Latest / 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel / Trump’s latest moves on voting, universities and dissent

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Trump’s latest moves on voting, universities and dissent · 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So all eyes have been on Iran over the last week,
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: but plenty of worrying things have been happening in the US
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  SPEAKER_00: that have kind of been pushed out of the headlines.
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  SPEAKER_00: So today I'm going to go through some of them covering voting
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  SPEAKER_00: and democracy, renewed attacks on university and information,
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  SPEAKER_00: and more attacks on perceived enemies at home.
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  SPEAKER_00: So on voting and democracy.
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  SPEAKER_00: So for the first time last week,
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  SPEAKER_00: President Trump linked his false claims of a rigged election
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  SPEAKER_00: in 2020 to the fates of people who'd been murdered.
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  SPEAKER_00: So he met with families whose family members had been killed
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  SPEAKER_00: by undocumented immigrants as part of his anti-immigrant push.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Trump said that those people would still be alive
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  SPEAKER_00: if the 2020 election hadn't been rigged.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that is kind of a real escalation.
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  SPEAKER_00: In in his rhetoric against rigged elections
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  SPEAKER_00: And then there's more kind of controlling of information.
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  SPEAKER_00: So while he was special counsel, Jack Smith produced a detailed report
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  SPEAKER_00: on Trump's mishandling of reams of classified documents
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  SPEAKER_00: after Trump left the White House in 2021.
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  SPEAKER_00: So last month, Jack Smith testified in front of Congress
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  SPEAKER_00: about several aspects of his election interference prosecution.
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  SPEAKER_00: But he's never been allowed to discuss his findings
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  SPEAKER_00: on the classified documents case in public
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  SPEAKER_00: because a Trump appointed judge, Judge Cannon,
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  SPEAKER_00: temporarily blocked the release of Jack Smith's report about it
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  SPEAKER_00: shortly before Trump's inauguration last year.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then last week, Judge Cannon has now permanently barred
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  SPEAKER_00: the Department of Justice from ever releasing that report.
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  SPEAKER_00: So who knows what it says.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then the Department of Justice also sued five more state for voter
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  SPEAKER_00: data, three of them Republican led.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's Utah, Oklahoma and West Virginia.
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  SPEAKER_00: So it's now sued
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  SPEAKER_00: 24 states for voter data, most of which have been Democrat led.
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  SPEAKER_00: and this really just seems to be an escalating effort to seize
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  SPEAKER_00: the personal and private information of voters ahead of the midterms.
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  SPEAKER_00: So moving on now to renewed attacks on universities and information.
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  SPEAKER_00: So first,
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  SPEAKER_00: officials said that
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  SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration is stepping up work to uncover
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  SPEAKER_00: what the administration sees
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  SPEAKER_00: as malign foreign influence at US colleges and universities.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then the Department of Justice
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  SPEAKER_00: sued the University of California, Los Angeles, so UCLA,
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  SPEAKER_00: accusing it of creating a hostile work environment for Jewish faculty.
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  SPEAKER_00: So this is an accusation that the administration
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  SPEAKER_00: has frequently actually used over the last year to target universities
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  SPEAKER_00: it doesn't like Two days after that, Columbia University said
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  SPEAKER_00: that one of its students was arrested by federal immigration officers,
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  SPEAKER_00: who apparently
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  SPEAKER_00: misrepresented themselves to gain entry to a residential building
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  SPEAKER_00: to make the arrest, which is against, university rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then a day
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  SPEAKER_00: after that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the cancellation
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  SPEAKER_00: of members of the military attending some of the country's
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  SPEAKER_00: top ranked colleges and universities beginning from this September,
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  SPEAKER_00: saying that schools are teaching
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  SPEAKER_00: the enemy's wicked ideologies to service members.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's basically really
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  SPEAKER_00: restricting where army personnel can go to college.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then the Trump administration is interviewing law students
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  SPEAKER_00: for summer placements.
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  SPEAKER_00: But this time there's a White House official sitting in
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  SPEAKER_00: to vet the political loyalty of each candidate.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the Liberty University
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  SPEAKER_00: School of Law actually told students hoping for a summer placement:
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  SPEAKER_00: You must be aligned politically with President Trump for the summer job.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that GPA was not a strong factor in the decision.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then thinking more broadly about controlling information.
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  SPEAKER_00: So there's this thing called
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  SPEAKER_00: the reference manual on Scientific Evidence.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's used to support judges
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  SPEAKER_00: in cases that involve complex scientific and technical evidence.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's produced jointly between the Federal Judicial Center
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  SPEAKER_00: and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
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  SPEAKER_00: But now, more than two dozen contributors are raising alarm bells
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  SPEAKER_00: about political interference
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  SPEAKER_00: after a chapter on climate science was deleted
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  SPEAKER_00: and apparently was deleted after Republican state attorney generals
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  SPEAKER_00: in a letter requested that it's removed, claiming it was biased.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then in a move that I just find really sad, a leaked Interior
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  SPEAKER_00: Department database revealed US plans to revise historical information.
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  SPEAKER_00: So basically,
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  SPEAKER_00: it revealed
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  SPEAKER_00: how far the Trump administration is prepared to go to revise or remove
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  SPEAKER_00: information on African-American history, LGBT rights,
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  SPEAKER_00: climate change and other topics at hundreds of national park sites.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then the final thing
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  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to go over was the targeting of perceived enemies.
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  SPEAKER_00: So in the latest escalation of the war
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  SPEAKER_00: that the administration has been having with Minnesota
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  SPEAKER_00: pretty much all year, Vice President Vance announced last week
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  SPEAKER_00: that the Trump administration would temporarily halt
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  SPEAKER_00: more than a quarter of $1
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  SPEAKER_00: billion in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota.
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  SPEAKER_00: This was branded as part of Trump's newly announced war on fraud.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then there have been some firings of, federal employees.
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  SPEAKER_00: So FBI Director Kash Patel fired at least ten FBI employees.
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  SPEAKER_00: He'd been working with, former special counsel Jack Smith
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  SPEAKER_00: on the investigation into Trump's retention of classified records.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that was the report
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  SPEAKER_00: that's now being permanently blocked from public release.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, fired
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  SPEAKER_00: 22 staff members who worked on environmental justice.
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  SPEAKER_00: And finally, after the state of the Union, Trump
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  SPEAKER_00: attacked Democrat representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who’d
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  SPEAKER_00: shouted, “You're killing Americans” during his State of the Union speech.
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  SPEAKER_00: So after that, in a social media post, Trump wrote,
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  SPEAKER_00: they had the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people lunatics,
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  SPEAKER_00: mentally deranged and sick,
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  SPEAKER_00: who frankly looked like they should be institutionalized.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he then went on to say that they should be sent
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  SPEAKER_00: back to where they came from.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of covers it for this week.
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  SPEAKER_00: Again, all actions are available on Trumpactiontracker.info.
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  SPEAKER_00: Do check it out.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll be back in a week or so.