Loading summary
Transcript128 lines
- [00:00]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yaoi, a gift shop.
- [00:03]
Natasha Sarin
From the lens of artists and handmade objects.
- [00:06]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
I chose Shopify because when I was
- [00:08]
Bianna Golodryga
testing other platforms it was definitely one
- [00:10]
Natasha Sarin
of the most user friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right
- [00:18]
Bianna Golodryga
there on your dashboard.
- [00:19]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
For anyone starting a small business, the
- [00:21]
Natasha Sarin
biggest thing I can tell you is it doesn't have to be perfect.
- [00:24]
Bianna Golodryga
Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on shopify.com. Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpour. Here's what's coming up. I think it's very bad for our nation.
- [00:39]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
We're the only nation that does it.
- [00:42]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
No other nation does that.
- [00:44]
Bianna Golodryga
Birthright citizenship?
- [00:45]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
No, not even close.
- [00:47]
Bianna Golodryga
The Supreme Court rules on birthright citizenship and campaign finance limits. Former government official Natasha Sarin and immigration expert David Beer discuss the impact of these decisions on American democracy.
- [01:00]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Then Russians standing in fuel lines across various regions of Russia can clearly see
- [01:07]
David Bier
that their so called three day war
- [01:08]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
has now entered its fifth year.
- [01:11]
Bianna Golodryga
Moscow feels the pain of Putin's war in Ukraine as Kyiv steps up its drone attacks. Could this be a turning point? I asked Wall Street Journal correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov.
- [01:22]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Plus a bunch of kids, maybe teenagers, who were just acting as freelancers with their phone scamming lonely westerns.
- [01:30]
Bianna Golodryga
The Yahoo Boys How Love Scammers Are Making Money off of the Loneliness Epidemic. Author Carlos Berrigan joins Hari Sreenivas. Welcome to the program everyone. I'm Bianna Galadriga New York sitting in for Christiane Amanpour. Two big wins and one big loss for President Trump today as the Supreme Court handed down some major rulings on the last day of its term. In a stinging rebuke, the president's attempt to gut birthright citizenship for millions of Americans was struck down in a 6 to 3 vote invalidated an executive order he signed on his first day in office. Still, the court upheld trans sports bans allowing states to bar transgender women and girls from playing on female sports teams. And the justices lifted a Watergate era cap on campaign spending, effectively unleashing political donors to plow even more money directly into parties campaigns just before the midterms. So what can we make of these rulings? David Beer is the director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute and Natasha Sarin is a professor at Yale Law School. They both join me now. Welcome both of you. David, let me start with you on this birthright ruling, specifically, the President, as we've noted, has been fixated on this since his first term, and he has spoken out since this decision. But this had been a ruling that I think most legal experts had been expecting from the Court to rule down this executive order. Were you expecting this decision?
- [03:20]
David Bier
I was based on the oral argument. Look, the Supreme Court has made it clear they want to give the President significant discretion on its immigration agenda, but there are limits, and he hit up against the limits here with this birthright citizenship order, which itself just asserts the authority to limit birthright citizenship in this way and really didn't provide any kind of legal basis for it in the order itself. They had to kind of work to come up with a theory under which they could claim this power. And the Supreme Court just said, no, this is a violation of the Constitution. The plain text, as well as the historical context would indicate that this is not what the founders and the framers of the 14th Amendment would have understood is a limit on birthright citizenship. And I must correct the President in your opening. We're not the only country in the world with birthright citizenship. Almost every country in the Western Hemisphere has birthright citizenship of the same nature as the United States does.
- [04:31]
Bianna Golodryga
And, Natasha, in striking down this executive order, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote for the majority, wrote that the Constitution settled this question more than 150 years ago ago, writing, quote, citizenship was the right to have rights. We keep that promise today. But in dissent, you heard from Justice Alito, who called this one of the most important decisions in the Court's history and a serious mistake. What do you make of his dissent here? And the fact that we had three dissents, and if you want to count what a fourth justice wrote as well, perhaps even four, though they didn't go as far as the three who dissented outright.
- [05:15]
Natasha Sarin
You know, it's so interesting because when you heard oral arguments and when you sort of started to understand, as David was describing, the facts at play with respect to this executive order and the reality that there wasn't really a legal justification offered for something that was very clearly a violation of the 14th Amendment and the Constitution, you were in a situation where you might have hoped for a 9:3 decision, a 9:0 decision in this case, and that unanimity wasn't there. I will say, though, that if you look at the nature of the dissents, in part, Justice Gorsuch was actually dissenting from the idea of birthright citizenship for temporary visitors to the United States and drawing a distinction there from those who are children of unauthorized immigrants. And so one way to read the ruling is that on at least a subset of the population that was at play in this case, you actually had a 7:2 majority overall. I think the fact that there was a very clear majority in this case indicates to you that this was at least one area where the Supreme Court, which has a massive conservative majority at the moment, was willing to provide a very clear rebuke to the President that here he had gone too far with respect to his immigration activities.
- [06:31]
Bianna Golodryga
And, David, what did you make then of Justice Thomas writing in his dissent that the majority, quote, repurposed the 14th Amendment to protect its own set of preferred rights?
- [06:43]
David Bier
Yeah, I don't understand it. You know, I read the dissents, and they all come up with different ideas about what the limits are and what it means and that it's. It's because there isn't really a textual basis for this exception that they're coming up with these different lines. And if you actually look at the reality in 1868, in 1868, there were some people who are deportable from the United States, and they were illegally trafficked slaves, the very people he says the birthright citizenship amendment was intended to protect. Those were the only people at the time in 1868 who could be lawfully deported from this country under the law prohibiting the slave trade. And so the very act of adopting the 14th Amendment not only protected the illegal immigrants or deportable immigrants in the future, at the very time it was adopted, it protected deportable immigrants who were illegally trafficked slaves. So I don't understand it. It's not historical. And, you know, I'm glad that the majority rejected it.
- [07:57]
Bianna Golodryga
Yeah, it was interesting then to even hear from Speaker Johnson who said that he was disappointed with this ruling, and he says that birthright has been grossly abused. Nonetheless, he himself described the ruling as contextualist, originalist view. So then, to hear these dissents, it is interesting to hear where these other justices are coming from. I do want to get, Natasha, your reaction to the President's response here. We know that we were expecting one from him. He attended the argument himself, and just a short time ago, he took to truth Social, and he's now urging Congress to take it upon itself to end birthright citizenship. And he's writing, the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, which is too bad for our country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through legislation. How easy would that legislation be? He goes on to say, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process, no long an unwieldy constitutional amendment is necessary. Congress should start today to work on ending expensive and unfair to our country birthright citizenship. They will have my complete, total support. So they have his support. But how easy is it for Congress to change this law itself? And do you think there's a political appetite to do it right now? Natasha?
- [09:20]
Natasha Sarin
I do not. I would, you know, speculate that it is pretty difficult to sort of overturn or rebuke a constitutional amendment. I would also say that a bit, this whole conversation around birthright citizenship has felt from an economic perspective like a solution in search of a problem. If you think about the number of children that are born in the United States each year that are born under birthright citizenship, that's something like 0.3% of children in this country today. We're in a moment, by the way, from an economic perspective where we desperately need more immigrants, not fewer immigrants, because as our population ages, we are going to need people in our labor force. And so all of it feels like kind of muddled and confused from an economic perspective and frankly does not really seem like as you're looking and watching Congress and the various priorities that they have to navigate through, that this should rise to the top with respect to their chosen activities.
- [10:17]
Bianna Golodryga
You mentioned the economic implications here. I do want to get you both to weigh in to the Fed's decision yesterday. I mean, the Fed, the Supreme Court's decision which involved the Federal Reserve yesterday and the president's executive power and limits on it. The court cleared the way for President Trump or any executive to remove officials at independent agencies, most of them. This is a significant expansion, we should note, of presidential control over the so called fourth branch. But the Fed was spared this time. And this relates to Fed Governor Lisa Cook. The Fed said that the Supreme Court said that the Fed governor deserved her time in court for now. But there were some on this bench who are concerned about this coming up again in the future about the Fed's ultimate independence here. How concerned are you, Natasha?
- [11:12]
Natasha Sarin
I'm pretty concerned, having watched this administration in a variety of ways, relating not just to the potential removal of Governor Lisa Cook, but also to what looked very clearly like sort of trumped up concerns with respect to former Chair Powell and a renovation project that the Federal Reserve was doing. You have seen President Trump be pretty clear and articulate that what he would like to see is a Federal Reserve that particularly ahead of a midterm election in November, decides to cut interest rates. We know what the consequences are of allowing a Federal Reserve to become politicized and focused not on sort of the long term trajectory of inflation or of the labor market, but instead on short term political exigencies. And I think there's real cause for concern here. This isn't the last chapter with respect to the Lisa Cook case. In fact, the case was remanded to lower courts on procedural grounds. But I do think it is heartening that you saw this Supreme Court articulate pretty clearly both as a matter of history and historical context and the tradition that they say is unique of the first and second national banks in this country, but also, frankly, as a matter of economic importance, that not having to have the appearance, not just the fact of independence is supremely important for the Federal Reserve, that they will continue to carve out this independent agency from this sort of political influence that the Trump administration is trying to levy.
- [12:40]
Bianna Golodryga
So thus far shielded and held to a bit of a higher standard. Nonetheless, in her dissent over the decision, Justice Sotomayor said the ruling creates a quota president who emerges with far greater power than ever before. David, let's also get you to weigh in to decisions we heard from the Supreme Court last week as it relates to temporary protective status. The court found that the courts themselves, lower courts, can't review DHS decisions, effectively letting Trump in the TPS program and send Haitians and Syrians home for families that are currently living under TPS protection here in the United States. What does this mean for them?
- [13:25]
David Bier
Well, it really means that they're going to end up here without legal status. I mean, this administration has not only engaged in a policy of stripping people of their legal status, attempting to strip away citizenship from people in order to gin up more deportations. He's also blocking legal immigration pathways for people from Haiti and these other countries that are being targeted. So the alternative is not, well, immigrate legally. Well, those paths are entirely blocked by this administration's policies. And so the decision is ultimately whether to go home to a country that's in a disaster or to stay and try to wait it out in illegal status, which unfortunately, I think many will choose that option.
- [14:16]
Bianna Golodryga
I want to play sound from Christiane Amanpour's interview in April. So anticipating this decision coming down from the Supreme Court, Haiti's prime minister says that it can't safely take these people back, given the political strife and the economic strife that the country faces. Here's what he said. Is it okay to send a million Haitians back to a country that you've
- [14:42]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
described as, you know, under a lot of gang violence and gang control.
- [14:46]
Bianna Golodryga
And could it complicate your job?
- [14:51]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
It will definitely complicate the job. But I understand every country's right to have their own immigration policy. The humanitarian outcome should be that those people are not allowed to come back to Haiti or forced to come back to Haiti until we resolve the security issue. Of course they are Haitians. We will take back all of our citizens. And I don't believe that people left Haiti out of there because they wanted to move to a country where it's cold. We have beautiful weather. You've been to Haiti. You know it. They leave because there is insecurity and they're looking for economic opportunity.
- [15:28]
Bianna Golodryga
And David, at the same time, this administration has granted asylum to white South Africans who are claiming that they are experiencing genocide, although I don't know that there is that much concrete evidence to support that. So what do you make of this apparent contradiction here from this administration?
- [15:49]
David Bier
Yeah, look, this administration is the only group of immigrants who received a favorable outcome by this administration. Everyone else has been closed off from refugee status and legal immigration has been slashed by almost 50%. He's actually cut legal immigration overall more than he's cut illegal entries at the border. And so the shocking outcome here is that you end up with people who are going to be forced back out of legal status, who are working and contributing here back to a disaster zone while we're inviting people from a country happy to have them here, have got no opposition to South Africans being able to immigrate here. But it does show a contrast in policy that I think lacks a rational basis. And I think that's what we're looking for, some sort of rational basis by which we move forward on immigration policy.
- [16:43]
Bianna Golodryga
And Natasha, it's noteworthy that there are Republicans, including governors, including the governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, who spoke out against this decision. Here's what he said about the impact that it would have on some people in his own state. It's Haitians who many times are taking care of your mom or your dad, who has Alzheimer's, taking care of family members who might be in a nursing home.
- [17:09]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
And to say we're going to pull all those out, it's just not in our own self interest.
- [17:17]
Bianna Golodryga
And Natasha, I don't have to go through the litany of comments, controversial, hateful comments, racist comments that the president that others that have supported this decision have made about these refugees, Haitians in particular. Just give us your take on what this decision means. Does it support perhaps more of this type of rhetoric in this country, allowing for it
- [17:48]
Natasha Sarin
I worry that it supports more of this rhetoric and I also worry that it sows the seeds of economic disruption, much like you were just playing for me in that clip. Biana particularly in parts of the economy, the care sector, nursing homes. What this order means is that hundreds of thousands of people who have been contributing to the economy on the order of magnitude of around $20, $30 billion to US GDP each year contributed by those with TPS status are all of a sudden going to be in situations where they have the choice about whether to continue to try and stay in this country without legal status or no longer be contributing to the economy in the way they are today at a moment when we need more nursing homes, not less and more people to be staffing those and labor shortages are quite significant across the board in those types of sectors. I really worry about the consequence here and frankly don't understand the RA rationale from a policy perspective to try to institute this type of immigration policy without any concern for the cascading consequences.
- [18:54]
Bianna Golodryga
Let me, since we have you and this is your field, Natasha, just the decision, if you find a rationale for it, and perhaps the impact of the court's decision lifting the cap on how much a party can spend hand in hand with its own candidate in terms of campaign finance, in a sense, endless amounts of money can now go into these campaigns.
- [19:19]
Natasha Sarin
Yeah, we are already a country where there are deep concerns about the nature of political corruption, the ways in which those at the top of the distribution who have billions and hundreds of billions of dollars to be able to deploy on their preferred causes are able to shape policy outcomes and into that context to actually rescind what few limits exist with respect to that type contribution in that type of activity. I worry it's not just like an economic issue that you're going to start to see even more dollars and unlimited dollars and these sorts of campaigns be deployed when they could be deployed to other purposes that are sort of more value additive from an economic perspective. But I also worry about like the corrosive nature of these types of activities for our democracy and for an economy where already many are frustrated that it feels like there are two sets of rules, one for the very wealthy and one for everyone else.
- [20:17]
Bianna Golodryga
And we could see immediate impact now as we are just months away from a very consequential midterm election. Natasha Sarin, David Bier, thank you as always for breaking this all down for us. Really appreciate it and do stay with cnn. We'll be right back with more. I'm Adi Cornish.
- [20:40]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
I'M Ari Shapiro and it's Engagement Party and we get to talk about what we're obsessed with, what we're engaged with, what we need to process with a
- [20:48]
Bianna Golodryga
going to hear about solitude, vlogging or aspirational loneliness, which is the world of content where people with no friends share with the public. We're also going to talk about the World Cup. All that content you have been seeing online that's giving us the warm and cultural fuzzies.
- [21:07]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Finally, foreigners love something about America.
- [21:10]
Bianna Golodryga
Okay, I think there's more to it than that.
- [21:12]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
Follow Engagement Party wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:21]
Bianna Golodryga
We turn now to South Africa where a months long ratcheting up of anti immigrant sentiment is coming to a head. Large crowds have taken to the streets in a nationwide protest against undocumented immigration. Organizers set a June 30 deadline for all undocumented migrants to leave the country after accusing them without evidence of committing crimes and stealing jobs. The government has rejected that deadline and has deployed additional police amid fears that the marches could turn violent. Larry Mado has this report from the streets of Johannesburg.
- [21:54]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
This is what it looks like when South Africans march against illegal migration across the country today. This is the deadline they had set for undocumented migrants to leave the country.
- [22:06]
Natasha Sarin
Our world is something else. It does not belong to South Africans anymore. So that is why we are saying
- [22:12]
Bianna Golodryga
this is the end of it.
- [22:13]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Tired? Yeah. There's people who criticize these protests as being xenophobic. What do you, how do you respond to that?
- [22:20]
Natasha Sarin
Because of this march is a peaceful march. So I am not taking it as being xenophobic. We cannot be xenophobic when we are asking people to go back to their countries because we just want to have our time as South Africans.
- [22:32]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
We want to deal with our world
- [22:33]
Natasha Sarin
and want to deal with everything that is happening here.
- [22:36]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
This march has developed to a few thousand people now.
- [22:38]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
What's happened is there's been a few
- [22:40]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
sporadic marches popping up across Johannesburg, in
- [22:43]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
other parts of the country, some of
- [22:44]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
them unaffiliated with the official organizers of this June 30 deadline.
- [22:49]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Why are you marching today? We are marching. Foreigners must go.
- [22:52]
Natasha Sarin
We want work, they must go. There's corruption. They are selling drugs.
- [23:00]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
The marches here in Johannesburg have been
- [23:02]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
largely peaceful, but we did see some
- [23:04]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
incidents of people throwing glasses at some buildings as they drove past.
- [23:09]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Police did a good job of largely keeping them from doing more damage. And that's been the tension between their
- [23:16]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
constitutional rights to picket and those who fear that it's more than picketing.
- [23:21]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
It could degenerate into crime.
- [23:24]
Bianna Golodryga
Our thanks to Larry Madowo for that report from Johannesburg. We turn to Moscow now, where the cost of Putin's war has become impossible to ignore. Dozens of Ukrainian drones swarmed the Russian capital overnight, reportedly striking one of the country's largest satellite centers. As Kyiv ramps up its campaign to drain the Kremlin's war economy. The targeting of key energy infrastructures has caused fuel shortages, long queues at gas stations and power outages. It's pushed Russian occupied Crimea into a state of emergency. So how is Putin handling this increased pressure? Yaroslav Trofimov is the Wall Street Journal's chief foreign affairs correspondent and he joins me now. Yaroslav, it's good to see you back on the show again. So let's talk about this latest attack of Ukrainian Dr. On Moscow this week. Russia says that it downed more than 400. There are reports that a six month old baby was killed south of the capital. And Putin has answered to this latest attack by vowing the, quote, final liberation of Donbas and Nova Rossiya. This, however, is what he said about the fuel shortages that this has created.
- [24:41]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
You are well aware that problems persist for both drivers and businesses. Queues at petrol stations unfortunately also remain. It is not always possible to find the required grade of fuel at present. And of course, we understand the difficulties faced by agricultural producers and farming enterprises during this period. Every effort must be made to ensure that seasonal fuel supplies, schedules are fully observed for the agricultural sector. The harvest depends on it.
- [25:10]
Bianna Golodryga
So he's acknowledging this impact here as sort of a burden, but not critical. You've covered the Russian society for years now since this war began. That has been one of Putin's primary goals, to shield average Russians, especially those in major cities, from this war. He's even avoided just calling this a war. How hard is that at this point? Now? Can he truly shield Russians from what this war has created?
- [25:38]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
That's a great question, and the answer is no, because this is really the first time that every single Russian person is affected by the war in Ukraine. This was something that Russians used to watch on TV in the beginning of the war. Then there were occasional strikes, but now everyone needs to drive or to take a bus or to buy things that are being delivered by trucks to their grocery store. And all of a sudden, Russia is paralyzed. Now there are fuel shortages in pretty much every single city, including Moscow. There are lines of an hour somewhere in other areas, overnight and maybe two nights. And these are the scenes that haven't been seen by Russians in decades. It's also now the first time since the 1990s that Russia, which the late central McCain used to call as a gas station, masquerading as a country, is actually having to import fuel from overseas. The Crimean spokesman, Dmitry Peacekov, said today that Russia is now considering importing gasoline from faraway destinations. And so that's really a huge shift. And that is the result of Ukraine's relentless drone campaign. What we have seen is that every night several hundred drones are flying towards Russia, striking those refineries. But one third of Russia's refining capacity is now offline and striking other targets, such as military installations, such as port facilities, and in recent days, also the military facilities that manufactured the Russian missiles that Russia uses to strike Ukrainian cities. And we have seen a shift also in recent weeks of not just drones, but missiles. So Ukraine manufactures these Flamingo missiles, and they have been used to hit a factory in the city of Volgograd that makes components for Russian missiles and also another one in the city of Voronezh. So these are sort of pretty dangerous developments for the Russian military industry, too.
- [27:41]
Bianna Golodryga
And I want to talk about how the Russian military has adapted, how they've created their own drone warfare as well, in many ways outpacing other NATO countries in Europe. It's Ukraine dominant, but then Russia is not that far behind in drone warfare production. But as it relates to these specific longer range strikes, which the United States, we should note, even under President Biden, had really urged Ukraine not to engage in and not to pursue. President Zelensky calls them long range sanctions. And in his view, he thinks this is what, what's going to bring President Putin to the negotiating table in earnest. Is that how you're interpreting it? Do you think that this will finally get him to settle down for peace talks, or is he only going to fight back harder now?
- [28:34]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
Well, you know, President Putin is a very stubborn man. He's a man who believes that he can win this war on the battlefield. You know, in this speech in which he promised to take care of the fuel shortages, he also spoke at length about real and alleged Russian military victories in the battlefield. And one must say that the information that he was citing is incorrect. So these are wildly optimistic assessments that do not correspond to the reality in the battlefield, where Russia has barely advanced in the last six months. But the equation is very simple. Fuel can return to the Russian gas stations the moment Russia agrees to a cease fire, or at the very least to a cease fire when it comes to long range strikes. President Putin on Sunday refused to do that. He said that Russia has an advantage in long range firepower. So it's not in Russia's benefit to seize fire and to stop these long range strikes. So for now, this exchange will go on and as Ukraine's capabilities grow, so will the pain that Russia is suffering.
- [29:40]
Bianna Golodryga
Let's turn to this unbelievable blockade that is surrounding Crimea now. This week, the Russian installed authorities there declared a state of emergency across occupied Crimea. A reminder for our viewers that Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Since then, we've seen blackouts. Now the past few weeks, fuel has been banned to ordinary residents. We're seeing a mass exodus of those into Russia, not seeing much traffic at all going the other way. And your latest piece argues that Crimea, which will was once a crown jewel for Vladimir Putin, has really turned into an albatross around his neck. What is the greatest risk for him here in terms of all of the investments he's made in Crimea? This was a popular annexation even for the majority of Russians at the time. We should note, given the state it's in right now, does he face more pressure at home politically or is this more of a military challenge for him?
- [30:39]
David Bier
Him?
- [30:41]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
Well, I think for now it's a military and logistical challenge. Obviously one of the most popular things inside Russia was for President Putin to Annex Crimea in 2014. This was widely celebrated in Russia and Crimea as a popular holiday destination. Hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens have moved in illegally to settle there since then. And now he has a problem because he cannot supply this peninsula. Ukraine has now deployed this so called mid range strike drones that are patrolling the roads towards Crimea that are guided. And so they are striking fuel tanks, they're striking other vehicles that are providing logistics. They are also hitting power installations, refineries. They have sunk a number of ferries that link Crimea to mainland Russia. And so all of a sudden there are power shortages, there are food shortages, and it is definitely a shortage of fuel on the black market. In Crimea today, fuel goes for upwards of 25 to $30 per gallon. And so, you know, it is a military asset if you can sustain it. But if you cannot sustain it, it becomes a military liability. And that's, that's what Ukraine is counting on.
- [31:53]
Bianna Golodryga
As we noted before, Russia is also adapting quickly in terms of drone technology and production. Is Ukraine's lead in the this feel durable or do you think it's something that, that Moscow could close the, the, close the gap in.
- [32:11]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
Well, you know, we've seen this yo yo throughout the war. So this kind of mouse game on one side gives the advantage and then the other offsets it with this technology swings. So right now, for the last, let's say, two or three months, Ukraine definitely has an advantage, in part because it uses these drones that operate using Starlink. And Russia cannot use Starlink for now, in part because of the use of artificial intelligence in target acquisition for these drones that are patrolling the roads. So in that segment, Ukraine definitely has an advantage. Now. We don't know what other things Russia can come up with in the coming weeks and months. And it's quite likely that we'll find some sort of solution and then we'll have another technological advance from Ukraine, possibly. So this war is really a war of technologies that are changing by the week and by the month, rendering old technologies obsolete very, very quickly.
- [33:05]
Bianna Golodryga
And these technological feats that Ukraine has amassed over the last year or so have definitely got noticed. And President Trump has even weighed in on this as well. At the G7, he reportedly said that he was hugely impressed by Ukraine's strike deep inside Russia and agreed to tighter sanctions. Ukrainian officials say that they are cautiously optimistic that perhaps Trump could be turning in their favor and warming to them. Here's what he said about this with NATO chief Mark Rutte at the White House last week.
- [33:41]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Look, no matter how you look at it, he's doing pretty well. He's holding his own. At least a lot of people dying
- [33:46]
David Bier
on both sides, but I think he's doing pretty well.
- [33:51]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Look, you have to say he's courageous. He's got great equipment, but he's got great men.
- [33:57]
David Bier
He's got fighters.
- [34:01]
Bianna Golodryga
Now, he's praised Ukrainian soldiers and the Ukrainian people in the past. I don't recall many times that he's actually praised President Zelensky himself. Do you see a significant turn and change in the president's attitude towards Ukraine, or do you think this changes once again when Vladimir Putin gets him on the phone?
- [34:21]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
Well, I mean, there is a fact about President Trump, he likes winners. And he is now, it looks like, that he's believing that Ukraine has turned the tide of the war and is enjoying this winning strike, being able to hit the heart of Moscow, being able to disable much of Russia's economy through these fuel shortages, being able to impose a blockade on Crimea. So that's a far cry from the battlefield picture when President Trump came into office in the beginning of last year, when he famously told President Zelensky that you have no cards. So Ukraine has shown that it has cards, and President Trump is honest.
- [34:58]
Bianna Golodryga
And even if the balance has shifted in Ukraine's favor, no one should doubt the threat that Russia still poses to the region, even to NATO allies, especially since there's a real question being asked as to how the United States will act if one of those allies is in fact attacked. Will it honor Article 5? And since that is in play, the question then rises about how much NATO countries can defend themselves without the help of the US you have studied this as well. You've done some war gaming. Where would they stand, especially as it relates to drone technology?
- [35:39]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
Well, that's a very good question. And when people are saying that the Ukrainians are so brave in drone warfare and how a few dozen Ukrainian soldiers can defeat a NATO battalion, well, unfortunately, the same applies to a few dozen Russian soldiers. And as President Putin is looking at the stalemate on the battlefield in Ukraine and is looking at the mounting casualties, he has a choice to make to try to find a solution or to escalate. And one possible avenue of this escalation could be part of the NATO countries, could be the Baltic states, could be Finland, could be Poland. We don't know exactly where he would find the weak spot or a perceived weak spot. But President Putin has always had European nations in disdain. He doesn't believe that they will be able to defend themselves. And if he counts on the US Staying out of the fight, there is a high risk that he can misjudge his capabilities and start another war elsewhere. And you know, it's not the first time because as we see from his failure in Ukraine, he has also misjudged his capabilities in Ukraine in 2022.
- [36:48]
Bianna Golodryga
Yaroslav Trofimov, five years now into the war. We always appreciate your analysis and reporting. Thank you for joining the show.
- [36:56]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
Thank you.
- [36:57]
Bianna Golodryga
And we'll be right back after a break.
- [37:07]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Craig Ferguson is going coast to coast
- [37:09]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
to unpack what it really means to be an American today.
- [37:11]
Bianna Golodryga
What could possibly go wrong?
- [37:12]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Craig Ferguson, American on purpose.
- [37:15]
David Bier
New episodes now streaming on the CNN app. Go to CNN.com watch to subscribe or
- [37:19]
Yaroslav Trofimov / Larry Madowo
log in with your TV provider.
- [37:22]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. Nelson Dallas is a six time US Memory champion who not only trained his brain to work better, but he also wrote about it for his new book called Everyday Genius. You know, the message is, is that everybody, no matter where you are in life, what you think your memory currently is capable of, we all can transform our brain, the mind and memory is just like any other skill that you can learn and it's not a fixed thing. Listen to Chasing Life streaming now. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [38:02]
Bianna Golodryga
Nearly $1 billion. That's the sum extracted out of the US last year from online catfish scams preying on lonely Americans. Using fake dating site profiles and promising relationships, young men based in Nigeria are persuading individuals to send them thousands of dollars. Journalist and author Carlos Baragan's new book looks at the effectiveness of these scams, which hit close to home after his mother became a victim. He joins Hari Srinivasan to discuss what this issue reveals about cultural failures in both the United States and Nigeria.
- [38:39]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
Diana, thanks. Carlos Baragan, thanks so much for joining us. Your recent book is called the Yahoo Love Deception and the Real Lives of Nigeria's Romance Scammers. What provoked you to go into this story? What was the trigger?
- [38:57]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Thank you so much for having me here, Hari. Long time ago, around 10 years ago, my mom met a wonderful American man on a dating app. And she's a single mom. She was taking care of me and my two brothers and she was so excited after meeting this man called Brian that we thought of, okay, why not? But then the relationship became was very weird from the beginning. They were exchanging emails. The guy said he was based in Syria as an American soldier. And after a month, the guy said that he was going to ship some gold bars to our apartment. Of course, my mom didn't care about the gold bars, but it was the idea of starting a new life together. And immediately I knew that it was a scam. So I traced the IP email address and the guy, Brian was not in Syria, but actually he was in Lagos, Nigeria. So after a few years of me watching my mom struggling with loneliness, I was very curious, you know, I wanted to know who was the guy behind these scams. So I went to Nigeria, as any good reporter would.
- [40:01]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
Right, and you quit your job, you traveled to this place. I mean, what was your first impression? I mean, were you looking for something? Were you looking for kind of a big organized crime ring and you know, huge machines that were powering all of this and then. And what did you actually find?
- [40:19]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
So it's important to note that. Exactly. Nigeria has this bad rep about scammers, but there are scammers everywhere. Might change the kind of scams they do. But you know, right now we have a lot of scams in Southeast Asia. And these people are well organized mafias who enslaved people to act as scammers. So I was expecting some sort of something like that, you know, very well organized syndicate in Nigeria, very dangerous, very reckless. But what I found actually was a bunch of kids, maybe teenagers, who were just acting as freelancers with their phone, scamming lonely westerns. And they were learning how to do that by talking to their older brothers, older friends, passing scripts where they could get information on how to talk to lonely people. So there was no syndicate. It was just a bunch of kids with phones.
- [41:13]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
Wow. So what, what was the environment like? Where were they doing this? What was their kind of day to day life like?
- [41:19]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
So I focused the book on Ecotoon, which is a poor neighborhood in Lagos. Lagos is a massive city. And in Ecotoon, most of the boys I talk to, you know, this, this is a community where most of the people there or some of the people there struggle to eat sometimes, especially since the pandemic when inflation hit hard. And these boys spend most of the nights, quote, unquote, working, as they would call it, because they are talking to Americans online and because of the time zone, they have to spend their nights awake talking to men and women on the other side of the ocean. So they spend their night, their mornings sleeping. And then sometimes they smoke drugs to keep awake. And obviously they also spend the money they scammed, they get from these victims.
- [42:07]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
And when you say they spent the money they scammed, how much money are we talking about? I mean, you can talk about individual cases and then kind of abstract how big of a problem this is.
- [42:16]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
So for example, one of the characters I follow, his name is asis. He's a 14 year old boy who came from the village and his mom sells food on the street. She makes $2 a day. Of course, this little boy doesn't really know about the atomization of the. So called, the so called atomization of the western world. But he learns from other people how to talk to, for example, a truck driver in California. And he struggles a lot getting money from these victims because he doesn't know how to talk to them. But first, $5 he gets, he goes to a restaurant with air conditioning for the first time in his life and he buys a jollof rice and chicken which is 10 times more expensive than what his mom had given him, that money. Now that is one case that shows how poor some of these young boys are. But other cases, when they get more money because they are victims who might send hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, they go to clubs, they go to hotels, and they splurge the money to tell the community, I made it. So in a way, it's also very connected to status.
- [43:27]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
Tell me about how society deals with this. Right? It must not be a secret on how this 14 year old or 18 year old are making so much money that they can buy huge bottle service in a club. What do the parents think? What does society think? Because there's also an economic ripple effect of those dollars.
- [43:49]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Yeah, it creates a lot of tension. You just have to mention the word Yahoo to a Nigerian and I feel like like 50% of the people are completely against it and the other 50 have their reservations because they might mention colonialism or they might mention slavery, some of the causes that in a way created the current Nigeria as it is. And at the same time this money, as you said, has ripple effects because these scammers who are 18, 20, 25, they get the money. And around them there is a whole community trying to get, get their share of the pie as well. And you have boutique stores, hotel owners, even police officers, all sorts of people trying to get that money from that boy who just wants to share it or at least wants to brag about his illicit gains. And I think that it creates this sort of tension where the community in the short term is receiving money that in a way might end up in like, like being paid school fees or food for young people. But in the long term it is detrimental for the community because these young people end up without learning any trade.
- [45:03]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
What are the customers overseas from the United States, England, whatever. What do they need? Why are they willing to engage in these false relationships in the first place?
- [45:16]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
So whenever I talk to the Yahoo boys, Biggie for example, he's a 30 year old man in Ecotor, he would mention all the time the same word attention. You have to give the clients because they call their victims clients. You have to give them attention. And after a lot of hours talking to these scammers, I talked to more than 50 of them. You realize that these are not very sophisticated scammers or masterminds. Actually they are just, just there all the time. They know that sometimes saying how was your day? What do you have for breakfast? What are you going to do today? Is more powerful than sending these very beautiful message. And made me think, you know, I think that is the key point of the book. How lonely some people are in the western world. That these 14 year old boy who has never left Lagos in his life is able to get some money from this victim. And I'm not trying to put the blame on the, on the individual, on the victim, but society around the victim.
- [46:26]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
You know, it's interesting that a child at the age of 14 is able to tap in to what in America we consider a loneliness epidemic. I mean there's numbers here that an estimated 52 million adults or, you know, experience loneliness at least once a week. What's happening to us? How are we so compartmentalized? How are we not able to see each other on the street and say hello and how was your day? And you know, check in on each other as human beings in the society that we're in. And here we are using the Internet to find this connection somewhere else.
- [47:01]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
I have one Nigerian man who told me, you Americans, even though I'm a Spaniard, but he meant and you Westerners have all the money in the world but have no shoulder to cry on, while here in Nigeria we have everyone around us, but we have no money. And I think it is the central paradox of the book that it is quite sad that these people who are providing something to each other have to lie to the other person to give that. And I think that we are not really aware of how lonely some of the people around us are because some of the victims were being scammed. Actually they were in relationships. When we talk about loneliness, it's not only about isolation. I think that probably is connected to the golden cage the tech companies have built to make an enormous profit and also to keep us engaged.
- [47:59]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
On the, the supply side, we seem to have this loneliness epidemic that might lead people. And then on the kind of demand side, over on the Nigerian front, you have incredible inequality and poverty and it feels like you would do anything to put food on your table. And when you see what your mother might do for a living and how little money you get and how little bread, so to speak, you get. Yet this alternative seems like, ah, this is almost a victimless crime. I'm not actually, you know, murdering anybody. I'm not, I'm not engaging in gang violence and I just have to spend some time on my phone and stay up all night.
- [48:38]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
I think this is a problem of globalization and extreme inequality. When in the past you were living in a city that was, that had a lot of inequality. In the long run, either was going to lead to social instability or to authoritarianism to control that instability. What happened with the Internet is that suddenly these people in Nigeria, but it could also happen in other parts of the world. They had a window into our riches and that social instability. Maybe they are not burning breaches because they can't get to America, but they are talking to lonely people and they are scamming them. And certainly there is also the aftershocks of colonialism and slavery and the British Empire creating a country out of nowhere. So in the book, for example, you have this character who is Biggie's grandfather who had to dress up as a woman during the civil war that in a way was also impacted by the British misrule in West Africa. So it was quite a paradox that Biggie's grandfather had to dress up as a woman to survive as an Igbo in the Civil War. And 60 years later, his grandson is also dressing up as a woman online to subine.
- [49:56]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
For a lot of people in my age, you know, the Nigerian prince emails, that's the stuff that came around the 1990s. But in your book, you go back into the history of scamming Nigeria and you go way further. What is that?
- [50:11]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Well, for me, it was very important to trace back the origin of impersonation scams in West Africa, of course, highlighting the point that there is nothing particularly Nigerian about these scams. But of course the socioeconomic and the historical conditions that led to this scam are important. And you know, you have West Africans so terrified by the British men in the early 20th century when they got there and they fooled some of the locals with fake arrangements to get their land, that some of the locals would dress up as the white man with their clothes, pretending to be someone who's been sent by the British Empire and they would steal cattle, they would steal grain, they would steal all sorts of things to all the communities, not to their own community, but to others communities. So in a way, it's quite paradoxical that the first time they did this kind of ruse, it was the result of colonialism. We shouldn't forget that colonialism has also this kind of weird aftershocks. And in a way this is also the result of what, what we did 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And I'm not saying that this is just one dimensional like cause, but the same way that we look at, for example, American shooters and we try to understand all the socioeconomic conditions that drive them to do such a horrific act, I think we should deserve the same level of empathy to other people.
- [51:46]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
In 2025, there were more than 23,000 complaints of different kinds of confidence and romance crimes that were filed in the US and the estimate is that these crimes cost, you know, people lost almost a billion dollars. Why do you think these crimes have become so prevalent and so widespread?
- [52:10]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
It's a difficult question, but I do think that the main reason is that going back to the Yahoo Boys answers, because for me it was very important to understand their perspective. I couldn't understand why my mom had fallen for this camp. So maybe these young boys who are getting the money can explain to me why suddenly thousands, if not of tens of thousands of Westerners are sending the money to people who've never met in their real lives. And I think it goes back to the idea of attention. You know, I would throw them the word loneliness that they would throw me back the word of attention. And we are, we, all of us, we are spending so much time on our devices, on our phones, and these tech companies are competing for our attention the same way that Yahoo boys are competing for the victim's attention. So I do think that when I look at my mom, when I look at the people love, sometimes I feel I don't have enough time for them. And I wonder where is that time going? So especially after the pandemic, a lot of people, I think they do feel completely disconnected from society. And they are, just by talking to these people online, they are trying to fill a void that we've decided that we were not going to feel as partners, brothers and sisters or children.
- [53:29]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
Carlos Abarragan, the author of the book called the Yahoo Boys, thanks so much for your time.
- [53:34]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
- [53:37]
Bianna Golodryga
And finally, June brings its signature burst of color as cities around the world celebrate Pride Month. In Budapest, thousands of people joined the city's parade, marking a new era of openness for Hungary's LGBTQ community. Former far right leaders, Viktor Orban, who tried to ban the parade last year, was voted out of office in April, allowing freedom of expression at this year's festivities. And thousands of miles away in Chennai, India, communities came together in a vibrant protest to demand increased inclusivity. So whether it's celebrating with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on the streets of Toronto or marching through New York City honoring the legacy of the 1960 Stonewall Riots, Pride has been front and center for millions of people across the globe. Happy Pride Month, all. All right, that is it for now. Thank you so much for watching and goodbye. From New York,
- [54:40]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
This is CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam, thrilled to introduce the new CNN weather action app. Be prepared for anything with comprehensive coverage
- [54:49]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
from real experts like me.
- [54:51]
Hari Srinivasan / Derek Van Dam
Download the CNN weather app on iOS today. From the descendants of history makers involved in the Louisiana Purchase to the Lewis and Clark expedition, discover the untold stories of American expansion in the CNN original series this Land.
- [55:07]
Shannon Maldonado / Ari Shapiro / Carlos Abarragan / Craig Ferguson / Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Now streaming on the CNN app.