Wrongly Deported, DOGE And Agency Data, Harvard Defies The White House

Summary

Up First from NPR – April 15, 2025

Hosts: Leila Fadel, Steve Inskeep, Michel Martin, A Martinez

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1. Wrongful Deportation Ignored by the Trump Administration

Overview: The episode opens with a troubling case where the Trump administration appears to be neglecting a Supreme Court order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident wrongfully deported to an El Salvadoran prison. This situation raises serious concerns about the administration's adherence to judicial directives and human rights obligations.

Key Points:

• Supreme Court Order Ignored: The Supreme Court mandated the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but the Trump administration shows no intention of complying.

• El Salvador's Stance: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has refused to release Garcia, citing sovereignty over his citizens.

• Accusations and Defense: The administration has labeled Garcia as a member of the MS-13 gang, a claim his attorney vehemently denies due to lack of public evidence.

Notable Quotes:

• Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff (03:12): "It's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens as a starting point."

• Ki.load Garcia’s Attorney (04:33): "This case goes beyond just this one man and could have significant implications for over 200 migrants wrongfully deported without due process."

Implications: The refusal to comply with the Supreme Court’s order not only jeopardizes Garcia’s life but also sets a concerning precedent for the treatment of migrants and the respect for judicial authority. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is challenging the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act, arguing it undermines due process and American values.

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2. DOGE and Data Breaches at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

Overview: A whistleblower at the NLRB, Daniel Baroulis, has exposed alarming security breaches orchestrated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk’s cost-cutting group. These actions have compromised sensitive data and raised questions about DOGE's broader intentions within federal agencies.

Key Points:

• Unauthorized Access and Data Deletion: DOGE demanded high-level access to the NLRB’s cloud servers, leading to suspicious data deletions and the deactivation of security tools.

• Potential Compromise of Sensitive Information: Baroulis observed unusual data transfers and unauthorized login attempts, possibly indicating a data breach.

• Wider Implications: Similar incidents have been reported across other federal agencies, including the Treasury Department and the IRS, suggesting a systemic issue with DOGE’s management of government data.

Notable Quotes:

• Daniel Baroulis, Whistleblower (06:17): "There was a big spike in data leaving the agency, something that almost never happens. Security tools were turned off, and records were deleted."

• Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff (06:53): "Logs don't just disappear. Tools don't just turn themselves off randomly. Everything in a computer has a cause and effect."

Implications: The infiltration of DOGE into federal agencies poses a significant threat to national security and the integrity of government operations. With multiple court cases and ongoing investigations, the potential misuse of sensitive data by DOGE could undermine public trust and jeopardize critical governmental functions.

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3. Harvard University Defies the White House Over Funding Demands

Overview: In a bold stand for academic freedom, Harvard University has refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demands to alter its hiring, admissions, and diversity policies. In response, the administration has frozen over $2.2 billion in federal contracts and grants, escalating tensions between higher education institutions and the federal government.

Key Points:

• Administration’s Demands: The Trump administration seeks Harvard to implement measures such as screening international students for anti-Semitism, eliminating diversity programs, and ensuring admissions are based solely on merit without race-based preferences.

• Harvard’s Response: Harvard’s President Alan Garber emphasized that no government should dictate a university’s academic and hiring practices, highlighting the importance of intellectual freedom and civil rights.

• Financial Ramifications: The administration’s freeze on funding threatens not only Harvard’s research initiatives but also the broader landscape of higher education, with similar threats extended to other universities.

Notable Quotes:

• Alan Garber, Harvard President (10:26): "No government, regardless of which party is in power, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire."

• Trump Administration Representative (10:26): "Harvard's statement today reinforces a troubling entitlement mindset that's endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges."

Implications: The confrontation between Harvard and the Trump administration underscores a pivotal struggle over academic autonomy and federal influence. The potential withdrawal of billions in funding could have far-reaching effects on research, innovation, and the operational capabilities of higher education institutions across the nation.

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Additional Coverage: Sudan Civil War Peace Talks

The episode briefly touches on ongoing peace negotiations in London aimed at ending the prolonged civil war in Sudan, which has resulted in extensive casualties and displacement. Despite international efforts, Sudanese officials criticize the exclusion of their representatives from the talks, with violence continuing in regions like Darfur.

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Produced by: Ziad Butch, Carla Estevez, Ashley Montgomery, Nia Dumas, Christopher Thomas
Engineering Support: Arthur Lorenz
Technical Director: David Greenberg

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Support NPR: Subscribe to Up First+ for sponsor-free listening and support your local NPR station at donate.npr.org.

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Transcript

[Michelle Martin]

The Trump administration seems to have no plans to bring back a Maryland man mistakenly sent to a prison in El Salvador. Why don't you just say, isn't it.

[Layla Fadel]

Wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country?

[Franco Ordonez]

Is the administration defying the Supreme Court?

[Michelle Martin]

I am Michelle Martin. That's Layla Fadel. And this is up first from NPR News. A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board tells NPR that after Doge Elon Musk's cost cutting group gained access to their servers, records were deleted and security tools were deactivated.

[Stephen Miller]

That doesn't just happen. Logs don't just disappear. Tools don't just turn themselves off randomly.

[Michelle Martin]

Was the agency's data compromised?

[Franco Ordonez]

And Harvard says it won't let the Trump administration dictate what it teaches, who it hires or who it admits. It's risking billions of dollars in federal funds by defying the demands. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your.

[Layla Fadel]

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[Franco Ordonez]

Despite a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran prison. The White House appears to have no intention of doing that.

[Pam Bondi]

Why don't you just say, isn't it.

[Layla Fadel]

Wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country?

[Michelle Martin]

Why can't you just say that?

[Franco Ordonez]

And Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele says he doesn't plan to release the man either.

[Michelle Martin]

The Trump administration has accused Kilmar Abrego Garcia of being a gang member. His attorney says that is not true and there's been no evidence presented publicly to support that. The Salvadoran president was in the Oval Office yesterday meeting with President Trump.

[Franco Ordonez]

NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez is covering this story, and he joins us now. Good morning, Franco.

[Pam Bondi]

Good morning, Leila.

[Franco Ordonez]

Franco, tell us more about the situation here involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

[Pam Bondi]

Yeah, he is a Salvadoran citizen who has lived in Maryland for about 15 years. He was granted some protections by the court, but then last month, he was deported along with hundreds of other migrants to a Salvadoran mega prison. But the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.

[Franco Ordonez]

So wait, Franco, are they ignoring a Supreme Court ruling?

[Pam Bondi]

Well, I mean, first, the Trump team is downplaying this as a paperwork issue. They insist Abeduco Garcia has ties to the MS.13 gang. Again, his lawyer says he's not a member. So at this meeting yesterday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Supreme Court's order to facilitate simply means they need to provide a plane to return him. But first, El Salvador has to release him. And it's clear the Trump administration has no intention of asking Bukele to do that. Here is White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaking from the Oval Office. He is a citizen of El Salvador. So it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens as a starting point. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio also described this as an international matter and said that no court in the US had the right to conduct US Foreign policy.

[Franco Ordonez]

So what are the implications of this? Attorneys say there are more cases like Abreco Garcia, where people are wrongfully being accused of being gang members.

[Pam Bondi]

Yeah, that's right. The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the administration's use of a really old law to deport gang alleged gang members. It's called the Alien Enemies Act. I spoke with Lee Gellert, one of their attorneys.

[Layla Fadel]

This is a case not just about.

[Pam Bondi]

Legal technicalities, but American values. We've admitted we sent this individual to El Salvador by mistake. We all know that he may spend the rest of his life in this brutal prison, and yet the United States is battling in court not to bring him back. Gellert says the case goes well beyond just this one man and really could have big implications on all these other cases. I mean, more than 200 migrants were deported to the prison without due process using the old law. And he argues that the US should not be using a system where people have no due process, especially if the US Is not willing to correct its mistakes.

[Franco Ordonez]

So is Trump having any second thoughts about this?

[Pam Bondi]

I mean it doesn't appear that way. In fact, he was talking yesterday about expanding work with Bukele. Trump said he should build more prisons and even floated the idea of sending some US Convicts to El Salvador, but it's not clear that would be legal.

[Franco Ordonez]

That's White House correspondent Franco Ordonez. Thank you, Franco.

[Pam Bondi]

Thank you.

[Michelle Martin]

Since President Trump took office again, members of the Department of Government Efficiency, or doge, that's that ad hoc cost cutting group led by Elon Musk, have aggressively sought access to government data and computer systems.

[Franco Ordonez]

Today we're going to learn how they've done that. At one small agency, a whistleblower told Congress and NPR about what DOGE did when it arrived at the National Labor Relations Board.

[Michelle Martin]

We're joined now by NPR's Jenna McLaughlin who covers cybersecurity. Good morning, Jenna.

[Jenna McLaughlin]

Good morning, Michelle.

[Michelle Martin]

So what sort of things did the whistleblower see that made him want to come forward?

[Jenna McLaughlin]

A lot. So the whistleblower's name is Daniel Baroulis and he's one of the people who manages the NLRB's cloud. That's the virtual servers that host almost all the agency's data. So when DOGE arrived, he says they demanded the highest level access, the so called God tier accounts. And then weird stuff started happening. He saw a big spike in data leaving the agency, something that almost never happens. Meanwhile, security and monitoring tools were turned off. A bunch of records were deleted. He even started to notice login attempts from a Russian IP address that had the right username and password. Listen to how he describes it.

[Stephen Miller]

Why was that done? And that's a purposeful effort that doesn't just happen. Logs don't just disappear. Tools don't just turn themselves off randomly. Everything in a computer has a cause and effect. That means it has to have a trigger.

[Jenna McLaughlin]

So it's difficult to prove exactly what happened. But Barulla says he and his colleagues agreed it looked like a breach and that the agency's data could have been compromised.

[Michelle Martin]

Let's back up for a second. For people who don't know, what is the National Labor Relations Board or the NLRB and what does it do and why is the data that it holds sensitive?

[Jenna McLaughlin]

Yeah, so it's a small independent agency, but it is really important for workers rights. It investigates and adjudicates unfair labor practice complaints. So if a group of employees believes they were wrongfully fired, they might call in the NLRB to look into it. It also protects the rights of employees to unionize. So in the course of their investigations, Michelle, they gather really sensitive data from lists of people interested in forming a union to witness statements, maybe even corporate secrets.

[Michelle Martin]

So this Department of Government Efficiency, or doge, is led by Elon Musk. Does he fit into this story?

[Jenna McLaughlin]

Yeah. So there currently are several ongoing NLRB cases involving Musk's companies, including SpaceX and Tesla. That was really concerning to some of the labor law experts that I spoke to. He said that he will recuse himself from anything involving his companies, but we haven't really seen any evidence that's true so far. If he got access to information about how the government was building those cases or private statements from witnesses even, it could give him a real leg up in court for one.

[Michelle Martin]

Do we have any evidence that Doge is acting this way in other parts of the federal government?

[Jenna McLaughlin]

Absolutely, Michelle, according to my reporting and a lot of public evidence, this seems like a trend. First, there are over a dozen court cases where government witnesses have outlined Doge's mishandling of sensitive data at agencies like the Treasury Department or the irs. I also heard from AIDS in Congress, and they say there are ongoing investigations into other reports of Doge removing data from agencies for unknown reasons. Part of the reason Baroulis came forward was to inspire others to speak up.

[Stephen Miller]

I believe with all my heart that this goes far beyond just case data.

[Jenna McLaughlin]

Baroulis provided a lot of technical data we have not seen before. But this could be just one piece of the puzzle.

[Michelle Martin]

That was NPR CyberSecurity Correspondent Jenna McLaughlin. Jenna, thank you.

[Jenna McLaughlin]

Thank you.

[Michelle Martin]

You can find a lot more of Jenna's [e-mail] and hear more about this story on All Things CONSIDERED tonight.

[Franco Ordonez]

Last night, the Trump administration froze more than $2.2 billion in contracts and multi year grants for Harvard University.

[Michelle Martin]

This move came hours after Harvard said it will not comply with the administration's demands that it drastically change its hiring, admission, other policies in exchange for federal money.

[Franco Ordonez]

NPR's Jonaki Mehta has been following this. Hi, Jonaki.

[Stephen Miller]

Hey, Leila.

[Franco Ordonez]

Okay, so what does the Trump administration want Harvard to change exactly?

[Stephen Miller]

Yeah, there are a range of demands. They include ordering the university to screen international students for what they call supporting terrorism or anti Semitism, eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and making sure their hiring and admission practices are solely based on merit rather than race based preference, for example.

[Franco Ordonez]

Now Harvard is refusing to comply, which is very different than what we saw at Columbia, which did comply with a list of demands from the administration to keep its funding. Tell us why.

[Stephen Miller]

Yeah, that's right. On Monday, Harvard's president Alan Garber wrote A letter to students and staff that said, quote, no government, regardless of which party is in power, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue. He also went on to say that even though some of the demands outlined by the government were aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority majority were trying to regulate what he called intellectual conditions at Harvard and threatening free speech. And then just hours after that response, the Trump administration froze that $2.2 billion and said, quote, harvard's statement today reinforces a troubling entitlement mindset that's endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges, that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.

[Franco Ordonez]

Has Harvard said anything in response to the funding freeze?

[Stephen Miller]

Yeah. So minutes after the announcement about the freeze, a spokesperson from Harvard pointed me to one specific part of the president's letter which said for the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well being of millions of individuals, but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.

[Franco Ordonez]

Okay, so in what way, Janaki, just break down what this 2.2 plus billion dollars that's already frozen does? And this other 6.7 or so billion that's on the line, what are they used for?

[Stephen Miller]

Yeah, so Harvard actually updated the homepage of its website to reflect how federal dollars support research. They do. They list research on treatments for several forms of cancer, heart disease, organs, and transplantation. And they say federal funding is the university's largest source of support for what Harvard calls cutting edge, groundbreaking research.

[Franco Ordonez]

Now, it's not just Harvard. The Trump administration has sent similar threats to dozens of universities. How are leaders of those institutions responding?

[Stephen Miller]

Yeah, the administration has threatened billions of dollars of funding for other universities, some of whom say they will cooperate with the government's demands. You, you pointed to Columbia. But that has created a lot of anxiety for college leaders who are in this unprecedented bind, change their policies or lose money for important research. My colleague Alyssa Nadwarney recently spoke to some of those leaders. Here's Andrew Martin, the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis.

[Pam Bondi]

We're in a moment with great uncertainty about what the future of the relationship between the federal government and American institutions of higher education look like. Uncertainty is challenging, and a lot of.

[Stephen Miller]

These leaders said that's made it really hard not just to focus on budgets, but also on students, faculty, and education itself.

[Franco Ordonez]

NPR education reporter Janaki Mehta. Thanks, Janaki.

[Stephen Miller]

Thank you, Layla.

[Franco Ordonez]

Peace talks to end the civil war in Sudan are happening in London today. It's been two years of war. 100,000 people have been killed and 15 million are displaced. This is the world's largest humanitarian crisis. The UN Says famine there is the worst the world has seen in decades. Sudanese officials have criticized the negotiations in London. They say their representatives weren't invited and that even as talks were happening, massacres were still taking in the western region of Darfur. NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu has been covering this since the beginning. He's at that conference in London, and he is on his way back to Sudan. You can follow his ongoing coverage of the conflict on npr.org and that's up first for Tuesday, April 15th. I'm Layla Falden.

[Michelle Martin]

And I'm Michelle Martin. Your next listen is Consider this from npr. We here at upfirst give you the three big stories of the day. Our Consider this colleagues take a different approach. Approach. They dive into a single news story and what it means to you in less than 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Franco Ordonez]

Today's episode of up first was edited by Roberta Rampton, Brett Ney, Stephen Drummond, Mohamed Elvarisi and Jana Williams. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Carla Estevez, Ashley Montgomery, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Lorenz, and our technical director is David Greenberg. Join us again tomorrow.

[Layla Fadel]

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