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Good morning, everybody.
Glad you are here.
Another busy day.
We're going to talk a lot about Iran, of course, later on in the program.
But we've got to start with just a few things that happened since we left and maybe since you went to bed because Iran, it's Iran.
Are we going with Iran or Iran?
Iran, Iran.
I know before people get mad.
It's
So the US State Department has ordered the mandatory departure of all non-emergency personnel in the six Middle Eastern countries that have been affected by this.
There's actually 11 that are now in the fray over in the Middle East.
Donald Trump made a little statement yesterday.
He warned about a big wave of the U.S.
attack, saying it's still yet to come in Iran.
That's good because his cavalier attitude toward service people dying doesn't seem to be changing.
And on that note, six U.S.
service people have now died following a direct Iranian strike on a makeshift operations in Kuwait.
There's a lot more.
At least 787 people we're talking civilians have been killed by the U.S.
and Israeli bombings across Iran since Saturday.
And Iranian, that's according to the Iranian Red Crescent this morning.
Israel has said that it's conducting simultaneous strikes in Tehran and Beirut, claiming that it has struck Hezbollah, centers of gravity in Beirut.
We're going to have a foreign policy expert who's going to join us after
eight o'clock this morning and we're going to be talking more about the situation throughout the morning and obviously monitoring things, bringing any updates that are important for all of us as well.
But that's what we know as of right now
We've been following, since last week, we've been following, and you may have too, the Anthropic story.
That is an AI company.
They have developed Claude, which is doing very well.
My
My friend who produces the podcast and uses AI at his regular job loves Claude.
Thinks Claude is the best thing.
He's on there.
He's on LinkedIn and stuff telling everybody if you've tried other things, you got to go to Claude.
Anyway, Claude and Anthropic had a contract with
the Pentagon.
Big lucrative contract up to $200 million.
Very nice.
Well, last week, if you remember, one day we talked about Pete Hegseth and his Department of Defense telling Anthropic and their CEO, Dario Amade, that unless you give us full control, take the safety
the training wheels off, the safety guards.
We don't want any of that.
We want to be able to use your AI the way we want to use it.
And a motor went, well, no, we're not going to do that.
And so Hexeth puffed up his chest, straightened his little American flag pocket square, and said, well, if that's the case, we're going to label you a supply chain risk.
And then the next day, anthropic came out and said, well, we're dropping some of our own self-imposed guidelines.
But that's separate.
And I thought, oh, that's not going to be separate.
Turns out it was separate.
They held firm on their decision with the Pentagon.
And Pete Hegseth has now...
label them a supply chain risk.
And that's an important label because it's usually only reserved for foreign adversaries like Chinese or Russian firms, not American companies.
Now, what I also think is interesting is that the supply chain risk designation essentially ends anthropics contract with the Pentagon.
And you mentioned the $200 million because that
is
Now Anthropic says that this action is legally unsound, also unprecedented.
The company plans to sue saying that the Department of Defense does not have authority to actually interfere with broader commercial business.
Imagine that, the government not being able to interfere in personal business.
Says
This is a warning though, I think, for a lot of other tech companies because if you don't meet the administration's terms, you could lose that government business.
Now, it turns out that your friend who produces your podcast is not alone when it comes to the love of Claude because it actually jumped to number one on Apple's US free app chart.
Just a day after this administration moved to block its use by the government agencies.
I think this is where a lot of, well, the media companies and a lot of other places are making a miscalculation when they think it's better to go along and capitulate to the demands of this administration than it is to stand up and fight.
I mean, Claude, I don't know.
Oh, I know almost nothing about AI.
I've used chat GPT a few times.
I don't know.
Claude may in fact be a much superior product.
It might be not too much better than chat GPT or open AI or any of the others.
But people may look at that and especially people who are very involved in the tech world.
It tends to lean a little more left.
They're going to say, oh, this company is standing up.
This is the company I'm going to back.
They're going to get my
my business, they're going to get my money, they're going to get my support.
Not as you know, not that the other companies have been bent to knee yet.
But maybe these other companies can look at what Anthropoc is doing and say, okay, we can still survive.
Some of them probably can't if they don't have those $200 million contracts.
And that's where once you have economic blackmail,
That's where the trouble starts
now open AI which has chat GPT did actually bend the knee They they basically are saying we'll do whatever the government wants to make sure that these contracts exist the dispute between Anthropic though in the US government Obviously, you can imagine it comes with some big financial risks, right?
Yeah Anthropic expects roughly $14 billion in revenue this year mostly from businesses using its AI assistant, which is of course Claude for all
of the coding and the office work that happens and more than 500 customers reportedly pay at least a million dollars annually, million dollars I should say annually to use Anthropics tools, which does include Claude.
I think this is an interesting argument though because artificial intelligence isn't just this far off futuristic debate anymore.
It's being used for weapon systems, surveillance tools, military targeting.
intelligence analyst.
And the rules that are currently being set by this administration are essentially going to shape how wars are fought down the road.
And as we look at what's happening in Iran, Iran, I'll get my pronunciation right yet this morning, you have to think that some of this has been in the
back of this administration's mind.
Because this debate with Anthropic has been going on for weeks, and we also know that the debate about what to do in the Middle East has also been going on for weeks.
But our guardrails at this point, it feels like some of our guardrails are off.
And when you are essentially getting involved, the US government is getting involved in business, especially in Silicon Valley,
that has to send a chill through Silicon Valley.
And I know there's plenty of people in Silicon Valley who support this administration, but did they ever anticipate the administration going as far as to say, well, here's what you're going to do if you want to do business with us.
to do
Because we you know what steel does this is steel AI there are still so many unanswered questions And that's at the basis of anthropic subjection to this that what the guardrails that we have put in so that for the Defense Department to use are Because we don't know exactly what will happen if they are not there.
We haven't there hasn't been enough research.
We don't know
how this can be used if these safeguards are off.
So to just allow the Defense Department to take this and do whatever they want with this, I'm sorry, I don't have faith that this administration is going to make the most ethical choices with a tool that might have unbridled potential.
So if these companies start feeling some sort of pressure to move fast without any of those guardrails or with government input, you have to really start thinking about who is going...
who is going to be monitoring the safety of all of this, right?
That's what my mind keeps going back to.
I mean, who's going to decide the rules for AI in warfare?
Is it going to be the government or is it essentially going to be the companies building the technology who then feel like they have to give in to whatever the government wants because they essentially hold the purse strings?
That's where I keep going with this argument with Anthropic.
Because a lot of people think this is minor on the peripheral.
I don't believe this is.
I think this is actually a bigger conversation that people are missing with everything else that this administration keeps throwing at us.
And just to remind people, the big stumbling blocks, when we keep saying the safeguards and the guardrails that Anthropic wants to put in, they don't want their product to be used for mass surveillance, unchecked, or
Autonomous weapons where there's no people involved where judgment doesn't come in.
It's just these these weapons are sent out and they do what their program to do or The program makes the decision.
So that's what anthropic is like.
No, we're not taking these off of there and I That sounds like a good idea to me again.
I don't know anything about AI, right?
But I do know at some point you have to have humans involved
Uh, especially if we're going to be dropping bombs on another country.
I mean, and you are I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
No, that's okay.
I just I don't The the idea of mass surveillance unchecked mass surveillance should scare everybody Well, I'm not doing anything wrong.
Why should I be afraid?
I don't know because maybe you don't want the government knowing everything you say do think Everywhere you go everything you buy.
I don't know maybe that
You know, and when you look at what happened with open AI after, uh, Anthropic didn't sign the deal because they quickly, quickly, their CEO, Sam Altman, uh, also opposes mass surveillance and a full and fully autonomous weapons.
Um, he signed the contract as soon as Anthropic basically stepped out.
He was like, no, no, we're not going to let that happen to us.
And it also becomes more of a debate because Amade, who is now, who is now the CEO, uh,
of Anthropic, as you mentioned, he was actually an employee at Open AI for many, many years in 2021.
So you can already see what this government is doing by creating that sort of tension between the companies and basically saying, well, if you don't do what we're asking, if you don't give us the technology we need for the warfare, for the mass surveillance, to compete with China, whatever the laundry list is,
Well, we're going to make sure that you're basically shut out of this market completely and we're going to award this to the person who's going to do exactly what we want.
That's dangerous.
And there's, there's a lot of dangers and they don't want it gone for good.
They just want to, you know, they just want to pump the brakes because they don't know what it's capable of.
All right, well, we come back.
Greg Bovino and some remember that name and other federal agents are being investigated for their role in Minneapolis.
Gonna be another interesting story, interesting day.
This is Daybreak.
I'm Brian Noonan.
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That's the phone number.
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They both go to the same place.
Don't ask me how I'm not an engineer.
But this is good news, I'm going to say, just because
the debacle that was the occupation of Minneapolis.
At least somebody may be held accountable.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has announced 17 instances of potential unlawful behavior by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge and those are under investigation for possible criminal charges.
So, you know, we've said from the beginning,
when Minnesota was being shut out of the initial investigations, that you had to let Minnesota investigate.
They're the ones who convicted Derek Chauvin.
It's their state.
They should be investigating.
Well, it seems now they are investigating and things are moving forward.
Unlike our DOJ and the Epstein case, at least Minnesota, good for you, they're looking into it.
and we'll see what happens with
Yeah, and they're looking at a few different instances.
One of them includes Greg Bovino, who was captured on video deploying a chemical irritant during a clash with protesters in South Minneapolis back in January.
Another video shows him warning the crowd before throwing a gas canister as green and gray smoke filled the area and some individuals were hit with an orange spray.
Now, Moriarty created the transparency in a
accountability project.
It's called TAP for short.
It allows the public to submit photos, videos, and descriptions of potential unlawful conduct committed by these federal agents.
And it's staffed by county prosecutors, as well as a civilian investigator, and it's already reviewing the 17 reported incidents at this time.
There's going to be more investigations, I think, as well.
Some of them already underway include actions by ICE and Border Patrol agents involving students at the
Minneapolis Roosevelt High School.
That was back in early January when they basically stationed themselves outside the school and were targeting students as they were leaving and to and from.
We also a lot of us saw the photo circulating on social media of what was happening at the high schools in Minneapolis during those raids.
let's take I somebody I know somebody's gonna go well what about deep fakes let's take that off the table there is enough video and photographic evidence of a lot of these incidents that it should be fairly easy to for prosecutors to decide does this rise to the level where we need to charge or is it just run-of-the-mill misconduct
that
way,
But this is a good step.
Everybody who has footage should be in that area, should be looking at this TAP program and get those videos and pictures in.
Because, again, you can lie if it's just your word against mine.
Your word against mine and I also have video and I have receipts
a lot harder.
And we all saw the stuff Bovino was doing.
You'd have to make a concerted effort to turn a blind eye.
Which I think is interesting because he was actually sidelined and replaced by Tom Homan, who has a much harder public stance on immigration enforcement.
However, we've seen Bovino's tactics and what happened as they played out in Chicago.
Of course, a lot of the same tactics that he used, the heavy presence, the confrontation.
the community backlash and then he ended up in court there as well.
And, you know, and at this point, um, I think it's going to be fascinating to see what happens because there is an ice presence, uh, now already in the Western part of the state.
Obviously now Bovino has been sidelined back to California.
We know that Tom Holman, uh, is, is at the front and center of these ice raids.
So it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out in the Western part of the state.
We're going to actually talk to an advocate.
Bore Bore already says that the federal government has refused to provide in Insta in investigation materials making the case
is more challenging for her office.
They have sent formal letters demanding evidence but says that there has been so far no response from the federal government in these investigations.
All right, no hands here.
I don't know if you're raising your hand at home, but I'm doubting it.
Yeah.
See, and this was the argument from the very beginning that the feds were going to cover up, install, and put up any kind of roadblock to investigations that they could.
And the supporters of these actions were, once again, as they have been for 10 years, telling anybody who voiced concern that we were being hysterical, why don't you trust the government?
This is why you don't trust the government.
because they they impede investigations when it could show wrong doing on their part.
If they had ironclad cases about protesters doing stuff, you can bet that that evidence would be out there.
We would be seeing it nonstop every day.
It's been in Portland.
It's been in LA.
It's been in Chicago.
It's been wherever there's been a major ice presence that protesters, even if they're peaceful, are showing up and then being targeted by these ice agents.
So the fact that good for Minnesota, good for standing up, good for carrying on these investigations, they said they were going to from the start.
you know, if there's something there, there's something there, and it needs to be prosecuted if so.
629 right now, you are listening to Daybreak.
I am Jamie Martenson.
Yeah.
There's been a lot of talk, and if you're not familiar with the term food desert, it basically describes an area
there where access to fresh groceries is limited.
Whether it's a neighborhood in an inner city or a small rural community where the places you can go to grocery shop are either very limited or non-existent.
Well this has hit a crisis point in Milwaukee where the access to fresh food has been disappearing because grocery stores across the city are closing.
Retailers are sometimes closing these stores with little or no notice.
So you may have gone grocery shopping at your local Century or Safeway.
I forget all the grocery stores in Milwaukee But then the next day they're gone.
So all of a sudden residents are left with nowhere to buy groceries and it is it has become alarming how many grocery stores are leaving and not surprising
the neighborhoods they are leaving.
to your point, since 2021, nine grocery stores have shut down, five of those on the city's north side.
A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study actually found some pretty big disparities.
Predominantly white neighborhoods have more than three times as many supermarkets as predominantly black neighborhoods.
Also to your point about where they're shutting down, and white neighborhoods also have more than twice as many supermarkets as predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods.
From 2021,
to about 2023, Milwaukee lost four major grocery stores all north of I-94.
And those closures have continued into 2025 and into the early part of 2026, including Pick and Save, All These Century Foods and River West Co-op.
You know, and this is happening, as you mentioned, all across the state.
It becomes such a problem that people end up going to convenience stores to buy food where you don't have as many healthy options and you're paying much more for
That's the key right there.
Both are very important aspects, but think about it.
A lot of us look at the weekly flyers from the grocery stores and we decide, oh, okay, look, this place has this on sale and this place has this on sale.
And we can compare and we can try to make our grocery budget last a little longer.
If you're in one of these food deserts, you don't have any choice.
And as we've talked about before, when we were talked about our weight loss and things,
Healthy food is expensive.
Yes vegetables are expensive lean meat is expensive.
It's not
Ramen and chips those things are cheap, but they're not they're not good for you.
They're not good for you and you know besides Milwaukee We're also looking at neighborhoods in places like Racine and Beloit that are in these food deserts There is rural northern counties like iron Ashland and Sawyer who have food deserts There's also central counties like Adams and Juneau and then there's also tribal communities that are also facing the same type of food desert that we're talking about right now in parts of
of Milwaukee.
And I think this is an interesting conversation.
And if you do want to chime in or you live in an area where there's food deserts, please let us know this morning.
That number is 1-855-752-4842.
1-855-75 civic call or text.
We'd love to hear from you if you live in an area with a food desert and what people in your community do.
I know there are places in this state that literally have no grocery store in their local towns and
that was that's what I wanted to say that that's the answer right so people if you live if you live in the suburbs if you live in a rural community maybe you're used to driving places in the city a lot of people are used to live within walking distance of a grocery store they use would use public transportation to get there well now if their local store closes they
The difficulty of using public transportation to get there is unbelievable.
Maybe they don't have a car.
They can't drive.
They're senior citizens, things like that.
Getting an Uber is expensive.
You can't just Uber back and forth to the grocery store.
So it's not just, oh well, you have to, it's not an inconvenience where you just travel a little bit further.
How?
is the question.
Or those parts of cities.
Because the local dollars start leaving the community when you have to drive 20 or 30 miles just to buy some food.
But you also look at the fact that when those stores start to close, like we just named, and you saw what was happening in Milwaukee, that means you're also losing local jobs.
So people that were once employed in those areas no longer have anywhere to go on a daily basis.
nearby small businesses start losing customers.
The health suffers when families rely on those convenient stores instead of the fresh food.
Transportation becomes a bigger burden, as you were mentioning, especially when we're talking rising gas prices now with the Middle East conflict.
And once one of those full service stores actually closes, it's incredibly hard to get one of those back into your area or your town.
And so now you've just started compounding the issue and it's not just a herb.
an issue.
This is happening all across the state and all across the country as well.
Self fulfilling prophecy.
The neighborhood is bad.
We don't have a lot of business.
We're going to shut the store.
Oh, look, now the neighborhood is devolved even more.
So or the town, because everything else, based on all the things you just listed, all these other things have closed.
All these people now are having to drive to work farther and farther.
And it's so now, you know, if I'm if I'm
Grocery store chain a and I closed or independent grocers.
You know, we used to have a nice nice network of independent grocery stores, especially when you got into more rural communities It would be you know, like an IGA but owned locally.
Well now grocery store chain a leaves The neighborhood devolves even farther than when grocery store a was there now grocery store chain B is not going to come in right just because
Well, where are the people?
Well, they left because grocery store A closed.
And again, if you want to chime in this morning or you live in a place that has limited access to groceries or even chain stores, sometimes we'd even take a chain store in some of these communities, 1-855-752-4842, 1-855-75 Civic.
Now, when it comes to the case in Milwaukee, Brian, the retailers have offered very limited explanations as to why they're pulling out from these areas.
Some have cited efficiency or a long-term business decision.
theft has been mentioned as a factor, even though city leaders have questioned that reasoning.
Smaller local owners say rising costs, aging equipment, and lower customer traffic makes it really hard to stay open.
But what we do know is that the closures hit hardest in neighborhoods that already face challenges like segregation, housing inequality, and financial instability.
In fact, about 17% of Milwaukee households do not have a vehicle compared to about 7% statewide.
So that goes back to the point you're saying, now it becomes harder to get yourself there.
a
go in and
And I think that's a novel concept and one that especially in places like Milwaukee, when you are dealing with the food deserts in these urban areas, I think that that is going to become vital to making sure that families in those areas have everything that they need.
Scott is chiming in over on our text line this morning.
listening on WMDX, he says Walmart is 25% of every grocery dollar spent in the U.S.
Once a Walmart opens, you can almost guarantee your local grocery stores will disappear.
There's no correlation.
These neighborhoods don't have Walmart's either.
These neighborhoods that are being affected, again, and it's, listen, you have to, you have to,
call out the facts.
It's black and brown neighborhoods where this is happening.
And I can imagine if in some of these more downtrodden neighborhoods, they don't have disposable income to spend a lot at the store.
Everybody, everybody, I don't care where you live now, if you're not watching your, your pennies when you go to the grocery store, God bless you.
But
Yes, the business is not going to be there so they can use the underperforming
stores.
one survey as we talk about Milwaukee found that residents near some of the closed doors were paying roughly 50% more just for basic groceries Which think about this when we're talking about certain communities where you already have income disparities where you already have people may be living on
of fixed income.
And now you're talking about asking them to pay 50% more for a basic necessity in life because food
and
I'm entertained by...
I'm entertained by Cam.
He's in Appleton, and he's texting in.
He says, if Walmart opened and closed down Cub Foods when I lived in Minnesota, I think I would have rioted.
Cub is the only one who has the broaster pressure fryer, and they use it for chicken.
And they also make JoJo potato wedges.
So good.
Well, I just would like people to know too how hard it is on the small local grocery stores and how much harder it will be when they cut the SNAP program and Medicaid because if people who have SNAP can't afford to shop in those little stores in the little towns,
Doors are going to have to close and they have no right to get to places to grocery shop because the majority of them are elderly people.
Thank
Yes.
It makes sense.
If you're if you're cutting the way people buy their groceries, not just where they buy their groceries, but the actual benefits that they need to get those groceries.
Again, things just on pay.
For a corporation I understand on paper things may look good But then it reminds me and I'm sorry to equate this with a national lampoon's Christmas vacation When Brian Doyle Murray says Sometimes something looks good on paper till you see how it affects the little people.
Yeah
And unfortunately, folks, we are the little people.
You and I are the little people.
And in case anybody's wondering, in Milwaukee, officials there have declared a food apartheid as a public health emergency.
They have a task force that's been created to attract and retain grocery stores.
They have proposed ordinances that we require stores to give 60 days notice before closing, and the city's also exploring additional funding to help those stores stay open.
You are listening to Daybreak.
My name is Jamie Martinson.
This is the Civic Media Network.
nicely
Should have put money on it.
Everybody would have gone, yeah, Doug, what else is he gonna play?
Exactly.
Anyway, the reason Parker played Ray Parker Jr., somebody's watching me, nice tie-in, is because our distinguished Secretary of Homeland Security, the dog-loving costume-wearing Kristi Noem, has said,
That she recently discovered that employees in her department installed software on her phone and laptop to spy on her Q dramatic music Yes, she was on a conservative podcast.
Yes, which which one there's thousands a lot of them.
Yeah, everybody with a microphone Well, she said that her team by chance Jamie just by chance Because we're always just by chance sweeping for right eavesdropping, right?
They found a secure room called a sensitive compartmented information facility on a university campus.
She doesn't say which one.
That had, quote, secret files that nobody knew about.
They just randomly found, well, yes, I have multiple.
The biggest one that's going through my mind is all of a sudden they just found a skiff, a skiff on a university campus that nobody knew about.
And it was just randomly there.
And how, how does that happen?
Most places don't have a skiff.
We just had to explain to most people listening what it was, what skiffs stood for.
I can't imagine that this is just a random thing that you find on some sort of university campus.
into the good graces of the president, because she has been sidelined a little bit since Minneapolis.
But she actually said that the room was found when employee happened to just notice a door, ask some questions, and then looked into.
but if it's a skip, it didn't seem very secure if you could just open the door, but.
Whatever.
The materials, according to Noam on this podcast, that were found have been now turned over to attorneys.
Now, if the head of the Homeland Security is saying that her own department was spying on her, okay, that's probably a serious allegation.
Obviously, they oversee border security, disaster response, cyber security.
counter-terrorism, if it's true.
If it's true,
to
Because everybody's been calling for her resignation.
Not everybody.
A lot of people in Congress, a lot of.
U.S.
citizens calling for her resignation because she, like Cash Patel and Pete Hexeth, are in way over their head and are not serious people.
I would not be surprised if there's some whistleblowers who are trying to get some information to release to force the president's hand.
No, it wouldn't surprise me either, I guess at this point.
I just think that this is the, this is the department, right?
When you think about DHS, obviously been in the news because of the ICE rates, but this is also the department that has a role in election security, infrastructure protection and coordinating the state and local law enforcement.
And this team didn't know that there was a skiff at this university and that there were just some random files in there.
Come on now.
exactly and they either think we're really dumb or we know they're really dumb so somebody there's there's some ineptitude and stupidity running around and they're trying to shift it to look our crack investigator saw a door
Jamie, I don't know about you.
I walk by, I don't want to say hundreds of doors.
I walk by my fair share of doors during the day.
Of course.
Probably no more than the average American.
But rarely do I go, what's in there?
I bet there's something nefarious going on behind that door.
That's where the mops are.
That I
this
since the
There's confusion and that is obviously starting to ripple into other parts of what is happening in the world, right?
Because there is no leadership at the top and so that means when there's no leadership at the top, then we're going to start to struggle.
in the long form, and that's what we're starting to see.
And honestly, this should also lead to questions about public distrust, whether there is some sort of whistleblower involved here, whether there is just an aptitude by staff.
these could have been actual files, right?
We've seen what this administration likes to do with just files.
They like
So I don't know.
I don't know if they were in the box in the bathroom.
We'll see.
We're going to take a deeper dive into Iran because both the president and little Marco had something to say about it yesterday.
So we'll get into that.
And so much more when daybreak comes back.
On the other side, I'm Brian Newton.
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