The moment, dear listener has come. Donald Trump is president of the United States once again. He started by unleashing a flurry of executive orders trying to end things that are in the constitution, like birthright citizenship, while also boosting the oil industry that's causing climate change, and targeting immigrants and trans people.
As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.
Today, we're going to analyze Trump's actions in his first week in office, and we're going to start here with Trump signing an executive order instructing the federal government to issue passports and other federal documents that reflect only two sexes.
My friends, comunity, my family are angry and scared that.
Daniel Trujillo, a seventeen year old trans student from Arizona.
As I get older, I'm going to have to apply to schools, get a house, get a job, and a lot of those things require documents. If those documents aren't correct, it opens the door to discrimination and violence and places that trans people shouldn't have to fear violence from. You know, no one should have to fear being discriminated against. At a job interview or by their employer or their landlord.
And then there's climate.
We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will.
Help to do it.
As Californians continue to deal with the devastation of wildfires and New Orleans is blanketed in a record breaking snowfall, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement at a time when scientists have said humanity has about four years before climate change becomes catastrophic, and in another national emergency declaration, Trump greenlit a massive expansion of the fossil fuel industry.
Growing up in Houston is being surrounded by pipes, trains, trucks, boats and barges, all filled with poison.
Brian Barras is forty seven and he lives in Houston, Texas, a city with so many refineries and superfund sites it's known as the petro Metro. Brian says that Trump's deregulation will lead to sickness and even early death in his community.
When all checks and accountability are taken away, that leads to accidents and explosions at the expense of the people who live around his facilities. You see more cases respiratory problems asthma, headaches, nose bleeds, and eventually we'll see more cancers.
And then there's Trump's biggest targets, immigrants.
I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.
As Trump delivered his inaugural address on Monday afternoon, migrants at the southern border received a life altering message pop up on their phone. CBP one, the government app where migrants could schedule appointments to apply for asylum, had canceled all appointments, even those made months ago, with the phone message simply saying existing appointments are no longer valid. Lament
that's the voice of Pablo. He's a thirty year old migrant from Venezuela who, after months at the Southern border, had an appointment scheduled with US Customs and Border Protection for Inauguration day at eight p m. His appointment, like all others, was automatically canceled. He told us that he didn't try to cross the border illegally. In fact, he waited for his place in line, and the news, he said, is heartbreaking.
Hey persona Sally Dejesu Cordia Ni.
Pablo, who's an engineer, says he and other Venezuelans left behind their lives to start anew in the US and asked for more kindness and mercy from Trump, a person who he said speaks so much about Jesus Trump's so called borders are. Tom Homan said to CNN that ICE is not just going after migrants who pose a public safety threat. He said ICE will arrest undocumented migrants who have no criminal record and possibly deport them as well.
Is tamagia alanompra aros escuchamo ke ambistove las patrez migracion in Tom says in a personaci medamo.
This is Norman.
She's an undocumented Mexican domestic worker based in New Jersey. She's lived there for twenty seven years. She had family members deported under the Obama administration and has already heard rumors of ICE patrolling in her neighborhood. She's afraid, and so is Itzel, her sixteen year old US born daughter.
How do they see taking someone's mother away from them? Okay, Like, how would they like it if random people they don't even know knock at their door telling the mother to get out packing.
Things that you leave it For undocumented people, safe spaces are becoming increasingly difficult to find.
The new administration says ICE can arrest people at churches, schools, daycare centers, and shelters. Homeland Security announced agents have this authority to carry out these enforcements.
For me, sanctuary was the only place where I could be safe, where I could be protective, where I could not be reached or harmed, and in a spiritual way, not only protected by the congregation but by God.
Under the first Trump administration, Rosa Savido, a sixty year old Mexican immigrant, took sanctuary in a church in her rural town in Colorado to resist a deportation order. Before that, she had sold tamalis, and she had worked in the local church there for over thirty years with no criminal record. Now, she says she's not sure where she'll go.
I cannot even imagine how things are going to look like from now on for all of.
Us from futuro Media and PRX, It's Latino USA. I'm Marie no posa today Avengeful Return, how our communities are bracing for Donald Trump's initial actions in office, and how can we navigate the next four years. People in our communities are grappling with what comes next for our families, for our neighbors, for our livelihoods, our safety. So today we are combining forces with Tuturo Media's political podcast In the Thick to bring you a roundtable discussion to break
it all down. Joining us from Princeton, New Jersey, renowned author and professor of African American studies and yes, unketido amigo, doctor Eddie Glaud. Even though he's battling a cold in the flu here he is. That's how we're showing up in twenty twenty five. Welcome back to the show, Eddie.
I'm so excited to be with you.
And from Austin, Texas is Nicole Nadia, Senior political reporter at Fox. She covers immigration and disinformation. Nicole, welcome to the show.
Thanks glad to be here.
All right, so we're going to start with a temperature check. This is really about how you're feeling emotionally. So what's your emotional temperature check? We'll start with you Eddie.
Well, I'm vacillating between anger, rage, trying to figure out what to do next, kind of anxiety in some ways, but for the most part, all those emotions are feeding into kind of resolved to get to work, to get to work close to the ground. I think I'm sick for a reason, you know. I think it's appropriate given this moment and what's happened. But you know, just I
keep saying to myself, they've done it again. And you know, I got a text from my son saying, I can't believe this is what you guys are handing to us, and he was indicting the older generation. So just worried about him and his dreams and what we have to do moving forward.
Although it's not forever.
No, it's not forever, right, and we've been here in horrible places in our country before. Nicole Quiles Duistado emotional your temperature check.
It's a lot. I had forgotten what the first Trump administration was like and the way that he sort of lived in our minds constantly, and I embracing myself for the next four years and trying to figure out how to get through this marathon.
We are all in this together, and we are going to figure it out here at Latino, USA, and in the thick we are committed to not giving up. So, Eddie, Trump said that he was going to begin a quote golden age for the United States. He cast himself as a rescuer of a country in turmoil. He even suggested that divine intervention was responsible for him surviving those assassination attempts.
His speech, Eddie, was filled with the usual xenophobia as he let out plans for a wide scale militarized assault on immigrant communities.
Eddie, how did you see this speech?
And do you think it's going to stand out, you historian, as a moment that is going to be remarkable in American political history.
Wow?
In terms of the latter question, I don't know if it'll stand out. It all depends on whether or not we survive this, whether not American democracy will survive this second term of trump Ism. And I think his speech gave us a very clear indication of the kind of very deep anti democratic sensibilities, efforts that will drive the way which he thinks about policy, the way in which he thinks about governing, if he governs at all. Right, So, I was just struck by how none of it was new.
He didn't say anything that should surprise us. He's been saying this all along, And I guess the thing I could say that was our advantage last time is that he didn't know how to move a government for his ends. This time, he has cadrea folk around him who can move government to achieve the vision that he put forward.
So it was all familiar. But the question that we have to ask ourselves and from a historical standpoint, is what will be the scope and depth of the damage done by the vision that he put forward.
It's important to remember right that Donald Trump is walking in with this sense of power, especially in terms of executive orders, and he's trying to end birthright citizenship. In order to do that, he need to get a congressional super majority and for three fourths of the states from the United States to ratify a change in the constitution to officially end birthright citizenship, which is a pretty tall order.
But Trump does have the power right now to order federal agencies to stop providing services to babies born from undocumented parents. But either way, we expect that this is going to be litigated in the courts for some time. Nicole, what if any executive orders did in fact stand out for you.
I think Trump is looking here to really start with shock and awe. That's the words that his advisors were using ahead of his inauguration. But a lot of this is potentially vulnerable to legal challenges. Of course, via executive order, he can basically undo anything that Biden passed via executive order. One of the first ones he signed was reversing many Biden regulations around climate, around immigration, and I think we'll
see more of that in the days ahead. I think there are still a lot of questions about what exactly this means in practice, So especially on immigration, he really is laying out a very sweeping vision for changing immigration enforcement in this country, looking in word rather than just
outward at people who are coming in. I think also if we're looking at other topics withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, of course we expected that, but we will see sort of a huge reversal on the environmental progress that Biden made. We're also looking at his pardons for the January sixth insurrectionists, which he described as J six hostages, notably in front of the families of Israeli hostages at
the rally. He had There's so much here that we can dig into, but I think those are some of the ones that stand out to me right off the bat.
And we're already seeing resistance right. So far, twenty two states have sued to block Trump's executive order that aims to end birthright citizenship. And it's not just in the US right because Trump also vowed to take back the Panama Canal, which provoked protests in Panama City, and Mexico's president and Claudia Shanbaum said her country would support Mexicans in the United States, calling them heroes and heroines of the nation, and Shamee Baum said that she would defend
Mexico's sovereignty and independence. Coming up on Latino USA, so where do we go from here? We're going to continue our conversation with author and professor of African American studies, doctor Eddie Glaud and Nicole Naria, senior political reporter at Vox. Stay with US notes. Welcome back to Latino USA. I'm Maria no Josa. We're going to continue now our conversation with Princeton's doctor Eddie Glaud and Nicole Naria, senior political
reporter at Vox. So Eddie look, much of your work revolves around the idea that in ord to understand the current political reality and to imagine something that could come in the future, we actually have to go back. So, Eddie, what lessons do you think that we can learn from history? I'm trying to talk to my brother Frederick Douglas. What would he be saying. What do you think that we need to understand from our past history that can help
us navigate this moment? And do you think that there's anything comparable that we've experienced in the United States?
Oh?
Absolutely, I mean this is an echo in some ways of the collapse of reconstruction. I mean you mentioned Frederick Douglas. He was born into slavery. He stole his freedom. He lived long enough to see the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln, the passage of the Civil War amendments. But he lived long enough to see the first Jim Crow Laws past. When you listen to his July fifth, eighteen seventy five address on the eve of the centennial, he
understands what's happening. That is to say that reunion and redemption, the quarrel that led to black freedom, is now being reconciled, and that required that black folk be removed from view. It's almost this kind of continuous loop. Maria, What do I mean by that? There's a kind of tragic choice that's at the heart of the American founding, a compromise, and that compromise had everything to do with our democratic
principles and with greed and selfishness rooted in slavery. And because of that compromise, we have bequeath to succeeding generations, right, a kind of political culture of evasion and deferral. We don't want to confront the ugliness of who we are. We always have to declare ourselves as somehow the redeemer nation, or a Golden Age or something of that sort. Right, And so I think part of what I see with Donald Trump is a kind of nostalgic longing for an
America of old. This is the ugly underbelly of the country. It's always been here, yep. And so I think what I've been saying is that we have to just simply admit it in order for us to get beyond it. So this is not just Donald Trump, this is us. And I think that's the key inside here.
I just don't know where the left goes from here in terms of trying to articulate a path forward that meaningfully opposes Trump and the impact of his policies, which we're already beginning to see, even appointments for the CBP, one app at the border being canceled, and people reckoning with the fact that they may never be able to enter the US. So, you know, we're already seeing the human impact here. But I feel it's really all quiet on the Western front when it comes to the left here.
One of the things that I've been asking Trump voters is what do you want to see in order for you to feel satisfied that Donald Trump has delivered, right, So you want to see the women crying on the other side of the border, realizing that they will not legally be able to enter the United States to request
political asylum. At the same time, Nicole, I've also been understanding that our job as American citizens, as American residents is only going to be to push that democracy is not kind of like you know given here it is with a bo I think we kind of went through that with Barack Obama. People were like, oh my god, we did it, and then no, it never really stops, right, We get tired, but we just have to continue doing this work for the entirety of our lives. Nicole, specifically
in terms of immigration. Who are the players that you're watching and do you believe that because it's a second Trump administration they are going to be able to in fact deliver on these extremist policies.
A big one is Stephen Miller, who has always articulated this vision of an America that is at risk of sort of its white majority and its white culture being subsumed by an increasingly diversifying population. And I think that fear is at the root of much of Trump's immigration policy, which are really sort of Stephen Miller's brainchild. So we're going to see how all this plays out in terms
of the mass deportation agenda in particular. But a few other figures that I'm watching are Tom Holman, who is Trump's Borders art He was big in US Immigration Customs Forcement under Obama, presided over record deportations there under Trump was also heading up the agency but was also never confirmed by the Senate, but notably was behind this policy of family separation that we saw during the first Trump administration.
At the border with children being housed in these temporary facilities, and many of them were never reunited with their families, and he was quite unapologetic about that. And I think this time around is looking to oversee the policy of mass deportations and has suggested deporting families together.
So there is a lot coming at us. And as both of you have said, we've kind of been through this before, right Eddie. In your work you have helped us to understand by studying and writing about powerful black revolutionaries and thinkers. Your latest book is called We Are the Leaders We've been waiting for, So in it you argue what we were just saying here right that it's going to be all of us. It's everyday folks that
are going to be the heroes of democracy. So what do you think this means in this political moment as this administration targets some of the most vulnerable people, because it questions solidarity and what it looks like right now.
Yeah, I mean, we got to get clear on what we mean by justice, and we have to, I think very clearly align our actions with our passions and our commitments. We can't expect politicians to save American democracy. We're going to have to do it, and we're going to have to do it close to the ground. Washington, DC is going to be a mess over the next four years. There's going to be the executive orders, the Imperial presidency.
He will do what he will do. All of the innovation is going to have to happen downstream at the county and state levels. And so what we have to do is to understand, right where we are in our communities, how are we arguing for better housing, how are we addressing the question of policing, how are we addressing the issues of education in our communities? Right where we are?
And then as we organize, maybe we can produce a new cadre of leadership, of politicians that are not so shall we say, self interested or bought or purchased by money. I think part of what we're seeing here, and I think this is just to go to a certain level of abstraction money is all of the contradictions of neoliberalism are.
In full view.
It's collapsing right in front of our faces. And we have to understand that the Democratic Party is a part of that. The Democratic Leadership Conference and its legacy. People are tired of republican light. That's what Democrats have been for all of these years. And so I think there's going to be a political realignment that's going to take place on the ground as people try to grapple with the issues that directly confront them. Right now, a lot
of folks are overwhelmed. They're grieving a kind of sadness, the kind of sense of helplessness. How can the country I know, I'm asking myself this question, how in the hell did these folk elect this crook again? What's motivating it? And then when you ask that question, you get to a certain space, at least for me, and you will say, I'll be damn these people would rather throw the entire
experiment away than to share it with us. And so once you get beyond that, then you got to turn your face or turn your feet, turn your hands to the hard work on the ground. And I think that's what I mean by we are the leaders we've been looking for. We don't need politicians to do to expect them to do it. We got to get to work on the ground, and that means in our local communities, in our counties, in our states. That's what I'm suggesting.
And you know, what, Nicole, I am not hearing a lot about immediately taking on the issue that so many Trump voters that I spoke to were interested in, which is the economy, lowering the price of eggs, figure out how I pay my rent, how can I get enough to buy a home. I'm not hearing any of that, But we are hearing so much of the hatred. Right Nicole, you are in Texas. What does solidarity look like for you in these times? As a journalist and as at Dejana.
It's a difficult question. So much of my work is focused on elevating voices from communities that right now especially have been drowned out among as you said, sort of a lot of the hateful language that we've seen coming out of Trump's campaign and his new administration. So I think that's what I'm trying to focus on. That's been my guiding light here. But I have to say, people here are very open about their support of Trump and what he stands for, and I think it's a scary time.
I think to be a member of a marginalized community. I can't say I'm heading into the next four years with a particularly hopeful attitude.
Well two years to the midterms.
That's two years to the midterms, right, Nicole, since you are in Texas, I want to leave our listeners with a thought. Right, there was ones progressive woman who ran the state of Texas as the governor. Her name is Anne Richards. May she rest in peace. Things can happen. Do not give up hope. There was an outspoken woman who did once rule the state of Texas. And I think for Latino USA and in the Thick and our listeners who care so deeply, we don't give up hope.
It's going to be hard, it's going to be a challenge. We have to heal ourselves. But as we say no nos bamos, we're not going anywhere. Nicole Nadea, Doctor Eddie Glaud, thank you so much for joining me on in the Thick and Latino USA. We really appreciate your work and your insights and your commitment to our country.
Thank you for having us appreciate it.
Great conversation.
Well, dear listener, it is a new era and you know our country has been through a lot. We certainly are not going to stop doing what we do, so stay tuned. Our episode was produced by Ariel Goodman in Estrenique, and Tasha Sandoval.
It was edited by Andrea.
Lopez Gruzado and our co executive producer, Maria Garcia. It was mixed by Stephanie Lbou, Julia Gruso and jj carubin special things to Felix Marquez in the text. Production manager is Francis Boon, with production support from Jessica Ellis and Nancy Trujido. The Latino USA team also includes Roxanna Guire, Fernando Chavari, Victoria Estrada, Dominique Estrosra Rinaldo, Leanoz Junior, Luis.
Luna, Marta Martinez and more.
Saudi Penni, Lee, Ramidez, Marlon Bishop, Maria Garzia and myself are co executive producers and I'm your host, Maria Rosa.
That's it for now, everyone.
Astar approxima, not teva yas nunca.
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