1/23/25: Elon Musk Civil War With Altman And Trump, CNN Admits Mass Deportation Popular In US
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Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? We do. Many interesting things continuing to unfold. So we have a continuation in the war between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. But Trump is kind of undercut by this one as well because Elon has taken shots at his big Stargate project that he announced with great fanfare. So anyway, there's a lot of drama going on there and also some real concerns about the direction of AI. So we'll show you a lot to do with that.

I'm also going to update you on the latest with regard to immigration, what we know about Trump's plans, what they're moving forward with. Also the polling about how Americans feel about this new more hardline direction on immigration. So break all of that down for you. Also going to break down for you this controversy over the bishop who spoke at the National Cathedral and the right was very upset about what she had to say.

So we'll show you that and show you that controversy, etc. Sager's had a little bit of inside reporting about some pushback, some war between various factions within the Trump administration, the more sort of like hawkish, neocon, pro-Israel faction versus some of the new people who are being brought on board who maybe have a different view and different direction they want to go. And so that's very interesting. We also got Steve Witkoff sounding off and planning a trip to Gaza.

So we'll see what comes of that and where that's all going. You know, there's some troubling indications, but there's also, you know, that's one at least positive indication. So break all of that down for you. We've also got Trump weighing in on his approach to the Russia-Ukraine war. We're trying to read the tea leaves there as best we can.

And we're going to investigate whether there is some social media new censorship going on in the new Trump era. And also a weatherman, weather lady, weather person, I guess. Meteorologist. Whatever. Meteorologist. Anyway, a woman, local news station, weathercaster, we'll go with that, who was fired because she criticized Elon Musk's

We'll leave it at that to avoid Sagar and I having to wait this long.

Before we get into any of that, though, thank you guys so much for your support of the show. We're really excited about what we have to bring for you. This year, obviously, there are going to be a million things for us to cover, so it is going to be eventful, if nothing else. Yeah, look, and there's a lot that's in play. I'm going to be talking a lot about that today. It's really interesting getting some of the inside knowledge and all of that, and I really want to try and share it with

some of you, and thank you to everybody who's supporting the show and others. Our ability to be completely independent and also have a little bit of a line, not claiming to have a total line or whatever, on what's going on on the inside, I think is kind of unique. And so that's one of the things that you can help us do here at BreakingPoints.com. We continue to build that out as the Trump administration really comes, really starts to take shape, and also with the Democratic Republicans

response and the podcast selection and all that. So the narrative is really on our side if we want to do something interesting over here. So breakingpoints.com, and you can go ahead and support us. But let's get to Stargate, because this is AI, one of the stories, Crystal, that we've been wanting to focus on now for quite some time. Fundamentally, probably the thing that will be when the historian looks back at this time period, a lot of the crap that we talk about here, day-to-day, whatever, controversy, none of that is even going to be a footnote.

it will be about the big macro economic trends and artificial intelligence and the eventual, you know, how it comes to be shaped, the corporate influence and all of that, as we see here with the development of Stargate, could be a big jump off in that period. Incredibly consequential. And so Trump made this big announcement, counterpoints, I'm sure you guys saw this too, that these private companies and investment funds were going to put 500 billion dollars

into building out AI-focused data centers in the U.S. One of the companies that was involved in that is OpenAI, headed by Sam Holtman, who was formerly, up until like five minutes ago, major Democratic donor. Actually, full disclosure, he had previously contributed to a project that I ran to try to recruit working-class candidates.

to run in Democratic primaries. So he was buddies with Reid Hoffman, all in on the Democratic side. Once Trump won, suddenly, oh, let me give you a million dollars for the inauguration fund. Here I am at the inauguration singing a very different tune, et cetera. The other piece of the backstory you need to know is that he and Elon are actually

Elon has sued him. They founded OpenAI originally together. They had a falling out. They both have different versions of what that falling out was over. But in any case, they're at war with one another. So let me show you a little bit of Sam Altman at this announcement, really buttering up Trump and doing the whole dance as part of this Stargate reveal. Let's take a listen. To create hundreds of thousands of jobs, to create a new industry centered here, we wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President. And I'm thrilled that we get to.

I think it'll be an exciting project. I think we'll be able to do all of the wonderful things these guys talked about. But the fact that we get to do this in the United States is, I think, wonderful. So thank you very much.

First, let me talk to you, Sam, about what this means for AI in the future for the US investment here. This means we can create AI and AGI in the United States of America. It wouldn't have been obvious that this was possible. I think it's a different president. It might not have been possible, but we are thrilled to get to do this. And I think it'll be great for Americans, great for the whole world. Yeah, it's great for the whole world. I'm sure. I'm sure it's great for the world. It's going to be great for you, for sure. And the tech oligarchs who are at the forefront of this. But

You know, I don't know if you watched the whole press conference. I did watch the whole press conference. Everybody would say, oh my God, Trump, President Trump, this is so amazing. Like this never would have happened without you, blah, blah, blah. And it's, it is a little odd because there's no indication at least that public money is going into this. This is just like businesses who were doing a thing, Trump gets to take credit for and look like he's making this, you know, giant investment, et cetera, et cetera. Also an opportunity for them to like kiss the ring and

bend the knee and tell him how wonderful and great and brilliant he is, et cetera, et cetera. OpenAI put out an announcement on Twitter. Let's put this up on the screen. I'll read a little bit of the way that they framed this. They said the Stargate project's a new company intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years. Building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the U.S. will begin deploying $100 billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs. I'll believe that when I see it.

and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States, quite the opposite actually, but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies. We don't have this part up here, but they go on to name all the partners. SoftBank,

OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. By the way, MGX is a UAE-based investment fund with huge investments from the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund. Strange group of bad fellows. Anyway, the whole thing is a little bit odd. But the key part of this is underneath this big announcement, you know, it's a big Trump initiative, something he's taking credit for. Elon Musk, Trump's first buddy, says they don't actually have the money.

So Elon coming in hot, taking a shot obviously at Sam. Yes. But also inadvertently perhaps taking a shot at Trump and this big glossy announcement that he made there. Yeah, I mean there are several dimensions to it obviously where you have basically Elon is now a White House official. So can we say that? A senior White House official is pouring cold water on Trump.

on Stargate, but Stargate itself is really worth looking at and saying, what the hell is going on here? Because effectively, the way I've come to understand it is that this is supposed to be a Manhattan project for AI to compete with China. There's only a big difference here, which is it's not being run by the United States government or to the public interest or with a coherent goal involved, and instead is basically being outsourced to the private sectors.

Now, the real reason why everyone should pay attention is first, let's just look at the colossal amount of money that we're talking about here. 500 billion. Look, I understand here that we can talk every once in a while like 100 billion, 200 billion. 500 billion is half a trillion dollars. For a private corporation or even corporations to be able to come up with that sum is extraordinary.

I mean, just think about that in terms of actual cash and dollars, even over a 10-year period. We've very rarely seen ever such private investments. Now, if that's going to happen, where does that money come from? And that's kind of what Elon is getting at here when he says they don't actually have the money. Now, Satya Nadell, the CEO of Microsoft, has said, I'm good for my $80 billion. But I mean, keep in mind, this is a

trillion market cap corporation. Where is OpenAI's money coming from? Even Masa, you know, over at SoftBank. A lot of people probably don't know a lot about SoftBank, but

I encourage you to go and read some of the histories of Uber and WeWork where Masa was very, very important in the development of those companies. Masa is literally the guy who told Adam Neumann to do all of this crazy shit over at WeWork. And he was like, the only thing I don't like about you, Adam, this is a direct quote. He said, the only thing I don't like about you, Adam, is that you're not crazy enough.

And he's the one who encouraged him to go from an office space company to we live and we care and, you know, drive a $40 billion company into the ground that eventually gets sold for scraps over to like a private equity giant or something.

Yeah, and we'll be taught for years as a corporate cautionary tale. That's who we're talking about here. You know, I guess because I read the news, I'm aware of who these people are. It's really important to first think about where this money is coming from. As you said, the UAE, MASA in the past has taken tons of money from the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund. Do we really want all of this money to be involved in our Manhattan Project? But secondary to that,

And part of the reason why I'm really concerned about the lack of oversight and where at least – look, somehow in this war, I'm like on Yvonne's side where I'm like, yeah, I'm not so sure about all of this. This is a corporate conglomerate, which is totally – which is basically coming together as a cartel with all of these big tech companies who are now getting to decide our future of our economy. That's right. Our medicine, as we're about to show you, which they're openly bragging about.

which will replace humanity, which will develop mRNA vaccines in 48 hours. How amazing. I'm sure they'll work and all of that. If we put this stuff together, you're looking at it literally like an Elysium-led society.

And they're not even shy about saying it all out loud. That's the crazy part. That's all so well said. And that's not to say that there aren't potential benefits to society from AI. But as we'll get to in a minute, you also should look like this technology already exists. So we should also look at the way it's already being deployed. And many of the ways it's already being deployed are to eliminate jobs, make your health care worse, right?

kill people in, kill Palestinians in Gaza. So it's, you know, listen, anytime you put the corporate profit motive at the center of innovation, then definitionally the benefit of humanity is not going to be

not going to be the primary goal here. So the fact that it is being celebrated and so on, it is all really wild. Just to take you quickly through the Elon Musk, Sam Altman drama, because of course human drama is always interesting. And it's also another indication of the way all of these tech oligarch types work.

are, even if they were previously totally on board with the Democratic brand, now completely bending the knee and sucking up to Trump because that's where power is, that's where the money is, etc. Let's put this up on the screen, a little bit of this back and forth. So Elon says, hey, they don't actually have the money. By the way, Elon, also self-interested here, has his own AI developments, etc. Sam Altman,

Chimes in, Elon, I genuinely respect your accomplishments and I think you're the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time. Because again, he sees who has power and Elon Musk has a lot of position and power. Let's put the next piece up on the screen. So Elon says, SoftBank,

has well under $10 billion secured. I have that on good authority. Sam says, wrong as you surely know. Want to come visit the first site already underway? This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn't always what's optimal for your companies, but in your new role, I hope you'll mostly put America first.

Let's put the next piece up on the screen. As this continues, you had someone who pointed out online basically like in one tweet Sam being like, "Oh my God, Elon's so amazing." And then in another tweet, you know, criticizing him. And Sam says, "Well, both sentiments are true. I don't think he's a nice person or treating us fairly, but you have to respect the guy." And he pushes all of us to be more ambitious. Elon again chimes in, so the next one up on the screen.

pointing out, as I recently did, that Sam was, until five seconds ago, totally tied in with the Democratic... Yeah, he's hugely big. Like, what? With the Democratic machine. I mean, he put significant financial resources into the Democratic Party and various Democratic Party projects. Right. So you've got Cernovich here pointing out that...

Sam was involved with Reid Hoffman, who was involved with what he describes as lawfare against Trump. Sam said, And Elon quote tweets all of that and says,

True. So, I mean, the thing that's funny to me too is like, it's not like MAGA is even buying this new act from Sam Ullman. It's just so shameless to completely change your tune and change your colors

on a dime now that there's a new regime in power and a new vibe out there and you want to secure these partnerships and, you know, whatever deregulatory stuff you want and be hand to the can, not be subject to any sort of retaliation now that you've got Elon and you're at war with Elon, et cetera. So it's just so, this is one of the most brazen and shameless possibilities.

possible examples. I mean, Zuckerberg is really up there too, given how much he changes on the dime. None of these people really ultimately believe anything. They're just in it for themselves and trying to position themselves in the best possible, most self-interested way. I would put Zuck at the top of the list and Sam Holtman now. That would be your ranking? I mean, it's just so ridiculous. It's just too much. It really is. It's too much. I just can't handle it all sometimes. But Sam Holtman is definitely up there as well. Like you said, this is a lifelong Democrat guy who put behind

tens of millions at the least, possibly hundreds, you know, who even knows into the Democratic machine over the last several years. Completely switches about how incredible Trump is. But really, the game for Zuck and Altman are all the same. Remember, Sam Altman, you know, even though he might appear to be like some meek, mild-mannered guy, this is a person who took a nonprofit and has turned it into a hundred and somethings of billions of dollar company who himself is now worth untold sums.

transferred this NGO nonprofit into a partnership with Microsoft. I mean, he took the entire idea of open AI is really one I could get behind, right? It's like, okay,

This is going to be a fundamentally transformative technology. We're going to make sure that this technology is open source, is not profit-driven, and is for the benefit of humanity. Great. Well, the problem is they strike gold with ChatGPT, and they're like, oh, there's a lot of money to be made here. License it off to Microsoft. Now you're turning it into a major service, and now there's all this censorship stuff going on behind the scenes. Well, and let me just, just to chime in and to back you up,

We have to take a look at what they're doing now with this tech, which already exists specifically at Microsoft. And DropSight has new breaking news that I just saw this morning. Guess who one of the top customers for Microsoft's AI services is right now at this point in time? Oh, that would be the Israeli military. So, you know, all of your, oh, I'm going to do good for humanity and just be the best thing ever for mankind stuff.

What they're actually using the tech for right now is to kill Palestinian civilians en masse. And we, of course, talked here about the 972 magazine reporting about the way that AI program was used to have algorithmically generate this mass number of targets, many of them including civilian infrastructure, et cetera. So those are the sorts of things AI is being deployed for right now today.

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We mentioned a couple of days ago, but on January 18th, members of OpenAI apparently had some closed-door briefings with U.S. officials. Let's put this up there on the screen from Axios, which alludes to some of it. They say, OpenAI product chief says that the world is on the verge of AI agents. Now, according to Axios, the world is on the verge of AI agents.

Members of OpenAI and others are poised to announce a next-level breakthrough that will unleash PhD-level super agents to do complex human tasks. Such a breakthrough would push generative AI from a fun, cool, aspirational tool to a true replacement for human workers. This is apparently something that has already been developed.

inside the company and that was briefed to senior members of the Trump administration in terms of a warning about what is coming. Now, when we pair that with now the illusions of all of these people, Larry Ellison for a replacement, for him again saying we're going to have mRNA vaccines, like basically talking in a full scope of replacement of technology without

any human check, and also more importantly for Stargate here, is no government or policy check. That's gonna be the most important. And honestly, there's some huge battle lines here to be drawn because part of the thing that Stargate reveals to all of us

is the scale and the cost of compute with open AI or with AI in general. So we could say it's nice. It's like, oh yeah, we want open AI theory and or open source. But the truth is, is that the development of these models costs tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to build these data centers, NVIDIA, the amount of power that they consume. It could go on forever. So the scale of the cost means that it naturally lends itself to existing technological monopolies

people like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others who have hundreds of billions of dollars in profits that they can burn just to develop the new future technology. So they're the ones who are getting to decide all of our future. And as we all saw, like with Google Gemini, you know, with the crazy censorship going on, as we see also, if you have political questions to ask,

to chat GPT. This has real scale implications for if you're going to replace humans, you know, humans are complex systems, complex theories in terms of our ability to intuit what is maybe good and bad and to debate democratically about whether this is something that we all even want. And they're the ones who are very openly are pursuing like transhumanism and complete replacement of the human being in the US economy.

Openly, yeah, like they only we're about to show it to you talk about that being their goal And I think that is the most important point is I really want it sounds insane But I really want people to reckon with the fact that a really quite small number of people a handful of mostly billionaires self-interested billionaires are deciding things that will be just

immeasurably consequential to the future of humanity, and especially for workers like that is a really important piece right now, is, I mean, they talk openly about wanting to replace all of the human labor force. And this is happening behind closed doors, zero democratic input. I mean, at this point, I'm not particularly hopeful that there's even a chance to turn it back because a lot of this has already—

a lot of the direction has kind of already been set, that this is all happening with a handful of elites with no democratic input whatsoever. And it is deeply, deeply troubling. So here is the anthropic CEO talking about how the thing he's happy about with AI is that it will render all

humans useless ultimately if he accomplishes his goal. Let's take a listen to that. I don't know exactly when it'll come. I don't know if it'll be 2027. I think it's plausible it could be longer than that. I don't think it will be a whole bunch longer than that when AI systems are better than humans at

almost everything, better than almost all humans at almost everything, and then eventually better all humans at everything. Even robotics. We make good enough AI systems, they'll enable us to make better, better, better robots. And so when that happens, we will need to have a conversation at places like this, right? At places like this event about robotics.

how do we organize our economy? How do humans find meaning? There are a lot of assumptions we've made when humans were the most intelligent species on the planet that are going to be invalidated by what's happening with AI.

And I think the only good thing about it is that we'll all be in the same boat. I'm actually afraid of the world where 30% of human labor becomes fully automated by AI and the other 70%. That's going to cause this just incredible class war between the groups that have been and the groups that haven't been. If we're all in the same boat. So, I mean, listen, maybe...

they're high on their own supply and this is preposterous and it's never going to be this transformational thing that they think. But he's like, oh, when it happens, we'll have that conversation. Maybe we should have that conversation now. Whether, to your point, we even are interested in moving in a direction where all human labor is irrelevant and, you know, that being a concerted goal now being led, pushed by our government, but led by a bunch of self-interest groups.

corporate oligarchs with driven by a profit motive. Maybe that's something we should be talking about right now instead of years down the road when it is far too late to change anything. - Yeah, absolutely. And not only that, you had these images here of what AI is currently better at humans for. So let's put those on the screen please.

Just to give everybody an example, you say Amazon used AI to automatically fire low productivity workers. The lavender, the AI machine directing Israel's bombing spree in Gaza and UnitedHealth uses faulty AI to deny elderly patients medically necessary coverage lawsuit claim. The point is, is that any large scale organization, either bureaucratic or corporate, which relies on data,

to make, quote unquote, better decisions. And by better, they mean increasing the bottom line is something that AI is really good at. If you've ever used, I use it all the time, you know, whenever I'm trying to calculate a budget or something like that, or doing financial projections, looking at like retirement savings, it's really good at crunching big amounts of data where it would have taken me hours in Excel to do something like that. It can build me a model in seconds. It's like, well, now imagine that at scale, but

for what end and what purpose? And that's exactly the issue is when you really see what's happening. China is a very good example. They use AI, facial recognition, all of that to increase censorship and citizen control. It's really good at that.

By being able to, remember, in China, they're able to predict almost with 99% accuracy based off of their cameras to surveil the entire population and keep people on their best behavior. You can actually watch videos online of people crossing the crosswalks, and they're being identified with their name and their social credit score and all of that that pops up. It's out there. It's open. We saw a lot of that during COVID online.

That is the dream of the security state and of the corporate, you know, the big corporations, because it's very good at increasing profit. The question is, is about what about all of us? And it's our country. We should be able to get to decide. That's exactly right. And that technology is also deployed in the U.S.,

And not just at airports, but there was an example I think we talked about on the show of someone who was wrongfully arrested, accused of I think stealing like a purse or something like that based on this facial recognition technology. No other evidence than that. It wasn't – they got the wrong guy. It wasn't even the right person. He hadn't even been in the state. And they arrested him and he was held for quite a while under false – like under just something that was totally wrong and false.

simply because this police department was using some of this facial recognition technology. Well, whatever has been dabbled in thus far, they want to take nationwide, global, et cetera. Here's Oracle's Larry Ellison talking about how AI will make sure that quote, "Citizens will be on their best behavior." Let's take a listen. - The police will be on their best behavior.

Because we record we constantly recording watching and recording everything that's going on Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on and it's It's unimpeachable the cars the cars have camera, you know cameras on them. All right, we have I think we have a squad car here someplace but those kind of applications using

And we're using AI to monitor the video. So if that altercation had occurred in Memphis, the chief of police would be immediately notified. You guys want that?

Do you want it? Do you want to at least be able to have some input into whether or not that's the direction you want the society to go in? And so, you know, what I really want people to understand is that a lot of the actions and the posturing that you see from these tech barons, what it really is about is AI technology.

development, the amount of money that's at stake, the amount of prestige that is at stake. And some of these people, it truly is like a religion. I mean, I'm not even kidding when I say many of these people think that they will be immortal because they'll be able to use

AGI to upload their consciousness to the cloud and live forever. I mean, it really has this like cult-like religious dimension, not to mention massive billions, trillions of dollars at stake. And so to bring it back to the beginning here, when you see Sam Altman do a political 180 like that and give Trump a million dollars at the inauguration, oh my God, Mr. Trump, thank you so much. You're so amazing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's what it is really all about. The H1

be fight two. Oh, huge. This is the real ballgame here. So keep your eye on these developments because they could end up being truly the most consequential

generational type developments that shape all of our future for better or for worse. I am also hoping that this is an area where Elon can be helpful and just be like, just so you know, Mr. President, Sam Altman is, you know, look at his track record. Big Democrat, has gone from nonprofit and talking greatly about humanity to enriching himself and Microsoft and turning it into the greatest big data tool. How do you think Trump, though, likes him undercutting him on this and being like, they don't have the money? I don't know. Yeah, I'm actually curious to see how that is all. Because that was pretty bold. It's incredibly bold.

And, you know, in some sense it's nice because this is an OG Elon issue. And, you know, maybe we wouldn't be even able to talk about it or whatever if he wasn't able to get behind it. This is, again, where some of the battle lines are not so clear. For example, like you have Andreessen and his people being much more in favor of, you know, free and open, like open source AI. And Elon is –

kind of like that, even though he's got Grok going on. But Altman and Satya Nadella and all those, and Larry Ellison, et cetera, they don't care about, they don't want open source. They want all the money for themselves. They want the data. Obviously, NVIDIA and these other companies. I mean, we didn't have time to get into this, but there was this huge

huge thing behind the scenes where the Biden administration in the very, very last days made it more difficult to export chips to China. And NVIDIA was openly campaigning against it because they care about money. Like, even though this is the company on our soil manufactured in Taiwan. All right. So they don't care about the geopolitics. And even though their stock is up, what, by like 10,000 percent or whatever, they want even more.

They need to keep this thing going, the money train. And so this is where the Democratic input and all of that is really, really important. And I am curious to see how the White House is going to handle some of this because already you see major MAGA skepticism, not just over Sam Altman, but that clip of Larry Ellison talking about, we're going to be able to have mRNA vaccines. It's like, yeah, good luck. Good luck telling people that. Or look,

Trump was elected, you know, with the most working class Republican coalition literally ever. Do you think those guys in the Rio Grande Valley who are working, you know, working class or the guys in the Permian Basin who are sitting there like, you know, like pumping oil, they really want to be replaced, you know, by machine? Like, no, this is a very common concern. Anybody who doesn't have a college degree, which is

62% of the U.S. population is in danger. And actually, the crazy thing about AI is it also means that people with college degrees who are entry-level... Even sooner, probably, than the blue-collar workers. ...are also really vulnerable to all of this. So unless you're super rich, you should be afraid. And even if you are...

They might be able to take that from you too. And again, maybe they are full of it and high on their own supply and they will never achieve their dreams and goals and ambitions. It will never come to be what they think. But I want you to understand their goal is to replace you. Mm-hmm.

That is what this money is about. That is the goal. As explicitly stated by them at times, that's what they're trying to do here is to replace your labor and make you completely irrelevant. And this is all being decided by a few oligarchs behind closed doors with hundreds of billions of dollars to throw at it. So good luck, humanity. Yeah. Yeah.

I really do think this will be one of the central stories of the Trump administration. And it will – there's going to be some big Democratic questions that actually have to happen here. And when the scale and the fights of this come really – I think in a couple of years this will really crescendo too just because that's when the alleged breakthroughs and all of that will actually know a little bit whether they were –

or not. The geopolitics are going to get real messy because it's January 23rd. Tariffs and all that can come as soon as February 1st and maybe all the way up until March. But all of that is going to have significant impact on

this. And then bigger questions, too, about who's coming up with all this money? Is it Saudi money? A UAE money? I mean, I don't remember the Saudis or, I don't know, similar power, super rich nation in World War II investing in the Manhattan Project. You know, I think that's bad, actually. Yeah. Right. So let's think about that, too. Lately on the NPR Politics Podcast, we're talking about a big question.

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Let's get to immigration. There's been a number of moves in the last 72 hours which have really show how much of a different political landscape that we're in. First and foremost was this. Let's put it up there on the screen. The Lakin-Riley Act has now passed the House of Representatives. The vote was 263 to 156, 436.

46 Democrats joined with every Republican to support that bill, and it will now be the very first bill that President Trump will sign into law, just in terms of how you guys can see the vibe shift. The Lake and Riley Act, as a reminder, is one that allows the federal government to deport individuals, illegal immigrants who are here who have been charged with a crime.

Even a misdemeanor offense. It requires, it's a little different than that. It requires them to detain undocumented immigrants even before they're tried, even before they're convicted. So if they're accused of a crime, even something low level like shoplifting or something like that, then they are required to detain.

to detain them and to expedite their deportation. So that's what the bill does. - Right, hadn't previous, that's legal standard had not previously existed. You know what's crazy? - 'Cause there's no due process, but anyway. - Oh, right, due process applies to who? US citizens, right, forgot about that.

But if we think about how different that this change is, it's the first bipartisan piece of immigration legislation that has passed the U.S. Congress in almost 20 years just to give people the scale of how much of a change that has now happened. So that's crazy, first and foremost. Past the Senate, the House of Representatives, the 46 Democrats joining on is a little bit, you know,

It makes sense, but it's not like it's a big part of the coalition. The crazy part is it was enough to get a filibuster-proof majority through the Senate. That's actually the big hurdle that happened. So Trump will sign that piece of legislation into law. Let's continue here. Let's go to the next part just to show people who voted for the bill so you can actually see all of the states. I mean, it really does go the gamut in terms of both the House Democrats voting

People like Josh Gottheimer from New Jersey. By the way, Crystal, I don't know if you know this. He's been passing around packets of salt around the House because he's so enthusiastic. Well, he's going to get his way. The Republicans support him. Well, he gives them the immigration thing, and then maybe they'll give him an increase in the salt cap for his rich constituents. I mean, yeah, you've got him. You've got Richie Torres on there. Cuellar. What's that? Who are some other high-profile folks here? Cuellar's there. That makes sense, though, right? Because he's from South Dakota.

Well, and Amina is also right-wing, consistently sort of right-wing. So my new congressman, Congressman Vindman. Oh, no. I didn't know he was your rep. So he's an ally with you in this one. Terry Sewell, she's an African-American woman, congressman from Alabama. Jared Golden, who also is one who's kind of like, I don't know, his politics are a little hard to describe. Lucy McBath, I've never...

Lake and Riley was from Georgia. So you had a number of Georgia members here, plus both Georgia senators, Warnock and Ossoff, both voted for it as well. Right. Let's continue along that. There has been a gluttony

lot of polling now after the election around immigration and some of the individual actions. And mass deportation in particular has been one that's been polled, but also all of kind of the sub ideas of immigration running from ending birthright citizenship up to just deporting illegal immigrants who came here under the Biden administration. CNN's Harry Enten broke some of that down. Some of it is popular. Some of it is very unpopular. Let's take a listen.

Deported all immigrants who are here illegally, 55% of the New York Times. Marquette, 64%. CBS News, 57%. ABC News with a slightly different question, 56%. So what you're seeing essentially here is a very clear indication that a majority of Americans, in fact, when they're asked this blunt question, which I believe gets at the underlying feelings, do in fact want to deport all immigrants who are here illegally. There's no arguing with these different numbers because they're all essentially deported.

The same across four different pollsters. You go back to 2015, I'm going to come to your side of the screen, it was 42%. Hello. Go to 2016, it was 36%. Look at where we are now. This was taken at the end of last year, 56%. This is 20 points higher than it was just before Trump got into office the first time.

There you go. That's as clear as day in terms of mass deportation. But like I said, I've got to present all sides of the picture. Birthright citizenship, though, is significantly underwater, ending birthright citizenship. What I mean, one of those executive orders that Donald Trump signed on the first day of office. Let's take a listen to Harry on that.

I mean, look, I think Donald Trump is, by pushing policies like this, are just trying to eliminate his honeymoon period completely because this is just not a popular policy. Embirthright citizenship for children born to immigrants illegally here. Look at this. Just 35% support. The clear majority, 53% support.

opposed. And I've looked at multiple polls, looked at the question, asked multiple different ways. If anything, this undersells the opposition by a little bit. If you don't, in fact, mention for children born to immigrants here legally and just ask about ending birthright citizenship, the opposition shoots all the way up to about 70 percent. But this 53 percent is clearly indicative of a country that does not want to end birthright citizenship. Simply put, this is not a popularization

popular policy. And if Donald Trump pushes policies like this, his honeymoon period will squeeze and be even shorter than it was back in 2017. Okay, have opinions.

So you can see there that definitely opinion runs the gamut and it also shows you it's not necessarily as rosy as I might like it to be. Let's put this up there from the New York Times because they also did a good job of breaking down each one of these individual questions. So for example, which of the following comes closest to your opinion about our nation's political system? It has been broken for decades. It has been broken only for the last few years. It is not broken.

I can report that only 9% of U.S. adults say it is not broken. I need to meet these people. I know. I really do. I'm going to interview those folks. But on immigration, actually, is where things get really interesting. So from the New York Times, do you support or oppose each of the following?

Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have criminal records, 87%, 10% oppose. Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and arrived over the last four years, 63%, 33% oppose. Deporting all immigrants who are here illegally, aka mass deportation, 55%, 42% oppose.

Then, ending birthright citizenship for born to immigrants who are here illegally is 41%. And then finally, the least popular one is ending protection from deportation for immigrants who were children when they entered the US illegally, otherwise known as DACA recipients and/or DREAMers. So you can see here that what Trump, I believe, has happened.

happen, and from my speaking, people who are around the administration, is they're trying to flood the zone strategy. So what do you do when you're doing something unpopular? You also need to do something that's really popular. So they are trying to keep it so that the conversation is not around any one issue, but it's just a flood of executive orders and a major change to the status quo. That's where mass deportation and some of the actions we're about to talk about really come into play, in addition to things like the Lakin-Riley accident.

But really what I see is a basic collapse of the democratic argument around immigration. I mean, I'm happy to see it, but it is really interesting because I think it just demonstrates how fake democratic opposition has been on this issue now for so long. It's like we've talked about, I mean, maybe this is where we can find some common ground. It's like people don't believe anything. That's

You went from 2018 weeping outside of these deportation camps or whatever and the screeching and just, oh, the fascism argument to voting for the Lake and Riley Act.

a position that you all opposed on the stage. Do you remember in 2019 on the Democrat? Every single candidate on that stage opposed what is now being passed in the Lake and Riley Act, which is passed to a super majority through the Senate and through the House of Representatives to send to Donald Trump's desk here. So what's happening exactly with that? Are we just, we're all supposed to have amnesia? Like, come on. They're cowards by and large. Like, obviously there are, you know, there are some Democrats who,

Most of the Democrats are opposed to this, blah, blah, blah. But certainly the level of consistent opposition to Trump immigration hawkishness is...

is gone. It's gone. I mean, and this happened even before Trump was elected. You remember, they decided like, oh, we're going to show the Republicans, we're going to get behind this like hawkish border security only bill with no pathway to citizenship. We're going to show them that we're the ones who are really tough on the border. I mean, think about how much Kamala Harris positioned herself as like, I'm the only person here who's prosecuted transnational gangs. You know, I'm the real border hawk, blah, blah, blah. So, I mean,

And the bottom line is that they are mostly cowards who don't really, many of them, have their own ideology or have things that they're willing to fight for even when it's a little uncomfortable or even when at that particular political moment it's a little unpopular. And this is a core rot of...

of neoliberal brain, which infects corners of both parties, but notably not Trump. Trump is willing to bulldozer through whatever he wants to, even if ending birthright citizenship is dramatically unpopular, he's going to go ahead and do it. Even hardening J6ers who beat cops

Obviously, wildly unpopular, but he'll just bulldoze through and do it. And, you know, on the neoliberal brain says basically, like, I don't have any values of my own. I outsource all of my thinking to markets and polls. And the extension, the political ideology extension of that is, quote unquote, popularism, where it's just let me rather than having my own like vision and view of the world, I'm

I'm going to take a poll and I'm going to treat that poll as gospel as to what people think and where they are. And I'm just going to cater to that in the focus groups, whatever. It is a completely failed way of doing politics. And this is what I've been trying to shout from the rooftops. And, you know, two people who are very different ideologically who seem to understand this are number one, Donald Trump, who will just relentlessly push his

view and his vision of the world, however it polls and however people may, you know, complain about it. And Bernie Sanders, who has his own very specific and clear-cut vision of the world and isn't buffeted around by, oh, a poll says this today or a poll says that last week or, oh, it's a little uncomfortable, et cetera, et cetera. And guess what? People respect that and that's

how, if you care about actually implementing your principles and ideology, you have to be a leader and make the case to people and push them to your position. And that's what Republicans on mass deportation have successfully done, and specifically Donald Trump.

has successfully done. Part of that is, yes, the reality of more people coming to the border, although at this particular moment in this drop happened even before the election, we're at like a five-year low in terms of number of illegal crossings. But there was the reality of migrants getting bused to cities, et cetera, et cetera. And it was also Democrats abandoning the principles that five seconds ago they claimed they stood by. So of course the public's going to look and go, oh, well, both

parties basically agree that this whole immigration thing is like a real problem. These migrants are a big issue. So where do you think the polling is going to go? So this is the piece, the part of politics that liberal Democrats are fundamentally incapable of really wrapping their heads around. You have to be a leader. People's opinions are not set in stone. I mean, even the immigration like polling that we're showing you right now, which put the AP poll up on the screen as well. It's not...

You know, it depends on how people are asked the question and it depends on how you frame it and what particular part of the policy you're asking about. Most people are not like hardcore ideologues the way that, frankly, you and I are, Sagar. I agree. Most people are like, you know, it depends on kind of the vibes and the mood and what they heard and how the questions asked, et cetera. You can move people and change public opinion. So, yeah.

In this poll, about four in 10 American adults support deporting all immigrants living in the US illegally, and a similar share are opposed. So it's pretty much like 50/50 here, or 40/40, and I guess the other 20% like, "Eh, I don't know." But they tested another policy that it was just announced that they're lifting the restrictions on deportations from quote-unquote "sensitive places," that's places like churches and school,

wildly unpopular to do that. Only 20% support arresting immigrants at church. 18% support, you know, pulling kids out of school to deport them. Relatively few Americans, only three in 10 in this particular poll, somewhat or strongly favor changing the constitution. So kids born in the U.S. are not automatically granted citizenship. That's the birthright citizenship thing that we were talking about. So there is even within the Trump policy right now,

If Democrats decided to have a principle, there are plenty of things to go after. But to your point, Sagar, the flood the zone strategy is not just to try to counterbalance the things that are unpopular with the things that are popular. It's also to try to keep the opposition from settling on one consistent attack and to keep them sort of like scattered. And, you know, the crazy thing to me is like, you know, looking at a political party is,

A lot of these executive orders that he signed, it's not like they were a surprise. Many of them were in Project 2025. Many of them are things that he's been advertised and have been leaked to the press for weeks and weeks now. And where is – there is really no consistent like sort of unified democratic plan to attack any of these things. Right.

right now, let alone immigration. So anyway, that was a long story about sort of my political, you know, meta-political views and how these things work. But the Republicans...

wanted to make the country more nativist and more hawkish on immigration. They did that, and the Democratic opposition completely collapsed. And not only did they lose the battle on the issue, but they also showed themselves to be fundamentally unprincipled. Yes, I agree with half of that in terms of they are unprincipled. As I always say, I think reality played a role. The

I think reality played a role. Fair enough. But I'm saying Biden was a huge part of it. He changed the immigration status quo more than any president in modern American history in terms of the number of illegals who entered under his watch. So, okay, yeah, of course that's going to radically change the way it is. I mean, you know, it's funny. If you look at support for mass deportation, it was underwater in 2016 as Harry played, even with Republicans.

People were not bought in. But when you have the border basically have 10 million people who come here illegally in this four-year period, well, yeah, that's going to completely change. Trump also played a big role in that. But the status quo change on top of the argument, it basically aligned perfectly then with also the popular vote. And then the collapse of democratic argumentation means that they are –

I mean, people who are immigration restrictionists like myself have never been in a more powerful position. This went from a fringe position of Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions in 2015, 10 years ago, one member of the United States Senate and a guy named Stephen Miller to the policy of the United States government. And here's what I want people to understand. That position was wildly unpopular at the time. Did that make them go, oh, we can't?

We just gotta, we gotta do, you know, we gotta do a Gang of Eight immigration. We gotta move to the left on this. We gotta accept it. Killing Gang of Eight was a part of that. No. It did not. Did not cause the Stephen Millers and the Steve Bannons and the Donald Trumps and the Jeff Sessions of the world to suddenly change their position and bend to the current political moment. Instead, they made it a project of

over years pushing a consistent vision and message and guess what you're right Sagar they won and You can see Democrats put Democrat pathetic like just complete capitulation to this world

Now, what I would say is the caution is that after Trump was elected and began implementing, you know, child separation policy and we had those, you know, horrific, like I would say cruel images coming out from the detention center, kids being intentionally taken away from their parents, et cetera, and orphaned in certain instances, you know,

and the public had a revulsion to that, the support for those immigration policies dropped even further so that there was the lowest level we've had in the past number of decades for hawkish immigration policy that we've seen. And that's what Democrats responded to in that 2020 primary and why they were all in a very different place was

because the polling was in a very different place at that point. So there is a risk here because they are planning on, you know, they got rid of the restrictions on pulling people out of church or pulling kids out of school. Obviously, child separation is going to be back. They actively—well, I don't think you would disagree with this. They actively want some of those images back.

Well, that's already working, actually.

Already we see images from the border where people are like, without CBP1, it's never going to happen. I should just go back. I actually just read a BBC article about that. Those are people who are trying to come – who are trying to follow a legal process. So, yeah, if there's no legal process, they're like, okay. Yeah, I mean, I think it's great. It's like, well, if you can go back, you weren't really fearing for your life, were you? It's not so untenable.

Let's put this up there on the screen. Yeah, fine. Go make your own country great again. We wish you the best. Let's put the AP up on the screen. The Pentagon is sending up 1,500 active duty troops to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border. That will be in addition to the 2,300 troops that President Biden sent.

actually to the border. It's actually less than Biden, ironically. These troops apparently will be helping with some ISR and a few other things. There are a lot of legal restrictions that apply to active duty U.S. military troops operating in the United States. They can't actually participate in law enforcement. All they can really do is support it. That's a little unclear because, well, in terms of, so, um,

The number is roughly equivalent to what Biden sent in terms of active duty troops. Biden used them purely in those support roles that are more sort of clear cut in terms of you don't want to run afoul of posse comitatus, which is a restriction on – you can't have the military doing domestic law enforcement effectively. Right.

But Trump is declaring a national border emergency, and The Wall Street Journal is reporting that part of the reason for doing that is to try to get around those laws that prohibit troops from engaging in law enforcement functions. So even though it's the same roughly number of people, the goal and the plan in terms of how they're used

is quite different. Now, that will certainly face legal obstacles, and it's yet to be seen whether Trump actually, you know, deploys them in that way where they would be the ones detaining migrants and, you know, holding them and rounding them up and all those sorts of things, which normally has been completely out of bounds.

But the declaration of a national emergency, which says, oh, this is a national security issue, ergo I can use my military, part of the goal is to directly enlist the military in those sorts of typically law enforcement functions. A lot of this is also just because the Border Patrol just –

there's a lot of funding problems. That's all controlled by Congress, the exact number of the people that they're allowed to hire. So if you do even wanna change the status quo, they don't even have the employees at ICE, at Border Patrol, at DHS. So it would require basically a bipartisan act of Congress

to change that status quo. Let's go to the next one. Here is a change in policy. We had previewed some of this, where they say U.S. border agents have been instructed to summarily deport migrants without asylum hearings. What they have done is they have resurrected that Title 42 law of public health concern and 212F that allows the president to suspend the entry of foreigners whose entry is deemed to be detrimental because of

public health concerns. This was one that the Biden administration used for the first, what was it, two years, I think? The first two years of the Biden administration with COVID as a justification. Trump had put it in place and they maintained it. They maintained the policy.

going forward. It's a public, yeah, the document cite the public health related 212F. It applies to quote, aliens that have traveled through a country with a communicable disease and given that there are communicable diseases in Guatemala, Mexico, and Central America, it's pretty easy to justify. It's basically just a legal workaround to enforce the remain in Mexico policy as the only viable path for asylum status in the United States. And

What it means is that not only will there be deportations to Mexico, but remain in Mexico requires these people to remain in Mexico, as it means, as they adjudicate their asylum claim, only after being legally approved are they allowed to enter the United States. That's part of the reason why, you know, you were saying that there has been a drop-off

But the drop-off from the drop-off is even crazier. So the day before Donald Trump took the office, 4,000 people entered the United States under this CBP1 asylum app. It's dropped to 500. So we're talking about like, what is that amount?

eight-fold decrease in the span of two days for what the policy looks like in practice. This, I want to be clear, will all face insane legal scrutiny. So for anyone who thinks that this is policy, law of the land, yeah, that's not how it works.

Title 42 and all that will make its way to SCOTUS, I'm sure, very soon. That's what the immigration groups are doing to Biden. The pasta comatata stuff is absolutely going to be under legal review. Birthright citizenship, I believe, what was it, 25 states have already filed suit against that, which means it will be blocked by a court tomorrow, almost certainly. And by that time, it'll take a year and a half.

to go to the Supreme Court. So none of this is to be taken as this is 100% what's happening. It is a preview of what they want to do and are trying to do, but what will inevitably face a lot of legal scrutiny from the courts and what they are allowed to do and whatnot. So I do want people to keep that in mind.

Lately on the NPR Politics Podcast, we're talking about a big question.

How much can one guy change? They want change. What will change look like for energy? Drill, baby, drill. Schools. Take the Department of Education, close it. Health care. Better and less expensive. Follow coverage of a changing country. Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises. On the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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