The United States of Donald Trump

Pope Francis, Deportations, and Parenting

LIVINGSTON, MONTANA - APRIL 19: Residents protesting against the Trump administration march along the sidewalk down Main Street to the county courthouse in Livingston, Montana on April 19, 2025. Organizers of the nationwide protest said the demonstrations were to denounce the "hostile government takeover" by the Trump administration. (Photo by William Campbell/Getty Images)

The Secretary of Homeland Security’s handbag was apparently stolen from a Washington, D.C., restaurant on Sunday night. Her department security badge and passport and $3000 in cash and some blank checks and some keys…all taken.

I hate that for her, genuinely. Also, it feels like a metaphor for the entire administration at this point.

Today, we’re talking about the mess and the malice (or, as Larry Summers put it, “the evil or the incompetence”). From Pete Hegseth’s disastrous tenure at DoD to the disappearance of people without due process, things are not going well.

We’re also discussing some of the feedback on Friday’s episode, answering questions about whether we are in a constitutional crisis (spoiler: yes, we think so), and thinking through the path forward.

And then outside of politics…well, it fired Sarah up, and I imagine it will fire some of you up, too. But don’t sleep on this fantastic piece that inspired our segment. - Beth

Topics Discussed

• Episode Feedback: Death with Dignity

• The Legacy of Pope Francis

• Detangling Evil and Incompetence in Trump’s Government

• Due Process for Non-Citizens

• Outside of Politics: When is it safe to leave your child alone?

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

Join us for our 10th Birthday Celebration

Episode Feedback and the Legacy of Pope Francis

• Death with Dignity (Pantsuit Politics)

• Death and Taxes (Pantsuit Politics Newsletter)

• Pope Francis has died on Easter Monday aged 88 (Vatican News)

Detangling Evil and Incompetence in Trump’s Government

• Amid Trump-imposed chaos, IRS loses its fourth commissioner in three months (MSNBC)

• Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat (The New York Times)

• Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard (The New York Times)

• Larry Summers (X)

Due Process in Immigration

• More to Say about Disappearance and Due Process (Pantsuit Politics Premium)

• Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions (Just Security)

• Addressing Risks from Chris Krebs and Government Censorship (The White House)

• 'Homegrowns are next': Trump hopes to deport and jail U.S. citizens abroad (NPR)

• After Meeting Wrongly Deported Man, Van Hollen Accuses Trump of Defying Courts (The New York Times)

• The 7 Most Shameless Attention-Seekers in Congress (Politico)

Leaving Kids Alone

• You’re on Vacation. You Leave Your Kid in Your Hotel Room With a Baby Monitor. What Could Go Wrong? (Slate)

• Louise Bates Ames | Penguin Random House

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

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Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:29] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:31] This is Beth Silvers. You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're going to spend a few minutes following up on Friday's discussion about medical assistance in dying, and we're going to turn our attention to how badly things are going at the executive branch right now; and specifically to the Trump administration's approach to removing non-citizens from the country. Today we are going to discuss are we in a constitutional crisis or not? And if so, what does that mean and where do we go from here? Outside of Politics, because I chose badly for the exhale of the episode, we're just getting into more heat by talking about baby monitors and when and why and for how long you can leave a baby when with a baby monitor in the picture.

Sarah [00:01:15] I'm not exhaling I'm inhaling in order to yell more. So I'm just setting the expectations right now for that.

Beth [00:01:21] It's a spicy Outside of Politics, that's for sure.

Sarah [00:01:24] I get really riled up about this topic, y'all. So prepare yourselves. Okay. We do have lots of hard conversations here at Pantsuit Politics, but in person, we just like to have a good time. And one of the best compliments about one of our live shows came from Danielle when she came to Paducah. She was like, "I knew it was going to be good, but I did know I was going to have fun." We had so much fun at that one. We're going to have fun in Cincinnati, too. Now we're sold out for in-person tickets on July 19th, but you can still join the fun with a virtual ticket thanks to Substack, our sponsor. A link to buy that ticket is in the show notes and it will let you watch and participate live or see it later when it's convenient for you.

Beth [00:02:03] Next up, you had a lot to say about Friday's episode and we were listening, and we will discuss. On Friday, we talked about medical assistance in death as it exists in Canada, Switzerland, and to a much smaller degree in the United States. We had a lot of responses to that episode and so we wanted to spend just a couple minutes processing those responses and sharing how we're still thinking about it as we've had the weekend.

Sarah [00:02:43] As a part of our 10th anniversary, we've been revisiting old episodes. And we used to do this a lot. We used to spend a lot of the episodes talking about audience reactions. And I kind of miss it. Listening to them, I'm like, "Yeah, this was really helpful. And this was such a passionate response that it felt important." You and I break up show running and I was the "show runner" for this episode. And I think a piece of responsibility I'm willing to take is that I was really in my own mind in conversation with a couple of situations that have broken through in the national media, specifically Daniel Kahneman's death and a piece in the New Yorker magazine called The Last Words My Mother Spoke. I think that was the name of it. And I understand that some people see those as edge cases, but in my mind the edge cases are illustrating something.

[00:03:43] I also think once you're talking about them at a national or global scale it's no longer an edge case. We've breached something important where it's stopped being someone's experience and started being a story. And a story is something you tell other people and there's a reason for that. But I think because it was the first time we talked about it I feel bad that people maybe came in thinking we were starting as like an intro level and in my own head I was sort of advanced in the conversation. That happens a lot. There's just a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes of the show. We're not talking about everything for the first time on the episodes, that would be impossible. But I do feel bad when people listening feel like a sense of jarring or confusion and especially around a topic as sensitive as this one.

Beth [00:04:35] And it definitely happens with an episode like this that we have been talking about for three years and collecting pieces and trading things back and forth. When we talk about this, we need to make sure we include that. I think that I can relate to listening to something or someone when you are in a difficult situation with your own body and feeling like what you're hearing is someone saying, "I'm not in your shoes, but if I were, I'd wear them better." And that's a terrible feeling, and I think that is what came across from the episode. And, of course, that wasn't our intention, but it happens. And it elicits a strong response. It has for me at moments in my life. And so I'm really sensitive about that. If we don't have intense personal feelings about death, what are we going to feel things about? So it should kick off a difficult conversation. Two things have stuck with me over the weekend as I've been thinking about this.

[00:05:36] The first is that the edge cases have been defining really salient political issues for the past several years. And a lesson that I'm personally trying to learn is to pull back anytime I feel myself going, but that's not the majority of something that's going on. Or that's really what's happening. Or, sure, that sounds terrible, but look at this much more common instance. Because if I'm unwilling to confront the thing that feels like it's on the edge, like you said, it's probably not as on the edges as I think it is anyway. But even if it is, that causes an entrenchment in other folks and trust is broken. And as I try to think about what makes for a politics of reconciliation, I think is contending with everything people put on the table, every story, every statistic, every piece that feels jarring to me has to go on the table as I'm thinking about something.

Sarah [00:06:35] Yeah, I think to that piece of it, the reality we have to grapple with is in a decentralized media environment that is largely fueled by conflict. Of course, those edge cases are going to matter. Of course, they're relevant. And people feel talked down to when you tell them not to see what they can see or to tell them it doesn't really matter because it's such a small number of cases. Listen, Fox News, they might as well just have a whole section on edge cases. Like half their homepage at any given time is individual anecdotal stories. It just is. Because I check in. I like to check in over there and see what's going on. And it's always edge cases, particularly involving liberal celebrities. That's their favorite. Because I think that, again, the way people are getting news and engaging with news these days, the edge case as a story allows you to be an expert. It allows you to release some of the intimidation if you're not in it. An individual story is something we can all feel invested in. We don't have to be policy experts, we don't to be lawyers, we don' have to doctors. We can just say, well, I heard the story and this is what I think about it. And so I just think that for too long I've also had that reaction, like, but the serious people know to look at the data.

[00:08:00] Well, we're going to talk about an edge case that we all care deeply about regarding immigration in a little bit. So it does matter. These stories matter. And often they become stories everyone's talking about because they speak to something we're struggling with. And that's really what I had latched onto, I think, particularly post pandemic. We are struggling with aspects of death and life. And especially because we're reading Habits of the Heart right now, which I'm totally obsessed with, there's a lot of conversation about individuality but we also know we're connected. And what does that mean? And how do we put those pieces together? And so that was front of mind too as I was thinking through all this. And the thing I always try to say is it's a limited conversation. We're not going to get to every experience we've had with loved ones and death.

[00:08:54] We're not going to get to every experience we've had with our own bodies and their autonomy. We're not going to obviously be able to speak to everyone's lived experiences. But if we let that limit us, if we let that scare us-- which it did around this conversation for years, it's why we didn't want to have it. It's why we were a little trepidatious about this conversation because you don't want to hurt people. You don't want to take this very sensitive subject and make people angry. It breaks my heart when someone says I was so angry I had to turn it off. I don't ever want people to listen to our show and feel that way. But I also don't want to stop talking about it. I think it's really important. And so, holding all that together is hard.

Beth [00:09:35] Well, that trepidatiousness relates to the second thing that I keep thinking about, which is always in my mind. When you are using your voice to say things and then you publish it and you don't know who's listening or in what context. If you hear from me a reticence about endorsing anything related to the end of life, that is the side I'm going to err on talking on the internet about life and death. It is really important to me that I remember that people are listening in a whole lot of different states and some people were listening in a state where this conversation hurt them and I'm sorry for that. That's never what I want. If I am going to say something that has the risk of hurting someone, I would rather it be encouraging people to take life really seriously and to be hesitant before doing something that cannot be undone. That's what I keep thinking about with this. We can't talk to people who've made this choice on the other side. That's why it's so hard. And that doesn't mean I'm against it. I went into the conversation unsure of the contours of what policy should be, and I'm still there. I believe absolutely that there are circumstances, as we said, both of us on Friday's episode, when death with dignity through medical assistance is the kind, compassionate, best thing we can do for each other.

[00:11:03] I believe there need to be some limitations around that, even though those limitations are sometimes difficult and frustrating. I'm not sure exactly what those limitations should be, but I support them because I do worry about what happens when we get too casual about life and death. So I really appreciate the feedback. I appreciate you all trusting us by saying you really pissed me off this time. I think that's important when you're in relationships. Death belongs to all of us, not just the medical professionals; although, their perspectives are important. And that is why we also shared a conversation with a hospice palliative care nurse who has just been a beautiful friend to us for most of the time we've had this show. Janice Elliott. That conversation is on Substack. It is free to everyone to listen. You do not have to be a premium subscriber to hear Janice and I talking about her experience in California with medical assistance in dying. And also just Janice's perspective on what makes for a good death was really valuable and important to me. So I hope that you'll listen to that conversation as well.

Sarah [00:12:03] And relevant because this week one death in particular is going to be the major headline.

Beth [00:12:09] Yes, Pope Francis passed away at age 88. He had been battling pneumonia for a number of weeks. He had been in declining health. There were reports daily how the Pope is doing. It was coming across my newsfeed all the time. And so a lot of reflection about what his life has meant. I was really touched, Sarah, to learn that just last week, even as he's in this declining state, he went to a prison and said to people incarcerated, I just want to be near you and I want to give you my love and a message of hope. And I thought that was a pretty beautiful representation of his heart.

Sarah [00:12:52] This year with Well-Read Mom, the Catholic book study-- it's not just for Catholics. Obviously, I am not a Catholic. But it has a predominantly Catholic worldview. We always read a biography of a saint and we read a biography of St. Francis of Assisi. And St. Francis, I think we all have, (especially if you're outside the Catholic church) this vision of him we know that he was dedicated to a life of poverty and there's always the images of him with the animals. I feel like that's the popular conception of St. Francis of Assisi, right? But man, when you understand more about St. Francis, you understand why this Pope took his name because it's not just to dedication to the poor and the marginalized, but a willingness to fight and sacrifice and upend the status quo in pursuit of that dedication. It's always so hard because the Catholic Church's history is so long. I even Said it on the News Brief. It feels a little dismissive even to say that he was the first Pope from Latin America. He was a first Pope from anywhere but Europe in like 1000 years. And that's only because they're counting St. Peter, which I feel is like a little bit of a cheat.

[00:14:27] That history is so long and we've lived for so many hundreds of years on the other side of what St. Francis did, which was upend these powerful, very rich popes and say, well, I'm going to walk around in a sackcloth and barefoot and serve the poor. And I think about Pope Francis through the lens of this name he chose and his dedication to upending a lot of things and pushing hard made a lot of enemies during his time as Pope within the Catholic Church. There was a huge contingency of conservative Catholics in the United States that were very opposed to his papacy and his expansion of compassion and some policy towards people in same-sex marriages and trans Catholics, and in particular, his just unwavering dedication to immigrants and migrants and calling out policies and politics and conflicts around the world that he thinks should end. He called for a ceasefire in Gaza continuously and repeatedly. And so it's sad to see that his time is at an end. But I think that he was a pretty, everything I've read, a relentless manager. I think he put his imprint on a lot of things. And so, hopefully, his legacy will have a long reach including into the picking of his successor.

Beth [00:16:11] I think you can feel in the coverage today that America is just more interested in religion than we've been in a long time.

Sarah [00:16:17] Yeah, for sure.

Beth [00:16:18] And that is a trend that I feel like we saw coming and predicted here at Pantsuit Politics, so I feel good about that. But there's been a lot of reporting lately about how more people are headed back to church and are interested in finding something larger than themselves and more grounding and community-oriented and intergenerational. I read this morning that the Catholic Church in America is growing because of immigrants, and also that the youngest generations tend to be the most conservative. You have a lot of different trends happening at one time. And you had a pretty big movie about conclaves just come out, which I think is also stirring interest in what's going to happen and what will it be like when the Cardinals go to the Sistine Chapel to vote for someone new.

Sarah [00:17:09] Well, and I think he saw those trends. He came into the church where attendance was down and I thank his embracing of a everyman stature. And previously even when he was a bishop, really rejecting the hierarchy. There's reporting that he eliminated a lot of the formality around his own funeral. He was like, we don't need to do this. I think that especially coming in during the sex abuse scandal and saying like, "Do you think more formality and hierarchy is going to invite people back after they feel betrayed by this institution?" That was a good instinct on his on his part. I think that you can't detach some of this from his leadership inside the church and on the global stage and that will be his legacy as well.

Beth [00:18:01] Well, from one kind of leadership to a very different kind, we need to spend a few minutes talking about how things are going in the executive branch of our government. We are on the fourth IRS leader since Donald Trump took office. He hasn't been there a hundred days yet. We've had four heads of the IRS. We also have a real situation where the president is mad at Jerome Powell, who is the chair of the Federal Reserve. Historically, the Federal Reserve's independence has been a key factor in assuring investors that the economy was going to be managed without too much political influence. And the reactions to the president threatening to fire Powell have been strong.

Sarah [00:18:50] That in combination with Pete Hegseth, apparently, having more than one inappropriate chat over Signal, sharing sensitive information with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer. And more than that you have like three of his senior advisors, longtime friends, these are not like DOD bureaucrats, they came with him and they've been fired. His chief of staff has left. You have a op-ed in Politico from the public affairs person who just left, who's like a real Trump diehard saint, it is a dumpster fire at the Department of Defense. It is a huge, huge mess over there.

Beth [00:19:30] And then we have reporting from the New York Times that the administration's battle with Harvard University seems to have escalated by mistake. There was a letter drafted to send to Harvard that was very hardcore about what the administration wanted to see from Harvard. And that is when Harvard said you have crossed our line and we will use our endowment to resist what the Administration is asking of us. And now we are hearing that somehow that letter was not supposed to have reached Harvard. Differing accounts on how it was mishandled. But now everybody's dug in because there's this mistake, but it's happened and no one's going to walk back. And Harvard is saying, whatever they meant to say in their letter, we see what they've done since we told them we were going to fight. And that's what matters.

Sarah [00:20:16] I don't go around quoting Larry Summers, usually not my particular favorite, but he tweeted, "Evil and incompetence are hard to disentangle. Who is in charge?" And I thought, yeah, that just about sums it up. Evil and incompetent are hard to disentangle whether you're talking about the IRS, whether you are talking about DOD, whether you talking about this pursuit of academia or whether you're talking about immigration.

Beth [00:20:44] So next up, we are going to talk about immigration and specifically about deportation and what we think policy should look like as we are dealing with people who are in the United States but who are not citizens, their speech rights, their rights to remain here, their due process rights, all that up next. I've been thinking a lot about the Alien Enemies Act lately.

Sarah [00:21:15] Haven't we all?

Beth [00:21:16] It is easy for me to get lost in feeling a sense of empathy and compassion for the people impacted when someone is deported. For that person, for the person they leave behind. Every story of someone who is being removed from the country, who is married to an American citizen, who has a child here, that really pulls at my heart. I have been trying for the past couple of days in preparation for this episode to get a little colder about it and to really think about the law and what the law is and what we think the law should be.

Sarah [00:21:53] A simple question of what do we owe non-citizens is very complicated. And I think that that is what offers cover to the evil incompetence (let's just put them together) of the current Trump administration. Because people's immigration status is so complicated. And a phrase that, as a person who went to law school, is not intimidating to me at all, is very intimidating to other people. I'm not really sure if you polled Americans about what is due process if they could answer you. But what I do know and what I think is easily explained and increasingly obvious is that for most of our history we offered hearing-- I think that's a word most Americans understand. We offered a hearing of some type to people before we deported them and a chance. This is America. We're going to give you a chance to speak for yourself even as a non-citizen. And what the Trump administration wants is to eliminate that.

[00:23:12] They don't want a chance for people to speak for themselves. They do not want a change for lawyers to speak for those people. They don't want a chance for judges to make decisions about those people. The due process, as far as the Trump administration is, he decided you're bad and so we get to push you off a cliff into oblivion. They don't want due process because it slows it down, and they want to deport as many people as they can. Even though under anyone's understanding of logistics, flying 200 people at a time is not going to get them to the million deportations they want. But Stephen Miller, who I think is probably the primary architect of this, wants to eliminate any opportunity for people to speak for themselves because he doesn't care. It doesn't matter what they say. He wants to be able to deport them because he doesn't think they belong here, AKA Donald Trump. But really I think it might just be Stephen Miller. Like we said so, that's enough, end of story. That's what they want. And America has to decide if that's acceptable or not.

Beth [00:24:24] I think that the administration right now is very uninterested in both of the other branches of government. They're not interested in Congress doing anything. Congress is a nuisance. If you vote against what we've told you we want, then Elon Musk will spend his vast fortune to fund a primary to get somebody who will vote exactly as we want. That's what they're reducing Congress to. And you're right, they want to outrun the court system. They know that the courts move slowly. And so the theory goes, if we just get these people out of the country, then they are beyond the court's jurisdiction and there's nothing that anyone can do about it. And they don't want to have to prove a case. I'm deep into reading a couple of books about the 2024 election. A striking anecdote that comes up over and over again in these books is how there is a pretty young woman who is hired by Donald Trump to be what people call his human printer. She travels with him. She's often on the golf course with him. Wherever he goes, she goes. She keeps herself right at his side. There seems to be kind of an unhealthy dynamic there. And she prints things for him to read from the internet. And even within his close set of advisors, people who are very bought into him and his agenda, they feel that she gets way out there.

[00:25:43] That she will hand him things that fire him up about something that is not grounded in reality or in fact. That she is often the person who types out the most egregious social posts. But he is easily persuaded by whatever salacious thing is handed to him as a story from media. And that seems to be the process of choosing the people that they are going to throw out of the country. I think that he was envious of what he heard about the president of El Salvador who calls himself the world's coolest dictator, who has risen in popularity because of his tough on crime, tough on gangs posture. And I think he wants to emulate some of that. If you look at a story like Mahmoud Khalil, the graduate student at Columbia who the government is trying to deport because of participation and protest about Gaza, he was easy to identify because he was one of very few people in photographs who did not have his face covered. And he was mentioned in a lot of stories about those protests because he acted as a negotiator between students and authorities. And so his name is out there a lot and you could see the president just being handed stories. Well, look at this guy. Well go get him. We can't have that. But that kind of decision-making does not hold up in a court of law. They have these tattoos; they're wearing these sweatshirts. All of the things that the press secretary seems to be happy to smear people with constantly, that doesn't hold up in court. And so they want to be faster than the courts.

Sarah [00:27:29] I think they want to be the court. I think they don't even care if they're faster, they just don't think anybody should decide but him. It's not the United States of America; it's the United States of Trump. He holds all the power. He holds all the decision making. If you want anything done, then you better have some leverage to offer him or tribute to pay. And I just think we have to be honest about that. There are very few checks on him right now. He's not checked by the market because he's made an enormous amount of money off running for office and crypto. He's not checked by elections because he's term limited. And he sure as hell doesn't care what happens to the Republican party in elections. He's not checked by any sort of inner party criticism. The Republican party is not acting as any type of check on him. He doesn't have any of the people in his first term who had basic respect for the norms of our government. And, look, I think the hard truth too is that particularly when it comes to immigration and the unitary executive and the powers within any sort of distinctions around foreign policy, this road was paved by the Bush administration that he is now walking on. This is how this started. It was post 9/11. This is how it always starts. It's how it started in El Salvador. No one's going to argue that the gangs in El Salvador and the crime in El Salvador wasn't wreaking all kinds of havoc.

[00:29:07] The reason these cases are so easily exploitable politically in a power grab is because the hard question is always how much humanity do we offer those who dehumanize? What do we do with the criminal who murdered or who was a gang member, who was a threat? What do we with the terrorist who's a threat to the United States? That's the hard one. What are we going to do with an administration that dehumanizes as we try to fight them? And I think that's why this situation, that's they're going after this. This is why they're not going back to trying to separate children from their families because they were like, oh no, well, people like kids. So that wasn't a workable long-term solution. So we'll do criminals because who's going to defend the criminal? Who's going to to defend the person who did something abhorrent, right? You really want to go to the prison in El Salvador filled with some, of course, heinous criminals? And so that's why it's such a sweet spot politically. And when you're in that power grab, that's why it started with the Bush administration post 9/11. And I think it's really important to just see that clearly so that we know what we're fighting.

Beth [00:30:35] The trouble is it cannot be that the president gets to name someone a criminal and so they are. I have no idea what acts and affiliations exist or don't exist in the 200 plus people who have been put on a plane and sent to a president in El Salvador from the United States. I don't know. How could we? I think that there's a lot of criticism from Republicans about how Democrats respond to this, that Democrats will rush to make the sinners saints in pursuit of political causes. And that is not my aim here. I have no idea. We have lawyers for people willing to say in court, sign their name to pleadings that say in good faith I believe that my client is not a member of this gang that you have targeted in an executive order. But that gets to the point of the whole thing. People before they are punished should have a chance to stand accused of their crime and respond to that accusation. And that's what we mean by due process, that's it. Notice and an opportunity to be heard. And the Supreme Court, nine to zero, has said in a recent order that that exists for people who are in this country. That if you are in the country, before you are removed, whatever your status, you should have a notice and an opportunity to be heard.

[00:32:05] And the Supreme Court is now acting pretty unusually for the Supreme court. Over the weekend we got a middle of the night order telling the Trump administration that there's a group of Venezuelan people in Texas who have been detained, who believe they are going to be flown out of the country. And the supreme court, before waiting on an order from the district court, appealed by the circuit court and a decision from the circuit Court just said, don't put them on a plane and send them out of this country. So we have at least the judicial branch saying to the executive, we will not stand by and allow you to place this matter outside of our jurisdiction again. You've done it once, you will not do it again.

Sarah [00:32:47] Well, I just want to say that was under pursuit from the ACLU. Mad shout out to the ACLU which is doing all kinds of essential work right now. I'm about to put my card back in my wallet. Took it out for a while. Seems like a good time to put it back in there in case I need to call a number. Because it's not just the ways in which they use fear and fear of certain populations to expand their power. It's what they do when there's a mistake. A self-admitted mistake. Like with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, this poor Maryland man who was, again, pushed off cliff and their responses is so what? I mean, this is what we were trying to do. We were trying to push them to constitutional oblivion, right? This was the goal. You can see it in the way that they're not trying to correct the mistake. Now, look, what I think ultimately could happen, and you're starting to see that with this order from the Supreme Court, is they never will just take a minute-- there's this weird paradox where you see them acting more strategically legally, but also being so sloppy when it comes to like permanent policy.

[00:34:10] I think they're going to push this so hard. They're going to either have a court say you can't use the Alien Enemies Act at all. Hopefully, you'll see Congress overturn this law and say, no, we're not going to use the Alien Enemies Act at all because there is no Alien Enemies Act. Like I can't tell what they want to do. I can't tell if it's just the pursuit of his power. And maybe that is what it is. It's really not about fixing our broken immigration system. Give me a break. Because I think that's really what they don't ever accept responsibility. They don't see themselves as administrators of the immigration state. They see themselves as heroes in the face of a broken immigration system, despite the fact that they are now in the power to fix it.

Beth [00:35:02] I think that's right. I think they begin on a policy that they've decided is common sense. They have a mandate to go after, but then ego always gets in the way. I think there's no chance the Supreme Court would have made this order over the weekend had it not been for the Abrego Garcia case. Had the Supreme Court not been so keenly aware that it told the administration, like a district court, you must facilitate his return and then watch the president give that order and those judges a middle finger from the Oval Office. Because that's what happened, right? And on social media the White House posting on Instagram he'll never be back. In every way that they can telling the court system we don't care. We're going to come to court and act like we are complying with your order to facilitate his return while telling everyone he will never be back in this country. That is an extraordinary act of ego at odds with the policy that you say that you want. I think the courts would have given him an enormous amount of room here had he not taken on their authority so quickly and so directly.

Sarah [00:36:12] Also worth noting that this is a policy that is also unpopular with the American people; that it polls at 61% opposed to the deportation of immigrants without criminal conviction. So then not only are you talking about deporting people without criminal conviction saying, first of all, it's also the offensiveness of I alone can fix it. I have power across the world. Watch my video of Trump Gaza. And also, I don't know. We just can't do it. However could we get him back? It's so insulting even to the person barely paying attention to this. That comes across to me. Maybe I'm just trying to hope it comes across everywhere else. But it's that and it's the I can't fix the mistake. And maybe up next, American citizens. Maybe if you keep at this, I'll invent a reason without due process to send you to the El Salvadorian prison. Maybe we'll look at the laws, see what happens.

Beth [00:37:18] Again, a criminal is whoever he doesn't like. This executive order against Chris Krebs bothers me in ways that I can't even begin to describe. If you haven't followed that, Chris Krebs was working at CISA, which is an agency responsible for securing elections. And in 2020, he very publicly said, "This election was the safest one we've ever had. It was secure." Which was of course at odds with President Trump's narrative that the election had been stolen from him. And so now we have this executive order, an official act of the president that will remain in our records forever, saying that Chris Krebs is basically a terrible human being who should have no access to sensitive information, and anyone who employs him shouldn't either. And this man has now had to quit his job. You don't want to be hyperbolic. You don't want to be over reactive. You don' want to be like the sky is falling, chicken little all the time. But, man, that's really bad. And when you put all these things alongside each other, you're going to need to build some more prisons down there, world's coolest dictator, my buddy, because I've got a lot of homegrown ones that I need to send your way. And then I say constantly, in official acts, the homegrown one's are people like Chris Krebs. There's a lot to worry about here. And I'm glad that the Supreme Court is adapting a little bit to say, you know what, we are going to disregard some of our usual procedure because that is what's required under the circumstances.

Sarah [00:38:59] The question is, the question we get a lot, is this now a constitutional crisis?

Beth [00:39:05] I have trouble answering that question because I have trouble knowing what that means to the people who use and hear those words. I think that we are, yes, in the thick of a struggle among two of the three branches of government that if it comes down to it, if everybody digs in can only be resolved by the third. And yes, that is a constitutional crisis. Because if the courts say you willfully disobeyed our order, which they are clearly in the process of doing--

Sarah [00:39:38] Particularly at the district level.

Beth [00:39:39] Yes. The remedy for that is contempt of court. Two forms of that: civil and criminal. In both forms, the executive branch is who is supposed to enforce the law. And so if the court said, I'm going to refer this matter for prosecution and we're going to indict these two people in the Department of Homeland Security, then President Trump says I'm pardoning them and I'm preemptively pardoning everybody else who works in my administration, okay, well then the only remedy that we have now is impeachment. The United States Congress ultimately is the keeper of the rule of law because ultimately the rule of law is a political concept. And so that's why usually I am not for the protest this early and this often, but I think it is really a big deal that people are already in the streets saying this is not okay, and showing up at town halls and filing to run against their members of Congress to say this is all unacceptable to us. Because that is all we got if the executive and the judiciary keep pushing here.

Sarah [00:40:53] My answer is yes. Because they prevented that plane from taking off, but Mr. Garcia is still trapped. They said effectuate his return. And the Trump administration basically looked at the United States Supreme Court and said, make us. So I think that we are in a clash, definitively now, officially, (as much as they try to play with the language) between those two branches of government. And the courts were never going to save us anyway. They're not going to save us from him. They were never going to be a full check on someone who feels as empowered, saved by God, and surrounded by yes men as Donald Trump is right now. And so I think that we have to accept that it's going to get worse before it gets better. I've been walking around in like a funk and I couldn't figure out why. And I think this is why. It's because now is the time it's going to get worse before it gets better. And it's going to take an enormous amount of political power to unseat him.

[00:42:20] In so many ways, there are a lot of repetitions found in the first Trump administration. I think impeachment will probably be another one. Whether we'll make it stick this time, I don't know. But for me personally, yeah, I'm planning on joining a May Day protest on May 1st. I'm planning on going to the reorganization convention of my local Democratic party on Saturday. It's time. And we're not even 100 days in, and I know that sucks, but he is unhinged in a way that I don't think was true. I think he was intimidated by the office. I think he had enough people surrounding him dedicated to the norms and processes. I think that he was afraid for his own financial well-being and his own livelihood and perception. And I think for so many reasons up to and including the assassination attempt and his feeling that he saved by God, that is not true this time. He wants to make it the United States of Trump. I don't want to live in the United States of Trump. I like the United States of America. But that's not his vision. His vision is only animated by him. That's it. Tribute to him, leverage for him, a Nobel Peace Prize. Like that's it. This is where we're at. And it's going to take a lot. And I am worried about what will happen as the protest increase in intensity.

Beth [00:43:59] I am, too.

Sarah [00:44:00] People are going to get hurt. I don't see a way out of this without people getting hurt. I just don't. People are already getting hurt! The people shipped to El Salvador were hurt.

Beth [00:44:18] Yeah, and his administration will overreact. They don't respect speech rights.

Sarah [00:44:24] No. Why crowing about speech rights? That's my favorite part.

Beth [00:44:27] And so I think they will overreact this. That's right. It's all projection. And so they will overreact to some of these protests and it will get bad. And the courts are doing I think what they can do right now. You got some brave district court judges out there doing the work all over the country. Because the stories that have made the national media are not all the stories yet. There are a lot of stories. There's a lot of incompetence. I was just reading this story about some college students who are being detained and in a hearing the judge was like, "I don't know their status because the government's lawyer is standing in front of me and the government lawyer cannot answer that question." It's really bad right now and I never want to be a doomsdayer, but it really is.

Sarah [00:45:14] What does it say that in the battle of evil and incompetence, my hope is that incompetence will win and my experience with the previous Trump administration tells me it will. The letter to Harvard was a mistake? They're sending emails saying self-deport to United States citizens born in America. Like, what are you doing?

Beth [00:45:39] And meanwhile, they're still firing people and unfiring them. It is a disaster.

Sarah [00:45:46] Our local Head Start hasn't gotten their funding letter. I don't think anybody has. I don' think the person who sends the letters is there. I think they fired him.

Beth [00:45:53] I don't think they have the beginning of a clue what they're messing with Head Start either.

Sarah [00:45:57] Or AmeriCorps who they laid off. We're going to start it over. With who, dude? And it's just going to continue to play out in people's lives. I think the incompetence and the way in which people will get hurt, I think you're right, it's Congress that's going to have to settle it. And I think it's going to get really bad if we're just going to sit around and wait till the midterms. And I think it's congress and there are other institutions. That's why we all cheered when Harvard said enough. And thank God there are other institutions that still hold power. I know we've been talking about institutional distrust for a long time, but let's talk about an institution that's gaining back societal cachet. Let's talk the church. That's an institution with power. That is something I'd like to see. There's a long history of the Church, particularly the Catholic Church, being on the front lines of situations like this where people were treated in dehumanizing ways. And so I think everybody's going to have to come to play.

Beth [00:47:17] I was really, really touched by Chris Van Hollen going to El Salvador.

Sarah [00:47:24] He's a good person. He always has been [inaudible]. He's Just a good Person.

Beth [00:47:29] And, look, the White House's attacks on him ring so hollow to me because he is a head-down Senator. He does not make the list of the thirstiest politicians that Politico did just actually assemble and is an entertaining read. But he's not like that. And this was his constituent. This is a person who lived in his state, is married to an American citizen in his State, has a child in his statewide. These are his constituents. And it was dangerous for him to take that trip. You could think of 100 ways that could have gone very, very bad. And he took that risk and he went and he used his power. I am so tired of hearing from people in positions of power that they have none because they're in the minority party right now or because the president calls all the shots for our party or whatever it is. There are only 535 people out of 330 plus millions of us who have a seat at the table in Congress. That's an enormous amount of power. And Chris Van Hollen stepped into his and used it and got somewhere. He's not home yet, but it made a difference. And that's the kind of action that I want to see from more people. And action that makes sense, where it clearly wasn't like a fundraising escapade for Chris Van Holland. It was constituent work. That was his person, his responsibility.

Sarah [00:48:47] I think what's so hard about it, though, is I agree with that. And also when people are like, do something to the Democrats, I'm like, guys, there's a limit to what they can do right now. We have to accept that as well. Because some of their political power comes from us. And some of the political power from Republicans in the Congress comes from real Americans. And those real Americans in red states-- I'm encouraged by the thousands of people who turn out in like Utah to cheer on AOC and Bernie. But that matters, too. I don't want it to become like Democrats just aren't doing enough. I don' think we'll get to another government funding fight where they will even be able to entertain the idea of not shutting down the government. And fine, I'm happy to shut down the government that disappears people. So I think that that's what's hard. It's like there's a balance here between, yes, I didn't want to hear you complain about not having the power, because you do have power just by being in that position. And also we can't depend on Democrats in Congress to get us out of this. Now, I do think once they have power, hopefully they'll take the House. The Senate is closer. This is a place that we could all exercise an enormous amount of power. It's going to be a big lift for the Democrats to take the Senate, but it is achievable. We could do it. And so I think all of that coming to play will be so important, but that's a long time away. It's just a long time.

Beth [00:50:20] Well, and that's why I'm not just complaining about Democrats. I'm complaining about Republicans. There are plenty of Republicans in Congress who know that what is being done right now in the name of this Alien Enemies Act is wrong. It is fundamentally unconstitutional and they know it. And you know they believe that in their hearts and you know that their constituents believe that in their heart. For what it's worth, a lot of those Republicans also know that this economic policy is going to be a disaster for them personally. They've got even more selfish reasons to be a check on the president there. And so I want them to step up. Congress has tools that it could be using. Like you said, Congress could just say the Alien Enemies Act is revoked. It's not a law anymore. It was a bad law to begin with. Since it has been passed, people have been saying this only goes dark places.

Sarah [00:51:10] Which was in the 1700s. It was a long time ago.

Beth [00:51:14] In the 1700s. And they didn't even use it when they passed it because it was so draconian. Come on. So I just want to see everybody stepping into the power that they have in the places where they can legitimately do it and help here. Okay, Sarah, we always take kind of an exhale at the end of the episode. Although, I may not have chosen wisely today.

Sarah [00:51:40] You didn't! I'm just going to get riled up again.

Beth [00:51:43] I'm sorry. I apologize. We're going to go in a different direction though. Stephanie H. Murray wrote for Slate a piece entitled, "You're on vacation. You leave your kid in your hotel room with a baby monitor. What could go wrong?" And the first thing I want to say is, it's just a great read. I love that the internet still has some great, relatively long reads that say, I bet your attention can hang with me to really explore something and get somewhere. And she has done that with this piece.

Sarah [00:52:17] I'm just going to yell. Everybody, turn your volume down. This is something that has riled me up since I've had children. I was reading the free range parenting movement before it was cool. I don't mind saying so. I practically dared people to call the police on me. I left my sleeping children in running cars all the time. I left my napping children in my own home sometimes without a baby monitor all the times. I don't mean like for hours I went across town. But would I walk to my neighbor's house while my baby was napping? Uh-huh, I would. And I think this is so, so dumb. The piece of the article that I was like, I knew it. I knew the whole time why I was so mad about this, was a 2016 study at UC Irvine. And they found that people have different reactions to leaving kids alone, not based on the actual danger, but based on their assessment of how good the parent’s reason to be away was. And this was a quote from one of the researchers, "The more morally outraged people felt at the parent, the more danger they claimed the child was in." I freaking knew it. I knew it the whole time. That, first of all, people are shit at danger assessments. That's why they're afraid of planes, but drive across country. They're bad at it and then they want to-- it's really not even about that. It's not even the danger. It's about how you feel about me as a parent. You know what? You can shove that up your ass because I don't care.

Beth [00:53:39] Well, so just to back up a little bit, the article is about thinking it's nice that a baby monitor will let you if you're in a hotel, put your kids in bed, go down to the hotel's restaurant or a restaurant nearby where the monitor stretches.

Sarah [00:53:55] Or like a cruise. You're on a damn ship.

Beth [00:53:58] If you're on a cruise, yes, let your kids sleep and you still go out and have some kind of adult vacation moment. And what the author found is that a couple of parenting influencers posted about doing this and got such a backlash that they then said, well, no, of course there was a nanny in the room. We never would have left the children alone. And so then she got interested, the author, in the topic and started calling hotels and cruise lines. And she found that most places do not have an official policy and that what you heard back depended on kind of the view of the staff on shift at that moment. Some of them were like, yes, amazing. Please come enjoy the hotel's restaurants. We have five for you to choose from. We would love for you to spend your money with us while your children sleep in the room. That's fantastic. Others said we would call the police if a staff member went in to clean a room or do bedside turndown or whatever and found a sleeping child alone. We would call the police, absolutely. And so she was just interested in how many people she talked to who did things like this, because me too, we absolutely had the baby monitor at neighbor's houses to play cards or whatever at night, but they didn't want their names included in the story because so many people on the internet freak out. And I love this quote, "The internet emboldens the neurotic and encourages everyone else to keep quiet."

Sarah [00:55:28] Not me, I'm the opposite. What's the personality test that does the opposite of that? Because that's me. Because I'm like, no, no, now everybody's going to know that I do this because this is so stupid. Because the assumption here that drives me insane is that you care about my kid more than I care about my kid. And as a person who works as a court appointed special advocate, I am not arguing that there aren't people who are harmful to their children. But guess what? You don't catch them because they left their kid on a baby monitor. You catch them because their kids come to school with bruises. Give me a break. If you care so much, why don't you go volunteer and be a CASA? If you care about kids so much instead of tattling on people because you want to be up in their business. I can't take it. And look, the closest I ever got to a run-in with this is on vacation. It's not even a baby monitor situation, but I was teaching my middle child to swim. And he was crying because he didn't want to learn to swim, but we were at the beach and he had to practice. And this woman came up to me and said, "We can all see you. I'm a mandatory reporter and you better stop right now." And I still think about it. I can still feel the shame wash from the top of my head to my toes, even though guess who learned to swim and was fine the rest of the week? One Amos Edward Holland.

[00:56:52] Guess who doesn't remember anything about that vacation except for the delightful swimming he experienced. It just made me feel like crap. I had a little baby. I had three kids. I was doing the best I could. What did you think I was doing? Trying to drown my child in front of a giant vacation resort pool in front of a million people. Really? You just thought I was being a bad mom. I was just doing it in a way you wouldn't do it. And, look, I've been around people who are parenting very different than I would. Because let me tell you what I think about this. I would rather you leave your kid asleep than bring him down and make him watch an iPad. I'm not saying you're a bad parent. I'm not saying that. This is a cultural problem, not individual bad parenting. I know why everybody does it. But can we all agree that maybe sleep is more beneficial to children than the infantisimal tiny risk that involves-- sorry, I told you not to get me started on this. Here's the other thing that this assumes. It assumes you can remove all risk from your children's lives. That's what really, there's a lot clearly, a lot of things here that [inaudible]

Beth [00:57:59] And assumes that you should do that, as though you have the power and that it would be a good idea if you did.

Sarah [00:58:04] And I don't care what it costs you to do that. I don' care what it costs you to remove all bit of risk.

Beth [00:58:12] You're not trying to show your children how to live a good life and teach them to do that. You're just trying to make sure that nothing is ever dangerous or uncomfortable, or that there's any possibility of danger or discomfort for them. This is what causes me to need deep breaths. The more I read, the more I feel like parenting might be kind of like money where there is some point of diminishing returns. Yes. We're just spending so much time trying to actively manage our kids that we have crossed the threshold where that's really great quality, attentive parenting into something very different. And I struggle with this because I want to be a great, attentive parent. But I also realize more and more all the time that what my girls learn from me comes from what I do in my own life, not the way that I parent them. It really is what I show them about living in the world that they're learning from.

Sarah [00:59:25] Here's the thing. I think what helped me with this-- because look, I sat in a therapist's office one time and I was upset because Amos had cried about something. And she was, like, because Amis shouldn't cry? And I was like, first of all, rude. Second of all, no, of course he should cry in the pre-approved developmentally appropriate ways that I have chosen for him beforehand. And she's like, mm-hmm, right. So I think I was reading a Louise Bates Ame, she wrote all these books like back in the day like you're a one year old, you're two year old. I just picked up your 10 to 14 year old actually at the thrift store. I can't wait to break into it. She's so good. And I think maybe it was because this was back in the early eighties. Maybe it was a good, like, before we really stepped off the deep end with that approach of like we will control everything. Because I think we all articulate we want confident children. We want to be attentive, but we think the attentiveness-- because this is what a lot of the parenting influencer narrative is. The more attentive you are, the more secure they are and the more confident they are. Like that's the promise, right?

[01:00:32] What she said is you don't instill confidence. They build it. They have to face challenges and discomfort and find ways to succeed in the face of that or overcome it to build confidence. It's not just something you can give them by being present all the time and playing whenever they want you to. They have to build it. And I was like, okay, that makes sense to me because I felt like my kids weren't confident. They would do that kid thing. I'm bad at that, I won't try it. Or whatever it was. And I thought, I think that's why people still are so inherently supportive. And it's something I've learned to really accept I missed about sports. It's like that's a lot of what sports gives kids, is this ability to try and build the confidence. But they have to do it. You can't just give it to them. It has to be something they build on their own. And so that's why I like the free range kid’s movement. I think that we call it something different now. But when they were little, I'd let them cross the street to the playground. Or from the playground to the grocery store across the street, go in with my cash and buy the snack.

[01:01:40] I mean probably like third, fourth grade, I'd send them over there by themselves. Because I live in Paducah, Kentucky. There's basically no risk. And so that was really important for them to figure that out and do it. And it's weird where you find pockets of that. My friends who have kids in New York City, those kids be independent. They ride in the subway to school; they're doing all kinds of stuff. It's because they can. Of course, they can. And I just think like, man, when you keep people from that and you don't-- but if you can't leave your baby with a monitor, how are you going to let them cross the street to go buy something at the store? Or how are going to let him walk to school? Because you're afraid somebody's going to call the damn cops on you.

Beth [01:02:19] Yeah, there's no right or wrong with parenting. We're all just learning. We're all doing it for the first time. I just don't want to lose the fact that the parents matter in the equations. And that's what stories like this bug me about. People think that something is more dangerous because the parent is being a human with needs. And that's just not it.

Sarah [01:02:46] Well, and when you said people are doing it for the first time, but some people aren't. Some people are doing it for like the fifth time, the eighth time.

Beth [01:02:51] That's true. I can't think about that. It's stressful for me, but I applaud them.

Sarah [01:02:55] But you know what, look at those people. Are they the ones obsessed with the baby monitors and protecting their children from all risk and trying to control everything? They are not. I know that because my best friend has five. That's not how she functions. And I like to learn from that. I think it's very important.

Beth [01:03:11] I am sure that you all will have thoughts about the baby monitors and when we can leave our kids. It's not even unattended because we're watching and listening, but relatively unattended. So we look forward to hearing from you about that and everything else in the episode. Thank you for being here. Thank you first saying in conversation with us and with each other. Substack is a wonderful place to do that. We would love for you to join our premium community and be part of the dialog and know that when you are, you are with other people who've made that commitment as well. So it's not just kind of the bots and the dumpster fire that the internet can be. We will be back with you with another new episode this Friday. Until then, have the best week available.