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This week on Angry Planet we have returning guest and former judge advocate Dan Maurer. The last time he was on the show, Maurer walked us through the consequences of a Supreme Court ruling that asked the question: is it illegal for the President to order SEAL Team Six to kill people? It was a surreal question that now feels more pressing.

A US Carrier Strike Group is moving into South American waters to support America’s highly kinetic War on Drugs. Military lawyers might have advised the Trump administration that extra-judiciously executing alleged criminals in international waters is, in fact, illegal. But Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is no fan of military lawyers and fired the Judge Advocate General (JAG) of both the Army and the Air Force. The Pentagon plans to turn as many as 600 of the remaining military lawyers into immigration judges.

The second Trump administration is perverting the law and sidelining anyone that might tell them it’s a bad idea. Since he was last on the show, Maurer has retired from the Army and is now a professor at Ohio Northern University’s college of law. He’s here to tell us how bad things are and how much worse they might get.

• The terminal parent metaphor
• A story that only ends one way
• What’s a JAG?
• Hegseth’s JAG hate
• Law as perversion
• Are these strikes legal? “No.”
• “It can be lawful, but not moral.”
• Legally speaking, you can’t be a combatant and a criminal.
• When Truman tried to take over the steel industry.
• Can state authorities arrest the feds?
• Life after Trump time

Are Military Lawyers Being Sidelined?

Defining ‘Rebellion’ in 10 U.S.C. § 12406 and the Insurrection Act

On Treason and Traitors

“Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here.”

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The episode is about Vanessa Guillén, a US soldier who was murdered at Fort Hood in 2020. She also experienced sexual harassment while in the military. I spoke with ABC Special Correspondent John Quiñones about his new podcast, Vanished. It’s a good podcast that covers Guillén’s case in-depth and highlights the reforms the Pentagon instituted after.

We recorded the show on September 30, Guillén’s birthday. That morning, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivered a long speech about his own military reforms. Many of the changes Hegseth has pushed through conflict with the changes that Guillén’s death ushered in.

As such, I thought it was important to get John’s reaction to Hegseth’s speech. Before we began recording,I told him I planned to ask him about this and he agreed to talk about it.

When I asked the question during recording, a public relations person from ABC jumped on the line and asked me to stop talking about Hegseth. I pushed back, but not hard enough.

The next day, ABC PR reached out via email to ask if I would cut this moment from the show.

I will not. It’s included here in full.

Further, I want to take a moment at the top to highlight the reasons why I brought up Hegseth’s speech. There’s a lot to it and, honestly, it demands its own episode. Here are Hegseth’s thoughts on toxic leaders.

Guillén’s case also changed the way the Army investigates sexual harassment. Here are the secretary’s thoughts on the current state of official internal military investigations:

After the speech, Hegseth signed 11 memos that detailed these changes. I’ll link them in the show notes. The memos say that the military’s definition of “harassment” is overly broad, calls for the end of “anonymous complaints”—something Hegesth also said in his speech, and asks that investigations be completed quickly with the assistance of artificial intelligence.

I believe that is all important context for this episode. I also believe that Hegseth’s speech and the policy directives represent a regression in the American armed services. I will not pretend otherwise.

Listen to the All-New ‘Vanished: What Happened to Vanessa’ Podcast

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Political assassins often have incoherent politics and Tyler Robinson is no different. The young man who killed Charlie Kirk inscribed the shell casings of his bullets with obscure memes that say less about what he believed and more about where he spent time online. Robinson isn’t alone. Earlier this year the Annunciation Church shooter showed off a rifle inscribed with similar memes pulled from the internet. The Christchurch shooter in 2019 livestreamed their killing and left behind a meme laden manifesto.

So what the hell is going on? On this episode of Angry Planet, Michael Senters—a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech—has some unsatisfying answers. Senters painstakingly walks us through each message on Robinson’s bullets and explains the online spaces from whence they came.

If you don’t know a gropyer from a Helldiver or have never heard “OwO” said aloud, this episode is for you.

It will not make you feel better.

• 4,000 hours in seven games
• A painfully specific explanation of every shell casing meme
• “It can’t be Helldivers”
• “This kid has probably fried his brain online.”
• Hearts of Iron IV’s place in online fascist discourse
• Son, what’s a groyper?
• There’s no compelling evidence Robinson was a Groyper
• The terrible embarrassment of explaining memes out loud
• The 10 year old meme on the shell that killed Kirk
• Constructing an ideology here is a Sisyphian task
• Being online is about irony and performance
• How a moment in time becomes a memetic hieroglyph
• Assassination as performance
• Gamergate as a “critical junction” in the Republican party
• How GG spread the irony-poisoned posting style like a virus
• Filming a TikTok video at an assassination
• Re-evaluating our relationship to the internet
• A little bit about working in a bookstore
• The charging documents drop at the end of our conversation

What the shell casings in the assassination of Charlie Kirk do – and don't – tell us

Yes, It’s the Guns. It’s Also the Phones.

Read the Charges Against Tyler Robinson

Exclusive: Leaked Messages from Charlie Kirk Assassin

The “Notices Bulge OwO” video

The “Loss” comic

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