... mentioned, what, what have they been telling you?

So that's what we set out to do in, in this most recent story, was to get at the human cost of this policy.

And, and, and, to, the key background piece of that is judges are overwhelmingly finding that this is il- uh, the Trump administration's policy is being implemented illegally, that it's not, it's not proper to treat these people as though they should be mandatorily detained.

And so people who have built lives here, they have US citizen children, sometimes they have c- citizen spouses, um, um, they've had companies and jobs, they've worked here and been part of their communities for, for years or decades, um, are saying this is, this has upended their lives.

I mean, it's, it's put them into financial ruin.

They've lost their jobs.

They've been, they've had their work permits confiscated from them.

Um, how overwhelmed are they when they're trying to adjudicate all the cases in their docket?

Just overall, what's the key finding from your reporting on this?

So you mentioned the volume of cases, the volume of rejections from judges that we've been tracking for a long time.

I think what we wanted to show in this story was also just the absolute, uh, you know, volume of human lives that are really affected and touched by this expansion of man- mandatory detention, the way it really impacts people, and not just the people who are detained, but their family members and their children.

A lot of the time they're US citizens, spouses and children, uh, who are sort of, sort of caught up in this.

And not just that, that these are pe- people are being detained, but they're being detained in ways that judges are saying is flagrantly illegal, just over and over and over again.

Overwhelmingly, something like 90% of the cases that are going forward, judges, including judges appointed by President Trump, uh, and Republicans across the board, uh, saying this is just overwhelmingly illegal, and it's been rising up through the court system.

Um, but it's been pretty consistent, uh, for the past year.

... against this administration?

I'm sure they'll still be banging on the president's door wanting that money they were promised.

promised.Well, i- it's interesting.

I mean, look, you saw people who were defend- defenders of this anti-weaponization fund saying literally in the moment that we were learning about the Cornyn deal, "This will be, this will be rescinded by Tuesday." Essentially, like essentially the deal will be rescinded by Tuesday, you know, as once Blanche gets through committee.

You know, I don't know if they're gonna be quite that brazen about it, but it, it is something you can't block as this in perpetuity if someone's really, if the president's really motivated to do it, as he says he is.

And the other thing is, yes, there are other ways to pay people, although I would say, note it's fairly interesting that there was a class action lawsuit brought by a bunch of Jan Sixers in Florida, uh, in which the Justice Department was asked to weigh in, and on Monday evening they said they brought their claims too late.

They were supposed to, they should have brought them in 2023.

That time, that ship has sailed.

Do you see the, the parallels with Cuba?

Mm.

But what's also happening alongside that is this mass detention effort.

It's a, this effort to put as many people as you can in, in detention facilities or jails, uh, and hold them while their deportation proceedings are pending.

And, and what this administration has done is expand that, not to target sort of the worst of the worst in their, in their parlance, as they like to say, but actually people who have resided in the United States for years, and often, and actually for the most part, don't have criminal records.

And they're being grabbed by, you know, hundreds a day, um, and put in detention facilities.

And what the administration is saying is, "Not only do, can we detain you, we must detain you and hold you indefinitely until you're either deported or your immigration proceedings play out." Um, and courts are seeing that and saying that is a massive and, uh, the scope of this is mass- a massive due process violation, um, in sort of an unprecedented way we've never really seen before.

Kyle, did the justices effectively give Trump permission to do this?

I mean, es- essentially, you know, the, the, they sort of blessed sort of analogic- analogous, you know, removals of executive branch, you know, multi-member agency heads and things like that.

Yeah.

So, I mean, to me this is a, an issue That I'm interested in for a number of reasons.

It's an interesting legal issue, but also one that is s- like I mentioned before, kind of central to the Donald Trump, uh, persona, uh, which is this idea that states, um, for decades now, but, um, have, uh, m- many states, dozens of states, have agreed that b- ballots can arrive after Election Day, mail-in ballots, so long as they are f- postmarked by Election Day.

Um, and that's just been an ac- accepted part of the fabric of our elections for a very long time, but one that Donald Trump decided he was against because he blamed...

I'm not even sure he blamed late-arriving ballots, he just blamed slow counted ballots, even ones that were fi- that were submitted on time, for his defeat in 2020 and claimed that they were fraudulent without evidence.

Um, and then, uh, has applied that to particularly these late-arriving ballots that, that are accepted in, in I think 30 states.

Um, and the court said essentially he's wrong, um, that, that a Mississippi law that allowed ballots to arrive up to five days after Election Day, again, so long as they were postmarked by Election Day, uh, is, uh, is perfectly legitimate.

Um, what are you looking for? Like, what, what is the tell for you as you, as you go about covering this stuff?

In more than 10,000 instances, federal judges across the country found that the detention of individuals without a chance to plead their case was illegal.

What's happened then is that the courts and the judges who are interpreting this policy for the first time saying, "This is ridiculous.

I mean, this is out, this is unbelievable and not legal," on an overwhelming basis have rejected it.

By our count, it's more than 430 federal judges have said this is not the proper interpretation of mandatory detention law that's been on the books for 30 years.

The policy shift has resulted in millions of people being denied bond hearings from the start of the process.

What ICE did under the second Trump administration was say, "If we find you, no matter where you are in the country, no matter how long you've been here, we will still treat you as seeking admission to the country as though we've apprehended you at the border, and therefore, you are also required to be put in detention."

So m- maybe just tell us, uh, for starters, what you've found and how, in broad strokes, the judges are now thinking about Trump's immigration enforcement and the sorts of various, uh, defeats he's been dealt.

Sure.

It, it's, it's been sort of remarkable, as I, I didn't start tracking this in a concerted way on purpose, but it became this almost mission because we started to see it balloon, uh, you know, the alarm of the courts, the degree, the tenor, and then the, the just the breadth of the rejection everywhere.

Where this administration is, in addition to a mass deportation effort, is also undergoing and undertaking a mass detention effort, where basically anyone that they intend to deport, even if those people are pursuing asylum claims or other forms of legal status, they not only say they, they can detain them, they must detain them in some immigration facility, and have been doing that in a large-scale way, most acutely in Minnesota, where they had the surge in enforcement, but everywhere.

And judges are not just rejecting it, but in extremely alarmed and pointed ways, saying this, you know, this is a, essentially a human rights catastrophe.

And what's most remarkable is these are, these are not, you know, left and right judges.

Doesn't matter...

[chuckles] And I think the dissent really touched on something so important, that this government is now treating-... anyone, anywhere under these circumstances, as if they're at a border crossing, and that's what makes this so chilling.

What do they argue here?

What they say is, number one, i- it would be kind of shocking if, for 30 years, every other administration had this power to mass detain people and didn't realize it.

[music] That would be a little unusual for people not to have known that.

If Congress had authorized this mass detention strategy, maybe they would've been a little more explicit about it than some sort of nuanced reinterpretation of ambiguous language in an old law.

And so that's what they point to, and they say, "Look, someone who's lived in the United States for decades is not an arriving alien," just the plain meaning, a common sense reading of that.

Um, they also point to a Supreme Court ruling from a few years ago that kind of endorsed this divide between arriving and, and people who are crossing the border and can be detained in a mandatory way.

You know, one of the most pointed responses we saw was from the judge who opposed the Fifth Circuit's view.

They just kind of threw me in there and didn't care.

And it just goes to show how deep the sort of web of Epstein really goes, to see these stories popping up all over the place, different countries, people in different walks of life unexpectedly close to Epstein, and it's really starting to tell in all sorts of places.

Well, it- there's two points that you raise.

One is there were a lot of people we knew had contact with Epstein, but we didn't know how deep those contacts were until we saw this new batch.

That's people like Steve Bannon, is the one that jumps to my mind as someone who we knew had some relationship with him, where they'd filmed a movie together.

He had sort of been friendly to him.

But the depth of their relationship was, became apparent when we read the full breadth of the files, and that appears to be true with Peter Mandelson, too.

People like Howard Lutnick, people who had disclaimed Epstein, said, "Oh, yeah, I knew him, but only a little bit," and it turns out they actually talked a lot more often than they let on.

Tell us what happened on Friday and why this next one might be headed to the Supreme Court and why it's so important.

... and what this looks like for these individuals.

So it's, it's really complicated, and it's something that...

But it traces back to a very specific moment, which is that in July, Director Lyons, who we just talked about, um, adopted a new interpretation of old immigration laws, so things that date back to the mid-'90s, um, in which ca- You know, i- it used to be that when, uh, the federal government would en- encounter someone at the border, they could quickly put them into deportation proceedings and hold them in detention, and imi- and, and, essentially lock them up while those proce- proceedings were pending.

What the admini- the Trump administration has done is reinterpret that to say, "Anyone we encounter anywhere in the country, essentially, p- even people who have been here for decades, we ca- we actually, not only can we lock them up, we must lock them up under our new interpretation of the law.

It's mandatory, and they don't get a chance for bond at all." And the courts a- ac- across the country, writ large, have reacted sort of with horror at this, because they're, you know, they're starting to get all these people filing emergency petitions, saying, "I've been- I've lived here for 30 years, no criminal record, a job, a community, my kids are citizens.

I've done nothing wrong, and I just- I went into my, my ICE check-in that I do, you know, a few times a year, and I- they arrested me." And judges are saying that...

And, and they, and they're, not only are they arresting me, they're saying, "I can't even ask for bond.

Like, wh-... w- what is the check for that? What is the remedy for that? Or can they just do it, and, you know, case by case gets litigated, and then they just ignore the judge's ruling? Like, how does this get reined in? Is the, are, is the court system capable, in a sense, of really checking this administration when they are very determined to make their own rules?

How on earth do you keep track of everything and choose what you're actually going to cover and report on?

Sure.

I, I mean, it is, um...

It, it's a, you know, fire hose.

It really is.

Um, and it's, we're constantly triaging.

There's 10 things happening at once.

Um, how do you sort of balance your mental health around these things and, and take care of yourself?

Do they have a point?

They do.

Um, I mean, eh, uh, that actually, in my read of the ruling initially was that the judge has almost echoed that.

That she, she dismissed the case without prejudice, which is a key thing that basically says they can, they could theoretically re-indict.

You know, if you dismiss it with prejudice, she says that there, there is no, you know, circumstance in which you should be able to re-bring this case.

She's leaving that open.

Um, but she also says in the same breath, but because this indictment was invalid from the beginning and Pam Bondi's appointment of Lindsay Halligan to this role, um, you know, wasn't legal, that shouldn't give you this automatic, like, sic- this automatic, you know, tolling of the statute of limitations.

Go ahead.

Kal, what do you see as the through line between Trump's pardons, whether we're talking about a billionaire crypto executive he says he, he doesn't really know or some of his closest allies who've acted on his behalf to try to overturn election results?

I mean, look, there, there's, it's politics is the through line.

It's, it's, it's, you know, business interests, it's, it's things that are personal to him, and I think that, th- that has been true, um, you know, acro- across the board, um, with, with who he's decided to exercise clemency for.

Um, it, it's, you know, here he says, "Well, I didn't know the guy.

My, my sons are in that, in that industry." So there's still a personal connection there, and, you know, I think it's, it's sort of striking to hear him say, "I don't really know the guy." Uh, people pointed out, you know, that was...

He criticized, you know, Joe Biden for signing pardons that he claimed that Biden didn't have so- (laughs) any awareness of the details about.

Well, here he is saying, saying essentially the same thing, and the pardon power is such an extraordinary, uh, act of, of, you know, presidential authority, almost unchallengeable to use that for someone who can say, "Oh, I didn't really know anything about that case." Um, especially when there's a business connection there, and, you know, the president's clearly interested in, in crypto and, and spreading his own personal empire in that direction, um, that, that it was really a remarkable thing to say.

bearing.Kyle, I think a big picture question is why now? Why is the president again going back to things that happened in 2020 when it seems he, he evaded any serious legal consequences for the events of January 6th?

Mm-hmm.

...

COVID-era investigation of the Russia probe.

Trump...

You know, uh, you know, the Trump 2016 campaign's links to Russia, Comey investigated that, and that's what he was testifying about.

Um, they think he lied about not just the, that probe broadly, but about whether he ever authorized anyone to give an anonymous statement to the press related to that probe.

(laughs) So that's the charge, uh, the false statement.

But ta- talk about the, the, the rarity of that.

But Kyle, just unpack the situation for us, and then I'm gonna pepper you with questions.

Sure.

I mean, and just to set it up, I mean, Em- Emal Bove is, um, a controversial figure even prior to this whistleblower disclosure.

He represented Trump in his criminal trial, um, and, uh, and all of his criminal cases pretty much and then when he- he had a reputation as sort of this hard charging, kind of abrasive guy who sort of steamrolled people at the Justice Department, um, in his first tenure there when he was at SDNY, um, prior to the Trump legal effort.

And then when he came in, he helped unravel the prosecution of Eric Adams in New York, um, and that- that led to resignations and controversy, and he also le- spearheaded the firing of the January 6th prosecutors, um, and- and endorsed that- endorsed that whole effort.

Um, you know, and he sparked a lot of- you know, triggered a lot of fear that other people were gonna be targeted, like at the FBI, for their role in those cases.

So that's the backdrop before we even get-

(laughs)

Yeah.

The battle that's going on right now between these two branches of government, you know, with Congress kind of in the back being supine.

And Trump, the only obstacle to his agenda really are the legal limits and the court saying, "You're crossing those legal limits time and again." And the tariff story is part of that narrative now, um, and in a big way.

I mean, we've seen a lot of clashes over Trump and immigration, his mass deportations getting stopped.

This is the first time where a central plank of his economic agenda has been stymied by the court.

And we have this Court of International Trade, which even a lot of lawyers didn't know existed.

Yeah, what is this? (laughs)

It's based in New York, but it is designated to handle matters of international trade.

What are you watching for today?

Sure.

So this is a really important moment because of everything we saw yesterday in the Oval Office with President Trump and President Bukele of, of El Salvador in which they basically said there's nothing any of us can do to get this guy back.

We...

You know, the White House is even taking this tack that maybe we didn't even wrongly deport him.

Maybe we meant to send him to El Salvador in violation of a court order, you know, which is bizarre because they've been saying for weeks now that, "No, no, it was a mistake.

We screwed up," in court.

Is Trump just ignoring that ruling here and have we ever seen anything like that before?

What are they saying?

... sort of, that they, that the court acknowledged, uh, that the admi- that the executive branch has this sort of primacy on foreign poli- foreign policy, foreign, uh, you know, relations, authority, that they, they...

The one thing the Supreme Court did was say, you know, the judge who issued the order has to sort of clarify it to make sure she doesn't overstep into the executive branch's lane.

And the administration, look, sort of zooms in on that part and says, "See? We told you that we have the exclusive authority over foreign policy." Um, which is actually not what the court said, um, but it did sort of tell the court to be mindful of it.

Does this court decision from the Supreme Court address the specifics of J.D. Vance's critique, or no?

Um, not precisely.

I mean, uh, J., J.D. Vance was just wrong when he called this guy a convicted gang member.

This guy was suspected of being a gang member and had some initial sort of preliminary immigration proceedings, um, in which the judge said, "I'm persuaded, so I'm gonna keep him detained." And then as you noted, they later ruled that he couldn't be sent back to El Salvador because he might be at risk of persecution by a local gang, um, and so that's why they released him and let him live in the United States for the, for the last six years.

Any other questions about the World Cup? Well, the new reporting comes after Politico reported that Trump had told top members of his administration that Musk was, quote, "empowered to make recommendations to the departments, but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy." We start tonight with Kyle Chaney, who shares a byline on that Politico story. Also, The New York Times's, uh, Kate Conger, co-author of Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. So, Kyle, the President says there was no clash. Can you walk us through some of what you've learned?

Sure. Well, I mean, look, this is, this is the question that's animating the, the entire early part of the s- the second Trump administration, which is, what exactly is Elon Musk doing? What, uh, what power has Donald Trump given him? And is he wielding it unilaterally, or is he doing it, you know, with, as sort of an advisory recommendation, and then the Cabinet secretaries are carrying it out for him? I- in court, the argument has been, "Well, Elon Musk doesn't really have any real decision-making power." But as you see from this Cabinet meeting, the Cabinet secretaries seem to disagree with that. (laughs) They feel like they're being steamrolled by Elon Musk, and they don't like it, and they're starting to push back. So, this is actually gonna have some repercussions, I think, in the legal battles that are facing Doge and Elon Musk o- over wh- what kind of power he's actually wielding, 'cause it sounds a lot more serious and substantive than what they've been presenting in court.

Kyle, what, what do you know about why the President decided to try to curb some of Musk's power over the Cabinet? 'Cause then later on, he put a, uh, a statement saying, you know, things would be done with, with a scalpel, not with a hatchet, which certainly flies in the face of Elon Musk, you know, running around the stage with a ch- a chain saw.

(laughs) Right. And I mean, uh, and yet, yet in the same breath, he said, you know, "By the way, Cabinet, if you don't cut enough, Elon's gonna come in and do it." So, he's kind of saying what, a little bit of what he thinks e- I think everyone wants to hear in, in this case, and it's hard to tell if, is he really constraining Elon Musk, or is he trying to placate the Cabinet to a degree, and we'll sort of let this play out and see how it shakes out another day? Again, this is all happening in the backdrop of an enormous wave of lawsuits against what Elon Musk is doing, and I think every word that comes out of the President's mouth, um, is, you know, is legally salient too. That's why his speech in- in praising Elon Musk as the head of Doge in a speech to Congress, uh, you know, immediately had repercussions, both in court and, and possibly with his other Cabinet members. And I think, uh, you know, it's, a lot of it's a Rorschach test right now, and, and this is, uh, sort of the next phase of it.

(laughs) So, I mean, what- what are we left with there?

I mean, uh, my immediate reaction to this was this was a play for the- the lawsuits that you just described, which is where, you know, the judges have started to push back and all these lawsuits challenging what, you know, what is DOGE? Who's running it? What authority do they have? And the White House has said in court filings, Elon Musk has no power. But in rea- in- in the real world where Donald Trump is speaking, you know, in his address to Congress out loud, he's saying Elon Musk is in charge of this thing, and that is the exact argument that all the states are making, that- that employee unions are making, which is that Elon Musk, who is not senate confirmed, has amassed so much power that it's unconstitutional. And so if he's really the one calling the shots, then that may be- that may play out in court and they may- they may win those arguments in court. So, I th- it seemed to me that Trump was trying to s- you know, at least get out loud he's not in charge, you know, he's- he has no real authority here, while kind of winking that, you know, maybe he still does-

That... See, that's the... I- that wa- I had the exact same thought this was essentially a kind of legal CYA situation. They have been representing in court what are, to my mind, preposterous positions. For instance, that he's not the administrator of DOGE. Obviously, he runs DOGE, the president said it, it's all he talked about. They came up with this woman, Amy Gleason, who was on vacation in Mexico, uh, when they had the court filing. And the threshold legal question is: Does he have authority? Is he just an advisor who tells the president or does he have authority, right? Which is why it was such an interesting red flag that he's saying he doesn't have authority. Here's the- the characterization of why this is unconstitutional from one of the latest lawsuits, 'cause I just wanna set this context for this meeting today. And the people suing the government over DOGE say, "Defendant Elon Musk is not legally the President of the United States nor is he a federal elected official of any kind. Mr. Musk is not a Senate confirmed officer of the United States, but he and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, not in fact a Federal Executive Department, are lawlessly and unconstitutionally wielding sweeping power across the executive branch. As Mr. Musk and DOGE lawlessly seize power over large swaths of federal spending, decimate the federal workforce, dismantle federal agencies, they are severely harming and threatening further imminent harm to everyday Americans." You also, Kyle, uh, covered another legal case today on exactly this sort of question of authority in which Trump summarily fired the independent board member of the National Labor Relations Board, and a judge reinstated that member today. Tell me about that.

Sure. This is- this is the latest in a series of cases where a judge has sort of put back in someone that Trump has purported to fire, uh, in these independent boards. There's a whole series of boards and then this- this one manages labor disputes across the country, really important, uh- uh, function. And they're designed by Congress essentially to be independent, uh, to be not- not subject to the politic- to political pressure, um, and therefore can't be removed from that board without cause or some specific reason. Trump did not want to be subject to those laws, thinks he shouldn't be, so he has started removing these people without- without any cause and then saying it's just my authority to run the executive branch. Court, uh, and particularly this court, Judge Howell in DC pushed back and said, this is just, you know, the latest in this snowballing, uh, example of- of- of, you know, a president trying to be above and- and not subject to the law, um, that started sort of with the immunity ruling last year, um, and has continued now as he's exercised unprecedented authority as president.