These are heavy topics, and I know you both handle these interviews delicately and with sensitivity, but I have to ask, how do you as the reporter deal with those emotions after the fact?

I think you really try to focus on the person you're talking to.

It's their time to have emotions and feelings, is kind of how I look at it.

My time to kind of process it and have the feelings about it is on my own time.

Uh, you know, after I've written the story or when I'm back in my hotel room and I just kind of take a quiet moment by myself and process that however I need to process that.

Sometimes that's crying, quite honestly.

Uh, other times it's just kind of sitting in quiet.

And I don't know if listeners realize, but NPR has that infrastructure, that teamwork set up across the Middle East, across multiple countries, in Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, and so on.

We've been focusing at this point on people being surveilled out in the world, but I'm curious, Cat, on if we're also seeing new tactics play out, um, tracking people's, you know, lives online.

Yeah, we absolutely are, specifically on social media.

And we're seeing that play out a lot through something called administrative subpoenas, which DHS is sending to tech companies like Google or Meta, demanding personal information to unmask anonymous accounts, specifically anonymous accounts that are tracking ICE activity or are critical of ICE.

You know, administrative subpoenas can be issued by a federal agency like DHS without a judge or a grand jury.

They've typically been used with tech companies, ah, in the past involving serious offenses like child sexual abuse material.

But now privacy and civil rights experts say that we've seen a big uptick in them being sent to tech companies to threaten free speech.

Ah, we talked to Steve Loney, an attorney at the ACLU in Pennsylvania who has represented several people who have been subpoenaed in this way in recent months, and he told us that a pattern is starting to emerge.

Why, why is the government able to basically request information on these people?

And actually the administration denied it at the time, which is interesting because then you see just a few years later, Stephen Miller's like, actually, we're gonna be doing that.

Yeah, exactly.

The administration very much distanced themselves from that AP report at the time.

But yeah, exactly.

In 2023, Stephen Miller, who has essentially become President Trump's right-hand man on immigration.

Back in 2023, he was on the late Charlie Kirk's right-wing podcast.

And he talked explicitly about what we're seeing right now, basically.

The National Guard is key, but the National Guard is maybe also just a model for how the administration wants to proceed, a costume almost that almost anyone can wear.

And actually the administration denied it at the time, which is interesting because then you see just a few years later, Stephen Miller's like, actually, we're gonna be doing that.

Yeah, exactly.

The administration very much distanced themselves from that AP report at the time.

But yeah, exactly.

In 2023, Stephen Miller, who has essentially become President Trump's right-hand man on immigration.

Back in 2023, he was on the late Charlie Kirk's right-wing podcast.

And he talked explicitly about what we're seeing right now, basically.

The National Guard is key, but the National Guard is maybe also just a model for how the administration wants to proceed, a costume almost that almost anyone can wear.

Like in 2017, the AP reported on this memo from the Department of Homeland Security that talked about deploying the National Guard, how we might use the National Guard to help with immigration, and actually the administration denied it at the time, which is interesting because then you see just a few years later, Stephen Miller's like, "Actually, we're gonna be doing that."

Yeah, exactly.

The administration very much distanced themselves from that AP report at the time.

Um, but yeah, exactly.

In 2023, Stephen Miller, who has essentially become President Trump's right-hand man on immigration, back in 2023 he was on the late Charlie Kirk's right-wing podcast.

Uh, and he talked explicitly about what we're seeing right now basically.

He was talking about, um, kind of his plans for Trump's second term, uh, assuming that he was to win a second term at that point, and he was talking about how there would be mass deportations and immigration raids across the country, and he spelled out using the National Guard to help with that.

Like I, I feel like in some ways, the National Guard is key, but the National Guard is maybe also just a model for how the administration wants to proceed, a, a costume almost, that almost anyone can wear.