Trump Admin Threatens to Disrupt Air Travel Over "Sanctuary" Policies | Receipts LIVE

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Bulwark – Trump Admin Threatens to Disrupt Air Travel Over "Sanctuary" Policies | Receipts LIVE

Date: May 29, 2026
Hosts: Jonathan V. Last (JVL) & Katherine Rampell
Notable Guests: Clip from Markwayne Mullin, Rep. Jim Banks

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into recent moves by the Trump administration to threaten the disruption of air travel to so-called "sanctuary cities"—a response to local governments not cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. JVL and Katherine dissect both the legal battles over a controversial slush fund proposed as reparations for supposed "weaponization" under Biden, and the policy threats to international air travel targeting blue states. The hosts cut through the political theater, examining the real motivations, collateral damage, and economic fallout, with their signature mix of wit and sharp critique.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Federal Judge Stops "Slush Fund" Over Trump Tax Leak Lawsuit (00:55–04:53)

• Katherine explains a federal judge's temporary stay on creating a $1.8B fund intended as compensation for victims of alleged "weaponization" of government, reminding listeners the lawsuit originated with Trump himself over his tax returns, leaked in 2020 during his own presidency:
  • Quote: "This whole lawsuit began with Trump suing over the leaking of his own tax returns… that happened in 2020 when—who was president?… Donald Trump." — Jonathan V. Last (02:22).
• JVL likens Trump's logic to "taking himself hostage," pointing to the self-defeating cycle of political retribution (03:10).
• Key takeaway: The fund, while branded as relief for Biden-era abuses, stems from Trump-era actions, exposing contradictions in the narrative.

2. Sanctuary City Air Travel Threats—A Tool for Retribution (05:13–09:20)

• Markwayne Mullin’s statement is played: threatens to block international flights into sanctuary cities as punishment for local resistance to federal enforcement.
  • Quote: "We shouldn't be processing international flights into their cities either, because they don't want us to enforce immigration, but they want us to process immigration at their facilities. Nothing about that makes sense to me." — Markwayne Mullin (05:13).
• JVL and Katherine critically unpack the logic:
  • The real motivation is political punishment for blue cities, not policy efficacy.
  • JVL notes: "…as much as Donald Trump and his underlings try to weaponize government against their own perceived political enemies, there are plenty of allies who are also caught up in the crossfire…" (06:00).
• Potential unintended victims: International sports organizations (e.g., FIFA), Republican representatives from these regions, tourists, and airlines.

3. Collateral Damage & Economic Fallout (07:17–14:30)

• JVL lists groups harmed by such a policy:
  • Airlines (Spirit, et al.) suffering from both increased fuel costs and now operational barriers.
  • Constituents of vulnerable Republicans who often travel internationally.
  • Local businesses, tourism, and especially Manhattan finance.
• Rampell notes projected economic loss:
  • "If you shut down international flights at Newark, it's going to cost $8 billion in revenue… those are at best guesses, but...it will siphon money out of the local economy." (13:04).
• JVL and Katherine both argue: The strategy is about inflicting economic pain (particularly on blue-state industries), not advancing legitimate immigration policy.

4. Explicitly Retaliatory Rhetoric: Rep. Jim Banks Reacts (08:54)

• Banks overtly supports using air travel disruptions as a "punishment":
  • Quote: "This is a good idea to punish those cities." — Rep. Jim Banks (09:20).
• Rampell reacts: Criticizes the lack of logic in assuming rerouting flights to far-away red states is practical, pointing out non-immigrants (e.g., American tourists, business travelers) will be hit as well.

5. Political Calculations & GOP's Internal Contradictions (14:13–16:40)

• JVL highlights: While Trump’s camp may believe there's no risk in hurting blue states (“No Republicans live there, right?”), there are GOP swing-district reps in those regions whose electoral fortunes may be damaged.
• Quote: "If Mike Lawler loses his seat, if Brian Fitzpatrick loses his seat, that is bad for Donald Trump." (14:54).
• Rampell counters: The administration seems willing to accept House losses for the sake of energizing their base around immigration and “owning the libs.”

6. The Administration’s Preference for Chaos Over Legal Process (12:29–13:04)

• JVL recalls a similar Trump 1.0 proposal (removing Global Entry privileges) was abandoned for legal reasons, but:
  • Quote: "That is no longer an obstacle for this administration. They don't care at all whether anything can survive a litigation challenge…we can cause enough chaos." (12:31).

7. Brief Segment—Economic Spin from Administration Allies (18:10–19:08)

• Kevin Hassett (clip): Spins increases in consumer spending amid high prices as proof of optimism.
  • Quote: "They're still very, very optimistic about the state of the economy..." — Kevin Hassett (18:26).
• JVL and Katherine respond with skepticism, citing consumer sentiment data at historic lows, and mock the administration’s disconnect from economic reality.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It kind of reminds me of that scene in Blazing Saddles…where the new sheriff, like, takes himself hostage?” — Jonathan V. Last (03:17), highlighting the absurdity of the Trump lawsuit.
• “We want to be conducting operations in these cities with ICE. We're not allowed to. And so in retaliation, we're not going to do border enforcement at the airport.” — Katherine Rampel (10:43), summarizing the real mechanism at play.
• “They have this…ID that only understands retribution, lashing out. They don't think through whether any of it’s politically strategic.” — Jonathan V. Last (11:09), on the administration’s mindset.

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Key Timestamps

• 00:55 – 02:22: Background on the slush fund lawsuit and Trump’s contradictory legal position.
• 05:13 – 06:50: Audio and reaction to Markwayne Mullin’s threat on air travel.
• 08:54 – 09:20: Rep. Jim Banks' endorsement of punitive measures.
• 12:29 – 13:04: Discussion on the disregard for legal feasibility and intent to sow chaos.
• 13:04 – 14:30: Economic consequences for the NY metro area industries.
• 14:30 – 16:40: Analysis of political calculation and possible impact on GOP swing districts.
• 18:10 – 19:08: Segment on economic “good news” spin by Kevin Hassett.

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Tone and Style

The discussion is sharp, humorous, and heavily critical of Trump-era political tactics, mixing serious policy analysis with irreverent asides, pop culture references, and lighthearted banter about New York’s airports. Throughout, the hosts maintain their blunt, skeptical stance toward both political retribution masquerading as policy and attempts to gaslight the public about economic reality.

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Transcript

[Jonathan V. Last]

Foreign.

[Katherine Rampel]

Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my Bulwark colleague, Katherine Rampel, author of the Receipts newsletter on Receipts Live. If you are not signed up for Catherine's newsletter, do yourself a favor. Go and go and get it right now. Go to the bulwark.com sign up. Get Katherine Rampel's receipts in your inbox. It's fantastic. Catherine, my friend, we are going to talk about Mark Wayne McMullen in his attack on my beloved Newark Airport in a moment.

[Jonathan V. Last]

But first, beloved only to you, I think, no one else in America.

[Katherine Rampel]

Newark is the queen of the New York City metro airports. Would you not agree? Okay. We will rank the airport at some point in this episode.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Okay.

[Katherine Rampel]

First.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Okay. I mean, they all suck, but sure. Yeah.

[Katherine Rampel]

Brand new news. Trump administration judge freezes effort to create a $1.8 billion slush fund. The slush fund from hell, or whatever it is we're calling it. We have a judge who has issued a stay here because a group of people who said that they were unfairly attacked by the Trump administration have filed to a claim saying, hey, we will be discriminated against and not be allowed to seek compensation for what we've gotten had happened to us by. By the executive branch because of partisan reasons. And the judge has said, I'm just going to read from the order. It prohibits transferring of money to the fund, the consideration of any claims submitted to the fund, and the dispersing of any funds from the fund. And so she doesn't want this thing to even get filled with yet because she doesn't want to lose control of the dollars before she adjudicates this. Yay.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah. I mean, that's good. I will. Before we get into the meat of this temporary stay or whatever, I will add that even though this fund is ostensibly about paying reparations of some kind to the victims of Biden's supposed supposed weaponization.

[Mark Wayne McMullen]

Sleepy.

[Katherine Rampel]

Joe Biden crime family sleepy.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Exact. The settlement itself is over something that happened during Trump won. Right. I feel like this often, this, like, little important detail often gets lost in discussions of this, and I want to make sure it doesn't get lost, which is that this whole lawsuit began with Trump suing over the leaking of his own tax returns, which is illegal, don't get me wrong. But that happened in 2020 when who was president? People always forget. It's like one of the great mysteries of America. Like that in 2020, it was Donald Trump. So that weaponization, I guess, is something that he himself is tacitly admitting that he Did. I don't know.

[Katherine Rampel]

But yes, the government against himself so that he could sue the government led by himself to settle the suit with himself.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah, pretty much. It kind of reminds me of that scene in Blazing Saddles. Do you remember where the new sheriff, like, takes himself hostage? Yeah, a little bit like that.

[Katherine Rampel]

That's a good bit.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Except less self aware, perhaps. So, yes, that's a good bit. It's very good. Obviously, that there is at least this pause. And this is in the case, I believe the judge made this decision in one of the several cases that has been filed against this anti weaponization fund. This was a case brought by the Democracy Fund. And their plaintiffs include various people who claim that the Trump administration has weaponized government against them. So they are sent. That's. That's part of their argument about standing here, that this, this money should not be going. Not. Should be. Should. Excuse me, should not be going out to people who claim to have been victims of Biden, given that they themselves say that the Trump administration has been pursuing political prosecutions and otherwise against its own enemy. So that's, again, some of the important context here. But I think this is very good. I know you've written a lot about this fund, this slush fund. And one thing that I think you have emphasized that I also want to emphasize is that this is about changing the incentives for other people who might be willing be considering breaking the laws. And that is so important to emphasize in any discussion. It's not just about unfairness. It's not just about cronyism and corruption. It's also about incentivizing more crime.

[Katherine Rampel]

Yeah, no, that's, that's the big problem. Well, we'll see. Maybe, you know, we, we don't get good news around here very often, so I am happy to simply accept this and be grateful for it. Okay, here is Mark Wayne explaining what he is planning to do to the great city of Newark.

[Mark Wayne McMullen]

We've drawn up plans to say, listen, in these sanctuary cities where the local radical left Democrats aren't allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn't be processing international flights into their cities either, because they don't want us to enforce immigration, but they want us to process immigration at their facilities. Nothing about that makes sense to me.

[Jonathan V. Last]

So there's a lot that doesn't make sense to me either about any of this.

[Katherine Rampel]

But I'll let you begin, I guess. I mean, do we have to pretend that this is about anything other than punishing Democratic municipalities? Do we have to pretend that

[Jonathan V. Last]

well, do we have to pretend that? I think that may be the motivation. Whether that is the ultimate effect is a different question altogether. Right. Like, even if the goal is to exact retribution against blue cities, Blue states, Democrats, etc. Those will be far from the only victims here. And. And again, this is like another theme of Trumpism, that as much as Donald Trump and his underlings try to weaponize government against their own perceived political enemies, there are plenty of allies who are also caught up in the crossfire in, like, completely foreseeable ways, whether we're talking about the tariffs or immigration or anything else. And that is exactly what is happening here. Right. Like, you have FIFA, nice buddies of Donald Trump.

[Katherine Rampel]

In fact, they gave him a peace prize.

[Jonathan V. Last]

The first annual peace prize, of course.

[Katherine Rampel]

Who do you think will get the second one?

[Jonathan V. Last]

I don't know. I. I think that Donald Trump is going for a double header here. That would be my guess.

[Katherine Rampel]

Do you think there will be another one? I.

[Mark Wayne McMullen]

If.

[Katherine Rampel]

Is there a couchy couchy bet that I could go make somewhere on just FIFA ever give out another peace prize?

[Jonathan V. Last]

I don't know. I think you can request a market on that. So you could try.

[Katherine Rampel]

I'd work on that.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Either way. FIFA, you know, notoriously upright standing citizens of FIFA. No corruption there. Whatso. I know we all feel very bad for them for being victimized by all of this, but they will be victimized by all of this. Right. If they're canceling international flights into Newark. Yeah. Just as we have these soccer matches happening. That could be problematic. Other potential victims of all of this who might see themselves normally as Trump's allies. I don't know, people like Mike Lawler or Brian Fitzpatrick who are in these swing districts, you know, Republicans who are hanging on for dear life, who happen to have constituents who probably fly through Newark. Yeah. Could be a real problem if they want to take their vacations this summer to Italy or Ireland or anywhere else that requires international travel. You know, not to mention the airline industry. Like, I'm pretty sure that the ghost of Spirit Airlines would love a word here in all of this. Like, he's already murdering plenty of allies through his economic policy. You know, through, like, strictly economic type actions, things like spiking jet fuel as a result of his Iran war, and then layer on top of it, like, actual prohibitions on their ability to conduct their operations. Yeah. That's going to be problematic. And you've already seen the airline industry weigh in and be like, please, dear friend, do not do this to us. And whether they'll Listen, I don't know for counterpoint.

[Katherine Rampel]

Oh, here's Congressman Banks.

[Jim Banks]

I think it's a great idea. I mean, you think about blocking international flights into sanctuary cities that are harboring illegal immigrants who, many of them, who are violent criminals, send those international flights to red state cities that aren't sanctuary cities and the country will be safer and better off for it. I think Secretary Mullen is onto something here. This is a good idea to punish those cities.

[Katherine Rampel]

Oh, he just says it. Punishing. So a couple things here that strike me. The first is that Jim Banks seems to think that people from foreign countries will just accept being flown to Texas when they want to go to New York.

[Jonathan V. Last]

I mean, it's a hop, skip and a jump away.

[Katherine Rampel]

I, I don't understand that, frankly. But also, again, I, I just want to unpack. The idea here isn't sanctuary cities like Newark don't enforce immigration. And so we can't allow planes to land there because illegal immigrants then won't be rounded up. That's not, that's not the proposition. Which is what it kind of sounds like. Right? It kind of sounds like, well, all of these illegals are flowing in through the plains and they're going to the sanctuary cities, so why don't we cut them off right there? That's not what this is. This is, we want to be conducting operations in these cities with ice. We're not allowed to. And so in retaliation, we're not going to do border enforcement at the airport. And because we don't do border enforcement at the airport, no international flights can, well, sorry, international flights can land there. They simply can't process anybody. And so everybody on the international flight has to stay on the plane or get on a new plane and land and leave.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah.

[Katherine Rampel]

And that is the position here.

[Jonathan V. Last]

That would not only punish the immigrants, legal or otherwise, who are being insinuated, as you know, invading our country through these airports. There are Americans who fly internationally, particularly in the summer during their vacations. They are going to get screwed over by all of this as well. But nobody seems to think through any of the actions that the administration has taken on its economic impacts or its political impacts or anything else. It's like they have this, like, ID that only understands retribution, lashing out. They don't think through whether any of it's politically strategic. They don't think through whether any of the potential victims are going to be their own friends or their own industries that might matter to their constituencies. None of that stuff is, like, even on the table. And nobody who's around the president, who presumably is smart enough to anticipate some of these effects, seems brave enough to explain any of them to the president. Instead, they go on Fox News and speak to their audience of one and talk about what a brilliant idea all of this is. And if you get this feedback loop where somebody has one bad idea, maybe the president, maybe Mullen, I don't know who originated this particular stupid idea, although I will say there was a version of this that was proposed in Trump 1.0 as well. In that case, it was about, I think, taking away global entry from people

[Katherine Rampel]

who make people wait in lines.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah. And they didn't. My recollection is they did not ultimately do it, probably because it was not on sound legal footing. But that is no longer an obstacle for this administration. They don't care at all whether anything can survive a litigation challenge, a court challenge. They don't bother. They just figure we can cause enough chaos. In the meantime, the courts are slow, that even if it gets shut down in the end, ultimately it doesn't matter. We've gotten our intended effect to happen anyway.

[Katherine Rampel]

Yeah. So I think this is, I mean, again, I think the main goal here is economic pain. There was a story from one travel group saying, oh, if you shut down international flights of Newark, it's going to cost $8 billion in revenue. I am not willing to stipulate to that. These things are at best guesses and they're all done with. They know what they want to say. The answer is it'll cost a lot of money, though, and it will siphon money out of the local economy because you get a lot of tourism coming in and a lot of business travel coming in internationally. And so this is money that is needed. I mean, tourism isn't the number one industry in New York City, but it's not insignificant. And especially at the level of finance, which is the big industry in New York, you have a lot of people flying back and forth to Europe and everywhere else. It's kind of important. And so that's what this is about. This is about creating economic harm for the key industries in the New York metro area. And it's safe to do for them because they're all blue states, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, all blue states. And so they.

[Jonathan V. Last]

No Republicans live in any of them. Right? No Republicans.

[Katherine Rampel]

They don't care about the Republicans there, though. Right. I mean, this is the again, it's, it's just about power. And so they have no power to lose there. And so why not try to impose pain in Order to get what they want.

[Jonathan V. Last]

No, they have power to lose there again, there are Republicans running in swing districts that are part of Republicans very, very thin margin in the House. You have people like Mike Lawler, Plum Kane, I guess.

[Katherine Rampel]

Right?

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah. So you know these things. Yeah. Kane, if he's. Well, we don't. The mysterious.

[Katherine Rampel]

He's even still on this planet.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Who knows, who knows what's going on weekend with Bernie, Mr. King there anyway. Yeah, there are Republicans who stand to be hurt who, you know, look, we should care about whether people are hurt by idiotic policies regardless of their political allegiances. But Donald Trump does not. But he should care about people within his own coalition who are going to be hurt by this and who will. And that pain will redound bound back to Donald Trump. Right. If Mike Lawler loses his seat, if Brian Fitzpatrick loses his seat, that is bad for Donald Trump. That increases the likelihood of just as a for instance impeachment happening once again next year. All of those things should be at least part of the whole, the hard, you know, the cold, hard Machiavellian calculus in all of this. Like forget about prioritizing the public good or anything lofty like that. If you just care about what is in Donald Trump's own very, very narrow political interest, this is disastrous for it. And again, no one seems able to even make that very self interested argument to the President because presumably they're worried about him lashing out at them. And he's not known as somebody who takes bad news or disagreement in stride. He is not looking for a team of rivals, to put it mildly. He's looking for a bunch of yes men. And those yes men ultimately enable many of his worst political instincts both from like a public good perspective and from a narrow political self interest perspective as well.

[Katherine Rampel]

Yeah, you know, I'm not sure I buy that. I think they've priced in the loss of the House to a large degree and they can. My guess is that they balance this as we're showing we're fighting, it's talking about something other than Iran. It reminds our voters that we're talking about immigration and that we're trying to hurt brown people and libs and that that is that trade off outbalances, whatever the losses are for like Mike Lawler

[Jonathan V. Last]

and Tom Kane maybe is my guess underwater on immigration.

[Katherine Rampel]

So another one on that too. Yeah, you're not wrong. Yeah, you're not wrong. Listen, I promise people we would rank the New York metro area airports, we will do that. We're going to save that to the End. I just want to very briefly tell people. So we are running. We've never done this before, a monster sale for Bulwark plus membership. Literally never done. We're getting 50 off. I. I was not in favor of this sale, but we're doing it. And it's limited. It runs out this weekend. If you want to join and get half off, go to the bulwark.com sanity. That's the bulwark.com sanity. It's 50 off, an annual membership. Come do it because you will get not only Catherine and her great newsletter every week, but me too. Both of us. You get the two of us. What a bargain.

[Jonathan V. Last]

And Sanity, apparently. I love that URL.

[Katherine Rampel]

Yeah, I'm not sure that I'm where you go for sanity. Catherine will give you sanity. Me, not so much. All right, so our favorite punching bag, Kevin Hassett, came out to explain to people why everything is going great in the economy.

[Mark Wayne McMullen]

The thing that I've seen when I look at credit card data and other things that I can get for the private sector is that while people have been spending more money at gas stations, they've been spending more money at everything on everything else, which means that they're still very, very optimistic about the state of the economy. And they should be. If you look at GDP now, right now it's north of 4%.

[Katherine Rampel]

So, yes, fuel costs are high, but costs on everything else are getting high, too. And so that's evidence that people are actually really confident about inflation, is evidence of consumer confidence. Catherine, can you believe he says that with a straight face?

[Jonathan V. Last]

If you.

[Katherine Rampel]

How does somebody do that?

[Jonathan V. Last]

Okay, if you want to take the most charitable interpretation of what he is saying, he is saying a version of people say that they hate the economy, but, like, their actions speak louder than words and they're still spending and that spending is a revealed preference, that it suggests that they actually are confident enough to spend money. What? He's so that, like there is a version of this argument that I have heard more sane people make. However, he is leaving out a lot of key details. It's not just that people, like, say that they hate the economy, which is a thing that you and I talk about, it seems like every week because we get data pretty regularly suggest, like, I think we have some consumer confidence data that we can show if we get a chance. Yeah, that like, well, this consumer sentiment, this is the University of Michigan line go down. Line go down. It is at an all time low. And there are a lot of, again, like normal independent economist types who have been a little bit perplexed by this. Like, is the economy actually worse than it was during the Great Recession during the, you know, early 80s? Double dip recessions like, it does seem impressive.