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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3: And I'm Nate Silver in the show.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a Trump heavy episode, I think, Maria,
Speaker 2: there have been a lot of headlines lightly last week.
Speaker 2: We took a break to talk about AI, but we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about immigration, We're gonna talk a little
Speaker 2: bit more about terrors, We're going to talk about Trump
Speaker 2: versus Harvard, and more generally about political strategy. If you're
Speaker 2: a Democrat, if you're anti trumped, if you're part of
Speaker 2: the resistance, then.
Speaker 3: How should you fight back?
Speaker 2: How should you think about Trump's strategic objectives?
Speaker 3: And how do you know which are the right battles
Speaker 3: to pick.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the case that has been in everyone's mind.
Speaker 1: I'll let you start because you had an entire issue
Speaker 1: of Silver Bulletin about this. But I go to c
Speaker 1: NA give us a lignry.
Speaker 3: What that's fanis saying. I don't know, Maria, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm jealous, but I'm not going to try it. I'm
Speaker 2: going to anglicize everything.
Speaker 1: Ate Nate a broad in Spain.
Speaker 3: What can I say?
Speaker 2: One of the challenges with this case is that, like,
Speaker 2: there are relatively few undisputed facts, right, But let's take
Speaker 2: a couple of undisputed facts, right. Kilmar Aberdo Garcia, who
Speaker 2: is twenty nine, is from El Salvador, entered the United
Speaker 2: States illegally, I believe through Texas some time ago. Father
Speaker 2: of two, He has never been arrested or charged with
Speaker 2: the crime. He has, however, been detained on a couple
Speaker 2: of occasions, and was not convicted of those charges. However,
Speaker 2: you know, judges at various times revealed that a preponderance
Speaker 2: of evidence was that he was a.
Speaker 3: Gang member of MS thirteen.
Speaker 2: His lawyer tells a different story, which is that, well,
Speaker 2: in El Salvador, you kind of get forced into picking
Speaker 2: a gang. I think the evidence is based on some
Speaker 2: degree of hearsay and profiling. The government is not necessarily
Speaker 2: releasing all the evidents that had but.
Speaker 3: You know, but the judge was making.
Speaker 2: These judges were making I suppose a probabilistic assessment, including
Speaker 2: tattoos that he had and clothing that he was wearing. Right, However,
Speaker 2: he was not supposed to be deported specifically to El
Speaker 2: Salvador because of a status he had, which is a
Speaker 2: step short of asylum, which said that because he could
Speaker 2: be threatened by a rival gag to MS thirteen if
Speaker 2: returned to El Salvador, that his deportation process was suspended.
Speaker 3: Right, and then was it a few weeks ago?
Speaker 2: He is supported Basically, the Trump administration is taking bus
Speaker 2: loads and planeloads of immigrants and sending them back to
Speaker 2: their native places or other countries that may be adjacent
Speaker 2: to their native places or not.
Speaker 3: Right now, I've ingested a lot of information about this case.
Speaker 3: I hope I'm remembering a right, right.
Speaker 2: It's not quite clear why he was included in one
Speaker 2: of these deportation flights. Right anyway, he sent to prison
Speaker 2: in Al Salvador. He's trince been transfer to another prison
Speaker 2: right based on what the administration said was an administrative error.
Speaker 2: I should say, not because I want to dignify it,
Speaker 2: but just for the sake of completeness, that the administration
Speaker 2: Stephen Miller has now changed this to and it said,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, this was actually what we mentioned you all along.
Speaker 2: But in court filings the administration said, we made this mistake.
Speaker 2: A district court ruled that the US should quote facilitate
Speaker 2: and effectuate his return to the US for due process right.
Speaker 2: It gets appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court
Speaker 2: says facilitate, yes, but we're not going to pull this
Speaker 2: effectuate part for now.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But like the point is, the administration has no interest
Speaker 2: in bringing him back right now. How you would bring
Speaker 2: him back at El Salveder really's won back is tricky, right.
Speaker 2: This is why Supreme Court sot of Mayor wrote the
Speaker 2: ruling was concerned that, Okay, are you now acquiring the
Speaker 2: US to go and like snatch this guy from a
Speaker 2: foreign country. You know, you can't have the court dictating
Speaker 2: US foreign policy negotiations or invasions. So I don't think
Speaker 2: the court ruling is as clear as some of the
Speaker 2: coverage in liberal outlets that I've seen. I think the
Speaker 2: court there's a good podcast with Russ Stout, who's a
Speaker 2: conservative really center right Times New York Coimes columnists Jack Goldsmith,
Speaker 2: who is a Bush era attorney, and Goldsmith's view is like,
Speaker 2: the Court is actually trying to prevent a constitutional crisis
Speaker 2: here and hope that the administration comes to its census.
Speaker 2: And how the lower court is now kind of saying, okay,
Speaker 2: you got to give us your little book report on
Speaker 2: how you're trying to facilitate his return.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You know what's interesting and this now gets into the
Speaker 2: theory is like and the strategy is like, you know,
Speaker 2: Trump could take a bunch of kind of somewhat bad faith,
Speaker 2: perfunctory steps to say, well, but Kelly Real doesn't want
Speaker 2: him returned, right, And we sent an official democratic cable
Speaker 2: and request to this officially, and we have a plane
Speaker 2: or a battleship whatever ready to take him back whenever
Speaker 2: El Salvador commits to it. Instead, they really kind of
Speaker 2: like thumb their nose at this process by changing their story.
Speaker 2: The other thing, too, is the administration is also making
Speaker 2: these moves because of things. The political battle is fine,
Speaker 2: too good for it, I think, right, you know, jd Vance,
Speaker 2: I believe we could go Tuesday treated. Why is all
Speaker 2: the liberal media making this not exact quote, Why is
Speaker 2: all the liberal media making this such a big deal
Speaker 2: of this case and then proceeds to tweet about it
Speaker 2: like another nine times over the next three days. It's
Speaker 2: clearly adminterstory for them than tariffs. I think that if
Speaker 2: I bring Garcia, we're just a mirror and father with
Speaker 2: no brushes with the law. By the way, his wife
Speaker 2: also filed an order against him because of an accusation
Speaker 2: of domestic abuse that he could become violent. She is
Speaker 2: no longer pursuing that right. But you know, this is
Speaker 2: not the ideal test case. So I've said a lot.
Speaker 2: I have a longer summary of this in silver bulletin
Speaker 2: the newsletter if you want to read that. But Maria,
Speaker 2: I spoke for five minutes, so it's not I owe
Speaker 2: you the floor.
Speaker 1: It's all it's all good. You were you were setting
Speaker 1: up the you were setting the stage. But I think
Speaker 1: we have a few things going on here that we
Speaker 1: should really highlight because it is a mess and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of gray zones here where we don't
Speaker 1: have adequate information, right, Like we don't actually know a
Speaker 1: lot about the background, we don't know a lot about
Speaker 1: the decision process. Like there's just a lot of uncertainty
Speaker 1: around this on purpose, by the way, like there it
Speaker 1: could be much clearer. And I think that this ambiguity
Speaker 1: is being put out there on purpose in this kind
Speaker 1: of grayish way to allow for different interpretations and you know,
Speaker 1: basically to give the administration in the room that they need.
Speaker 1: But there are certain things that are that we do know.
Speaker 1: One is the deportation did happen without any sort of
Speaker 1: due process, right, So this is someone who was already
Speaker 1: in the US legally, right. So he yes, he originally
Speaker 1: entered illegally, but he now had protected status in the
Speaker 1: United States, married to a US citizen, you know, US
Speaker 1: citizen kids, and someone who has no criminal record in
Speaker 1: the US, which is so here.
Speaker 3: Here's why I get set. I guess I have to
Speaker 3: let you. But here's why get the spin part of
Speaker 3: you know I mean.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not trying to do spin right now, I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to do like, what do we know? Right,
Speaker 1: we know that there's someone who has a protected status
Speaker 1: in the US. We have no idea if he was
Speaker 1: a former gang memor or, like, we don't know, right,
Speaker 1: Like we know that there's some evidence, there's some evidence
Speaker 1: to the contrary, we just do not know. So so
Speaker 1: that like, I don't know, but that doesn't That's not
Speaker 1: the thing that's relevant right now. The thing that is
Speaker 1: relevant is that he had protected status in the United
Speaker 1: States and that he was just deported right without any warning,
Speaker 1: without anything, without any due process of law. That's the
Speaker 1: scary part, Right even if he was even if we
Speaker 1: knew with one hundred percent certainty that he was a
Speaker 1: former gang member, right, but he was granted protected status
Speaker 1: in the United States. You can't just unilaterally say, you
Speaker 1: know what, even though the courts have said that we
Speaker 1: are not allowed to deport you, We're just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and do it with no warning, no attempt to
Speaker 1: have any sort of say your lawyer isn't going to know,
Speaker 1: No one's going to know. We're just going to put
Speaker 1: you on a plane and get you out of there.
Speaker 1: That's the one part of this story that is incontrovertible,
Speaker 1: regardless of who this person is, what his background is,
Speaker 1: and that is the scary element of it. And I
Speaker 1: think that that is the one thing that should be like,
Speaker 1: it's a legal point, but it's an incredibly important legal point, right,
Speaker 1: because that is the constitutional crisis. If that is allowed
Speaker 1: to happen, and happened with no repercussions, then what happens
Speaker 1: after that? Right? What happens if we just one of
Speaker 1: the wonderful things about the United States used to be
Speaker 1: due process of law, Right that you actually knew that
Speaker 1: no matter what, you would have kind of the legal system,
Speaker 1: and that that would that whole process would have to unravel.
Speaker 1: And then if it decided against you, Okay, you know, sometimes.
Speaker 3: It's not fair.
Speaker 2: It includes, by the way, in actual wars, we have
Speaker 2: foreign combatants who are still supposed to be given and
Speaker 2: usually we're given process.
Speaker 3: And they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had so when I was in college, i
Speaker 1: interned at the DOJ and I was an intern at
Speaker 1: the Special Investigations which was prosecuting the remaining Nazi war criminals,
Speaker 1: and they had a number of huge cases where these
Speaker 1: notorious Nazis still got a trial, right, they went through
Speaker 1: the entire trial process in the United States, and in
Speaker 1: some cases, like the Demyano case, which was incredibly famous
Speaker 1: case multiple decades ago, these were people who weren't notorious
Speaker 1: guards who killed people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Due process, Right, you don't like it. You know they're guilty,
Speaker 1: and yet they still have that entire process appeals Like
Speaker 1: there's you go through the entire thing and in this
Speaker 1: particular case, none of it right zero. That should be
Speaker 1: actually scary to everyone. But as you point out strategically,
Speaker 1: why does jd vance, Why is he so thrilled that
Speaker 1: this is kind of the thing that people are talking about,
Speaker 1: because most people aren't talking about like the the legal
Speaker 1: part of it, the due process part of it. That's
Speaker 1: actually you know, democracy is at stake in some senses.
Speaker 1: They're talking about oh, you know, innocent man, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and so many people are like, oh, we
Speaker 1: don't want gang members here. This is a talking point
Speaker 1: where Trump actually resonates where like we don't want immigrants,
Speaker 1: we don't want this, we don't want that. So they're
Speaker 1: trying to conflate the two stories and use this as
Speaker 1: a see, we're making the country safer and we're making
Speaker 1: you safer. And so they're trying to take this something
Speaker 1: very bad and actually conflate it with something that people
Speaker 1: are more sympathetic with.
Speaker 2: The JD Evans, I mean, he is an old school blogger.
Speaker 2: He'll argue with people on Twitter, not from the official
Speaker 2: VP account, but from the JD Events account, which follows
Speaker 2: me emmutually. His best version of the argument is that, look,
Speaker 2: you elected me and Donald Trump to crack down on
Speaker 2: illegal immigration, right, and Biden and Obama had put way
Speaker 2: too much of a finger on the scale where it's
Speaker 2: very hard to remove people, and we have to shift
Speaker 2: that paradigm. And if there are a few mistakes, may well,
Speaker 2: tough shit. These people are in the country illegally. And
Speaker 2: this guy, a particular guy, is not a not a
Speaker 2: good guy.
Speaker 3: Anyway, He's a gang member, right like.
Speaker 2: You know that gets undermined when Stephen Miller Lader says, oh,
Speaker 2: we meant to deport him, right, that gets undermine when
Speaker 2: Trump says what about US citizens?
Speaker 3: Right? You know they're bad guys. Want to send them
Speaker 3: down there too.
Speaker 2: But like, you know, but that argument is like understandable,
Speaker 2: I think, and relatable to some degree. And and you know,
Speaker 2: immigration is Trump's least bad issue in the polls.
Speaker 3: I would debate in some sense both kind of like.
Speaker 2: The substance and the strategy of like picking this case.
Speaker 3: So, first of all, this is not the worst thing
Speaker 3: Trump has done.
Speaker 2: The worst thing it was January sixth, from a standpoint
Speaker 2: of undermining legal norms or some of the different firings
Speaker 2: that he's done, you know, even in this term.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, some people would say that.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: What he's done with TikTok, where Congress basically passed a
Speaker 2: law to say we're outlawed tektuck in the US, and
Speaker 2: the administration is like filibustering that and delaying that, and
Speaker 2: that's being litigated. Like that's directly over overturning you know,
Speaker 2: Congress's vote.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, arguably that's bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are a whole array of deportation cases.
Speaker 2: The Supreme Court issued a mid dank order saying stop
Speaker 2: doing this. Right, it is a genuinely difficult point of
Speaker 2: law to compel the United States administration to do something
Speaker 2: in a foreign country, and Trump would make himself much
Speaker 2: more sympathetic if he like gave a shit or pretended
Speaker 2: to even pretended to pretend to give a shit, right,
Speaker 2: But like it is like a genuinely ambiguous thing, and
Speaker 2: I don't I mean, look, I don't think it absolutes, right.
Speaker 2: I mean I think you know, if zero was everything
Speaker 2: is great, and one hundred is a constitutional crisis, right,
Speaker 2: you know this six is from sixty two to sixty.
Speaker 3: Six or something like or something.
Speaker 2: But you know what I mean, And you kind of
Speaker 2: get in this kind of brinksmanship situation that does get
Speaker 2: into game theory and things like that, right. And part
Speaker 2: of the problem with brinksmanship is that the party who's
Speaker 2: behaving inappropriately or trying to be more aggressive, right, can say, Okay,
Speaker 2: well we're in it fourtify this territory a little bit
Speaker 2: further across this line, right, But you're not going to
Speaker 2: mix such a big deal over this.
Speaker 3: This isn't a battle worth picking.
Speaker 2: And then that kind of like cycles back again and
Speaker 2: again and again.
Speaker 3: By the way, I.
Speaker 2: Think liberals are pretty I think the Supreme Court is
Speaker 2: going to wind up being pretty unfriendly to Trump, right,
Speaker 2: And I think it's very strategic. Roberts in particular is
Speaker 2: quite strategic, and it's gonna say, Okay, we know we
Speaker 2: have to be careful because we don't want to get
Speaker 2: in a position where he's openly defying us, right, but
Speaker 2: we can make his life hard in various ways, and
Speaker 2: we see ourselves like maybe the only bulwark and st
Speaker 2: I mean, it's ironic that, like you know, and Alito
Speaker 2: and Thomas are too far to the right on many issues.
Speaker 3: Right, Roberts, to facto is a centrist right.
Speaker 2: So ironically, you know, the left is relying on three
Speaker 2: on the three Trump avoided judges, right, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Gorsich,
Speaker 2: who you know have a little using differences from issue
Speaker 2: to issue. Right, but those three are you know, kind
Speaker 2: of you know, democracy's best.
Speaker 3: Defense until until the midterms at.
Speaker 2: Least, and excluding state government. But you know, but like
Speaker 2: that there is a deep irony there.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, no, there's an irony on the fact
Speaker 1: that there are best defense actually puts my constitutional crisis
Speaker 1: meter a little bit higher than yours. State. I think
Speaker 1: we're a little above sixty six percent. But but I
Speaker 1: think I think that there are two things here. One
Speaker 1: this is just one, and you kind of hinted at
Speaker 1: this of a litany of legal issues that are happening
Speaker 1: right now. Right there are challenges all over the country.
Speaker 1: But I think that there will probably come a moment
Speaker 1: where there is kind of a black and white confrontation,
Speaker 1: right because right now there are kind of degrees you
Speaker 1: can say, well like he is he openly defying it.
Speaker 1: But I think there will come a point where there
Speaker 1: will be like a Okay, you have to do this,
Speaker 1: or or where in a constitutional crisis. I think that
Speaker 1: breaking point probably probably will come, and I'm interested to
Speaker 1: see how the Trump administration will respond to that, because
Speaker 1: right now they've been very defiant, and as you said,
Speaker 1: it would be much more sympathetic if they at least
Speaker 1: made an effort and was like, oh, you know, we're
Speaker 1: really trying to get him back, and instead Trump's like,
Speaker 1: fuck you, like we don't want to get him back,
Speaker 1: We're not going to do that, and then they just
Speaker 1: lie also about what the Supreme Court said, Oh you
Speaker 1: didn't you know, you didn't tell us to do this.
Speaker 1: That's why I said, right now we have like these ambiguities.
Speaker 1: There will come a point where I think there will
Speaker 1: be an an ambiguous moment where where there's going to
Speaker 1: be a decision point.
Speaker 3: And will be right back after this break.
Speaker 1: I think that the other issue here, and this is
Speaker 1: something that we've been hinting at and that I think
Speaker 1: you've written about, Nate, is that so immigration, right? Why
Speaker 1: is it a good issue for Trump? Because you can
Speaker 1: make it emotional. You can make it visceral, like people
Speaker 1: can be like, oh, you know, they're taking my jobs,
Speaker 1: they're making me you know, whether or not it's true, right,
Speaker 1: whether or not these things are true. You can make
Speaker 1: this emotional appeal that people can like immediately see right,
Speaker 1: it's something that they can respond to. Constitutional crisis, democracy
Speaker 1: is at stake, is something that's much more intellectual, much
Speaker 1: kind of broader, and in the long run, obviously this
Speaker 1: is hugely important. This is kind of what our country
Speaker 1: is founded on. But it's not if Democrats are going
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, this is an issue that we can
Speaker 1: focus on, that's probably not it if you want to
Speaker 1: win votes, because it's much easier to say yeah, but
Speaker 1: immigrants right, as opposed to oh, constitutional crisis, it's working
Speaker 1: its way through the courts. It's a much more difficult
Speaker 1: You can't make an emotional appeal here you can't be
Speaker 1: and people will always say, oh, well, it doesn't affect me,
Speaker 1: right until it does, they'll say it doesn't. And so
Speaker 1: in some ways, like we can all agree that this
Speaker 1: is important, and this is an important battle that needs
Speaker 1: to be fought, but is this the one issue that
Speaker 1: people should be focusing on? And you made the argument
Speaker 1: and I actually agree with this, and we made this
Speaker 1: argument on the show that there are things that people
Speaker 1: do agree on that can win the election, that can
Speaker 1: help you with everything, like the constitutional crisis says like tariffs.
Speaker 1: I mean, Nate, why didn't the United States decide to
Speaker 1: go to war with England before it was the United States,
Speaker 1: when it was still a colony? Do you remember remember
Speaker 1: the Boston Tea Party?
Speaker 3: What was that all about?
Speaker 1: Oh? Right, tariffs on tea. We went to war with
Speaker 1: England over tariffs. That's how much we wanted to have
Speaker 1: us say, no taxation without representation. Right. So tariffs are
Speaker 1: an issue that has been resonant with the United States
Speaker 1: for centuries and continues to be so, so we can
Speaker 1: you know, on a broad level, there are lots of
Speaker 1: people who can and should be fighting these battles, these
Speaker 1: constitutional battles do process. I'm petrified. You know, I'm a
Speaker 1: US citizen, but I'm a naturalized citizen, right, Like what
Speaker 1: happens if he says, well, people who aren't naturalized citizens, Like,
Speaker 1: we can deport those too. People even if you were
Speaker 1: a natural born citizen but your parents were illegal, you know,
Speaker 1: you can be deported too. And that is actually something
Speaker 1: that's being fought in the courts too. So there are
Speaker 1: things that are incredibly important and incredibly scary. But then
Speaker 1: there's also Okay, how do we win elections? Right? How
Speaker 1: do we get votes? How do we get people to
Speaker 1: actually mobilize? And there are things like tariffs that have
Speaker 1: worked for centuries and things that people can feel because
Speaker 1: a tariff you can feel it viscerally. Bottom line, it hurts.
Speaker 1: It hits, It affects a.
Speaker 3: Lot of people's stock propolebly is taken to hit.
Speaker 2: But also like the University of Mission consumer sentiment number
Speaker 2: just had it's like second worst decline or print since
Speaker 2: like the history of the index, right, and inflation expectations
Speaker 2: are about as high as they ever been now.
Speaker 3: And the short way once some people do is they
Speaker 3: accelerate purchases.
Speaker 2: Right, So I want to buy this card now before
Speaker 2: tariffs go into effect, right to some acceleration of that cycle.
Speaker 3: But you already see different.
Speaker 2: Local manufacturers surveys at the Federal Reserve index. People are
Speaker 2: already kind of back planning and hiring. If you go
Speaker 2: to polymarket check it sult forth. There's more likely than
Speaker 2: not the US will hit a recession this year. I
Speaker 2: think if we don't hit a recession, we'll probably scrape
Speaker 2: just above a recession with zero point five percent GDP
Speaker 2: growth and stagnant maybe some job losses, some stagflation most likely. Right,
Speaker 2: And Trump's priple ratings in the economy are like now
Speaker 2: his worst numbers except maybe on healthcare. I think his
Speaker 2: numbers are pretty bad. Right, So it's like it's and
Speaker 2: by the way, we at silver bills and track Trump's
Speaker 2: approval rating. It was declining to decline more sharply after
Speaker 2: the Liberation Day terraces, and then when the topic turns
Speaker 2: to immigration, democracy, due process, then they begin.
Speaker 3: To level out again, because it is abstract.
Speaker 2: Unless you are you know, I mean, you know, a
Speaker 2: student A four and visa. There are other cases like this, right,
Speaker 2: and also like I mean, like.
Speaker 3: You know of the many.
Speaker 2: Test cases that you could pick on immigration and due process.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure or why, like Democrats are choosing this
Speaker 2: guy who was the propriers I have everge accorded too.
Speaker 3: Judges was that he was.
Speaker 2: More likely not to be a gang member, right, And
Speaker 2: I just kind of sense whereas like on I'll put
Speaker 2: it like this, right on terroriffs, I was down in
Speaker 2: Miami like kind of briefly for like poker tournament a
Speaker 2: couple weeks ago, right, and like that's the kind of
Speaker 2: thing you can like, Man, these terriffs suck, right and
Speaker 2: bring it up like in a poker table where you
Speaker 2: don't know what people's politics are, and that's like safe
Speaker 2: territory to do that, right, because if you look, you know,
Speaker 2: the poll's basically eighty twenty against that. And people I
Speaker 2: know that were like, well, you know, some of the
Speaker 2: stuff's Trump's sewing. Not I'm a liberal, but right, they
Speaker 2: were like, Okay, these terrifts are terrible. Why is he
Speaker 2: taking the economy? Why is he taking the sococker market?
Speaker 2: If I run a small business, it's fucking up the
Speaker 2: small business, right.
Speaker 3: And then and.
Speaker 2: Then immigration, it's kind of back to the partisan spin wars,
Speaker 2: at least with this particular case.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, absolutely, And I think that a lot right now,
Speaker 1: A lot of the constitutional crisis stuff and the democracy
Speaker 1: stuff is unfortunately centered around immigration. Right So those are
Speaker 1: the two, Like, it's the counterpoint. So you can't you
Speaker 1: can't go into one without the other. There isn't kind
Speaker 1: of this visceral like oh Man tariffs, right like, or
Speaker 1: inflation like how much eggs cost? Oh Man, enger crisis
Speaker 1: right Like. There isn't that kind of reaction that you
Speaker 1: can say right now to kind of the democratic crisis.
Speaker 1: And because if you start talking about the court cases,
Speaker 1: you're going to have to talk about, oh, well, he's
Speaker 1: a gang member. And even if we don't know this, like,
Speaker 1: this is going to come up and people are going
Speaker 1: to respond negatively and no one who is pro Trump
Speaker 1: is going to be convinced by this, which I think
Speaker 1: is the other part of this, right Like, what is
Speaker 1: the end goal? Is the and goal to try to
Speaker 1: score a rhetorical victory, you know and say look, you
Speaker 1: know we were right about this, Or is the end
Speaker 1: goal to win the twenty twenty six mid terms, to
Speaker 1: win in twenty twenty eight, right as the democrat And
Speaker 1: again we're talking as a democratic party, You should really
Speaker 1: prioritize the shit that brings people together. You're absolutely right, Nate.
Speaker 1: Like the poker community, lots of Republicans there, right, lots
Speaker 1: of Trump supporters, lots of things I don't want to
Speaker 1: bring up at the poker table. You know, I've been
Speaker 1: accused of being a fucking liptard to my face at
Speaker 1: the poker table. So you know that happens, and you
Speaker 1: just you just kind of want to try to keep
Speaker 1: it kind of more even keeled. But tariffs and the
Speaker 1: economic policy is something that people can really come together
Speaker 1: on now, as you say, they can and should be
Speaker 1: fighting these battles elsewhere, and there are other institution tutions
Speaker 1: that can be fighting other battles because we know we
Speaker 1: have these we have immigration, we have tariffs, but we
Speaker 1: also have other things that are happening that we've also
Speaker 1: talked about on the show. You know, the huge funding cuts, right,
Speaker 1: the kind of death of research in the United States.
Speaker 1: And now you have Harvard University who has been threatened
Speaker 1: with well, first of all, two point two billion dollars
Speaker 1: in funding was frozen to them after they said no,
Speaker 1: we will not be will not be following Trump's demands Columbia.
Speaker 1: By the way, It's funding has never been returned to it.
Speaker 1: It's still frozen. Even though Trump got what he wanted
Speaker 1: at Columbia and they acquiesced to everything. But this week
Speaker 1: Harvard said, we're actually even going to file a lawsuit
Speaker 1: because it's also been threatened with an end to its
Speaker 1: tax exempt status. And what they're trying to say is, hey,
Speaker 1: you are not allowed to freeze our funds. This goes
Speaker 1: back to do process. By the way, there's a process
Speaker 1: to doing it right. There's you actually have to go
Speaker 1: through a process to prove that what you're saying is true.
Speaker 1: And only then after the court rules, can you freeze
Speaker 1: the funds. You can't just preemptively freeze all of them,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what Trump has done. And so Harvard
Speaker 1: is actually now trying to fight back in the court system.
Speaker 1: We know, we've talked about this before. Harvard is not
Speaker 1: popular among the everyman, and so Harvard is a good
Speaker 1: target for Trump. But Harvard's the single richest private university
Speaker 1: in the world, I'm pretty sure, certainly in the United States,
Speaker 1: I think in the world. Please correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: But they actually have, you know, the money to fight
Speaker 1: Trump legally, which a lot of private institutions don't, and
Speaker 1: so we have other actors who can very strategically try
Speaker 1: to bring this to the courts to try to get
Speaker 1: at some of the extra legal things that Trump is
Speaker 1: doing and try to get a due process that way.
Speaker 1: And that is also something that you know, in the
Speaker 1: long term is incredibly harmful to the US right the
Speaker 1: cuts to the NIH, the freezing funds, all of these things,
Speaker 1: it's really bad. But it's also very hard for every
Speaker 1: man to care about that and say, well, I don't care,
Speaker 1: like I don't work for the NIH. Well, you do
Speaker 1: care if you're in a trial, clinical trial that has
Speaker 1: been that has been suddenly halted. These have happened in
Speaker 1: the United States, but if you're not someone who's directly affected,
Speaker 1: it can be harder, once again to kind of viscerally
Speaker 1: feel it. But we do need people fighting these battles
Speaker 1: and making sure that you know that it remains a priority.
Speaker 2: The King Abdullah University of Science Technology in Saudi Arabia
Speaker 2: has an adabtment of twenty billion, still no match though
Speaker 2: for Harvard, So I believe it is like there rich
Speaker 2: is university in the world.
Speaker 3: By the way, to Harvard.
Speaker 2: Have you ever sent an email, Maria and unintentionally copied
Speaker 2: someone who is not supposed to receive the email?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, I have. I've definitely copied someone unintentionally because
Speaker 1: I've meant to copy someone else, right, Like the I
Speaker 1: use Gmail Gmail autofill and sometimes like I'll click on
Speaker 1: the wrong one. I now use the undo like I
Speaker 1: have the undue feature, which which I use liberally, but
Speaker 1: sometimes you can't undo, like and I've definitely had an
Speaker 1: oh shit moment.
Speaker 2: When I work for Baseball Prospectus back in the day.
Speaker 2: We were kind of frustrated with our book publisher, right,
Speaker 2: and I think I said something like this is going
Speaker 2: to be late, but they're not paying in US anyway,
Speaker 2: so screw them, right, And they were copied on it.
Speaker 3: But like, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So apparently the demonstration was negotiating with Harvard, as
Speaker 2: it's with a lot of universities, and Harvard had like
Speaker 2: hired lawyers to preempt this and and but anyway, the
Speaker 2: Trump administration apparently an error sent a list of demands
Speaker 2: to Harvard.
Speaker 3: And now they're saying, oh, you.
Speaker 1: Believe this to night, do we believe that it was
Speaker 1: an error to send that letter to Harvard. I actually
Speaker 1: don't believe that. I think that this this is one
Speaker 1: of the many. After the fact, Lie is like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a pattern.
Speaker 2: I mean, keep in mind that there are a lot
Speaker 2: of new people and experienced people.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of sloppiness. There is a lot
Speaker 1: of sloppiness. Okay, you know what, that's the counterpoint. All
Speaker 1: the people who knew what they were doing have been fired. Well,
Speaker 1: all the budgets for everything have been completely slashed. There's
Speaker 1: no more oversight, incompetent people are in every department. So yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that's the counterpoint that you're absolutely right. It might have
Speaker 1: been an error. Please continue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but anyway, Harvard had been helpful that could negotiate this.
Speaker 2: And then I don't know if you looked this. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know you're our ivylea correspondent for you, so I'll
Speaker 2: I'll let you.
Speaker 1: Take the Yeah. No, I mean I saw, I saw
Speaker 1: the list of demands. I saw before the news broke
Speaker 1: that Harvard was suing. We got we being alumni, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming Curtain students as well, got a letter from Alan Garber,
Speaker 1: the president, kind of outlining that they were about to sue.
Speaker 1: What was going to happen and why they were doing this.
Speaker 1: But it was I mean, if it was sent and error,
Speaker 1: it was not a draft, right Like, That's one of
Speaker 1: you can always be like, oh, that was a draft,
Speaker 1: Like sorry, and I've done that too, By the way,
Speaker 1: I was horrified. Back when I was an undergrad. I
Speaker 1: was working on kind of a term paper for one
Speaker 1: of my classes, and I saved multiple drafts, you know,
Speaker 1: and as I go, like, I will update the version.
Speaker 1: And I had finished this and I, buy mistake, sent
Speaker 1: the wrong one to my TA and it had like
Speaker 1: placeholder paragraphs that had like three words that said what
Speaker 1: I was going to put there, and instead of telling me,
Speaker 1: he just grated it. And it was just it was
Speaker 1: very clearly a draft. And I asked him, I was like,
Speaker 1: why didn't you say something like I clearly sent you
Speaker 1: a draft.
Speaker 2: Hey, if the Trump administration is looking for new hirey,
Speaker 2: I seem very qualified?
Speaker 3: Can I seem very qualified? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm very good at sending drafts. But this is just
Speaker 1: to say that the letter that they sent to Harvard
Speaker 1: with the demands was not a draft, right that was
Speaker 1: it was like a it was a full like, it
Speaker 1: was a completely there were no placeholders there, and so yes,
Speaker 1: they might have sent it in air, but it was
Speaker 1: clearly something that want and the demands were totally crazy.
Speaker 1: They were crazy for Columbia too, And you know, you
Speaker 1: know when I when we talked about Columbia, it looked
Speaker 1: like Harvard was going to cave because it was before
Speaker 1: this new letter came out, and I'd said that, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm ashamed to be a graduate of Columbia, which I
Speaker 1: still am, even more now than I was before. But
Speaker 1: like I'm glad that Harvard has finally, you know, grown
Speaker 1: some balls, and and I fully support that, but it
Speaker 1: made it, this second letter made it much more clear
Speaker 1: cut that they really could not accede to the demands
Speaker 1: because they had oversight. They wanted basically oversight over hiring
Speaker 1: over all foreign students, over the research that was being done,
Speaker 1: over everything that would completely undermine the independence and the
Speaker 1: academic integrity of the institution. And this is a fight
Speaker 1: for the future because we want you know, there are
Speaker 1: lots of and we've talked about this many times, there
Speaker 1: are lots of issues with academia. Lots of reforms need
Speaker 1: to be made, but academic inquiry and scientific inquiry and
Speaker 1: all of these things are the reason that the United
Speaker 1: States has the industry that we have, the innovation that
Speaker 1: we have, all of the you know, all of the
Speaker 1: good stuff, right, it comes from there as well. And
Speaker 1: right now it's just everything is being completely slashed with
Speaker 1: no I think there's no plan that is there's what's
Speaker 1: the grand plan? Let's just destroy everything with a sledgehammer
Speaker 1: and see what happens.
Speaker 2: Should I try to steal man it, Maria, let me
Speaker 2: steal man a version of risky business in ten years
Speaker 2: where we feel like the US is doing relatively well, right,
Speaker 2: the steelman is probably that, Look, you had a lot
Speaker 2: of layers of fat and sediment that built up over
Speaker 2: the course of the expansion of the bureaucratic state over
Speaker 2: you know, three democratic presidencies or twelve it out of
Speaker 2: sixteen years and whatever else, right, And yes, Trump and
Speaker 2: Elon did kind of shock therapy. And what happened in
Speaker 2: the end is that the court fought back and they
Speaker 2: got about like one third of what they wanted.
Speaker 3: And was it the ideal third? Maybe not. But then
Speaker 3: Democrats won the mid.
Speaker 2: Term, and they won in twenty twenty eight, and then
Speaker 2: they restored some of it, and now and now things
Speaker 2: are NORMALI ish, but we trimmed some of the fat
Speaker 2: with some mistakes made along the way. Right, Like that
Speaker 2: that to me is not crazy. It does depend on
Speaker 2: the courts and eventually the Congress and the people like
Speaker 2: like fighting back a little bit, right, But I mean
Speaker 2: this is why companies do layoffs. Right, Sometimes you easier.
Speaker 2: It's also easier by the way, from like a legal perspective, right,
Speaker 2: but like sometimes just.
Speaker 3: Getting rid of everybody is.
Speaker 2: Actually more rational than making case by case decisions, because
Speaker 2: you want to avoid special pleading, right, you want to
Speaker 2: avoid the transaction costs, and because someone will be clawed
Speaker 2: back anyways, you kind of like deliberately overshoot the target.
Speaker 1: I just want to push back against one thing. I
Speaker 1: think that that's plausible in some cases, but not in others.
Speaker 1: And what we're specifically, like when we're specifically talking about
Speaker 1: kind of the scientific funding, what's happening there, it's not
Speaker 1: as easy to say, oh oops, two years later, we'll
Speaker 1: restore it and it will go back because so many
Speaker 1: things like you can't disrupt some of these trials, you
Speaker 1: can't disrupt this research, and in the meantime, people are
Speaker 1: going to go elsewhere, right, So that might be a
Speaker 1: permanent change that will make the US worse off for
Speaker 1: decades that you can't just roll back because oops, I
Speaker 1: guess we shouldn't have slashed, you know, eighty percent of
Speaker 1: that budget.
Speaker 3: No, and the.
Speaker 2: Decline and again like the the ambitiousness of it and
Speaker 2: the chao. I mean, the New York Times had like
Speaker 2: one of these news analysis pieces a day that was like,
Speaker 2: it seemed like Trump really had.
Speaker 3: A shit together in.
Speaker 2: The first two months, and now he doesn't. I don't
Speaker 2: quite know that I buy that frame. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think from the start you had a very ambitious administration
Speaker 2: and a sloppy, chaotic one. I think those two ingredients
Speaker 2: have been present from the start. And or I mean,
Speaker 2: there are somewhat in some public opinion, right, like rumors
Speaker 2: there that Pete Hegseth will get fired. Elon Musk has
Speaker 2: been back seated a little bit, right, They haven't picked
Speaker 2: fights on issues like abortion, whereas conversely, so let me
Speaker 2: just give you just so we're at least staying somewhat
Speaker 2: grounded in the data.
Speaker 3: Twenty fifteen Gallup Poll.
Speaker 2: Please tell me how much confidence you yourself have in
Speaker 2: higher education twenty fifteen, fifty seven percent of Americans have
Speaker 2: a great d are quite a lot of confidence.
Speaker 3: Only ten percent have very little or no confidence.
Speaker 2: Right so, mad to twenty twenty four, those numbers are
Speaker 2: thirty six great deal and thirty two very little or
Speaker 2: no confidence. Thirty two percent also say some confidence. So
Speaker 2: basically you've gone from six to one high confidence to
Speaker 2: low confidence to even And you know, some of that
Speaker 2: happened during Trump's first term, but it's pretty linear and steady.
Speaker 2: It's been you know, so this is a case where
Speaker 2: Trump is picking an un sympathetic target. Now if you
Speaker 2: go so far and sympathetic target, then like that target
Speaker 2: may become like more sympathetic.
Speaker 3: You know, I I.
Speaker 2: A couple of friends who kind of work in university emissions.
Speaker 2: I'd be like, if I are you, I'd be like, Wow,
Speaker 2: now you can not feel selfish and greedy for donating
Speaker 2: to Harvard because you're fighting in a good fight. I
Speaker 2: would fucking I would fucking love it if I worked
Speaker 2: in Harvard's fundraising committee.
Speaker 3: Right now, now you're you know.
Speaker 2: Because before I would say that giving money to a
Speaker 2: richivally union is I'm not sure it's actually better than
Speaker 2: setting your money on fire. Sending your money on fire
Speaker 2: at least at least causes some degree of deflation.
Speaker 3: Right, But if universes are actually tapping.
Speaker 2: To their own downlands, then I'm much more sympathetic to that,
Speaker 2: I would say.
Speaker 1: And we'll be back right after this to kind of
Speaker 1: sum up all of this chaos and everything we've been
Speaker 1: talking about. From a strategic standpoint, it seems like these
Speaker 1: are all crucial issues and people should be fighting all
Speaker 1: of them. But from a messaging like let's win election standpoint,
Speaker 1: I do think trying to focus on the economics, right,
Speaker 1: on the tariffs, on the stuff that can actually appeal
Speaker 1: to people and get them to potentially kind of change
Speaker 1: their to change their minds or start voting. I think
Speaker 1: that that should be kind of if we're talking about
Speaker 1: democratic leadership, that should be the number one messaging, and
Speaker 1: then all of the other stuff has to keep happening, right,
Speaker 1: Keep fighting the court battles, delegate some stuff to Harvard, right, like,
Speaker 1: keep fighting all of those things, keep those talking points going,
Speaker 1: yet have that strategic unity that will bring people to
Speaker 1: your cause and will be sympathetic and will not let
Speaker 1: Trump pull the cards of the unpopular stuff.
Speaker 3: Right, we bring on one more final game theory example.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, even when there is some risk of cheating
Speaker 2: or rules not being followed, then there is still an
Speaker 2: equilibrium that emerges.
Speaker 3: Right, Like you know, if you're in a cash game.
Speaker 2: It's a very good cash game, but you're worried about
Speaker 2: not getting paid, particularly if another.
Speaker 3: Player loses too much money. I mean, that might affect
Speaker 3: your play of certain hands.
Speaker 2: Right if you think, you know, we've probably had all
Speaker 2: the situation where you're playing poker and you check your cards.
Speaker 2: Both us keep a pretty good lid on our carac right,
Speaker 2: but sometimes you're can little sloppy. You kind of or
Speaker 2: the car to slippery. You lift her a little high,
Speaker 2: and you're worry that your opponent to the right saw
Speaker 2: you know, at least a suit of the car. Right,
Speaker 2: that might make you a little bit more cautious when
Speaker 2: you're playing out At the point is like Trump is
Speaker 2: not completely un constrained, right if he had a twenty
Speaker 2: percent approval rating, so he's unpopular even in redistricts in Congress,
Speaker 2: would I'm sure have no trouble finding grounds to impeaching, Right,
Speaker 2: Will it come to that during the next three and
Speaker 2: a half years, I would tend to doubt it, right,
Speaker 2: But the point is that like that, like that is
Speaker 2: some constraint operating on some level.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The fact that Jade Vance, I presume, would like to
Speaker 2: be president and not lose to AOC whatever in four years,
Speaker 2: that that provides some constraint on Trump.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The fact that Trump likes to be well liked by
Speaker 2: certain types of people.
Speaker 3: Rides some constraint.
Speaker 2: And and the court provides some constraint because you know
Speaker 2: this everyal Garcia case is what I call a finder's
Speaker 2: keeper's case, where oops, he's in El Salvador.
Speaker 3: The default is he's still there. Right. In other cases,
Speaker 3: the default is that like, okay.
Speaker 2: Well now now someone as if you were in the
Speaker 2: US and you say you can't deport him, well, now
Speaker 2: someone who acts in that chain to deport him is
Speaker 2: violating a law and then they could get in trouble
Speaker 2: and so like so you know, it's not always the case.
Speaker 3: And by the way, if you have stage sitting and
Speaker 3: we're not.
Speaker 2: Going to respect these court decisions, right, I mean you
Speaker 2: have had this during the Civil rights era, not in a
Speaker 2: good way, where Southern states were being you know, disobedient
Speaker 2: and things like that, and then and then you know,
Speaker 2: it gets very it gets very messy. But the point
Speaker 2: is that like Trump does face some constraints. They're not
Speaker 2: the constraints that I might want or the constraints that
Speaker 2: the founders might have envision, but like, but they basically
Speaker 2: all boil down to, like can you marshall public opinion
Speaker 2: on your side? And the kind of silver bulletin article
Speaker 2: makes a case that like, you know, it might be
Speaker 2: kind of a moral thing too, oh, you know, fighting
Speaker 2: the good fight. Well, we are a democracy, right, Like,
Speaker 2: if you think Trump is very damaging to the health
Speaker 2: or republic, and I'm eighty percent of the way there,
Speaker 2: I think, right then, like then, like you have to
Speaker 2: be politically smart.
Speaker 1: Yep, I think that's a good end message, be politically
Speaker 1: smart because we do not want the damage to be
Speaker 1: permanent and fatal. Let us know what you think of
Speaker 1: the show. Reach out to us at Risky Business at
Speaker 1: Pushkin dot fm. And by the way, if you're a
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Speaker 1: We'll be answering a listener question each week that's coming
Speaker 1: up right after the credits.
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Speaker 2: listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.
Speaker 1: Risky Business hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 3: And by me Nate Silver.
Speaker 2: The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
Speaker 2: is Sonia Gerwit Sally helm As our editor, and our
Speaker 2: executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 3: Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please rate and review us
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Speaker 1: for tuning in.