5/23/25: Trump Big Beautiful Bill Passes, Secret Crypto Dinner, Trump War On Harvard & MORE

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar Episode: Trump Big Beautiful Bill Passes, Secret Crypto Dinner, Trump War On Harvard & MORE
Release Date: May 23, 2025
Host/Authors: Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In this episode of Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti delve into a series of pressing political and economic issues dominating the American landscape. From alleged corruption in President Trump's crypto initiatives to the administration's aggressive stance on higher education and labor protections, the discussion is both comprehensive and incisive.

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1. Trump's Crypto Dinner: A Facade of Corruption?

Timestamps:

• 08:24 – Caroline Levitt discusses the crypto dinner organized by President Trump, highlighting its structure and underlying motives.

Key Points:

• Secretive Nature: The dinner required attendees to purchase Trump’s Meme Coin, with top holders gaining exclusive access to the president.
• Foreign Influence: Over 50% of the top 200 coin holders were identified as foreign participants, raising concerns about potential bribery and undue influence on U.S. financial policies.
• Manipulation of Trusts: Caroline Levitt addresses arguments defending Trump’s actions by citing his assets being managed through blind trusts by his children, a claim met with skepticism by the hosts. “A blind trust managed by his children. That is indeed what she said.” (08:54)
• Impact on Transparency: The lack of transparency in these transactions contradicts democratic principles and fuels distrust in the administration’s financial integrity.

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2. The Big Beautiful Bill: Deficit Reduction or Explosion?

Timestamps:

• 05:05 – James Lee introduces the discussion on the Big Beautiful Bill and its implications on the national deficit.
• 50:32 – 51:48 – Ryan Grim and James Lee analyze the bill’s impact, highlighting contradictions between its promises and actual effects.

Key Points:

• Contradictory Claims: The bill is marketed as a major deficit cut, but critics argue it will, in reality, increase the deficit by $20-30 trillion over the next decade.
• Public Skepticism: Ryan Grim points out the disconnect between the bill’s branding and public perception. “It's all about branding. You're putting diet on the sugarful yogurt. That's exactly what this is.” (51:23)
• Economic Consequences: The bill’s passage in the House indicates Republican desperation, potentially leading to more aggressive fiscal policies that could destabilize the economy further.

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3. Trump's War on Harvard: Restricting International Students

Timestamps:

• 05:26 – Ryan Grim introduces the Trump administration’s move to halt Harvard’s enrollment of international students.
• 27:46 – 36:05 – Detailed analysis and discussion on the implications of this policy.

Key Points:

• Policy Overview: The administration sent a letter to Harvard to cease enrolling foreign students, citing unspecified legal authorities.
• Impact on Innovation: Ryan Grim emphasizes the role of international students in fostering innovation and maintaining the U.S.’s competitive edge. “The United States doesn't make much anymore, but we are still the innovation center of the world.” (07:10)
• Legal and Ethical Concerns: The policy lacks legal justification and raises ethical questions about discrimination and the undermining of academic freedoms.
• Long-Term Consequences: Severing ties with international academia could lead to a brain drain, diminishing America's status as a global leader in education and innovation.

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4. Assault on Labor Protections: NLRB and MSPB

Timestamps:

• 45:58 – 49:11 – Ryan Grim and James Lee discuss the Trump administration’s temporary removal of key officials from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).

Key Points:

• NLRB and MSPB Threats: President Trump’s administration achieved a temporary victory allowing the removal of Gwen Wilcox from the NLRB and Kathy Harris from the MSPB.
• Judicial Pushback: Justices Kagan and Sotomayor dissent, emphasizing the importance of maintaining independent agencies. “Not since the 1950s... has a president without a legitimate reason tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency.” (47:48)
• Implications for Labor Rights: Undermining the NLRB threatens workers' rights and labor protections, potentially eroding fairness in employer-employee relations.
• Merit Systems Protection Board: Efforts to dismantle the MSPB would eliminate essential safeguards against wrongful termination in federal employment, further concentrating power within the executive branch.

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5. Human Stories: ICE Detention and Immigration Policies

Timestamps:

• 36:05 – 43:01 – Ryan Grim narrates the harrowing story of Casper Erickson, a father from Denmark detained by ICE due to a minor clerical error.

Key Points:

• Case Study: Casper Erickson, a law-abiding immigrant, was detained and separated from his pregnant wife and four children over a missed form submission.
• Systemic Failures: This incident highlights the cruelty and inefficiency within the ICE detention system, where bureaucratic mistakes lead to devastating personal consequences.
• Moral and Ethical Debates: The hosts argue that the U.S. has a moral duty to treat immigrants humanely, contrasting current policies with the nation’s historical role as a refuge for those seeking freedom and opportunity.
• Policy Solutions: Emphasis on the need for reforming immigration processes to prevent such tragedies and uphold the country’s humanitarian values.

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6. Public Sentiment and Financial Pessimism

Timestamps:

• 51:59 – 58:06 – The discussion shifts to the American public’s growing pessimism about their financial future, illustrated by falling consumer expectations.

Key Points:

• Economic Anxiety: A recent report shows Americans are more pessimistic than ever about their financial situation in the coming year.
• Political Response: The administration leverages this pessimism to justify aggressive fiscal policies, promising future benefits despite immediate negative impacts.
• Disconnect Between Branding and Reality: The Big Beautiful Bill serves as a prime example of political branding failing to align with public sentiment and economic reality.

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Conclusion

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti provide a critical examination of the Trump administration's policies, particularly focusing on corruption in financial dealings, aggressive legislative maneuvers, and draconian immigration enforcement. Through detailed analysis and compelling narratives, the hosts underscore the urgent need for accountability, transparency, and humane policies in governance.

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Notable Quotes

1. Caroline Levitt on Trump's Crypto Dinner:
   “A blind trust managed by his children. That is indeed what she said.” (08:54)

2. Ryan Grim on Deficit Branding:
   “It's all about branding. You're putting diet on the sugarful yogurt. That's exactly what this is.” (51:23)

3. Justice Kagan on NLRB Removal:
   “Not since the 1950s... has a president without a legitimate reason tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency.” (47:48)

4. James Lee on Immigration Promise:
   “Immigrants to the United States are often the best Americans because they love the US so much.” (40:07)

5. Ryan Grim on Moral Choice in Policy:
   “We can choose what kind of country we want to be. If we want to be vicious and cruel like that is, that is a thing we can do.” (42:42)

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This episode offers a thorough exploration of significant contemporary issues, blending investigative journalism with passionate discourse to inform and engage listeners. For more in-depth analysis and exclusive content, consider becoming a premium subscriber at BreakingPoints.com.

Transcript

[Ryan Grim]

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[Krystal Ball]

Every day our world gets a little more connected, but a little further apart. But then there are moments that remind us to be more human.

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Don't worry, we'll get you taken care of.

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At Ameca, we understand that looking out for each other isn't new or groundbreaking. It's human. Amika, empathy is our best policy.

[Matt Stoller]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[James Lee]

Okay, we could be here all day. Try Clorox Scentiva for a trusted clean.

[Ryan Grim]

With long lasting freshness.

[James Lee]

Also available in lavender and coconut. News as directed. Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

[Ryan Grim]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Emily Jashinsky]

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[James Lee]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we.

[Ryan Grim]

Hope to see you@breaking points.com all right, good Friday morning. Welcome to a counterpoints takeover of this Friday show. Just some programming notes. Stick around for the very end. If you're a premium subscriber. If you're not a premium subscriber. Premium subscriber. It'll cut off about halfway through. You're going to miss a lot of good stuff. We give so much of this show away. We give so much milk away. We got to figure out ways to make you buy this cow. And so we're going to have Matt Stoller and James Lee in the back end of it. Matt Stoller talking about the definition of oligarchy. James Lee doing an interview with a former layman trader about the private equity bubble, which I actually think is one of the, maybe the biggest issue facing the economy right now is, is the potential collapse of private equity, which could just rip through everything and give us another, you know, 2008, 2009. We're also going to talk in the back half of the show about the latest developments in Israel and wanted to talk about one piece of that before we move to domestic news and then we'll pick more of that up. Actually, a producer, Mac, who has the YouTube channel Good Politic Guy, picked up on this earlier this week. I only noticed it recently, but Bezel Smotrich, the finance minister, Israel's finance minister, gave a speech this week where he said that he had, where he basically says he won an internal battle and Israel is now, because he has won this battle, deliberately targeting civilians and the civilian infrastructure of Hamas in Gaza. No longer just focusing on the military, but going after civilians. That is crime against humanity. It's against international law. You cannot target civilians even if they work in the government. If anybody told you that it was legal to kill two Israeli members of the embassy here in Washington, D.C. because there's a war going on, they're lying to you. That is a crime against humanity. You cannot kill civilian members of the government. The IDF is finally conducting a campaign against the civilian rule of Hamas and not just focusing on the military infrastructure. We are eliminating ministers, officials, money changers and elements of the economic and governmental system. So we'll talk more about that, what that means about this next phase of the Israeli attack on Gaza in the back half of the show. Emily, any quick reaction to that or we want to save it all for the back half.

[James Lee]

We'll at least have a lot to discuss when we get to that portion of the show, which again, is for premium subscribers. You can head over to breakingpoints.com to get access to the back half of these Friday shows. Usually it's more of a party. We've got Crystal, sometimes Sagar. But now it's like right today you don't want rising Fridays like circa four years ago.

[Ryan Grim]

That's right, that's right, that's right. Yeah.

[James Lee]

You're definitely not going to miss that, Ryan. Also, we have in the front of the show, we're going to be talking about Trump's crypto dinner, which happened last night. And the reports are trickling in about exactly how that went. The claim is now that the big beautiful bill cuts the deficit, which is incredible. So we will break all of that down, too.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, not true. We'll we'll have some updates on immigration policy. Trump telling a 400 year old university, the top university in the world, that it can no longer accept foreign students. They, they cited no rationale, no legal rationale for that. So that's gonna, that's gonna head to court. But, you know, the, the fight with Harvard is kicking up and I desperately, you know, hate Trump for making me defend Harvard, you know, one of the worst institutions in the world. But come on, what are you doing? What on earth are you doing? The, though the white immigrant, the Denmark guy in Mississippi is kind of making waves on, on the, on the right. And you know, across the spectrum, this guy, we'll talk about this guy who has been in the country since 2013, was doing everything right, went to a immigration hearing, father of four, married to an American citizen, you know, on, on his, you know, he was doing, did nothing wrong except I think they missed one, one filing or something. Arrested down in Mississippi by ICE agents. He's in detention now. Trump, now that the stock market has recovered, he's doing his best to smash it again. He's threatening a 25 tariff on Apple, 50 tariff on, on the EU and also the old tariffs are still in place. He's going after media matters. Democrats are proposing a whole bunch of, a whole bunch of different changes that, that we can, that we'll talk about going forward. This interesting, interesting story in the, in the Bulwark, even everything you just said.

[James Lee]

The fact that it's happening all at once, it gave me a little bit of whiplash. I was like, wow. You told me 10 years ago that that would just be the casual rundown of a Friday show. I'd be like, wow, okay, there we are. But it is all happening at once. And everyone give me a little patience this morning. I moved yesterday and had all kinds of tech fun this morning. So if there's weirdness in the audio and if I'm at an odd angle, just. We're working on it.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Your computer's buzzing. So is it hard for you to put up elements you can.

[James Lee]

Should I handle those or trying. And it looks like I'm on an iPad.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, because you're on an iPad.

[James Lee]

Boomers on an iPad. So we will.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, your computer broke and you still made it on here.

[James Lee]

That's right. The one thing that broke. Yeah. The least important.

[Ryan Grim]

That's not Boomer at all. Okay, so let's, let's start here with Caroline Levitt talking about the, talking about this crypto dinner last night, which is, you know, it's Hard to remain shocked anymore. But this is truly a shocking level and brazen level of corruption. So let me share this, Caroline Levitt.

[James Lee]

Here on the dinner tonight you mentioned this is not a White House dinner, but the president is, and the Trump.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Family is making money off of this.

[James Lee]

So can you just explain how is this not the president using the office to enrich himself?

[Caroline Levitt]

All of the president's assets are in a blind trust which is managed by his children. And I would argue one of the many reasons that the American people reelected this president back to this office is because he was a very successful businessman before giving it up to publicly serve our country.

[James Lee]

Did she say a blind trust managed by his.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay, that was comical. That was comical. A blind trust managed by his children. That is. That is indeed what, what she said.

[James Lee]

Does that mean. That could mean a lot of different things, by the way. It could mean that they are the people who are the, the like actual. They're. They're making the trades and stuff, or it could mean that they're managing the people who are handling the investments. But it sounds like they're the ones that are handling the investments from that quote.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[James Lee]

Not. Not so blind.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah. Yes. And yes, I'm sure his. Yeah, it's because we're like, give us the money. Give us your money. We'll manage it for you. And they're doing all, and they're doing all their deals around the world. Like, how does that, how does that, how does that not make it worse? Like, that feels a little, I guess it's actually worse than, like, one of those answers where you're like, oh, wow, this was really bad when I heard the question. It's worse now that I've heard the answer. So for folks not following this, this crypto dinner, if you what, in order to get into this dinner, you had to buy Trump's Meme Coin, and the top 200 holders of Trump's Meme Coin would then get access to Trump. And I think the top 15 or 30 would get this, like, VIP access. Now, the way that crypto works is it's, there's some transparency in being able to follow the coin, and more than 50% of the, of the, of the people who bought into the top 200 and more than 50% bought in the top 30 did so through exchanges that only allow foreigners to participate in them. So we, so we knew for a fact going in that this was a bunch of people from outside of the country who were going, were giving money directly to Donald Trump to enrich him. For access to him. Now, the question then is they just want to, like, they just want a selfie or are they actually trying to move policy? Because then, then you're at the level of bribery. And so the New York Times has.

[James Lee]

It's incredible. It's exactly what you'd expect, but incredible nonetheless.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Several of the dinner guests in interviews with the New York Times said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and US financial regulations. Sangrock oh, a Korean crypto executive, arrived at the dinner with a collection of red baseball caps emblazoned with the words make crypto great again that he planned to hand out at the event. He said he had flown all the way from Seoul to attend the dinner. Quote, it's kind of a fundraiser for Mr. Trump, Mr. Oh said in an interview at his hotel in Virginia. And he'll always be good to his sponsors. The dinner was designed to fuel more sales. The organizers framed it as a contest. The top 220 buyers would dine with Mr. Trump at his golf club, while the top 25 would attend a more intimate gathering with the president before dinner and go on a tour of the White House. So you can't believe anything I say. I said 230. Just open bribery. And that's not the New York Times. That's Mr. Hanania there. So, yeah, so they paid money to Trump, a fundraiser for Trump, not Trump's campaign, which is the way that we've legalized bribery in the United States, but directly to Trump, which is the old school illegal kind of bribery. Is. Is there as anybody attempted a steel man of why this is not just flagrant.

[James Lee]

I think Caroline Levitt, speaking of Caroline Levitt, I think she.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, because it's a blind. His money's in a blind trouser. He doesn't know if all of this money that's being given to him actually benefits him or not, because his kids might lose it on, well, you know, cocaine.

[James Lee]

I was thinking of when she was talking last week about the Cutter jet, and she said the notion that Donald Trump would be influenced by anything like that is insane. And I actually really think that's the only steel man that you could possibly come up with.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, meaning so rich.

[James Lee]

Well, even with that, he's just.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[James Lee]

At least for a couple of weeks, he was willing to give a middle finger to all the Wall street guys that were messing with him. Like, that's. I don't think it's a good argument, but I think it's the best version of the argument that it's all on the up and up, because Trump is just someone who's uniquely resistant to the influence of money in politics, which is how a lot of people see him. On the other, that's not how the people who were dishing out millions of dollars to. Who have dished out millions of dollars to Trump see him. And that's in this. I mean, you see that in this rundown itself. I think the estimate is about 40% of Trump's net worth is now tied up in the coin in crypto, which is astounding because that's only happened over the course of the last five months. This a man who spent how many years toiling away in the trenches of New York real. So it is just to see Ryan, two things. On the one hand, the people who are activists in crypto world do fundamentally want to change the global economy. Bottom line. That's why they're activists, activists in crypto world. And on the other hand, what they're doing here is so nakedly corrupt that you just. It's head spinning. And so you have activists and corruption combined in one beautiful dinner. One big, beautiful dinner.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. And this is a good example of it. This is a piece in the Wall Street Journal headlined, a Crypto billionaire who feared arrest in the US Returns for dinner with Trump. It's about this guy, Justin sun, who runs a crypto network that is very popular with what. What the Wall Street Journal calls the criminal underbelly. And this is a top use of crypto, is trying to move money outside of the banking system. If you are involved in things that the banking system is going to flag as potentially illegal, drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, the underworld stuff. And so this guy was, you know, Persona non grata until recently, and now he has, you know, used this money to buy in. If, if you are Sam Bankman fried, you have to be feeling like the biggest moron on the planet. Like, you. You put all of your money into Democrats, and then Democrats went and tried to regulate crypto and then locked you up. Like your move, moron, was to put your money into. On the Republicans.

[James Lee]

He did that too, though. He was fairly. Yeah, it was what I was like, 60, 40.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, he was spread. He was spreading it around. He gave a bunch to McConnell. Right? He was. Yeah, he was definitely spreading it around. Yeah, but he was a little more.

[James Lee]

No, he was. And he was. Anyway, he was sort of culturally aligning with the left, which is, again, very interesting too, like, he was. Because at the time, it's how quickly Culture changes. Now at the time, the idea of, you know, the, the what do they call it? It's like so out of vogue now. The effect of altruism, that was really.

[Ryan Grim]

That's right, yeah.

[James Lee]

Sort of left wing, progressive business circles to the extent that makes sense. Sort of like the center left circles. And so he thought he could pitch crypto as effective altruism instead. You're right. It should have just been, you know, piracy and take it to the, the libertarian right. Just leave it at that.

[Ryan Grim]

And while we're, while we're on the topic of corruption, ProPublic has this news story that what is a dozen top congressional aides and executive branch officials sold huge amounts of stock just before Liberation Day. Now, in, in their defense, Donald Trump went to Congress with his, in his State of the Union and announced that he was going to do his Liberation Day. And as Jeff Stein kept complaining about Wall street, like, guys, like we've been saying he's going to do this. He has said it out loud. He has said it out loud repeatedly. So I, what I think goes to the, a fundamental corruption in the system that these officials hold that those shares at all. Like, if you are a public official, you should, to me, you should not have.

[James Lee]

You mean public servant?

[Ryan Grim]

Any kind of a public servant. Any stocks. Yeah, public servant. Yes, exactly. Yes, yes. Serving, serving the public. Put, you know, your money should be in an actual blind trust, not run by.

[James Lee]

It's insane. I mean, but the thing is it doesn't matter. And I don't even know. I mean, it just, it matters. It doesn't matter for Trump because I guess what's the best explanation of this? It's always been baked into Trump and there's no other politician like it. I mean, this is the man who actually based a not insignificant portion of his 2020 campaign on Biden family corruption. The 2016 campaign was not insignificantly based on Clinton corruption.

[Ryan Grim]

And that was also about insecure use of messaging. Like they're. The personal emails were said to be the greatest, like national security catastrophe. Let's get an update on that. And foreign influence, how's that going? How's that, how's the Trump administration handling?

[James Lee]

It was really particularly about foreign influence peddling both with the Clinton foundation and with the Biden operation. And I think Hanani described, yeah, I think he described one of the pictures from the Times article is like a United nations of corruption because it was people from so many different countries who were racing to be involved in the dinner. While again, Trump is a sitting president of The United States. So Trump is not like, yeah, the only difference between Trump and Hunter Biden, whatever, is Trump has Caroline Levitt go out there and just say to everyone, well, yeah, people can give him money. It doesn't mean it's going to change his mind. Like, he's taking all of this, you know, he's doing all these events. Doesn't mean it's going to change his mind. Whereas with the Bidens it would be, well, everything is legal, you know, everything that nothing is, nothing to see here. Everything is perfectly in compliance. They're just like, screw. Doesn't. Don't even worry about that. The question fundamentally is whether it's changing Trump's mind. It's not. So look somewhere else. Did you see Tucker, by the way? Tucker, Sorry, maybe Sean Ryan was on Tucker Carlson show this week and brought it up. Brought up. I think they were in the context of last week's trip to the Middle east. And Tucker was like, sure looks corrupt. And if you're a consistent sort of supporter of, of Donald Trump's because he is a very effective critic of the swamp in Washington D.C. there's only one way to be consistent. It would be to see that as outrageous.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, it's corrupt. The only defense of it is that people who like Trump like Trump and that is cool. They don't care. The argument is that by def, like.

[James Lee]

By definition outweighs the, the personal enrichment. But of course, again, it makes it look like the United States is for sale. And the United States has been for sale in many different ways over many, many years. But there's something about.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. All they have is what about us?

[James Lee]

And there's something also about the sort of pretense of. It's not even just a pretense, it's an ambition that as you sort of respect the will of voters, that they respect our laws, that they say, hey, the, you know, we don't have a spoil system. It's something we're very opposed to as like average Americans. We don't like it when the people who are elected abuse their office for the sake of personal enrichment. But the, I mean, it just. That's out the window and who knows what happens afterwards because of that.

[Krystal Ball]

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[Ryan Grim]

And maybe we disagree on this Harvard, this Harvard issue. Let's move on to that one. So let me, let me put this up. So Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard saying that the headline in the Times is Trump administration says it is halting Harvard's ability to enroll international students. That's, that's what they did. They sent a letter to Harvard saying you are no longer eligible to enroll foreign students. They're what, 27, what 27%? Like some. Yes, 27% of the student body, 6,800 international students attended Harvard in the, in the last school year. It had been, it had been 19.7% in 2010-2011. So it's slightly increasing number. And so they're telling Harvard forget it, like you can't do this anymore. Now, as people have, you know, looked closely at the letters, it doesn't have, doesn't cite any law, doesn't cite any authority under which they're going to single out Harvard. Bondi set out Noam. This is intended to send a message to the rest of. No, sorry, Noam said. This is intended to send a message to the rest of the universities that they better not fight the administration. So, you know, presumably, who knows, presumably the Supreme Court or whoever rules on this will knock this down. We could talk about that, that whether or not that's the case, but also the merits of it. I guess the argument on behalf of it is that, hey, it's an American university. It should be. It should be there for Americans. The argument for it is that the United States doesn't make much anymore, but we are still the innovation center of the world. China's challenging us, but we're. We are. We're still at minimum, competitive with them, if not, if not better. And the reason for that is that other countries aren't just competing against the top graduates of, you know, American high schools, but of the best and brightest from all around the world, you know, who come to the United States to go to the best university system in the world. Many of those students then become permanent residents and become citizens and stay here. They found companies like Google here that put us in the forefront of this kind of innovation economy. The ones who don't stay here and return to their capitals or to their big metropoles develop an affinity for the United States and, and give us another advantage when it comes to kind of soft power around the world, because they had a good time while they were here, and they have a lot of friends here, and they understand our country in a way that Americans don't. For instance, understand China. I was talking to a Pakistani guy who was here in the United States a week or two ago, and he was. And he travels to China a lot. He's. He's in London a lot. And he was saying that the advantage to him that the United States has is that he doesn't feel like he is a foreigner here, but he doesn't feel like a foreigner. He comes to the United States. He feels at home. He's welcomed. Despite all of this Trump rhetoric and the attacks on immigrants and such, you look around and we're a genuinely diverse, pluralistic, multicultural countries that you go to China, so you immediately feel like a foreigner. And that's not to single out China. That's the case for so many other countries. You just feel out of place. And that gives us this advantage, without which we're then competing in textile mills and just manufacturing, and we don't have that capacity right now. So if we get. So if we cut off our head, like the body's Going to die too would be my argument. What's your take on the value of these elite colleges and foreign students?

[James Lee]

A couple different parts of that. The first part is the question you just were discussing, which is the value of foreign attendance at elite colleges and universities. And then the other is the value of this policy if we break it down that way. I think probably if you look through some of the highest achieving Americans in the last, you know, 50 plus years, a lot of them probably came to the United States because they were exceptional students and you know, got to Harvard or wherever and their, the sake of their merit and made incredible companies and careers in the United States because they love the United States. And as we talk about often, immigrants to the United States are often the best Americans because they love the US So much. Yeah, they take it for granted in the way, because they come from places where you don't have as much freedom, you don't have as much prosperity. So I don't, I don't think it's wise to shut that off completely because some of the most brilliant people from around the world, in fact, it's a real benefit to the United States that still today, if you are high achieving in any other part of the world, you're not going to Chinese universities, you're trying to go to Harvard and Yale and Princeton, wherever else and actually even some of our big flagship state schools. So I think that's actually becomes a, creates a, the United States becomes a magnet for the best talent in the entire world. How we then integrate that, that talent into the United States is another question. That number 27% enrollment of foreign students at Harvard, which is the pride of America's higher education system, seems exorbitantly high. That seems like it is actually, you know, this is a publicly funded university funded by US taxpayers. That seems like it probably is closing the door to too many American students. So I think it makes sense to have a conversation about that. On the other hand, policy wise, this is another sort of creative attempt or an attempt to create a new like novel avenue to the. They're like bushwhacking their way to like screwing with elite institutions. And I'm, I have the letter in front of me just to get what Kristi Noem is saying out there. They are saying they sent a letter in April to Harvard where they quote, requested records pertaining to non immigrant students enrolled at Harvard University, including information regarding misconduct and other offenses that would render foreign students inadmissible or removable. They said twice they got insufficient response. They say as a courtesy that Harvard was not legally entitled to. DHS afforded them another opportunity to comply. Harvard again provided an insufficient response. So.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. And they're asking for like five years.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[James Lee]

Within 72 hours. They have like six demands. Yeah. That include that. And they also are saying that this is under the auspices of a revocation of the Student and Exchange Visitor program, which DHS apparently. I didn't know this. Right. But DHS apparently administers. So that's why it's coming from Kristi Noem and dhs. And it is part of this administration wide effort to again like bushwhack their way through uncharted territory to screw with elite institutions via all kinds of different mechanisms, creative mechanisms. And so as much as I want to screw with elite institutions is just sounds completely silly. It doesn't seem entirely lawless. They do administer the program, but it seems like, it seems maybe silly is the best word. It seems like kind of a joke.

[Ryan Grim]

No. And yeah. In the sense that they are the law. It's not lawless. But they're not citing any particular authority that they have as the administrators. Administrators of this program to just kind of arbitrarily target them because they're not turning over footage of protesters. It's like what? Like get out of here. Like, who are you? Dhs. Like, and I want, I miss the, the free speech right. That would be like, wait a minute. You. You want the government, the DHS wants a private institution to turn over five years of video footage of speech?

[James Lee]

A heavily funded private institution. A heavily taxpayer funded private institution.

[Ryan Grim]

That's fine. Still. It's still. We're all taxpayer funded on some level.

[James Lee]

That's like Obama. You didn't build that.

[Ryan Grim]

Even if it's public. Even if it's public. Even if they went to the University of Michigan, asked for five years of footage of protests. Like it is First Amendment, the right to peaceably assemble right there in the First Amendment. Not just speech. Peaceful assembly is right there in the Constitution. It's one of the key things that, that we're so proud of that makes us a free country. DHS demanding that and if they don't turn it over, they're going to basically try to destroy them. Is just a fundamental threat to civil liberties in this country. Now everything I have said is the. Is an argument as an American for the United States of America. I think for a person in the world you could argue, go ahead. Good. It is actually. It will be better for the world if the United States commits suicide. It will be better for these other countries if The United States is not creating a gravitational pull that creates this brain drain out of all of these other countries. If the United States is weaker and is interfering less in the democratic governance of other countries, that's probably a good thing. Now for people in the United States, their quality of life will go way down. This country itself will spiral, but the rest of the world may actually do better. So in that sense, you know, I guess. Go ahead, Christy Noem.

[James Lee]

Yeah, I mean, that 20 again, 27, just seems, it's probably what.

[Ryan Grim]

Although it's probably low, like, if you think about it, if, if this is, you know, there's 300 million people in the United States, there's 8, 8, 9 billion around the world, maybe 10, all competing for spots in the best college and you American students are getting quarters of them. Somebody's putting the thumb.

[James Lee]

Yeah, I mean, the public funding of the institution is 100American. But the.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, right. But the private, the foreign.

[James Lee]

Well, that's what I was just going to say.

[Ryan Grim]

Subsidize it.

[James Lee]

Yeah, that's what I was. It's, it's. I wonder how much of that is actually merit and, versus, you know, the rich sheiks, you know, buying their kids into Harvard or wherever else. So I, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to have a conversation about that. Also, these schools do have legitimate problems with espionage that they kind of opened in or welcomed in for a long time. They seem like they're all kind of cracking down on it now. But whether it's Qatar or China, there's been all kinds of stuff happening at these, I believe, institutions. It's hard to tell whether this letter is specifically.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. And a federal judge has already blocked it, by the way.

[James Lee]

Well, that's why I think. So when you said it's a serious threat to higher education, I, it's like in, I look at that on paper and I'm like, yes, that's true. But then I look in practice and I'm like, yeah, I know some of these people spend time with some of these people and they're just trolling with a lot of this stuff. And it's not funny if you're Harvard. But the only point that I would make is just. And again, this is, it's controversial and not entirely fair. But the only thing I would say is I don't know how serious they are about going through with a lot of this stuff. It doesn't, it doesn't make it Right.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[James Lee]

I just think that they're throwing like, Jackson Pollocking, the whole administration, like they're throwing everything at the wall and trying to make a beautiful portrait out of their mess. And yeah, it's, it's, it doesn't, again, it doesn't make it right. It doesn't mean that it's not going to have implications. But just to like explain it from their perspective and explain why it doesn't feel like a grave threat to me is partially just because I'm like, I don't think they're going to go through with it. I think they're just doing this to scare the universities into compliance with other things that they are more serious about. And some of those will be, I mean, the endowment tax that's in the big beautiful bill is significant. That actually is a huge deal if you're Harvard or any of these schools. So some of this stuff is completely serious. Some of it feels like, okay, we're, you know, just creating these funny, like legal ideas that somebody came up with at a happy hour and was like, haha, this whole F with Harvard. Let's see what happens.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. So let, let's talk briefly about this, this father in Mississippi. And I guess you can let me know if the right is angry that I would, that I call him a Mississippi father. Just like they're angry about calling BR Garcia a Maryland father.

[James Lee]

Maryland man.

[Ryan Grim]

But this is.

[James Lee]

That was the Atlantic headline.

[Ryan Grim]

No, they hated, they hated Maryland father in particular. How dare you humanize him. So I'll just read from this, this report. This father went to his. This father went to a citizenship hearing expecting a handshake. Instead, ice shackled him, threw him into a van and tore him away from his pregnant wife and four children without even letting him say goodbye. Caspar Erickson arrived in Mississippi from Denmark in 2013. Fully documented and determined to build a life here. He started a family, became part of his community and followed every rule. He was never accused, let alone convicted of any crime. But as best we understand, he's now in prison because of a single clerical mistake made years ago. In 2015, Casper and his wife Savannah missed filing one form among the hundreds acquired on the complicated path to citizenship. Savannah had just suffered a stillbirth, losing their first child. In the painful days that followed, paperwork deadlines understandably slipped past unnoticed. Now, over a month after his arrest, Casper remains locked in a detention facility notorious for cruelty, neglect and abuse. Savannah, eight months pregnant, at high risk and terrified, is desperately pleading for her husband's return. She and their children have no idea when or if they'll ever see him again. And she doesn't know if he'll be present for her child's birth. Every day brings another nightmare under the Trump administration. The actions of our government are evil. There's simply no other way to describe it. May God have mercy on all of us for allowing this to happen. Here's the family. You know, this comes at the same time that ICE is also denying Mahmoud Khalil a contact visit with his one with his one month old baby for no reason. Like there's contact visits are a thing that you can allow people who are in detention. Khalil was arrested or locked up a month before his child was born. As he has not seen his child since then. This one, you know, struck me. You know, we also suffered a stillborn with our, with our first daughter and also now have four children. And I can, I can only imagine that, of course, you're missing paperwork amidst, amidst the deepest grief that, that a human being can imagine losing a child. Like, there's, there's nothing deeper than that. And to, to use that, to have a system that says, all right, you missed that deadline. There's nothing we can do. We must put you in this private prison for months on end as we work to deport you to Denmark is like this, this guy here described it as evil. And like, I'm hard pressed to find a, a different about.

[James Lee]

Yeah, I mean, there's the, the legal question and the ethical question. And on the ethical question, one of the things that bothers me about the way particularly we looked at like Venezuelan asylum seekers who ended up in, in seacot and were legitimate asylum seekers, like the barber that we discussed. What bothers me about that is I feel like the United States made a promise and I feel that about many of the asylum seekers who came under Biden. It's one of the things that bothered me about the Biden policy because I knew that at some point we were going to break the promise because it was unsustainable to make those promises to so many different people that you will have a fair asylum hearing and that if you are. And I know I'm just talking narrowly about asylum here, but the point is that we do promise rule of law and legal processes. And we, you know, people come here with the expectation that the United States will do it fairly and will, you know, treat people humanely. And so whether something is legal in a narrow sense is different than whether it's ethical. And it just, it does, you know, looking at some of the, particularly some of the asylum cases, Cubans, I mean, it just eats me up when I Think about just having that sort of removed after people because the United States extended a hand and said, make an appointment on CBP1. Come here. You know, you can just tell us, like go through the legal process, tell us why you want asylum, tell us why you're a refugee. And it's, I think, sort of been that it feels like we've let, let ourselves down in some of those cases. And again, that's coming from somebody who actually is pretty supportive of a lot of what Donald Trump has done on the border. Like the crossings are down so significantly. The border basically is closed to the point where it doesn't justify any policies based on a quote, unquote invasion. But, you know, it's not Trump's fault that Biden did what Biden did, that the Biden administration did what the Biden administration did. It's not the Republican Party's. Well, Republican Party is different. It's not the Trump administration's fault. But they do have then a moral obligation to deal with the people who came here humanely.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, right. Because we can choose what kind of country we want to be. If we want to be vicious and cruel like that is, that is a thing we can do. Like that is within our power and our ability. Or we can be, or we can try to be a civilized country. That's, that's the choice.

[James Lee]

We are a haven for refugees and we always should be. That's the other thing. Like that's another the United States. We were just talking about this when we were talking about academia. We have been a place, a talent magnet for generations and there aren't. And there have been excesses of that. We have been a magnet for desperate people seeking freedom for decades. And there have been some excesses of that. But in the concept in and of itself is part of what makes us a great country is because we are comprised of this amazing collection of people who are really talented, love freedom, and that's in addition to our native born population and its additive. And people integrate and love the United States. And again, we have to fix those processes too. There's nothing to say that I think there's more. There are plenty of questions to be raised about that. But on the other hand, it also is part. It's always been additive. It's part of what makes us a good country and a place where a lot of us are proud to live.

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[Ryan Grim]

There's also news last night that where out of the Supreme Court and I can put this up that the Trump administration won in in the Supreme Court and is being allowed temporarily. It's a temporary victory, but it's a significant one. Being allowed to temporarily remove Gwen Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board and also Kathy Harris who's on the Merit Systems Protection Board. And people understand the nlrb. That's this, this is the board that oversees labor rights. The the kind of I think failure of the bipartisan populist movement or our trans partisan populism, whatever you would call it, has been that despite the kind of working class shift in the Republican Party, the NLRB has remained a, you know, public enemy number one because of the the kind of corporate control and and kind of medium business control as well of inside the Republican coalition. We can talk about that in a second. I just want to say a word about the Merit Systems Protection Board. But basically what this is, is there are all of these rules around, you know, how you can hire and fire people in the federal government. And so if, if you are wrongfully fired, you can then appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. And what Trump, what Trump is doing here is trying to destroy the merit, the merit board, which then would allow him to get rid of all of the protections. Because if the protections are there on paper, but there's no avenue for you to challenge them, then they don't really exist. And so this is a huge win in his kind of assault on this federal warfare.

[James Lee]

Kagan and Sotomayor agree with that. I'm reading from their dissent here. She says the current President believes that Humphreys, so that's the Humphreys executor case, should be either overruled or confined. And he has chosen to act on that belief really to take the law into his own hands. Not since the 1950s or even before has a president without a legitimate reason tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency. And they write, our Humphreys decision remains good law and it forecloses both the President's firings and the court's decision to award emergency relief. So it's a very long descent. But basically they feel that Humphreys is threatened here and Humphreys is. My preference would be that Humphreys executor is, is overturned. I do think that these outside agencies need to be accountable to the executive. But at the same time, although the.

[Ryan Grim]

Fed in here, they also said that the Fed is cool. Right. Which is just, they're just making it up as they go along. That's like, like, yeah, like there's no principle here, by the way, just this independent agency. You can destroy this independent agency, which we're very nervous about. What Trump would do with that one. Constitutionally is protected. It's like what they all are. None of it.

[James Lee]

No argument with me on that one. But that's what's.

[Ryan Grim]

Like when they, when they handed the White House to Bush. There's this famous line in the, in Bush v. Gore, this sets no preced and can never be referenced again. Oh, okay.

[James Lee]

I want to add that as my email signature. Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

Delete this email. Can that.

[James Lee]

The reason that's a fault, actually, to your point, the reason that the NLRB is particularly a fault line, even amidst the transpartisan like FTC populism, all of that is because it brings into the question the size of the executive branch, period. And most people on the right still believe that the executive branch is bloated and unaccountable to the President. I include myself in that category. So Humphreys, to the point that Kagan and Sotomayor are making is sort of a foundational like that is a load bearing decision for the entire executive branch.

[Ryan Grim]

Let's talk about this comical clip with Caroline Levitt being asked, hey man, you guys said you're gonna cut the deficit. This bill explodes it. She had a very, she had a very clever response to that challenge. Let's play this.

[Caroline Levitt]

The one big beautiful bill. Also get our fiscal house in order by carrying out the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years with $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings. Every single Democrat in the House of Representatives who voted against all of these common sense and massively popular policies. The Democrat Party has never been more radical and out of touch with the needs of the American people. The one big beautiful bill is the final missing piece toward ushering the golden age of America. The Senate should pass this as quickly as possible and send it to President Trump's desk for a. Yeah, so we.

[Ryan Grim]

Want to hear that again just for fun. It's just, it's just amazing.

[Caroline Levitt]

Also helps get our fiscal house in order by carrying out the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years.

[Ryan Grim]

That's amazing.

[James Lee]

The fiscal.

[Ryan Grim]

I didn't know you could do that.

[James Lee]

So in order. You are going to be sick of the fiscal house being in order.

[Ryan Grim]

It's a really clever governing strategy. So instead of actually creating a bill that cuts the deficit as you said you would do, you create a bill and pass it through the house that blows up the deficit. But they say that it cuts the deficit.

[James Lee]

It's all about branding. You're putting diet on the sugarful yogurt. That's exactly what this is. It works. That's the American way.

[Ryan Grim]

Except the problem apparently is that the American people don't quite buy it. So this is the kobec we were trying to figure out yesterday how you say this, the Kobese letter. Americans have never been so pessimistic about future finances. US consumers expectations about their financial situation over the next year dropped to an all time low in May. So this is how do you feel like you will be doing one year from now? And you can see that. So that chart there, if you're listening to this, it's just a cliff. Like the numbers fluctuating over the years and over the last couple weeks, two months, it's just a, it's just a straight line. It looked like the chart looks like you're going to have to quickly hit that minus button and start like zooming out to give it more room to be able to encompass the depth of the pessimism that is engulfing the American public right now.

[James Lee]

If I had to, I wouldn't have bet this week on whether the big beautiful bill passed the House or not because it was just such a close call. But the fact that it was, did pass, I think bodes well, actually, going into the Senate. It's going to be very, very, very, very difficult. But what the passage in the House suggests is the Republican Party is sufficiently desperate to have some type of augmentation for the tariff policy. And they're, they're freaked out about the chart, for example, that you just showed, and other charts liked it like it. Because that's the only way you really get people on board with blowing up the deficit is when they are deficit hawks is saying, well, if nothing passes, then you are even like you're tanking the economy because you're not having, you have no reassuring legislative policy. You have no 100% tax write offs retroactive to January for building all of that stuff. And so if you don't pass this bill, cut the corporate taxes, you don't have the reshoring incentives, then you have a much worse situation. So it's a, that's a wonderful way we make laws.

[Ryan Grim]

By the way, I got some details from that Trump meeting that he had with the Republican conference from a source that, that hadn't made it into the press yet. You take some of this stuff back to your sources, they'll, they'll, they'll enjoy this. You know, they're the thing that the Freedom Caucus put out, leaked out. He said, I love the Freedom Caucus. You know, these are my guys. The fuller quote was, I love the Freedom Caucus. These are my guys. You know, give me liberty or give me death. And then he added, vote for this bill or it's gonna be death for you. And when the Freedom Caucus members leaked that out to the press, they conveniently skipped that.

[James Lee]

They gave it to the Wall Street Journal. Yeah, that's funny.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. He loves us. He loves us so much they left out that he's threatened to kill them. Metaphorically kill them. I assume he also, at one point, I forget the exact context, said he was the first gay president because he was complimenting somebody and it'll be Buchanan. Come on. Well, this is Buchanan erasure.

[James Lee]

Yeah. Okay. It's fair. Not.

[Ryan Grim]

He was married to a senator from, like, Mississippi or whatever. Like. Well, yeah, that's an interesting one. And Then he got into a back and forth with Massie. Source told me where he, he said like Massey, very smart guy, he went to mit, but look it up. Wharton, much better school, much harder to get into.

[James Lee]

I want to see Trump running his house on Tesla batteries, you know, making that, that's Massey is like an absolute genius. He's like literally a self sustaining farming.

[Ryan Grim]

Wharton, harder to get into.

[James Lee]

Incredible.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm smarter than Massey. So let's here, let's roll. Massey's. He did vote against. He's one of the few that did vote against it. Let's play his, his speech. Anna Reserves Gentleman from Massachusetts is recognized.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Mr. Speaker, I yield one and one.

[Ryan Grim]

Half minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky.

[Sagar Enjeti]

A man who is not afraid to speak his mind about fiscal responsibility.

[Ryan Grim]

Mr. Massie, gentleman from Kentucky is recognized for 90 seconds.

[Unknown]

Well, I'd love to stand here and tell the American people we can cut your taxes and we can increase spending and everything's going to be just fine. But I can't do that because I'm here to deliver a dose of reality. This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises? This bill is a debt bomb ticking. Congress can do funny math, fantasy math if it wants, but bond investors don't. And this week they sent us a message. Moody's downgraded our credit rating and the bond investors who buy our debt and finance our debt demanded higher interest rates on the 10 year note, the 20 year note and the 30 year note. What does this mean? Very soon the government will be paying $16,000 of interest, interest alone, per U.S. family. And what are we telling them? Instead of taking care of that problem, we're going to give you a sixteen hundred dollar tax break. Under the taxing and spending levels in this bill, we're going to rack up, the authors say, $20 trillion of new debt over the next 10 years. I'm telling you, it's closer to $30 trillion of new debt in the next 10 years. Mr. Speaker, we're not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We're putting coal in the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg. If something is, if something is beautiful. If something is beautiful, you don't do it after midnight. I oppose this.

[James Lee]

That's an incredible quote. It's not true.

[Ryan Grim]

That's a good one. So that Massey. Not always true. Real quickly, let's. And we gotta get to this back half of the show. But I did want to talk about this Bulwark piece real quick where Democrats are planning a whole claiming that they're going to do a bunch of changes. The funniest one that I thought from this one is that they're saying that Joe Biden operatives, they're going to attempt to blacklist them. We'll see. That would be like, like the first blacklisting of any, like, kind of mainstream operatives for anything ever in, in Democratic politics. In the, in the past, it's only been a blacklist for people who challenge the Democratic establishment. They're. And they're also going after South Carolina. Like, they're all of South Carolina.

[James Lee]

No. You mean like Clyburn?

[Ryan Grim]

No. Well, making, no, making South Carolina the first in the nation state. Like, that was done for Clyburn and for, but for really for Biden, who, you know, credits South Carolina for, for that win. And so now they're, they're looking at that again. And we'll see if. I don't, I don't, I don't think they'll actually do it, but we'll see.

[James Lee]

No, I think that's, that's actually very interesting because, and you have both of your books behind you, the, the posters for them, but we see some of this starting to happen on the right. Like, if you worked in Koch universe, you were supposed to be kind of booted from Trump circles, that you were supposed to be off the list of the administration. That didn't totally happen. But it's still kind of a, it's still not great on a resume. If you're trying to move into the mainstream conservative movement now, and you have recently, like a Koch group on your resume. But, you know, the, the idea that someone who worked for a mainstream Democratic politician campaign, presidential campaign for an establishment Democrat like Joe Biden, that that would be a problem for you. I just genuinely don't believe that that's durable. It seems to me like something that is being discussed right now, but then everyone will just pretend never happened in six months or something like that. But maybe it applies to the tippy tippy top. Like, maybe you're Jenn o' Malley Dillon. Maybe you're like other people that are up, that were up really high in that world. Maybe that's why, maybe that's why people like LaRosa are, you know, talking to breaking points, for example, to sort of say, well, we were in here and we were the same voices or we tried to be the same voices. I don't know.

[Ryan Grim]

I would think Geno Melly Dylan is done anyway, like she, you know, she ran the 20, Obama's 2012 campaign and Biden in 2020 and then this one. And she's a corporate consultant. Like that's her her main gig is her firm does corporate consulting. So I don't expect her to run another presidential campaign. And once you've run them, you don't, you don't go into, you know, you maybe, maybe she'll still do some like, side consulting work for a future presidential campaign. But that's peanuts compared to the amount of corporate money that's available to her and other Democratic operatives. But let's move, let's move to the back half of this show. This is for premium subscribers. Breaking go to breakingpoints.com this because it supports all the journalism that that we do here. And you'll also get a Matt Stoller clip that we're going to play towards the end and also a James Lee interview that he did with this. And we should Lehman trader Jared.

[James Lee]

We should also mention we're doing an AMA in the second half of the show. So we're taking some premium subscribers. So if you want to see the rest of the show, breakingpoints.com do that. You can send questions for future AMAs and you can hear all the fun stuff we discuss today.

[Ryan Grim]

And so let's talk about some of the political fallout from the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers and killing here in Washington, D.C. the other night.

[Unknown]

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[Emily Jashinsky]

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[James Lee]

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[Ryan Grim]

You're listening to an iHeart podcast.