall if i remember correctly
oh yeah well i got it pulled up can you can you see it on the screen
can you zoom in no here i can read it it's fine so wes allen put out a statement about about this um
and and the title of it erin is statement from wes allen regarding the candidacy of nehemiah wall
now fey you're going to be a little confused as to well you were talking about john wall who the
fuck is nehemiah ezekiel wall and that brings us back to a bit of a story no a bit a bit of a time
so i believe you've mentioned a little bit of this to me but please so john wall
remember what i said about do not get on kyle whitmyer's bad side so kyle whitmyer has also
been writing john wall's ass because there's a lot of stuff that just doesn't add up and again this
brings us back to in a state where republican nominees are shoe-ins why would you shoot yourself
in the foot this way i don't know that it's actually going to stop well i mean frankly in this race um
i don't know who would win wes allen or john wall i really don't um you know that it almost feels like
two different kinds of republicans you know running against each other so john wall i don't know if you
can see this very well fey john wall made his own voter id card um this is that voter id card
uh he voted with it um and when the poll workers um was he a press secretary at the time
no no this is a made-up position wait okay so this man has committed fraud
i love that okay at the time just to describe this there is a very don't come to school today
tomorrow man photo of john wall oh damn with a barcode but if you look closely it's not a barcode
it just repeats the same number over over and over again and then it says reasonable press secretary
the great seal of alabama which makes this a state crime the office of state auditor 600 dexter avenue
room 101 john wall that is all this says on it so to be clear um in alabama if you have a state
id like you are a state employee and you have an id you can use that as voter id
so here's the problem with this id uh-huh so the the the um uh the poll worker in limestone county
because that's where john wall lives the the poll worker asked him uh you know what is this card
like i've never seen this before um so when he was talent challenged he texted this photo the limestone
limestone county probate court um and the alabama finance department says it has no record of wall
working for the state and it never issued him an employee id badge while later said that he made
the id with the state auditor's permission he printed this himself like he quite literally made this
himself like both physically and in terms of like laying it out the state auditor at the time i believe
was jim uh zig ziegler who did i think he corroborated like oh yeah i let him make this id now why why
do you need to go to all of these lengths right you would assume that john wall has a driver's license
this is where we get to the nehemiah ezekiel of it all so quick quick context um john wall is an
anabaptist he comes from a family of anabaptists and his particular branch uh his particular family
they don't believe in photo id um they believe it's like the mark of the beast or maybe not mark of
the beast you're not supposed to have photos of yourself like that they don't believe in ids to the
point that um you know john wall represents um and uh a party right that is extremely pro voter id wants
to have extremely strict voter id laws and and at the time that alabama put in place their initial
photo uh id for voting for voting laws um john wall's brother was actually one of the plaintiffs in the acl
lawsuit against that that law um which john championed so um there are ways around this by the way um for
example if you don't have photo id i think there was something about like if you have like a religious
exemption like they do there's something about like you know if if if three people can verify or if the
if the county probate you know judge can verify your identity like say look oh yeah i know who that is
like they live here yeah then you can still vote but obviously wait no that doesn't one of the ways
you can vote in alabama is you can be a personal friend of the probate judge if they can verify your
your because like as you as you can imagine right there are i think it's i can't remember if it's
specifically a religious exemption or if it works for anybody but yes asterisk i need to double check
that i didn't write that in my notes so i didn't verify it but i i feel like i remember that being a
thing because this was one of the things that was brought up of like why didn't everybody knows
john wall why did he need to make an id in the first place he could have just had the poll workers
verify his identity the other way but anyway be that as made it doesn't matter one way or the other
because so the question right is like why didn't he use a driver's license which he presumably has
because you know he gets around the state because john wall is the current alabama gop chairman
so he's the chairman of the entire alabama party right and has been for a while um i think this
is what like his third consecutive term as as the chairman he it's been years right uh he travels all
over the state he's in montgomery all the time he lives in limestone county or at least that's where
his butterfly farm is yes we will do an entire yes we will do an entire episode on john wall i'm
working on it it's it is it's a criminal that a man this straight white man energy
has a butterfly farm the lepsidopter ends deserve better representation this should be reserved for a
delightful autistic old 60 year old gay man you are you are really you were just really uh
you're just really obsessed with using that like you you had that word ready to go
anyway lepidopterist yes it's a good word thank you for using it fae you're welcome so so let's get
let's get back to nehemiah ezekiel um so this man makes his own id the name on it is john wall he tries
to vote with it it becomes a thing he does successfully vote he gets the poll worker who
flagged it fired um which it's a volunteer i think you actually get paid if you're an official poll
worker but just for that day it's not a lot of money right this is no it's somebody who's doing
it out of a sense of civic obligation generally speaking yeah and this is somebody who did exactly
what the republicans say that they want which is like they saw something sketchy and they were like
hey um i flagged this and then it went to the probate judge who looked at it and went um
hey i know this guy it's okay he can vote yes this is his address whatever john wall was able to
successfully catch the cash jesus christ he was able to successfully cast his ballot right the process
worked the way it's supposed to and then he got the man fired so this is already a lot this is already a
lot and then we found out that his name is not john wall and we found out that his name is not john wall
because he has a tennessee driver's license under the name nehemiah ezekiel wall and he's registered to
vote in tennessee so again with the not getting on kyle whitmeyer's bad side um this is an article
he wrote back in oh may 13th 2025 uh whose phone is sorry i thought i had it muted
okay so um
so for most of his tenure as alabama gop chairman he has had a driver's a tennessee driver's license
under the name nehemiah wall and he's registered to vote there too and that seven-year residency required
for governor also applies to alabama like i mean also applies to lieutenant governor so it's also the
same um the reason we found this out is because he got a traffic ticket in 2023 which kyle got and
that shows that john wall gave an alabama state trooper a tennessee driver's license with the name
nehemiah ezekiel wall tennessee voter records also show that nehemiah wall registered to vote there in
december 2020 which was the same year that he ran to represent alabama as an elector in the electoral
college yeah so um
uh see this is this is these are these are uh these are good
these are great quotes all right i'm just gonna read this verbatim uh last week again this is back
in 2025 um i in this case i'm reading from the article this is kyle asked wall by text his request
whether nehemiah was his real name whether he had ever gone by nehemiah and whether as i had been
told he had given the name nehemiah to get past the u.s secret service to visit donald trump
during last year's alabama georgia football game you shouldn't believe everything you hear he said
i don't know who or what your sources are but you have some bad information after i let him know that
i had found that old speeding ticket and tennessee voter registration he wrote back my first name is
nehemiah and that's not something i have ever tried to hide my guy you just did yeah you've been
that's what you've been doing whether nehemiah was his real name you shouldn't believe everything
you hear um okay all right many people especially public figures don't go by their first names or
choose to go by nicknames i have gone by john since my childhood and that's that's uh everyone
who knows that's how everyone knows me his name appears as john wall in alabama election records
candidate filings ethics disclosures and alabama certificate certification to the 2020 electoral
college now i do want to point here as three individuals who have all changed our names right
i am very uh understanding to somebody like i'm still in the legal process of of officially changing
my name like it it gets a little internet scene it's a pain in the ass you gotta go to the social
security office and camp out there all day like it you know when i show up at the restaurant i did this
yesterday with my mother and i look gorgeous and i have my hair done i'm in a nice pretty dress and then i
i hand the waitress my id and i'm just go yeah that's me and let me tell you that depressed unwashed
white man on there that is that that was me a while ago and that name the name on that driver's
license is not the one i go by now but i don't hide it it's the fun game i play with the with the
waitress it's not like switcheroo right i don't say oh yeah no here's my my special my special id card
issued to me by myself with my name and photo on it because that's how nice would it be if you could if
you could just do that right yeah i wish i could um now here's the thing right a until uh 2022 um
the ethics commission um had a space until 2022 the ethics commission had a space that gave officials a
space to share nicknames so people could tell that senator james thomas waggoner and jabbo are the
same person and you see this right like when people run for re-election jabbo wagner is what's on the
signs it's what you can put on the file you know we we have a friend who's currently running for office
she got to choose how her name appeared there right like these are not
unanticipated right by the establishment in this instance and he did not use any of those
um uh avenues this is also how i found out that apparently uh representative mark tuggle is
sometimes called snuggles i i don't know anything further about that that's just you know some future
things i don't want to know about that actually i don't know i don't know alabama election records
yeah name alert tuggle yeah look look man i bet this guy got made fun of a lot in middle school
hey tuggle what were you doing last night yeah snuggling snuggling oh my god
sorry the nickname was snuggles i just the fact that they rhyme okay so let's let's just just
because i want to move on past this because it's 7 30 and aaron's got to go at nine and we haven't
even started the real episode yet basically decided to skip that meeting okay well i mean i also want
to eat dinner so you know that's fair but but good to know um and and you know so what what john says
is that you know he intended to move to tennessee in 2020 um but never did full time but he did get a
driver's license there he's registered to vote in in tennessee although to be fair election records show
he hasn't cast a ballot there um and when he decided to stay in alabama he didn't get around to updating
his license thus obvious thus implying that he had you know here's something else you need to know
in alabama you can vote with a with a driver's license that's from another state as long as you're like
a resident here you live here you can show because what you have to do is you have to prove residency
and you have to prove um your uh identity and those can be separate documents so you can have a photo
id that is your um you know your uh your your driver's license from colorado for example like
one of my friends did when she voted but then just have like a letter addressed to you or something
to you know prove your residency i'm actually not even confident as i say that that you actually have
to prove residency at the polls i think you have to sign an affidavit but either way he could have used
the tennessee driver's license but he didn't he used one that he made himself and like look at the timeline
um he uh received a speeding ticket in april 2023 which served as a uh much needed reminder
to update my license after that i obtained an alabama driver's license but in 2022 that's when
he tried to vote with this self-made id which means that he had the tennessee driver's license he knew
like he knew like he just didn't want people to know either that it was his name or that he had
a tennessee driver's license i don't know there's no reason why that should have raised any consternation
either i guess maybe because he wasn't registered to vote under nehemiah and maybe he didn't realize
it until it was too late to change his name because that closes 30 days before any given election
actually it might be 15 um it closes you know you can't update your voter registration in alabama same
day or even oh i should get on that week yeah you absolutely should so
this is the guy who is running for uh for lieutenant governor so now that we have so frustrating
because if i ran for any position and the alabama media caught hold of it they would not stop dead
naming me from now until the day i fucking died yeah yeah and and that's why i like i mean there's
the other part is we can't like rail on this because we all have dead names that we prefer not to go by
right and that's why like i don't usually say like his name is nehemiah as like a joking like
well nehemiah over here you know like i that's a line that i draw is like you know what if you want
to go by john whatever i'll respect you i call you john john wall is so much more phonetically
just go change your birth certificate but i will like me the pain in the ass but i will absolutely
point out the hypocrisy of what you're doing so this brings us back to now that we have finished that
little trek down down uh context lane um this is the statement that wes allen who again is the other
republican in that race and who was until john entered the presumed winner of the lieutenant governor
race like he is by far and away the the one who is i don't want to say the most qualified but had the
most um momentum money he's currently in statewide office he was kind of a shoo-in you know so now you
know john wall enters literally on the last day so wes allen puts out this statement i am the only
candidate in the race for lieutenant governor with a proven record of standing up against liberals and
defending alabama's christian conservative values while establishing the strictest strictest voter
integrity standards in the nation i have the endorsement of farmers foresters businesses large and small
and the vast majority of alabama's republican caucus members these endorsements represent hundreds of
thousands of dedicated republicans across the state by entering this race nehemiah wall has once again
betrayed his obligation to the alabama republican party instead of living up to his duty to promote
republican values and the success of republican candidates he has chosen self-promotion that will
undercut the campaigns of republicans up and down the ballot democrats are fielding the strongest
slate of candidates in recent history and the chairman of the alabama republican party is giving
them ammunition to attack every republican candidate in the state k and i are grateful for the support of
hard-working alabamians across the state who have made my campaign the front runner in the race to
become alabama's next republican lieutenant governor i will continue to work hard to earn every republican
vote in the may 19th primary oh yeah that's not something you that is scathing the girls are fighting
the girls are very much fighting and that point what to not they let them fight back yes
truly truly and like that's what i mean about when i say like they're concerned about the money they're
gonna have to spend defending against democrats like that's that's a thing right and this whole thing
about like chosen self-promotion one of the reasons that it if you want to run for office
fucking run for office you might not win but your opponent will actually have to do something rather
than just like sit at home and jerk off until it's time to be sworn in
yeah um and also i have made mentioned multiple times that uh john walls the the chairman of the alabama
gop he did resign as soon as his uh uh candidacy was um was uh announced okay so he has stepped down
now um we will get into this in uh the apls episodes but so john wall is also the chairman
of the alabama public library service board a position that he has used to
become as a chairman or as board member ron schneidman sorry go ahead it was clear as day
that he was running for office and using the library board as a way to create as much of a media stir as
possible what did ron stander call him uh the alabama censor-in-chief so that is a fellow
board member who is not particularly liberal um i don't know that he is a conservative because
unlike other board members he doesn't really make his politics in that way like known um but no
ron's been uh just running the library board for the last well not running but up a working gear in the
the machinery of the library board for a long time until john came along he was the chairman right
before john okay i couldn't remember yeah he was the chairman and then uh when they got the majority
on the board because virginia doyle was removed by kiv that's how john got the majority of i forgot
him as chair yes that was a whole yeah they they had to basically coo from the inside anyway all right
we need to get to the actual like episode but yeah there there's stuff happening here uh election wise
uh normally the girls do not fight like this this is this is behind closed doors knives out kind of
shit so yeah that's that's fun that's very fun oh um the alabama uh the gop steering committee as of
sunday so yesterday uh cleared both of them so great cleared them to run or just said they're cool to be
governor and lieutenant governor both i mean they will like them they cleared them by saying like they
they're they're the challenges to their residency both of which came from again inside the party um
that that they dismissed those uh those challenges yay yeah yay for self-regulation yep okay so anyway
moving on now that we're an hour in okay great cool uh awesome all right i'm not going to stress about
it it's it's fine it's fine we're just gonna go with it it's okay all right so uh this episode we're
going to go over um the legislative session uh week one um this is my seventh legislative session uh five
regular sessions and two special sessions i did in fact get a press pass this year um unlike my
predictions in the first episode um which makes this my third session where i've had a press pass
um that means that i have access to press only areas on the house and the senate floor more access to
legislators and i'm allowed into packed out committee rooms even if there's no seats left and that's no small
thing um generally if there are no open seats available you are not allowed to just stand in
the committee room uh room 200 is a little bit of an exception but most committee rooms it's um you
you have to have a seat open because i have a press pass i'm allowed to stand so that means that even
you know if i roll up to a packed out state you know committee room a thing that happens all the time
um i can still go which is great um something is new this year though and that's my role at the state
house because this is the first year that i'm not working for anyone else but myself um i get paid
as a contractor to record non-streaming committee meetings for the alabama channel um if you want
to know more info on why that has to happen check out our first episode on how alabama uh how our state
house does not uh save uh any of the videos that they live stream from the state house and that there are
rooms that they don't live stream from um but the vast you know majority of the time i'm in the state
state house as myself um which is really uncharted territory for me my press passes in 2023 and 2024
were part of my former non-profit job um this is the first year that i like look at the schedule
in the state house and i i map it out myself you know based on what i think is important or
interesting to cover or where you know some interesting debate uh might happen that i think
people should know about um obviously that you know any recordings that i have to do for alabama channel
will come first and unfortunately there's a lot of meetings that happen in non-streaming rooms that
are at the same time as a lot of like big ticket committee meetings so i have to go back and review
them later but you know all my self-indulging aside uh that means i'm in the state house every day
before the legislators gavel in and i'm there after they leave till this session wraps so i want to bring
people along with me i want to give you all a front row seat of how shit is actually going down in the
state house so let's do that um y'all can just like interrupt me and shit sorry i can't see you so i
can't like respond to visual cues so i'm just gonna keep reading until somebody interrupts me um
so just a quick overview of the legislative session uh we need a crumb of context just a smidge just a
little dusting before diving into the episode not a flood of another hour of context no no absolutely
not um no history lessons today none of that every state has different rules and regulations around
when and how its state lawmakers meet and in alabama our legislators meet once a year which
is called a regular session the session is limited to 30 meeting days commonly called legislative days
which they have to use up within 105 calendar days i'm gonna try that again in english
on that okay no no ask aaron please okay okay actually i was going to i was going to add something
uh this is why the filibuster people go like oh they they're filibustering it um the reason this is
important is because uh every bill has to go through those 30 days twice and so it takes a minimum of
what did we say it was five five five days and if your bill doesn't get those five days in
it doesn't pass and so this is where the filibuster comes in and this is why the democrats have some
power in the alabama state even though there's a super majority if they filibuster something they don't
want to happen nothing else gets done and so that's where things like a special order calendar come in
where they can limit the number of the amount of time you can spend talking on a bill but you have
you also have to debate that because they have to be able to vote on it that's how the legislative
process works everybody has to at least on paper agree by majority that there should be a special
order calendar today the republican party can force that through but it takes time and then uh they
have to follow that special order calendar for the day this is how they passed what is a woman last
year they burned an entire legislative day to do that one of their 30 days nothing else got done that
day that was by royal decree by k ivy that was her priority was that bill i'm gonna disagree on the
royal decree part but i'll get to that later and i'm mentioning it because where she made her address
on the first day of the legislative session uh and so that was one of the things she talked about
last year in her address was her priorities and her priorities do get followed by the public
republican party but it's possible the republican party sets those priorities a little little
column a little little column b yeah anyway uh that's just some more explanation on why those 30 days are
important yeah so unlike a lot of other states you know every state is different um we have a
relatively short legislative session um so i'm just going to try to explain this again in a different
way so the regular session started on january 13th this year that means that the legislature has until may
23rd to use up to 30 official legislative days they don't have to use all 30 days though
but once that clock runs out on the 105th day like once it gets to may 23rd the legislature can't meet
again until the next regular session unless the governor calls a special session and we're not going to get
into that today um those are pretty rare um i went through you know two of them for redistricting
they usually have to be something massive um the entire time that aaron's been following the state
house she's never experienced a special session the last one was in 2023 so that's not a usual
thing um so what counts as an official legislative day is probably not what you think because just
because the lawmakers are in the state house does not make it an official legislative day the senate
and the house have to gavel in on the floor to use one up so just like what aaron was talking about
they had to the house had to gavel in it was on a wednesday to pass what is a woman it doesn't matter
how long they're there for it could be five minutes it could be an entire day up to 11 59 pm but it
counts as one legislative day so the instant that that gavel bangs they've used up a day and they only
have 30 to use every single year and they only have you know a few months every single year that they can
meet period so um that's you know just general context for how things are moving in the state
house um on average generally speaking the legislature will gavel in on tuesdays and thursdays with
wednesday being committee meetings only it's not uncommon to gavel in on wednesdays too we actually
see that the first two weeks of the legislation this year it's also more common later in the session
that's enough context for now just so you know like a typical legislative week is going to be tuesday
wednesday thursday um and most of those days are going to be them gaveling in thus using up
legislative days so that's what we mean when we say this is legislative day one this is legislative day
two blah blah hopefully that that got it you know so uh just a point so that that address that aaron's
talking about um that happens every year on the first day it's legislative day one i don't really
have any notes for y'all because it was just pomp and circumstance nothing particularly interesting
happened that day that evening governor ivy gave her state of the state address that's what happens
every year on the first legislative day um she does lay out priorities in that um address um that does
not mean that the legislator the legislature passes those things it it usually does i do feel like there's
a lot of working behind the scenes because what she's laying out in that priority is also going to be
mirrored in the um the financial documents the the budget that she sends to the to the legislators
as like hey this is what i want um that is not what gets passed i mean it's close to it but but
the alabama has a veto proof super majority which means that anything that kiv vetoes they can
they can come back and pass it again that there's gonna i'm gonna put an asterisk on this that there's
some like pocket veto power that they that she gets like later in the session but the point is is that
like the legislatures will sometimes leave a few days and the bank won't use up all 30 days because if
something does get vetoed then they can come back and and push it through this has not happened since i've
been following the legislature but this is k ivy's last year so something crazy could happen i don't know like
there's no there's no uh backlash to her administration if she uh you know messes with
them but that she is not do it for the bit yeah in my memory to my memory uh she has not vetoed a
single thing so it just to just to point out though that the power does reside in the legislature in
this equation you know they they really have they're in the driver's seat so that's why i was pushing back
on the the thing of like oh she gave them her priorities i'm like how much of that was them giving
her their priorities and it's it's a it's a conversation more than a demand um so um for
example in 2021 um i don't remember if it was 21 or 22 but that's when she highlighted the um the
anti uh anti-protest bill as like her number one priority it did not pass there was a massive amount of
pushback so it's not a guarantee it does make it more likely but it's not a guarantee so some of the
things that she pushed were um actually um a bill we're going to talk about in a in a little bit
um which was matt simpson's uh death penalty bill i believe it was uh hd hd jesus christ um uh house
bill hb b not the house bill 41 um if i'm remembering that correctly but she mentioned that bill as a as a
priority um and a few other things that it was more interesting what she what she didn't talk about than
what she did but it mostly we can just move on from that um we've got a lot more to talk about
and other days so legislative day two which was wednesday january 14th uh wednesday are committee days
um aaron's been through a few wednesdays they're they're crazy um they start at eight sometimes at
8 30 in the morning that's when senate judiciary meets um and the last committee meetings are at start
at 4 p.m and simultaneously throughout that entire time there are multiple meetings happening
in both the senate and the house so you can have you know 9 a.m is a very popular slot you can have
like six different meetings happening on the same day i can tell you right now because we can look up
what what the schedule is for later this week um let's see allison.legislature.state.us
and go over to little meetings tab
so we can see already so just and this this isn't necessarily all of the meetings they have till
tomorrow to load these and they've got 24 hours in advance one two three four five five
9 a.m meetings happening simultaneously and a 9 30 um and one two two of these i can tell already by
looking at this are in rooms that do not have streaming so i'll be assigned i can already tell
you i'll be assigned to cover one of these meetings at least um and that means that anything else
happening at nine like for example education policy would be a meeting that i really like to go to um
i'll have to leave judiciary early to go to a 9 a.m meeting to record that right so the what i'm what
i'm getting at is that i take pretty extensive notes in the state house but there are lots of
meetings that are happening simultaneously so i have to kind of choose like which hour meeting am
i'm not going to go back and like look over so i'm looking at like what bills are coming up you know
what um oh god damn it uh i shouldn't be looking at this live sorry i just realized there was a bill
that i really hate that's up in uh public safety homeland security oh it's in the house okay which one
is it the driver's license exams exclusively in english yes we both this is why i can't look at
i can't look at oh and then barnes's stupid bill is already oh god damn it i'm of disruption of a
worship service oh you didn't see that 1819 news article yeah because of minneapolis i stay off 1819
for my mountain mental health fair um no so yeah i saw that i don't even know barnes i can't tell you
who's taking weirdly good headshots of me they really they have done more to document trans
history in this state than really anybody else and i find that immensely that picture is on my wall
i'm so mad that craig is no longer working with them so i can't get him to autograph
what he wrote about me i want his autograph i bet he still does his podcast
no because the podcast was through 1819 oh the pod oh shit yeah
they they did get paid for that you hate to see it they get paid for that heated gaming moment
we are truly independent i get paid on the back end as in like people hear it and then maybe they
throw in money they get paid up front and they have w-2s like we're we are not in this anyway
having a w-2 okay let's let's not go down to anyway anyway anyway moving the fuck on
so there's a lot of meetings happen happening simultaneously it's a very long day the first
two weeks the house and the senate were also gaveling in so like i think that wednesday i
wasn't there super late but the week after i didn't leave the state house until 7 30 um they were done
by like six but i still had to like upload videos and stuff afterwards because i record the scrums
the um the press q a's that happen afterwards and i upload those for alabama channel as well
so like you know again like if you're a journalist in the state house if you're if that's your beat
you're there a very long time um so this year because it's an election year unlike most other
years legislators want to get through this session as fast as humanly possible because they want to
get back to their districts to campaign before primary elections in may uh so this is something we've we
kind of touched on earlier but not not explicitly and this is something i always want to mention when
we're talking about elections in alabama is that because alabama legislative districts so not statewide
office but the legislative districts are either very republican or very democrat the real election then
becomes the primary election yeah so for example um in the house there's 105 districts only five
districts fall into a competitive range so that's uh house district 10 25 47 63 79 of those only two
districts are what i would call toss-ups now for people who know me from like redistricting times
don't take that as like you know an official steel stamp and approval that's just kind of my like back of the
envelope it's within a couple of points uh and that's what i'm qualifying as a toss-up i'm just just
a caveat for some people who know me to throw out numbers that are much more serious than that so in
the senate out of 35 districts only two fall into a competitive range and that's sd2 and sd7 both of
which are in huntsville um if i recall correctly so you know represent yeah you're our resident north
alabamian um i don't know how well y'all live in this very cursed city i don't know how well y'all can
see this uh it is a cursed city i'm sorry i like i was this is the birmingham this is the the former
birmingham resident and in me of like i i can't i can't even with uh with huntsville it's just not
real like that's a city that's not a city that's a collection of strip malls you're so right
the american my car was out of commission for like two days and i could bike to the grocery store
barely and then i had to bike to a doctor's appointment um and that was a fucking workout
so anyway it was fun back to the house map yeah this is a this is a map of the alabama state house
we will in other episodes and definitely would have to have visuals for that one um explain a little
bit more about what's going on with this map like for example the fact that i noticed earlier that house
district 72 is not technically contiguous uh they're missing a block there um that's fun um
this is i'm using dave's redistricting a thing that if you know me from redistricting i have
talked about so many times i love dave's redistricting and i just love redistricting
in general but what we're really looking at here is this page um it's statistics so it's just showing
us the um the dem or republican lean of like any given district so you can already see like the one
the the districts that i listed as being competitive there are these white ones like this
they don't have a specific color so i mean it's it's pretty intuitive but if it's very very blue
right it's very dem if it's very red you know it's uh it's republican
to you know this kind of district right that's like 58 republican 40 dem like that is absolutely
like in the bag republican kind of district yeah it's lean republican but it's yeah so this is the
only district really that i think is like a true true toss-up which is hd to house district 10 you can
see it's 49 to 48 um you know just very very barely i mean that could be that can be almost a statistical
anomaly of like you know the the dem of a republican um and then this is uh you know you look at this
one which is hd 25 is also listed as as a competitive district but it's 44 dem to 53 republican you know
is i would almost in alabama i'd say that's likely republican you know the point of this i'm sorry
faye go ahead yeah no it's like it's a toss or it's competitive in the sense that oh it's you know
mathematically possible it's that's what i'm trying to point out yeah it's like it's like it could like
it could happen out of 105 districts there are five districts where it's mathematically possible to do a
switcheroo to do a switcheroo now caveat to this turnout in primary elections is extremely low
so you could get actually a major upset i have not seen it happen you know yeah but these districts
are in some cases like crazy like 82 republican and 16.96 democratic that's an insane district that's
crazy so bringing me back to legislators want to get out of the out of the state house and back to their
districts because if they have a primary challenger that may election date that's their real election
unless you live in one of these competitive districts and you have a challenger and that
challenger is actually mounting you know any kind of serious offense so i mean that that's a lot of
that's a lot of ands there in all likelihood these these uh all of these people who are up for
re-election which is in this case everyone uh they all have to actually do things this year instead of
like a lot of um a lot of like political posturing um a lot of what john wall's been doing i would
refer to as like um a bird mating dance where he's doing a lot of jump he's doing a lot of visual
things there's a lot of visual things he's getting a lot of attention he's singing a pretty song
um so are are the voters then in this metaphor the the proverbial like potential mate of john wall also
yes yes okay but also remember that john wall is running for statewide office and this is what this
is different which i think you're about sorry i just wanted to make fun of him no by all means and
also oh fuck so he's doing all this jumping around but the thing that the legislature actually does
that is like important for the running of the state is i saw a bill last year just in passing that was
like we need to hire a sheriff but we can't hire a new sheriff without the old sheriff passing it on and
he's dead he died of old age or something so we need to pass a bill that lets us elect a new sheriff
there's so we can have one every year so one thing that's what the legislature needs to be able to do
yeah and so suddenly you actually have to pass the bill that lets you have a sheriff for your county this
year rather than i spent eight months dicking around with like i'm just imagining a passages from the
handmaid's tale on public television rather than you know doing things that my state actually requires
me to do i these i'm taking examples from john wall but like this is a lot of stuff like mac butler's
been doing mac butler hasn't passed like okay well that's probably well okay yeah see so i have to i
have to unfortunately i have to like rework not re-record but i have to put in an addendum to our
previous episode about mac butler because mac butler shocking to to me and i think everybody else has
had multiple real bills that have actually nearly passed so far because it turns out because he's
up for re-election yes but it turns out when he has like yeah but but it turns out when he has
non-crazy bills they run through the legislative like the legislative process with with a minimal
amount of disruption he has one about like cutting the cost by a committee head at all
no not once i was in a room with him and without even like realizing it i struck up like a friendly
conversation with him a thing that i was like god damn it that's the thing evil well no see this is what's
difficult this is what's difficult about my job in that like i have to like most people like if
they're podcasting you're doing whatever they're talking shit no i don't mean play nice like i am
genuinely like my my knee-jerk reaction like when i joked about like oh i sit next to jeff poor like
our first interaction was me sharing my like my charger with him you know because there's a limited
number of chargers like power outlets in the press rooms and like it just it just makes sense you
know my first time in the state house or my second time in the state house i went boy mode and i wore
a suit and tie you weren't like eight gentlemen but i thought i was uh eight gentlemen shook my hand
and they were very polite so this yeah i think one of them uh i can't remember one of them was like a
a person we'll have to cut this one of them was like a person wasn't a person but was like one
he's a skinwalker oof no we're not bringing that shit in
sorry i derailed us that time no no you're good you're good um okay so all this being said we have
all seen um you know legislative uh let's let's say priorities or hearings or whatever on bills that
are just like what who is this for what is this for why are we doing this um and then there are a ton
of bills that really don't get much munch in that are very you know use oh excuse me very useful bills
that sort of thing um something that i have really um appreciated about all right are we done with the
the burping okay try that again something that i've really appreciated about uh working with alabama
channel is that it has put me into these rooms that don't stream and those are committees that are
you know not terribly divisible like i've gotten to see the legislature actually work and work well
and because these are you know because there's only like for example in the house there's only 28 dems
so there's not a dem on every committee i mean they try to have like at least one but
sometimes there isn't like there are several meetings i've gone to where there's no dem in
the room and they are having like actual discussions about things they're having
fairly friendly debates they have like aaron i was so surprised because they'll have public hearings and
if they have people who have a lot of expertise like they represent the county commission or they're
you know represent the county the the counties in the state or whatever they'll ask them up and they will
ask probing questions like not not aggressive ones but just like they are genuinely trying to understand
and it's been so interesting to watch and it's what makes what we're going to get to in this episode
some of the the the um the whiplash of going from meetings like that to house judiciary just even more
pronounced so let's get the fuck into this because i'm getting tired i'm starting to get into like
podcast hole and like all right so the the you know there's a joke there
oh yeah so 9 30 in the morning uh on wednesday uh january 14th that's legislative day two um kicks
off with a 9 30 a.m legislative budget hearing that was held in room 200 which is the largest room in the state
house and it was absolutely packed standing room only line of folks outside and it was a good reminder
um room 200 can hold over 100 maybe 200 people um as opposed to most committing rooms which can hold
maybe a couple dozen at best um it is it was a really good reminder right off the bat to see like
what actually gets all the legislators the lobbyists the special interests and the press
in one room and that is money because passing the general budget and the education budget are the
only two things that the legislature is actually required to do per the state constitution so to
your point about like oh they have these nice bills and that's what they're supposed to be doing
that's actually gravy what they're required to do is pass the general budget and the education budget
everything else is a cherry on top i i think that's a bill that's really important to pass
but it isn't actually in their job description so oh my god yeah i think it's something that like we
don't think about because laws are so much a part of what they are so yep um so something else you
know i'm just picking and choosing here i'm just i'm just pulling out like you said like some some cool
little you know bits or things that i i heard that i was like oh this is this is really interesting or this
is important um and no i didn't pull the audio for any of this i might put them in in post but
i have i've decided that i don't need to prove that i'm telling the truth with every little thing
so we can we can save a little bit of time there but uh in senate judiciary um which was held at the
nice time of 11 a.m instead of 8 30 which it usually is um elliot had uh senator elliot our favorite
senator had a bill about um establishing a crime that the assault of public uh assaulting public
officials it basically if you assault a public official you get an elevated charge uh similar
to how there's federal charges or the charges you get if you um you know assault a a bus uh bus driver
or things like that right and um i thought it was really interesting because one of the the dem senators
i believe it was senator coleman madison she uh brought up the tv show the pit in reference to
the bill um about like hey could we add um nurses or medical care workers to this bill like that they
would also get an elevated charge so um both her and senator figures wanted to add more protected
classes um coleman madison wanted to add health care workers and senator figures wanted to add social
workers uh where if you attack them you would get an elevated charge um and i i wanted to point out that
media just just general media like what is on tv can affect lawmaking because yes it's it's certainly
true that there was an issue with people attacking health care workers please don't attack health care
workers um however the the reference that her mind immediately went to was to pull from a fictional tv
show to reference you know a general real problem um we also already have elevated charges about um
attacking health care workers didn't scalia once like reference 24 as i'm sure he did as grounds like
like as justification for torture it's like jack bauer tortures people all the time in 24
i i do not i cannot verify this but it was the last week tonight but i'm pretty like not a bit it
it was it was it was something that they documented um also the tv this is like a fun fact most people
know but the tv show csi affected how crimes are persecuted across the country and across the world
because of the sudden interest in dna evidence and forensic analysis yes and as much as i loved csi and
especially og csi it does give you a um unrealistic expectation for what forensic science is able to
achieve when they're not using junk science to begin with like bite marks yeah but yeah so i just wanted
to point that out because like they're you know i've made this comment before we've we've all said
this before of like you know there are bills that exist in the state house where somebody said somebody
said something to somebody in line at the grocery store and the next thing you know it's a goddamn bill
um that happens all the time um i thought this was interesting because it you know whether or not
it's for example right if you are having um you know god forbid a psychotic break you know when you
assault a nurse while you're um you know while you're currently um you know trying to get treatment or
or something is happening right um that happens all the time without healthcare workers pressing charges but
there is a scenario where you can be you know kind of not in your mind and assault a healthcare worker
and walk out of it with a felony when you are having a legitimate medical you know crisis um i do not
think it's okay to assault healthcare workers uh the the rates of assault on nurses are obscene i used
to be a home healthcare aid the physical assaults on home healthcare workers a thing that i also personally
experienced are awful um my personal opinion i i this is a bias i have i don't think you know increasing
punishment on people is and does anything about preventing the problem to begin with because
there's a different thing there what i thought was really interesting about this is that the people
who were opposed to this bill were republicans it was senator albritton and i i think senator
stutz and their argument was they didn't want to create more protected classes and then
senator albritton said explicitly quote assaulting me is no better or worse than assaulting another
person and i'm concerned about the creation of these special classes of people i just thought it was
odd that i was agreeing with senator albritton yeah like like like i didn't know who you were who
that quote was from but i'm like i see the reasoning of it and and like senator albritton is the
senator in charge of um the budgets he's the money guy um he is he's you know very smart like he's
he's definitely one like i would say more thoughtful but he has you know sometimes different opinions than
the other republicans um there was a there was a joke about um how uh it was later on and i think this
committee meeting where no it might have been on the floor where he was like oh i got three people
to agree with me you know anyway um he also did go on to say later in the same meeting that like
he said quote i miss the boy scouts and i miss the other entities that were caught up in what
some individuals did uh and and he mentioned this on the floor when the nda bill came to the floor
later we're gonna we'll talk about that next week um i'm just gonna skip over that bill because i think
the the floor debate was um more more robust than than anything else um and the last thing i just want
to point out from senate judiciary was um the another bill from uh new newly minted senator woods um sb 31
which was a penalty increase for the crimes of making a terrorist threat in the first or second degree
um and i thought it was it was funny because senator coleman madison had a uh had a an interesting
comment of we're gonna have to start we're gonna have to start having law classes for kids in school
because you know again hi as somebody who grew up in the era of calling in you know bomb threats to
elementary schools in particular anybody who is in school now and is subject to you know to lockdown
drills and everything like it's not a it's not a victimless crime right to make a terrorist threat of
any any one of us have gotten death threats online just for existing right like it does impact you um
and yet every time that legislators are weighing things like this my mind i guess maybe i have like
a bit of like a defense lawyer brain of like i just look at it of i can just see the swiss cheese holes
lining up in such a way that some kid gets a charge for something that really i don't want to say isn't
like a big deal but it's like a life-changing uh thing that would not apply to him uh to them you know
if they were white or wealthy and had access to like a good lawyer you know i just i see like the worst
case scenario of like this being used to you know criminalize more people um well of course it will
be that's how this works i you know i know a kid who like brought his gun to school and was like or
no he threatened online to say he was going to bring his gun to school um and then uh suddenly he
kids are stupid yes especially especially if you're a 13 year old boy um whose parents let him have
a gun and you think it's cool to be like tough and uh like cringe or you know how yes you know the
white boy i'm talking about yep um and somehow under this bill this kid would not get a terrorist charge
even though that would be one um but if a black kid um did something even remotely similar
i'm pretty sure we can imagine the way that plays out yeah unfortunate
yep so i'm trying to there we go i finally found the bill text so let's see
under existing law a public k-12 school is required to immediately suspend from attending
regular classes any student whose conduct is in violation of local board of education policy
and warrants criminal charges and may only readmit the student when the student satisfies
certain conditions prescribed by the local board of education um let's see what is the charge
elevation let's see credible threat uh property yeah i see i see the terms what are the charges
the crime of making a terrorist threat in the first degree is a class b felony
that is class c yeah class c is up to 10 years i believe um
let's see what our second degree is a class d felony um
yeah i mean these are these are serious charges yeah and again like it's not just a oh you make a
threat and that's it there is there is a little bit more to it um there's like a four step uh
four step thing it says they make a credible threat to another one all of the following occur
they make a a statement to ha here's another thing too by any means to harm a person or property
and that's where things get the statement is communicated to another person the threat and harm
is reasonably perceived to be made with the intent and the ability to carry out the threat
oh the statement causes the person to some protests
yes and this is part of why you know i read a lot of things with the eye of like
you know is can this be can this be a clear person in alabama who is involved in politics
i was going to say you know burning a flag on school property uh like outside in a way that like
wasn't going to catch anything else on fire you know and then telling somebody that ahead of time
and i i get that this is this is intended to the intention right is to catch somebody who
is threatening to bring a gun to school i get that um i also don't know that charging a kid
is it with oh well yeah in the in the best eye right anyway so i just thought it was interesting
that coleman madison pointed out like we're gonna have to start having these law classes for kids
because like you said aaron kids are stupid and i always you know and this is part of why i stopped
a few years ago attending judiciary meetings because it's just criminalization after criminal that's
all that any of the judiciaries do especially the punishment doesn't work
well we're about to move to house judiciary where matt simpson opened up his bill by saying some people
have to die so hell yeah let's go to straight into my veins the most depressing and angry there's two
things that happened back to back here that made me really really angry the first week i can see the
caps yes oh yes um yes there are there's there's caps um uh literally the sentence i hate when i'm
so gobsmacked i can't take good notes made it into my notes um so i needed to just give a brief
introduction to house judiciary committee um it's it's called house judy for short um it's the
largest uh it's held in the largest committee room in the state house room 200 which you mentioned
earlier um the the largest of it gives it a very different vibe than any other committee room um
the other committee rooms you know aaron you've been in room 206 which is almost feels intimate by
comparison um 200 feels like i don't even know how to explain it exactly when you are sitting there and
they're debating a bill especially one that attacks you like as a human being or you know could
potentially criminalize you because i have sat in that room while they were debating anti-protest
bills it feels almost more than any other room very alienating um it the the the amount of space
in it just feels really weird describe it in terms of a college class are we talking first year
engineering lecture no physics engineering lecture okay are we talking uh second year math class or are
we talking me in my speech community college class with 10 kids in it uh well it's way more than 10 kids
because it's at least 150 people sitting there oh i do have to add that like my my perception of what
an entry-level like engineering class would be is that i went to state school in new york um so there
were 900 kids in my organic chemistry class uh 300 per section because our biggest lecture hall held 300
people um so it wasn't it's not that i think there were like 150 in mine okay well that's half the
size so i can't tell you yeah i can't tell you that like lecture hall one in binghamton university
is a bigger and more spacious vibe than room 200 forgetting uh but i i don't i don't know how that
translates to okay but you have sort of the building itself looming over you you you have the the people
enacting these changes all around you yeah it's i mean it's not just that um there's just there's a
lot of people they're all there for different things a lot of lobbyists in that room almost
always the press in that room just like in room 206 you sit perpendicular along the wall
and the the dais is set like where the legislators sit it's set much further back in that room that's
also the room that just because of the things that they talk about they have the most guards in that
room like like those that's the room where like i was referring to talking i i don't remember if this
is in the recording or not uh but i was referring to talking to like one of the security folks that was
not one who carries a gun the folks who who do security detail in house judiciary committee have
guns you know they are and they are very on top of things um i've never seen anybody remotely like
step out of line but um you know in a way that that was necessary but that's that's one of the ones
where you know folks are there are armed folks in that room they're not like visibly you know it's
not in your face like a police officer um they're wearing suits uh but but it is like you will notice
if you look for it so anyway it's it's a very different vibe um i don't know that i'm really
doing justice to to how it feels but i will say like anytime i felt alienated alienated in that room i felt
really particularly alienated um i cut my my teeth on anti-protest bills i've kind of mentioned it a few
times um back in 2021 house judiciary was my first introduction to the madhouse that is the alabama
legislature um the same person has been chairing the committee the entire time um representative uh
uh jim hill uh judge judge hill um i'm pretty sure that this is also the first committee meeting like
that's the first room and committee that i ever intended attended in person as well uh but the
last couple years i haven't had a reason to listen house judiciary i was really busy with
a slate of other bills 2024 was a crazy legislative year last year um i it was my first year working
for alabama channel and um and i lost my other job and there was other stuff going on um so i was
you know really kind of getting my feet under me in terms of like what am i doing in the state
house so this is the that meeting in person on you know this is wednesday uh january 14th was the first
time i had listened to house judy for a while and it it reminded me why i had stopped listening to it
like for my mental health because it's a really hard committee to to to sit through um as as
yeah so this is something that i do think like i need to play for y'all um because i can't do it
justice and i have a lot of opinions on how this back and forth debate happened and i think it's
important to just play it for y'all first without um without editorializing um so that you can kind
of decide you know for yourselves like if if i am um how i not decide for yourselves but you can you
can let us formulate our own opinions yes let's get the primary source i'm going to give those opinions
readily um i'm probably going to get really angry about this again um
okay so hb 41 um
okay where does it start it starts immediately okay so the main characters who are going to be talking
here are um representative simpson who is presenting the bill he's a prosecutor uh down in the uh baldwin
county area um and um he is obviously by virtue of being a prosecutor he's a lawyer house judiciary
you know most of the committees they try to have people on them who are at least have some subject
matter expertise so the the folks on this committee you know i i said that the chairman is is judge hill
right um uh representative prince chestnut is on here he is a lawyer there's several other lawyers
i believe representative robinson is also a lawyer um i think breniark is too um represent faulkner
definitely is representative england who is going to be the other you know really main character here uh
at least initially um he is a lawyer he was a former prosecutor he's the current city attorney uh for the
city of tuscaloosa um so this exchange that's about to happen is between two prosecutors so these are
two people who have the same background the same education the difference is that representative
simpson is white and representative england is black oh boy
and i'm assuming you guys can see the video here i can yes
oh um last last bit of context for this um a contact warning this this is a bill that deals with
uh child sexual abuse um and so like you know they're talking about heavy stuff um so just just
keep that in mind for you know your your um safety sanity mental health all of that thank you for the
okay so i just want to editorialize right there move to give the fit the bill of favorable report is
saying we want to we want to pass this immediately we want to just vote on it put it through no discussion
um you can see that representative england is already raising his hand like oh wait wait a minute wait a
minute
so to explain that comment a little bit uh representative simpson and representative england
sit next to each other so you can see that empty chair up there on the dais that's simpson's spot
he's on this committee he just got down to present his bill so he's saying that's why i came down here
so we could see each other while we're talking because he was expecting some opposition from him
Thank you.
Really rail against Representative Jim Hill as a chair for this committee.
Actually, I think he's one of the fairest chairs, you know, in the state house.
If there's a public hearing, he'll let every person go for like three minutes, you know,
he wants everybody heard.
That means that house judiciary, unlike most committees, runs as long as it runs.
Usually won't let it go past like two and a half hours, you know.
Is this committee room, is this committee room on the far right, is this the committee hearing
where I had my first involuntary experience with public speaking?
Possibly.
I thought that was in 206, which is the second to last room down that hall.
Okay.
It was probably that one then.
The room just looks familiar and you were like, and he lets everyone speak.
And I was like, yeah, well, I mean, I don't think, let me think.
There was the first year, I feel like what is a woman was in judiciary, but I, that was before
I'll track became a thing.
Yeah, this one was the, was the dead names in schools, Bill.
It could have been.
I'd have to double check, but it's, it's, it's possible.
But anyway, this room is laid out, like the daises are similar to 206.
I'm just saying like the room is like four or five times larger than 206.
But at any rate, just for, for folks listening, while this is happening, right, we're talking
about a really serious subject.
I think it's Bolton.
Representative Bolton has gotten up and he's now conversing with, uh, representative, uh,
with the chairman.
That's, that's Jim Hill up there that he's talking to.
Um, you know, there's a sidebar going on between, um, uh, that's not Robertson.
That is, uh, Robinson, sorry, not Robertson.
That's Robinson, Robinson.
I don't know why I said that weird.
And, uh, Prince Chestnut are having a conversation up here and Representative Faulkner has just
gotten up and walked off.
Now, I, I do, again, caveat, I don't think Faulkner has another meeting at the same time.
He could because House Judiciary starts at 1.30.
This is about 30 minutes in.
So he could have a 2 p.m.
I don't actually know that for sure.
But the point is, is like there's stuff happening while these two people are having this conversation.
Um, so I'm going to skip ahead a little bit.
Um, uh, so Chris England kind of leads, like, like, it just lays out that not only on the
victims is it not easy, but also if you're a perpetrator, you know, you're not going to
plead guilty to a capital offense.
Um, you won't take a plea deal, you know, um, and, and he's saying like, you know, there's
life without parole.
But when you're talking about capital offenses, um, and they're going to start talking back
and forth here, uh, or just in a little bit, I'm just put it a few sentences before.
Actually, I went too far.
I should have just played it from where it was.
All right.
That's, that's on me for trying to make the shorter.
I'm just, I know I play really long audio clips, so I've been trying really hard not to
do that, uh, in these episodes, but look, live and learn, right?
Well, we'll, uh.
We'll be right back.
Just pausing right there just to clarify.
So, you know, you can already tell, like, he's, he's doing this through a prosecutor's
lens.
And when he's saying that, um, this is something where the, the, they're going to evaluate the
case and the jury's going to evaluate the case, the options there are, um, capital charge
and the jury says yes, or they find the person innocent.
So when he says, oh, the jury can decide that he's not saying the jury can decide the, um, the punishment.
There, there was a small caveat to that in that, um, like he said, if the jury, um, finds them guilty of the charge, but doesn't agree to a death sentence, then that's life without parole.
You're not charging them.
At least my understanding of this is like, you're not charging somebody, uh, you're not bringing charges such that they get life without parole.
That's like a jury decision.
So you're, you're still bringing a capital charge in a, in a case where somebody has not died.
Um, and that's going to be kind of the crux of, of what's going on.
Um, and that's going to be kind of the, in a case where somebody has not been charged with, um, and that's going to be kind of the, in a case where they're going to be, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they were charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with.
And that's going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with.
And that's going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with.
And that's going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with.
And that's going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with, in a case where they're going to be charged with.
Thank you.
I'm pausing it right there, because we're going to move on to another disagreement in a second.
But I don't know how well that came through in audio, but there are multiple times where Representative Englitt is trying to respond to Representative Simpson.
Representative Simpson, at this point, is kind of just going into, I don't know what you would characterize that as, like, hammering mode.
It's just bulldogging.
Bulldogging.
That's a great term for it.
Like, it is just territorial, taking up space, like, refusing to, like, I'm answering your question, but it's like, okay, you're answering my question, but then you are asking questions that I need to respond to.
Are you going to let me go, or are you going to go?
Bitch.
Yeah, you're talking about your bill.
Like, Representative Englitt is asking questions.
Like, that's the reversal of how that usually goes.
So, yeah, I just wanted to pause that to give us, like, just a second to talk about that, because in the video, you can visit, like, Chris Englitt is, like, he's raising his hand a little bit.
Like, he is, he's clearly, he's not interrupting, but I just wanted to characterize that in the video for people who are just listening on audio.
And I know that that was a lot, but I really think it's important to hear the tenor of this as this ramps up, because we're not going to talk about it on this episode, but this bill does go to the floor.
And I feel like you saw this, we see the same thing again, where it starts out reasonable, kind of, and then Representative Simpson gets, I don't know, gets irritated, gets annoyed, starts bulldogging.
And I've just seen that pattern happen again, and so I just thought it was important to just kind of see, like, there is no, when he says, well, some people just have to die, it felt like a slap to the face.
You know, it just, it felt really like, oh, and then it just keeps going.
So, I'm going to, I'm going to, they're now going to discuss how this bill is actually unconstitutional, and then Representative Simpson is going to talk about his reasoning for bringing this bill.
Hey, Zephyr?
Yes?
We could cut that whole ten-minute clip down to just, like, a little bit before, where he says some people need to die, and it characterizes it all.
Yeah.
And it's not a ten-minute clip where I almost fell asleep.
Yeah.
I love you.
They've been saying the same thing for a little bit.
Yeah.
It's, like I said, I just didn't, whether it's me or you doing the editing.
I didn't cut the clips ahead of time.
I would have cut, like, I just didn't know where to, like, bring it in,
because, like, yeah, this wasn't a, oh, I thought it had to be all of this.
Like, I'm trying to get better about, like, not cutting clips that are longer than, like, two minutes at most.
But, yeah.
Two minutes is good.
It's so interesting how, like, experiencing it remotely right afterwards.
Yeah, the issue is, if I get bored recording the podcast.
No, that's so fair.
That's so fair.
It's just, it's one of those, like, it's hard to kind of figure out where to put it in, because I listen to this, and I still have the emotional reaction that I had in the room, because I walked in the room, like, maybe two lines before he said, well, some people have to die.
And it was like, you know, you have that emotional reaction of, like, what the fuck is going on?
And then everything kind of feels like a bitch slap.
We can capture that in the podcast.
Huh?
We can capture that.
We can, we can cut to right.
Yeah, right when you came in.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Maybe, maybe we play, some people have to die, and then we go, hello?
And then we, yeah, exactly.
We play a little rewind noise.
Okay.
No, appreciate the note.
Yeah.
All right.
So now we're going to, it's going to keep ramping up, you know.
So Representative England is about to bring up Supreme Court issues.
So this is the first time.
So that's the first time that Representative Hill has finally interjected to try to, to break this up a little bit.
Mm-hmm.
First time.
Thank you.
So I'm just going to pause it there.
This is a nationwide push.
He's gotten a lot angrier.
Yeah.
Gotten very impassioned.
It's going to get more.
Now we're at a point where I'm like, I don't, I would be afraid to be in a room alone with
this man.
I'm okay.
I'm glad you had that.
I have had, I felt that way and I felt and I have, I have, um, kind of struggled with
like, am I just being a little overly, but like, yeah, yeah, this is.
There's something very menacing.
Yes.
And it's going to get worse.
It is absolutely going to get worse.
Oh boy.
Um, but I, I just wanted to pause it there.
Cause like, again, you kind of have to break it up.
It's like, it really, in my mind is kind of like a crescendo, right?
It's we, we started at, at, at mezzo piano, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe just a mezzo, a nice
mezzo, right?
We got to mezzo forte and you're like, okay, we're getting a little spicy forte, right?
We are now at like, we're, we're getting up to like a, maybe, maybe a forte, maybe a double
forte, right?
You know, it's kind of feeling that way.
This, this feels like, um, there are several pieces.
I'm a classical musician.
There's some pieces where like the, the conductor is really harping on you to start out much
quieter at the beginning.
They're like, yeah, I know it says, but start out lower because you need to have the range
to really go up because I promise you, I know, um, Aaron, I think you saw maybe what was in
the caps, but, uh, Faye, if you didn't see what was in the notes, you have no idea where
this is going.
Oh, I saw something that I, that I am embracing myself for, but yeah, let's, let's keep going.
So yeah, but again, I just want to just bring us back to this moment of he is the reason
for this bill, right?
Is that this is a bill that the Supreme court has already said is cruel and unusual.
And they threw it out.
There was a bill in Louisiana.
I believe that that was the Kennedy decision is it's something that came out of Louisiana.
So in, um, 2008, um, it was deemed a cruel and unusual.
And now represent Simpson is bringing this bill because there is a nationwide push to, uh,
to, to pass this bill in multiple States so that these States can put people to death.
And I am not defending what they did.
And that's, that's, that's just assuming that they actually did what they're accused of,
because we have people who are found innocent on death row all the time, all the time.
So assuming that they are actually guilty of what they did, we are putting through this
time, energy, emotion bills in multiple States so that we can kill more people when putting
them away with like life without parole or just, you know, a life sentence accomplishes the
same thing of separating the abuser from the child.
You know, anyway, um, for where this, again, this, the rest of this meeting as well goes,
I just really want to emphasize that what we're talking about is we want the state to be able
to legally murder people.
And I will be upfront.
Like I am against the death penalty.
I have that bias, but I think even again, representative England safe and stating that
is the position of the podcast.
Yeah.
I mean, I just wanted to be like clear of like, I don't know.
I'm trying to, I'm trying to really like, be like, I'm presenting this, I'm going to editorialize
on it, but I really want it to like, this is what was said.
I am not erasing what was said, you know?
And these are two people who like, I don't think representative England is against the
death penalty.
I think he's very critical of it.
Generally.
I'm not, I, I don't feel confident saying that one way or the other.
It sounds like he's a prosecutor and his opposition seems very well reasoned.
Like, like he, he's not coming out, like he's coming up from a position that is empathetic
to the victims, but it is that which is motivating him to be very, to very reasonably say, I don't
think we should be doing that here.
Yeah.
Yes.
And here's the thing.
And this is why I really made a point at the beginning to say that representative Simpson
is white and Chris England is black, representative England is black, and that they have the same
backgrounds because in this entire time, and, and I will tell y'all, um, I'll
I'll make that note, note later.
Um, but representative England does not raise his voice at any point.
He does not get worked up.
He stays at the same tenor this entire time.
Um, and I'll talk more about that later, but let's, let's keep going with this.
Um, and I'll talk more about that later, but let's talk about that later, but let's say that
it's just a little bit more, but let's talk about that later.
And I'll talk about that later, but let's talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later,
but let's talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later.
And I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later.
And I'll talk about that later, and then I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later.
And I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later.
And I'll talk about that later.
And I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later.
I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later.
And I'll talk about that later.
I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later.
And I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later.
I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about it later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about it later, and I'll talk about that later.
And I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about it later.
And I'll talk about that later, and I'll talk about that later.
Thank you.
He's so hungry to be on that team.
team.
He wants that to be an Alabama case.
Yes.
Thank you.
You got that too?
Okay.
What were you, what did you just react to Aaron?
And I think you would agree with me on that.
He says, speaking to a black person.
Oh, it's going to get more explicit than that.
Yes.
Okay.
I'm just, I'm just noticing.
Yeah.
But yes.
Wow.
It foreshadows that thing in the notes.
Yep.
Foreshadowing.
Yeah.
Which I actually like, this is so interesting too, because this is like time processing,
right?
Is that this was so disjointing in the moment.
I truly thought like when I started playing this, I really thought we only had like two
minutes, maybe three to get to all of that.
The fact that this lasted for much longer is interesting.
Yes.
We've recorded basically two podcasts worth of content at this time.
I'm just letting you know.
If you give me free reign to edit this, I'm going to split the first intro part into one
and then I'm going to put this first week of legislature into another.
I'm going to see if I can make that work.
That's my suggestion.
Like I'm tired and I'm like, I'm whatever.
And we're like, we have more.
There's so many more notes.
I really thought this was, I want to be able to make this for one.
This, this is okay.
To be fair, this is the one that I really wanted to like dig into.
If you want this to be one, we can't, so like, I really appreciate your thorough notes.
We cannot have full pages of notes for the intro and then every single note afterwards.
We need to have like, this was two pages of notes for the entire episode.
I think that that would be a very wise practice to engage in going forward.
So my suggestion is we continue, we continue recording this and then we figure out if it's one episode or two.
Yeah.
Yep.
Here's the thing is like, I wanted to like, uh, yes.
Yep.
All right.
Let me, um, let me, uh, let's skip ahead.
So, uh, representative McClammy, um, is going to ask about how much money is this going to cost?
And, um, oh, wow.
Uh, he said that to, uh, he said that to McClammy, not to England.
I wrote that down wrong.
I think I was so gobsmacked that like it happened.
Okay.
I'll, I'll just play this straight then.
I, uh.
Thank you.
I don't know what the price tag is, but I'll pay it.
All right.
That's the end of that.
It's not his money.
No.
Yeah.
So Representative McClanney is also black.
Yep.
So to just put into context what we just listened to, Representative Simpson, a white man, is referencing, oh, the Supreme Court got this wrong because I want to be able to kill more people.
And is referencing Plessy versus Ferguson, a Supreme Court ruling that ruled that people like Representative McClanney were not whole human beings, did not have the rights to their own bodies and freedom as a reason.
It brought up Brown versus Board of Education and said that separate but equal was wrong.
And, you know, and while he's saying it, I don't know how well it comes through in the audio.
I know you can hear it a little bit, but the little clankings you hear, he is pounding his fist on the podium while he is saying this.
While, you know, I'm in the room while this is happening.
And while I was sitting there, most of the room was full of white people.
It just happened to be like how it broke down that day.
And I am sitting there and a black woman who happened to be within like eye distance of me.
I think she's like in the third or fourth row.
Basically, where I was sitting perpendicular and where she was sitting row wise, we were like facing I was facing her and she's facing forward.
She turned around and looked at me and kind of gave me that look of like, did I just hear like like did that just happen?
Did that just happen?
Like am I am I like here in my body?
And it's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And and there is one more thing that I want to just point out while we move on from here a little bit.
Is a comment that the chair says.
Is a comment that I want to share with you?
I am so sick of Representative Simpson's conduct towards Representative England and Representative
McClammy is being characterized as healthy debate.
This is not the first time I've heard this.
In the days following this, I passed by and overheard multiple conversations of people referencing
this moment and joking about it and just saying, oh, well, you know, Simpson and England, they
really got it on or, you know, oh, that's not even as bad as they usually get, which is true.
I've heard I've heard them debate harder.
I've heard Representative Simpson be more of an ass.
Like I've I've I've heard this.
I do not think this is a healthy debate.
I don't think a white rep shouting down and cutting off a black representative who is the
exact same educational professional background as he does is appropriate, is healthy, is a
safe workplace environment because all these people are at work.
These are all co-workers.
And after this, Representative Simpson is going to introduce another death penalty bill and
then he's going to go back up and he's going to sit.
This man really has a boner for murdering people.
This was these were the two bills that were on KIV's priority lists.
When we talk about the state of the state, it's this bill.
This is the bill that she said was the most important this year.
Really?
Yes.
Ugh.
This one.
You know, and I don't want to idolize Representative England.
You know, everybody's a human being.
They make mistakes or things that I disagree with Representative England on.
But I have heard so many.
I can't so many white representatives in the state house talk to him in in a in a tone of
voice that makes me want to want makes me want to to get into a fight.
I actually could like I could put in a drop right now of me pre transition saying that exact
thing from twenty twenty one.
Like this has been a consistent thing.
I really I mean, again, I don't know what it's like to be a black man in this world.
I have heard him.
He is.
I've never really heard him get really that upset or raise his voice.
I'm sure he's seething or maybe he's not because he just has to he just can't get upset at this
because you just be upset all the time.
You know, I just it was so gross.
It was so gross.
And it it that I think, too, it's not just affecting him.
Right.
Like it is also affecting their other, you know, Representative McClammy is black.
Representative Prince Chestnut is there.
He's black.
Right.
And then there's the folks in the audience.
And then there's whoever is going to see this clip or interact with this podcast.
Right.
The the the ripples of harm keep going.
And just the fact that it got characterized as a joke, like it was like I never got a chance
to not be angry about it because it kept coming up.
This bill, we're going to talk about this in a later episode as well, because it goes to
the floor and Representative Simpson gets angry again.
And he has an exchange with Representative McClammy that I think is very telling.
Obviously not going to talk about this episode.
We're going to talk, you know, as you know, this is a that's a week three episode, you
know.
Yeah.
Again, the fact that it just became.
A joke.
This next bill is also a death penalty bill.
Representative Robinson, this is what really elevated this meeting to crassness.
So at this point, I'm angry.
I am I'm feeling my feelings.
You know, I'm just kind of like, did I just hear this?
And then I had an out of body experience.
So this is another death penalty bill.
You know, there are this is about like, you know, if you endanger people in public, he's
going to explain it.
I'll just play the brief explanation because like I can't explain this this bill briefly.
I'll be here.
Why do we need to charge it as capital?
Like you killed somebody.
We give very stiff penalties in Alabama for murder, at least, you know, if this if somebody
is poor and and doesn't have good representation or God forbid if they're black.
But what why why do we need to to put them to death?
Why?
I don't understand.
But this then, you know, so the point of the bill, right, like is that if you only kill
one person, but if you create a situation where more people could have been harmed or whatever,
you can put them to death.
You could charge them with capital murder.
He's going to mention Charlie Kirk.
I can see it coming up.
Oh, my God.
Charging people with capital murder will not change the fact that they're shooting into
a crowd there.
They already know that they're going to, you know, if they're caught right, like the
the kid who murdered Charlie Kirk, his life is never going.
He's not going to have a life.
You know, he's going to he's going to get like at least what, 20 plus years, probably
more, you know, he might get life.
He very easily could get life.
You know, like we're pretending like these.
Let's be honest.
He's going to.
I'm just saying like we're pretending like the or the way this is presented.
Right.
There's a zero or capital murder.
Right.
And functionally, there is no difference for the person being prosecuted between capital
murder and murder.
Both of them result in a drastic changing of your life.
And you like they like they were talking about earlier, you don't even get the death penalty
for capital murder sometimes.
And in fact, the death penalty is quite recent in Alabama that that they just started doing
it again.
There were now that they have the opportunity to do again.
They are so happy to go in there and kill people.
I'm working on a piece about, you know, our obsession with death and the effect that it
has, like not only in the victims and their families, but on the journalists who because
to attend an execution, you know, journalists like you get your phone taken away.
You have to get onto like a shuttle, right, that you get taken to that facility and you
have to sit there the entire time, you know, so you're there hours before they're executed.
And then there's always delays.
There's always like last minute appeals.
Right.
So it's like this this crazy like 12 hour process.
And then you have to watch a human being die.
And then you have to get on that bus and you have to go back and then you finally get
your phone and then you have to write an article about how you watch somebody suffocate for
30 minutes because we now execute people with like with nitrogen, whatever the hell, you
know, it is an ugly, horrible thing.
And I'm being very yeah, this is my this is my damn opinion.
Even if you are pro capital murder, I mean, you know what?
I'm not even I'm not even both sides that, you know, there's just there's no damn
reason.
There is no damn reason.
It's we're not letting these people actually.
It's a very quite unchristian of people to say that it's impossible for these people to
change and repent and therefore they should die.
This is a lust for death.
Yeah, it's just this is like it's so gross.
This is the reason I would not want to be alone in a room with Senator with Representative
Simpson is because if he gets mad at me, I'm more worried that Representative Simpson is
going to kill me because he thinks it's appropriate than any of the people he's trying to charge
the death penalty for.
Yeah.
I hear you.
So given the serious representative Simpson thinks about killing people more often than
any of the people he wants to kill with this bill.
Yeah.
So given the seriousness, right, like they're discussing whether or not, you know, this sort
of thing, right?
Like if you get into an altercation, a lot of shootings happen when there are other people
around.
Right.
This is really opening up the number of people who can be charged.
And one of the biggest issues we have, in fact, one of the people who is scheduled to
be put to death on death row was not present for a shooting.
He was not in the room.
He was like outside.
He was like part of it.
I think it was like a robbery.
That's really common because if if there is a death in the in the in the while you're
you're doing a crime that somebody else that you're with like you're talking about accessory
murder.
Yeah.
So he's going to be put to death.
He is on death row.
He is scheduled to be put to death for a situation where he did not hold the gun.
He did not fire the gun.
He did not know anybody was going to die.
He was not even in the room when it happened.
So I, you know, miss me with the like, I obviously do not think it's OK to shoot somebody
unless they're a Nazi, allegedly in Minecraft, you know, but like it's so so anyway, I mean
less of me pontificating more of.
So this is the seriousness, right?
We're all we all we all feel the heaviness right now.
This is how the representatives decide to deal with that.
So this is Representative Robinson.
He is trying to understand, like, what is what are the extent of this bill?
Like he's he's he's going to to present a model of a hypothetical and ask how this would
work in this hypothetical.
Yeah.
OK, which is which is a perfectly reasonable way to talk about a bill.
Yeah.
How would this look in practice?
Yeah.
So, Representative Robinson is just talking through...
Initially, I went maybe a little too...
Okay, wait, hold up.
Which one is Representative Robinson?
Yeah, I started that a little too early.
So, we're going to pretend I didn't do that.
He's the one up here.
Okay, he's not black.
No, no, no, no.
Sorry, yeah.
This is white-on-white violence for the rest of this.
It's not even white-on-white violence.
It's just white-on-white folks talking for the rest of this.
So, I started this a little early.
But, like, he's dialoguing back and forth.
And so, he's like, okay, so...
It can be overturned.
Okay, yeah, let me just start it here.
Sorry, I started a little early because I don't think you really get how out-of-pocket Matt Simpson's answer is.
All right, so, we're going to, you know, move on.
I don't know where the heck I started from or what I'm cutting from this.
Eh, eh.
Eh.
Thank you.
So Representative Robinson is trying to get clarity. And I will also say this is somebody who agrees with Matt Simpson as like to killing more people. Like these are two folks who agree. Right. So Representative Robinson is trying to understand how this bill is going to work in practice. So he's just asking, well, you have to have like this intent, whatever.
And Matt Simpson, Representative Simpson decides to answer him with a hypothetical of if I kill you, if I kill you. Right. And he's not saying it in like a I don't I'm not I'm not trying to make it a big thing of like, oh, he sounds like he's going to kill Representative Robinson.
But I just think it's it's very interesting to then answer like, I'm not going to make a hypothetical of like person A kills person B or whatever. If I murder you and I shoot everybody else in this room, it would I you couldn't charge me with capital murder.
This is a workplace.
That's a very personalized scenario that.
And he said, welcome to Judy before he said it. Welcome to this because this is his first committee meeting in this committee. Welcome to Judy if I kill you.
And, you know.
And wildly out of pocket things to say to a co-worker.
It keeps going.
Thank you.
Uh-huh.
They're going to evaluate and say yes.
If they say, oh, yeah, we're going to leave it up to whatever.
We're just making the definition.
We're just making the law.
We're just what that'll be up to the courts.
That'll be up to the district.
That happens a lot.
Yep.
But also, like, again, this this starts to this starts to snowball.
Right.
So we're not going to listen to these clips.
This comes up in every single bill after this, which do not have to deal with death penalty cases, where it becomes a running joke in the rest of this committee meeting, where they everybody who introduces a bill after this is this bill is like if Representative Bryniark stole this.
This is this bill is like if if Representative Robertson assaulted X or assaulted, you know, this other person.
And it is being in the room.
Right.
It was clearly something that was ingest between these folks.
Representative Robinson is pointing to people who are sitting around him.
So he does mention Representative Tillman, who is black.
But I think he's he's quite literally he's pointed to the person to his, you know, far to his right to like the dice in front of him.
Like, it's the people like in his immediate area.
Although he does not bring in Representative Chestnut, who is sitting next to him, I think because he knows better, which I find really funny.
But also good because this.
Yeah.
I would.
Oh, I would like laugh at this.
I would think, OK, yeah, this is kind of funny.
Like if we were on the podcast and I was discussing and I was like, yeah, hey, Zephyr, if I like this law is like if I killed you.
Then whatever.
But the that I think the difference here is context.
And I'm not yet the context.
And also.
One, these people aren't these people are the people making this decision.
And so we're laughing and joking about this.
They're making light of death.
Kill people there.
And then the other issue is we began this with this man getting visibly angry at not being able to kill.
Yes.
Well, audibly angry.
This is why I struggle to cut things out of clips, because it's like it's the the whole.
That makes it so goddamn awful.
But you have to get it shorter so that people can listen or.
Yeah.
So it'll be listenable.
So they're going to keep my my current plan or my current suggestion.
If you end up editing this, I've been writing down significant clips and the times and we pull out things like I absolutely think these people should die.
And we put that at the beginning and then we we fill in the context for it at the end.
We're like, and here's the cut.
And here's.
Yeah.
If you've listened to like the ones I've done, like or I guess you don't know this because you weren't.
And the camp ones, there's a significant amount of clip reshuffling and cutting that went into that.
I was trying to avoid doing that for this one.
But yeah.
OK, so I'm going to skip ahead a bit.
So like.
Again, I was going to kill Brynyak, but the rest of you people, I knowingly created that risk because I'm just shooting this people.
This is still on the same bill.
It's still going.
So there's a very specific moment that I am trying to find that I think that the transcript is probably going to be wrong at.
OK, there was a point that I remember Chris making this.
It's after the ball drop.
OK.
Because there was a thing he said about the ball drop that I was like, sir, what?
I just don't know what order it is.
What district do you pass?
OK, OK.
Hey, this part is important.
Is this England again?
Yes.
OK, so Representative England is is going to talk again.
We're on the next, you know, on we're still on this, you know, capital murder.
If you shoot somebody in the I guess in the presence of others.
Right.
And Representative England is going to it's going to talk about that a little bit.
OK.
Thank you.
That would be before being found guilty.
Yeah.
You know, and we're going to talk about this in a later episode, but the next week is a joint prison oversight committee meeting, and I talked to the families of the men who are part of the Alabama Solution documentary, who have not been able to talk to those men, have not been in touch with them, in some cases for over a month.
They were suddenly moved out of the prison, and they were taken to another prison and put in what their family suspect is solitary confinement without the ability to talk to their family for a month.
And these are folks who are found guilty, but there are folks sitting in jail.
You know, we have a massive, massive incarceration problem in Alabama.
Oh yeah, I was talking with some guy who had just gotten out of jail, and he was talking about how there had been like 30 people confined to a cell for 12.
Mm-hmm.
And that's at jail.
That is at the, hey, we think you've done something wrong.
We need to put you aside for a little bit.
This is, you don't have the money to make bail.
Yeah.
You know, because there is, to be clear, you can be in jail because, you know, you got bail revoked or whatever.
But for most people, they're in jail pending trial because they can't pay to get out.
You know, sorry, Faye, I don't want to talk over you.
No, no, no.
This is something.
But it's another reason why it's unjust, right?
Like, it's another reason why our system is flawed.
And instead of fixing the flaws that it has, this guy just wants to go and kill some people.
Yep.
So, this part was really interesting.
And Chris is the one who actually pointed out this to me, and I thought this was a really important point to make.
Thank you.
So there is something that Chris pointed out to me that I didn't think about.
And I wanted, first of all, for the, again, tone of voice that Simpson is using there.
But also...
Yes, I literally wrote down in my notes to come back to later, Simpson gets angry.
He gets so angry.
One hour.
Yeah.
He gets so riled up over...
This is very much white boy rage.
Mm-hmm.
And Chris said, I'm going to have fun bleeping their name out of this, somebody who I work
with closely who is really obsessed with, like, legal analysis.
Is that what we're calling it now?
They work together historically closely.
They're secret pals.
Oh, my God.
I try to keep my personal...
That's why I picked this up.
Yeah.
Because I was like...
Anyway, they made the comment that it's fun to hear Representative Simpson say that what
crime you commit is subject to the charging authority's financial ability to prosecute that crime.
And I just thought that was...
Yeah, that little exchange right there was something that I never...
That feels very...
Saying the quiet part out loud.
Mm-hmm.
Like, it's like...
I don't...
I feel like you two know this, but I don't feel like that's general knowledge amongst everybody
in this room.
Because if you look at the bill, right, the bill just says, like, you know, if you create
a risk to others in the process of killing people, which already, like, you know, anything
that's death penalty, I'm, like, kind of looking at a side eye at, right?
But these are folks who, you know, there's a reason they're on this committee.
They have lived experience, you know, in these areas.
And so, like, yeah, that was something that I didn't know because I didn't know about that
case in Tuscaloosa.
I could imagine something like that, right?
But again, the, you know, when Representative Simpson is talking about Mobile and Baldwin
County especially, these are places that have a lot more money than Tuscaloosa.
And Tuscaloosa has a decent amount of money.
But, like, this is, again, you know, we're not going to keep playing this, but they keep
dialoguing about that, right?
Where, you know, you're making a law for the entire state and you're, what I'm concerned
about is an application of the law, you know, that this is, this is, you know, well, forget
what I said there.
Let's see.
That's so broad.
That's so vague.
I'm sorry.
I have to step away for a moment.
You're good.
Go piss, girl.
Yeah.
Oh, Sherry, you took the headphones off.
Recharges of murder.
Risk.
Well, I suppose this put the final nail in the coffin of, I cannot play clips unless I cut
them ahead of time.
I'm just much more judicious when, uh, better at cutting them down when I'm not just trying
to go through them.
I have noticed that.
Ugh.
My thought is that this committee hearing and the one you said you wanted to talk about next
week are one episode.
That's how I felt too, but I was trying really hard to like, I wanted to do, cause like this
is like week one, week two, week three, whatever.
And then if there's like big days, I'm just trying to get like more of like, this was quite
literally just supposed to be like an overview episode.
And then you see me get into like, you got to get into details.
We haven't even talked about.
Um, we should collaborate on the, um, on, on the notes.
Well, the notes are like, those are just, those are the detailed notes I take.
And then I was just copying them into the script.
I didn't go through and like rewrite it because I just did all of this today.
Then my next suggestion is, uh, at the beginning of the episode, say this is how long the episode
should be.
And then you divide those minutes up amongst the things and we, you know, we, we allow
some fudge, but not too much fudge.
Yeah.
Well, we'll work it out.
I mean, I'm also like, I'm fading hard.
So, uh, yeah.
Um, I'm still trying to murder cases.
There's a specific moment.
Um, I feel like I'm getting a circle.
Go back and play, uh, that bit starting at, um, 107.56.
I want to know who says, uh, you have, you obviously haven't talked to a lot of jurors.
Actually, I know who says it.
I want to see what tone of voice he says it in.
Actually, I think Prince Chessman, Prince Chessman says that.
Um, give me one second.
You'll ask the questions.
Why more?
Okay.
That's the end of it.
There's something I am trying.
Cause it doesn't show up on, in the transcript, which means that like, I know it's there because
I wrote it in my notes and both and Chris heard it, uh, in the, um, they were watching
the live stream and that we, we both texted about it.
So I know it exists.
A lot of people, ah, here it is.
Here it is.
Ha.
I knew it was here.
Okay.
Thank you.
Did you hear that?
So, oh, God, I do not think that when they did the moon pie drop in Mobile, they were intentionally aiming to kill somebody.
I don't think somebody cut the cord and then and it killed somebody.
I believe that was a horrible accident.
And I still think people should be charged capital offense for it.
I still think people should die for an accident.
An accident.
Because you put the public in danger.
So fucked.
Very, very fucked.
All right.
So, yeah, that's the last thing I wanted to point out.
Like I said, the next few bills that get brought up in this committee, they get described in the this would this would be like if, you know, representative Robbins, which, by the way, I said Robinson earlier.
It's representative Robbins.
That's I'm just tired.
We we've been doing there.
And then they were also talking about Robertson.
I just for some reason, my brain was convinced his name was Robinson because I got the Rob part right.
But it's Robbins, not Robinson.
So it's yeah, it's Robertson and Robbins.
Yeah, welcome to Judy.
Good luck.
Good God.
Anyway, the representative England has like the second to last bill in this committee, and he literally introduces it as this bill is like, if I'm dead, you can't steal my organs.
Which is true, and it is really sad that that's a bill that has to be brought, but it does because in the state of Alabama, we have a problem where people who die in prison apparently get their organs stolen.
And when I say apparently, I mean, it's been reported multiple times and that UAB may be stolen.
Oh, you don't know this?
Oh, you don't know about this.
OK, I shouldn't just be like.
What is this?
What is this horrible thing now, Zephyr?
Or what is this?
This is not even what I was prepared.
Oh, I love organ removal lawsuit.
Oh, that's great.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, so.
Jefferson County judge allows organ harvesting lawsuit against UAB to proceed.
The family of Matthew Harrell says his organs were taken without permission after his death in a federal prison in 2023.
He is not the only one.
Oh, that's right, Jen.
Please scroll down and let me read this.
So people's organs.
Please let me read this article.
I'll put it in the.
Just to say, by the way, the update to this is it was dismissed by the Alabama Supreme Court, I believe.
Oh.
Yeah.
No, justice is not served in this state.
Oh, of course.
Just so that people are not.
Just before we start, just in case you start having the glimmerous, the faintest gleam of hope in your heart, that there might be some sense of justice in this society.
I gotta say, bless your heart.
I'm sorry.
Just go back and click on the direct message again.
Thank you.
Where it says direct messages.
I'm glad you saw my confused face.
I was like, how the hell do I drop this?
Where is the where is the chat?
Yeah, these are, again, not.
This two parallels another set of lawsuits against the Alabama Department of Corrections and UAB for harvesting organs of people who died while in prison.
This is just.
They.
They've been stealing organs to send to UAB, not for transplants or anything.
I don't think that's alleged.
It was, I believe, for the medical school.
To, like, be able to dissect a human heart kind of situation.
Yeah.
And as somebody who has attended a, not an autopsy lab, a, oh, goddamn, what the fuck is it called?
I did shadow.
I thought I was going to go to medical school for a hot minute.
My dad is a doctor and I got to shadow a class in the, it's not called the body lab.
I don't know why my brain is not working right now.
I know why.
It's because we've been podcasting for three damn hours.
Um, and I don't have the skill to do it like other podcasters and make it funny.
Anyway.
Um, yeah.
So representative England's bill, uh, if this bill is, if someone kills you, they can't steal
your organs.
And that's how we, uh, more or less ended the meeting.
There was, there was a representative Hill.
The chairman had one quick meeting, quick, quick bill after that, but that got put through
really quickly.
Um, you know, um, we're, we're not going to talk about this 4 PM meeting.
I just have this one other thing and then we will, um, we'll just, I think we can just skip
over Thursday entirely, honestly.
Okay.
And I'll just say that that's, so there's the, the next bit because these two, these two things
happen within an hour of each other.
Um, so I guess, you know, depressing stuff.
Uh, this shouldn't take super long.
Um, uh, yeah.
So, um, after this meeting, I was not in a great place.
Wasn't really happy.
Had a lot of anger.
It just sort of like, you know, that, like, you don't really have a direction for it.
Right.
Um, this, I didn't feel like I knew these bills well enough to really interview any of the
reps afterwards.
Also, they, they all left immediately after.
So it's not like I really had an opportunity.
So I, um, fled for what I assume it would be the relative safety of the Senate floor.
Um, unlike previous years, the Senate has been dead quiet.
Like they have been, Aaron, would you believe me when I said, when I would say that, um, uh,
this next day, we're not going to talk about legislative day three.
Um, but the Senate gavels in at 830 and they gaveled out by 930 and they passed 10 bills.
They have been moving like a machine this year.
That's so productive.
They have been extremely productive this year.
And none of them were like crazy bills.
Like this is, they, they just, they were just getting things through.
So I went to.
Actual like civic efficiency and efficacy.
Uh, you don't really want efficiency when passing bills.
Honestly, I'd prefer that they debate them.
I would actually like maximum discussion.
Yeah.
Yes.
But like, I'm talking, I'm not speaking aspirationally.
I'm speaking like in terms of things that people are not going to expect to hear from the Alabama
state legislature.
Yeah.
Of people actually getting stuff done.
It's also like in direct contrast to how the Senate was last year, really the last two
years.
We've seen a lot of bad bills be going through the Senate.
Um, a lot of, um, um, just filibustering from the beginning.
I have not seen Smith or, I can't say that I, I maybe missed.
One, but I haven't seen Smith or been filibuster once.
This might be the longest streak ever.
So anyway, um, I, I get to the, you know, I head over to the Senate.
Um, this is the same day.
It's Wednesday.
Um, and I was wrong.
I was wrong in a very different way though, because it's in this time, it wasn't what
happened on the floor.
It was what was happening off the floor while somebody was speaking.
So Claudette Colvin, um, I don't know, uh, if you two know about her at all.
Um, but briefly, Claudette Colvin is, uh, a civil rights hero.
She, um, she was 15 years old.
She is, um, what people think Rosa Parks did is what Claudette Colvin actually did.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So Claudette Colvin was 15 years old when she, um, refused to get up, um, out of her seat.
Um, she was, uh, thrown off the bus.
She was beaten.
Um, it was really ugly and she was originally going to be the plaintiff, um, the place that
Rosa Parks eventually took.
She, and, and, um, I think there was, there were, there were two other women as well.
She, um, she got pregnant.
Um, the NAACP and others, um, decided that, that she wouldn't be the right look as the plaintiff
for the lawsuit.
So, um, Rosa Parks, uh, did the same action, which had the same effect.
And so then she could be the plaintiff.
So Rosa Parks, um, and I think this is incredibly brave, right?
To, to, to put yourself in a situation where you know that something bad is going to happen
to you.
Um, and so Claudette Colvin, um, she was charged.
Um, she actually lost her right to vote because of what she did and she never got that right
to vote back.
So when she was, I think she was.
Felons can't vote.
Right.
Which is one of the reasons why being, having possession of weed is a felony.
So because, guess which minority gets blatantly overcharged with possession, which is a felony.
So Claudette Colvin came back to Alabama.
She, she had moved to, oh, I want to say Chicago, Chicago or Detroit.
She moved out of the state.
She came back 66 years later to get her juvenile record expunged.
And, um, Senator figures is, um, on the floor and she is presenting this incredible resolution
about Claudette Colvin's life.
This is a, an Alabamian, a hero, somebody who is aspirational for everybody, right?
She was an ordinary 15 year old girl.
And when she was asked afterwards why she did it, she's like, we were just learning in school
about all of these, you know, lately brave, like men and women.
Um, I, I'm, I'm misparaphrasing, but you know, it was incredibly moving.
And while she's talking and then turns it over to Representative Marika Coleman, both of whom
are black, um, this is what was happening, um, off, off screen.
If you were watching remotely, if you were not physically in the press room, even if you
were in the gallery, you couldn't see this happening.
Um, but this is happening right in front of the, um, press, um, so, um, a little bit
of, uh, context for this.
Um, I'm standing in the press room in the Senate.
Um, you can't actually be on the Senate floor itself.
We're in this glass box in the back of the Senate and it's not a one way mirror.
Like you, it's, it's very clear glass.
I don't think you can tell that I'm recording through glass here.
Um, you might catch some reflection sometimes, but they keep it very, very clear, but I am
standing behind a, a floor to ceiling pane of glass and these senators are standing a foot
in front of me.
There's, I'm not zoomed in at all.
This is just, this is the distance that is the back of Jay Hovi's head.
That's my Senator.
That is Shay Shalnett right here.
And this is Senator Price.
Thank you.
So when she said that pointed remark, because when I mentioned this moment to other people
who were there, cause I was, I was angry about this.
So I realized I did not explain what's happening.
So as this, uh, as this is happening on the floor, Senators Jay Hovi, Senator Shay Shalnett
and Senator Price and Shay Shalnett is looking directly at me, right?
Like you can see, you can see that red light in the camera.
Like he knows I'm recording.
Right.
But here's the thing, right?
Press don't do this.
They don't release video of, of what they're doing.
You know, it's just not maybe a photo, right?
But, but in the three weeks since this has happened, I don't think I've seen any like reporting
on what they were doing.
And me and everybody else in the press room could see him.
You know, I can see them doing something.
I can't hear what I couldn't hear what they were saying either.
But they, they have these, they're clearly, they're, they're chuffing it up with each
other.
They're laughing.
Shay Shalnett's back is completely turned to Senator Coleman.
Price is like at an angle.
Oh, it's disrespectful as hell.
They're, they're laughing.
They have such, here's the thing.
There are other people in this room who are not paying attention, but they're not paying
attention quietly.
Like Senator Orr is over there like on his phone, but he's not being like obtrusive, you
know, but they are, they're, they're mimicking, they're gesturing.
Shay Shalnett is throwing his hands in the air.
He's making these exaggerated facial expressions.
I have no idea what they're saying.
I can't hear them at all.
You know, that one, that part they did fine.
They, they soundproofed the hell out of that class.
You know, I cannot hear them for anything, even though we're standing this far apart.
But it's so, first of all, so extraordinarily disrespectful.
Like you could just shut up for five minutes.
That's all this took was five minutes.
You could just stop for five fucking minutes.
And like seeing this right after, like I've, I've, I've been writing about this.
I have, this was the first article I started writing and I've been writing about this on
and off for like three weeks because I can't quite figure out how to characterize because
there's just some, there's a through line to me between not, not just the fact that they
happen within an hour of each other, not even within like 20 minutes of each other.
Matt Simpson's behavior in house judiciary.
It's like, this is the, in your face, um, you know, microaggressions and, and, and racism.
The, the assumption that I can speak to in this elevated tone, but if representative England
had a 10th of that, that tomber in his voice, he would have gotten screened at, you know,
like it would not have been seen as acceptable, but it's acceptable for his white colleague.
Um, and then same thing here, right?
Like, I'm not going to pretend that, that, that white senators don't do this when other
white senators are up there.
They do, but there was something so particularly disrespectful about this.
And, and again, I have not, I've, I, the, the current working title is bad behavior is tolerated
to the white at the state house and it shouldn't be, you know, and that's not right.
That's not, that's not the right framing.
Exactly.
I've still, I've been struggling for weeks to figure out how to characterize these two sides
of the same coin of just what are you doing?
Like what, what is happening here?
It's this, this frame, there's one frame in particular that just is just in my head.
You also just couldn't like get a line of sight on the person speaking because they were standing
in between the press box and the speakers.
That was something else that was really like, like, yeah, I guess I did, I did not do a good
job of explaining that to people who are just listening, is that not only are these senators
yakking it up, they're, they're physically blocking, they're standing between the press
box, which is not a big room.
It's like 10 feet by five feet, something like that.
12 feet by five feet.
It's not big.
It, we only have access to this one corner of the Senate.
We don't have the other side.
And, and Senator Coleman is, she is, she's physically dwarfed.
She's, she's, she's mirrored or not mirrored.
She's, um, uh, flanked, you know, visually by the senators.
Um, and she noticed me recording.
Um, and she asked me afterwards if she could have a copy of the video because she's like,
oh, I never remember what I say at the podium.
And I was told by some folks, you know, they were texting me saying that they had seen my
remarks on the live stream and, um, they thought they were really good.
So I'd love to, you know, could you pass me that recording?
And I had to, I had to text her back and tell her, Hey, I do have a recording of you speaking.
However, the bulk of the recording is these senators disrespecting you.
Um, it made me angry.
I will share this with you, but I wanted to give you a warning, you know, a heads up that
this is not what you're asking me for because the video I took isn't what you thought I was
taking.
It's not what you should have had the opportunity to take.
Yes.
Like it keeps, it keeps blowing my mind that these state senators and representatives are
displaying less decorum than, than like my high school, like not even like the, the advanced
courses, but like any of my high school classes, none of this would have been stood for in a
public school.
And they're being just so rude to not give their like speakers and such the, the attention.
The first line of the draft is you would be fired for this.
Um, if you acted like this, you would be fired.
And I, I really believe that.
Um, I, I know it's a different, I don't know.
It frustrates me.
I have the chance to interview her about this afterwards.
So that's where we're going to end this on.
I'm not going to play the full interview.
I just, again, really want to, um, the difference in the grace given to other people versus the
grace given to her.
Um, let me find the transcript so we can jump around a little bit.
And I, I, uh, I asked her to, um, speak on the resolution and because one of the things
that, that Senator Coleman was saying when she was being rudely ignored was she was talking
about her personal relationship with Claudette Colvin, a thing I didn't know she had because
she was, uh, around when, um, um, and was actually served as a probate attorney.
And that's something I was like, oh, that's amazing.
And I got distracted from hearing about it because I was so focused on these stupid ass senators.
So let's listen to her talk about what Claudette meant to her.
Cause that's, that's the way to, to end this.
Thank you.
She's only coming off as passionate here.
And what I want to point out, right, is that she doesn't get to channel the anger that Matt Simpson was showing, that Representative Simpson was showing at being challenged for wanting to put people to death.
She is probably far angrier and she is probably far angrier and frankly, way more legitimately angry in this situation, but she can't do that because as a black woman, she would be seen as aggressive, as hysterical, as unprofessional.
And, you know, I'm glad that I wasn't projecting that she was enraged.
I didn't, I couldn't, it didn't feel that way, right?
She just seemed passionate.
But I assumed that, you know, she must feel some sort of way about like, she's speaking about this thing so passionately and, you know, she can see them so clearly.
She looks over at these folks, she looks over at these folks multiple times, you know, there's a frame where Shayshawn that has like his arm up, he's doing this big gesture and you can just see her through him and it is, it has literally been stuck in my head for three weeks.
She does glare daggers at them at one point, but honestly, that, that was very restrained given the disrespect shown.
So, yeah, I mean, like I said, I've been, I've been kind of, um, I've been struggling with how to, how to write about this in particular, but that just really felt like the, yeah, it just, it felt very, um, I don't know what to say.
I'm out of words.
You're out of words and there's chicken in the other room.
I'm out of words.
There's chicken that I spent a lot of time yesterday prepping to make, uh, yeah.
Yeah.
So that's, um, that's week one.
They did gavel in on Thursday.
There's really nothing super important to point out.
Oh, Elliot got his MBA.
That's, that's really, that's really it.
That's the only other clip I was going to play was, uh, Senator Orr telling Elliot not to be a smartass.
That's it.
Um, yeah.
I'm going to call that a podcast and then some.
Well, thank you for taking us, uh, through this labyrinth of, of logistical nightmares and very rude dudes who are not cool like Raphael.
Cool like Raphael.
You know, Raphael, he's cool, but croon.
Are we, is this a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?
Yeah, it's a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
I'm going to say April O'Neil for DragonCon.
Was Raph usually, was he, I guess he was a cool stereotype.
I don't know.
I always like jived with Raphael, but I always think of him as angry, like justifiably, but like, I don't know.
I guess I just, I, now that you say cool, I'm like, oh, I guess, was that what I was supposed to take away from his character?
Like, like, like Donatello does machines.
Raphael is cool and crude.
Um, Leo leads and Michelangelo Calabunga, Calabunga dude.
Is there, is it some combination like that?
That's so interesting because I never took away like cool from Raphael.
I mean, like, not to say that he wasn't, but like, to me, he's like, he's like, he's, uh, angry and like passionate and he's, he's in the, in the like, punch the problem first.
Yeah, that, that is how most archetypes of him that I've seen have broken down.
I haven't watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle content in some time or read the comic.
I have, but only a few episodes because I was trying to be, because I was making a costume for original April O'Neil.
Nice.
That's awesome.
And that was me for Dragon Con.
When you say original April O'Neil, are we talking 2003, aka the best?
No.
Uh, the, which version do I have?
Which one was it?
The first animation.
That would be older.
And I accept that for like original cartoon or whatever.
I just, I have obviously a very special place in my heart for the 2003 version.
Anyway, uh, let's, does anybody have anything to plug?
My face with food.
I'm very uncool.
Hearing, hearing no objections, so ordered.
If I had anything to plug, it would be this.
You didn't catch my ledge joke there.
Nope.
I did.
Thank you.
Uh, Aaron, it's been a pleasure working with you again.
It's been great.
Yeah.
Thank you for letting me torture you guys.
All right.
I'm stopping the recording.
Hold on.
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Um, cool.
Cool.