ICE Raids, LA Riots, Strong Economic Data, Politicized Fed, Iran War with Tucker Carlson

The episode opens with banter, not news. One participant asks whether a nicotine pouch melts in the mouth or has to be spat out. The answer is that it can be spat out, swallowed, or simply left in place "like you would a dip of tobacco." The user describes the effect in deliberately exaggerated terms: a "zen paradox" of "higher alertness accompanied by deep relaxation."

Dosage comes up next. The speaker says they usually keep one pouch going and has eighteen milligrams of nicotine on hand, but jokes that using that much at once turns them into "this kind of colossus," so they "usually keep it to one." When someone asks for a starting level, three milligrams is suggested. The joke continues that, as with "all great addictions," there is an adjustment period: "you do vomit" at first before "your body acclimates." Others riff on comparisons to heroin, Ozempic and ayahuasca. These are jokes, not health guidance.

The show introduction names the panel: Tucker Carlson returning as a guest, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Sacks, described as appearing "from the suite" rather than the White House. Jokes follow about Brioni collars, a seventy-two-month payment plan, and Affirm or Klarna. Then comes a callback to the guest's previous appearance and the feedback it drew from "private equity housewives." A participant says a Los Angeles "studio wives group" is upset at being left out. Others joke that this group is "absolutely a bigger problem" but smaller, likening it to "an elite unit" or "delta force," and remark that its members "don't get as much in the divorce."

After a plug for the All-In Summit in Los Angeles in September, with ticket applications at allin.com/summit, and a note that Friedberg is out this week, the episode turns to the immigration protests in Los Angeles. The introduction calls them "protests slash riots slash ICE actions." It says they began the previous Friday after ICE raided a Home Depot and a fashion wholesaler.

The introduction gives the following figures:

ICE arrested 44 people in total; arrests from the protests were put at "400 and counting," described as 10 times as many. ICE was described as going into a strawberry field in Oxnard "to just randomly pick people up, it seems." At least a half dozen Waymos were vandalized and burned and more than 20 businesses looted; Waymo narrowed its service area, and wait times rose to thirty minutes. Rioters threw bricks and Molotov cocktails and shot fireworks at law enforcement; two men were charged with throwing Molotov cocktails at officers. Trump deployed the National Guard, 2,000 and then "4,000 apparently," and a battalion of 700 Marines was reported to be in the city. Karen Bass imposed an 8PM to 6AM curfew in downtown LA, and federal prosecutors are trying to identify hundreds of people. Newsom and Bass denounced the raids and blamed Trump for escalating the situation; Trump and White House officials criticized California's "weak leadership." Protests have spread to New York, Chicago, Austin and DC.

A participant who says they grew up in LA and La Jolla is asked how serious the riots are and who is to blame. They answer that, measured by violence, the unrest is less severe than what happened in 2020 after George Floyd died. They also call it "way less dangerous" than the Watts riot or the Rodney King riots. But they argue it is "much more profound" because it challenges a core federal duty. Enforcing immigration law and policing the borders is, in their words, "what the federal government is, really."

The speaker blames "a series of paradoxically weak federal governments" for letting sanctuary cities continue "literally for decades." They call each one "its own form of insurrection against the central government." They accept that someone could make a philosophical or constitutional case that immigration is not a federal responsibility. But they say most people accept that it is, and that once you accept it, states and cities cannot be allowed to defy federal law. They compare this to federal intervention at Central High School in Little Rock.

And I think the longer this continues, the greater the threat of disunion, the greater the threat of reaching a point where you, I don't know, you can't drive from New York to LA.

The speaker says Americans take free movement between states for granted. They compare it to Brazil, where they say driving from Sao Paulo to Rio is too dangerous, while noting they have not tried it themselves. Their conclusion is that once the Trump administration commits to enforcing federal law by force, "it kinda can't back away from that." They also ask who is funding the unrest and say arrests should not stop at the people on the scene. They claim drug cartels are involved and have "a lot of control in California," but offer no evidence for this in the discussion. Their bottom line is that the federal government has the right to enforce immigration law, and that if states refuse to comply, it has no option "but to force the issue."

The questioner then challenges the escalation. They contrast an earlier strategy aimed at felons and gang members with what they describe as rolling up to a farm or a Home Depot and figuring out later whether people's papers check out. They put two options to another panelist. One is that "All 20,000,000 gotta go," which they label "the Steve Bannon position." The other is removing the roughly 5% who are criminals while offering a possible path to citizenship to "the other 19,000,000."

The panelist cites the president's answer to a similar question that day. In that answer, people who have worked on farms for twenty to twenty-five years, or in the leisure industry, deserve "a common sense approach." The reasoning is that removing them could create a vacuum filled by "folks that are essentially criminals or other things." The panelist calls this "a reasonable starting point."

The panelist then shifts the focus to legal immigrants waiting for adjustment of status, whom they number at "seven and a half" (the transcript does not give the unit). They describe this group as doctors, lawyers, scientists and family members of American citizens. Their complaint is that the debate keeps centering on "people whose fundamental action was an illegal action" and overlooks those who waited in line. They propose a tiered approach: common sense for long-term residents, priority for people who followed the legal process, and a chance for the group in between "to get their affairs in order" while playing by the rules. They add that "it's unfair to reward not playing by the rules."

Other participants mention an idea they saw online: give people "a stipend and a year" to get their affairs in order and then leave. They credit a version of it to someone transcribed as "Kaizen" and call it "the most rational for the middle chunk." The segment ends with a summary of the position: reward people who came legally, punish illegal entry, and "Adjudicate everybody else."

To widen the frame, the show plays a clip of Reagan on immigration followed by one of Clinton. Reagan praises immigrants as "bold men and women yearning for freedom and opportunity." He says their greatest contribution "is more than economic" and calls America "the last best hope of men on earth." Clinton says Americans are "rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country." He cites a record number of new border guards and twice as many deportations of criminal aliens as ever before.

We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws.

The questioner argues that the parties have swapped positions. In their telling, Republicans once favored immigration, NAFTA and something close to an open labor border with Mexico "kinda like the EU," while Clinton wanted deportations to protect American jobs and wages. They add a new factor for the participant they call the AI czar: jobs disappearing in key areas as robotics and AI arrive. They invite that participant to separate personal views from administration positions.

The reply rejects the framing outright. The respondent says the questioner is "doing everything possible to avoid the fact that LA is on fire right now." They describe rioters who "look like an invading army" and are "riding under a foreign flag," and ask what the Reagan and Clinton clips have to do with the riots. The questioner takes this as a personal accusation. They answer that they come from a family of cops and firefighters, oppose violence against police whether on January 6 or now, and are "insulted" by any suggestion otherwise. The respondent says they made no such insinuation. They argue the riots are "the topic of the week" and add that riding under a foreign flag is "a stupid way to advocate for your position."

On what Americans actually think, the respondent cites polling: