We're going to put the National Guard, who, by the way, are young men and women from working in middle-class neighborhoods who signed up to serve their communities in times of natural disasters or go overseas and protect the homeland.

They did not sign up to be ICE agents or do immigration enforcement or police their own neighbors.

And he's sending these people against their own volition, against the

wishes of local law enforcement and elected leaders into these cities in these highly charged

partisan situations in order to create an escalation that will then allow for further militarization.

Music Hello, and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host Lee McGowan. Let's get into it.

Well, I legitimately shut down after watching that Pete Hegseth Donald Trump meeting with the 800 of the military's top brass last

week. It was like my brain short-circuited because I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

I couldn't process how demoralizing the whole thing felt. I didn't recognize my country.

And as someone who lives in a blue city, one that was named as a place that needs to be

brought under control by the U.S. military as someone who does

this kind of work and would definitely fall into the enemy from within category that our president

was telling these officers they needed to violently engage with. I found myself horrified.

So I took to my bed legitimately. For about four hours, I totally shut down. As I always say,

I don't do the news, I explain the news, and I couldn't even explain what I had seen to myself,

let alone make it make sense for other people. So I did as much research as possible,

then watched Lady Chatterley's lover, and took an app. I did, however, also reach out to my friend

Janessa Goldbeck, the CEO of Vet Voice Foundation, the national nonprofit that advocates for veterans

and military families to actively participate in our democracy. As a Marine Court combat

engineer officer, Janessa led missions overseas and supported service members as a uniformed victim

advocate. I knew I needed perspective on what I'd witnessed, and I knew Janessa would be the

perfect person to give insight into what we saw, why it was important, and where we go from here.

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