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- [00:00]
Dr. Tori Waxman
Is your dog's food created to maximize your dog's quality of life or to extend the food's shelf life. It's time to make the switch to sundaes. Sundaes was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed sundaes air dried real food made in a human grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and your family. Every bite of sundaes is clean and made from real meat, fruits and vegg with no kibble. That means no weird ingredients you can't pronounce and no fillers because your dog deserves food made with care, not in the interest of cost cutting. You just scoop and serve. No freezer, no thawing or prep, no mess. Just nutrient rich clean food that fuels their happiest, healthiest days so you get more of them to share together. So go right now to sundaysfordogs.com acast30 and get 30% off your first three orders. Or you can use code acast acast30 at checkout. That's 30% off your first order at Sundays for dogs.com acast30 or use code acast30 at checkout.
- [01:19]
Jason Palmer
The economist. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Figuring out the plans of Kim Jong Un, North Korea's God King, is a famously speculative business, but we look closely at how he may be playing an early game of positioning his daughter as his successor. And for more than 20 years, Mark Tully was the BBC's Delhi bureau chief, insisting on balance through times in which that was all but impossible, our obituary's editor looks back on the career of a man who came to be known as the Voice of India. First up, though, America reached a very dangerous place this week. Not just with the killing of Alex Preddy at the barrel of a federal agent's gun in Minneapolis, just two weeks after Renee Goode died the same way. And not just with the administration's vilification of those citizens and the plain misdirection about who was at fault. The peril was also boringly yet essentially in Congress. Would a big funding package for the ICE immigration agency get through with all of this going on? In the end, there was a subtle shift. Democrats pushed back, threatened a government shutdown and won temporarily, at least, the only leverage Americans have seen recently. The only institutional check on the administration's immigration agenda. In Minneapolis, there's a new boss of that agenda, Tom Homan, the so called border czar. With this generation's version of mistakes were made.
- [03:20]
Tom Homan
Nothing's ever perfect. Anything can be improved on. And what we've been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient. By the book.
- [03:32]
Jason Palmer
This is subtle too. A conciliatory tone, a nod to, if not a promise of holding agents to account.
- [03:39]
Tom Homan
I want to make it clear. Licensed CBP officers are performing their duties in a challenging environment under tremendous circumstances, but they're trying to do it with professionalism. If they don't, they'll be dealt with.
- [03:56]
Jason Palmer
These are the signs that Donald Trump's paramilitary approach to immigration is losing favor. Jacob Fry, the mayor of Minneapolis, put it in stark. The Operation Metro surge needs to end. This kind of conduct and siege needs to stop. Not just in Minneapolis, it needs to stop. Nationwide, three in five Americans now agree that ICE's operations are too forceful. Minneapolis has shown them that there's something more fundamental than immigration going on here, something even deeper than mere partisanship.
- [04:32]
Charlotte Howard
A big question throughout Trump's presidency has been when Congress would show any sign of life. And it has in two ways.
- [04:40]
Jason Palmer
Charlotte Howard is our New York bureau chief and a host of Checks and Balance, our sister show on American Politics.
- [04:47]
Charlotte Howard
One is more Republicans have voiced concern over Trump's immigration tactics. And the second way is that Democrats are trying to force President Trump to the table with a threat of a shutdown, which for now has been averted. And they're going to get two more weeks of funding for the Department of Homeland Security while they try to wrangle over restrictions to restrain what has become, in Democrats eyes, an out of control deportation campaign.
- [05:18]
Jason Palmer
So this is the sign of life you mentioned, a sign that the legislative branch might in this instance be providing a meaningful check on Mr. Trump's power as regards ICE.
- [05:28]
Charlotte Howard
So I think, as is always the case with this president, there is an escalation, a crisis of some kind, an outrage of some kind. And then the news historically has moved on. I mean, remember when Maduro was seized from Venezuela and brought into US Cust? That seems like a long time ago at this point, but there's reason to remain concerned, I think from the events in Minneapolis, because they really illuminate a vulnerability in America's democracy where the system of providing checks from one branch of government to another has not really shown to be as robust as many people might think.
- [06:08]
Jason Palmer
And at the mention of Minneapolis, the kind of the locus of the outrage this week, what's been going on there.
- [06:15]
Charlotte Howard
Well, there was big change this week in the leadership of the president's efforts in Minneapolis. Greg Bevino, who is this bombastic former customs agent who now leads Customs Borders Protection, he is out. He seems to have been demoted and sent to California. Tom Homan, President Trump's immigration czar, is in. Tom Homan is someone who is much more focused than Greg Bevino has been on trying to deport people with criminal record in the past few months. According to the Cato Institute, which is hardly a Lefty think tank, only 5% of those brought into custody have had a record of violent convictions. So they really have been casting a wide net. And it looks like Tom Homan is trying to strike a more conciliatory tone with the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Fry. I would note, though, that it's not clear how big a pivot this is for Minneapolis or for other cities. There remains a huge increase in funding for ICE that was authorized by the big Beautiful bill last summer. The number of immigration agents has roughly doubled in the past year. There is no broader change in Donald Trump's promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. So this is a de escalation from a situation which you had federal agents shooting an unarmed nurse in the back. But it is not a massive overhaul of Trump's broader immigration agenda.
- [07:48]
Jason Palmer
But in fairness, that is what Mr. Trump has promised to do across two administrations. He has a mandate to deal with the immigration issue as he sees it.
- [07:57]
Charlotte Howard
You're right, of course, that immigration has always been a very strong issue for him, and he campaigned on this promise. I think it's possible to overread that mandate in a few ways. One is three in five Americans already are saying that immigration officers tactics are too forceful, and there is not a mandate to pursue this campaign in this way. The second is that the Trump administration is seeking a dramatic expansion in power for ICE in ways that are being litigated now in courts, with plaintiffs arguing that this campaign impinges on basic constitutional rights. Whether it's their First Amendment right to protest, whether it is their Fourth Amendment right to not have agents forcibly enter a home with just a slip of paper signed by another agent. Whether it is 10th amendment questions over state sovereignty. And then there is a bigger challenge. I think that has been illuminated by the events of the past month. Donald Trump is ignoring court orders. There was a judge just this week that pointed out that he has ignored about 100 court orders just in the month of January and So the ability of the courts to hold this presentation, President, to account is really being tested. And then there's now a big question of whether other branches of government can move effectively to restrain a president who is redefining the borders of the executive branch's power. And this is a big test for the courts, and it is a big test for Congress. So that's what I think many Americans are waiting to see.
- [09:29]
Jason Palmer
And it would appear, temporarily at least, that Congress has done something to constrain the president here by cutting a deal with the specter of a shutdown.
- [09:37]
Charlotte Howard
Yes, I think it would be helpful if some Republicans joined Democrats in seeking a way to set clear guardrails for the activities of ICE and CBP agents. I would say that there's a federal judge in Minnesota who this week noted that ICE is ignoring court orders. And so as Congress thinks about how to restrain this president, there's also a question of how effectively the courts can enforce orders that they issue. And there I would say that it's very clear that if the president continues to ignore those, that will become an argument that escalates to the Supreme Court. So, on two fronts, both in the courts and in Congress, we're in some ways in uncharted territory. And it really is up to the leaders within those institutions to show some of the courage and principle that has been displayed by citizens on the streets of Minneapolis.
- [10:36]
Jason Palmer
And it's easy to speculate that what citizens were doing on the streets of Minneapolis is ultimately what prompted Mr. Trump's de escalation, as he called it. Climb down, as others have called it.
- [10:47]
Charlotte Howard
The people in Minneapolis deserve enormous credit. They've been extremely organized, bringing food to their neighbors, helping people get to school, documenting. Of course, we wouldn't know the details of some of these shootings if there were not citizens who were documenting these horrific incidents. I would say that there is a time limit on peaceful protests. Citizens protest because they want leaders to act. It was one week after Selma in the civil rights era that LBJ Lyndon B. Johnson addressed the joint session of Congress and called for the Civil Rights act as a response to the moral outrage over the violence in Selma. So protests don't exist for the sake of protests. Protests exist so that people in positions of power move. And so that's what we're waiting to see and hopefully will see from Congress.
- [11:43]
Jason Palmer
I mean, how much do you expect that? How much do you think the time limited protest notion will affect the direction of travel here, which a lot of people are pointing out is troubling?
- [11:54]
Charlotte Howard
Going on recent history. I would not place too much confidence in the ability of Congress to do anything. However, I do think that this past month in Minneapolis has sent a shock through the American public and we are now in a situation in which Congress may act. I think there will be more protests in other cities. Someone somewhere, I think is going to break a window at some point. And that is the big risk, that Trump uses that as an excuse to assert that he is the president of law and order and that he has the authority to help bring safety and order to cities. That risk spiraling out of control. That has always been part of his promise to Americans that he will restore the America they knew and one in which they feel safe. So I don't think this is a question that's settled. There are big issues moving through the courts. I don't think it's settled politically. We don't know what will happen in other cities. The immigration campaign is going to ramp up with this additional funding. So I think that it's not at all a situation in which because Greg Bevino is out in Minneapolis and Tom Homan is in, that everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.
- [13:08]
Jason Palmer
Charlotte, thanks very much for your time.
- [13:10]
Charlotte Howard
Thank you.
- [13:14]
Jason Palmer
Charlotte will be joining the other hosts of Checks and Balance with a much wider look at the ICE question in America, about just how much of what we're seeing is actually about immigration, about how much all of it looks like a paramilitary force that answers only to the President and about how America has been in exactly this position before. For our devoted subscribers, checks and balances out later today and every Friday.
- [13:44]
Dr. Tori Waxman
Is your dog's food created to maximize your dog's quality of life or to extend the food's shelf life? It's time to make the switch to Sundays. Sundaes was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed sundaes, air dried real food made in a human grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and your family. Every bite of sundaes is clean and made from real meat, fruits and veggies with no kibble. That means no weird ingredients you can't pronounce and no fillers because your dog deserves food made with care, not in the interest of cost cutting. You just scoop and serve. No freezer, no thawing or prep, no mess. Just nutrient rich clean food that fuels their happiest, healthiest days so you get more of them to share together so go right now to sundaysfordogs.com acast30 and get 30% off your first three orders. Or you can use code acast30 at checkout. That's 30% off your first order at sundaysfordogs.com acda acast30 or use code acast30 at checkout.
- [15:06]
Noah Snyder
At the start of the new year, North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Un paid a visit to a very special place in Pyongyang, the grand mausoleum where his father and grandfather lie in eternal rest.
- [15:19]
Jason Palmer
Noah Snyder is our East Asia bureau chief.
- [15:23]
Noah Snyder
Standing next to him on this visit was a young woman. It was her first time in this sacred space. She is believed to be the dictator's daughter, but we don't know a whole lot else about her. She stands in the pictures released by the North Korean government directly to her father's right. She's wearing a Bordeaux blazer with a golden brooch. She looks youthful but serious, standing in front of a crowd of generals draped in medals and older men in suits and ties. She's believed to be in her early teens, but even her name is a matter of some debate. She's typically referred to as Kim Joo Ae, and that name comes to us courtesy of the former basketball star Dennis Rodman, who claims to have held her when she was a baby on a visit to Pyongyang in 2013. But a recently defected North Korean diplomat says her name is in fact Kim Joo Ye. Kim Jong Un is still in his early 40s, but the speculation is that he is preparing this girl, Kim Ju a Kim Ju Hye, to one day do his job.
- [16:31]
Jason Palmer
Oh, I do love speculation about North Korea. But why is that the speculation?
- [16:37]
Noah Snyder
I should preface this with the disclaimer we used for all reporting and all analysis on North Korea, which is that there is a degree of speculation involved. The regime is quite closed and quite secretive. But this child, whom North Korean official newspapers refer to as the respected Child, showed up at her father's side for the first time in late 2022 at the site of an intercontinental ballistic missile test launch. Speculation at the time went that perhaps Kim Jong Un was seeking to burnish his image, to show his people that he was not only a nuclear arms strongman, but also a loving family man. But in the years since, the respected child's appearances have become more and more frequent. And just as the frequency of her appearances has increased, so too has the weight of those appearances. She's showing up at ever more important gatherings, not only the internal gatherings, like this appearance at the mausoleum but also important diplomatic events. A reception at the Russian embassy in Pyongyang, and she even went along for a big visit that Kim Jong Un took to Beijing late last year.
- [17:45]
Jason Palmer
So it's the fact that she is increasingly in the room where it happens that makes this more than just bring your daughter to work day.
- [17:52]
Noah Snyder
That's right, Jason. And there's a lot of symbolism that is meant to lend her a particular kind of authority. It's not by chance that her first appearance was next to the missiles, the nuclear weapons that the regime considers its ultimate source of security. There are other signs. Military officers tend to defer to her when she walks into a room. State media has mentioned that she. She has a favorite white horse. And North Koreans would know that the white horse was an important part of the Kim Il Sung personality cult, an important symbol in the founding mythology of the Kim family regime. So all of this adds up to a pretty strong case that she's being prepared for higher office or higher duties of some kind. And South Korean officials, who I speak to increasingly think that she is, in fact, being groomed to be the next successor, to be the fourth generation ruler of the Kim dynasty. And there's even speculation that her status could become formal at the next North Korean party congress, which is held every five years. And the next one is expected to happen sometime this year.
- [18:59]
Jason Palmer
But insofar as North Korea works in a monarchy kind of way, it's a patrilineal one.
- [19:04]
Noah Snyder
You're right, Jason. And it's a deeply patriarchal society as well. In the picture of her in the mausoleum, she's standing before a sea of mostly male faces. So a lot of observers wonder whether North Korean society, the North Korean elite, could really accept a female ruler now under Kim Jong Un, who, it's worth saying, is a millennial, who was educated in Switzerland, women have gained some more prominence in his regime. They've taken on pretty high level roles. Effectively, the second most powerful person in the country is his sister. North Korea also has its first ever female foreign minister. But still, there is a future vulnerability for the dynastic that comes from having a female leader. Future offspring of a female Kim ruler might find it harder to take power if they can't show that they're descended via the male line from the founding fathers. Kim Jong Un is rumored to have a son as well. Perhaps some cynics would say he's just using the girl as a decoy until his son suitably matures.
- [20:10]
Jason Palmer
And what's your take on that? If we're gonna continue in this realm of speculation?
- [20:16]
Noah Snyder
Well, I think what all of this shows is what Kim Jong Un is really worried about. And the regime has built up its nuclear and ballistic missile arsenal substantially since his succession a decade and a half ago. So that makes the regime a little bit less worried about foreign powers invading or outside threats undermining the stability of the regime. And I think what. What this shows is that what they're really worried about are threats from within, threats from inside the system to the continuity of Kim family rule. And that's why I think he's starting to prepare much earlier than in previous generations. Neither he nor his father were really ever put on public display until they became adults, until they were much closer to the actual succession stage. And for Kim Jong Un, he became the clear successor only after his father suffered a stroke in 2008. And that left him very little time before his father died in 2011 to really consolidate power. So after he ascended to the throne, essentially, he ended up having to do some pretty nasty stuff. He had his uncle executed and his half brother assassinated in a wild plot in a Malaysian airport. So he may be thinking that, but next time around, it's better to give his kids a bit of a head start.
- [21:38]
Jason Palmer
Noah, thanks very much for joining us.
- [21:40]
Noah Snyder
Thank you, Jason.
- [22:00]
Ann Ro
Mark Talley didn't do very well at theological college.
- [22:05]
Jason Palmer
Ann Ro is the Economist's obituaries editor.
- [22:08]
Ann Ro
He had always been keen to be a priest, but once he got there, he found he was a lot keener on wine, women and song. He eventually left without being ordained, so it was rather embarrassing for him when he was in India, where he always felt very big and clumsy anyway, that people would rush up to shake his hand and children would scamper after him. And he was seen, more or less by many people as a saint, rather along the lines of Mother Teresa. But the reason he was given this respect was because he was the BBC's chief reporter from India for more than 20 years, and he was taken as a voice of truth in the country. He told people all the things that the government didn't want them to hear. They were informed about, for example, the Bhopal chemical disaster, the riots at Ayodhya, where Mark Tully himself was involved and was beaten, put in a room and caught up in it in the most terrifying way. He said it was the worst thing he ever faced in India. And ordinary Indians also learned about the attack by Hindu fundamentalists on the Sikh golden Temple at Amritsar and about the assassination of Indira Gandhi soon afterwards. All these stories which otherwise might not have reached their ears. He was in fact broadcasting to 50 million people and many of them were illiterate. They didn't read newspapers, they relied on the radio. His broadcasts were turned into six different Indian languages. And on the other end of the broadcast, of course, were the people of Britain hearing about India and what was going on, and not simply in the great offices of state. But Mark Tully made a great effort to get into the villages, the tea houses, the railway stations, anywhere where he could interview ordinary people and send their thoughts on what was happening back to England. India had much to offer the world. It had a culture, a literature, a spirituality that was extraordinary. And yet the legacy of colonialism was still strong. Indians still seem to believe, especially among the elites, that the Western way was the way to follow. The way to progress was to go full sail for consumerism. And consumerism was based on greed. He could see nothing worthy about it at all. And he wished Indians would have confidence in their own culture to progress in their own way. The aspect of India that most worried him when he was there was religious tension. He'd managed to avoid the bloodbath of partition in 1947 because he had been at school in England. But his experiences at Ayodhya, where he was beaten up and where he saw the riots that followed between Muslims and Hindus, had scarred him deeply. He felt that the most important thing about an independent India and the most important guarantor of its independence was secularism, the fact that the state took no side between Hindus and Muslims, but that all religions were equal in its eyes. He could see this was changing, especially under Narendra Modi, with the rise of Indutva. He was extremely worried about what would happen to India. He had a terrible bust up with the director general of the the BBC, John Burt. He decided that he could no longer stay. So he resigned in 1994. But he couldn't bear to leave India. Indeed, he'd taken a pledge that he wouldn't do that. He'd been head of the Delhi office for more than 20 years and he decided that although he wouldn't leave broadcasting, it would not be for the BBC and he would stay in Delhi and successfully presented a program called Something Understood, which was about faith and spirituality, which put prose and poetry of music together and was something for listeners that gave them a sense of the divine. He was very upset when it finished. So in the end, his karma seemed to have worked and he had come back from India with an extremely strong sense of karma. That was the legacy of India on his own faith. He was aware that his life had formed the shape of a circle and he didn't think that he'd done that. His fate had done that. So he'd been born in India and he was determined to die in India. He had wanted to be a priest for a long time, since the beginning. And in the end, in a way, he became one. In his end was his beginning.
- [28:09]
Jason Palmer
Ann Rowe on Mark Tully, who's died aged 90. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence the show's editors are Chris Impey and Jack Gill. Our deputy editor is Sarah Larnuke and our sound designer is Will Rowe, with help this week from Mark Burrows. Our senior producers are Rory Galloway and Henrietta McFarlane. And our senior creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Jonathan Day and Anne Hanna. And our assistant producer is Kunal Patel, with extra production help this week from Emily Elias and Alize Jean Baptiste. We'll all see you back here tomorrow. For a little change to your weekend intelligence programming. We'll be introducing season three of Boss Class, our series on work and management. This time it's all about generative AI, whether and how to use it at work and whether and how to worry about its use at work.