Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: The Trump administration has taken aggressive action against sanctuary cities
Speaker 2: and states, filing lawsuits against Colorado and Denver, Illinois and Chicago,
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, Rochester, New York for New Jersey cities, and
Speaker 2: just last week New York City. The basic contention of
Speaker 2: the lawsuits is that sanctuary cities and states interfere with
Speaker 2: federal immigration enforcement. But on Friday, a federal judge dismissed
Speaker 2: the administration's lawsuit against Illinois and Chicago. Joining me is
Speaker 2: immigration attorney Leon Fresco, a partnered Honda Knight. He was
Speaker 2: the head of the Office of Civil Immigration Litigation during
Speaker 2: the Obama administration. Leon, there's no official definition for sanctuary cities,
Speaker 2: but can you describe what they are?
Speaker 3: Two components of what people talk about when they mentioned
Speaker 3: sanctuary city. So one is the issue of information sharing
Speaker 3: with the federal government. So that is, if a specific
Speaker 3: city or locality or county or state has information about
Speaker 3: someone that's been arrested, the question is should they share
Speaker 3: that information with immigration so that immigration knows that there's
Speaker 3: now someone who's a document that that's been arrested that
Speaker 3: they should try to pick up as part of an
Speaker 3: initiative to pick up people with criminal violations. That's one,
Speaker 3: and then the second is cooperation with administrative warrants or
Speaker 3: what are called detainer requests, which is on the other end,
Speaker 3: when I actually knows that somebody is in custody in
Speaker 3: a city or county jail or a state facility, if
Speaker 3: there's an ordinance that says, well, if ICE issues an
Speaker 3: administrative warrant, which is a warrant that can be issued
Speaker 3: just by an ICE agent, it doesn't have to go
Speaker 3: to a court, does that compel in any way the city,
Speaker 3: the county, or the state to actually comply with that warrant.
Speaker 3: And so what the sanctuary provision say is no, you're
Speaker 3: not compelled to do anything with that. If there's a
Speaker 3: federal judicial warrant, fine, then turn the person over to
Speaker 3: the ICE agent who's showing that federal criminal judicial warrant.
Speaker 3: But otherwise just release them and don't do anything just
Speaker 3: because ICE is commandeering you to perform work on its behalf.
Speaker 3: And so those are the two things that are commonly
Speaker 3: meant by sanctuary cities. It's not really that the city
Speaker 3: itself is in any way sort of creating an amnesty
Speaker 3: that legalizes undocumented people or anything like that within its borders.
Speaker 3: What it's posentially saying is it's not going to do
Speaker 3: anything affirmatively to help the federal government in its mission
Speaker 3: of trying to deport people who are deportable from the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 2: So the Trump administration has been targeting sanctuary cities, which
Speaker 2: are generally democratic cities. I mean, having a sanctuary city
Speaker 2: does that really hold up their immigration efforts.
Speaker 3: So we're not talking legally, we're just talking about as
Speaker 3: a factual matter. Absolutely. ICE would prefer one million times
Speaker 3: out of a million to be given a list every
Speaker 3: day from states and cities and counties across the country.
Speaker 3: Here is a list of people that we've arrested today.
Speaker 3: Go look at all of these people in these lists
Speaker 3: and try to figure out if any of them are undocumented.
Speaker 3: And there are many cities in America, some in Florida,
Speaker 3: I'm in Texas that do this. They provide us every
Speaker 3: day with a list of people that have been arrested.
Speaker 3: And then ICE goes and says, well, out of these
Speaker 3: one hundred people on this list, we care about these fourteen,
Speaker 3: detain them tell us when you're going to release them,
Speaker 3: call us and we'll come pick them up. And because
Speaker 3: that doesn't happen, then those let's say fourteen people out
Speaker 3: of that list from one hundred, ICE has to go
Speaker 3: find them. So it would be much easier for ICE
Speaker 3: if they could just literally be handed that human being
Speaker 3: and put them in an ICE detention vehicle and put
Speaker 3: them in an ICE facility. But with you have a
Speaker 3: law that does not permit that, then those people get
Speaker 3: released and ICE has to catch them again, just like
Speaker 3: if they had never had any information about them in
Speaker 3: the first place. And so as a practical matter, I
Speaker 3: don't think anybody would dispute that it practically makes the
Speaker 3: job of deportation of people with criminal interactions. I can't
Speaker 3: say criminals because some of these folks who get arrested
Speaker 3: that are going to be acquitted. So that's one of
Speaker 3: the other problems is if you say you're deporting a
Speaker 3: criminal non citizen, the issue is, well, are they actually
Speaker 3: criminals in the sense but they actually did something that
Speaker 3: they got convicted for or are they just wrongfully arrested
Speaker 3: of something? And then you know, there's the other argument
Speaker 3: that people make about well, yeah, but they're here illegally,
Speaker 3: so in and of itself, you can call that person
Speaker 3: a criminal. But putting that argument to the side, which
Speaker 3: is a semantic argument that people debate in the political realm,
Speaker 3: the point being that that group, whether you care about
Speaker 3: whether they were convicted or whether you just care that
Speaker 3: they were arrested and people shouldn't be getting arrested anyway,
Speaker 3: whatever you think about that group, it is immensely harder
Speaker 3: to remove anyone in that group in any of the
Speaker 3: iterations if the cities don't give that information and share
Speaker 3: it affirmatively with ICE.
Speaker 2: The administration sued New York City Mayor Rick Adams and
Speaker 2: other officials after the shooting of an off duty Customs
Speaker 2: and Border Protection officer in a Manhattan park a little
Speaker 2: over a week ago. They blamed New York sanctuary city
Speaker 2: policies for the shooting. Here's Homeland Security Secretary Christy nom
Speaker 2: two days after the shooting.
Speaker 1: Make no mistake, this officer is in the hospital today
Speaker 1: fighting for his life because of the policies of the
Speaker 1: mayor of the city and the city council and the
Speaker 1: people that were in charge of keeping the public safe.
Speaker 2: Would the suspects have been in ice custody, if New
Speaker 2: York wasn't a sanctuary.
Speaker 3: City, if according to the lawsuits, one of the two
Speaker 3: people that had been arrested absolutely did interact with eyes
Speaker 3: in the sense that I placed an immigration detainer on
Speaker 3: one of the two people, both who committed the crime
Speaker 3: of the attack on the CDP officer and for Washington Park.
Speaker 3: Both were here illegally, and both were arrested and released
Speaker 3: in New York. But I set actually placed what was
Speaker 3: called an immigration detainer on one of the two individuals,
Speaker 3: meaning they told a New York City jail, please hold
Speaker 3: this person so we can go pick them up and
Speaker 3: tell us when you're gonna release them, and that went unanswered.
Speaker 3: It was like, you know, it's like sending a fax
Speaker 3: into Mars. You know, if you send the facts to Mars,
Speaker 3: nobody is there in Mars andswering that fact. It's the
Speaker 3: same concept here, So that detainer is ignored, and then
Speaker 3: this individual who gets arrested then walks out and they
Speaker 3: commit this crime against the CBP officer for Washington. The
Speaker 3: argument being if this had been a locality like some
Speaker 3: of the ones in Florida or in Texas, for sure
Speaker 3: that ice detainer would have been honored, meaning at least
Speaker 3: one of the two individuals for sure would have been
Speaker 3: arrested and detained and would never have been able to
Speaker 3: commit this crime. But even the second one, who didn't
Speaker 3: have an ICE detainer, had New y York had an
Speaker 3: especially cooperative relationship with ICE, and it would have even
Speaker 3: given this second person the moment they were arrested, affirmatively
Speaker 3: the information to ICE and said, hey, please do us
Speaker 3: a favor and pick up this person because we're really
Speaker 3: trying to enforce the immigration law. And so depending on
Speaker 3: the scenario, either one or both would have been apprehended
Speaker 3: and would not have been free to commit that crime.
Speaker 2: Are all the administration's lawsuits against sanctuary cities and states
Speaker 2: basically making the same arguments based on the supremacy clause.
Speaker 3: They argue basically three different arguments. They say, Number one,
Speaker 3: that there is preemption that the federal immigration law actually
Speaker 3: requires in a sense information sharing between the federal government
Speaker 3: and the state government in the same It's that part
Speaker 3: of the Immigration Code says that states, cities, and counties
Speaker 3: cannot pass any laws that prohibit the sharing of information.
Speaker 3: And here's the key, It says regarding an individual's citizenship
Speaker 3: and immigration status. And so the point is what does
Speaker 3: that mean. Does that mean only that issue, meaning just
Speaker 3: number one, are you a citizen? Are you here legally?
Speaker 3: Or does it mean a bigger basket of information? Are
Speaker 3: you detained? What time are you going to be released?
Speaker 3: Where are you detained, what crime did you commit? Et cetera.
Speaker 3: And so that say debate now, to be fair to
Speaker 3: the states and the cities and the counties, this debate
Speaker 3: has been had in the first Trump administration and now
Speaker 3: in the second one, and so far the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: hasn't weighed in, but every other court that has weighed
Speaker 3: in has said that information is just the very narrow
Speaker 3: is the person here legally or or not? And is
Speaker 3: the person a citizen or not? But has nothing to
Speaker 3: do with this broader basket of information that the federal
Speaker 3: government seeks. But nevertheless, that's one argument. Number one, that
Speaker 3: what the cities and the states and the counties are
Speaker 3: doing is preempted because they have to provide this information.
Speaker 3: And then number two, that it's preempted by the supremacy
Speaker 3: clause because these laws discriminate against the federal government. They
Speaker 3: give worse treatment to the federal government than they do
Speaker 3: against others that might ask for this information. They're specifically
Speaker 3: targeted towards not sharing information with the federal government. And finally,
Speaker 3: they actually implicitly regulate the federal government. That's the final
Speaker 3: argument that has made in these lawsuits, because if you're
Speaker 3: telling the federal government here's how you have to operate
Speaker 3: in a particular location. You have to do this, this,
Speaker 3: and this. In order to get someone from county detention,
Speaker 3: you have to get a federal warrant. You can't get
Speaker 3: a civil warrant, etc. You can't ask for information. You
Speaker 3: have to stand outside the dail and try to catch people,
Speaker 3: or stand outside the courts and try to catch people.
Speaker 3: Then you're regulating the federal government in a way that's
Speaker 3: in permissible. So those are the arguments that the federal
Speaker 3: government has made in these cases. But again, to be
Speaker 3: fair to the states and the localities, they have not
Speaker 3: been successful at any level district or appellate court so
Speaker 3: far in winning any of these cases so far.
Speaker 2: Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue
Speaker 2: this conversation with Leon Fresco. While Venezuela's Little League team
Speaker 2: was denied visas to take part in the league's Senior
Speaker 2: Baseball World Series in South Carolina. You're listening to Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: The Trump administration has found a series of lawsuits targeting
Speaker 2: state and city policies seen as interfering with immigration enforcement.
Speaker 2: But last Friday, a judge in Illinois dismissed the administration
Speaker 2: lawsuit against Chicago and Illinois. I've been talking to immigration
Speaker 2: attorney Leon Fresco, a partner at Holnden Knight. Leon. The
Speaker 2: judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying the Trump administration didn't have
Speaker 2: standing to bring the suit. Tell us about her ruling.
Speaker 3: Very similar laws in Cook County in Chicago and Illinois
Speaker 3: as the ones we were just talking about in New York.
Speaker 3: And so the defendant Chicago, Illinois, Cook County file a
Speaker 3: motion to dismiss, and they say, at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, you can't sue us because you don't have standing,
Speaker 3: because you're not affected by anything we're doing. If you
Speaker 3: feel that you are affected by something we're doing, it's
Speaker 3: because you're forcing us to do things. And you know
Speaker 3: you can enforce all the immigration law you want in Chicago,
Speaker 3: federal government. That's what the city and the county and
Speaker 3: the state were saying. They're saying, you can enforce all
Speaker 3: the immigration law you want. We don't have officers shooting
Speaker 3: at you while you're trying to enforce immigration law, or
Speaker 3: we don't have officers putting up barricades or hiding people
Speaker 3: or anything else. The problem in these cases is you're
Speaker 3: trying to make us do things that we don't want
Speaker 3: to do, and so you don't have standing to make
Speaker 3: us do things that we don't want to do, because
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court has already held in the famous Prince case,
Speaker 3: and that was a case where when the Brady Law
Speaker 3: was passed that developed the national background check system. Until
Speaker 3: that system was developed, they said for the states and
Speaker 3: the localities they had to do the background checks. And
Speaker 3: then the locality students said, you can't force us to
Speaker 3: do background checks. We don't want to do that. You know,
Speaker 3: there were some localities that didn't believe that constitutionally you
Speaker 3: could have background checks on guns, and so the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court agreed. They said the federal government cannot force states
Speaker 3: and localities it's called anti commandeering into implementing federal regulatory programs.
Speaker 3: And so that same theory that existed in the case
Speaker 3: is being applied in these sanctuary city cases, but again
Speaker 3: in this Chicago case, to say, if you actually are
Speaker 3: saying you have standing because you're being hurt, you're only
Speaker 3: being hurt because the cities aren't enforcing the law in
Speaker 3: the way you want them to. And you can't do that.
Speaker 3: You can't make a city or a county affirmatively do anything.
Speaker 3: They can do what they want as long as they're
Speaker 3: not interfering. And because there was no finding of interference,
Speaker 3: then the idea was there's no standing because you can't
Speaker 3: force them to cooperate. You can only force them to
Speaker 3: not interfere.
Speaker 2: So can we conclude that the lawsuits against other sanctuary
Speaker 2: cities and states will likely go a similar way?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, unless the Supreme Court wants to announce
Speaker 3: a new doctrine and there is a final sort of
Speaker 3: straw that the government is grasping at, which is to say,
Speaker 3: in the end, we want to distinguish princes from these
Speaker 3: sanctuary city cases to the extent that what we're seeking
Speaker 3: is only information as opposed to the faith or the
Speaker 3: cities doing anything. So, for instance, I don't think the
Speaker 3: federal government will ever be successful in getting the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court to say that a city or a county or
Speaker 3: a state has to affirmatively detain somebody because that's an
Speaker 3: affirmative action. That's similar to prince. But the question is
Speaker 3: on information sharing. Is that going to be something that
Speaker 3: is covered by prince or will they be able to
Speaker 3: achieve an information sharing exception which allows the federal government
Speaker 3: to force states and cities to share information that they
Speaker 3: have with regard to foreign nationals, i e. Where are they,
Speaker 3: where they detained, when are they going to be released?
Speaker 3: And so that is I think the final threat question.
Speaker 3: And I would say, given that the Supreme Court has
Speaker 3: been pretty deferential recently toward Trump's efforts to deport people
Speaker 3: and to enforce the immigration laws, I would say that
Speaker 3: that one is not so crazy to think that the
Speaker 3: Immigration Court might set out an exception for information sharing.
Speaker 3: Wep the wave and see.
Speaker 2: I want to turn to denaturalization, which has been in
Speaker 2: the news a bit lately. Denaturalizing citizens used to be
Speaker 2: reserved for extreme cases like war criminals or national security threats,
Speaker 2: but last month the Department of Justice made it one
Speaker 2: of five enforcement priorities for the agency's Civil Division. First
Speaker 2: of all, who are we talking about.
Speaker 3: We're talking about people who entered the United States did
Speaker 3: everything the right way, got green cards, local permanent residents,
Speaker 3: waited the statutory period past the English and Civics test,
Speaker 3: and are now US. It is so they can vote,
Speaker 3: they can serve on juries, they can apply for security clearances,
Speaker 3: the whole thing. Yes, these are US citizens, just like
Speaker 3: someone who was born here.
Speaker 2: And how difficult is it for the government to denaturalize
Speaker 2: a citizen.
Speaker 3: In federal court? Because when you do a denaturalization, and
Speaker 3: this is where you know, you can issue all the
Speaker 3: press releases you want, but in reality, when you do
Speaker 3: a denaturalization, it is a very resource intensive action. You
Speaker 3: actually have to get the Department of Justice and I
Speaker 3: used to work together on filing an actual federal lawsuit
Speaker 3: against the person, and there actually has to be the
Speaker 3: equivalent of a trial, and you have to go in
Speaker 3: and say that a material misrepresentation was made in either
Speaker 3: the citizenship application or the green card application, such that
Speaker 3: had that material misrepresentation been known at the time, there's
Speaker 3: no way the person would have been approved in their application.
Speaker 3: And so that's the standard, and it's a very high threshold.
Speaker 3: There can't be something like oh, you didn't tell us
Speaker 3: you were in the Elk Club and it turns out
Speaker 3: you were in the Elk Club, or you didn't tell
Speaker 3: us you were in the Five Sigma fraternity, and had
Speaker 3: we known that, we would have approved you. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: it has to be something serious, like cases where people
Speaker 3: either didn't disclose criminal convictions or people didn't disclose certain
Speaker 3: terrorists or national security issues. Then theoretically there is some argument.
Speaker 3: Now the question is is this gonna be expanded out
Speaker 3: to slightly more frivolous groups of people. We're gonna have
Speaker 3: to wait and see. But I don't think at least
Speaker 3: in the short term that's gonna happen, because the Department
Speaker 3: of Justice at the moment is in a very big
Speaker 3: crunt in terms of they've lost a lot of lawyers
Speaker 3: from the department. These cases are very very resource intensive,
Speaker 3: and so to devote lawyers to these cases when the
Speaker 3: facts are not so compelling is not going to be
Speaker 3: a productive use of their resources. But again, in scenarios
Speaker 3: where a criminal conviction was not reported or with fake identities,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing might actually be something where you'd
Speaker 3: want to do this kind of denaturalization action.
Speaker 2: So Trump has raised the prospect of stripping citizenship from
Speaker 2: Elon Musk and New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zoren Mundami.
Speaker 2: Could he do that?
Speaker 3: So you have to go again to the theories of
Speaker 3: these cases, which is that material misrepresentations were made on
Speaker 3: either the green card or the citizenship cases. So on
Speaker 3: the green card and citizenship cases, the ones that have
Speaker 3: been made, I have no opinion, nor am I making
Speaker 3: any allegations against anyone.
Speaker 2: I want it against you.
Speaker 3: But allegations that have been made are that Elon must
Speaker 3: reportedly engaged in unauthorized work while he was on a
Speaker 3: student in the United States, which if he did, would
Speaker 3: have been a violation of his student visa, which if
Speaker 3: he did. When he was asked a question on his
Speaker 3: Green card and his citizenship applications, have you ever violated
Speaker 3: the terms of any visa you've held that he answered no,
Speaker 3: that would have been a dishonest answer, and then thus
Speaker 3: you can the naturalize them that would be his. The
Speaker 3: Mamdani one would be even more complicated because his would
Speaker 3: be based off of memberships in certain organizations that they
Speaker 3: would claim, Hey, this guy was cohorting with terrorist type
Speaker 3: people and he did disclose this in his application, and
Speaker 3: so it's similar to the Moot Khalil type of situation.
Speaker 3: And even though my Mood Khalils is easier because he's
Speaker 3: just a Green card holder, but it's the same concept
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, which is, did you
Speaker 3: fail to disclose the kinds of affiliations that you had
Speaker 3: with entities that had you disclosed them, we would never
Speaker 3: have approved your Green card. And so I think that
Speaker 3: one will be much more challenging because I don't know
Speaker 3: if there are any such organizations. I'm not aware of any,
Speaker 3: but who knows, you know. And then the final case
Speaker 3: that's been brought up is Rosi o'donalds. She was born
Speaker 3: in the United States, so for her they would actually
Speaker 3: have to find that she committed one of the expropriating acts,
Speaker 3: which there's only a few of them, which is that
Speaker 3: you either go to a US embassy and say hey,
Speaker 3: I don't want to be a citizen anymore, that's the
Speaker 3: main one, or you take up arms against the US
Speaker 3: and a war. But she hasn't done any of that,
Speaker 3: so there is no provision in the law I'm aware
Speaker 3: of where Rosie o'donald's citizenship could be taken away. From
Speaker 3: that perspective, I think.
Speaker 2: She says, let's transition yet again, because there are so
Speaker 2: many immigration topics in the news. Venezuela's Little League team
Speaker 2: made it to the Senior Baseball World Series, which is
Speaker 2: being held in South Carolina, as it always is, but
Speaker 2: they can't make the competition because the US refused to
Speaker 2: give them visas.
Speaker 3: Every year there's a thing called the Little League World
Speaker 3: Series and they put it on TV, and each year
Speaker 3: there's more and more coverage. There used to be only coverage.
Speaker 3: When I was a young kid, there was this coverage
Speaker 3: of maybe like the final game or two. Now they
Speaker 3: show the whole tournament, two, three, four weeks. I bet
Speaker 3: there's even gambling on it.
Speaker 2: Now. No, there's gambling on everything.
Speaker 3: So probably yes, correct. And so the point is that
Speaker 3: Venezuela qualified. One of the Little League teams from Venezuela
Speaker 3: qualified to be in the Little League World Series. They
Speaker 3: were the winner of their tournament. And because of the
Speaker 3: travel band that was implemented several weeks ago that said
Speaker 3: that Venezuelans who were trying to come on non immigrant visas,
Speaker 3: meaning visas that were not visas for immigrating into the
Speaker 3: United States like tourists visas which would be the visas
Speaker 3: these kids would come in under. Can't comment United States
Speaker 3: their band. Now that travel band did have a exception,
Speaker 3: A literally had one for like the World Cup itself,
Speaker 3: because I think they understand that. For instance, I think
Speaker 3: I ran as qualified for the World Cup, and so
Speaker 3: that one would be very tough if you don't let
Speaker 3: them in for the World Cup. But secondly, you know,
Speaker 3: for other things that are in the national interest. So
Speaker 3: the Venezuelan kids applied for visa and they were denied,
Speaker 3: and that was just it. They were not given a
Speaker 3: chance to get one of these waivers. And so from
Speaker 3: my perspective, I don't know if this perspective is shared
Speaker 3: by others in the United States, But even when we
Speaker 3: had the height of the Cold War with Russia, a
Speaker 3: nuclear power who was intent on killing us and wiping
Speaker 3: us off the face of the match, we still let
Speaker 3: the balls showy ballet perform in New York and we
Speaker 3: just ban them from the United States. And so somehow
Speaker 3: we made it through the Cold War. I think we'd
Speaker 3: be able to make it through whatever this period is
Speaker 3: by letting some little kids play baseball. But call me crazy.
Speaker 2: So there are these exceptions, but do you think that
Speaker 2: fewer people will come to the United States to attend
Speaker 2: the events because of fears of the travel ban or
Speaker 2: other restrictions.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean we already saw that with the Club
Speaker 3: World Cup, where we had a number of stadiums that
Speaker 3: were quite empty in cases where you would normally have
Speaker 3: expected the stadiums to have many more people because people
Speaker 3: would have been having summer travel to come visit their
Speaker 3: teams from all over the world. And there was concern
Speaker 3: that I heard, both specifically from actual human beings, but
Speaker 3: also that were reported by news outlets. But you know,
Speaker 3: I just corroborated with my individual clients who said, we're
Speaker 3: not going to come in because we're afraid that something
Speaker 3: will happen to us if we try to enter the
Speaker 3: United States. I mean, it is a fear that is
Speaker 3: not justified. Just to be clear, if one looks at
Speaker 3: this from a statistical level and says, what is the
Speaker 3: actual chance of something bad happening to me if I
Speaker 3: come to visit some of these events. But nevertheless, because
Speaker 3: of various media coverage and other things, that's happening, and
Speaker 3: I think the administration needs to be doing more to
Speaker 3: assuade these concerns. But because that's not happening, then you
Speaker 3: have these situations where people aren't coming to attend these events.
Speaker 3: And I don't know what effects it's going to have
Speaker 3: on the World Cup next year. We're gonna have to
Speaker 3: wait and see, but it would be a shame if
Speaker 3: any of those stadiums were empty, because I think the
Speaker 3: President himself wants to see a great World Cup. He's
Speaker 3: very interested in the event. You know, he attends and
Speaker 3: holds the trophy and everything, and so from that perspective,
Speaker 3: I would hope that the administration would do what it
Speaker 3: can to facilitate sports in the United States. And so
Speaker 3: I'm hopeful that they will see the error here and
Speaker 3: let the Venezuelan kids come in, because again, I just
Speaker 3: don't see the security concern here of letting those kids
Speaker 3: come in and play baseball for two weeks.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Leon. That's Leon Fresco of Honda Knight.
Speaker 2: Coming up next, the conservative activist who wants to widen
Speaker 2: Trump's crusade against colleges. You're listening to Bloomberg. Columbia University
Speaker 2: reached a landmark deal with the Trump administration to restore
Speaker 2: federal funding for research the Ivy League school will pay
Speaker 2: a two hundred million dollar penalty over three years, and
Speaker 2: made other commitments intended to increase transparency and compliance with
Speaker 2: federal civil rights laws. Christopher Rufo is a conservative activist
Speaker 2: who's been influential in the White House's efforts to reshape
Speaker 2: higher education, and he now wants to expand that campaign.
Speaker 2: Joining me is Bloomberg education reporter Liam Knox, who has
Speaker 2: written about Rufo. So Liam start by telling us a
Speaker 2: little about Christopher Rufo.
Speaker 4: Christopher Rufo is a fairly influential conservative activist policy designer.
Speaker 4: He's been very influential than Trump administration's education agenda. He's
Speaker 4: been an influential, in fact, in the conservative movement's intensified
Speaker 4: focus on education and higher education in particular for the
Speaker 4: past few years. He kind of rose to prominence in Florida.
Speaker 4: A couple of years ago he helped design Governor Ronda Santis'
Speaker 4: Don't Say Gay campaign. If you remember that was a
Speaker 4: core architect of the anti Dei movement years ago. This
Speaker 4: position of various conservative think tanks, including the Manhattan Institute
Speaker 4: where he still works, and Rond de Stantists actually appointed
Speaker 4: him to the board of the new College, which was
Speaker 4: a Florida institution where that was basically the proving ground
Speaker 4: in Florida for a lot of what has now become
Speaker 4: the Trump administration's nationwide campaign to reshape higher education and
Speaker 4: reform higher education along their own minds.
Speaker 2: So will you explain is the effort to reform higher education?
Speaker 2: Is it mainly an effort against DEI or an effort
Speaker 2: against so called wokeness in higher education, or is it
Speaker 2: about combating anti semitism on campuses.
Speaker 4: The answer is it's all of the above, and the
Speaker 4: focus has shifted as the news cycles have shifted. Back
Speaker 4: in February and March, when the negotiations the terms of
Speaker 4: negotiation were being set with some of these universities, primarily
Speaker 4: first and foremost Columbia University, the focus really was campus
Speaker 4: anti semitism. Claims that these universities had fostered or enabled
Speaker 4: kind of anti Semitic harassment on campus during the encampment
Speaker 4: protest movements. But it's grown significantly since then. And you
Speaker 4: see that actually even in the terms of the Columbia
Speaker 4: settlement that came out last week, they included anti DEI measures,
Speaker 4: you know, a commitment not to discriminate based on race
Speaker 4: or sex in various programs, commitment to be transparent in
Speaker 4: releasing data around race and merit and admissions. It included
Speaker 4: a lot of stipulations around international student enrollment, which the
Speaker 4: Trump Administration's agenda has sort of encompassed as well, and
Speaker 4: Higher ed with their campaigns to provoke student fisas and
Speaker 4: curtail international enrollment at American universities. So it's a wide
Speaker 4: ranging campaign that the administration is waging in the higher sphere,
Speaker 4: and you know that has kind of always been true.
Speaker 4: But in terms of where they're headed next, I think
Speaker 4: it's just, you know, one of the things that are
Speaker 4: reporting on this story with RUFO and folks in the
Speaker 4: Education Department whose ear he has show that it's only
Speaker 4: set to expand even.
Speaker 2: Wider, and expand even wider, meaning expand the number of
Speaker 2: schools that they're going to target with the loss of
Speaker 2: federal funding, or expand what they're asking from the schools.
Speaker 4: I think in the number of schools. The main finding
Speaker 4: here is that, yes, the administration of the White House,
Speaker 4: the Education Department, a number of other agencies helping human
Speaker 4: services agencies that control federal funding for research, federal financial
Speaker 4: aid funding, things like that. That is the main lever
Speaker 4: kind of power that they've been using against civic institutions
Speaker 4: that they're investigating or that they are bringing to the
Speaker 4: negotiating table around federal funding freezes like Columbia, like Harvard.
Speaker 4: But you know, those are just a handful of institutions
Speaker 4: which serve a very comparatively small number of students across
Speaker 4: the country. What Ruffo told us basically was that he'd
Speaker 4: had some at least some level of interest from the
Speaker 4: Education Department, from the White House in a broader plan
Speaker 4: to not necessarily threaten every school with the loss of
Speaker 4: federal funding, but to attach terms similar to those we
Speaker 4: saw Columbia except last week into basically bake them into
Speaker 4: federal contracts in research grants, you know, in kind of
Speaker 4: Title Title six compliance that's basically civil rights low anti
Speaker 4: discrimination law. That's another big level that they've been using,
Speaker 4: and a slew of Department of Justice investigations around that lately.
Speaker 4: Just today they launched another into Duke University. But you know,
Speaker 4: basically right now, they've been doing this piecemeal, you know,
Speaker 4: targeting you know, a few elite institutions here and there,
Speaker 4: targeting a few dozen in some of these big batches
Speaker 4: of civil rights investigations. The most wide ranging effects have
Speaker 4: been felt in the elimination or the freezing of research funds,
Speaker 4: because you know, those aren't always targeted at specific universities.
Speaker 4: There's also been just kind of a lot of spending
Speaker 4: cuts in that area. Rufo's plan would basically be a
Speaker 4: blanket policy for federal funding for all universities, and there's
Speaker 4: really very few universities that don't take federal funding in
Speaker 4: some form or another, and so would have a near
Speaker 4: universal impact on higher education.
Speaker 2: He's pushing this idea. Has the administration in any sense
Speaker 2: been receptive.
Speaker 4: To this, it's my understanding that they have. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's actually public that least the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon,
Speaker 4: is supportive of it in spirit. She tweeted or posted
Speaker 4: on x her support for Rufo's plan, calling it a
Speaker 4: compelling road map basically to bring in this campaign wider
Speaker 4: to other campuses across the country. And Rufo himself told
Speaker 4: us that he had circulated the plan among political appointees
Speaker 4: and senior officials in the White House at the Education Department,
Speaker 4: that some of them had even helped him draft parts
Speaker 4: of the plan of the strategy, and so it's certainly
Speaker 4: not out of the questions to see this becoming policy soon.
Speaker 4: When I spoke to the Education Department about it, they
Speaker 4: basically said that there no implementation in the works, but
Speaker 4: did not deny that it is a possibility in the future.
Speaker 4: The one other piece that is not in the formal
Speaker 4: plan that RUFO spoke with us about is kind of
Speaker 4: bringing the accreditors into the next here. That's a strategy
Speaker 4: using a college accreditation which are basically very influential but
Speaker 4: largely at least until recently, lying under the radar. Organizations
Speaker 4: that approve universities to receive federal financial aid, uphold standards
Speaker 4: of educational quality, make sure that they're financially sound, these institutions,
Speaker 4: make sure they're not breaking federal civil rights law. These
Speaker 4: are organizations that just recently that you know, the Trump
Speaker 4: administration is kind of bringing into its larger campaign against HIRET.
Speaker 4: They used it against Columbia. There's a lot of talk
Speaker 4: about what how that that's another lever another arrow in
Speaker 4: the quiver of the administration in their bigger campaign here,
Speaker 4: and that would be extremely universal and that you know,
Speaker 4: that's something that the Education Department has that folks in
Speaker 4: the Education Department have discussed and explored before. So you know,
Speaker 4: I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility,
Speaker 4: and it would be enormously impactful.
Speaker 2: Rufo went to Georgetown and Harvard. Why did he develop
Speaker 2: this antipathy? Especially, I guess to Harvard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting. He didn't actually go
Speaker 4: to Harvard University. He went to the Harvard Extension School,
Speaker 4: as is not really a part of the university. They
Speaker 4: offer university degrees, but they don't really reject anyone, but
Speaker 4: basically you pay for a program. You know, a lot
Speaker 4: of adults take this just because they're interested in auditing
Speaker 4: classes at Harvard. So he doesn't actually have any really
Speaker 4: direct ties to the university. But he does talk about
Speaker 4: his experience as kind of being like a come to
Speaker 4: light moment where he became disillusioned with the way that
Speaker 4: faculty at elite universities teach, with the focus he believes
Speaker 4: on overly liberal political influence. So I think, you know,
Speaker 4: that's all part of his ideological journey. He didn't speak
Speaker 4: that much about it in his interview with Bloomberg, but
Speaker 4: you raise a good point It's not just Chris Ruffo
Speaker 4: who attended elite institutions, it's most of the members of
Speaker 4: the Trump administration who are making this policy.
Speaker 2: Do they acknowledge that if the next president comes in
Speaker 2: and it's a Democrat president too is so called woke
Speaker 2: and is in favor of DEI, that these policies could
Speaker 2: all be changed.
Speaker 4: Right, They certainly could be. That's not really part of
Speaker 4: the discussion. I mean, I think we're really still in
Speaker 4: the honeymoon phase here. It's only been about six months
Speaker 4: or so of the Trump administration. There's a lot more runway.
Speaker 4: The folks at the Education Department at the White House,
Speaker 4: who are responsible for education policy, have been very aggressive
Speaker 4: in pursuing it thus far. I think they see quite
Speaker 4: a lot more room to do that, and you know,
Speaker 4: aren't really thinking about an endpoint here, you know. I
Speaker 4: think that one of the things Rufo discussed was that
Speaker 4: he feels that the Trump administration's agenda on high ED
Speaker 4: has a popular mandate, an electoral mandate, that DEI is unpopular,
Speaker 4: that other things that universities culture there you are unpopular,
Speaker 4: and that reshaping it is something that has popular support.
Speaker 4: You know. I guess we'll see if that continues to
Speaker 4: be true, you know, but that's I think that's the
Speaker 4: perspective from which these policy makers are approaching.
Speaker 2: Talks are underway with Cornell, Northwestern and Brown to reinstate
Speaker 2: previously frozen funds, so we'll see what happens there. Thanks
Speaker 2: so much, Liam. That's Bloomberg Education reporter Liam Knox, and
Speaker 2: that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show.
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