The Monroe Gazette Podcast

B.J. Mendelson
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Semiweekly

The audio edition of The Monroe Gazette's long form local news coverage. For paid subscribers only. www.monroegazette.com

  1. 4h ago

    AI Won’t Kill You, But This Big Pat Ryan Donor Might

    The full transcript for this week’s podcast is below. It’s a follow-up to last week’s episode involving West Point professor, Tim Bakken, and his recent first amendment victory against Pete Hegseth and the Trump Administration. In doing research for that story, I came across an odd appearance by Anduril Industries’s Palmer Lucky at West Point. This was super weird because Lucky is essentially an arms dealer with zero military background and even less leadership and management experience. What was he doing at West Point? And what’s with that $28,550 linked to Anduril that was donated to Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan’s re-election campaign? To explain, I asked friend of the show, Pivot to AI’s David Gerard, to explain. The Monroe Gazette is ad-free and paywall-free, covering local news in Monroe as well as county, state, and national issues that impact those residents. Truthful. Not neutral. We need to recruit 982 paid annual subscribers between now and June 24, 2027 to keep the lights on. It’ll cost you $5 a month or $60 for the year. Or about what a Pumpkin Spice Latte costs at your local, rabidly anti-union Starbucks. If you’re new here, or are already a free subscriber, press the red button below to upgrade. [AI Disclosure: This transcript was generated by Riverside, which is the podcast recording tool we use. I then, using Duck.Ai, ran it through Claudes 4.5 Haiku to correct any spelling, grammar, and compliance issues with the Associated Press Style Guide. This is the exact kind of work Large Language Models can do well. What they can’t do well is basically everything else. And even then, I still checked over the transcript.] BJ Mendelson: David, I had you on our other show, Stupid Sexy Privacy, but there’s a lot happening over in Orange County, New York. And so I was hoping for a chance to have you back, and here you are. But for people who did not hear that first interview, would you like to take a moment just to introduce yourself? David Gerard: My name’s David Gerard. I’m a journalist. I do Pivot to AI, which is a blog, a YouTube channel, and a podcast about the AI bubble and why all of these people need to go to jail but probably won’t. BJ Mendelson: Mm-hmm. David Gerard: And how we’re heading for a Great Depression to depress harder. Just—it’s a very cheerful blog, as you can tell. BJ Mendelson: That’s pretty much the vibe of The Monroe Gazette. It is: all these people should be in jail, but they’re not going to be. We’re just going to write about it anyway, because someone has to. You had a great video last night just to give people an idea of what Pivot to AI puts out, because I watch it regularly. Like, whenever there’s a new video, I will watch it. David Gerard: Comes out daily. BJ Mendelson: Yeah, so tell us about the video last night where there was almost a little whoopsie between the United States and China caused by AI. David Gerard: That was very good. Where the existential risk of AI is not that the AI will take over and turn us all into paperclips—because that’s science fiction fantasy promoted by a literal cult. The hazard is that stupid people will think the magic truth machine is a magic truth machine and do stupid things because, well, “computer says kill.” And it’s worse because the current Department of Defense—or to use its proper name, the Department of Defense—is full of very, very stupid people who believe the chatbot is the magic truth machine. Pete Hegseth is a person of limited capacities, but he absolutely believes AI is the best thing ever. And yeah, I can’t say I’m convinced myself. BJ Mendelson: I can’t either. And you know, Hegseth has a lot of influence in our community over what happens at West Point. You know, there was just the lawsuit that we covered with Professor Tim Bacon, where Hegseth and Trump essentially wanted to censor the civilian professors at West Point so that they can only talk about whatever the Department of Defense approved. So my ears always perk up whenever you cover that stuff, because there’s a trickle-down effect. But before we get to that, just before we came on here, I wanted to get your take on commercials that just came out. Like, as we’re recording this, they’ve just come out from Kathy Hochul—all of a sudden she’s reversed course on these data centers. And I was just hoping to get your impression on this new commercial. David Gerard: Yeah, I had a look at the commercial just before we popped on. It’s just a 30-second campaign ad. The entire thing is: I’m against data centers. My opponent loves data centers. That’s the whole thing. BJ Mendelson: Right. David Gerard: Right? Now that’s very good political marketing in the lead-up to the November elections, because the populace hates data centers with all their hearts. There’s a bunch of Democratic strategists who absolutely cannot handle the concept of being handed a slam-dunk win. And so they’re saying we shouldn’t talk about this stuff. We might get some of their money. And that’s a very dumb, losing strategy. And if you’re a candidate listening to this and you want to think, well, maybe I should moderate on the data center question—no, don’t. Go for it. Your electorate will love you. With Hochul, it’s interesting because I read her statement where she talks about risks of AI, and a lot of it’s the doomsday cult framing. Now, to be clear, people like Jacob Cox and the kid who got marketed into the news a couple of weeks ago is an idiot. These people are weird, stupid cultists. And I’m not saying that lightly. At their extremes they become murderous lunatics. Not all of them are crazy people, just many of them. But it’s sort of an engine for making weird and disturbing people. And their basic idea is they believe superintelligence will destroy all of humanity. And we can’t prove that the chatbot is not the first stage of that. So this might sound really absolutely inane, but these people honestly believe that. They also love using the chatbot, by the way. So they’ve actually had a great hit with a lot of politicians. They got Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon up on the same stage, and boy, is that an unfair forced error from Bernie. I’m sorry, Bernie—this is not a guy you should be on a stage with, you know. BJ Mendelson: Yeah. David Gerard: This is not a guy you should share a stage with, you know. BJ Mendelson: I gotta say, that’s probably been my biggest disappointment with him—he seems to have fallen hook, line, and sinker for a lot of this AI doomsday stuff. David Gerard: Yeah, it’s unfortunate. Hochul’s press release that she put out—when was that? It was a few days ago, I think. BJ Mendelson: Yeah, it was just as we were chatting to set up this interview last week when it came out. David Gerard: Yeah, here it is. September 21. So this was like Monday. She was requiring starting in November, New York will direct large AI developers to register with the state. So this is about safety incidents with AI—meaning we programmed our automated hacking tool to hack people, and then we enabled it to hack people, and the people we hacked are idiots. So we’re reporting that. That’s what that is. BJ Mendelson: Yes. David Gerard: So I found that actually really interesting because it’s like: obviously everyone hates AI. I’m gonna get on the anti-AI side because I want to get reelected. Which is the job. So I was really interested by that. One thing that really caught my eye about that press release was the regulator is part of the Department of Financial Services. Now, remember that New York is the state through which every U.S. dollar goes. It’s the New York Fed. It does all the banking arrangements for international banking. Every U.S. dollar that’s electronic goes through New York, more or less. So it’s like New York is the city the money lives in. It’s the city with the U.S.—it is the home city of the U.S. dollar, functionally. BJ Mendelson: Right. Can you explain that a little for people? David Gerard: The DFS is big and scary. They often put in financial regulation before the U.S. federal government does. So a lot of the SEC setup and laws were modeled on New York Blue Sky laws from the 1920s—they put them in place in the 1930s. Now Trump’s gutted them, but of course. But the DFS—it’s interesting she’s gotten the big regulator with teeth on this one: the Office of Digital Innovation, Governance, Integrity, and Trust. Digit! Isn’t that clever? So yeah, and I don’t know—they might do something. Who knows? It happens. BJ Mendelson: You know what’s interesting, though? Originally the data center ban that came out of the New York State legislature this session was for three years. She weakened it down to one. And up until the 21st, when that press release came out, she looked like Gavin Newsom in terms of being completely in the bag with these tech companies. Do you think that she just changed directions because that’s where the wind was blowing? David Gerard: Hochul is not the sort of person who has beliefs. She is not a politician who has beliefs. I presume she is doing it from electoral calculus. And in this thing, the electoral calculus says two plus two equals ban the data centers. So yeah, it’s pretty amazing. Even Greg Abbott in Texas—arch-Republican who never saw business in Texas he didn’t like and was very much in the pockets of the data center developers—had to walk it back with various restrictions on the data center industry. And it was interesting because everything he did is stuff that he could backtrack on in five seconds. It’s all governor decrees. His Democratic opponent says that’s weak. We need actual legislation, because that way you can’t just switch it off the day after you get reelected. And it’s quite something that a Democratic candidate in Texas actually has a chance and is hammering on the AI

  2. Sep 15

    West Point Professor Wins Historic Free Speech Battle

    Photo via the official West Point account on Flickr. I did promise that the podcast would be back after I finished How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos, and I am a man of my word. In this week’s episode: West Point’s longest serving law professor, Tim Bakken, reveals how he fought back against President Trump and Pete Hegseth’s efforts to censor the civilian professors at West Point, and won. The Monroe Gazette is ad-free and paywall-free, covering local news in Monroe and surrounding towns as well as county, state, and national issues that impact those residents. We’re truthful. Not neutral. We need to recruit 982 paid annual subscribers between now and June 24, 2027 to keep our lights on. If you’re new here or already a free subscriber, press the red button below to upgrade Our Interview With Professor Tim Bakken [Editor Note: Riverside.fm generates these transcripts using generative AI. I then, using Duck.Ai — to prevent Anthropic from stealing my stuff — run the transcript through Clause 4.5 Haiku to correct the transcript for any errors, and to make the transcript compliance with AP Style. You may not realize it, but all Monroe Gazette articles follow AP Style. Except when I say the word f**k. Anyway, I tell you this because I believe any use of artificial narrow intelligence needs to be disclosed, and because there may be errors in the transcript below. If so, blame the robots, and take this as further proof that all of those AI Doomers are bogus weirdos trying to hype their technology before the bubble pops.] BJ Mendelson Tim, would you like to take a moment just to introduce yourself and let our readers and listeners know who you are? Professor Tim Bakken I am a professor of law at the US Military Academy at West Point. I started in 2000, and I’m currently the longest serving professor in that position in West Point’s history. I have started at West Point teaching constitutional and military law and now teach criminal law, and I’ve done either one of those for the last 27 years. BJ Mendelson Could you describe what your experience has been up until February of 2025 when it comes to the way that you might conduct a course? Professor Tim Bakken In my courses and in writing publicly or speaking publicly over the course of my first twenty-five years or about twenty-four and a half years, I was free to speak and write publicly, and I was free to tell my cadets what my beliefs are regarding my subject matters. That changed on February 13, 2025 because then West Point created a new rule that prohibited professors, the civilian professors at West Point, from speaking or writing publicly. [The Dean's Policy and Operating Memorandum 03-24] And somewhat later at the new academic year in August of 2025, the Dean of West Point issued a directive orally that said professors, military and civilian, cannot give their opinions to cadets while in class. I opposed those initiatives by the dean’s office and West Point. And in September, on Sept. 22, 2025, I filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York contending that all three of those directives — not being able to speak publicly as a citizen, not being able to speak publicly at conferences as a professor, and not being able to give opinions to cadets at West Point — were unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment. Recently, as of Sept. 8, a federal judge issued a final permanent injunction because the judge found that those three restrictions were indeed unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment and issued a permanent injunction banning West Point from enforcing those restrictions against the civilian professors. There’s one caveat to that. The restriction that professors can’t speak in class, that prohibition is unenforceable against me. But if West Point chose to do it, and I think that no institution should do that, West Point perhaps could argue that it could continue to prevent other civilian professors from speaking their opinions on their subject matters while in class. BJ Mendelson Now where did all this come from? Was this an executive order that pushed West Point to do this, or was this something West Point was sort of looking into? Professor Tim Bakken The complaint alleges that West Point felt pressure from the new administration and from the new Secretary of Defense, but there was nothing in writing formally that indicated that the military administrators at West Point were required to, for example, ban books in the library — which occurred — and limiting professors from teaching certain materials such as climate change. And there was nothing in the executive orders of the new administration that required West Point to do those kinds of things or prohibit professors from speaking or writing publicly. Nonetheless, the military administrators did do that, and because of that, I thought that was a First Amendment violation and filed suit in September of 2025. BJ Mendelson Can you give us an example? You mentioned climate change specifically, but I’m wondering if there’s maybe an example you can give us of what this policy would do to your class if you were forced to follow it. Professor Tim Bakken One of the examples I experienced, and I think I indicated three or four of them in the complaint, is that in one instance a cadet asked me my view of the death penalty, and I demurred from that and just tried to tell the cadet that the cadet would have to definitely decide on one’s own with regard to the death penalty. In another instance, I was asked a question about whether the deinstitutionalization movement from the 1970s and 1980s led to more homeless people and to more homeless people being incarcerated or in trouble with the criminal justice system. And while my opinion is probably yes in regard to that, I demurred in that situation also and said that the cadet might consider doing some research on that particular issue. Those are a couple of examples, but those are instances when I was faithfully trying to follow the dean’s edict — the directive that said professors cannot give their opinions on matters in class. And as a result of that, I thought that was a severe violation, a very extraordinary violation of academic freedom, and sued on that basis. And in fact, academic freedom is a part of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Academic freedom is the concept that applies to college professors and it allows them to speak freely in those areas that I just mentioned in the classroom and while being a professor and doing professor’s work at colleges and certainly also as a citizen. And sometimes we forget that we need to be able to try to find some people somewhere or someplace where we can expect that they will try to search for the truth. That’s not to say anybody is so wise as to know what the truth is, but certainly we all want to be able to look to people who are trying to be as objective and neutral as possible and trying to search for the truth. One place that we’re able to do that, it seems, although there’s a lot of question about that today, is in universities and colleges. And in my position, was and certainly is: if we’re looking for someone who will try to search for the truth, we should certainly expect our federal employees to do that. That’s what we’re expecting of them. And as a result, because I felt that the West Point rules were restrictive in that way — not allowing either me and my colleagues or anybody else in our situation to speak freely as teachers and not allowing us to speak freely as federal employees — I thought both of those were unconstitutional violations. And now I can say that they’re unconstitutional, and that sounds a little bit formalistic and highfalutin in some ways, but the result of that, in my view, is this: when people can’t speak or write freely in the military context, then the cadets and students who will go on to become admirals and generals will be accustomed to groupthink, blind loyalty, and conformity rather than critical thinking. We can talk about critical thinking all we want, but unless we’re willing to engage in dissent among each other in any environment — but especially an environment where the cadets will go on to be generals, as is the case at West Point — we want them to have all the possible dissenting and disagreeing viewpoints that exist, so they’ll learn how to make decisions, they’ll have the repetitions necessary to think and make decisions throughout their undergraduate years. And then because of that, they’ll do the same kind of thing, the same kind of processing when they become leaders, and certainly when they become generals, we hope. Without the ability of college professors at West Point to do that, and only the civilians are now enabled to do that because the restrictive rule still applies to the military faculty, if the civilian faculty were unable to do that, then there’d be nobody at the military academy with the right to press the cadets on the most controversial, the most serious, and the most difficult issues. Now because of the judge’s decision on Sept. 8, the civilian professors can once again do that without at least formal fear of being disciplined for engaging in that kind of free speech. BJ Mendelson Can you clarify for people what the distinction is between, let’s say, a civilian professor versus a military professor? Professor Tim Bakken At West Point historically until the mid-1990s, all the instructors except a few in physical education and foreign languages were rotating military officers. Those officers had largely obtained master’s degrees in their disciplines and then come to West Point to teach for two or three years and then left to go back and do something else in the Army. That changed in the mid-1990s because Congress felt that West Point did not have enough intellectual back and forth, not enough intellec

  3. Aug 4

    Fee Waivers, Expedited Processing, and Other FOIA Secrets Revealed

    Here’s part two in our series exploring the use of LLMs to generate successful FOIA requests. This time, I am joined by Adam Marshall, director of national litigation at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Adam takes a different position from our previous guest, Lauren Harper, Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy with Freedom of the Press Foundation. You can listen to Part 1 here. This is important information for those of you who want to stay on top of what ICE and DHS is doing in our community given their sharp uptick in activity that started in July. A real hero—pictured above—is documenting the increasing presence of ICE in Monroe and in Kiryas Joel. Full Transcript [Editorial note: I did attempt to use Claude 4.5 Haiku along with Duck.AI to create this week’s transcript. I am desperate to find ways to save time with anything that’s not investigating and writing, and I absolutely hate doing these transcripts. So, let’s see how this goes. Just note that this transcript may be slightly different from the audio version above.] BJ Mendelson: Adam, thank you so much for joining us today. Would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself to our audience? Adam Marshall: Sure, my name is Adam Marshall. I am the director of national litigation at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. BJ: And can you tell us just a bit more about what the Reporters Committee does? Adam: Yeah, so the Reporters Committee is a nonprofit. We are based partly in DC, but we also have attorneys in states across the U.S. We are primarily a bunch of attorneys that provide pro bono legal services to journalists and newsrooms in the United States. We do a lot of public transparency work—records requests, court access, that type of thing. But we touch on all kinds of issues at the intersection of journalism and law, to try to support reporters and newsrooms as they do their job. BJ: And I think that’s a perfect fit for what we want to talk about today. Our goal at the Monroe Gazette is to train people to report on news within a ten-mile radius of their house. That’s our overarching desire. And sometimes it bumps into this question of large language models and whether they’re effective or useful. So before we get into it, I’m just curious: up until this point, what has been your interaction with large language models when it comes to the work that you do? Adam: I mean, I believe when I first typed anything into ChatGPT—years ago when it first came out—the first thing I ever did was ask it to draft a FOIA request, actually. BJ: Nice. Adam: Because I was like, this could be interesting. I wonder what it will do. So from the very beginning of public access to these chat interfaces for LLMs, I’ve been testing them out and thinking about them—where they could be useful, where they do helpful stuff, where they are not as helpful or maybe even affirmatively unhelpful. So yeah, it’s been several years now that I’ve been tinkering with it and theorizing about the intersection between FOIA and these tools. BJ: Generally speaking, do you think they’re useful for generating a FOIA request? Adam: I’m going to say the lawyerly thing, which is: it depends. BJ: Sure. Yeah. Adam: It completely depends on what model you are using, what instructions you give it, and what you are asking about. I think that in general, if you just ask an LLM—certainly some of the earlier models, but continuing through more recent models—to generate a FOIA request for records about X or Y or Z, it will generally produce something that looks like a FOIA request if you don’t dig into the details too much. But the descriptions of the records in the request are often quite poor. It often misses a lot of key things that requesters should address in the request. And so I’ve been pretty skeptical about just taking the output from LLMs and using it as a FOIA request. Where I do think there is potential is to create custom RAGs—retrieval-augmented generative tools—that look at a corpus of government record descriptors to try to identify potential records to ask for in a records request. I think that’s where the real magic of LLMs can be helpful. Because one of the challenges a requester faces in describing records is that agencies are just often like black boxes. There’s so much that goes on, but it’s so hard for a layperson or even a journalist who’s interested in something to figure out exactly what to ask for. And where I think an LLM can be helpful is translating the kind of underlying semantic content of what you’re interested in into the bureaucratic language that agencies might use. So if I’m interested in, say, a contract at an agency, I might not know how the agency goes about describing those types of contracts or related documents. But if I can use an LLM to examine the agency’s forms and regulations and all kinds of stuff, the LLM might be able to say, this is what you’re interested in. This corresponds to Form 274/D. And that’s really what you should be focused on. And then if I go out and verify that Form 274/D is in fact what I’m interested in, then I think that is a huge benefit to the requester because they can be really precise and the agency then knows exactly what they’re talking about. BJ: Yeah, and I think you kind of hit some of the problems head-on. And so I’m wondering: what would you advise people if they’re given a choice? Would you say that life before LLMs—is it still maybe a matter of having better success using something like FOIA Wiki, for example, which I know you guys are absolutely familiar with and we can definitely talk about? Adam: Yeah. BJ: Would you steer people toward more of those resources than using the LLM? Let’s say you have a new journalist coming to you. Would you steer them toward more of those resources? Adam: I don’t think there’s a huge benefit to using an LLM for the other parts of the request because of a few reasons. One is that the other trappings of the request seem to be pretty standard, right? It’s like, who are you? How much are you willing to pay for this? What is your address? That type of thing. And then there are other parts of the request that require some kind of argument. For example, the requester might argue that they’re entitled to expedited processing or a fee waiver. And in those contexts, I don’t think that the LLMs often do a great job in making a convincing argument. I don’t know. The models are changing all the time and getting better and more sophisticated. So this isn’t to say they’re never going to be helpful. But I think the real value add is in using them to identify very particular types of records that would otherwise be difficult for a requester to know about. BJ: That takes us perfectly into the example we posted where I found that if not for Project Saltbox and if not for feeding that specific Project Saltbox link into the LLM, I don’t think it would have been able to help me identify the records concerning 800 Corporate Boulevard. But I did find that Claude in particular was helpful in, as you pointed out, saying, okay, well this is specifically what you need and what you don’t need. Adam: Yeah. And so I was just looking at the preface to your request. It looks like you used Claude 4.5 Haiku via Duck AI. BJ: Yes. That’s right. Adam: And you know, I’ve also tended to find—to be honest, I have not played around a lot with Haiku. I think in general the bigger parameter models tend to give much better results. So with respect to Claude, I think I’ve only looked at it using Sonnet and Opus. I don’t think I’ve experimented with Haiku. BJ: I don’t want anyone to take this as an endorsement for Anthropic or Claude. Yeah. Adam: No. No. BJ: I certainly don’t. And I’m one of the plaintiffs in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, so I can factually say they stole my stuff to train their model. So our interest in promoting these things is just: how can we arm everyday citizens to act like reporters, and how quickly can we onboard them? And is this better than some of the other things? Can you tell us a little bit about FOIA Wiki and maybe why that would be the more superior thing for people to go to? Adam: Yeah, well, I mean, I certainly like it because it’s a resource that the Reporters Committee hosts and that other groups have contributed to over the years. I’m not saying it’s the best one out there, but it is certainly something that we like to send journalists to when they have questions about FOIA. I think that federal FOIA in particular is not always easy to use. And that’s a shame because these laws exist for the benefit of the public at large. But for better or for worse, we have sixty years now of case law and regulations and implementation of FOIA. And I do think it behooves people to understand how the law works, both as a legal entity and as a practical matter. And to do that, you just have to get your hands dirty a little bit. You have to read agency regulations, understand what are the trade-offs between the scope of your request and how quickly you need it, understand how to make an argument about timeliness or public interest. I do think that flexing your brain muscles around these things helps ultimately produce better requests. And there are a lot of tools that can help us produce better work product, but at the end of the day, I don’t think there are a lot of shortcuts that can be taken. So I think reading about FOIA from a whole variety of sources, including from the government frankly—the DOJ guide to FOIA—to better familiarize yourself with how the law works is always a good idea. BJ: Yeah, and I think a good example of using your brain is—I’m sure you’ve heard by now about ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Adam: Yes. BJ: Yeah, which Wired recently reported on, an incident in Syracuse, among others, where a poll

  4. Jul 17

    Is This The Best Way to FOIA ICE?

    We’re teaching everyone how to use FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act.) If you missed our first attempt to FOIA ICE and the General Services Administration for information concerning 800 Corporate Boulevard in the Town of Newburgh, start here. This conversation picks up from that post. The current deadline for GSA to get back to us, according to them, is 20 business days from July 13th, 2026. So August 7th, 2026 is when we will file up with them if we haven’t heard back. Transcript (Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.) BJ Mendelson, The Monroe Gazette: Lauren, would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself? Lauren Harper, Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy with Freedom of the Press Foundation: Of course. My name is Lauren Harper, and I currently serve as the Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy with Freedom of the Press Foundation. Prior to that, I spent over a decade working for a nonprofit based in Washington, DC called the National Security Archive, helping journalists, researchers, and lots of other folks use FOIA to get important documents declassified. BJ Mendelson: For for our younger members of the audience, could you tell us who Daniel Ellisberg was? Lauren Harper: Absolutely. Daniel Ellsberg was the legendary whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the early nineteen seventies, and these papers proved that successive presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican, had been lying to the public and to Congress about the odds of success …American success, in Vietnam. BJ: It’s striking to me. I I had just read The Afghanistan Papers a few years ago and I was struck by history not necessarily repeating, but definitely rhyming there. Lauren: Craig Whitlock’s book relied heavily on FOIA. I actually worked on the Afghanistan documentation project at the archive while he was was working on that and, absolutely, history repeats, rhymes, all that stuff. And FOIA, you know, is it’s an imperfect tool, but it was really important in getting …especially the Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction Reports out into the public for for that book. BJ: For people who haven’t read it, I can’t recommend [the book] enough. Especially as a millennial, my entire adulthood was shaped by Afghanistan. Lauren, let’s put aside for a second that the federal government is broken, right? And FOIA probably is not gonna work the way that it would in an ideal situation. That said, what we’re trying to do at The Monroe Gazette is train people to use the chat models like like a Claude or ChatGPT to send in FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests. And that can be fraught with peril. So I sent you what we had created in Claude to send to the GSA concerning 800 Corporate Boulevard in the Town of Newburgh. What worked and what didn’t in that FOIA? Lauren: I’ll just note that FOIA certainly does not work the way it was promised under this administration or really any other. You know, it’s had a lot of longstanding problems that have really snowballed over the decades and years, but I think it’s facing some acute pressure that is unique under this administration. So long standing problems and acute pressures right now make it a really difficult tool. But I don’t want that to discourage people from using FOIA because I think it remains the best avenue any member of the public has in forcing the government to disclose information that the public wants to see. It’s one of the most democratic tools that we have access to. And I think the more people who use it shows the government that one, there’s a demand for actual transparency and there’s a need for this law, which makes it more difficult I think for the government basically to starve FOIA offices across the board. But in terms of the request that you sent me, there are a couple things that that Claude did really well. And I think in general, you know, AI does pretty well when it comes to helping people craft a FOIA request objectively. You know, one of the things that it is best at is identifying what kind of documents an agency possesses. So AI can be really useful. And I think it was in this case for highlighting specific kinds of records that the GSA (General Services Administration) is likely to keep because you know the GSA has different kinds of records and a different record system than any other agency. You know, it’s got a different record system than ICE, different kind of records, etc. It can also be really helpful in identifying specific dates, award numbers, amounts, and these are all keywords that can be used by a FOIA officer when they receive your request to help process it. So I think overall that is what Claude is best at and did best here. But I think that there are a couple of things… It was almost too good. For example, you know, the request is really big. It’s got four parts. And objectively, that’s okay. But when it comes to how an agency actually processes a request, it might be better to split that up into four smaller requests. And I’m happy to talk about some of the other things that you could input into the Claude model to make it a stronger request. BJ: I wanted to briefly touch on how I relied Project Saltbox and their coverage of 800 Corporate Boulevard. They are the ones that initially had discovered this, I guess, secret intended use for the warehouse of possible transportation and holding of people there. And so I relied heavily on feeding that information into Claude, which is what generated the FOIA. In general, would you say it’s best practices to keep these FOIA requests as specific and narrow as possible? And if so, does that lead into… What you mentioned of instead of like one big request, it it should be maybe more specific, more narrow and smaller requests? Lauren: I think in general it’s always been best to file a targeted request as targeted as you can. And I think, you know, while a lot of there were a lot of specifics in the request that that you posted. It really it different sections of it lend itself to an agency coming back with specific exemptions. So if your goal is to, for example, have the simplest processing possible, like if you’re not gonna sue, that’s when it really behooves you to break up some of those requests. So for example, one section most likely to get met with trade secrets exemption, the exemption before. Another one was most likely to see what’s called “the deliberative process exemption.” So if you’re not going to sue, really the best thing to do is to break up that request to a little bit smaller. And that also allows you to preemptively kind of argue against some of the exemptions that might be applied. But I think for the average person perhaps who might be listening when filing your request, the best thing that you can do truly to put yourself on good footing Is not just the content of the stuff that you’re asking for, but make sure that you identify your fee status in the body of the request. I noticed that yours asked for a fee waiver, which honestly is something I’m on the fence about because it’s so rarely granted. [Reader note: At this time the GSA has said our request for a fee waiver is “pending.”] An agency will often come back and deny it. And it just kind of becomes another interaction you have to have with an agency before they process your request. What I’ve found, what a lot of particularly reporters, journalists, whether they’re freelancers or not, researchers at educational institutions and so on, their best bet is to preemptively identify their fee status. For example, that could be news media. And what happens here, because of amendments that were made to FOIA in 2016, this means that when an agency misses their processing deadline of 20 days, which they most certainly will, or an extra 10 days, even if you do get expedited processing, they can’t charge any fees. And so that’s eff effectively the same thing as a fee waiver, but it doesn’t really require a back and forth with the agency usually to secure it. So I think asking for a fee status is is knowing your fee status and asking for it up front, one of the best things you can do to make the FOIA process less painful and contentious. BJ: I think that’s great advice. And for us, what we’re trying to do is train people to be their local media. I think that’s great advice. And for us, what we’re trying to do is train people to be their own local media outlets so essentially everything within a ten mile radius of your home is what we’re encouraging people to report on. In that specific instance, what what could they claim, if anything? Lauren: I think you could say freelancer. I think you could say freelancer, which is member of the news media. You can pick the news media option when you file your request. That was another thing with your article. I think it mentioned either emailing or sending a hard copy of your FOIA request. You certainly can do that. You’re allowed to do that. What I recommend though, honestly, is going through GSA’s PAL portal, public access link portal. Because any other way that you submit a request, whether that’s you’re emailing it, you are mailing it in, or you’re using FOIA.gov, which is the government-wide FOIA portal, when the GSA gets it through any of those venues, they have to manually take all that information and put it into their their PAL portal. So that just creates another step. Sometimes errors can come in when an agency an agency FOIA officer is re-entering information into their direct portal. I would recommend just going directly into their their PAL portal. It keeps all of your correspondences with an agency right there so you can see it, which makes it much easier when you want to appeal. But another really common sense thing that I would just recommend your listeners d

  5. Jun 11

    Thomas DiNapoli Lies About Palantir, South Blooming Grove, and Coddles Elon Musk

    Early voting starts this weekend and continues through Election Day on June 23. If you live in Orange County and you're a registered Democrat, we encourage you to support Raj Goyle instead of the incumbent, Thomas DiNapoli, because of what appears to be an attempt by DiNapoli to bury the audit of South Blooming Grove. Something his office began in March of 2024 and is still going. Why? According to Thomas DiNapoli’s office, “During the audit, we identified matters requiring additional review which has impacted the timing of the audit.” Our guess is this audit will be done around the same time the remaining two to three million Epstein fiels are going to be released. Vote for Raj instead. It may be our only shot at full financial transparency from this Village. The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content and the ability to comment on posts just like this one. Note: The following transcript was lightly edited for brevity and clarity. BJ Mendelson, Editor, The Monroe Gazette: Raj, thank you so much for joining us here on The Monroe Gazette. Would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself? Raj Goyle, Candidate for New York State Comptroller: Thank you for having me, BJ. My name is Raj Goyle and I am a Democratic candidate for New York State Comptroller. BJ Mendelson: Tell us a little about yourself, and a little about yourself before you decided to run. Raj Goyle: I’m running to be the affordability watchdog. I think that we need better Democrats, people who fight and not fold, and that we can lower utility rates and that we can get ICE out of New York and build affordable housing. We can invest and attack the affordability crisis and fight the Trump authoritarian administration. I myself am a dad, I’m a husband, I’m a son, got two teenage daughters. I’ve run a successful New York business. I helped pass the cell phone ban in public schools here in New York. I’ve been a former legislator and perhaps most importantly I’ve been a civil rights lawyer my entire life and so I worked at the ACLU, the NAACP legal defense fund, Public Citizen, and very much believe in holding power accountable. BJ: Here in Orange County, we’re particularly excited for someone to challenge Thomas DiNapoli for some of the reasons that we’re gonna get into. But before we get into that, I first wanna ask you some bigger national … Raj: BJ, I I’m sorry, I need to interrupt you because you realize that I’m an adopted son of Orange County. My wife, Monica Aurora, is a a lifelong New Yorker and a native Orange Countian. And so she, my in-laws immigrated from New Delhi with, you know, five bucks to Rochester in nineteen seventy. And then after six months took a bus to Warwick. And some locals took them in and got them jobs in the school system. And they spent 30 years as lifelong union members and public school teachers. And my in-laws built a gorgeous Indian temple off exit 118 off the Thruway called Bartheam under. BJ: I sometimes feel like we have politicians that will run for a local office that have no connection at all to Orange County. We just had a gentleman, I won’t say who it was, run for Monroe Town Supervisor, who had never gone to a meeting and his only claim to fame was being the chief of staff of a New York State Assemblyman. So there was really no connection that they had with Monroe civically. So I I always love hearing things like that. Before we get into the Orange County stuff, there’s a bigger question I wanted to ask you about because I I really enjoyed the op-ed you wrote in City and State recently. So I have two questions related to that on some of these large national issues that New York State and the New York State Comptroller’s Office play a role in. And so the first is… This is something that we had first pointed out to DiNapoli’s office. Where the New York State Common Retirement Fund held just about 3.5 million shares of Tesla, which is worth about $1.42 billion. And this was around the time where Musk was still in the White House and was beginning his cuts, or not long after where Musk was beginning his cuts, to USAID. It’s projected that the number of people that have died because of these cuts is about seven hundred and sixty-two thousand people, over five hundred thousand of which are children. So we asked DiNapoli’s office basically, you know, would you consider divesting from Tesla? And we kind of got this non answer: “We recognize the concerns regarding Tesla’s governance challenges, recent financial performance, and reputational risks, but we must continue to focus on long-term value and sustainability. Consistent with this approach, we prioritize engagement with corporate management, and only contemplate divestment as an absolute last resort and only then when the Fund would not be negatively impacted by such action.” But I just wanted to ask, if if you were in Mr. DiNapoli’s seat, given what we know now about the Musk cuts to USAID and as well as the, you know, people can’t get accurate weather forecasts because of DOGE… So given all the damage that we can factually say has been caused by Musk, would you, as the comptroller divest from Tesla and other companies owned or operated by him? Raj Goyle: I know I would have a fundamentally different approach to Elon Musk than Tom DiNapoli Even in my launch video, I filmed a scene outside Tesla’s showroom in Manhattan because Tom DiNapoli voted for Elon Musk in a Tesla board election, did not seriously audit Tesla after the boondoggle in Buffalo. And he’s been, as you mentioned, when Elon Musk was taking a literal chainsaw to the federal government when he, you know, on on one of his ketamine fueled binges, causing massive death and destruction and of course not saving the government a dollar. In fact, he will end up costing us vast sums of money. Tom DiNapoli said nothing. And so I will absolutely take just a fundamentally different approach to Musk rather than coddling him. We will fight to make sure that we have not only our values protected in the pension fund, but moreover, we must have clear corporate governance. Elon Musk is taking a meat cleaver to very long establish corporate governance protections for not just investors, but for the people at large and the SpaceX IPO. That’s coming up is is a great example of that. They’re gonna SpaceX investors gonna be able to dump their shares right away, possibly. There is this … he’s got the Nasdaq to list the company much sooner than the normal lockup period to see which is an important investor protection. And so I would absolutely take a very, very different approach to Musk and of course I’m very open to divesting from Musk owned companies. BJ: And just for people listening, the it was the Cato Institute that had pointed out that the DOGE cuts would actually cost more money than what was actually saved. (Something laid out in detail from other reports like this one.) So we’re generally left leaning on this show. I think people know that when they listen to read our work, but I just wanna point out that it was even the conservative think tank that had pointed out that Musk would cause more financial damage… Raj: Well yeah, I mean I think any of us who are who are involved in government and public life, I think could have seen that one a mile a mile away. And I certainly was doing media appearances at the time and and and called that out very, very clearly. And in fact I predicted that the Musk-Trump relationship would fracture as it did. And so, you know, these are volatile people who have very who have no scruples and don’t mask their agenda. They are about self interest and and corporate greed and they do not care one bit about how we succeed as a community, as a people, as an economy. BJ: And this is on a similar topic where Orange County was sort of ground zero for this warehouse expansion that was proposed of taking warehouses across the country and converting them into concentration camps. That’s my term for them. I know most people are okay with that analogy, but some aren’t, and I understand why. But there was this big question of whether or not 29 Elizabeth Drive [in the Village of Chester] was gonna be converted. They eventually backed off, they being ICE and DHS. However, they did open a office in New Windsor that not even the town supervisor was aware of. And there’s also currently a discussion as to what they want to build, if anything, over by Stewart Airport over on the town of Newburgh side. So ICE is very much top of mind, so is DHS. You know, as I write this, ICE is continuing to kidnap Monroe residents. And so there are a number of companies that are currently doing business with DHS and ICE. Dell, UPS, FedEx, Motorola, Comcast, ATT, Lexus Nexus, Home Depot and Lowe’s, Amazon and Palantir, Palantir being the big one. we’ll circle back to Palantir when we get to the next question. But some of these other companies, it’s sort of the same topic of… if you found that they were doing business that deprived American citizens of their rights. What action could you take as the comptroller to help send the message saying that this is not okay? Raj Goyle: Obviously there’s two levers here. There’s divestment and then there’s shareholder activism and and pressure on the company. And I believe Tom has failed at both. Nobody I think fears Tom DiNapoli in terms of corporate responsibility and his strongly worded letters. I don’t know if you listen to the debate we had last week, but you know, a a strongly worded letter from Tom DiNapoli I think, is is so

  6. May 8

    "Populist" James Skoufis & Other Democrats Fails to Protect Immigrant Families. Again.

    Below is a transcript of this week’s podcast. It has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity. BJ Mendelson, Host of The Monroe Gazette podcast: Hello everyone, it’s BJ Mendelson. Welcome to another edition of the The Monroe Gazette podcast. We’re still on break, technically, until I finish my book, How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. I should be done next week, I hope, which we originally said was the 15th, when we’re gonna be coming back from our break. I’m gonna try very hard to meet that deadline. If I don’t, I will let you know. We will definitely be done with the book this month. If you would like free copy a free .PDF and a free .mp3 All you have to do is visit stupidsexyprivacy.com that’s our sister website to the Monroe Gazette. Subscribe to that newsletter and as soon as the finished PDF and mp3 are ready we’ll make sure you get a copy. Before we get into today’s interview, I just wanted to touch on something real quick. New York Focus is a great local news resource here in New York. They cover state news and they do a pretty good job of catching stories that otherwise would fall through the cracks. So I’m a big fan of New York Focus. It’s worth a donation. But man, that doesn’t mean it’s above criticism. So, something bad did happen over in New York focus this week. They published what is essentially a puff piece on state senator Skoufis. The headline is so nauseating it says The Young Populist Trying to Redefine the New York Democratic Party — and We Don’t Mean Mamdani. Like, listen … I’ve worked in PR and marketing, so I can spot these puff pieces from a mile away, because that’s what I’ve done for the last 20 years. I can’t say conclusively that The Parkside Group, which is what Mr. Skoufis has used to prop up the candidacy of a far right MAGA weirdo in Woodbury, which wasn’t too long ago, and also used it to plant voicemails to attack and otherwise defame the (now current) Monroe town supervisor. I don’t doubt that someone from The Parkside group wrote to New York Focus with a puff piece and basically laid out everything for them and was like, “hey, Senator Skoufis is up for reelection. Look how cool he is and look at this. Look how successful he is in this red district.” And I just want to fact check this because number one, Democrats outnumber Republicans in Orange County two to one. It is not a red district. It is not redder than almost any other place in New York. And I can say that because I have lived all over New York. Like if you want to visit MAGA LAND go to the North Country, you will see a red district. And that’s true also, like I’ve lived down in Buffalo and the second you leave Erie County and you’re in a place like Wyoming County, where there’s more cows and people. Yeah, it’s MAGA LAND! And I’m not, you know, that’s not an attack on those counties. It’s just me pointing out. Factually that it’s very misleading to portray Orange County as MAGA LAND and that Skoufis is some kind of bastion against the bulwark of MAGA because he’s not. The only reason why this man has any sort of political career is because of corporate donors. If you go and look at his finances, you can see that he’s raised over $6 million. The other reason that he’s done as well as he has is because there is a large group of people who do come out and vote for him consistently, who are atypical when we look at the rest of New York state. If you look at the rest of New York state, we’re unique in Orange County in that we do have a large population of Satmar voters. Many of whom, not all, and I want to underline the words, not all, tend to vote based on what Anash tells them, which is the majority party in Kiryas Joel, for example, or what the criminals in South Blooming Grove, Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein tell people. So to portray this man, Skoufis, as being some kind of like progressive agent or a populist agent who’s changing the Democratic Party and challenging the establishment in New York? No, that man is the establishment. This is a man who’s told people, I support New York for all, and then came out just recently against it. This is a man who, despite the fact that 1.2 million people in New York state are going to lose their health insurance by the end of this year. Skoufis is the man who said, I don’t want to vote for the New York Health Act because it’s too expensive. This is not a populist. So I recommend New York Focus. I do think you should check it out. But I saw that and I was just really disappointed. And I needed to tell someone how disappointed I was. This article did not pass the smell test. This looks like a PR puff piece. And I wanted you to know about it because you’re gonna hear in this discussion in today’s episode about how Skoufis has actively worked against the rights of immigrant communities that live here in New York State and immigrant families. That is not a populist. That is a con artist. The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one. BJ Mendelson, Host of The Monroe Gazette podcast: Hi Rosa, thank you so much for joining us today. Would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself to our audience? Rosa Cohen-Cruz, Director of Immigration Policy with the Bronx Defenders: Sure, my name is Rosa Cohen Cruz. I’m the Director of Immigration Policy with the Bronx Defenders. BJ Mendelson: And can you tell us a little bit about what the Bronx Defenders does? Rosa Cohen-Cruz: Yeah, the Bronx Defenders is a large public defender not-for-profit that represents people in criminal court, in family court, in immigration court, housing court, and is really one of the organizations that pioneered this model of holistic defense. Were we’re making sure that we’re representing people and providing services for all aspects of the people we serve, not just like one niche legal area. BJ: And have you had any any people that you represent that have been sent to Orange County Jail for one reason or another? Rosa: Yeah, so we are NYIFUP providers, which is the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project. Brooklyn Defender Services, Bronx Defender Services and Legal Aid together have been providing universal representation to people in New York who are detained while facing their deportation cases. And we have many, many clients who are at Orange County jail; and over the years have represented many people detained at the Orange County jail. BJ: Is there any particular issues that stand out or instances that come to mind involving the jail that you think people should know about? Rosa: Yeah, the Orange County jail is sort of notoriously one of the worst detention centers that we have had. Where we have had clients. a couple of years ago, there was a reporter that looked at complaints of, harassment by guards and medical issues and various things across all detention centers across the nation. And he sort of picked out some of the worst ones and Orange County Jail was one of the ones that he picked out as, you know, being particularly bad for medical neglect and abuse by guards. And so, I think that has definitely been the experience of the people we’ve represented. We’ve seen people go in healthy and come out with long term chronic illnesses that really developed because of their mistreatment at the facility. I’m sure you’re well aware that there was recently a report done by NYLPI about the medical neglect at the jail. And it has really been a place where we have seen people suffer and deteriorate. We’ve seen mental health, decompensation. We’ve seen people with strong claims for relief from their removal cases give up because of how horrific the conditions in the facility have been. BJ: It’s crazy to hear about because if you watch the legislative meetings for Orange County, we spend a lot of money on that jail. And my impression is that that money is not making its way towards better treatment for the people that are detained there. Is that right? Rosa: I don’t know the ins and outs of how the legislature spends its money, but I can certainly say that whatever financial decisions they’re making, it is not translating into people being well cared for at the facility. People have been suffering there for years. In the summer, we hear complaints about it being extremely hot in the facility. In the winter, we hear complaints about it being extremely cold, about people not being able to access enough blankets or ways to stay warm. We hear about medical neglect. We hear about the food being rotten. That’s been something that’s been shared for years and years. We hear about guards verbally abusing the people who are in detention there. Bronx Defenders was as part of a lawsuit against Orange County Jail for for transferring people in retaliation for hunger strikes several years ago. And those people had been protesting the conditions in the facility. So we have years and years and years of evidence of just how harmful this facility in particular has been, how much pain and damage it has caused to our fellow New Yorkers who have been forced to be caged there. BJ: I couldn’t help but notice that much of these complaints seem to correlate with the emergence of County Executive Steve Neuhaus at the helm of Orange County. The hunger strike goes back to the time where he took over or just after he took over as County Executive. Has anyone tried to bring these issues and concerns to the County Executive Neuhaus Rosa: Well

  7. May 1

    Cowardly Hochul, Skoufis, Other Dems Try to Abandon Immigrant Families

    Pictured Above: A flyer for an event put on by a new local community group, Hudson Valley Caracoles. We’d like to encourage you to attend. Below, Little Dick Energy State Senator Skoufis tries to weasel out of supporting a bill he told numerous Orange County constituents that he supported. He’s not the only Democrat to do so, as you’ll see in today’s post. This man has no reproductive organs to speak of. Yasmine Farhang, whom we spoke to in this podcast interview below, commented on the State Senator’s response, sharing with us: Senator Skouffis’s attempt to rationalize his opposition to New York for All false flat. His rhetoric seeks to demonize New Yorkers by fear-mongering and mis-leading his constituents. He fails to recognize the beliefs that so many New Yorkers hold close - that the importance of keeping families and communities together is bound up with the importance of upholding due process for all. For years, ICE entanglement with state and local agencies has enabled the cruel separation of family members across our state - this includes many people who face disproportionate policing, as well as those who are convicted of crimes and serve prison sentences only to then face a cruel double punishment when funneled to ICE detention and deportation. The bottom line - New York resources must not be used to fuel a federal mass deportation agenda, especially when sending people to ICE is increasingly deadly. I reject Senator Skouffi’s attempt to divide us and we will continue to stand united in calling for New York for All. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. There may be errors as it was generated by an AI and read over by BJ, who usually misses a ton of typos on the first read through. BJ Mendelson, Editor of The Monroe Gazette: Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of The Monroe Gazette podcast. I’m your host, BJ Mendelson. We have two interviews to bring to you today. Both are related to New York for All and some of the activity going on in our community to promote bills such as New York for All and Dignity Not Detention I just wanted to say something real quick. So I am working on finishing my book, How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. It was supposed to be out in February. We basically went and ripped up the whole thing after Alex Pretti was murdered. I thought about doing it after Renee Good was killed, then when Alex Pretti was murdered, we got pushed over the threshold of … You know, needing to redo the entire book. So we rewrote it. We rewrote the entire thing. So it’ll be out. It looks like the end of May. I need to do a lot of stuff to get it ready. This is all a long way of saying that May is probably going to be a quiet month on the Monroe Gazette, just so that I can get the book out. My expectation is that things will be fairly quiet until about May 15th. At that point, I will be done. And then other people will hopefully get involved and finish up the actual production of the book and then I can move on to other things. And then at that point, I’ve been thinking of doing some major changes to the The Monroe Gazette Originally we had two goals. And the first goal was get Tony Cardone out of office, which we succeed in doing. And then the other goal was to sort of document everything that’s happening in South Blooming Grove and try to bring Joel Stern and Isaac Eckstein to justice. So, I mean, we filed three lawsuits so far, and that’s not counting the federal one involving the stolen election. And it doesn’t involve the one with like the 26 residents who are going to file suit to have the village actually audited, because there’s no way Thomas DiNapoli, in an election year, is ever going to release that South Blooming Grove audit. So we figured we were going to sue. My expectation is to focus on South Blooming Grove and then what’s going on over in Sullivan County with Kiryas Skever. I can’t cover everything. And so there’s, there’s a certain like Maginot Line. I don’t know how many of you know what the Maginot Line but like the Maginot Line was basically a barrier that the French created after World War I, where they thought that they would be able to keep the Germans out by building this big ass fortification, which of course did not work at all. It did not work. So I kind of look at [this situation] as crossing the Maginot Line. Crossing the threshold. And we’re definitely at the Maginot Line in terms of like the Monroe Gazette in terms of like its finances. I held on for as long as I could for about two years doing it at a loss. I can’t keep doing that. So in order for it to continue as a publication, it definitely needs to expand its scope a bit in terms of what it covers. So I’m kind of leaning towards just doing like this radical change of focusing again on South Blooming Grove, Kiryas Skever as opposed to sort of the local news. That doesn’t mean we won’t cover the local news. There’s certainly things that’ll come up that are important and that we’ll write about, but it’s just not something that I’m gonna spend so much time on. So I’m telling you this in advance. We’re gonna take a short break. We’ll be back on or around May 15th or probably after that when the book is done. And then after that, we’re gonna kind of…figure out what exactly the Monroe Gazette is going to be covering and what it’s not going to be covering because it just can’t, it can’t continue in the shape that it is. But for now we have two wonderful interviews that we’re going to share with you concerning New York For All. The reason why I went on this whole tangent is because something that really frustrates me is that people don’t want preferential treatment for the Haredi. But those same people don’t want the law to be applied to people that are here, quote unquote, illegally. Again, no one here in America is here illegally. Technically, we’re all here illegally. We’re living on stolen Indian land. That’s a whole other thing. But it doesn’t matter what we think. It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what I think, because what matters is what the Constitution thinks. And the Constitution thinks in the 14th Amendment that the law of the United States applies to everyone equally, regardless of whether or not they are a citizen. And so I kind of struggle with this thing of, you know, you don’t want preferential treatment for the Satmar which I understand, but at the same time, you’re saying the law shouldn’t count towards people that are here, quote unquote, illegally. So my thing, the reason why we talk as much as we do about New York for all, Dignity Not Detention, and some of these other things is because our philosophy at the Monroe Gazette is very simple: Everybody counts. Everybody. And that’s sort where we’re coming from in our coverage of South Blooming Grove plus Kiryas Skever plus things like New York for All. So I just want people to understand why we spend as much time talking about it as we do, because we think it’s important, because we think everyone counts. And with that said, let’s get right to those interviews. The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one. Interview #1 Yasmine Farhang Yasmine Farhang, Executive Director of the Immigrant Defense Project: My name is Yasmine Farhang and I’m the executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project. And for those who are not familiar with IDP, we have been around for almost 30 years and we fight for justice for immigrants who are impacted at the intersections of the immigration legal system and the criminal legal system. BJ: Can you give us an example of that? Because I try to explain to people that being here in a country, quote unquote, illegally is not actually a criminal offense. It’s a civil offense. Is that right? Yasmine: So IDP was born in the wake of the 1996 immigration laws, which passed Congress and were signed by former President Clinton, which were some of the most draconian immigration laws that kind of shaped the detention and deportation system that we have today. But what people might be less familiar with is that those laws also bound up the criminal legal and the immigration legal systems together to really try to use kind of the policing, the worst of kind of racist policing and the criminal injustice and the criminal legal system to also funnel people to ICE detention and deportation. So, at IDP, we have a really core principle and that principle is that everyone deserves dignity and nobody is disposable. And we know we also approach this work from a racial justice lens and we know that disproportionately black immigrants and immigrants of color are disproportionately impacted at the intersection of those systems. And so, you know, that has been our mission for the last 30 years. And of course, the systems that were built back then are being supercharged now. BJ: Previously we had Senator Andrew Gounardes is the co-sponsor of New York for All. He’s walked us through what the bill does and what it doesn’t do. I’d to hear your perspective on New York for All, why it’s important and what it does. Yasmine: Absolutely. So New York for All, it really is there in the name. it’s really about ensuring that all New Yorkers all around our state, no matter what county they’re living in, no matter what their immigration status are, can rely on the ability to participate in their communiti

  8. Apr 29

    Gun Safety Advocates Lose, Tech Companies Win Under Sneaky NYS Budget Provision

    New articles on The Monroe Gazette are on hiatus until BJ finishes his book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” It will be released in late May or early June of this year. If you would like a free .pdf or .mp3 copy of the book when they become available, subscribe to the Stupid Sexy Privacy newsletter here. Articles will resume on The Monroe Gazette in early May. Until then we’ll be running brand new episodes of the podcast. The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one. The following is the full transcript from this week’s podcast. The transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity where neded. BJ Mendelson, Editor of The Monroe Gazette: Rory, thank you so much for joining us on The Monroe Gazette. we’ve had a couple of representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on our sister podcast, Stupid Sexy Privacy. But because this is The Monroe Gazette podcast, I was hoping you could take a moment just to introduce yourself and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Rory Mir, Director of Open Access and Tech Community Engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Yeah, I’m happy to and thank you so much for having me on. I’m Rory Mir. I’m the Director of Open Access and Tech Community Engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF has been fighting for over 30 years now. I wasn’t there the whole time, but over 30 years defending our civil liberties online. Basically bringing digital rights into a digital world. So a nonprofit law firm constantly defending innovation, privacy, and I’m particularly interested in defending consumers from bad tech practices from tech companies. BJ Mendelson: The reason why we’re having this discussion on the Monroe Gazette as opposed to Stupid Sexy Privacy is because right now there is a provision in the New York state budget that the Electronic Frontier Foundation caught concerning 3D printers. Could you walk us through that? Rory Mir: Folks that are familiar with the New York budget process know a lot of things get wrapped up into the budget And as usual it gets delayed quite a bit. So we’re still pushing back on it right now. There’s a couple of provision impacting 3d printers which folks are familiar with 2d printers, but 3d printers for folks that aren’t familiar are kind of like hot glue guns that you tell a computer to control and that slowly builds up a shape in three dimensions. Often you see this being used by artists, making cool statues or cosplay costumes. It’s also really common in more commercial settings where people are making prototypes or researchers testing a new shape for things. So it’s really this cool technology that lets you fabricate things without going through big manufacturers and kind of iterate quickly and build up new creative ideas. So we’re fans of this open innovation that it brings to folks on the grassroots level. And what this provision and the budget does is threatens that basically. It curtails a lot of that expressive freedom by mandating a software that we think is dangerous, a print blocking mandate that is yeah so out of fear of ghost guns and people making firearms and firearm components with these machines basically New York State in this proposed budget would have a database of forbidden files and mandate — without any details I need to emphasize — a way for all of these 3D printers to not be able to print shapes that could be used in that context, which I think there’s a lot of good intention coming into this. People are concerned about gun violence and unlicensed firearms. However, when you speak to people who actually understand how these machines work and just the nature of making a 3D shape, it is not something that is possible. There are many ways that any algorithm trying to detect shapes can be undermined quite easily. So we’re concerned that while the people that are being targeted, the people who are trying to make firearms and similar components with these machines will be able to follow a quick tutorial to get around those blocks, the many, many other creators, researchers, innovators, that use and rely on these machines are going to be stuck with this technology that the only real way to do it is to have it be surveilling users and there’s no safeguards in those in the provisions for that. So we’re really worried about the impact that it’ll have on the lawful use of these machines and really just don’t want it to be rushed through this budget process without any safeguards or oversight for those regular lawful users. BJ: So let me break that down a little bit. Because I think the concern from the ghost guns came from the murder of the United Health Care CEO and the claims that Luigi Mangione may have used a 3D printed gun. But my understanding is it’s actually really difficult to make a functioning gun from a 3D printer. Is that right? Rory: Yeah, it requires a level of understanding the craft of it. Technically, you don’t even need a 3D printer. Homemade DIY guns have existed long before 3D printers because it is ultimately a simple machine that once you know how to machine it, you can do it. So 3D printers... You can make a cheap error prone one that might blow up in your hand if you don’t already have that existing knowledge of how firearms work and how to properly put one together. So while it is possible for someone to make one with a 3D printer, there is a level of know-how that has to go into it as well. BJ: Right, and I have to imagine, and this is all getting into hypothetical territory, but I have to imagine that if someone is particularly motivated to print a 3D weapon, that nothing is really going to stop them from doing it. Rory: Yeah, I mean, that gets into this mandated software on these machines. One of the things is that it is easy enough to alter it because it’s unlike something tightly regulated and standard like currency. People will point to you’re not able to print a dollar bill, but that is a very specific reference with very specific design standards. So being able to detect whether it looks like that is quite simple. With a firearm, you’re talking about a function. So any shape that can or can potentially serve that same function falls into that definition. And that gets even further complicated by the fact that with 3D printing, the machine only sees what you’re printing in the moment. So if you print something that has a lot of extra adornments, you can maybe shave it down to a core component. And likewise, if you... kind of print a bunch of pieces of a firearm and then later fuse them together, you can also make one that way. So the machine isn’t gonna see your intention, right? It’s only gonna be able to look at the file and that’s what makes it so easy to game if you are determined to make these firearms. BJ: Right, and so my concern here is the way that this software is described, sounds like, and just how you’ve explained it, it looks like it’s not specifically targeted at guns, it’s targeted at gun-like shapes, is that right? Rory: Yeah, so we’re seeing a few of these in different states that have slightly different language. The New York one is really less detailed than ones we’ve seen in Washington and California. It’ll be decided by a working group without peer review, which is concerning to us. So it could be loaded with people with financial interests on how this works. The thing that is shared across these bills is often the receiver of the firearm, which is the part that needs a serial number when you buy or alterations, which is even more abstract of simple shapes that can turn a handgun into a machine gun, you can make with literally a clothes hanger, or you can 3D print a shape that looks like that. And that is the same sort of abstract shape that is being implicated in these bills. BJ: You were kind enough to send me a bunch of material, which I read through. And I found that I was kind of lost as to what exactly the software does, who exactly would enforce the penalties and then the penalties themselves seemed kind of outrageous. Could you explain those to us? Rory: So in New York, a lot of it is really focused on the sellers. So a lot of the penalties will come to a seller who sells one of these machines that doesn’t have this mandated software on it. So that one of the things that really strikes me about that is that that extends to the second hand market that someone who has a printer today, if this passes in a few years might want to sell it to recoup some of those costs, or maybe get a new one. And then they would be implicated in these same penalties, which really range, but include potentially financial penalties or liability for anything that is done with the machine that is sold. BJ: I was kind of shocked at this suggestion that people would have to buy, [the 3D printers face to face.] So if you lived in our region and you wanted a 3D printer because you saw what was being done at SUNY New Paltz, or you are interested in resistance work where you want to print out whistles for detecting ice, that you would have to go and meet someone in person to purchase a 3D printer. Is that right? Rory: Yeah. It’s absurd. I feel that not only for the purchase, but for the delivery of the device. And there’s no exception to commercial folks. So this bill includes 3D printers as well as something called CNC machines, which are similar to 3D printers, but kind of do the opposite. They

See All (29)

About

The audio edition of The Monroe Gazette's long form local news coverage. For paid subscribers only. www.monroegazette.com

Information

  • Creator
    B.J. Mendelson
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    29
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Earth's Temporary Solution LLC
  • Show Website
    The Monroe Gazette Podcast