The Intercept Briefing

At a recent rally at U.S. Steel in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump stood in front of a row of workers in hard hats and safety vests and proclaimed, “We're right now on the verge of passing the largest working class tax cuts in American history.” He framed his “Big Beautiful Bill” — a massive tax cut for the wealthy — as a blue-collar blessing. The sleight of hand is classic Trump, and what makes his appeal to voters enduring. “The Republican Party is building the multiracial working class coalition that the Democrats have always said that they want to build,” says David Sirota, founder of The Lever and a former Bernie Sanders speechwriter. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks to Sirota and politics reporter Jessica Washington about how Trump has successfully used culture-war grievances to win over working-class voters, and why the Democratic Party continues to hemorrhage support.The episode also features Ilyse Hogue, the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the co-creator of a new $20 million project called Speaking With American Men, or SAM. The initiative aims to understand — and win back — young male voters who’ve drifted to the right. “ A lot of what we heard from people is that they feel invisible to the Democratic coalition,” she says. You can hear the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

“Catch and revoke” — the phrase sounds like something from a dystopian thriller, but it's Secretary of State Marco Rubio's very real characterization of the Trump administration's new one-strike visa cancellation policy targeting foreign students. A State Department spokesperson said that "full social media vetting" will be used for visa interviews and will be ongoing while the student remains in the U.S. for studies.On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to anthropologist Sophia Goodfriend and Chris Gelardi, a reporter for New York Focus investigating surveillance and the criminal legal system. They unpack how AI and surveillance technology are being weaponized to silence dissent on American campuses and fuel the deportations of immigrants nationwide."In the past few months, as we see the expansion of government surveillance, the crackdown of ICE on both legal residents and undocumented people in this country, we see these technologies lending a veneer of algorithmic efficiency to increasingly draconian policies," says Goodfriend.To understand more about the tech infrastructure powering deportations and what this digital crackdown means for everyone, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

LATE SUNDAY NIGHT, police in El Salvador arrested one of President Nayib Bukele’s sharpest critics, Ruth Eleonora López, an anti-corruption attorney who has spent years exposing government abuses. “[She] is one of the strongest voices in defense of democracy,” says Noah Bullock, her colleague and the executive director of Cristosal, a human rights group operating in northern Central America, including El Salvador. López, a university professor and former elections official, heads Cristosal’s anti-corruption unit. She has also been an outspoken critic of Bukele’s crackdown on gang violence that has resulted in “arbitrary detentions, human rights violations,” and the imprisonment of people not connected to gangs, according to Cristosal. The organization has documented widespread abuses in the country’s prison system. “There's a clear pattern of physical abuse, and on top of that, a clear pattern of systematic denial of basic necessities like food, water, bathrooms, medicine — medical care in general," says Bullock. “Those two factors have combined to cause the deaths of at least 380 people” in custody in recent years. That’s a prison system “that's been contracted by the U.S. government,” Bullock adds. This week on The Intercept Briefing, Bullock speaks to host Jessica Washington about López’s continued imprisonment and what her work and detention reveals about the Trump administration’s interest in El Salvador’s prison system. Facing vague corruption charges, López has seen her family and lawyer but not yet a judge. “The type of jails and the prison system that the United States has contracted is one of a dictatorship — one that operates outside of the rule of law,” says Bullock. But El Salvador isn't the only country the U.S. is looking to partner with to outsource immigration detention. “Now in addition to El Salvador, the U.S. has reportedly explored, sought, or struck deals with at least 19 other countries,” says Nick Turse, national security fellow for The Intercept. “Many of these countries,” says Turse, “have been excoriated by not only human rights groups and NGOs, but also the U.S. State Department.”“ These policies did not leap fully formed from the head of Donald Trump,” says Turse. They have a legacy largely stemming from the post-9/11 counterterrorism policies of the George W. Bush administration. “The Trump administration has expanded the Bush and Obama-era terrorism paradigm to cast immigrants and refugees as terrorists and as gang members,” says Turse.Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

As Elon Musk steps away from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the chaotic legacy of his aggressive assault on federal agencies continues to reverberate throughout the government. Musk’s goal — slashing $1 trillion from the federal budget — has fallen far short. At most, it has cut $31.8 billion of federal funding, a number that the Financial Times reports is “opaque and overstated.” Notably, the richest man on Earth’s businesses have received a comparable amount of government funding, most of it going to SpaceX, which remains untouched by DOGE’s budget ax.Stepping in to carry the torch is Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and a key architect of Project 2025, the sweeping conservative playbook to consolidate executive power. Under his stewardship, DOGE will continue its mission to dismantle the federal government from within.”Access to all of this information gives extraordinary power to the worst people,” says Mark Lemley, the director of Stanford Law School’s program in law, science, and technology. Lemley is suing DOGE on behalf of federal employees for violating the Privacy Act. This week on The Intercept Briefing, Lemley and Intercept newsroom counsel and reporter Shawn Musgrave join host Jordan Uhl to take stock of the legal challenges mounting against the Trump administration’s agenda. As the executive branch grows more hostile to checks on its powers, the courts remain the last, fragile line of defense. “ There have now been hundreds of court decisions on issues, some involving the Privacy Act, but a wide variety of the Trump administration's illegal activities,” says Lemley. In partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and State Democracy Defenders, Lemley’s suit accuses the U.S. Office of Personnel Management of violating the federal Privacy Act by handing over sensitive data to DOGE without consent or legal authority.Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Donald Trump’s all-caps executive order on policing — “STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS” – is less about policy and more about intent. And that intent is clear: To give Trump direct control over local law enforcement and further shield police from accountability. As journalist and author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop” Radley Balko puts it, “It’s a statement of intent and whether or not Trump is able to do a lot of the more pernicious and unconstitutional things he wants to do.” The executive order calls for “military and national security assets” to assist in local policing, directs federal resources and protections for state and local law enforcement, and enhances police protections, among other proclamations. But it reflects a deeper ambition. “He wants more federal militarized law enforcement under his thumb instead of under the thumb of governors or mayors,” says Balko. “He wants to use them to help with immigration deportations. He wants help with cracking down on protest.” And the concern and fear, says Balko, is that Trump will also “use law enforcement to go after his critics and people he perceives to be his enemies.” This week on The Intercept Briefing, Balko joins senior reporter Akela Lacy and host Jessica Washington to break down the Trump administration’s push to federalize local law enforcement and “unleash” police who already face minimal meaningful restraint.Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

The Intercept Briefing is sharing a recent live podcast recording The Intercept's Senior Politics Reporter Akela Lacy joined about the unlawful detention of Rümeysa Öztürk — a graduate student who was seized by federal immigration agents for co-authoring an op-ed in her school's newspaper. The live event, hosted by Question Everything with Brian Reed – which you can listen to on KCRW – and the Tufts Daily where Rümeysa published her op-ed, gathered journalists, editors, and attorneys, including Carol Rose, who is part of Rümeysa's legal team and executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU. They discussed the status of Rümeysa’s case and the conditions she’s enduring under ICE detention, and the chilling effects her case has had on speech, journalism, and academic freedom. Full episode description: Where better to huddle up and discuss what to do about Rümeysa Öztürk and the chilling effect that is happening in journalism than on campus at Tufts University with the student journalists at The Tufts Daily?This week Brian and Question Everything co-host a live event with the editor-in-chief and associate editor from The Tufts Daily – Arghya Thallapragada and Ellora Onion-De. Together they interview journalists and attorneys, including Carol Rose, part of Rümeysa's legal team and executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU, to learn what all happened to Rümeysa and why. What did her abduction by federal agents a month ago have to do with her immigration status as a Turkish graduate student studying child development, here on a student visa? Why did Secretary of State Marco Rubio say her Op-ed was cause for incarceration? Why is she still in ICE’s custody? And what happened to the constitutional protections around free speech and a free press that we depend on in a free society? Joined by former editor-in-chief of both the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, Marty Baron; First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche; and senior politics reporter at The Intercept Akela Lacey; the group wrestles in real time with the gravity of this moment, not just for Rümeysa Öztürk, but for all of us.Read the Op-ed Rümeysa and others wrote that ran in The Tufts Daily a year ago in March.Watch the video of federal agents in plainclothes, forcing Rümeysa Öztürk into an SUV on March 25, 2025.Quick thing: In our discussion Carol Rose says the ACLU has filed 100 legal actions in President Trump’s first 100 days. The specific count on those is actually higher: the ACLU filed 110 legal actions in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.Sign up for our newsletter: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

This week, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., joined forces with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., to introduce ambitious Medicare for All legislation that would provide comprehensive coverage to every American without premiums, co-payments, or deductibles. The move comes at a striking moment — with Donald Trump in the White House and Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, the bill's passage remains unlikely.In this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, Jayapal delivers a candid assessment of Democratic strategy in the Trump era. "You can't just be an opposition party. You do have to also be a proposition party.” It's why Medicare for All was so important, she explains. “We have to show people that we are willing to un-rig the system.”Jayapal acknowledges critical missteps by her party. "A lot of my colleagues may have gotten scared off and somehow thought that what the American people wanted was for us to play footsie with Donald Trump instead of go toe to toe with him," she says. "And I think it is very clear now, after the first three months of destruction and chaos and cruelty, that that is not the way to go. This is not an administration that you want to try and get in bed with. This is an administration that we have to fight if we want to preserve our democracy."She has been particularly frustrated by her colleagues in the Senate. "The Senate had the ability to confirm Trump's Cabinet, and you saw many Democrats going along with those confirmations as if somehow this was OK to put these people who are completely incompetent and have no understanding whatsoever, and even worse have lots of things in their backgrounds that never should have allowed them to be confirmed as Cabinet members." The Senate, she adds, had “a certain power to stand up early that they didn't use."Now is the time, says Jayapal, to offer a clear roadmap for resistance. "My job now is to use the platform I have and the relationships I have to build the resistance movement on the outside and on the inside. And that is really on every level from Congress to the courts to the public."Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

On the eve of his second inauguration, Donald Trump did something no U.S. president had ever done: He launched a meme coin. The cryptocurrency — whose value hinges more on hype than utility — surged to an all-time high of $75.35 a token. The next day, First Lady Melania Trump dropped her own meme coin, debuting at about $13 a share. Both coins have since tumbled, but on Wednesday Trump’s token briefly bumped up again to $15.47 before dipping. The latest surge came after the coin’s official website announced that 220 top meme coin holders will be invited to a gala dinner with the president in May — black tie optional. These tokens, that are not tied to any real world assets, have proven lucrative for Trump and his family. Last month, the Financial Times estimated Trump made upwards of $350 million from the project. While small traders have lost big, the Trump Organization and its affiliates — controlling 80 percent of the token supply — have made hundreds of millions in just trading fees.Trump, once a crypto skeptic, is now the industry’s most powerful advocate.“ He went to a big bitcoin conference in Nashville last July. That's where he declared he would make the U.S. the crypto capital of the planet,” says Intercept reporter Matt Sledge. “And the crypto industry started showering money on him. They saw somebody who would be friendly to their industry.”This week on The Intercept Briefing, Sledge, who covers crypto’s political reach, discusses how investing in the president has paid off for the industry and for the Trump family.“So far in Trump's presidency, things have gone great for the crypto industry. Even as the rest of the economy is on pretty perilous footing, a bunch of crypto companies have seen the SEC and other regulatory agencies drop investigations or lawsuits. Trump has created a 'bitcoin reserve,' and in general, regulators and Congress are behaving much more friendly toward the industry.”For more on how Trump is reshaping the crypto landscape and what it means for the rest of us, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

In this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, we examine the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student whose decadelong journey toward American citizenship ended not with the oath of allegiance, but in handcuffs.On Monday, the Columbia student arrived at his long-awaited citizenship interview in Vermont. Instead, immigration agents arrested him, and he now faces deportation to the occupied West Bank.Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., who represents his district, is outraged and told The Intercept Briefing, “If you'll deny due process from somebody who was in this country with a green card for 10 years, who is somebody who talked about peace and connection between Palestinians and Israelis who was looking to build bridges — if this man is somehow a threat to our society, then we are down a sick path.”Mahdawi spoke to The Intercept the night before his fateful appointment and said he understood the risk he might be facing. He is now the ninth Columbia student targeted for deportation. The Trump administration has revoked or changed over a 1,000 student visas, according to Inside Higher Ed. Mahdawi’s case exemplifies how immigration enforcement is being weaponized, says Balint. “ If they're so proud of what they're doing, then show your damn face, then show your ID. Then talk about what grounds you are holding this person. But it's being done in secret, and it is meant to shock and awe and to get the rest of us to remain silent. They have no evidence, they have no details, which is what we're demanding of both Secretary [Marco] Rubio and Secretary [Kristi] Noem."Immigration lawyer Matt Cameron spoke to The Intercept about the broader implications of the administration’s agenda and said that this is much bigger than just students and immigrants. “ It's a message to student protesters obviously to start with, but it's a message to all of us that our free speech is a liability,” he warned.Cameron pointed to the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was illegally deported to El Salvador and is now imprisoned despite no criminal record. The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the government to facilitate his return, but so far, the administration has resisted. "This is going to be one of the most important cases of our lifetimes,” said Cameron. “ Even for people who don't think they're interested in following immigration issues: This is for all of us. And you know, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia will be all of us pretty soon here if we don't stay on our rights.”