California sues Trump over National Guard deployment to LA
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recruitment, development, career transition. LHH, a beautiful working world. Discover recruitment solutions at LHH.com slash beautiful. Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. Hello, and I'm Rima Grace. Thanks for joining us, everyone. It is Monday, June 9th. Today, we're going to do some news, do some smiles, but we're going to start with the news.

Yes, we are back from our break and it has been quite a newsy, newsy little bit of time there. You've got the big story, Remo. Why don't you go ahead? Yeah.

Yeah, I'll start. It's it's yeah, it's in all the headlines right now. I want to talk about the protests in Los Angeles, which I'm sure you've also been closely following, Kimberly. The videos are intense. You know, if you've been scrolling through social media, I'm sure you all have seen, you know, images and videos of federal and local law enforcement using things like flashbangs and tear gas and rubber bullets to break up crowds.

But if you haven't had a chance to catch up on this news story, just a brief background. So it all started on Friday. There was an immigration raid in the Garment District of L.A. There was also one outside of a Home Depot, which all sparked some protests. Police officers arrived in riot gear to break up the crowds. And that's when we started seeing things like tear gas and pepper spray being fired online.

And then, yeah, the protests continue through Saturday and Sunday around Los Angeles. And then Saturday night is when President Trump did something pretty extraordinary and called in the National Guard. And that's when things really escalated. You know, he painted this picture of what was happening as as a an existential threat to the country and made this pretty aggressive move and escalated.

You know, to be clear, it is within his power to call the troops, but it's rare to do it without the governor's consent. I was reading about how the last time that happened, you know, president calling in the National Guard without a governor's approval was in the 1960s. Johnson did that. He had to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama. Yeah.

And, yeah, people in California, officials are not happy. You've I'm sure you've seen the videos and clips, Kimberly, of Governor of California Gavin Newsom saying this is not OK. Like, I did not ask for this. And that, you know, sending troops is inflammatory and is only going to escalate tensions. And then I was just reading that the California officials are going to sue President Trump for taking control of the state's National Guard. Yeah.

And so there are a lot of different angles we could talk about with this story, but I just wanted to take a minute to focus on workplace raids to help give more context this weekend. Workplace raids were a feature of the first Trump administration. We saw ICE officials raid, you know, poultry plants in Mississippi, 7-Elevens, meat packing plants. Yeah. Were those things that you covered at the time? I didn't cover the raids, but obviously it was in the news and

I've talked to a couple of business owners in D.C. here who've had their workplaces raided and they were just talking about how jarring it is and just makes them feel like they're living in a dystopia. Yeah, yeah. Well, I wanted to get more context. And so this morning I called up an immigration legal scholar who I believe was on the show last year. He's at Ohio State University. His name is Cesar Cuauhtémoc Hernández-Garcia-Murillo.

And here's what he said about the return of this kind of strategy. They draw attention. Large-scale workplace raids, they are made for social media. They are easy to tout as evidence of a strong-armed approach to immigration law violations. It's an easy way to sell a political message. Right. So...

I wanted to get like a rough timeline of things. And so from what he told me, you know, during the George W. Bush administration, during his second term, that's when we really saw a lot of high profile raids, like heavily armed ICE agents and their partners coming in and rounding up hundreds of people. And there was a lot of public outcry at the time. And then really we saw under the Obama administration,

That came to an end. There were more, there were smaller enforcement acts. So like ICE would frequently do reviews of like I-9 employment verification forms. So like if a company was being targeted, HR people and managers would go through paperwork and prepare an audit. And then ICE, you know, would come in and maybe remove some folks. And so like those were not sensational, kind of boring, but, and then, and then we didn't really see any workplace raids during the Biden administration, but,

And, you know, I also talked this morning with another expert of sorts. Her name is Michelle LaPointe. She's the legal director at American Immigration Council. And she was making the point that, you know, and you see this in different kind of coverage, which is that these are really expensive operations. And she was saying that we should really be asking ourselves whether

Whether these kinds of raids are a good use of resources because they are expensive, they require a lot of planning and whether it makes sense from a policy perspective, because oftentimes the number of arrests aren't as high as the administration would like to see. And here's what she said.

The impact of these raids is wide reaching. And one aspect that is not discussed as much as it should be is the fact that this chills workers' rights. It chills immigrant workers and their colleagues from speaking out about exploitative workplace conditions. And that's really the impact of having ICE come in and haul a bunch of workers away. Yeah, like you said, it instills a lot of fear in immigrant communities and

Trump officials have been saying that they're going to escalate their response even more if necessary. We saw that Tom Homan, the president border czar, he he suggested that the administration would arrest anyone, including public officials who interfered with immigration enforcement activities, which, yeah, he said will continue in California and other parts of the country. So I think this may just be the beginning.

Yeah, there's a lot of troubling components of this. The National Guard being called up, you know, without the approval of the state officials. There have been some reports of members of Congress who are allowed by law to do surprise inspections of immigration detention centers not being given access or being given a really hard time when they're trying to access this. But another thing that's really standing out to me in this is just sort of

We are about to see a lot of protests coming up on the 14th here in D.C. We've got the big parade coming up. But this is when a lot of people are organizing for these so-called No King's Day protests. And I can't help but wonder if these protests, which were for the most part peaceful at the beginning, as I understand it, and, you know, there were...

You know, I was looking at Kai's postings online on Blue Sky this morning, and he was like, it's not like the city's in chaos, you know? And so it was well within the control of the state and local officials to respond appropriately. Is this just sort of a presaging of...

the potential federal response to other protests that they just sort of arbitrarily decide get to be too big. And of course, there are the invariable comparisons with like, this was so much more mild than January 6th when Trump famously did not call in the National Guard. So there's a lot there. I mean...

the ongoing crackdown on immigration is going to continue. But he ran on this. People wanted this, especially his supporters. And even though there's sort of occasional stories about people being like, oh, we didn't want them to arrest, you know, moms and kids and things, for the most part, these policies have a lot of support in many parts of the country. And so I don't think the...

I don't think there's a lot of sympathy as much as we might expect for the intensity of the crackdown. But the way that the protests are being responded to is extraordinarily notable here. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, the situation does have a lot of the ingredients of the kind of scenario Trump said he's interested in. Right. And like basically a showdown with the top political rival in a Democratic blue state over his top priority or one of his top priorities, immigration. Yeah.

What's your news? Go for it. Yeah, my news is an interesting opinion piece. It's actually a podcast episode from the New York Times called The Opinions. And this one is an episode with David Leonhardt sitting down with M. Gessen. And they're talking about the title. I actually read the transcript before I even listened to the piece. The Beautiful Danger of Normal Life During an Autocratic Rise.

And the headline struck me because I remember so clearly in Egypt, the moment from when everybody went euphoric about protests and like, oh, we toppled the dictator and everything's great. And then when the military coup happened and the protests kind of shifted from, you

You know, you can go out and maybe you'll get some tear gas too. They are very likely to shoot you in the streets or you will be arrested or you will be disappeared. And just the stark turn. But the way that the rest of life carried on outside of protests and how people tried to just move on with their day-to-day lives. And this episode of The Opinions is about...

So M. Gessen, Masha Gessen, was a reporter in Russia and was watching as Russia kind of transitioned to autocracy. And the episode is about how...

You sort of live your normal life as your country is transitioning to something you don't recognize. And I would highly encourage folks to listen to it, read the transcript, whatever. But there was a line that Masha Gesson said that really struck me. And she said, you know...

I think we can actually build on this life affirming impulse to say we need to take advantage of all the space that is available at any given point. We know what we're dealing with. We're dealing with an anti-democratic force that aims to continuously reduce the space available for action, whether it's action by journalists or actions by lawyers or action by academics.

For any group of us to act in our particular fields, that space is shrinking. And so when we find our footing after a shock, we need to take stock of the space that's available and take advantage of all of it. And I actually found that very affirming because there is still space for action across so many areas of public life. And...

While it's important to try to not be overwhelmed by the news and to try to not let yourself fall into a despair spiral, there is still space for a lot of action and a lot of opportunities for change. I just think it's useful for folks to remember that. I really love that. It reminds me of a couple of things I was reading. I think it was over the weekend, maybe yesterday. An article in The New York Times that gets at this point that you're describing, which is...

it was so, it's so jarring how LA, I mean, LA is set up in a way where it can, you can have so many different experiences in a kind of isolated way. But, um, the, this article described how like the LA pride parade was going on in the background. And, you know, the roots was playing at the Hollywood bowl. Meanwhile, as like federal troops are, you know, descending into LA. And so these juxtapositions are always so jarring to me. Um, I didn't have a chance to read the, or listen to the, um,

to the piece that you linked, but there was one line that I saw that stuck with me where she said, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. And I think about that all the time, just like how we're always trying to rationalize the world around us to find narratives that help us feel safe. And if I'm understanding correctly at that point of like, it's such a fine balance of

telling ourselves stories to give us comfort, but then also not to the point where it leads us to being complicit or where we're like adapting to norms that are actually not great or actually are harmful. Um, and so anyway, I'm, I'm excited to listen to that. I think that's really fascinating. Yeah. Let's move on to some smiles. Let's smile, please. So I'll go first. Cause I was in New York last week. Uh,

And I went to a Broadway show on Friday night. I saw Death Becomes Her. It was great. It was very fun. It was funny. And it just reminded me of how much I like Broadway shows and I like musicals, which was appropriate because then the Tony Awards were last night as well. And there was I didn't get to watch it because I was hanging out with my brother who was in town, which was great.

But this morning I saw the Hamilton mashup and I didn't realize that it was 10 years since Hamilton came out. Which, you know, if Kai was here we'd make an old joke. But like,

What would he say? Oh, yeah. He would be like, oh, you're dating me. Yes, yes, yes. But yeah, so they got back together and did a, you know, mashup of the songs, which was really cool. And I think it's also a great moment to be thinking about that musical and kind of the messages of, you know, fighting for your rights. History has its own. History has its own.

Feeling lucky to be alive. Lucky to be alive right now. Yep. I love it. I was listening to it early and bopping around. That's great. My make me smile is about the strawberry moon. Okay. It's apparently coming later this week. I think tomorrow or Wednesday, it's supposed to be pretty special. It's the lowest full moon that we've seen in decades. And it's going to be a little bit of a

So the strawberry moon, are you familiar with it? I know there's lots of different, there's lots of different kinds of moons. Yeah. This one apparently comes from native American tribes who used it to mark the time when wild strawberries were ripe and ready to harvest, which I think is really beautiful. Um, but this year's moon is supposed to be extra special because it's, uh, it's,

It's called a major lunar sandstill. It's part of the moon's 18.6 year cycle where its path across the sky hits extreme highs and lows. And so right now we're apparently nearing one of those low points, which is why the full moon will appear pretty close to the horizon. But yeah, look up pictures of the strawberry moon. It's so beautiful or better yet, if you can step outside of your house and look at it in the sky.

Oh, yes. I always love a good full moon. Makes me smile. Yes. That's all for today. Tomorrow, you can join us for our weekly deep dive. We're going to be digging into a question that's on a lot of minds this graduation season. Is college still worth it? And we want to hear from you. Do you have a young person in your life who's thinking about whether they should go to college or to a technical school?

Are you thinking about going back to school? Yeah, we want to hear it all. Send us a voice memo to makemesmartatmarketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-UBSMART. Also feel free to shout out your graduates this graduation season. We are all proud of them too. And before we go to the credits, just a heads up, you're going to hear some new names in our credits because with all the changes in the show, we've also got some changes behind the scenes.

All right. Today's episode of Make Me Smart was produced by Minju Park with help from Courtney Bergseger. Today's program was engineered by Jessen Duller. Daisy Palacios is our senior supervising producer. Nancy Fargali is executive producer of Marketplace Shows. And Joanne Griffith is our chief content officer. Oh, did you hear Simpsons on cue? Meow. I did. Right after you. Aw. Aw, Simpsons.

Personal finance isn't just about spreadsheets and investing. It's emotional. Talking to your partner about money, negotiating a raise. Even the smallest decisions, like splitting a bill, can bring up feelings of shame or anxiety. I'm Rima Reis, host of This is Uncomfortable, a podcast from Marketplace about life and how money messes with it.

In this season, we get into topics like workplace drama, tough financial trade-offs, and the quiet tension that builds when love and finances collide. Listen to This is Uncomfortable wherever you get your podcasts.