Are We All Deportable?

Claire and Neil bring you up to speed on this week's tragic campus shooting, Harvard's political defiance, DOGE's data theft, and today's focus: the Trump administration's illegal deportation mania

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia (left) and Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) meet yesterday at CECOT, the detention center in El Salvador where the Trump administration has imprisoned 261 deportees. Photo credit: Office of Senator Van Hollen

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We begin with a bizarre April 15 exchange between Fox News reporter Peter Doocey and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about whether Donald Trump plans to deport American citizens (hint: it’s not if—but how.)

In the news:

• Our hearts are with Florida State University in Tallahassee after a mass shooting: there are multiple casualties and at least two deaths so far. The culprit is also a student; his mother is a an 18-year veteran of the local sheriff’s department, and the murder weapon? Her personal firearm. Florida has expansive gun laws, although state statutes made the shooter to young to purchase his own handgun.

• Harvard becomes the first university to reject a deal with President Donald J. Trump that would have essentially put the university into receivership to the United States government. As a result, $2.2 billion in federal funding has been frozen, with another $5 billion at stake. The administration has also announced plans to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status and end visas for international students. See you in court, Donald.

• Claire also recommends Matthew Connelley’s recent op-ed asking for solidarity, “I’m a Columbia Professor.Here’s the Really Disheartening Part of this Mess,” (New York Times, April 16, 2025)

• Daniel Berulis, an NLRB staffer, has come forward to describe a massive export of sensitive and confidential data by DOGE from that agency, files specifically relating to labor organizing; some seem to implicate Elon Musk’s business interests. Listen to the video for even more troubling allegations.

Today’s focus:

• Late last night we learned that Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen has was able to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the wrongly deported man who has become the face of the 261 migrants who are being held at El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.

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Your hosts:

Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.

Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).