“They want systemic lawlessness. They want high retail theft,“ says Seneca Scott, founder of Neighbors Together Oakland. It’s ”managed decline from eviction moratoriums, managed decline from defunding police, managed decline from $950 you can steal from stores, not being able to catch people.” “Mega billionaires are giving money to defend the police movements. The same individuals are the largest investors in AI autonomous security,” Mr. Scott said. He has been documenting how Oakland, California became, as he describes it, an “urban hellscape.” Once a progressive Democrat and labor organizer who represented thousands of union workers in California, he says woke ideology took over the labor movement and it stopped representing the actual needs of workers. Watch the clip: “That’s when I saw that we were being used by the mega-billionaire class as very useful idiots for a very nefarious agenda of control,” Mr. Scott said. He argues the elites are pitting the upper middle class against the lower class and promoting class warfare. Now, Mr. Scott sees himself as a “post-partisan solutionary.” 🔴 WATCH the full episode (48 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0113SenecaScott FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Seneca Scott, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Seneca Scott: Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you for coming to Oakland, California. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about the reality in Oakland today and some of the very interesting changes which you are making happen. Before we go there, you have a very interesting and varied background, so please tell us about that. Mr. Scott: Since we’re deep diving, I'll go back to the very beginning. I’m from Cleveland, Ohio. My parents actually have a memoir that talks about my conception. I was conceived in Isfahan, Iran in 1978. My parents, like many black Americans, had moved to the Middle East. They thought it was going to be permanent. They had set down some roots and were actually doing quite well for themselves. In 1979, my parents were forced to flee the country under duress and lost everything they owned. They came back to Cleveland, Ohio, where they had me very shortly thereafter. I had a great childhood and upbringing in Cleveland, Ohio. I lived very close to both of my grandparents and most of my extended family. The biggest gifts my parents gave me were, one, not having any childhood trauma, and two, the strength that I felt from two very loving people praying for me every single day by name. I went to Cornell University and played football and track, briefly. I got hurt freshman year and ended up deep diving into my major, the School of Industrial Labor Relations. At the time I thought I was going to be a sports agent because of my interest in sports. One summer, I went out to San Diego to be a union organizer for the United Domestic Workers with Ken Msemaji and Fahari Jeffers, rest in peace, who passed away last year. That began my career as a professional organizer. During my senior year of college I actually worked full time on an organizing campaign in California for in-home supportive service workers, which would end up being the largest public sector group in the state with over 70,000 members, because a lot of people need in-home healthcare in California. I left Cornell to do that full time. I lived in Southern California from 2000 to 2014, and then I made my permanent move to Oakland. I started working in Oakland in 2012 as the East Bay Director of SEIU [Service Employees International Union] 1021. I mention the overlap because it’s significant. Working at that high level position gave me a perspective to explain to people what has happened to Oakland, and explain how a place with such smart, intentional people fell off the rails so quickly. During that time, we were making decisions for who got elected in Oakland like Dan Siegel, for example. We ran Dan Siegel for mayor. When I say we ran him, I mean the Central Labor Council, which is led by SEIU 1021, the largest public sector union in the Bay Area. They would decide which candidate to support, and that would be the Democratic candidate because of our influence over the party. We wanted Dan Siegel, but he didn’t win against Libby Schaaf, who won her first term. But other people we ran won a city council seat. I made those decisions from Silver Lake, Los Angeles, because I didn’t live in Oakland at the time, but I worked here. I would travel back and forth like many top-tier union leaders who live wherever they want and travel on the workers dime to do our thing. I’m incredibly proud of the work that we did at SEIU 1021. We actually helped people get back from the recession. We fought back furloughs. We had to negotiate these really complex scenarios for the public employee’s pension reform act, PEPRA. Pensions are a mess in California, so we’re going to have to reform them again soon. Back in 2012, there were a lot of complex negotiations. I led the negotiations for SEIU 1021 for every East Bay city, as well as BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] and the City of Oakland. That’s a lot of East Bay cities. If you were to name them, it would be Richmond, El Cerrito, Albany, Berkeley, Piedmont, Oakland, San Ramon, Union City, Fremont, and San Leandro. I did all that in two years as a union leader due to the fact that my staff couldn’t bargain because they weren’t trained enough. Mr. Jekielek: How many people were you representing? Mr. Scott: At the time, 55,000 workers were under my jurisdiction in the East Bay. I believe we had the largest, with maybe 15,000 in those various cities and sanitation departments, including BART, the public transportation. We had a BART strike in 2014 which was historic. The question was then raised nationwide, “Should public sector transportation workers even have the right to organize because of the economic disruption that happened?” But we were vindicated because we were fighting for safety reasons. Then the workers who were replacing union workers died. Two people died, and that’s what ended the strike. The exact things that we said were unsafe, and that our workers were refusing to perform anymore because they were worried about dying, the scabs both died performing these things, so this supported the strike. Then I burnt out on the unions, mostly because I saw the theme of what was coming. There was a growing disconnect from the needs of the actual workers who are always complaining that the union doesn’t represent them. They never see anyone. There’s a revolving door of labor reps and people aren’t trained. I saw all of that. Essentially, I had to do the bargaining that our labor reps were supposed to be responsible for, and that we paid them for. On looking at their work, many of them didn’t have the knowledge, skills or ability to be successful. That is why so many people had bad collective bargaining agreements that they weren’t happy with. There was a lot of work to do and I just took it all on. Then I really needed a sabbatical, so I left in 2014 and moved to Oakland because I liked it so much. I said, “I’m going to move to Oakland, California, and just be a neighbor.” Mr. Jekielek: You ran for mayor of Oakland in 2022. What happened there? Mr. Scott: It started with the city council, but I never thought I would run for office. Even within the union I would always say, “I hate politics. Keep me out of it. I just want to organize the workers. On the political side, you guys do what you have to do. Just give me my COPE [Committee on Political Education] requirement and I’ll get it back to you.” COPE donations for SEIU are the political dollars voluntarily given to the union. Unions cannot use dues monies for politics. That is absolutely illegal. No union uses dues money for politics. Contrary to popular belief, unions have a PAC that workers voluntarily pay into. All the money you see being spent from labor unions, not the companies or the government or the Democratic party, actually comes from workers in good faith and trusting their unions to use their political dollars to help strengthen the union. That needs to be said because there’s a lot of misconception about how the unions are using dues money. It’s absolutely illegal to use it for political purposes. If that’s happening, you should report it. During my time off, I became a business owner. I started a community garden, Bottoms Up Community Garden, which ended up becoming world famous. I started the Oakhella Festival, which is a very popular music festival. We produce some of the largest festivals in the city. I just continued with the organizing energy and started being on top of it in the neighborhoods. But I have to pay taxes now. I have to call the city for services. I have to depend on my former union members for services as a taxpayer and as a neighbor. That’s when I began to see a lot of the issues that we had caused by our divestment from purely working situations and going into social justice stuff. Covid hit and it was a big deal for me in my political evolution. Prior to Covid, I had still considered myself a progressive Democrat. I was not a member of DSA [Democratic Socialists of America], but I absolutely would tell people that my closest political inclination would be that of democratic socialism. I was a far-Left kind of guy. I wanted the working people to own the means of production and have more power and not be treated the way we are now, where we’re essentially controlled and dominated by our corporations and our government, which have now combined into what I call an emergent neo-fascism. The elders from my neighborhood grabbed me by the ear and dragged me to the city council on the very last day to file and said, “You’re going to run for city council. Why are you not running for office?’ I said, “Get out of here. It’s not my thing.” But then they said, “You’re vocal. You are a quick study. You understand how these policies affect us on the ground. You have the experience from the unions. You understand the finances and how the city works. You should run for city council.” Our elders and our children are our societal bookends. When they’re under duress and they’re being failed the way they are in Oakland and in cities across the country, things fall apart. It’s very important to me, through our gardening, that we make sure they are fed. We make sure they have a place to go that’s safe and beautiful and calm so they can get out of their house and essentially have a community third space. Only one of the 10 commandments comes with a promise. Take care of your parents and you'll live a long life. That’s not just your parents, but also the elders in our community that we’re failing. I had to follow this commandment, so I ran for city council. I didn’t have any money. But I had a platform that said, “Neighbors together, we deserve better.” That was my campaign slogan for city council. After the election, I turned that platform into a nonprofit, Neighbors Together Oakland. We sued the city of Oakland for failure to follow homeless policies that we had unanimously voted for. We started community organizing. I got back on the old horse, not for the union this time, but for myself. For the first time I was actually a constituent benefiting from my own organizing, rather than being an Ivy League-educated guy telling workers what was best for them and forcing our utopian elite vision on a society that did not have informed consent. It changed things. That was when I really started to see what was going on with the Left. I was attacked for wanting common sense policies around drugs, things that were truly compassionate. Everything that progressives are doing right now to save their butts, I was viciously attacked for in 2021. That’s when I saw that we were being used by the mega-billionaire class as very useful idiots for a very nefarious agenda of control, and not just over working class people. My prediction is that in the next 10 years, you’re going to see the upper middle class decimated. Those in control are going to take those gains and redistribute them to the lower class. You can see it right now. The lower class is actually making more money than they ever have before. If you’re actually looking at the numbers, for people who choose to go to work, McDonald’s is forcing up the minimum wage. They’re doing these things on purpose. This is class warfare between the upper, middle, and lower class, but we’re all poor compared to the elites. I saw there was no left or middle or right. It was only up and down. Either you have integrity and solutions and you care about team human, or you have an agenda that fits in with the elite and with their total control of our society. I can get into excruciating detail on this after we go through the political story. I decided to run for mayor because I didn’t see anyone who understood our city charter. Oakland is a dysfunctional city by structure. It’s not just the people, it’s the very structure. Jerry Brown actually bears a lot of blame for this. Jerry Brown ran for mayor in 1998 on Measure X, which created what he called a strong mayor. Prior to 1998, Oakland had a city manager model. We’re a midsize city of about 400,000 people. There’s only two forms of government for cities, either you have a city manager or you have a strong mayor. The difference is that a strong mayor has legislative veto power over legislation and line item veto power over the budget. Oakland’s mayor has neither, but they still call it a strong mayor. This is all because Jerry Brown just didn’t want to go to city council meetings. He passed the law so that he didn’t have to go sit through the boring meetings, because he’s Jerry Brown, and he’s a legend. It was a mistake. Jerry, it was a mistake. He created a situation where Oakland has no clear delineation of power, so our governing structure is flawed. Oakland doesn’t have a controller to watch our money. There’s just so many things missing here. I ran on structural changes to our city charter, adding a controller, and getting us back to 900 police officers, immediately. No one else was willing to actually name those things, although most of the leading candidates had agreed that those changes needed to be made. It wasn’t my groundbreaking research that exposed this. It was pretty well known in Oakland that we had structural issues and that we needed to add an office of controller for more fiduciary accountability, but no one was willing to campaign for it. I ran for these reasons and also to pull the city back to the center, away from the zealots who had taken office. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s start with defunding the police, which is insane. However, around 2020 and onwards, many cities implemented it, including Oakland. How does that even happen? Please tell us about that. Mr. Scott: They wanted to cut our police by 50 percent. But because of the few moderates we had left on council who were able to pull some maneuvers, it only got cut by $18 million. Here’s how it happened. Who was the major funder of this movement? This is where I’m going to get back to the mega-billionaires. Who’s the eBay founder guy who gave the most money? Lee Fang broke the story two months ago. Mega-billionaires are giving money to the defund the police movement. These same individuals are the largest investors in AI autonomous security. New York City now has robot dogs walking around the subway station. The people who are making money from those are also invested in defunding police. This is literally a plot from the movie RoboCop, and it’s playing out in real time. It’s right here. I don’t want to take credit for Lee Fang’s work because he did the investigation. If this is the first time you’re hearing this, go look him up. Mark Zuckerberg puts millions into defunding the police. But in his particular city, he puts millions toward his private security and police department. They want systemic lawlessness and they want high retail theft. They stripped away all this money statewide, but now they’re adding back hundreds of millions to fight retail theft. But they caused the problem to begin with and it’s all manufactured. It is managed decline. It is managed decline caused by eviction moratorium, managed decline caused by defunding the police, and managed decline caused by the $950 worth of merchandise you’re allowed to steal from stores without being charged. These petty crimes and not being able to catch these people contribute to a very dark pattern of poverty. It takes a poor person three years of good luck to get out of poverty. You know what bad luck really is? Getting your window smashed or having your catalytic converter, or your bike, or your method of transportation stolen. This year alone, 12,000-plus Oaklanders have had their car stolen. Mr. Jekielek: On one side you have these people that believe that defunding the police is the right thing to do in order to have this utopian vision. Mr. Scott: Yes, the police are bad. Mr. Jekielek: On the other side, you have people who want to implement a technocratic, computerized control system because it’s profitable for them or because they believe in it. Please explain that to us as you understand it. Mr. Scott: I can’t speak for their motivation, but profit is always assumed. It is extremely profitable. Following the money is always one of the things you do. It’s just a worldwide agenda, and you can see it in the World Economic Forum. Again, people may look at us as if we’ve got one of those tinfoil hats on, but you can just look at what these elites actually say. The most powerful people and most influential people control our commodities and our transportation mechanisms. Our defense contractors are meeting and literally telling you what the plan is. I think you should maybe listen. It’s playing out right here on the streets of Oakland where we have no rule of law, but people are still doubling and tripling down that we need to abolish—not defund—they are moving to abolish the police and then the root causes of poverty. That would then lift us all up. Root causes is a code word in government meaning, “We’re not going to do anything about this problem.” That’s what they really mean. Why do they create new root causes every day and want higher literacy rates for children who don’t even have nutrition? Why do you think we have child soldiers on our streets right now? Those are actually the new root causes that these woke policies have created. They’re directly responsible for the decline in education. Did you know that for seven years straight, Oakland had the most advanced literacy rate for the state of California. From 2009 to 2016, Oakland’s literacy rates were increasing every year and they were winning awards. In 2016, the wokes took over and said, “We don’t like phonics. Phonics is racist. We’re going to choose a progressive reading system.” Fast forward to today, and now no one can read. Why do we allow these people to continue to reward themselves while they’re failing us and then blaming root causes? It is just absolutely insane. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s go back to the organizing part here, because these people have been voted in. Mr. Scott: We have ranked-choice voting here, so are they really voted in? Mr. Jekielek: These policies started in 2016, but then they came in hard in 2020 during the pandemic. That’s when you had your awakening, correct? Mr. Scott: Essentially, this was all planned. We can look at the “Soros DAs,” as they are called, and we can follow the money. They all have the same talking points, no matter what city they are in. Let’s just look into defunding the police. Oakland has less than 700 cops, and we’re supposed to have 1000. We have dismal 911 times and we have no public safety. Compare that to Boston that also has a robust defund the police movement. Oakland has 450,000 people and Boston has 660,000 people. Boston has over 2,200 cops. If you were to scale that to Oakland, we would have 1400 officers. We could absolutely talk about defunding police and putting more money into mental health services if Oakland had 1400 officers, because that’s 400 officers more than the FBI says we need. Okay, now we’re talking. It’s not this cookie cutter thing where you can go to any city and say, “Defund the police.” Yes, in some cities you may want to take some money from a police force that’s underperforming and put it toward mental health services and other things that could help people. Those ideas are not bad in themselves. It’s when you apply them with no nuance or no data or proof that they can succeed that they start to fail. They are absolutely failing in Oakland right now because businesses are failing every week due to rampant retail theft. They’re not protecting people. We’re getting mocked and gaslit by our leaders that the patches they put on are going to work, but they know they’re not going to work. They know what they want. They want us to tap out and say, “Bring in the robots, bring in the drones, bring in the cameras everywhere.” We will be begging for anything to make us feel safe. That’s the danger here. Where is the safety supposed to come from? I’m not all in with the idea that police are going to save us either. Neighbors are going to have to save us, along with some self-help. We’re going to have to step up and protect our communities during this transitional period as we figure out what went wrong with our government politics. Mr. Jekielek: Since October 7th, other people have said that their one big fear is that this will be used as an opportunity to usher in a digital control system and CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency]. It is the same pattern that happened after 9/11 with the Patriot Act. People are afraid and people need safety and security. What is your view on that? Mr. Scott: That is very true. That’s exactly what is happening. That fear is well-founded and that’s why you should be very careful in your approach to what public safety means. Public safety needs to be clearly defined. Nostalgia is dangerous. People are nostalgic for this old world where they thought the police could save us, as they watched cops do this on TV every Friday night. That world is gone. We have some responsibility to parent better, and to have communities that are more intentional. You need to know your neighbors and hold your neighbors accountable for their safety and yours. That has to be a part of making our streets safe. Part of the solution for Oakland right now, and I’ve gotten a lot of heat for this, is soft martial law. When you have a big fire, what happens if your local fire department can’t handle it? Mr. Jekielek: You ask for help. Mr. Scott: Then what happens? They come from all around, and sometimes other states. When we had mega-forest fires in California, we’ve seen firefighters as far as Utah show up to California to help put out these forest fires. Arizona coming to California to help put out these forest fires. How come the same thing doesn’t apply for law enforcement? Do you know how many federal law enforcement agents there are? Do you know how many guys are sitting on their butts right now in the Bay Area? You have DHS, you have Border Patrol, you have Customs, and you have ICE. I could name five more. Why aren’t they here standing post in Oakland? It’s a small number of people doing most of the crime in Oakland. It’s not widespread with the average citizen yet. More and more people are entering that life every day because they’re forced to and they don’t see any repercussions. That’s natural. But right now there are organized crews. If you want to take them out, have a curfew for a month. We get every law enforcement agent you can to post here. You can chase people down and reestablish law and order in the same way you would have to in a riot. In a riot you have to bring in the riot police, because the police that were there aren’t enough anymore. You’ve got to get control of a situation. That’s the only alternative that would stop us from essentially moving into a surveillance state, an autonomous police state. Again, the people who are investing in defunding the police are investing in these autonomous police state robots. Mr. Jekielek: This idea that you’re posing, some people might describe it as martial law for a month. Then they will say, “This is exactly what will be used to implement top down control. Mr. Scott: They’re right. This is why I said we need to pull from other law enforcement agencies. They don’t want to stay in Oakland. They want to go back to their job. You’re pulling in people from other agencies for a fixed amount of time, That’s why I didn’t mention the National Guard. You need other law enforcement agencies of all levels, from the federal down to county. Whoever’s not doing anything right now needs to come help put out these fires in Oakland, the same way they do if there’s an actual real fire in a forest. They stay for a month, and then they’re going to beg to go back to their posts. That’s how you can assure that they’re going to leave your city. Yes, those fears are real. But we’re in a situation right now where we need to hear other ideas as well. Because if your idea is to just let everybody rob and steal and plunder and call that social justice, that doesn’t work for me or my neighbors. We’re going to self-help. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re not going to allow people to steal our stuff. Mr. Jekielek: Please give us a picture of what it’s like living in Oakland right now. Mr. Scott: It depends on what neighborhood you live in, but I will speak for everyone and say that none of us feel safe anymore. At least three times a week in West Oakland, I have to smell toxic fumes from a fire. For three years now, we have had three fires a day, mostly from RV’s in homeless encampments. There are always fires, so I have to close my windows. I routinely have to pass by scenes that look like Palestine or Bakhmut in Ukraine. I’m not joking. Just go to my Twitter feed and look at this urban decay where you have miles of burnt out vehicles stacked up like Legos, and trash everywhere. Mr. Jekielek: The term fentanyl island comes to mind. Mr. Scott: Fentanyl is just one of the many bad situations. This level of urban decay is unprecedented in American cities and it’s being ignored by our leaders, because they want to gaslight people and say that it’s not their fault. Oakland has never been this bad. Then you have people with their 90s nostalgia thing. First off, what do the 90s have to do with now? Living in Oakland right now is like living in an urban hellscape. But it’s a beautiful city. It’s probably the most beautiful city I’ve ever lived in or visited, and I’ve been in a lot of them. You’re here right now. What do you think? It’s beautiful. We have perfect weather. It’s sunny. We have proximity to all of Northern California’s best places and we’re a port city. We should be printing money, but instead we’re suffering and we’re living in hell right now. Anybody who’s telling you otherwise is either lying to themselves, or they want to make excuses for their failed ideology. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s go back to the unions now, because this is your area of expertise. Somehow labor unions went from representing people to representing a completely different constituency. How did that happen? Mr. Scott: Right when I entered the movement, labor unions were moving away from a representational model of servicing the members they had through the 80s and 90s. Then there was a decline in private sector labor. Over the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, private sector labor went from half of the labor movement to only 7 percent of the U.S. labor movement. Now, 93 percent of the U.S. labor movement is from the public sector, not the private sector. It’s no longer the big, bad boss man that is stepping on us. The question now is, “Who is the boss?” It’s the taxpayer, so it doesn’t work. There’s a big issue with public sector labor unions. They moved from a representation model to what’s called the organizing model because the unions needed members. They said, “We have to organize externally now. We’ve been focusing too much on just representing our workers. We forgot that there are many underrepresented workers out there that need representation, and we’re going to organize those workers into the union.” That’s a good idea and I support that. Then they moved into what’s called the social justice model, and that’s when things went off the rails. The pervasive thinking became about the systemic injustices in America that affect every worker and that we now have to focus on those. Okay, but it’s not mutually exclusive, because it came from the actual wages and the working conditions of the workers that you represented. You saw the biggest issues happening in 2020 in Oakland where many members started leaving the union because they felt the union no longer represented them, and because of the failure to protect them from the vaccines. Many people didn’t want to take the vaccine and they were either forced to take them or were told they had to leave. Many people felt unsafe. Our public sector workers have to clean up these homeless encampments. They have to issue tickets and they have to work in these streets. Many of them felt unsafe and felt that the unions were not protecting them, and frankly, they were not. They were actually protecting the activists who were threatening to harm these workers for cleaning up those encampments. Now they view everything through this social justice lens. But who determines what that social justice is? It’s the central labor councils and the labor movement. This is a problem right now. The labor movement and the public sector labor unions are the think tanks, the brains, and the foot soldiers of the Democratic Party. They are used to confuse people because the people trust the unions. If you are a Lefty, you trust the Democrats to tell you who the good people are. Then these so-called good people are ushering in these insidious policies like defunding the police. Every working person that lives in these impacted neighborhoods clearly says, “We don’t want that,” but they do it anyway. They say, “We know what’s best for you.” That’s the biggest issue with the union right now and this is also a reason why members are actually leaving in droves. You think they would have left after the Janus decision from the Supreme Court which said you didn’t have to pay union dues anymore. But most public sector labor unions grew slightly, or treaded water right after Janus. It was 2020 and the rise of wokeism that really put a stamp on this. We said, “This is actually really here and it’s scary. Where do we go from here in our local governments?” Mr. Jekielek: I was looking at your Twitter feed about what happened on October 7th and the horror in Israel. It’s created a moment of clarity, where people are seeing this social justice in a different light. I’ve seen this in a number of places. Please tell us about that. Mr. Scott: People are now entering politics out of self-defense and they are organizing. The first step to organizing is to educate, then agitate, and then organize. To educate, you would first ask, “What are the policies that are failing you? Who is responsible for writing and passing them? What decisions were made that led to those policies?” The more people find out about this, the more they say, “Oh, now I see what the play is.” Right now we are organizing our neighbors. Oakland is extremely blessed to have very well educated, intentional neighbors who understand the intersection between food and families and art and culture and quality of life. We’re a beautiful neighborhood. We absolutely have the talent to give people more political will to run for office and see this through. We need to stop depending on the mercenaries that these unions are feeding us or that the Democratic party is installing in our cities, pushing their agenda that has nothing to do with what we want in our city. Out of necessity, there is an awakening happening. It’s the mother of invention and people are organizing. This is the consequence of the cancel culture used by these people and the intense reputation destruction directed at their enemies. You do that for long enough, and there will be a tipping point where everybody says, “I don’t care what you say anymore.” Mr. Jekielek: Do you think this might be the tipping point? Mr. Scott: Yes, because no one cares anymore. Also, they’ve exposed themselves. The DSA-led woke movement has completely exposed itself in the past few months as being mostly white-led, racist, and sexist. We now know they are antisemitic as well. These progressives like to say, “Words are violence.” They like to chastise people like myself and say, “Hey, your political ideology of post-partisanship is really covert Right-wing stuff. When you dog whistle these things, it’s creating a dangerous environment for trans people and other people.” They always talk about the environment that you are creating with your words and that rhetoric is important. Now we’re seeing, in very real time, that the environment they are creating is leading to Jewish people feeling unsafe for their very lives. My alma mater, Cornell University, is in the national news right now for having to put out a statement against extremely alarming calls to action to harm Jewish people. Where’s the accountability for their dog whistles and creating an environment where we are ushering in a second holocaust in America right now? They have fallen on their faces with their hypocrisy. They’re completely naked and we’re mocking them right now. We’re laughing at them and moving on to people who have common sense. The question is, “Has this been quick enough? Has the damage been set in?” I don’t have the answer to that question. I’m worried that we may be a little bit too far behind the eight ball to stop this fundamental shift and what’s about to happen to America, all the way from the upper middle class going down. That’s why I say we’re building multiracial and multi-class coalitions, not working class coalitions. Because your upper class is about to become the working class very quickly if we continue the economic trajectory that we’re on right now in this country. Mr. Jekielek: You provided one solution for Oakland. In one month, get rid of the bad actors with coordinated action from different law enforcement groups. People with this woke ideology are found in every institution, holding the levers of power and implementing all this policy, which isn’t very good for most people. What is the next step here? Mr. Scott: What’s next is that neighbors need to knock on each other’s doors, and create organic third spaces like community gardens, community centers, or faith communities to talk and share their experiences. We absolutely have the talent amongst ourselves to draft policy. We have neighbors right now in our organization who are meeting with elected officials, drafting complex policy, and doing valuable research that will absolutely improve our ideas. We need to go back to having real debates. I have run for two offices and I have yet to have a debate in Oakland. How does that work? We just don’t debate anymore. They don’t want their ideas challenged. They don’t want to be held accountable and have to show proof of concept that these policies are actually helping people. That’s one thing we need to demand—public debates. We need to make sure that we’re educating our neighbors. But on the other side, it’s not about politics as much as it’s about mutual aid and the comfort of knowing the elders in their community are being looked after, that we’re intentionally parenting our children, both in the household as well as in the community, and that we’re reforming our schools. Our schools are a mess right now. These teachers are psycho. Not all of them, but a lot of them are using students for mental health therapy for their own problems and shortcomings and not teaching literacy or STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics]. Once the pandemic happened, if you were not privately schooled, you were falling behind. The next generation of American workers is not positioned to compete globally, and it’s going to have an impact in the near future. We have rampant illiteracy rates in America’s inner cities, and I don’t know what we’re going to do about that. To fix it, we need to start teaching somebody how to read, and start growing food. We have four pillars in Neighbors Together Oakland, our nonprofit. The first is community safety. The second is local food systems. Then we have accessible housing. We don’t stay affordable because that’s politicized. What does affordable actually mean? You have a homeless crisis where the average person is strung out on fentanyl and under mental duress, so they can’t afford anything anytime soon. We need to get them out of that RV or tent and find them shelter so that they can become healthy again, and so they can be a contributing member of society. Finally,we need the thriving local businesses, and this is very important. We’re in the city of Oakland, California. Every city that has ever been founded exists for one reason—commerce. Cities are places of commerce. They are often the only places where poor people can have their ideas come to fruition, obtain generational wealth, and no longer be poor. This is the place. Cities are places of economic mobility for the common person. They have always existed that way. The city government’s main job is to protect and encourage commerce, and to educate their constituents to be the next competitive generation in the workforce. Again, this is all for commerce. We have a Chamber of Commerce in Oakland that doesn’t protect business. They have yet to stay a word about the eviction moratorium. Small housing providers and mom and pops in Oakland are now owed $100 million. There is no protection, and there is government-enabled theft. We’re not protecting commerce. We are allowing people to steal $950 from any store they want without repercussion. This is not protecting commerce. Oakland missed a grant of $10 million that everyone else got, which we probably missed on purpose, just because they are ideologues who don’t want more police. They are not protecting commerce. We are a place that attacks commerce and attacks businesspeople, when essentially, this is what cities are for. We need to remember that and protect the commerce in our cities for all people, so that we have places to work and thrive. That’s the shift that people need to make. What do cities exist for? They don’t exist for social justice. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. That is the first thing you learn in Economics 101—there is no such thing as a free lunch. That applies to every person that works to put that ham sandwich into your hand, from the farmer to the driver. If you get it for free, who didn’t get paid? Then how long would those people continue to do the varying occupations that brought you that sandwich? We all know where this leads, so why are we doing it? We’re doing it because very powerful and wealthy people want total control of our cities, and they’re getting their way right now. We don’t have a lot of time. Go knock on your neighbor’s door and get to know each other and start fighting back. We can fight this while we still have a functioning democracy and democratic republic in America, even with the voter integrity issues. Most people do not trust elections for good reason. Anyone who will call this person a Right-winger for saying you question elections, just look at Stacey Abrams. I absolutely believe that Stacey Abrams’ election was tampered with, in the same way I believe other elections have been tampered with. Neither political party is trustworthy, and now they’re now coalescing into a uniparty where they only protect the interests of the elite. You know where there are no issues? It’s when it comes to whether we’re going to allow congresspeople to trade stocks or not. That’s a bipartisan issue. When it’s anything that has to do with lining their pockets, there is no issue whatsoever. Passing mega-budgets that are for war, or that are filled with pork, that’s no problem. These parties have become controlled opposition for the elite. They act like we have this political divide when we really don’t. It’s all about the elites and their quest for power and control. It’s time for the people to become post-partisan solutionaries with their neighbors, fight for people who have integrity and ideas, and demand that politicians show that their policies actually work in the way that they are described. Get more involved in their local politics. That’s what we need to do in Oakland, California, and in any city in the country where you feel that you’re losing your way. Mr. Jekielek: Getting involved locally, fostering community, reaching out to your neighbors is something we have lost. A theme that keeps coming up on this show is the need for local action, whether it’s political action or just creating community. Seneca Scott, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Mr. Scott: Thank you for coming to Oakland. I appreciate it. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (48 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0113SenecaScott Epoch Original DVD collection:

“Virtually every theater that we go to all around the world since Shen Yun’s inception has either gotten a phone call or a letter from the Chinese embassy or the Chinese consulate putting pressure on them to not have us perform,” says Shen Yun Master of Ceremonies, Jared Madsen. From blackmailing theaters and governments to slashing company bus tires, the Chinese communist regime has gone to extreme ends to subvert Shen Yun, a New York-based performing arts company. Watch the clip: As Shen Yun launches its 2024 world tour, I caught up with Mr. Madsen and Shen Yun conductor Ying Chen to learn a little more about their story, their mission, and how they’re defying the Chinese communist regime’s global censorship campaign. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (25 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0109shenyunJMYC FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Jared Madsen, Ying Chen, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Ying Chen: Thank you. It’s a great pleasure to be here. Jared Madsen: Thanks for having us. Mr. Jekielek: It’s amazing to be sitting with both of you again, because it was 2008 when you came with Shen Yun to Poland. I was involved in bringing you over for the first time. I remember the sold out shows and they had to create a standing-room-only area. I’ve wanted to invite you to talk about Shen Yun and some of the challenges and some of the amazing things that you’ve accomplished over the years. Jared, you’re the presenter. You come out as MC and explain the different pieces during the show. For those who might not be familiar with Shen Yun, let’s roll a quick video clip and then you can tell us about it. Speaker 4: Before communism, China had a glorious past. What if you could bring it back? Since 2006, Shen Yun has been reviving the essence of Chinese civilization, deeply rooted in ancient values like compassion, honesty, and faith. Mr. Jekielek: What did we just see there? Mr. Madsen: This is classical Chinese dance. Shen Yun is considered the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company. We have eight troupes that tour the world simultaneously, going to over 150 cities a year. You can really see the essence of traditional Chinese culture within these dances. It brings to life on stage the history, beliefs, and spirituality that’s imbued in 5,000 years of Chinese culture. Mr. Jekielek: Ying, you’re the conductor of the orchestra, and it’s a very unique sound. Please tell us about that. Ms. Chen: You always have live music at our performances. We’re very proud of the orchestra that we have created. It’s a unique blend of traditional Chinese instruments and classical Western instruments like the typical strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. The result is a wonderful collection of colors that are surprising for a lot of our audience, but at the same time, very familiar because of the Western orchestration. You can also hear these traditional Eastern melodies being played by the erhu and the pipa. The music is original and specifically created for each of the dances that are shown on stage. This orchestra is one of a kind, and I believe it’s the first one in the world to permanently incorporate traditional Chinese and Western instruments. Mr. Jekielek: How does one become a conductor for this new approach? Ms. Chen: My parents were both members of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra for about 30 years, so they are top level artists in China. They came to America and all of us joined Shen Yun at its inception in 2006. My father was actually the first conductor for the first orchestra that we formed for Shen Yun. As you know, we now have eight companies and each has its own orchestra. When the second orchestra was formed, I became the conductor of that orchestra, so I feel very honored to have joined this journey early on. Mr. Jekielek: The art form of traditional Chinese dance almost went extinct, and Shen Yun has been revitalizing that. There are other companies that have tried to do the same, but what makes Shen Yun different? Mr. Madsen: One really unique thing, especially from the inception of Shen Yun, is that we are not in China. We are not under the Chinese government’s thumb. A lot of artists who are in that environment realize very quickly that they just become a propaganda tool used by the communists in China. Here in the U.S., we don’t have that. Not only that, our whole goal is to revitalize traditional Chinese culture. Many artists from China came to understand, “This is great. This is perfect. I can actually express my art form. I can convey these 5,000 years of history without some sort of political agenda.” Mr. Jekielek: Viewers of this show will understand that with communist regimes, absolutely everything falls into the service of the communist agenda. But why would this be a problem? It’s just a dance performance, so why would that interfere with the regime? Mr. Madsen: In China, many of the companies there, if not all, are used in these various propaganda programs that praise the Communist Party. Whereas, the true art form is going to be praising the divine that is imbued in traditional Chinese culture. There are various philosophies and spiritual practices which permeate traditional Chinese culture. That runs exactly counter to communist theory which is also an atheist theory. Basically, they are trying to remove the essence of the dance and make it a propaganda tool. Whereas, our goal is to show the real thing. We show that dance with all the spirituality that is in the 5,000 years of Chinese culture.” Mr. Jekielek: Jared, you have been a student of China, Chinese history, and traditional Chinese medicine. Please tell us about your background. Mr. Madsen: Ever since I was a kid, I was very interested in Chinese culture. After reading the Tao Te Ching, reading Lao Tzu, and then reading some Buddhist things, I became fascinated with traditional Chinese culture. I had the good fortune of right when I entered high school, a Chinese teacher came. I started learning Chinese in my high school in Iowa, which was unheard of. We were the only high school in Iowa that had a Chinese teacher. After that, when I was 17-years-old, the School Year Abroad program started a China program. This was the very first time when high school students outside of China could go and study at a high school in China. After I graduated from high school, I just stayed there. In 1996, as I was studying Chinese medicine, and as I was looking into various types of practices, I came across Falun Gong. At that time, it was not outlawed in China. In fact, just the opposite, it was praised. I remember being in university in China and watching the TV and seeing the news reports praising Falun Gong and praising its health benefits. I always had this very deep wish to take the essence of traditional Chinese culture and bring it to the West, because there is so much wisdom that can be found in Chinese culture. In 1999, after I finished my university studies in China, I came back to the United States. Very soon after that, the persecution of Falun Gong began. I always had this dream of having Westerners experience traditional Chinese culture—and then came Shen Yun. In 2007, I was fortunate enough to become an MC for Shen Yun. Honestly, it really was my dream come true. I get to go on stage every night in front of thousands of people and help the world understand that there are 5,000 years of this amazing culture. There is so much wisdom and so much to learn that no matter who you are, and no matter what culture you are from, you will definitely find many benefits from it.” Mr. Jekielek: People familiar with Shen Yun might understand there is a deep connection between Shen Yun and Falun Gong. But for those that might not, Ying, please tell us about the connection. Ms. Chen: In 2006, Shen Yun was created by artists who follow the spiritual practice of Falun Gong. For thousands of years, Chinese culture has been very spiritual and strongly influenced by Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. However, when the Communist Party took power in 1949, they started to eradicate all of these belief systems, so that they could instill Marxism into people’s minds. It really comes down to mind control. For the last 70 years, they have changed textbooks. They basically try to brainwash people and reeducate our new generation without these traditional beliefs. Personally, I believe that is one reason why Falun Gong became so popular and was embraced by so many people in China in the 1990s. Aside from the health benefits, it really connects people back to their roots, because the spiritual element in Falun Gong is about self-improvement, and about believing that there is a higher power. Human beings are not the only ones in control, so it really resonates with people’s hearts in China. The people who practice Falun Gong started to search for that route more and study it in order to reclaim this lost cultural heritage. That’s part of what Shen Yun is doing. We try to sift through things and get back what is our authentic, traditional heritage and share it with the world. We remind people of what our beliefs are, and that traditionally, people saw the harmony between heaven, earth, and humanity. Mr. Madsen: Going to China and learning about traditional Chinese culture and being fascinated with it, when I came upon Falun Gong, it felt to me like it was the essence of traditional Chinese culture. It brought 5,000 years together into one practice. When Shen Yun was started by Falun Gong practitioners, it made perfect sense, because it is a practice that is trying to revitalize traditional culture. Of course, we’re going to have a show that brings the 5,000 years of culture to life on stage. Mr. Jekielek: Shen Yun has been interfered with by the Chinese communist regime quite a bit over the years, and most recently in South Korea. Recently, we had a series of reports on that. Please tell us about how that happened and why. Mr. Madsen: Virtually every theater that we go to all around the world since Shen Yun’s inception has either gotten a phone call or a letter from the Chinese embassy or the Chinese consulate putting pressure on them to not have us perform, sometimes dangling some economic benefits in front of them. Fortunately for us, virtually no theater has bowed to that. Right now, we’re experiencing some challenges in South Korea, and a couple other countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. One time during my tour I remember that we got up in the morning and somebody had slashed the bus tires and we noticed it. But they were slashed just deep enough so there was still air in the tires, but they would burst while we were driving. Ms. Chen: That was one of the dancers’ buses, correct? Mr. Madsen: It actually happened to multiple buses all around the same time, both the dancers’ buses and the trucks. From that point on, we had no other option but to have 24-hour security for our vehicles. Mr. Jekielek: It’s a show. Why are they so threatened? Ms. Chen: The arts in China have been heavily censored by the government. Basically, all the media in China is controlled by the government, so only the government gets to decide what you can say out in public. But here we have Shen Yun, made in the USA, which is outside the reach of the Communist Party, and we have refused to be subjugated to their rules and preferences. What we perform on stage reflects our divine culture, the very culture that they have worked so hard to eradicate over the last 70 some years. Also, we expose human rights crimes still being perpetrated in China today as we speak, including forced organ harvesting, which is taking organs from live people in order to benefit from it economically. It’s something you cannot even imagine, but it has been happening in China. In fact, my brother was once incarcerated in a labor camp for 18 months in China. He went through some brutal torture there, and at the time we thought he would never make it out of there. Thankfully, he did. But some of his friends were injected with drugs and went crazy as a result. Then the government said, “Look, this is what happens to people who practice Falun Gong. They’ve gone crazy by themselves.” Of course, people didn’t know that they were injected with drugs. There are unspeakable crimes that you and I in this country just cannot possibly imagine that are happening over there. Think about it—how can people get an organ transplant just like that without getting on a waiting list? In China you can get an organ that matches your blood type right away. Mr. Jekielek: The Epoch Times has reported on this horrific practice of forced organ harvesting. I call it the murder-for-organs industry in China. Mr. Madsen: It’s hard to believe that it’s just these one or two pieces that the Chinese Communist Party is threatened by. I think they’re threatened by our whole program. We’re showing 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture and you see divine beings on stage. We have a digital backdrop where they seem to come out of the heavens and then come to life on stage. That runs exactly counter to communist principles and their atheist ideas. That is what threatens them the most. Mr. Jekielek: We at The Epoch Times have been sponsors of Shen Yun for a very long time. We’ve been doing interviews with audience members and it’s astonishing what people say. Speaker 5: Breathtaking. It is absolutely stunning. Speaker 6: The ability of the show to transcend culture and bring light and love and happiness is just astounding. Speaker 7: I think it’s magnificent. It’s magnificent to see another part of Chinese culture that a lot of people don’t get to see. And the stories are amazing. The execution and the dance is amazing. Speaker 8: This experience for me is transcendent. Speaker 9: I feel better about the world. I feel uplifted. Speaker 10: You just cannot see this show and remain unchanged. Speaker 11: I can say this as a priest, it’s a real spiritual experience. Speaker 12: People nowadays go to the doctor and the psychiatrist for pills and antidepressants. This is the antidepressant. The best. Speaker 13: Absolutely. Perfection. Mr. Jekielek: One of the themes that has come out over the years is the unity of the dancers. People will say that they seem to move as one and there’s a flow that’s ineffable. Ms. Chen: You probably don’t see that anywhere else, correct? Mr. Jekielek: It’s incredibly unique. How do you achieve that? Ms. Chen: Many of Shen Yun’s accomplishments are credited to the spiritual practice that we engage in. When I talk about our spiritual practice, it means trying to live by the principles of Zhen Shan Ren. Zhen is usually translated as being true or being genuine. Shan is being kind and compassionate. Ren is something quite profound and you need a collection of words to describe it. It is translated as tolerance or forbearance, but it also means self-discipline. It means being resilient in all kinds of different situations. It means having patience and being able to endure difficult challenges. When we live by those principles, it really helps us stay composed and positive in all circumstances, and think about the benefits of teamwork. All of these principles play a big role in what we have accomplished. Let me give you one example. At the end of every single performance, and this is the case with all eight companies of Shen Yun, at the end of every performance, we actually gather together and do a recap of the show, asking, “What went right? What went wrong? What could have been done better?” I’m talking about at both an individual level and at the group level. People actually talk about, “I didn’t do so well here,” because self-reflection is part of the culture of how we do things at Shen Yun. We are always looking for ways to improve and do even better. Even when our audience thinks everything is perfect, we are still looking for ways to do things even better. When we strive for perfection in that way, it’s definitely a powerful thing that has helped us thrive and grow throughout the years. Mr. Jekielek: How are these dancers trained? Mr. Madsen: In the Hudson River Valley, we have this beautiful campus with the training facilities for Shen Yun. These are top-notch facilities and amazing dance studios. Ms. Chen: We have a beautiful concert hall and we have two theaters. Mr. Madsen: It’s an amazing concert hall. We have theaters where we can do rehearsals. We’re constantly learning from each other. One company will perform a rehearsal, and then all the other seven companies will watch and say, “Okay, I see what they did there.” We all bring it together. Ms. Chen: We learn from each other. Mr. Madsen: We learn from each other. Our campus also has a temple created in Tang Dynasty style and this whole area is called Dragon Springs. It gives you this feeling like you’ve gone back in time. For me anyway, it’s an amazing thing to have. It’s like a walk back in time. Mr. Jekielek: Two things are coming through here. One of them is the incredible sense of serenity that the dancers and the musicians get to experience; one, when they’re starting to learn their craft, and two; when they’re actually professionals doing it and preparing for the season. How long does the season last? Mr. Madsen: The tour season starts in mid-December, and then it will last until mid-May. We put on an all new performance every year. In the summer, the choreographers are working at creating new dances. The musicians and composers are working at creating new music. We have our costume department making beautiful costumes. We have a new backdrop, with the designers doing all of that. Fall is when we really start to seriously do our rehearsals and really get the show perfected for the tour. Mr. Jekielek: The scale of this is absolutely astonishing—eight orchestras and eight dance companies. Ms. Chen: All eight companies have a pretty full performance schedule. Mr. Madsen: I wouldn’t be surprised if we grow past eight companies soon, because sometimes we can’t even keep up with the demand. There are certain theaters that will request a show and we have to say, “Sorry, we’re booked. All eight companies are booked this year.” Mr. Jekielek: What are some of the challenges involved in making all this work? Ms. Chen: The performance standards at Shen Yun are very, very high. You have to have a passion for excellence and strive for that all the time. Our spiritual practice definitely helps us stay on the right track, but everything is still challenging. It’s not just magical. You have to do the hard work. There has to be the heart to do it, and there has to be the dedication. I believe we are creating something that’s truly special and unique and amazing. I feel so proud of what we have done in creating a performance that is world-class. It comes from heart, willpower, stamina, and dedication, all of that. It means continuous engagement and self-sacrifice, but it’s all worth it. That’s what it takes to create something amazing. Mr. Jekielek: Jared, a final thought as we finish? Mr. Madsen: One thing that really touches me is seeing the audience reaction after the show. Our bass player is in the orchestra pit, but he’s standing when he plays. He’s one of the only people who is playing that can see the audience, and he will see them when the curtain goes up. I don’t want to reveal what happens at the very beginning, but when the curtain goes up, he sees the look on people’s faces. He sometimes even sees tears in people’s eyes right when the curtain goes up. It’s an amazing, magical experience. Seeing those looks on people’s faces really encourages me. It means that this show is going above and beyond a typical show, and that it is almost an otherworldly experience. We really are transporting people to these different times, up into heaven and down into history. That is what moves me and motivates me the most, seeing the look on people’s faces and seeing the interviews afterwards. Mr. Jekielek: You are going to be at Lincoln Center in New York City, and at Kennedy Center in Washington DC. I tell people that when I attend the show, it gives me energy for a month, because it is so nourishing to the heart and soul. Ms. Chen: That means our efforts are worth it. Mr. Jekielek: Where else are you heading this year? Mr. Madsen: All over the world. We’re going to Asia, Japan, Taiwan, and down to Australia. We‘ll definitely be in the U.S. We’ll be in Canada, South America, and all over Europe. Mr. Jekielek: Jared Madsen, Chen Ying, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Ms. Chen: Thank you for having us. Mr. Madsen: Thanks, Jan. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Ying Chen, Jared Madsen, and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (25 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0109shenyunJMYC Epoch Original DVD collection:

As China grapples with a real estate and banking crisis and a demographic disaster, where is China’s economy headed? What kinds of calculations is Chinese leader Xi Jinping making vis-à-vis Taiwan? In this episode, we sit down with Kyle Bass, founder of Hayman Capital Management and a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China. Watch the clip: What are the dangers of the Chinese central bank digital currency? And what’s in store with the upcoming Taiwan election? 🔴 WATCH the full episode (47 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0111KyleBass FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Kyle Bass, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Kyle Bass: Great to be here, Jan. Mr. Jekielek: We’ve been getting signals for some time that things are not going well for the Chinese Communist Party-run economy in China. Please give us a picture of what is going on. Mr. Bass: Okay. That’s a big open-ended question, but I'll attempt to answer that. It’s important to think back to what drove the China miracle. If you look at how China financed itself and its GDP growth, it was almost solely from real estate speculation, with real estate prices rising, and local governments selling more real estate to fund their operating deficits. It was a very procyclical cycle of rising values, more speculation, and more sales from local governments. That created an economy for the average Chinese citizen where 70 percent of all of the assets in China were invested in real estate. What that miracle produced was meteoric GDP growth and all the concentric circles that surround it. Both you and I know, and those people that follow China closely understand, the birth rate of the average Chinese female has dropped to 1.2. It requires a birth rate of roughly 2.1 to sustain a population, so we’re seeing a pretty significant decline in the population. Those two things are inextricably linked. The median home price got to be 20 times north of the median income, for instance. The U.S. in all its subprime greatness. It only got to six times higher. In China it was over 20 times higher. Today it is about 17 times higher in the tier-1 cities. That means Chinese men can’t afford to buy new dwellings when they come out of university. They’re not having sex, they’re not marrying, and they’re not having kids. The birth rate collapsed when real estate speculation got to its zenith. A couple of years ago, Xi Jinping said that financial security is national security. He basically stopped real estate speculation, because he realized too late that it had created a real problem in the architecture of the Chinese economy. Today, every single public real estate company and developer in China is in a state of bankruptcy or default, most of the private ones. With the $13 trillion local government-financing vehicle market that either sold bonds or borrowed money from banks to run their operating budgets outside of real estate sales, the majority of that market is not paying. In fact, it got to a point in late October of 2023 where the PBoC [People’s Bank of China] said, “In our next set of bank reviews, any local government financing vehicle loans that are non-paying will be deemed to be paying, and it won’t affect your bank rating.” That was a public statement made by the PBoC. When you look at what created China’s miracle, it’s now the exact opposite. They’ve got almost 400 percent banking leveraged to GDP. They’ve got a scenario where they’ve got youth unemployment at a minimum of 25 percent, and the gray market says 40 to 50 percent of youth can’t find jobs. In a speech on New Year’s Day, Xi Jinping actually admitted that youth unemployment is a real problem. He actually inexplicably decided to declare that China’s economy is actually having problems and he declared that publicly. As you know, they don’t normally do things like that. You have a scenario where real estate isn’t going to bounce in China. It can’t. Xi Jinping has to get that ratio back down to a number that allows population growth. Again, this is the unintended consequence of allowing a market to run unchecked. You’re seeing a banking crisis. You’re clearly seeing a real estate crisis. Banks have a third to 45 percent of their assets in Chinese and Hong Kong real estate loans. You’ve got the perfect economic storm hitting China at a point in time where the geopolitical tensions in the world are at a multi-decade high. I think they’re in real trouble. Mr. Jekielek: For the layperson, it may be difficult to understand how the Chinese economy could grow over the last several decades purely on real estate speculation. Also, there has been significant Western investment in the Chinese economy during this time. Can you encapsulate this for us? Why are all these companies in default? Mr. Bass: That’s a great question. When you think about China Inc., you have to think about it in two spheres. You have to think about their domestic marketplace, where their banks are, where their capital markets are, and how it operates with the RMB [Renminbi] or the yuan. That market is a state-controlled operation. As you know, it’s a totalitarian government. They have their own version of capitalism with Chinese characteristics, and we will get into what that means. The point is they can control that marketplace if they control their own currency printing, because they still have a closed capital account with the world. We give them the benefit of the doubt of the conversion of RMB at a spot rate in dollars. Imagine if China were to abandon its great wall around its capital and allow the average citizen in China to invest abroad, to travel abroad, and to spend abroad. If they just opened that capital account, what would happen? The RMB would drop 40 or 50 percent, and their GDP in dollar terms would actually drop 40 or 50 percent. Do you see what I’m saying? We’re giving them the benefit of a conversion rate of a contrived number, because they have a closed capital account. This is how they do it. If you allow your RMB-based marketplace to grow unchecked in real estate and you plug the holes in the banks with more RMB, you can create a significant domestic inflation number of assets, which they did. When they report GDP, they take the RMB/GDP number, and convert it at a closed capital account spot rate into the dollar. We give them the benefit of the doubt on that conversion. We say, “Wow, in the last 15 years, they’ve grown over 500 percent GDP in dollar terms.” That’s because they still have a closed capital account. You mentioned that we’ve seen significant cash flows into China. We believe through the passive indices of the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond index and the MSCI World index that there is $2 trillion of passive capital in dollars that has gone into China, again, at that artificial rate. China grew a market unchecked in a speculative frenzy of real estate and reported GDP. Then they constructed a narrative around how you must invest in China. They said, “Look at how fast we are growing. We’re growing double digits every year. You would be stupid not to invest here.” Then the dollars flowed in. That was the Chinese government’s way of very quickly becoming influential on the world stage from an economic perspective, when it had actually been somewhat of a Potemkin village. We’re seeing that now. I know all of this sounds like hyperbole, but it’s exactly what happened. Mr. Jekielek: What do those returns on that $2 trillion look like through the passive indices? That is a 505 percent growth. Who wouldn’t want that? Mr. Bass: Correct. If I told you of a country that had a capital market that you could invest in and buy stocks and that was going to grow 500 percent in the next 15 years, and I knew it for a fact, you would probably put all your money there. But the interesting thing is today you have now lost a third of your money. If you invested in China and the Shanghai Shenzhen 300 index 15 years ago, you’re down about 33 percent. They ask, “But what do you mean? I thought China had an economic miracle.” It was, but it was an economic miracle with Chinese characteristics, and to the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party and their leadership. It is fascinating to me that you still have relatively educated folks that are fiduciaries and asset managers that have fiduciary responsibilities to their clients, still allocating capital to a communist-run country that has a limitless partnership with the world’s number one war criminal, Putin. Mr. Jekielek: Once you set a policy in place, it’s very hard to change that policy, for whatever reason. That is indeed the case with U.S. foreign policy towards China, even if there is discussion of decoupling from the CCP. Actually, the CCP is decoupling on its own terms and at its own convenience. Can you speak to that? Mr. Bass: Yes, some are convenient to the CCP. But I see China decoupling from a position of extreme weakness over the last 15 years. They’re in a very precarious position because China imports 12 million barrels of crude oil a day. They are the largest importer of crude oil in the world, in a world market of roughly 101 million barrels a day. They import 8 Bcfs [Billion cubic feet] a day of LNG [Liquified natural gas] in a world market that is 53 Bcfs daily. They are the largest LNG importer in the world. They import 40 percent of their food. All three of those things that they must import on a daily basis require dollars to purchase. It could be dollars, euros, yen, pounds, or other western currency, but it’s all priced in dollars. They have an insatiable need for dollars. If you are Xi Jinping and you are implementing new anti-spying laws, and if you’re implementing policies that completely restrict the macro/micro level data export from mainland China to the West, you would never cut off data flows and increase your militaristic belligerence from a position of weakness, unless it was your only option. The moves that Xi Jinping has been making in the last 12 months show you that, number one; he is in real trouble. Number two, just let me ask, “To distract the population, what do you think the natural place for him to move to would be to foster a sense of nationalism? You and I have seen these videos that the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has put together on the unification of China and Taiwan. As we record this today, we are five days before the Taiwanese elections. The DPP candidate is anywhere from 3 to 12 percent ahead, depending on which polling you look at. But in post-election Taiwan, all bets are off as to what Xi Jinping is going to do. You’re going to see a number of restructurings and you’re going to see even more economic pain. You’re going to see Xi Jinping try to change the narrative to stay in power. If that is the case, Taiwan is in real trouble. If that is the case, the West’s relationship with China and investment into China is in a very precarious place today. Mr. Jekielek: I want to talk about their economy. I also want to talk about Taiwan and the implications of where it might go. But 505 percent growth over 15 years and then a loss of a third on a yearly average doesn’t make sense. Mr. Bass: It doesn’t make sense. That’s called investing with Chinese characteristics. That begs the question, “Who got the money?” The Westerners didn’t get the money. In fact, some of that GDP growth was contrived, as I mentioned. With the real GDP growth, did it go to investors in dividends or capital gains? There actually were years in which the Chinese market did well, but over a 15-year period, you’ve lost a third of your money. When I think about where the money went—it went to the government. If it didn’t go to the government, it went to the management teams who lie, cheat, steal, bribe, or all of the above. That is the modus operandi of the Chinese Communist Party. When China implemented the national security law and took over Hong Kong at the end of 2019, what has the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index done since China implemented that law? It’s down 40 percent. You have lost money every year for the last four years if you stayed invested. Communism doesn’t pay, it just doesn’t. It never has, and it never will. It pays for short periods of time, because everyone gets very excited about some stimulus measure that Xi Jinping might be implementing. In the long run, we in the West are the suckers, and we’re making sucker bets. Mr. Jekielek: Just as a comparison, how did the U.S. economy do over those 15 years in terms of returns as well as growth? Mr. Bass: The U.S. has about 4 percent of the world’s population. We are a quarter of the world’s GDP, and we are 40 percent of the world’s capital markets. That is super interesting. We have the deepest, most liquid, most trusted capital markets in the world. The U.S. GDP has grown 72 percent over a 15-year period. If you had invested the same money 15 years ago in the S&P 500, instead of the Shenzhen Shanghai Composite, you’re now up 335 percent in your investment in U.S. indices of the S&P 500. Everyone got excited in 2001 when China ascended the WTO [World Trade Organization], and we gave them a pass to do it early. They didn’t meet the requirements. But as their GDP started growing, there was such an excitement about investment in globalization, with everybody becoming wealthier and things getting cheaper. In the end, there wasn’t a free lunch. In fact, the Chinese ate our lunch, they took our money, and you didn’t make anything. It’s a lesson in economics and geopolitics. Sooner or later, everyone is going to figure out this lesson. Mr. Jekielek: People talk about de-dollarization, the emerging BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] market, and the Chinese central bank digital currency, the digital yuan. Before we go there, how many trillion dollars did we add into the economy by printing money? Mr. Bass: The Fed’s balance sheet expanded by $5 trillion. Broad money in the U.S. expanded by 40%. Mr. Jekielek: I was going to say $6 trillion. One trillion is an unfathomable number in itself. Mr. Bass: You need to put that into context too. From 1972 to 2008, the Fed’s balance sheet expanded from roughly zero to about $940 billion. From 1972 to 2008, prior to the global financial crisis, the Fed’s balance sheet expansion was under $1 trillion over that timeframe. From 2008 to 2019, we went from just under $1 trillion to $4.5 trillion. We were able to pull about a half-trillion off the balance sheet going into 2020 and Covid. But in 2020, we went from roughly $4.1 trillion to $9 trillion. If you look at the timeline, we’ve gone parabolic with our monetary policy in a very, very short period of time. We can get into the de-dollarization and the rest of the world, but that’s all just a CCP narrative. Mr. Jekielek: The U.S. economy is much less stable and powerful than it was before this parabolic rise you are describing. Mr. Bass: That statement is true in itself, except that the rest of the world has that same convexity or worse to their economy. i.e., we are still the bellwether economy with the most strength of any economy in the world. But we are less stable than we were pre-2008 and pre-2020, because we’ve had to react by flooding the system with money. Mr. Jekielek: Could Xi Jinping be waiting for some kind of large-scale crash? What is your thinking around that? Mr. Bass: I don’t think so. Given their parasitic relationship with the West, and given their leverage levels, the worst thing that could happen to China today is a U.S. crash. Let’s do a quick look around the world as to where the world’s reserve assets might go. You have the most liquid, deepest capital markets in the world in the United States, which still has the rule of law. Would you invest in Europe? Let’s take a look. The European Union [EU] still doesn’t have a central taxing authority and they don’t have a unified fighting force. It’s still just a great idea. The EU has not actually been implemented into a proper union. We still have an Italian army and a French Navy. We still have all of these things that make no sense whatsoever. The Euro is not a currency where real reserve managers are going to go. In the last 15 years, how much have the 27 EU countries grown? They have grown 7 percent. Over 15 years it’s basically flat. Again, it is not a place for exciting investment. If you look at the construct of their economies, the state is playing a larger and larger role, and private enterprise is playing a smaller role. It’s not a role model for capitalism. Then you’re not going to invest your money in Europe. Are you going to give it to China? We just discussed this—you can’t do that. Where else in the world would you go, Canada or Australia? They’re both way too small of a market to do it. Would you invest in the UK? The UK has really stagnated for the last several years. Basically, there isn’t a place for real reserve money to go except for the United States. I don’t buy this de-dollarization story. Again, that’s a narrative pushed by China, Russia, and Iran on social media. There is no other place for the money to go. Look at Bitcoin. Bitcoin is really just vapor. It doesn’t have anything behind it whatsoever. It’s really just a sunny place for shady people, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Mr. Jekielek: There is gold, correct? It has surged to record levels recently, perhaps for all the reasons we’ve just been describing. Mr. Bass: You could add up all of the gold that’s ever been mined, forgetting about how much of it has gone into dowries in India and things like that. Let’s just assume that all the gold that’s ever been mined in the world is sitting there, and we can engage in a gold-backed currency again, which would actually be a disaster. But let’s assume that we can. There is about $8 trillion worth of gold that’s ever been mined in a global financial system of greater than $90 trillion. You just can’t do it. There is no functional alternative. When you think about BRICS, are you going to allocate your capital to these countries? Just think about who you’re looking at—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. You'd have to be a lunatic to put your hard-earned reserve assets or your savings into the buckets run by those people. India has actually said that they will not join a BRICS currency union. But Argentina now has said they’re in. I’ve never met a born again Christian on their prom night. The same goes for Argentina? They have taken their currency from 17 pesos to the dollar just a few years ago, to today, where it’s 500 or 1,000 to the dollar. It has been completely wiped out. Boom, that’s when Jesus, the savior, pops up and then you say, “We will join that union.” If you take India out and you add Argentina and you reorganize the letters, they’re the bottom feeders. They’re the crabs. Mr. Jekielek: These are the high-risk markets. Mr. Bass: You can call them high risk, or authoritarian, or war criminal. I don’t know what you want to call them, but investing in BRICS currency is not going to attract real reserve assets, in my opinion. Mr. Jekielek: Getting back to China and Taiwan specifically, you mentioned all bets are off after the election. Do you mean irrespective of who wins? Please give us a picture of what you’re imagining here. Mr. Bass: Yes. When you look at Taiwan, you see China ratcheting up and every year moving the goalposts closer and closer to China. Even in Xi Jinping’s New Year’s Day speech, he said that Taiwan will be unified with China, and that the people on both sides of the Taiwanese Strait should embrace this new great rejuvenation of the Chinese race. That is code for, “We are going to take you, peacefully or not peacefully. It’s up to you.” If you’ve noticed, in the last 30 days, there have been 23 separate balloon incursions flying right over Taiwanese military bases. That is an effort to engage in psychological warfare, to directly invade Taiwan’s airspace, and to monitor Taiwan’s level of readiness at their military bases. Going into the election, China has increased its belligerence and has increased its psychological warfare operations. I did a very detailed presentation for the Hudson Foundation on what China has done to prepare for war in the last few years. It looks like it’s on a one-way trip to a physical conflict. I would say that post-election, all bets are off. The DPP candidate has had a lead in these elections as high as almost 20 percent. Today, it’s somewhere between 4 and 11 percent from all the polling that I see. But when you poll the average Taiwanese person, there’s an 85 percent polling that says they want nothing to do with Chinese rule. They just watched the movie play out in Hong Kong and it didn’t end well, and they don’t want to see a replay in Taiwan. The people of Taiwan do not want authoritarian, Marxist-Leninist Chinese rule. They want to continue the status quo, but Xi Jinping is not going to have that. He said that his life’s mission is the reunification of China and Taiwan. He’s just over 70 years old, and he doesn’t have that much time left. He has told his military forces to be ready by 2027. That’s less than two years from now. I’m not sure what you think about this, but he will not tell you when he’s going to invade Taiwan. He’s not going to give us a fair warning. It’s just going to happen all at once. If I tell you that it’s sometime between now and 2027, that’s still a terrible outcome for the world. Yes, it’s inevitable. If the KMT candidate wins, that gives China a little bit more breathing room to engage in a soft takeover instead of a hard takeover. We'll see what happens there. But I still think the DPP candidate will run away with this election. Mr. Jekielek: That is the psyop. The Taiwanese think, “It’s inevitable. Look at all the Chinese aggression. We might as well accept our fate and better terms for us.” This is what they’re hoping for. Mr. Bass: Yes. What’s interesting though, the Taiwanese people understand A, what’s at stake, and B, what Chinese psychological operations are. When polled, they all say that they want nothing to do with Chinese rule. It’s only the old, wealthy Taiwanese people that have such strong ties to China that say, “Yes, we want Hou Yu-ih for president. We want the KMT. We want Beijing’s preferred candidate to win.” The population writ large is going to have William Lai win this election. Mr. Jekielek: We in the West take freedom for granted. For the Taiwanese, this is not an academic question anymore. Mr. Bass: Yes, and they know this. For instance, in the last 2 quarters of last year, self-defense classes in Taiwan have been sold out. They keep expanding the number of classes, and people wonder whether they’re ready to fight. The world was really surprised at the Ukrainian’s resilience, and how they’ve stood up to Putin and his war machine. I think the world is discounting the Taiwanese people a little too much right now. Mr. Jekielek: The digital yuan is effectively a system of next-level tyrannical control over the Chinese population, and it’s functioning today, as we speak. It seems like the wheels are in motion to implement CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency] in the West as well, with people saying that it has to happen. Can you speak to this? Mr. Bass: As it relates to China’s central bank digital currency, it’s a digital Trojan horse. It’s a way of China exporting its digital authoritarianism to the world. If you and I agree to accept some sort of digital yuan for goods or services that we provide to someone in China, and you and I go onto a show like this and we say things that Xi Jingping doesn’t like, then they just turn your wallet off. You'll learn not to say anything negative about him if it costs you money. It’s a digital cancer, and it should be outlawed in the West. To your point, you just had a great phrase, next-level totalitarianism. We’ve already seen them implement this. If you say something wrong, or look the wrong way, or even sing a song that might be deemed to be a national security threat in China, they can ding your social credit score so that you can’t buy food, you can’t ride on the train, and you’re not allowed to fly on an airplane until your credit score comes up. I’ve also seen that you can buy your credit score back up by giving the government money. They’ve created a dystopian system with this CBDC. Again, it’s a digital Trojan horse for anyone that accepts it. It is a real problem. The West, and Western intelligence, and Western financial market participants have war-gamed this for the last few years. Everyone comes to the same conclusion that I’ve arrived at. The question is how are we going to get this legislated? Mr. Jekielek: What exactly would be legislated? Mr. Bass: We need to outlaw the Chinese central bank digital currency for public and private use in the United States. Mr. Jekielek: A few years ago in Canada, we saw people’s bank accounts being turned off for political reasons. Mr. Bass: For the truck drivers protest. Mr. Jekielek: Exactly. Is CBDC a foregone conclusion in the West? How do we prevent it from happening here? Mr. Bass: I don’t believe that going to a cashless society is a positive thing for society writ large. That just puts all of our trust, our health, and our economic welfare in the hands of some elected and unelected officials. Remember, there are 18 people at the Fed that are unelected, that set monetary policy for the entire world, and they have no real checks and balances. Let’s look back over the last 10 years. If you and I had money in the bank, and they told us that the new interest rate on our bank balance was minus 2.5 percent, meaning that we would pay them to hold our money, we would say, “We'll just take the money out.” If you’re in a full digital currency world, you can’t. You have to sit there and take it. It’s like a donkey in a hailstorm. You have to just stand there and take it. I don’t think it’s a good idea. It gives the academic elite too much power over our lives. They already have enough power, given the fact that they set and maintain insane or crazy monetary policy like they just did. But you and I still have the ability to vote with our feet if it’s not a cashless society. If it’s a cashless society, again, you’re captive and you’re basically in a prison. That’s a terrible thing. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about the concept of voting with your feet. Kyle, we’ve talked about this multiple times. You described China as having a parasitic economy and I wholly agree with you. The single biggest problem is the West’s funding of the Chinese regime. It’s happening less recently, as people have observed the Chinese leader’s belligerence. But the CCP is still going strong, and these passive indices are still putting money into Chinese military companies. What is it going to take to stop this system and this voting with your feet that doesn’t seem to be beneficial? Mr. Bass: It seems to be some sort of Stockholm syndrome with Chinese characteristics. We’ve talked about losing money for 15 years, and losing money in the last four after the implementation of a national security law. Yet, we continue to allocate capital to China. There’s that old saying, the beatings will continue until morale improves. At some point in time, we’re going to have to cut these pipes off. Those people that put the pipes in, Henry Fernandez at MSCI and the Bloomberg bond indices folks get paid fees. They get paid huge fees for their indices, and the passive flows. They really don’t care that much about being a fiduciary, but they set the gold standard for fiduciaries that must index their returns. You mentioned that some things have changed, but the passive money is still flowing. Net, we actually saw an exodus of capital in the fourth quarter of last year. I don’t know what it is so far this year. We’re only about eight days in. But that is a pretty spectacular reversal to see a net net capital outflow. Imagine if you are a U.S. venture capital firm with money in Chinese venture capital. Good luck ever getting that money out, especially given the new paradigm that we’re investing under today with the increased economic and geopolitical belligerence of the Communist party. The losses will change those capital flows forever. But I do think that this requires leadership, Jan. Again, I jokingly say at our firm that if U.S. national security was left up to the private sector, we would all be speaking Chinese tomorrow. It requires leadership to say, “These are the things that we will allow, and these are the things that we won’t allow.” If you are on the director of national intelligence’s report and one of the top five threats to U.S. national security, how about we don’t invest capital in your economy? How about we don’t invest capital in state-run entities that are potentially building a war machine to potentially fight us in the future, like the U.S. and Britain did post-World War I? We are playing the exact same tune that we played between 1919 and 1938. It’s just crazy to me that we haven’t learned from history, yet, here we are again. We’re appeasing mad men. We have this woke ideology. We have the appeasement caucus running our country and several other countries just like we did when you had Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax running the UK. They were meeting with Hitler after he invaded the Rhineland, and after he was moving on Europe. They just desperately wanted a peace deal. We all want peace, and yet appeasing dictators has never worked and it’s not going to work now. That’s where we are. That’s a long way of saying that conflict will continue to increase. The gap between the wealthy and the poor continues to widen because of inflation. It’s an insidious thing that disproportionately affects the poor and the middle class, and that creates friction and conflict. That’s going to fuel the geopolitical fire that was already smoldering. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s touch on the transfer of potent technology with national security implications like Eco Health funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We’ve been discovering how deep that relationship went and how full-throated it was. Some of our biggest companies that are invested in AI are literally going to China and building R&D centers for AI over there. What do you make of this? Mr. Bass: We should have a vetting system here in this economy, but not to be xenophobic or racist, because we have very close partners in Asia. The Chinese people themselves are very good. The Chinese government is amazing on the world stage at playing the race card when they have nowhere else to turn. We have a deep, long standing relationship with the Philippines. We have a phenomenal relationship with Japan, and a very close relationship with many other Southeast Asian economies. But we should be running a vetting process for anyone that is receiving U.S. government money from the National Institutes of Health or any of these special grant programs going to potentially fund insane bioweapons research. I’ve read all of the FOIA emails between Fauci and Collins, and I can’t believe what I’ve read. It was shocking to see the level of corruption in that system early on, and then the denial of the truth all the way through. The denial was that the truth could be a different truth. I agree with you, we’ve got to stop this funding. When you understand the way the system works, if Alibaba was a pure private Chinese enterprise that Xi never did anything with or infringed upon, or we could prove its servers were in the U.S., and we were to buy shares in a secondary offering in Hong Kong, those dollars go into the Chinese banking system. The Chinese government can use those dollars at its own will. i.e., the dollars are fungible once they’re going into their system. To a certain extent, it doesn’t really matter which companies we’re funding and which companies we aren’t funding. The fact that the net capital flow is an inflow of dollars is a real problem. I am a proponent of full decoupling, but it will never happen before a physical conflict happens. I think that it’s already happening, but we won’t fully get out before the bullets start flying, and let’s hope they don’t fly. But it seems to me like it’s a foregone conclusion in Xi Jinping’s mind that it’s going to happen. Mr. Jekielek: One of the top advisors to the CCP Politburo talked about keeping the U.S. distracted with other wars and terrorist activities. Right now, we’re invested in at least two very serious conflicts. There is a rise in terrorist activities in the Middle East. This doesn’t seem like a good time to deal with a Taiwan question. Mr. Bass: That’s exactly right. We’re eight days into an election year. I’m a person that believes you need to lead with strength and not lead with weakness. We’ve been leading with weakness, which is a really poor signal to the world. Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely everybody says this is going to be an incredibly eventful year, and they really have no idea what’s going to happen. There are a lot of unknowns. The people that usually like to predict things are afraid to predict things. As we finish up, a final thought? Mr. Bass: I think that 2024 has the highest probability that we’ve seen in our lifetimes of China invading Taiwan, and I don’t think the markets are priced for that right now. If China invades Taiwan, the big question will be, “What do we do about it? What does the West do? How do we support Taiwan?” You’ve heard Japan say publicly that they will immediately be in the fight on Taiwan’s side. That has global implications if Japan is not bluffing. I don’t believe the world’s ready for a conflict of that scale. Clearly, I’m not ready either. We need to be talking about potential outcomes, but also potential penalties to China. We need to be socializing the concept of pulling China off the Swift system altogether. When you think about what we did with Russia, those sanctions were not really effective. We sanctioned 10 percent of the oligarchs. Big deal. We left all the Russian banks on the Swift system. We let the blood continue to flow to the tumor in Russia, because we were afraid of having our gasoline prices too high. We have an administration that is not able to press the hard button. They can only press the easy button. The hard button might get pressed for us in that invasion, and we'll see what happens. Mr. Jekielek: Kyle Bass, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Mr. Bass: Glad to be here, Jan. It’s a pleasure to see you. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Kyle Bass and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (47 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0111KyleBass Epoch Original DVD collection:

On Tuesday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis—who is pushing forward the RICO case against former President Donald Trump and 18 of his associates—was hit with some unexpected and very bad news. In a bombshell court filing, Ms. Willis was accused of having an “improper” relationship with the top prosecutor on the Trump case—a relationship from which she allegedly benefited financially. Watch the video: 🇺🇸 Epoch Times 25¢ Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale Exclusive video on EpochTV: Jack Smith Demands Twitter Info on All Americans Who Interacted With Trump | Facts Matter According to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released earlier this week, Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted President Trump’s tweets leading up to January 6th. Twitter ultimately complied. This means that if you interacted with President Trump’s Twitter account before he got kicked off — well, your name is literally on a list. Watch the exclusive video 👉 https://bit.ly/3TaF5wp

About six weeks ago, the people who follow Cosmopolitan magazine on social media were treated to a post with the details of how a “Satanic Abortion Ceremony” actually works. The post has several pages explaining how to conduct one of these rituals—with each page having an upside-down cross at the top. It then urges people to go to an actual full-length article on Cosmo’s website, which details the experience of an anonymous 37-year-old woman who conducted one of these satanic rituals herself. If this post were from some fringe part of the internet, this wouldn’t even be worth discussing. But it’s not from some fringe part of the internet. This is found in Cosmopolitan, the largest women’s magazine in America. Watch the video: 🇺🇸 Epoch Times 25¢ Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale Exclusive video on EpochTV: Jack Smith Demands Twitter Info on All Americans Who Interacted With Trump | Facts Matter According to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released earlier this week, Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted President Trump’s tweets leading up to January 6th. Twitter ultimately complied. This means that if you interacted with President Trump’s Twitter account before he got kicked off — well, your name is literally on a list. Watch the exclusive video 👉 https://bit.ly/3TaF5wp

The future of Taiwan is currently being decided, and the CCP is pulling out all the stops to sway the country in its favor. Taiwan is holding its 2024 elections for the president and legislature, and the elections are split between a pro-Taiwan-independence party and another party which is more in line with appeasing the Chinese Communist Party. As this takes place, the CCP has been holding top-level meetings on how to alter the outcomes of the elections. In this live Q&A with “Crossroads” host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss this topic and others and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/3RUtAa5 Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

The presidential elections currently being held in Taiwan could be a pivotal moment for the world. If the pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) party wins, this could have a ripple effect on the global markets, on the high-tech industry, and in particular on the trade war between the United States and China. If the anti-CCP party wins, this could spark new military threats from the CCP and a potential new war, as the regime has vowed to take Taiwan even if it means using force. In this live Q&A with “Crossroads” host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss this topic and others and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/3SaxQUh Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

Almost exactly 3 years ago, right in the aftermath of “the most secure election in world history” you might remember that another election was held. This was a special Senate Election in the state of Georgia wherein both of their 2 senate seats were up for grabs — it was basically a runoff election because no candidate got 50 percent of the vote. And so, while the presidential election took place on November 3rd of 2020, this special Georgia runoff election took place, on January 5th of 2021. And in that 2 month interim period between the 2 elections, an organization called True the Vote was working to clean up the voter rolls in the state of Georgia. Specifically, during this window of time:
“True the Vote, its founder Catherine Engelbrecht, and several others had raised questions about whether 364,000 Georgia voters were improperly registered because their voter registrations conflicted with their mailing addresses.” Essentially, they were comparing the data that they had, with the data that was on the official voter rolls in the state, and they found discrepancies in the form of people not living in the state, or the county, where they were registered to vote. Now, as a practical matter, their efforts in this particular election did not really bear much fruit. The voter roll challenges didn’t really go anywhere, and in the end, the 2 Democrat candidates wound up winning the Senate runoff elections. However, this is where the story took on a new twist. Watch the video: 🇺🇸 Epoch Times 25¢ Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale Exclusive video on EpochTV: Jack Smith Demands Twitter Info on All Americans Who Interacted With Trump | Facts Matter According to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released earlier this week, Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted President Trump’s tweets leading up to January 6th. Twitter ultimately complied. This means that if you interacted with President Trump’s Twitter account before he got kicked off — well, your name is literally on a list. Watch the exclusive video 👉 https://bit.ly/3TaF5wp

“My whole career was in the balance over this badly-phrased tweet, the substance of which something like 76 percent of Americans agree with.” In early 2022, Ilya Shapiro was about to start a new job as the executive director of the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University, when he was suspended for a “racist tweet.” “This is not the Berkeley hippies. In fact, the Berkeley hippies—now boomer professors—are afraid of this illiberal radical left that seems to want to cancel, if not kill them, for having divergent views,” says Mr. Shapiro. We discuss the limits of free speech, when it veers into misconduct or harassment, and how to balance the 1st amendment with Title VI and other civil rights laws—especially on college campuses. “A lot of what’s been going on in the last couple of months is not even speech to begin with. You do not escape criminal liability for, say, public urination on a building, just because you’re saying, ‘I’m being expressive in showing my displeasure for the organization that inhabits that building,’ or tearing down posters off private property because ‘I’m expressing my disdain for what those posters are saying.’ No,” says Mr. Shapiro. He argues that it is not the laws—not criminal, civil, federal, or state—nor is it the university policies at most places that are to blame for what we’re seeing today. Rather, it is their uneven enforcement. Watch the clip: “MIT famously, even after admitting that some students violated their rules on blocking access to buildings, then said, ‘Oh, we’re not going to punish those students, because a lot of them are foreign and they’re here on student visas.’ And it turns out, if you punish them for these kinds of violations, they lose their visas and they have to leave the country. And so, in effect, MIT has created a system where foreign students can harass and intimidate, but American students can’t,” says Mr. Shapiro. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (1 hour) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0106IlyaShapiro FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Ilya Shapiro, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Ilya Shapiro: Good to be with you. Looking forward to the conversation. Mr. Jekielek: Not too long ago, in 2022, you were pretty well-known and well-regarded, specializing in constitutional law. Then you tweeted something that wasn’t very popular. Please tell us what happened. Mr. Shapiro: I was at the very end of my tenure at the Cato Institute libertarian think tank here in Washington. I had this opportunity to have an impact in a different way, as a constitutional scholar, as a public commentator, and as a teacher, to move to Georgetown University and be the executive director of their Center for the Constitution. A few days before I was due to start that job, early in 2022, the news of Justice Breyer’s retirement broke, and I was doing a lot of media on that. I had written a book on the politics of judicial nominations and Supreme Court confirmation battles, so it was very timely. Whenever something like this happens, I’m in demand in the media. After a day of doing this, I was getting more and more upset at President Biden for sticking with his pledge during the campaign that he would nominate a black woman, that is, he would restrict his pool of candidates by race and sex. I was in Austin, Texas, and it was late at night in my hotel room. It’s not the best practice to be doom scrolling Twitter and firing something off late at night. I said, “If I were a Democratic president, I would pick the chief judge of the DC circuit. It’s the second most prestigious court in the country, and his name is Sri Srinivasan. He happens to be Indian American, an immigrant, and has a lot of diversity points as well.” But I said that due to the latest hierarchy of intersectionality, he wasn’t being considered and we would end up with a ”lesser black woman.” That wasn’t well phrased. I simply meant that if I considered Judge Srinivasan to be the best, then everyone else in the universe was less qualified, including the black woman that President Biden would eventually choose. Then I went to bed. All heck broke loose on Twitter overnight, and the next morning it was a firestorm. I might have been fired. It was very close whether Georgetown would rescind my offer even right then. Ultimately, what happened after these four days of hell was very unnerving. My whole career was in the balance over this badly phrased tweet, the substance of which something like 76 percent of Americans agreed with, that the President should consider all possible candidates. After these four days of hell, Dean Will Treanor of Georgetown decided that I would be onboarded, but that I would be immediately suspended with pay, pending investigation into whether I had violated the university’s harassment and anti-discrimination policies. It became clear rather quickly that the so-called investigation was a sham. It took four months to investigate a tweet, even though the university had clear protections on paper for freedom of speech. Mr. Jekielek: I just happen to have something here that Will Treanor said. He said, “The university does have a free speech and expression policy that binds us, but since we’re a private institution, the First Amendment doesn’t apply to us.” That means the university’s guideline is not the First Amendment. What do you think about that? Mr. Shapiro: That’s correct. Private universities are not bound by the protections of the First Amendment, including the ones that have been in the news lately with the disastrous testimony by the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn. Actually, it’s the former president of UPenn, because she has already resigned. These so-called elite schools do have broadly protective free speech policies that are essentially the same as the First Amendment. I’m very familiar with Georgetown’s policy, of course. It says that the mere fact that someone is uncomfortable or objects to something that someone says does not make it unprotected. There is a harassment policy, but the law and school or employer policies define harassment as targeting someone and making it hard for them to work. I’m sure we'll get into this with our discussion of antisemitism on campus. But Georgetown ended up clearing me after four months of this sham investigation. Dean Treanor cleared me on the technicality that I wasn’t yet an employee when I posted my tweet. But this took some high-powered lawyers. The same firm that prepared the university presidents for their testimony, WilmerHale, a very expensive, prestigious DC law firm, was Georgetown’s advisor in my investigation. It took some junior associate four months to look at a calendar and see that I was an employee. I finally got this report from the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action that was investigating me. They made it clear that had I been an employee, then I would have been subject to discipline, because I was creating a hostile educational environment. Indeed, the standard that they were applying was that if any faculty and staff say anything that someone even claims offense to, then that puts you in this Kafkaesque inquisition. I decided that I could not work like that. I couldn’t do the job that I was hired to do, which was partly public facing, and partly teaching students about controversial Supreme Court cases. I would have a Damocles sword over my head, so I came to the realization that I had to quit. As one does, I wrote up a resignation letter that was published in the Wall Street Journal and away we went. The next day I announced my move to the Manhattan Institute, where I am to this day. I announced this on the Tucker Carlson show on Fox News. It was four days of hell, or four months of purgatory, if you will. Then I was finally in control of the media narrative that exposes the rot in academia, which we’ve seen a lot more of these last couple of months. Mr. Jekielek: Why do you characterize the investigation as a sham? Mr. Shapiro: This is a law school, one of the supposedly most elite, most prestigious law schools in the country. When they investigate whether I have violated the harassment or discrimination policies, it doesn’t take a long time to apply these short policies to the facts, which are even shorter, being a couple of tweets, and come up with a conclusion. Here the conclusion seemed rather obvious—I had said something that some people didn’t like. I wasn’t targeting anyone or any decision based on race or sex. In fact, I was criticizing President Biden’s decision based on race or sex. Regardless, it should not have taken long to assign it to the most junior faculty member to come up with a conclusion. But clearly, they didn’t want to make a decision until the students were off campus. I had a couple of interactions with the dean over Zoom, because this was still during the Covid days and we couldn’t meet in person without wearing masks and all of that nonsense. He was like a deer in headlights and just did not want to make a decision one way or another. He didn’t like that I had put him in this position where he had to demonstrate leadership. Ultimately, I think he failed. These college leaders, most of them are not woke radicals, social justice warriors, or anti-free speech per se. They are spineless cowards. They are career bureaucrats following the incentives who have learned how to climb the greasy pole to rise within academic bureaucracy. That means they have to mollify and placate the activists on the Left who are very loud and also these bureaucracies that have sprung up that are often the tail wagging the dog. We no longer have faculty governance, but governance by these bureaucratic structures. In the last 5 to 10 years it has been the diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] structures which inculcate an illiberal ideology that is at cross purposes with the classical liberal mission of institutions of higher education. That mission is seeking open inquiry, looking for truth, and building human knowledge, aided by the values of free speech, academic freedom, due process, and treating everyone equally. These values are an anathema to the postmodern theories that these bureaucracies seek to instill. Mr. Jekielek: You talked about the three Ivy League presidents that created a firestorm recently. You don’t hold them in high esteem, but let’s look at this through the lens of a constitutional scholar and a free speech expert. Why is what they said problematic? Mr. Shapiro: They approached this hearing like a deposition, as if they were involved in a lawsuit and their lawyers were telling them, “Talk a lot without saying much. Don’t admit liability.” It was a very dry, bloodless presentation. They were asked if it is okay to call for genocide. They said that it depends on the context. Actually, if you were giving a sophisticated, nuanced, legal answer, it does depend on the context. There is something to that, but this was a public hearing for public consumption. It was a moral exercise. But it was a political exercise to not answer that question. They just said, “Of course, any institution of higher education condemns a call for genocide against any group. That is antithetical to our mission.” First of all, free speech is protected. There is no calling for genocide exception in the First Amendment and in our broad free speech policies that track First Amendment protections. The problem was they couldn’t say that, because they had not enforced freedom of speech at their schools. Countless professors have been investigated and disciplined. Students have been expelled for much lesser offenses than calling for genocide, like using the wrong pronoun, triggering someone in some way, or saying something that is politically incorrect. Surveys of elite schools or more broadly across the country show that students and faculty are apprehensive. They feel like they are walking on eggshells. They can’t express themselves. They can’t even discuss certain subjects, regardless of what viewpoint they might have, because they’re going to be canceled by their institution or by an investigation. It could be HR or the diversity office saying that certain values are more important than free speech. Let’s go back to the president’s presentation, saying we have broad speech protections. But as we’ve seen in the last couple of months, sometimes these rallies or demonstrations or anti-Israel chants become harassment or vandalism or assault. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: At MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no? Dr. Sally Kornbluth: If a targeted individual is not making public statements. Congresswoman Stefanik: Yes or no? Calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment? Dr. Kornbluth: I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus. Congresswoman Stefanik: But you’ve heard the chants for intifada. Dr. Kornbluth: I’ve heard chants which can be antisemitic, depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people. Congresswoman Stefanik: Those would not be according to MIT’s code of conduct or rules? Dr. Kornbluth: That would be investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe. Congresswoman Stefanik: Ms. Magill, at UPenn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate UPenn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no? Dr. Liz Magill: If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes. Congresswoman Stefanik: I am asking specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment? Dr. Magill: If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment. Congresswoman Stefanik: So, the answer is yes. Dr. Magill: It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman. Congresswoman Stefanik: It’s a context-dependent decision. That’s your testimony today? Calling for the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context? That is not bullying or harassment? This is the easiest question to answer, yes, Ms. Magill. Is your testimony that you will not answer yes? Dr. Magill: If the speech becomes- Congresswoman Stefanik: Yes or no. Dr. Magill: If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment, yes. Congresswoman Stefanik: Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide. The speech is not harassment. This is unacceptable, Ms. Magill, I’m going to give you one more opportunity for the world to see your answer. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment? Yes or no? Dr. Magill: It can be harassment. Congresswoman Stefanik: The answer is yes. Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no? Dr. Claudine Gay: It can be, depending on the context. Congresswoman Stefanik: What’s the context? Dr. Gay: Targeted as an individual, targeted at an individual. Congresswoman Stefanik: It’s targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of antisemitism? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no? Dr. Gay: Antisemitic rhetoric- Congresswoman Stefanik: And is it antisemitic rhetoric- Dr. Gay: Antisemitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, and intimidation is actionable conduct and we do take action. Congresswoman Stefanik: So, the answer is yes. Calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct? Dr. Gay: Again, it depends on the context. Congresswoman Stefanik: It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board. Mr. Shapiro: These things are not protected. They said that this violates our code of conduct and we’re going to investigate and punish those kinds of instances. That’s true. A lot of what’s been going on in the last couple of months is not even speech to begin with. You do not escape criminal liability for public urination on a building. Just because you’re saying, “I’m being expressive in showing my displeasure for the organization that inhabits that building or tearing down posters off private property because I’m expressing my disdain for what those posters are saying.” No, whatever your purpose is, you’re engaged in conduct that can be punished. The second category is exceptions to First Amendment protection. If I make a direct threat against someone, and if they are objectively in fear of physical harm, you can be arrested and prosecuted for that. There was a student at Cornell a month ago that posted a bunch of vile things, not just saying vile things, not just from the river to the sea or intifada or hurt all the Jews, not even something general like that, but specifically talking about making threats and he was properly arrested. It could be incitement of violence. That’s a high bar. There was some discussion of this over whether President Trump incited violence on January 6th. There has been some familiarity with the very high standard that the Supreme Court has put in place, namely that there has to be a call for imminent and direct violence that is closely tied to the speech. Just generally saying, “This is why we should have genocide of the Jews,” is not enough to be incitement of violence. It might be harassment if it’s outside of the Jewish Life Center, the Hillel Center. or a dorm where Israeli students are living. Stalking and intimidation might violate either school rules or the criminal law, but just saying something like that in a public square at a rally is not enough to be incitement. If the speaker says, “Kill all the Jews. Starting right now, any Jew you see on campus, punch them in the face,” that could be incitement of violence. Those are some exceptions. Again, it takes a while to explain all this. If the Ivy League presidents really wanted to be technocratic and legalistic, they would need to say all of that. But they try to fudge and say, “Well, it depends,” which is not a good PR maneuver for a congressional hearing. The third thing that is very important for your viewers to understand is time, place, and manner regulations. That is even for something that’s clearly protected like a political opinion, you can’t say that whenever, wherever, and however you want. I can’t go to your neighborhood in the middle of the night with a megaphone and start yelling what I think about Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Mr. Jekielek: There are noise ordinances. Mr. Shapiro: That’s right. On university campuses, there are rules about not disrupting classes. If a student organization has reserved a room to have a speaker, you can’t shout down that speaker. If they have reserved a space to have a rally, you can’t have your counter rally and try to disrupt them. Again, these time, place, and manner regulations are perfectly appropriate. Just like the people now being arrested for blocking streets and interstates. They may think they have an expressive purpose, but you can apply this time, place, and manner regulation, saying that you can’t impede the right of way. Those are the general things to think about as we observe what’s happening on campuses. Mr. Jekielek: Herbert Marcuse had his vision of repressive tolerance, that essentially everything should be tolerated from certain groups of people. But nothing should be tolerated from the others, the bad people and the conservatives. In fact, we can persecute certain groups, because we have deemed them to be bad. Mr. Shapiro: That’s right, this is situational ethics or the ends justify the means. That’s a huge reason why DEI is so problematic, because DEI is not civil rights law. Traditional civil rights law states that you can’t discriminate based on race and sex and other protected categories. That was there when I was in college in law school 25 years ago. There’s nothing wrong with that, and you can apply that. We don’t need whole new bureaucracies to impose it. In fact, there are all of these calls to abolish DEI, which I have been a part of. In January, Chris Rufo, my colleague at the Manhattan Institute and I proposed model legislation that’s been taken up by a number of states. Most recently, the Governor of Oklahoma signed an executive order defunding DEI bureaucracies at Oklahoma Public Universities. That’s all good, but that doesn’t touch the lawyers who are enforcing federal and state civil rights law. This is not about that. This is about an ideological structure that views everything through the lens of identity, whether it is race, sexual orientation, or gender. Everyone needs to be evaluated based on their level of privilege, whether they are part of the oppressor or the oppressed class, and where they are in the overall intersectional hierarchy. They believe that some speech is more valuable than others. Also, some speakers can be shouted down because they come from a position of privilege and they’re from the oppressor class. This all comes from critical theory born in the 30s and 40s in Austria and Germany, ironically, from those fleeing the Nazis and coming to America. They imposed a different kind of illiberal ideology, which started out in sociology departments and philosophy departments. In the 70s and 80s, there was a bit of a flare up of various critical theories, with the Crits and even in law schools. By the time I was in law school 20 years ago, it had flamed out, but now it’s back with a vengeance. Mr. Jekielek: Perhaps this is why you have been described as an embodiment of white supremacy. Mr. Shapiro: Yes. Under this rubric, everyone who is for classical liberal values is for white supremacy. There was a glossary of terms that came out of Stanford maybe six months ago which are indicia of white supremacy, because they support current structures. These critical postmodern theories say that all current structures are illegitimate. They need to be burnt down and reestablished based on these oppression Olympics and intersectional hierarchies. Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned that you decided to quit. Do you feel like you were canceled? Mr. Shapiro: I feel like I canceled them, but they had tried to cancel me. Mr. Jekielek: What does being canceled actually mean? Mr. Shapiro: Here is a good approximation. Nicholas Christakis is a Yale professor who was canceled from being the master of one of the residential colleges. Master is another word that is not allowed, because it harkens back to slavery. There are some places where you do field research. The word field is not allowed, because that harkens back to slavery. Actually, it is not only slaves who work in the field. There is a bizarre denial of basic, objective truths and the meaning of words. Nick Christakis, who famously was yelled at and pushed away from heading up this college, has a very pithy definition of cancel culture which says, “Disproportionate punishment for something you said that is clearly within the Overton window—the mainstream, socially acceptable range of views.” People celebrating Hamas, celebrating the atrocities and barbarities and baby killing and gang rape that Hamas perpetrated on October 7th, and then having their jobs rescinded, maybe that’s meritorious, because it would be hard for people like that to function normally in a big business or in a law firm. Mr. Jekielek: You wouldn’t want to entrust the development of our young people to folks who are supporting that. Mr. Shapiro: Sure, you can characterize it in different ways. For example, at Stanford earlier this year, students shouted at a federal judge, “We hope your daughters get raped.” It’s not improper cancel culture for a law firm to not hire a student who was involved in that. But anyway, that’s a rough approximation of cancel culture. I was expressing a view against racial and gender preferences for the selection of high public officials. Again, it’s a view that is supported by a vast majority of American people, according to that rabid Right-wing outlet, ABC News. It was 76 percent of the American people. It’s not just the Ted Cruz’s of the world that were supporting my position. Most Americans think this way. I could have expressed it better and it was a failure of communication. When you’re tweeting, you don’t necessarily think about it as much as you do when you’re writing an op-ed, or even speaking in a conversation like this one, even though it’s spontaneous and not scripted. Therefore, I was investigated. The process is the punishment in many of these circumstances. The first few days were the worst because I asked myself, “Have I thrown away my entire career?” I was changing jobs. It was a vulnerable position. I have four little kids. It was tough. But then it quickly became farcical. Again, I had been speaking about the Supreme Court. My counsel said, “Don’t criticize Georgetown because that’s an ongoing situation, but otherwise you’re free to do your normal job.” I was reinstated, so I wasn’t canceled in that respect, but then I canceled Georgetown. I said, “I can not work under the conditions that you have now created. You’ve changed the terms of the job and I’m not going to work like that.” I am using this platform that I’ve been given. I’ve always been for free speech and the First Amendment and I’ve been a constitutional scholar. I filed briefs to the Supreme Court on these types of issues, but I did not have nearly as much of a focus on either free speech or higher education policy as I do now. I’ve pivoted and I’ve used the platform I was given and this unexpected opportunity to take my career in a different direction. It doesn’t justify what happened, but you try to make lemonade when you get lemons. Mr. Jekielek: The UPenn president was pressured to resign after her performance at that hearing. How does that fit with this cancellation concept that we’re talking about? Mr. Shapiro: If you fail at your job, there can be consequences for that. You can fail at your job by poor public speaking. In a sense, there are consequences or punishment for speaking poorly. But it’s not the same thing as having an offer of admission to Harvard rescinded because somebody unearths some Instagram post of yours from when you were 12-years-old. People have gone down for far lesser crimes than the Harvard president’s performance, let alone her plagiarism. But Liz Magill, the erstwhile Penn president, like all of them, put on a poor performance. She’s not a good leader. They did not have their institutions come out looking well. If anything, it further lowered public confidence in what are supposed to be three of the leading higher education institutions in the country. A lot of the role of the university president is PR. A lot of it is preserving the brand, enhancing the brand, attracting prestige, and attracting donors. Mr. Jekielek: We are entrusting our young people to these institutions. One would hope that they don’t have this weird equivalency around issues as extreme as genocide. Mr. Shapiro: Also, it’s rank hypocrisy. Imagine this happening to any other minority group other than Jews. Imagine this hypothetical situation. Just imagine if Elise Stefanik had asked about people chanting, “Lynch all the blacks. Kill all the Arabs,” of course, that would not have been allowed. The answers would have been much different. Hypocrisy is not necessarily a crime, but it certainly makes you look bad. It’s a failure of leadership in that sense. By the way, there are pending lawsuits, including against these institutions, for failing to preserve a safe and equal access to educational opportunities in an educational environment under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. All of these schools receive research grants and student loans and they’re liable for various things. Non-discrimination policy is one, and creating a healthy educational environment is another. If it can be shown from the perspective of speech policies that other minority groups are treated differently than Jews, then that shows that Jews are disfavored, so there’s a lot going on there. The reason Liz Magill is now gone, and the other two are just hanging on, is because she had undergone criticism for her response to October 7th in the first place. There was an antisemitic literary festival where she botched the PR and other various things. This was just the latest incident. She was pushed out after some donors closed their wallets. We'll see. The others are still moving targets. MIT famously admitted that some students violated the rules by blocking access to buildings. Then they said, “We’re not going to punish those students, because a lot of them are foreign and they’re here on student visas.” It turns out if you punish them for these kinds of violations, then they lose their visas and they have to leave the country. In effect, MIT has created a system where foreign students can harass and intimidate, but American students can’t. There are a lot of weird things going on with the uneven enforcement of what otherwise are pretty good rules and policies at all of these places. Jan, it’s not the criminal laws or the civil laws or university policies at most places that are to blame for what we’re seeing. It’s their uneven enforcement or non-enforcement. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s go back to free speech because you explored what is protected and what is not. Where does this intersection of speech and conduct happen? Harassment is an area that might not be obvious. People will say, “I’m protected through free speech,” but actually what’s happening is conduct. Let’s start with harassment. When does something become conduct and not speech? Mr. Shapiro: There has to be targeting of particular individuals, and there has to be something that’s severe and pervasive. One catcall down the street probably is not going to be sufficient. But if people are following around a student or a group of students and yelling things at them and disturbing their ability to go about their lives or their education, that’s harassment. On Harvard Yard, a bunch of students crowded around a student carrying an Israeli flag and were menacing to them. There’s a state crime as well as a tort called menacing, where you’re intimidating someone with your physical presence and looking like you’re about to strike them. For that matter, to commit the tort of assault you don’t have to physically touch someone. It’s reasonable apprehension of an imminent threat. It doesn’t matter what your motive is, whether you have an expressive motive or not, whether it’s based on hate, or whether it’s based on anything else. But there are rules against vandalism, assault, harassment, intimidation, menacing, all of these different physical actions that are crimes or torts, meaning civil wrongs that you can be sued for, regardless of any expressive content in them. Mr. Jekielek: There is a slogan, “Globalize the intifada.” Some officials have said, “That’s not necessarily a call to violence.” Mr. Shapiro: The intifada are several campaigns that were initiated by Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization that involved suicide bombers on buses and cafes and pizzerias and daycares. It was extremely violent. Specifically, in the Palestinian context, intifada is armed violent resistance. Someone might be ignorant and not know about that, but the objective understanding is calling for violence. Mr. Jekielek: That’s one statement, “Globalize the intifada.” Another one is, “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” the implication being to wipe out the state of Israel. Mr. Shapiro: Yes, let’s be clear on that. In surveys, a lot of students who are chanting this apparently don’t know what it means. They don’t even know what river and what sea they are talking about. It’s from the Jordan River, which is the boundary between Israel and the country of Jordan, to the Mediterranean Sea. If you wipe that out from the river to the sea, that’s going to become all Palestine, which means you get rid of Israel and get rid of the Jews. It’s an eliminationist slogan. Again, many students might not know this. The objective truth of what that really means, and what they chant in Arabic is, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.” For rhyming purposes in English they say, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” But the objective meaning is to get rid of Israel and to get rid of the Jews. Mr. Jekielek: But both of those are protected speech. Mr. Shapiro: They are protected, except in certain contexts. Here Liz Magill was correct in saying that in a certain context that loses its protection, like if you’re having those chants in front of a Hanukkah service, or if you’re having those chants outside of synagogue or a Hillel group, because they are obviously threats of violence that are targeting people. It doesn’t rise to the level of incitement of violence, unless when those people leave that synagogue you make sure to hit them. But it can be harassment or intimidation. Someone may have lots of different things in mind. At Yale, they famously redefine words so that they mean the opposite of what they actually mean. But you can’t play these semantic games in the law. Sometimes it might be a jury question, but courts can take notice of the objective meaning of certain words. The Supreme Court decides the meaning of interstate commerce under the Constitution to define the scope of federal power. I suppose you could have a mini-trial in a district court over what the true meaning of all this stuff is. I’ve done some research into this, and when you look into what it means, regardless of what any one person might subjectively mean, the general public meaning of these terms is violently eliminationist. Mr. Jekielek: There is a young woman, a Hong Konger, who is in DC. Yesterday, the Hong Kong government announced a $1 million Hong Kong dollar bounty on her head for anti-government speech and organizing. She said there was a student on her campus that actually issued a death threat towards her. From what she could tell, there really were no repercussions, and the student graduated. Presumably, there’s a school policy that applies here, because I don’t think death threats are protected. Mr. Shapiro: That’s right. Mr. Jekielek: Is that an effort to be a true credible threat? Mr. Shapiro: I don’t know the facts of this specific case, but it’s a certain legal bar. This happens with people who threaten the lives of public officials from time to time, and then they get visited by the FBI and often arrested. About a month ago, this Cornell student who was issuing threats got arrested, because the threats were seen as credible. This question has gone to the Supreme Court, “Do you actually have to have in your mind the idea that you’re going to kill someone?” If that person objectively and reasonably fears that, based on what you said, and that you’re a threat to them, then that’s a true threat. Mr. Jekielek: In other words, if I say to someone, “I’m going to kill you.” In this case, there’s the weight of a regime known to be committing genocide behind it. That adds a bit of weight, or does it? Mr. Shapiro: I think it does. Again, it depends on the context. Let’s say that Hong Kong student had posted, “I was wavering about this, but now that there’s a reward for going after this person, I’m definitely going to go get her.” This is a matter of criminal law, not just school policy. Making credible death threats is illegal. It’s a crime. There is another example of what incitement of violence might be, or an exception to the protections. Back in October, 2023, there was a protest in Los Angeles, and they were chanting, “From the river to the sea,” and all these slogans. A gentleman with an Israeli flag was struck and killed. I think it was a community college professor who struck him with a megaphone, and that man fell and hit his head again and ended up dying. There is no video of the chanting, but it could well be that some of that speech was inciting that kind of violence. Mr. Jekielek: How can someone possibly know what will happen after they chant violent slogans? The protections are pretty strong. You have to be saying, “Go after that person right now,” if I understand this correctly. Mr. Shapiro: We don’t know specifically what was chanted. If there’s a witness who says, “The folks who were around this guy who used the megaphone to hit the man were saying, ‘Let’s go after anybody with an Israeli flag,’” that would be enough at that point. Mr. Jekielek: Then there would be other people who are complicit, not just the guy doing the hitting. Mr. Shapiro: Potentially, that’s correct. Mr. Jekielek: There is a group that has gotten some press called The Students for Justice in Palestine. They put out this resistance toolkit. Are you familiar with it? Mr. Shapiro: This goes to some slightly different issues. We were dealing with individuals. What speech is protected? What is conduct? What can be regulated? Then we talked about the duties of schools and their policies like Title VI and what they have to enforce. But this raises another issue. What about the rights of organizations to exist and to engage in expressive activity? A number of schools, like Columbia and Brandeis and a few others have deregistered their local chapters of the Students for Justice in Palestine, saying that this group foments activity that is against our policies. Florida went even further. The chairman of their board of governors announced the disestablishment and the defunding of SJP chapters at all public institutions in Florida. That was temporarily paused based on concerns about how the order was organized, and whether there would be liability for individual faculty members or staff. There’s some fact finding now going on about certain things. The key thing with that group with respect to public institutions is that there are both federal and state laws against material support for terrorism. What does that mean? The Supreme Court has interpreted it to mean something more than just engaging in violence. It can even be advice, and it can be public relations. The key is that there has to be some sort of coordination or cooperation. There has to be a close enough tie between the National Students for Justice in Palestine organization with Hamas or some other recognized terrorist organization, and that they’re also coordinating with the local chapters. That would be reason enough to disestablish the chapters. This doesn’t mean that the students who are members of SJP would then be arrested or punished or expelled. That’s a different question, and that goes to what each individual student might be doing. But in terms of disestablishing or removing public funding for organizations like that, the material support for terrorism aspect has been playing a large role. Mr. Jekielek: What about this resistance toolkit? Are you familiar with it? Mr. Shapiro: Yes. It had what things to chant, and it even had branding materials like the hand glider logos that started appearing on all these rallies, harkening back to the Hamas fighters who paraglided in over the fences to murder the kids who were partying in that rave in the south desert, so there is coordination. It’s quite clear that there’s coordination between the national organization and these local chapters. The question is, what exactly is their tie to Hamas or Islamic Jihad or some other recognized terrorist organization? Mr. Jekielek: You’re saying as long as the tie isn’t clear, it’s just discretionary. Mr. Shapiro: The Attorney General of Virginia is investigating the ties between various charities that allegedly have connections to Hamas or related organizations. The general counsel of any university or of the public university system of a state will have to make a judgment call as to whether this is a problem. As they conduct their investigation, SJP might file a lawsuit saying, “What is this? We want our rights back. We want our funding back.” Then it gets litigated in court, and then there’s discovery, meaning you get the information and the court evaluates it. Now, there have not been lawsuits by SJP against either the private schools or the state of Florida, which might indicate either there’s something to this material support allegation, or there’s other stuff that would have come out in discovery that they don’t want to see the light of day. Mr. Jekielek: October 7th and what happened subsequently out here in the U.S. and all over the world, provides this fascinating foil to explore all of these issues. Mr. Shapiro: I’m sure there are going to be classes taught about this period from multiple perspectives. On campus, it’s really led to the scales falling from a lot of people’s eyes. Bill Ackman, who’s a billionaire investor, has become the biggest thorn in the side of the Harvard Corporation, the board that oversees the president and everybody else at Harvard. He was also attacking Liz Magill and has become very active on Twitter now. He led the charge of CEOs who said that they wouldn’t hire anyone who signed the Harvard letter that blamed Israel for the attack on Israel. We’re seeing a lot of external stakeholders; donors, alumni, employers, state legislators, attorney generals, and others that are all of a sudden paying attention, not just conservatives. This is the point. These are middle of the road people who otherwise might have thought, “These complaints from the Right about DEI offices or free speech don’t concern us.” But now they’re seeing, through these extreme, unfortunate circumstances, that this is crushing to the continuation of our institutions of higher education, the spirit of free inquiry, and people becoming educated. There Is the bureaucratic part that we’ve referenced. There’s also this decolonialism, oppressor/oppressed stuff that’s being disproportionately taught in multiple academic departments. That is really poisoning the minds of students. Of course, these students eventually enter the real world. It’s not like the stuff magically goes away once they have that diploma in hand. Mr. Jekielek: Do you feel like this is an inflection point? Mr. Shapiro: It could be. We can’t really tell because we’re in the eye of the storm. We don’t know what’s going to happen five years from now. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the new year. The semester has ended as we record this. The students don’t return to campus until the new year, so there’s going to be a bit of a break. We'll see what the latest developments are in the war in Israel for that matter. There’s a fascinating juxtaposition or correlation between geopolitics and campus governance really, as well as what’s going on in Congress. It’s just affected so much of our daily public and private lives these last two months. Mr. Jekielek: It also seems to be one of the first significant fissures in the Left. Mr. Shapiro: The broad middle, what people who spend all their time online call the normies, the normal people who aren’t talking politics all the time, who aren’t paying attention to what this or that celebrity tweeted, are starting to pay attention, and they’re saying this is not right. There’s something palpably different from the decades-old conservative complaint, “The liberals have taken over the faculty lounge.” This is not the Berkeley hippies. In fact, the Berkeley hippies, now boomer professors, are afraid of this illiberal radical Left that seems to want to cancel, if not kill them for having divergent views. Mr. Jekielek: You just mentioned that Oklahoma is defunding DEI in public institutions. There are many initiatives like this. Mr. Shapiro: There are initiatives in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and South Dakota, and there are a couple other executive orders. In next year’s state legislative sessions, more will be taken up. There are multiple things here. Steve Pinker, a Harvard professor, a very interesting guy, wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe recently that talks about disempowering DEI structures. He’s a little softer than abolishing DEI, which is what I would propose. But he talks about disempowered DEI structures. If someone’s actually wanting to make people feel more welcome and included, that’s great. The problem is these DEI offices mostly seem to be concerned about the decrease in student comfort or their feeling of belonging on campus, which is remarkable. They should strengthen free speech, actually enforce the free speech protections, and get rid of discrimination by viewpoint in hiring and admissions. This goes to diversity statements. This goes to faculty, who after all, hire their future colleagues. The members of the sociology department hire the next members of the sociology department, so get rid of this discrimination based on ideology and make it just based on merit. There’s a couple more things that I’m leaving out, but I commend that op-ed by Steve Pinker. Fundamentally, it’s about changing the culture. The presidents, deans, and department chairs have all the tools they need to do it. They are quite good at instilling whatever virtues or cultures that they want, whether that be public service, whether that be inclusion, whether that be entrepreneurship, or giving back to the community. They need to reinstill these classical values of open inquiry, freedom of speech, academic freedom, the idea that education is supposed to make you feel a little uncomfortable and challenge your views. If all you’re ever taught or told in college is things that you already know and are comfortable with, then what’s the point of doing four years of that? Hanna Holborn Gray, who’s a former president of the University of Chicago, is one of the exceptions that proves this rule. Now, it’s not perfect at UChicago, which is where I went to law school. But they really are the gold standard for free speech policies, institutional neutrality, so that universities aren’t constantly taking positions on political controversies, and not having ideological screens for hiring. They published these policies in 3 reports called the Chicago Trifecta; the Chicago Principles on free speech, the Kalven Report on institutional neutrality, and the Shils Report on merit-based hiring. President Hanna Holborn Gray said, “The purpose of education is to take you out of your comfort zone and make you feel uncomfortable.” That is how you grow. It is a measure of learning when you feel, “I don’t have this concept yet. I’m not sure whether I agree with that. I’ve never heard that before. Let me evaluate that. Let me apply these critical thinking skills that I’ve been taught to this new problem.” That is what education and learning is. It’s not saying that this idea offends me so much or threatens my existence as a person. This is part of the problem we’ve brought in with these cognitive behavioral therapy ideas of safety-ism. That is not the way that we engage in open inquiry. That’s not the way that we discuss things. It’s shutting the door to learning. Again, university officials have to counteract that. They have to put in a culture of open inquiry and the freedom to say something that someone else might not like. Mr. Jekielek: There’s a whole generation of young people who have been deeply schooled in this kind of ideology. It doesn’t affect everyone equally because it’s an anti-real ideology, and some people are not going to go along with it. But nonetheless, back during the pandemic, there was that letter from 2000 health professionals which said that racism is an such an issue, it is actually a more important thing than this virus. You would think that these kinds of things couldn’t get into the medical profession. Mr. Shapiro: No. This DEI ideology has its most worrisome exposition in medical schools. It’s not just affirmative action or preferences that allow people that are less qualified than others to get in to take these spots to become doctors. It’s even in the standardized tests to become a doctor, the various certifications you need to become a doctor, or even the grading of classes at these places. Because there’s a supposed impact that is disproportionately on the lower tier of academic achievement, that makes the whole endeavor illegitimate, so we need to change the way we produce our doctors. Certain racial minorities and Asians don’t count in this equation, of course. That’s scary. It’s also scary in law schools, which I’ve been studying. I have a book coming out next year called, Canceling Justice: The Illiberal Takeover of Legal Education. Lawyers are the gatekeepers of our political and legal institutions. The Constitution, as we’ve seen with speech policies on campus, that’s just a parchment barrier. If people don’t understand it, they don’t want to enforce it. It’s not a self-enforcing mechanism. If our future lawyers don’t believe that there is objective truth or believe in the adversarial system where everyone gets a proper defense and you’re innocent before you’re proven guilty and you get due process, if they don’t believe in that, then we’ve lost America. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about the word systemic. You hear this phrase a lot, “This appears to be a systemic problem.” Mr. Shapiro: Here’s the thing, I’m preternaturally optimistic. I’m not sure about higher education. I’m less pessimistic than I was a year-and-a-half ago when I left Georgetown. We are now in the eye of this storm, and maybe there is even hope for higher ed. My oldest son is about to turn eight, so we have about 10 years to see the lay of the land. But with America more broadly and society more broadly, I have quite a bit of optimism, like what Justice Brett Kavanaugh said at his confirmation hearing, “I live on the sunrise side of the mountain.” When more average people or even elites that aren’t politically active like the Bill Ackman’s of the world pay attention and they see these pathologies and this rot, all it takes is not acquiescing to it, because it is certainly not a majority view. Even among the youth, there is not majority support for this. We’ve seen it in the pushback to Bud Light. We’ve seen that with Netflix. There was some spat over Dave Chappelle’s trans jokes. Anyway, we’ve seen green shoots in corporate America. With the Israel/Hamas developments, more and more normal, average, nonpolitical people are observing that some of these weird things seem to have escaped from the sociology lab. They are standing up to it rather than just trying to keep their head down and not be canceled, because there’s safety in numbers. If the silent majority, or the non-politically active majority says, “That is nonsense. We’re not going to allow it,” whether it be in our corporations, in our prosecutors’ offices, or in any civic organizations—that’s what it is going to take to stop it. Mr. Jekielek: As we finish up, I want to go back to these university presidents. One has resigned as we discussed, but in the case of President Gay, Harvard seems to have heavily doubled down on keeping her. Mr. Shapiro: It seems that Harvard has said that they’re doing this not for meritorious reasons, but because they don’t want to give a win to Elise Stefanik, the Republican Congresswoman who did the most damaging questioning of the presidents. They also don’t want to give a win to Bill Ackman for his activism, both online and wallet related. We'll see. A lot of people are saying that Claudine Gay, the Harvard President, is just too damaged. There are those of us who criticize academia who would love to see it be completely reformed. There’s utility both in the Magill resignation and in Gay staying on for being that example of everything that’s wrong with higher ed, especially at its most elite levels. Mr. Jekielek: Harvard President Claudine Gay has resigned from her position since the recording of this interview. Mr. Shapiro: There’s one mantra that I took to heart during my saga with Georgetown, and that is the writing of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the dissident Russian critic. He was illiberal himself in many ways. He was Eastern Orthodox and didn’t like the decadence in the West, and he made that kind of critique. But coming out of the Gulag where he had spent some time, his big lesson was, “Live not by lies.” They might put you to death, they might arrest you, and they might discipline you in lots of ways. They, being the oppressors from Right, Left, or wherever, but don’t let the lie prosper through you. Because if people refuse to do that, you can solve the collective action problem. You can have society point out and recognize that the emperor has no clothes, and that’s fundamentally how you have transformative change. Mr. Jekielek: Ilya Shapiro, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Mr. Shapiro: It has been a great discussion. It’s not often you get to spend this much time going in depth, but these are important issues at a pivotal time in our nation’s history, and in Western history. Mr. Jekielek: Thanks for being with us. Thank you all for joining Ilya Shapiro and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (1 hour) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0106IlyaShapiro Epoch Original DVD collection:

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping is openly telling the United States that he will take over Taiwan. This takes place as Taiwan is in the midst of a crucial election, which could see either a pro-America party or pro-CCP party take power. The CCP, meanwhile, is now aggressively trying to interfere in the Taiwanese presidential election, the outcome of which could determine the future of the island nation. In this live Q&A with “Crossroads” host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss this topic and others and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/3NTSO7k Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

“I’m a vegan restaurant owner, an organic farmer—a true environmentalist that cares about the soil, the water, and the air. I employ 350 people. I feel like I should be exactly what California wants … But I literally can’t make payroll,” says Mollie Engelhart. Watch the clip: A chef, entrepreneur, and regenerative farmer, Ms. Engelhart built an incredible farm-to-table business in California that had eleven years of year-over-year growth before the pandemic. But California’s policies ultimately strangled her business, she says. Now, she’s giving it all up to start from scratch in Texas. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (44 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1227MollieEngelhart FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Mollie Engelhart, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Mollie Engelhart: Thank you so much for having me. Mr. Jekielek: Please tell me about your farm. Ms. Engelhart: This is Sow A Heart Farm. This is in a dream taking shape, and an experience in the world. I owned restaurants. I was a chef and I was creating food waste. I realized that food waste was not the best thing, so I wanted to manage my own food waste. I got a farm so that I could keep the food in the loop. It evolved into this beautiful place where we grow food for our restaurants and for our community, and it became this community hub. People come and get their food here. We also use all the compost from the restaurants and turn it back into new food to send back to the restaurants. Mr. Jekielek: Where are we right now? Ms. Engelhart: We’re inside the greenhouse in a windstorm. If you’re hearing wind in the background, you’re not imagining it. Mr. Jekielek: Why the greenhouse? Ms. Engelhart: It’s a beautiful place on the farm and it’s a metaphor for anywhere that you can create shelter and grow something beautiful. This is a place where you create shelter and grow something beautiful. Mr. Jekielek: You’re growing some things in here that you couldn’t grow out there. Ms. Engelhart: Yes, you’re growing food inside. We have bananas, papayas, coffee, strawberries, spinach, broccoli, basil, things that you could grow here and also in New Zealand. Mr. Jekielek: Are you roasting your own coffee here? Ms. Engelhart: No, not yet. We won’t because we’re leaving, but we have a lot of really healthy coffee plants and somebody in the future could roast their own coffee here. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about your journey. We know that you’re heading to Texas to rebuild. Please chart for us the path of how you got here. Ms. Engelhart: I grew up on a small farm in upstate New York. My parents were vegetarians. I came to Los Angeles to go to film school. I worked in the music industry, was a professional poet, and did a lot of different things. Finally, I settled into my love of food and my love of serving people. I love to feed people and I love to serve people. That led me to wanting to get back to the farm and wanting to know where the food that I was serving came from. It was all working really wonderfully for a little while. But now the restaurants are really struggling and the farm needs the restaurants. This kind of farm needs the restaurants to survive. Now, we’re pivoting and shifting and doing things differently. That’s why we’re moving to Texas. Mr. Jekielek: You were riding high before March of 2020 when the pandemic arrived. Ms. Engelhart: We had 11 years of year-after-year growth. We were in a deal with a big firm to sell the business for $31 million and we were doing great. We had four locations and a brewery. We had the farm with this farm-to-table concept. It very much resonated with people to know where the food was coming from, to know that when they were done eating that the scraps were going back to the farm, and to know if they had a beer that the grain from that beer went to feed cows. People liked that. Even the first quarter of 2020 was our best quarter ever in the 11 years leading up to that point. We were on a trajectory to expand to other states and do this on a larger scale, and really bring this kind of service to more communities. Mr. Jekielek: You would think this is exactly what Californians want. Ms. Engelhart: Let’s look it up in Wikipedia and find out what a Californian is. I am a vegan restaurant owner, an organic farmer, and a true environmentalist that cares about the soil, the water, and the air. I employ 350 people. I feel like I should be exactly what California wants. I have a medium-sized business that is doing good in the world, caring about their employees, caring about the environment, and caring about their community. But now it’s impossible, and the pieces no longer fit together here. It used to be that people who worked in my restaurants could live in the same neighborhood, could eat at other restaurants in that neighborhood, and could afford to go on vacation. All of that fit together. Those pieces no longer fit together. The people that work for me can’t afford to live in the neighborhood. The people that live in the neighborhood can barely afford to live in the neighborhood, so they can’t afford to pay much more for food. Over the pandemic period, the costs for food have gone up so much. There’s a top price that people are willing to pay for a burrito or a stack of pancakes, and I'd say it’s $19 or $20. Going above that is having us lose money with each takeout that goes out the door. Those pieces that used to fit so nicely together no longer exist. Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned that prior to the pandemic, there was a huge regulatory burden to make it all work, but you did somehow. Please tell us what happened through the pandemic that changed things. Ms. Engelhart: In some states, they were closed for three weeks up to three months. But we were closed to some degree for two-and-a-half years, but the regulations didn’t stay the same. It wasn’t they said, “Now you can get your bearings. You are just doing takeout,” and for two years you would just do takeout and you get your bearings. It would change every couple of weeks. First, it would be, “We’re only doing takeout.” Then it would be, “We’re going to let people go back to dine-in, but the tables have to be six feet apart. If you put in booze, they could be back-to-back with high backs. Never mind about the booze, we’re going to eight feet apart. Midnight on Friday, there’s going to be no more indoor dining.” It was always that phrase, “Midnight on Friday.” Then you get your whole outdoors done and you do umbrellas and you put up heaters and you do everything and you expand your outdoors and you get a permit from the city to change parking into seating. Then you get the rails and you get plants and you decorate it and try to make it feel like people are not eating in a parking place outside on the street. Then they say, “Midnight on Friday, no more outdoor dining.” We would spend a lot of money trying to pivot and go with what they were asking of us, and I never closed. I kept my employees that wanted to work employed the entire time during the pandemic, but we couldn’t recover from that. It was just endless money, spending on outdoor awnings or trying to fix this or that. We said, “We’re going to do a little store. There’s no groceries. We‘ll bring in produce from the restaurant. We’ll sell toilet paper. We have toilet paper. ” We just kept endlessly trying to give the public what they needed through this time, but the regulations kept changing. Then minimum wage kept going up and all of these other things were very volatile. Takeout boxes went from $30 for 400 up to $150 for $400 within a span of months. Cauliflower was vacillating between $9 a case to $130 a case. It was hard to price anything, and sometimes ingredients would just be gone. Then you couldn’t have these things on the menu and you would have to reprint the menus. We kept thinking it would recover and it would get better. Really, we have retrained the public to eat at home, to go out less, and to order from third parties that take 30 percent. Now, we have a strike in the film industry, and even the best paid people in LA are not having any income, and all the ancillary and support staff don’t have any income. Mr. Jekielek: It’s almost like a perfect storm with the prices going up. People don’t have the money to spend on things, and there are these strikes. Is this specific to California? Ms. Engelhart: I don’t know. I have not been to other places, but I know it’s highly exacerbated here. The workforce is different. The people that are coming into food service graduated high school during the no-school-for-two-years period. They kind of got pushed through. There were practically no expectations of teenagers for two full years, and then they went out into the workforce. That’s a different workforce than we started the pandemic with. People that have been two or three years into the workforce now once spent two or three years at home on benefits. I don’t want this to be misinterpreted. Everybody deserves the best, but we also need hard work to be a fundamental core principle in raising our children. Mr. Jekielek: It should be viewed as a virtue. Ms. Engelhart: Yes, it should be viewed as a virtue. Yes, that changed, so the amount of employees you need to do the same job has shifted. Everybody went through this thing together and it was some kind of trauma. Whether you were afraid of it or you felt it was being foisted upon you, it was a thing that happened. That is in everybody’s psyche in how they’re responding, so customers can also be less forgiving. This has been a perfect storm and we’ve had to close two of our restaurants. People said, “Can you sell your restaurants?” I replied, “There’s nothing there to sell. How can you sell a business that can’t make payroll? There’s nothing there.” I’m not alone, because I was just looking at the liquor license transfers. There are 40 liquor license transfers lined up in front of me before I can sell mine to somebody else. I have never seen that. I’ve bought multiple liquor licenses in my life, and I have never seen 40 liquor licenses lined up like that. Mr. Jekielek: Please remind us of the names of your restaurants. Ms. Engelhart: I own Sage Plant Based Bistro & Brewery. There used to be four of them, but we’re now down to two, plus a cloud kitchen that services the Culver City area where we used to have a brick-and-mortar restaurant. We still have Pasadena and Echo Park and the breweries in the Echo Park location. Mr. Jekielek: Do you think anyone is taking over the type of service you offered? Ms. Engelhart: Not exactly the type of service that I offered. I have gone to some of these webinars for restaurant owners and listened. What is considered sit-down casual is being hit the hardest, because people from the sit-down casual place are going down to the Chipotle’s and the fast casuals. The fast casuals are going down to fast food. The fast food people are not eating out at all as the money is shifting. But the people that eat at fine dining are not coming down to the fast casual places. They’re still eating at fine dining, so there’s nobody to come down into the casual sit-down restaurant. That is the market that is being desecrated the most, and you see it all over Los Angeles. Restaurants all over LA that had been open for 10 years with a line waiting outside are now closing with no notice. Mr. Jekielek: There is also this whole reality of increased homelessness and drug use. Ms. Engelhart: It’s all intertwined. At my Echo Park location, there are whole encampments of homeless people. I believe that we have to find places for people to live. I don’t know if it works to say, “They’re unhoused, so we can’t move them.” I could be delivering to my restaurant and park right behind this encampment on the street outside. I could forget my meter while I’m unloading pizza boxes and whatever else that I’m taking in. Then someone says, “Hey, a customer wants to talk to you,” and I get distracted. I get a $52 ticket, but they are ignoring an entire encampment that’s taking up three parking spaces right in front of my restaurant. Someone just set off the fire sprinklers in my restaurant. Someone else got naked on Mother’s Day inside of the restaurant, screaming at the top of their lungs, and spitting in the face of my manager. We don’t have as much of a late night clientele because people are not as inclined to want to go out late. Obviously, we have to do something. California spends more on homeless resources than any other state and has the most homelessness of any state. But yet, it just gets more intense year after year after year. In my Culver City location that we shut down, the walking through the neighborhood was all blocked off, because all of the underpasses had become permanent encampments that were sanctioned by the city. It’s a shelter that is cool from the heat because of the overpass, and I understand all of that logic. But then I see guests and say, “Oh, my God, I haven’t seen you in so long.” They say, “We would always come get a cocktail and an appetizer when we walked our dog at 8:00 pm, but we no longer walk our dog this side of the freeway.” How many other guests that I didn’t talk to now no longer walk in that area? Of course, the condition of the city impacts the ability to do business. It has been getting progressively harder, and clearly, I haven’t been great at navigating it. Mr. Jekielek: It really does feel like the perfect storm. You were telling me about all the regulations around this farmland here, never mind all the restaurant regulations. Let’s talk about that. Ms. Engelhart: Yes, there are regulations about everything in California, like who can live on your land with you. I can’t have any accessory dwellings or tiny homes. Nobody could live in an RV here, and I can’t build any guest houses. But that’s only one type of regulation. Then there is how tall your compost pile can be. There are rules about almost every single thing. If an avocado falls on the ground, you can no longer sell it. If I’m selling parsley at the farmers market, they can come here and measure it to make sure it’s the same parsley I grow, and that I’m not buying the parsley from somewhere else. Yesterday I got fined $150 because one piece of produce that’s on my list of 300 products that we grow somehow got missed by the inspector. Now, they believe I was selling something that I didn’t grow, so they’re going to come out and inspect and see if I am growing it. Once they do that, it will only be a $150 fine. It would have been a greater fine if I was selling someone else’s produce. It’s just on and on with all these regulations. There are no dairies in this whole county, because the regulations are so difficult. I have been making hot sauce for years in my restaurants in a commercial kitchen with my professional food handlers license. We did not know it was illegal, for sure. We had been selling hot sauce for years at the restaurants, no problem. All of a sudden, we got raided and they embargoed all the hot sauce and sent it to get tested in Berkeley. Then they realized that nothing had botulism or anything else wrong. Still, it was thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hot sauce that had to be destroyed in front of them, like a display of how bad we were, even though they tested it and there was no botulism. They wouldn’t even let me eat it with my own family. It’s just on and on, and every little thing is highly, highly regulated. I am an entrepreneurial spirit, and I have ideas that I want to put into action. In California, say I want to start doing a CSA [Community-Supported Agriculture] box. I need a walk-in cooler. Think about the amount of years it would take me to get a permit for a walk-in cooler. Then finally, I actually put in a walk-in cooler, because we’re going to be selling produce to the community. It’s going to be awesome. Then I’m in trouble with the county because my walk-in cooler is not permitted, and on and on and on. In Texas, I’m free to create something out of nothing. There are regulations that exist around your septic tank and your water wells, and that’s good. I agree with both of those things, water and soil. I do believe in protecting the environment. These other rules that supposedly are to protect us are really inhibiting us from being creative and creating great things in the world. Mr. Jekielek: I would say they are inhibiting human flourishing. Ms. Engelhart: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Whatever government regulation is out there, it should actually be there to foster human flourishing. Ms. Engelhart: Of course, because wherever there is a flourishing community, it’s good for everybody. There are farms that have come into neighborhoods where there was nothing, no gas station, no anything. Take the White Oak Pastures farm in Georgia as an example. They revitalized the whole neighborhood and now the gas station is open. There’s a feed store and the whole community is thriving. If it is a farm with one man on a tractor spraying chemicals for hundreds and hundreds of acres, the local feed store, the local restaurant, and the local gas station cannot flourish. It is really with innovation and creation that the whole community can flourish. But if there is so much regulation that you are stopped every time you try to take a step forward, you can’t create that beauty in the world, and I believe that’s what we are here to do. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about regenerative agriculture, which we have not covered on the show yet. Ms. Engelhart: Regenerative agriculture is agriculture that is fostering the soil first, and the priority is the soil. There are many principles of limited disturbance, no till or low till, and then bringing animals in to do rotational, holistically-planned grazing. Imagine how the buffalo used to come in and eat and pee and poop and stomp, and then they move on to greener pastures. They don’t eat it down to the bare ground. That is what we’re trying to reproduce with regenerative agriculture. It’s not an extractive economy. It’s where we’re leaving more in the soil than we’re taking out. By doing that, you create this ecosystem. Here, we haven’t paid for any fertilizers for almost four years, because I spent some years building great soil and getting that soil and microbial food web together. The microbiology in our gut, which is very integral to our entire health system and our brain function and mental health is all connected. It’s 70 percent the same microbiology in healthy soil as in a healthy gut, which means it is obvious that we were meant to eat directly from the soil. When we eat food that comes in a plastic container that has been sterilized for our health, yes, we’re not getting any of those bad bacterias. But we also are not getting all the good microbiology that our body is dependent on that is replenished by healthy soil. One of the most important parts about regenerative agriculture is really caring for the soil. It’s not like, “Let’s be afraid of climate change.” It’s a foundational way that says, “Healthy soil equals healthy plants equals healthy food.” It’s a logical way. We grow food for our restaurants and we have about 350 subscribers to our CSA. They get a veggie box delivered to their house once a week, once every two weeks, or once a month. We grow food for other restaurants locally, and then we do farmers markets as well. We really try to provide the healthiest food possible to the community and to my family. I want them to have the healthiest food as well. But regenerative agriculture as a whole is looking at how we farm for the future so that we are not looking at Dust Bowl type of conditions where our topsoil can just blow away. It’s very windy here today. You might have noticed that when you’re driving up here that you will see big plumes of dust blowing across the road. You will see much less of that here, because our soil is connected and is mostly all covered by a living root. It’s very simple. The carbon in the atmosphere is just carbohydrates. The plant takes the carbon out of the atmosphere, turns it into carbohydrates on its roots, and feeds it to microbiology in the soil. Then the microbiology in the soil turns it into waste, which is food for plants. Then plants use that in order to make a tomato, a cucumber, a strawberry, or coffee. The more living plants we have, the more we are cycling carbon. There should be no fear conversation about carbon because plants are here to cycle carbon. They are meant to do that. The reason we talk about carbon a lot is because it can sell batteries and solar panels. But we don’t talk much about methane, because there’s nothing to sell by telling people not to put their food waste in the trash. Regenerative farming helps with carbon because it’s cycling and intentionally drawing more carbon down than you’re taking out. But it also helps with methane, because food waste is the greatest maker of methane. But when you compost it into soil, then it becomes sequestered carbon, and it never putrefies and becomes methane. The old way of farming with a few animals and then making your own compost and then putting that compost back on the field, that’s the way we’re meant to do it. We’ve tried to out-science nature and we forgot that we belong here. We have to steward what is here. Mr. Jekielek: As you said, these conditions don’t work for you anymore. Basically, you can’t make ends meet. Ms. Engelhart: I cannot. Mr. Jekielek: So, you’re moving to Texas. Ms. Engelhart: It’s hard to even say that without wanting to cry, but yes, I am moving to Texas. I’m excited and brokenhearted at the same time, if that’s possible. I love what I created here and I love my community. I love my neighbors, but I literally can’t make payroll. I’m selling things off to make it all work. It’s not a regenerative system anymore, and it’s just not working. I was able to get much more land in Texas, and so I will be able to practice more of these regenerative principles on a larger scale. I will be able to feed more people free of excessive regulation. A few regulations can go a long way, but there’s no need for the way it is here. If they have chased me out of California, I don’t know what their endgame is. I have been here 20 years and I am deeply rooted in the community. What is their endgame? I don’t know. Mr. Jekielek: There is an ideology that believes that humanity is a pestilence on the world, and we need to bring it back to nature. That’s actually what the endgame is. Ms. Engelhart: Yes. It’s 30 x 30 by 2030, which means to rewild 30 percent of the United States. First of all, where are you going to get that land? You’re just going to repossess it from farmers. But secondly, if we really think carbon is the problem, then let’s use this lens. I can sequester much more carbon than rewilding can—just me in partnership with my animals. The psyop, though, is to make us believe we don’t belong here, and to make us feel like we are the problem, because then we become helpless. But when I learned about regenerative agriculture, a light went off in my head that said, “Wait, we’re not the problem.” But I had been apathetic and was living in liberal Los Angeles. I was driving my hybrid vehicle and had my reusable bags, but I was apathetic. I said, “The whole world is burning down and there’s nothing we can do. Ah!” Then I learned about regenerative agriculture and the cycling of carbon and how we can facilitate, how we can steward, how we can be part of that, and how we can be the apex species on the planet. At that moment, I realized that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Regarding that rewilding idea, you can look at that mountain over there and then you can look at this soil right here. There is no question who can sequester more carbon. We can, and it’s through regenerative farming. If that’s really the conversation, and we are looking through that lens, rewilding makes no sense. What makes sense is having us know we belong here, and then taking our role as stewards very seriously. But as long as we think we’re the problem, we‘ll be apathetic. We’ll be malleable to policies around climate change that are going to be similar to policies around Covid. They will tell us when we can drive, what we can do on certain days of the week, and how we must try to reduce the amount of carbon we’re putting in the atmosphere. People will agree to it, because they will have believed that they are the problem. They had too many children, their parents had too many children, and the baby boomers had too many children, but none of that is real. We are here and we are meant to be here. That 70 percent compatibility between the soil and our gut biome is an obvious sign that we are meant to coexist with healthy soil. If we could take that seriously, then we wouldn’t have to talk about all this nonsense about rewilding 30 percent of the land by 2030. No. Rewilding only works to draw down carbon in places like England or New York where there’s a rainy season. The thought leaders that are coming up with this mindset are coming out of think tanks in New York or London. Because in an arid climate like California, you’re not going to get any carbon drawdown from letting it go back to desert. You’re just not. Mr. Jekielek: You’re on record saying there are seven different agencies coming after you. Please explain that to us. Ms. Engelhart: At any given time in California, there’s a practice of making some part of your business illegal and then charging you for that illegal activity. The Inside California program from The Epoch Times has even reported on this. This is actually a revenue-making practice for California. It could be something as small as an electrical violation, but then they’re going to charge you for that. We had outdoor seating for Covid, but you were not allowed to have heaters outside or umbrellas, only tables and chairs. Then they would charge you for having heaters and umbrellas for your customers while they’re eating outside in a parking lot. There’s code enforcement and then there’s different kinds of street enforcement for restaurants. I’ve even been raided by the ABC [Alcoholic Beverage Control], with them saying we weren’t brewing our own beer, when we actually were. There are so many different regulatory hurdles to get over at any given time. Then there’s all the agricultural regulations. I got in trouble for any kind of thing. We were selling flowers at the farmers market, and we put the olive branches and eucalyptus as the greenery in the bouquets of flowers. I didn’t register eucalyptus as something that I’m growing. I got fined $150 for having eucalyptus in the bouquets of flowers at the farmers market. Mr. Jekielek: Mollie, it’s astonishing that someone actually noticed that. Ms. Engelhart: Yes. My tax dollars are going to someone coming to the farmers market and investigating my booth and looking through my CPC [Certified Producer’s Certificate] trying to find something. It’s onerous to do any kind of thing here. Sometimes I have a personal assistant, and it often feels like their job is just compliance and licensing. It feels like that is their whole job, because there’s a license for almost everything. We worked it out one time for Echo Park, which also has a brewery, so there’s a little bit more licensing. There are 16 licenses required to exist. Of course, there are the big ones like a liquor license and a health permit. But then you need an outdoor patio seating license, and you need all these different permits for all these different things, and then you need a cannery license for making your hot sauce. It just goes on and on and on. The thing about the cannery, when they destroyed all those thousands of dollars of hot sauce, I had to pay them $150 an hour. It was $500 to watch me destroy hot sauce that was perfectly safe to eat, and which had been tested by UC Davis. They find these ways to fine you if you’re not in compliance with these different regulations. It’s not just me. I have a neighbor who had too many head of cattle for his amount of land. If he had just a quarter-acre more, he could have an unlimited amount of cattle, and there would be no regulations. But because he’s just a quarter-acre less than the threshold for having no rules about how many head of cattle he could have, he’s getting fined. It’s just on and on and on about so many different things. It becomes like why would anybody want to be a business owner? When I talk to people that are very pro-regulation and pro-the way California runs, I often ask them, “What do you do for a living?” You can bet that they are an educator, a lawyer, they have an online business, or they’re an influencer. It’s rare that someone that has a brick-and-mortar business that’s doing something physical in the real world thinks that the regulations in California are working. Mr. Jekielek: Just imagine the infrastructure you need to enforce all this compliance. I wonder how big it is. I need to find that out. Ms. Engelhart: It’s huge, and government is supposed to be small. It says so in our Constitution. It is so overreaching and overarching, and it never makes any sense. Every time I get one of these letters that says I’m in trouble for this, that, and the other thing, I then call my dad. I say, “You want to hear about California? It’s never logical and it’s never helping anyone.” I never say, ”That law makes so much sense that I’m so sorry that I broke that law.” Mr. Jekielek: Right. It just feels arbitrary. Ms. Engelhart: It feels arbitrary. Mr. Jekielek: Please tell me about this concept of radical trust. Ms. Engelhart: I believe that if we can live being totally responsible for our lives. Then we have to look at how we got here with a government that’s telling me whether someone can live on my land or not, and how many people can live in my house. How did we get to this point? We got here because we don’t trust each other, we don’t trust God, and we don’t trust our gut. We just don’t trust ourselves. We have invited the government to be in every transaction. I could say, “Jan, I’m starting a business. Do you want to invest $20,000 in my business?” Then you'll go pay a lawyer $5,000 to look at the contract that is investing your $20,000 to make sure that I’m not going to do something wrong to you. It’s a level of needing all these layers, because we don’t trust each other and we don’t trust anything. I had a lesson around my family and choosing to marry my husband and have the life that we had, really trusting that there was a plan from God or divinity. There was a plan. I’ve tried to live my life trusting my gut and trusting that even if I feel sad or I feel scared or I feel alone, it doesn’t mean it’s not the best thing to do. Right now, the best thing to do for my family is to move to Texas. I’m taking a big risk at 45-years-old and I’m starting over. I literally thought I was about to retire a couple of years ago and just raise my children and be a mom. That’s not going to happen. I’m definitely going to be working for the next however many years, and that’s okay. It’s a reframe. I can trust that whatever’s on this next journey is going to be powerful for me, for my husband, and for my family. I’m trying to have radical trust in myself, in my community, and in God. Mr. Jekielek: I sense your spirit of entrepreneurship and your desire to contribute to the community. Earlier in this interview, I heard about how you are involved with the people around you. I imagine that’s exactly what you’re going to foster in your new adventure in Texas. Ms. Engelhart: It is what I will foster. I was having a conversation recently with a gentleman and we realized that during Covid people that were making a big contribution with their lives were less likely to buy into the fear and the narrative of, “You have to be masked. You have to be vaccinated. You have to do all these things.” Because as human beings, we want to contribute, we want to make a difference, and we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. The masks, the vaccinations, and staying at home became a thing that you could belong to that was bigger than yourself. People that were steeped in community and making a difference every day were less likely to fall for the allure of that, because they were profoundly connected to their contributions, and the difference they were making every day. I love community, and I will foster it wherever I am. But it’s also heartbreaking to leave a community that you’re deeply rooted in. Mr. Jekielek: What is that characteristic that makes some people see through all of it and other people not see through it? Of course, many people came to it over time. Ms. Engelhart: Over time, yes. Mr. Jekielek: What’s in store for Texas? How is Texas going to feel the entrepreneurial spirit of Mollie Engelhart? Ms. Engelhart: We are really excited. We’ve started a ranch in Texas called Sovereignty Ranch, and we are currently building a brewery there. We'll be growing grains, brewing them, and then feeding the grain right back to the cows right there on the ranch. There is an event space where you could have weddings or parties or education or different kinds of seminars. We have 30 tiny houses for people to rent. You could have a wedding or people could just stay for the evening like in a hotel. We have a commercial kitchen with a restaurant-type environment there. All of this is going to be on the ranch. It’s going to be hospitality, but it is steeped in agriculture. Rather than going to the restaurant and seeing me on the screen talking about our farm, and how this food came from our farm, it’s going to be a little different. You'll make the effort to come to the farm and have a farm-to-table dinner or brunch or stay the evening in a hotel that’s a little tiny house and be really steeped in the agriculture and remember our connection to the earth. When you got here today, you said, “It smells so amazing.” I can’t tell you how many people get to the farm and have emotional experiences. They get teary and say, “I smell my grandma’s house,” or, “This is what my grandpa’s house smelled like.” There’s something really powerful about connecting with our agricultural past, which is not that long ago. A hundred years ago, practically all of our families were farming. Now, it’s a very small percent, just a couple percent. I want to create a space in Texas where people can come and immerse themselves in regenerative agriculture for an evening, for a weekend, or for a week. It will be a destination brewery with an event space. It is in Bandera, Texas, a beautiful place outside of San Antonio. I’m excited to be there, and I hope the community welcomes me. Mr. Jekielek: When do you expect all of this to launch? Ms. Engelhart: The event space is already open. We had our first event for the eclipse a couple of weeks ago, and 150 people stayed on the ranch. The tiny houses are not all finished, so we had glamping tents for 150 guests. We had different speakers talking about different things, everything from journalism to germ theory and everything else in between about the world that we’re living in. We had both interesting speakers and guests. That was our first event, and it was very affirming that people will travel to go to something like that. We’re in the money-raising phase for the brewery, but we are hoping to have the brewery open early next year. The event space is already open. With the tiny houses, we have about four of them installed, and hopefully, we'll have 30 by sometime in 2025. It’s already open to some degree, and it will continue to evolve. Once I get there full time, I’m sure it will kickstart faster, because I like to see results. Mr. Jekielek: I am absolutely certain of that. Mollie Engelhart, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Ms. Engelhart: Thank you so much for coming all the way out here to see my little piece of paradise before we transition it to other stewards. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Mollie Engelhart and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. 🔴 WATCH the full episode (44 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1227MollieEngelhart Epoch Original DVD collection:

There’s a woke movement that is criticizing the role of parents in the raising of kids. Part of this includes criticisms of fathers. Others include claims that two-parent families represent a type of racial inequality. Still others claim that the state itself should have more authority over children than the parents in some regards. This all ties into a much deeper argument over the value of families, and the many attacks on the traditional family structure. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss this topic and others and answer questions from the audience. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇 https://ept.ms/3ROL33L Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/