Latest / 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel / Immigration, nationalism and Europe

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Immigration, nationalism and Europe · 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel

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  SPEAKER_00: So I've logged 50 authoritarian like actions since the 1st of December.
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  SPEAKER_00: So you've probably seen the debate around
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  SPEAKER_00: whether the US committed war crimes in its boat strikes.
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  SPEAKER_00: But today, I'm going to cover three ways that the administration
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  SPEAKER_00: has advanced its anti-immigrant, nationalist agenda
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  SPEAKER_00: that have gone under the radar, but you should probably know about.
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  SPEAKER_00: So let's start with immigration and visas.
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  SPEAKER_00: So in June, Trump imposed sweeping restrictions on people
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  SPEAKER_00: entering the United States if they came from 19 countries,
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  SPEAKER_00: which included Afghanistan, Iran and Sudan.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this basically included both permanent and temporary migration.
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  SPEAKER_00: So it would include tourists.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that basically stop new people coming in.
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  SPEAKER_00: But people who already had valid visas were allowed to enter
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  SPEAKER_00: the United States.
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  SPEAKER_00: at the end of November,
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  SPEAKER_00: you had those two members of the National Guard who were
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  SPEAKER_00: tragically shot in Washington, D.C., and one person has since died.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they were shot by an Afghan national who entered the US in 2021.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, after that incident, Kristi Noem, who is secretary
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  SPEAKER_00: of the Department of Homeland Security,
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  SPEAKER_00: she said on social media that Trump should enact a full travel
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  SPEAKER_00: ban on every damn country that's been flooding our nation
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  SPEAKER_00: with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies.
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  SPEAKER_00: And a couple of days after that, the Trump administration paused
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  SPEAKER_00: all ongoing immigration applications from those 19 countries.
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  SPEAKER_00: So people who were in the process
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  SPEAKER_00: of getting a green card or becoming a naturalized citizen,
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  SPEAKER_00: or having their asylum applications assessed.
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  SPEAKER_00: All of that was just put on hold.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then anyone who already had a green card
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  SPEAKER_00: or had their refugee status approved was going to be re reviewed
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  SPEAKER_00: by the administration.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what that essentially is, is collective punishment
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  SPEAKER_00: for the actions of one person.
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  SPEAKER_00: And a crackdown on legal migration from what are mostly Muslim
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  SPEAKER_00: majority countries.
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  SPEAKER_00: And two days after that, so this is now the end of last week,
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  SPEAKER_00: Kristi Noem said on Fox News that the US is going to expand
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  SPEAKER_00: that list of countries to 30 or more than 30,
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  SPEAKER_00: but she didn't actually say which countries that was going to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: at the same time, the Trump administration
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  SPEAKER_00: has asked the State Department
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  SPEAKER_00: to start denying H-1b visas, which are for highly skilled workers.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they basically want to deny those visas where there's evidence
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  SPEAKER_00: that the applicant or any accompanying family member
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  SPEAKER_00: has been involved in censorship of free speech.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so how that is happening in that is that they're going
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  SPEAKER_00: to be checking the social media and LinkedIn profiles
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  SPEAKER_00: of both the applicant and their family members for any
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  SPEAKER_00: indication that they've ever worked in misinformation and fact checking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Content moderation, online safety and so on.
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  SPEAKER_00: And really, what I think that's about is that they want to weed out
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  SPEAKER_00: immigrants who might challenge the administration's narrative.
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  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, these are all ways in which the administration
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  SPEAKER_00: has attacked, or restricted immigration in this week
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  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that's happened is that the state of Minnesota
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  SPEAKER_00: has really come under attack.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a Democrat led state.
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  SPEAKER_00: And one particular aspect that's being used against
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  SPEAKER_00: it is that it has a large and vibrant Somali immigrant community.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that really stemmed from thousands of Somalis settling
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  SPEAKER_00: there in the early to mid 1990s because they were fleeing civil war
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  SPEAKER_00: in Somalia.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this includes Ilhan Omar, who came to the US
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  SPEAKER_00: as a refugee in 1995 when she was 12.
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  SPEAKER_00: She became a U.S.
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  SPEAKER_00: citizen in 2000.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then she was elected as a Democratic congresswoman
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  SPEAKER_00: to Minnesota's fifth district in 2018.
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  SPEAKER_00: And she's been an outspoken critic of President Trump.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this matters, as you'll see.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so what's going on?
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  SPEAKER_00: So basically, in November, Trump ended
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  SPEAKER_00: what's called temporary protected status for Somalis in Minnesota.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that basically means it's become easier to deport them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then last Tuesday, the administration announced a new Ice
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  SPEAKER_00: immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota specifically aimed
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  SPEAKER_00: at arresting and deporting hundreds of undocumented Somalis
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  SPEAKER_00: in Minneapolis.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then in a press conference last week,
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump really upped the rhetoric.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he he referred to Somalis, as garbage.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he particularly singled out Representative Ilhan Omar for attack.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he basically said, Ilhan Omar is garbage.
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  SPEAKER_00: She's garbage.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her friends are garbage.
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  SPEAKER_00: So alongside this, there's been a different way of attacking,
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  SPEAKER_00: Minnesota, which is that the Treasury Department
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  SPEAKER_00: is investigating tax fraud allegations, in Minnesota,
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  SPEAKER_00: alleging that they may have been diverted to Al Shabab,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is kind of a militant terrorist group in Somalia.
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  SPEAKER_00: So Trump called Minnesota a hub of fraudulent money
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  SPEAKER_00: laundering activity under Democratic Governor Tim Walz.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, you probably remember Tim Walz because he was Kamala Harris's
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  SPEAKER_00: running mate for vice president during the 2024 election.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, it is true that many people have been
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  SPEAKER_00: convicted of fraud in Minnesota,
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  SPEAKER_00: for targeting their welfare and housing programs, particularly
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  SPEAKER_00: during the Covid pandemic.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's also true
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  SPEAKER_00: that some of those people convicted had been Somali immigrants.
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  SPEAKER_00: But there is no evidence that those defrauded funds
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  SPEAKER_00: were then sent to a terrorist group in Somalia.
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  SPEAKER_00: But that has kind of become a right wing talking point
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  SPEAKER_00: which Trump has been repeating.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, says that those people who
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  SPEAKER_00: abuse the system
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  SPEAKER_00: in Minnesota have been prosecuted or are being prosecuted and jailed,
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  SPEAKER_00: and that effectively what the Trump administration is doing is demonising
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  SPEAKER_00: a whole committee, a whole community, based on the actions of a few.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then the kind of the final way the administration has targeted
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  SPEAKER_00: immigration in Minnesota is by threatening to withhold
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  SPEAKER_00: $30 million of federal highway funding from the state over
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  SPEAKER_00: what, are called foreign truck driver licenses.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so what this is, is that in September, the administration
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  SPEAKER_00: significantly tightened the regulations around, non-U.S.
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  SPEAKER_00: citizens being allowed to drive commercial trucks.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that includes things like stricter visa rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it has since used those tightened rules to target primarily
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  SPEAKER_00: Democrat led states with threats to withhold highway funding,
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  SPEAKER_00: unless they comply with these regulations.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what's happened is that the states
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  SPEAKER_00: have generally responded by saying, well, we are complying.
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  SPEAKER_00: Minnesota is doing exactly the same.
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  SPEAKER_00: So Governor Tim Walz said in a statement
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  SPEAKER_00: that Minnesota is complying with the new regulations.
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  SPEAKER_00: the last thing I want to cover in this part one is foreign policy.
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  SPEAKER_00: And really what happened was that last week,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration issued kind
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  SPEAKER_00: of a formal national security strategy paper,
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  SPEAKER_00: that called well, it did a lot of things,
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  SPEAKER_00: but some of the things it did is it called for European nations
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  SPEAKER_00: to take primary responsibility for their own defense.
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  SPEAKER_00: It baselessly accused the European Union of stifling political liberty.
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  SPEAKER_00: It warned that some NATO members would become a majority
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  SPEAKER_00: non-European, by which I presume it means majority nonwhite.
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  SPEAKER_00: And said that the US should align with patriotic European parties,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is really code for European right wing populist parties.
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  SPEAKER_00: What there wasn't of in the document was any criticism of Russia
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  SPEAKER_00: or Putin, or any acknowledgment that Russia poses
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  SPEAKER_00: a quite serious security threat to Europe.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, in some ways, this document isn't news, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: It just codifies formally all the various criticisms
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  that the administration
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  SPEAKER_00: has been making of Europe ever since Trump took office, including JD
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  SPEAKER_00: Vance, his famous speech in the spring, in Munich.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it is still shocking to see in black and white,
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  SPEAKER_00: that the official kind of US government position
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  SPEAKER_00: now is this this blatant disdain for Europe's liberal democracies
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  SPEAKER_00: and an open support for far right populist movements,
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  SPEAKER_00: some of which are really blatantly neo-Nazi.
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  SPEAKER_00: So these are all stories that I just think
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  SPEAKER_00: haven't reached the front pages this week, but are really important.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then in part to also cover things that you might have missed in
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  SPEAKER_00: the realm of science and health and, civil rights.
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  SPEAKER_00: So tune in for that.