We're Not In Kansas Anymore

Neil and Claire discuss a plane crash, an uncertain future for federal funding, and the real costs of Trumpism

A group of migrants entered the U.S. from Mexico through a hole in the border fence near Sasabe, Arizona and turned themselves in to a waiting CBP agent. Photo credit: Aaron Wells/Shutterstock

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Neil and I began this episode by expressing our condolences to those who lost family, friends, and colleagues to the tragic collision between a military helicopter and American Airlines flight 5342 this week. There were no survivors. You can read a partial list of the dead here: about two dozen of those lost were young figure skaters and their coaches, mostly from Boston, Wilmington, and Philadelphia. Another was a young law professor.

We are shocked and appalled that President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth expressed virtually no empathy with the victims of this event. Instead, they blamed the crash on the Biden administration’s DEI policies, and took the opportunity of a mass tragedy to propagandize about the dangers of having women, people of color, and the disabled in high-skilled jobs.

During the press conference, Trump also repeated an internet rumor that Jo Ellis, a transwoman and a Blackhawk pilot, was flying the helicopter in question; he referred to her as “mentally ill.” The rumor was retweeted by conservative Ann Coulter (the OP has since been taken down.) A little research later showed that Ellis is alive and had nothing to do with the flight.

Our news review includes a potpourri of this week’s horrors:

• On Tuesday, Trump ordered a freeze on nearly all government funding, domestic and foreign. That was rolled back on Wednesday by a court order: Here’s a full list of programs potentially affected if the freeze is reinstated.

• This is the week when perhaps the most contentious of Donald Trump’s nominees–RFK, Jr.,Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel—have come before the relevant Senate Committees.

• Finally, the Idaho Legislature is working on a bill that will ask SCOTUS to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage. The legislation originated in a Massachusetts think tank. One legal expert says it is "just theater." But if we have learned anything in the last ten days, it is never just theater, right?

Our main topic today is the assault on immigrants in the United States, documented and undocumented. Among other things, we discuss:

• The bipartisan passage of the Laken Reilly Act: the new law makes it possible to deport an undocumented person who is accused of a crime, no matter how minor, that has yet to be adjudicated.

• The complexities of why, and how, migrants come to the United States. We discuss points raised in Jordan Salama’s excellent long read, “On TikTok, Every Migrant is Living the Dream,” (The New Yorker, January 6, 2025.)

• Claire mistakenly stated that ICE offices have a quota of 88 bodies a week they must turn over. She misspoke: the real number is 75 per day.

•  We also discussed the significance of using an almost-shuttered concentration ration camp to house deportees indefinitely: see Hamed Aleaziz and Carol Rosenberg, “Trump Says U.S. Will Hold Migrants at Guantánamo,” New York Times, January 29, 2025.

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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).