The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: Immigration Rulings; DOGE & Social Security Data

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must "facilitate" the return of a man it mistakenly deported to El Salvador. How is the White House responding, and what happens next? Then, is the entity known as DOGE using Social Security information it isn't meant to be able to access? This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, political reporter Stephen Fowler, and senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from the Psi Sims Foundation since 1985, supporting advances in science, education, and the arts towards a fairer, more just, and civil society. More information is available at PsiSimsFoundation.org. Hi, this is Andy. I'm sitting next to a pond in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, listening to the sounds of spring. But you're listening to the NPR Politics Podcast, which was recorded at 12 38 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, April 11th of 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, or maybe they haven't. Why don't you listen and find out? Okay, enjoy the show.

I feel a little more at peace. Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast. I'm a smug hollad. I cover the White House. I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics. And I'm Tamra Keith. I also cover the White House. And after a wild, long week of politics, it is finally Friday, which means it is time for our Friday News Roundup. Well, Tam, we need to start with immigration news because there has been some major developments in just the last 24 hours with the case of Kilmer Armando Abrego Garcia. And just to remind folks, he is the Maryland man

who the government said was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and he has been in this legal battle to return to the United States. Last night, the Supreme Court weighed in and said the government must facilitate his, quote, release from custody. That sounds like the Trump administration needs to bring him back to the United States. But Tam, what are you hearing from the White House in response? The White House position for some time now has been that Mr. Abrego Garcia is in El Salvador

now. He is a citizen of El Salvador and he is in prison in El Salvador through an error, but he's there now. And they can't and won't bring him back. And remember that while he initially entered the US without being granted legal status, in 2019, a federal judge granted him protection from being deported because of concerns for his safety if he were to return to El Salvador. He is married to a US citizen

and has a son who lives in Maryland as well. Steven Miller, the top aide to the president and immigration hardliner, tweeted last night that the Supreme Court rejected the lower court and made clear that a district judge cannot exercise Article II foreign affairs powers. And then he adds, the illegal alien terrorist is in the custody and control of a sovereign foreign nation. That is El Salvador. So his interpretation of the Supreme Court's decision is- Different than a lot of the other interpretations

I've been seeing of that decision, to be clear. It is quite different, but essentially, that is the White House position that he's gone. I do want to ask you more about the El Salvador connection here. The government of El Salvador has agreed to take in and detain deportees from the United States. And the president of El Salvador is actually coming here to Washington, D.C. next week to visit and meet with President Trump.

We've talked a lot about how President Trump views bilateral relationships and policy as transactional. So can he or will he, would he, you know, affect any sort of leverage on the country of El Salvador? Can and would are two very different questions. President Bukele in El Salvador has gladly received these prisoners into this high level secure prison. The United States is paying millions of dollars for El Salvador to take in these deportees and put them in prison.

It includes a lot of people from Venezuela who the US government claims are part of a transnational gang that they have now called a terrorist organization. The same with some people from El Salvador, who were also deported and were alleged to be members of MS-13. In fact, the White House says that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, though he denies that and has strenuously denied that in court filings. So the president of El Salvador is coming to the United States. President Trump could say, bring him back or we won't pay you for housing all of these

prisoners. But clearly, President Trump and his White House are saying many ways over, they don't have an interest in bringing him back. They don't want to bring him back and they're calling him a terrorist. This is a very interesting drama that we are going to see play out, sort of a head-to-head matchup between the Trump administration and the courts, and also just seeing President Bukele in the Oval Office with President Trump, where inevitably they will be asked about this case. That'll happen on Monday. This does strike me as being bigger

than the single case of this Maryland man. It is a crucial test, I think, of whether the Trump administration will follow the Supreme Court's decision. I mean, it was striking to hear you talk about the ways in which Stephen Miller is interpreting the court's decision, because to be clear, as we said earlier, the Supreme Court weighed in and said that the government must facilitate his release from custody. And so my question is, you know, if the Trump administration doesn't follow that guidance, are there any consequences?

I don't know the answer to that question, but I think that we could safely call that a constitutional crisis if the Trump administration ultimately ends up fully defying the Supreme Court and the lower courts. We aren't quite there yet, but we keep watching, and many of these cases are sort of on the precipice of that. Lauren Henry Stephen, I want to bring you into the conversation here. Donald Trump campaigned on immigration, and he believes he has a mandate to carry out deportations. I'm curious what you are seeing about how his actual policies

are playing out. Well on the campaign trail it was the number one issue that he campaigned on. He vowed to have the largest ever deportation in American history when he took office. That hasn't played out in that exact way. There have been more targeted approaches to certain categories of people, but it is still this visual of deporting violent criminals from the country with a focus on Trende Aragua and MS-13 and other gangs. And, you know, people voted for Trump, you could argue for his immigration stances. Deportations are not just a Republican presidential thing. It would happen during president Biden and president Obama, but Trump's messaging around immigration and about deportations and removing people from the country that he says are harming the country is something that resonated during the

campaign trail and has been a major theme during his first few months in the return to office. I mean, the White House social media account sharing memes about people that they've deported, people that they've sent on planes to foreign countries. And so, it is still a central part of his message, even though there has also been the high profile court cases and the examples of people being mistakenly deported and people with no ties to gangs according to court filings and detailing inhumane treatment.

So some would say that is kind of baked into the message and the mandate that Trump says he has. So what I would just add to that is in terms of polling, immigration is President Trump's number one issue. According to a new APNORC poll, he gets a 49% approval on his handling of immigration. That's underwater, doesn't sound great. It is still far stronger than the way people are assessing his handling of the economy, for instance.

And Republicans are off the charts happy with his handling of immigration. Despite some of these high profile cases. That's really interesting. Despite some of these high profile cases. But what I'll say is also President Trump and his Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, are in some ways shifting to a more recent emphasis on self-deportation. A big part of this is they want people to be scared. They want people, they want to make it uncomfortable and they want people to leave. And so they are talking a lot now about leaving, saying, just go, self-deport. And that's how they might get to the mass deportation that they're

promising. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. Lots more in a moment. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate, no markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.

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This is Peak Travel, a podcast from WHYY, and we're back with our second season. I'm your host, Tariah Ramzazewa. We're traveling the world, tailgating the Super Bowl in New Orleans, touring ancient caves in Petra, and summiting Himalayan peaks in Bhutan. All to figure out how travel shapes communities and hotspots around the world, and how we can do it better. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And Stephen, you, along with our colleague, Jude Jaffe Block, have some new reporting about the latest happenings over at the entity known as DOGE. Your reporting has to do with social security information and what Doge is supposed

to have access to. I want you to first actually tell us more about this Doge staffer mentioned in your reporting. His name is Antonio Gracias. Antonio Gracias is a billionaire. He's the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Valor Equity Partners. He's this private equity guy that's one of 10 Doge staffers embedded in the Social Security Administration. And for the last few weeks, he has been making the rounds, making some claims about non-citizens that have received Social Security numbers. And he says that Doge has dug into that data and other databases and other sources and some states voter roles that have shared

the information and found evidence of non-citizens with Social Security numbers registering to vote and voting in a relatively large scale. Now that is not something that is true according to both Social Security experts and election experts that we've talked to, it's very hard to match information from a state voter role with social security data, even if you have the access to the backend master social security data file, because of the level of precision between the two.

State voter files usually have names and maybe a birth year. They don't have the level of granularity needed to match to say, oh, this person in this database here is this potential person on the voter roll. So there have been these big claims made that just have not added up with explaining how social security works for these non-citizens or with voting.

I do want to ask Stephen also, though, about the data source itself. Because it sounds like he's using data that he says DOGE has collected. So to be clear now DOGE, at least in his case, has access to all sorts of personal data information that Social Security collects? Yeah the DOGE initiative is a small number of people that have been dispersed to just about every federal agency you can think of, having access to just about every federal data set you can think of, including your personal and financial information at Social Security and other places.

And this is where it gets interesting. There have been more than a dozen lawsuits challenging DOJ's access to this sensitive data, including including the Social Security Administration. And in this ongoing lawsuit there, Gracia's is listed in these filings as employee four. Employee four has a bio in some of these documents that matches Gracia's bio on his website. And employee four, according to these court filings, doesn't have access to any sensitive social security data or databases. And also this case, a judge issued a temporary

restraining order blocking Doge staffers from accessing social security data while this larger case plays out. So in this lawsuit, in this case, there are some big questions about how this particular Doge staffer has access to this particular data or claims to have access to this data when the courts are saying, whoa, whoa, pause, you can't do that. And so it just is part of this larger question swirling around Doge in the federal government, who has access, why they have the access, and what they're doing with it. Steven, one question I have is finding alleged voter fraud doesn't even seem to be in the purpose

or the remit of Doge. What are they actually using the social security information for in terms of finding efficiency? is there an efficiency part of this? There is an efficiency part of what DOJ is supposed to be doing in social security. Through these hundreds and hundreds of pages of court documents, they have explained that DOJ at Social Security is looking at doing things like cleaning up the deathmaster file and filling in information for people that don't have death dates and claim to be over a hundred years old and,

you know, making sure that there's nobody on the list to receive benefits that aren't supposed to because of data errors or searching for waste, fraud and abuse within social security benefits and data. None of that touches on non-citizens and non-citizen voting, though the president did sign two executive orders that are relevant here. One, he signed an executive order last month directing agencies to knock down information silos

and have more data sharing. And two, there was one dealing with voting that specifically mentions having the Department of Homeland Security look at state voter rolls to find evidence of non-citizens voting there. But there's nothing really to back up why this particular person is using this set of data in this way at Social Security. Stephen, what's the deathmaster file that you referenced? The deathmaster file is the file that Social Security has of people who have died and therefore

are no longer receiving Social Security benefits and other benefits. You know, this strikes me of a case yet again in which Doge staffers have access to a tremendous amount of government data, government information, and yet they're in this really weird position where you're sort of unclear on how they're exactly affiliated with the government entirely, right, and what status they have. And, Tam, this comes on the heels of yet another cabinet meeting we saw this week in which Elon Musk appeared

at the cabinet meeting, though he is not a member of the president's cabinet. You know, the first cabinet meeting, he was standing, sort of where a staffer would be. This cabinet meeting, and I think this is the third or fourth, one of them the press wasn't invited into, he was seated around the table.

And he spoke, you know, as President Trump went around the table asking his cabinet secretaries to give a report. Elon Musk also gave a report. One thing to note though that President Trump said is something to the effect of, you know, like, Elon, you've got all of these great people, all of these tech geniuses. I hope they'll stick around. And I think that that gets at the temporary nature of Elon Musk's role. In theory, he is supposed to

be done after 130 days as a special government employee. And there have been a lot of hints dropped by the president and others that he is going to wind down his time in the government. One question I have is, are billionaires like Gracia is actually going to stick around if Elon Musk goes back to just running his businesses? All right. Well, we are going to take one more break and when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. Support for NPR comes from the PsySims Foundation since 1985, supporting advances in science, education, and the arts towards a fairer, more just, and civil society.

More information is available at psyysimsfoundation.org. And we're back and it's time for everyone's favorite part of the show, Can't Let It Go. That is the part of the podcast where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. And I think I'm going to kick it off today because mine is actually political this week. So I have a pet peeve that apparently is kind of akin to President Trump's pet peeve, which is about water pressure in showers. Oh no, don't get me started.

So I confess that I can relate to this situation about wanting to ensure there is good water pressure, right? Like when I would rent apartments, I was that person who would go in and like the number one thing I would check in each apartment is like, turn on the shower. And what's the water pressure? Because I have really thick hair and it's a process to wash it,

which apparently is a big concern of President Trump's. And this week he talked about it in the Oval Office. In my case, I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair. I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It's ridiculous. And so he put forth an executive order. There's in fact a fact sheet for those who are curious about making America's showers great again in his words which is about essentially eliminating some of what he views as bureaucratic restrictions on the amount of water that can come out of a standard shower that were put in place first by

the Obama administration then reinstated by the Biden administration. But my question is look like I've lived in different places, gone to different hotels over the last several years, and I don't feel like I noticed a substantial difference between Obama-Trump-Biden era showers. I just assumed it was like, oh, there's bad plumbing here or lime buildup in this situation. Well, there could be lime buildup,

but there actually are showerheads that restrict the water coming out to conserve water. Pumping water is like one of the biggest sources of energy consumption in the country. I have unfortunately done many stories about this over the years. Nearly. And not unfortunately, one of my favorite stories ever was about President Trump's obsession with water pressure, not just showers, but toilets. He hates low-flow toilets and

hearing him talk about it is hilarious. All right Stephen, what can you not let go of? Okay so I don't know how much you know Asma and Tam about Fortnite, the video game slash world-building empire that is popular with a lot of younger people, myself included, I have played from time to time. But this week, Fortnite added a special skin crossover with Sabrina Carpenter. Sabrina Carpenter, pop star, great tiny desk by the way. And so there have just been a ton of clips online

of hordes of Sabrina Carpenter's doing Fortnite dances and lip syncing to a lot of her songs while hilarious gameplay ensues. And if I ever get free time from all of my reporting, I might please, please, please spend some time with the Sabrina Carpenter Fortnite skin because everybody else is doing it. And so that's why I can't let it go because every time I log on to Fortnite, every couple months or so, there's entirely new universes built

in there. And so I have been thinking about the Sabrina Carpenter Fortnite emotes for several days this week. Yeah. So has my son, my older son. So I first allowed him to play Fortnite because I thought it was a dancing game. What I didn't know is that you dance after you kill people. Really? And before. The dancing is not the point.

Anyway, I have been overhearing him playing with his friends being like, why are there all these Sabrina Carpenter's everywhere? This is terrible. While listening to Metallica or whatever. That's a very unusual collaboration, I will say. Fortnite and Sabrina Carpenter, that's all I got. And it's an unexpected collaboration. All right, well, what about you, Tam? What can you not let go of? What I cannot let go of is it's sort of a crossover event, not exactly the same, but there was a discovery in Loch Ness

of a 55-year-old underwater camera that was tethered to the bottom of the lake, well below the surface, trying to capture images of the Loch Ness monster. capture images of the Loch Ness monster. Monster. And so these were set up before we were born, this camera system all over Loch Ness. And an ocean going yellow sub was doing some practice in the lake. That sub is named Bodie McBoatface, famous Bodie McBoatface, got its rudder stuck on something related to the cameras and found this ancient camera and they pulled it up to the surface.

It was still dry. It was amazing. The system worked. It just sat there for all these years and it was dry and there was film and they developed it. And did they see a monster? A submarine. No.

It was just sort of like blurry dark pictures of underwater. But I just love that Bodie McBodeface has re-emerged in our popular culture. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today's show. Our executive producer is Mathony Maturi. Casey Morell edits this podcast. Our producers are Bria Suggs and Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Roberta Rampton. I'm Asma Khalid, I cover the White House. I'm Stephen Fowler, I cover politics.

And I'm Tamara Keith, I also cover the White House. And thank you all as always for listening to the NPR comes from the PsySims Foundation since 1985, supporting advances in science, education, and the arts towards a fairer, more just, and civil society. More information is available at psysimsfoundation.org.