Can the U.S. banish its citizens?

04/16/25 • 11 min

4 Listeners

The Trump administration's move to send immigrants to a maximum security prison in El Salvador is the subject of multiple on-going fights in court.

But in an Oval Office meeting with the Salvadoran president this week, President Trump was already looking ahead.
"We also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they're not looking, that are absolute monsters. I'd like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country," Trump said.
Trump later clarified that by "homegrown criminals" he meant U.S. citizens.
No president has tried to do exactly what Trump is proposing.
In this episode, we hear from someone who argues it's wildly unconstitutional.
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Did DOGE take sensitive labor data?

President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency team, or DOGE, appears to be grabbing sensitive data from all over the government.
A whistleblower has come forward by filing an official disclosure to Congress about concerning activity on the systems at one independent federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board.
Elon Musk says DOGE is searching for savings throughout the government. But is the data being accessed valuable?
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Raising kids is costly; Tariffs will make it even more expensive

When it comes to the cost of raising a child from infancy to the age of 17 in the United States – it's hard to settle on a precise figure.
There's one thing we do know – it's going to be expensive.
By some estimates, raising a kid, who was born in 2015, could cost a middle class family close to $320,000 over 17 years.
That money goes to childcare, healthcare, food, clothes, education, transportation, activities, toys, and a lot more. All of those things will be affected – one way or another – by the Trump administration's tariff policy.
And the companies that sell products geared at those raising kids – they're going to feel the pinch as well. One CEO argues it could even mean certain products will become unavailable.
Being a parent in the U.S. is already expensive. Slapping tariffs on the products kids use could make it more so.
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