Welcome back everyone to the damage ward.

I'm John Aurola, big show today.

We're gonna be doing a dive back into Syria and Turkey and the Kurds.

Some really worrying moves being made by the US military as they desperately flee ahead

of the Turkish-backed militia groups that are now taking over formerly USL territory.

Also, Trump's letter to Erdogan, it's real and we're going to dive into it.

We're also gonna be closing at the show with Meanwhilein touching on the banning of climate

protests in London and how they're fighting back.

We're gonna talk about the protests in Hong Kong and some of the horrific violence against

protest leaders recently, as well as a little bit of positive news involving how environmental

regulations have helped one population of animals bounce back.

Along the way we're gonna have guests, we're gonna be joining us to talk about pro-democracy

reforms and also ranked choice voting.

So we're gonna be diving to those topics as well.

But before we can get to all that, we're gonna be starting off with an incredibly sad story.

So prepare yourself, this is going to be tough.

At 68 Elijah Cummings passed away today.

That was the announcement that many people greeted the morning with very sad news, obviously

when any politician dies.

But particularly Elijah Cummings, there are a few people serving elected office right

now that have rightfully accrued the sort of reputation and respect that he has.

Not just from people of his party, but across party lines.

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