WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Under the Radar - Episode 24

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

This week on “Under the Radar,” hear about the bill that finally releases the Epstein files (sort of), a Supreme Court case about the extent to which border patrol must allow asylum seekers into the United States, a court case blocking Texas’ gerrymandering efforts, and more.

This is Under the Radar on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Now, here's your host, Luke Miller. This week on Under the Radar, hear about the bill that finally releases the Epstein files, sort of, a Supreme Court case about the extent to which Border Patrol must allow asylum seekers into the United States, a court case blocking Texas' gerrymandering efforts and more. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and on this show, we'll cover the news you didn't catch this week from the mainstream media. Well, they're covering the president's latest tweets here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you. Welcome to Under the Radar.

The first piece of news I have for you this week is a bill called the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Trump just signed into law on November 19th. The bill was introduced by Representative Roe Kana of California, and was co-sponsored by Thomas Massey, who's a Republican. The bill had very wide bipartisan support, as you might expect. The vote in the House of Representatives was 427 to 1 in favor of passing this bill. In the Senate, it passed unanimously, and it was just signed by the president what the bill does. It requires the Department of Justice to publish all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in relation to the investigation and

prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein. Now, in case you've been living under Iraq for a really long Jeffrey Epstein is one of the most notorious criminals of the modern era. He was on trial in 2019 for major sex trafficking crimes when he died in prison under suspicious circumstances while awaiting his trial. He worked as a financial strategist, but for many people, it seems hard to explain how that helped him accumulate almost $600 million in net worth. And people have really begun to question how and why he had so many ties to so many different famous and powerful people in the United States, particularly, but in other countries as well. Now, President Trump made a campaign promise in 2024 that he would release all of the Epstein files

because this is something the American public really cares about. They want to know who among their elites were hobnobbing with Jeffrey Epstein, who may he have been blackmailing, who may he have been working with in this sex trafficking operation of his. Did he have ties to the American intelligence agencies or foreign ones? These are all things that the American people really would like to know. And so since President Trump has taken office in this second term, he's basically dismissed the issue entirely. He said, we're not going to worry about the Epstein files.

We've released all that we can release. There's really no need to waste any time on it. But that's made a lot of his base very mad because that was a campaign promise and that's something that the American people really care about. The process of this legislation was really sped along when last week, Senate Democrats leaked a few emails from the Epstein files, which cast President Trump in a very negative light because he does appear in the Epstein files. That doesn't mean that he has committed crimes. That's not been proven by any means at this point. We do know that Trump had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and kicked him out of his

Club and Mara Lago over this kind of pedophilic behavior. But after Senate Democrats released those three emails, Republicans in the Senate responded by releasing about 20,000 emails from the Epstein Files, and that really sped along the vote for this. The Epstein Files Transparency Act. The Department of Justice is directed to release about 50,000 pages of materials relating to Jeffrey Epstein, Jelaine Maxwell, who's currently in prison for having sexually trafficked women to Jeffrey Epstein. Specifically, she trafficked underage girls. to Epstein and whoever was with him on the island, flight logs and travel records related to Epstein and anyone that he may have been traveling with, individuals in connection with

Epstein's criminal activities, including government officials, any kind of business entities that have known or alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein, any deals, immunity deals, or plea bargains that Epstein made with the government, and all communications within the Department of Justice relating to the Jeffrey Epstein case. Now, this bill applies only to certain unclassified documents, And what that means is that there's going to be a lot of this that's either redacted or completely withheld. For example, the bill makes very clear that if the information would jeopardize any active federal investigation that's ongoing or contains information that might be damaging to the victims, that all of that can be redacted or withheld. Which means that most likely a lot of what's in these 50,000 pages worth of files is going to be withheld.

Because there are active federal investigations and prosecutions going on in relation to this case, not with Jeffrey Epstein specifically, because he's dead, but the FBI is still investigating a lot of the ties that Jeffrey Epstein had, and so a lot of this stuff is going to be withheld. However, the bill makes very clear, and I think this is something that's very important about this, it says that no record shall be withheld on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, specifically to any government official or public figure. So nothing can be withheld because it might embarrass someone or it might make a difference in elections or anything like that. is not justifiable cause for withholding any of this information. So as President Trump signed this bill, he basically gave his populist appeal as to why he's signing it. He says, listen, I'll give you what you want. I'll sign it. It's not my problem. I'm not worried about it implicating me. He actually

said repeatedly that it was going to implicate Democrats a lot more than himself or any Republicans, which I guess we'll see how true that is, but that is the pitch that he's making. And he says that, yes, we'll release all the Epstein files, but I don't want it to take away from the other stuff that the administration is doing. He likened it to the Russia hoax, as he calls it, from his first administration where it was just kind of a distraction that turned out to not really have a whole lot of substance behind it. But what those allegations did do was force the first Trump administration to take its eyes off of its goals for a while to deal with the fallout. And he doesn't want to see that happen again with the Epstein situation. And it is true

that people go down the conspiracy theory rabbit trail with Jeffrey Epstein. Who knows how much substance there is behind this whole thing? But we can answer that question once these files get revealed. So I think it's overall a positive thing that this bill has completely passed. We'll see how much of that information is telling and even available, whether a lot of that information is redacted or not. But overall, this is President Trump listening to what the American people wanted him to do. This is him fulfilling one of his campaign promises, taking a positive step towards government transparency, and trying to move on to what he sees as more important facets of his administration. The next piece of news I have for you this week is a Supreme Court case

called Nome v. Al Otrolado, a case about the U.S. CBP, the Customs and Border Patrol's policy called metering. Metering has to do with asylum seekers. So in 2016, during the first Trump administration, there was a surge in the number of Haitian immigrants seeking asylum in California. And so the Department of Homeland Security through Customs and Border Patrol started this policy called metering where they would turn back asylum seekers before they entered the United States. Because the way asylum works, any non-citizen who is, quote, physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States, whether or not as a designated port of arrival may apply for asylum. So there's a right to apply for asylum if you enter the United States or

are physically present in the United States. In this case, basically is questioning whether that means you have a right to apply for asylum if you are outside a port of arrival. So this case was originally brought forward during the first Trump administration by Al-Otrellado, which is an immigrant rights group and 13 asylum seekers who went to federal court in California arguing that the metering policy was unconstitutional, basically saying they couldn't be turned away from U.S. ports of entry because them getting to a port of entry meant that they had arrived in the United States. And the appeals court agreed that that was the case. They agreed that physically present in the United States encompasses non-citizens within the borders of the United States and arrives in the

United States includes those who encounter officials at the border, whatever side of the border they're standing on. So that case was decided a few years ago during the first time of administration. The metering policy has not been in effect in the United States since 2020, but the Trump administration brought this case forward to the Supreme Court asking them to weigh in and come up with a clearer ruling on this situation. The proposal of the Trump administration is basically that an immigrant does not arrive into the United States while he's still in Mexico. That's a quote from the Trump administration in their filing for this case. So there's a couple things that need to be pointed out about this case. First of all, border crossings in the first year of the second

Trump administration are down at a 50-year low. They're at the lowest that they've been since the 1970s. And so we're not experiencing a ton of illegal border crossings right now. The problem at the border has been solved. It was a crisis and the Trump administration solved it very quickly. It cannot be overstated how important the one big beautiful bill was in accomplishing that goal. The deportations and the ice raids that are going on right now are kind of a side effort to that. But the whole has been plugged, so to speak. And so what that means is that there are going to be more people trying to legally seek asylum. And every year, there are about a million people who seek asylum in the United States. You have a right to do that under United States law. If you are

facing persecution or imminent danger in another country, you can come to the U.S. and apply for asylum. And if you get into the United States or to a port of entry, we have to at least review your asylum application. Now, apart from the first and second Trump administrations separately, that also meant that asylum seekers, while their application was pending, could come into the United States and wait for that to process, which is a problem when you know that there are about 1.5 million asylum cases worth of backlog in the United States immigration courts right now, which means that it's taking a really long time for any of these asylum applications to go through. The important step to solve this problem is the Remain in Mexico policy, which the Trump

administration used in the first term and reinstated in the second term, which meant that if you applied for asylum in the United States, you could not wait for that application to be processed in the United States. You had to wait in Mexico. The other side of that issue is that you can file a defensive asylum claim, too. So if you're facing deportation, you can file an asylum claim then, which is what's happening a lot this year. When facing deportation, an illegal immigrant can say that it would be, that they would face persecution or they would face imminent danger if they have to go back to their country, so they can file a defensive asylum claim and basically delay deportation, which is part of the reason that it's so difficult for the Trump administration to actually enforce the mass deportation efforts that they're trying to do right now.

But that's probably part of the reason why this case has come to the Supreme Court, which is the other thing that I wanted to talk about here, is if asylum seekers are going to increase, which seems the likely result of illegal immigration, illegal border crossings being at a 50-year low, legal asylum seekers could create this situation that we saw in 2016, which led to the metering policy where there was a backlog, like there was a surge of asylum seekers in a particular area, and that's just too many to process at a particular time. So the metering policy allowed Customs and Border Patrol to turn some of those people away before they got to the port of entry where the United States is required to receive their asylum application. So that's what this court case is going to decide. The Supreme Court is going to weigh in on whether that metering policy is legal or not.

And presumably the Trump administration is bringing this case before the Supreme Court because they would like to either reinstate the metering policy or they expect the need to turn people away from seeking asylum in the future. There might be expecting a surge of asylum seekers to come. The other reason they might want to reinstate this kind of policy is to work down the backlog in the immigration courts. Like I said, there's about a 1.5 million case backlog of asylum seekers in the immigration courts right now. So they might reenact a metering policy or something like it to try to work down that backlog and make our immigration court system a little bit more efficient and better functioning. So we'll see what the Supreme Court has to say about this case. It just agreed to hear it within the next few weeks. So we'll be looking forward to see what the Supreme Court has to say about this issue.

You're listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller on Radio for Hillsdale 101.7. FM. The next piece of news I have for you this week is a court case in Texas, where this week a federal court blocked Texas from using a gerrymandered House of Representatives map for the 2026 elections. So with the 26 midterm elections coming up, there are a lot of states that are kind of redrawing their congressional maps to try to win more seats for their party in Congress. You can call it redistricting. You can call it gerrymandering. Jerrymandering is a little bit different from rediscovering. redistricting in the sense that it implies that you're doing it for partisan reasons, which is fully legal under the current system. It's generally seen as somewhat unethical, but it's done by both parties, and it's just kind of the way that politics works these days, unfortunately. So this Texas map was specifically and openly engineered to give Republicans five additional seats in the House of Representatives. It was going to redraw the maps so as to help Republicans win a few more seats. And this map caused some other states to retaliate, specifically

California, which issued a referendum about a proposition that would redraw the map in a way to give Democrats five additional House seats in California, which I'll also note the referendum passed by a vast majority, and California is now gerrymandering to give Democrats five more seats there. So in 2019, a case about gerrymandering came before the U.S. Supreme Court, and they decided that gerrymandering, redistricting for partisan reasons to try to win your party more seats in Congress, is a political question and not one for federal courts to decide. So it's legal, unless Congress proposes a bill to make it illegal, which neither party would do that because they both benefit from it, and redistricting is necessary over time for nonpartisan reasons as well, so it makes it difficult to make a law around this.

However, the only thing that can make redistricting in this sense illegal is if it's done for racial reasons under the Voters Right Act from 60 years ago. The ruling from the federal court on the Texas map says, quote, to be sure politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map, but it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map. Now, after Texas proposed this map for the 26 midterms, there were various civil rights groups representing black and Hispanic voters that brought this case before the federal courts, arguing that the new map would, quote, reduce the influence of minority voters, making it a racial gerrymander that violates the Federal Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. And while Texas Republicans are obviously

denying that this map was drawn for racial reasons, the new map decreased from 16 to 14 the number of congressional districts where minority voters comprise a majority of voting age citizens. So what that means is with the new map, there were two less congressional districts where minorities were the majority, if that makes sense. However, Republicans have been quick to point out that the map creates three new districts that did not have minority majorities before. Now there's an eighth Hispanic majority district and two new black majority districts. Taking all that into consideration and the fact that many states, red states, and blue states are doing this gerrymandering right now, it seems really hard to prove under the Voting Rights Act

that what Texas is doing has racial intent behind it. And that's the really difficult thing about enforcing these laws under the Voting Rights Act, is that you have to somehow prove racial intent, and the way that that's generally done is by showing disparate racial outcomes, which does not necessarily imply racial intent, or racist intent. So for now, the federal courts have put this map on hold for 2026, and it's worth noting that the Trump administration sued over California's proposition to add five blue seats to their redistricted maps. So now both of these maps are on hold and probably will be for the 26 midterms, at least until the major questions that come from this can be decided by the Supreme Court, namely how to prove intent on racial discrimination in gerrymandering, and whether cases like these, are generally going to work in the favor of Democrats because minority voters tend to vote a lot more for Democrats. So Republican drawn maps like this are going to tend to have a disparate effect on minority voters,

not because they're minority voters per se, but because minority districts tend to vote Democrat. And so this law and this interpretation of the law has a disparate impact upon Republican states that try to do this. So it seems to me that it's either got to be fully legal across the board or it needs to be fully illegal across the board. But we'll see what the Supreme Court has to say when they inevitably take up this case. case at some point in the future. The next piece of news I have for you this week is an executive order entitled Regulatory Relief for Certain Stationary Sources to Promote American Coke Oven Processing Security.

So I talked a couple weeks ago about the restrictions that the Trump administration lifted on copper smelters in the United States because copper is essential for American defense and American industry, and so we want to encourage more domestic production of copper. This is basically the same thing in regards to steel. So I had to look up what Coke ovens are because I didn't know what that was, but they're essentially really unique furnaces that are used to heat coal to around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit without oxygen. That converts and draws from the coal to get what's called Coke, which is a solid fuel that's used to produce steel. About 70% of steel is made using these kind of furnaces, which requires Coke and these Coke ovens to act as fuel without Coke, these furnaces that are used to make a steel. steel can't operate. And what the executive order is doing is it lifts some of the

emission standards that were imposed upon this industry by the Biden administration in 2024, basically saying that the technology required for this industry to live up to the admission standards doesn't really exist in a cost-efficient form yet. And so it's very, very difficult for these producers in the Coke oven industry to fulfill those standards. So it basically extends the time period that they have to fulfill the standards for about two years. Now, there's a pretty obvious ulterior motive that the Trump administration has in doing this, namely that it needs more domestic steel production. One of the very first things that the Trump administration did under its new tariff policy was put a very high tariff on steel. It started at about

25%. And as of June 4th, 2025, the steel tariff that we impose on imported steel is at 50%. Now, the goal of those tariffs is to increase domestic production of steel because steel is absolutely necessary for things like military vehicles, weapons, aircraft, naval ships, all sorts of other defense manufacturing needs. We need steel for buildings and bridges, vehicles, heavy machinery, energy. Steel is vital to almost all of our most important national productions and national defense and security, which is no doubt why the Trump administration wants more domestic production of it, and when you impose a really heavy tariff on imports for steel, then you're going to need to produce more domestically and it costs more to produce more domestically when the resources

you need to produce it costs more. Coke ovens and Coke costs more when you have environmental restrictions that require you to spend more money to produce it. And so putting basically what is a temporary lift on the environmental restrictions will make it cheaper to produce Coke, which will make it in turn cheaper to produce domestic steel,

which will make up for some of the lack of supply of steel that we have because of the high tariff on it. So that's the goal of this executive order is to hopefully make it a little bit cheaper to produce steel domestically. The last piece of news I have for you this week is a House resolution that passed on November 21st, which was a resolution to condemn socialism. Now, first of all, it's always worth noting with these kind of House resolutions

that this is purely performative, it does nothing. I don't really even understand why they do this, except for the people who introduce the resolutions to get to virtue signal to their base. But in looking at the vote, the resolution to condemn socialism passed 280 to 96 with 54 no votes. Among Republicans, it was 195 that voted to condemn socialism and zero that did not. While among Democrats in the House, there were 85 who voted to condemn socialism and 96 who voted to not condemn socialism, which is worth noting for a couple reasons. First of all, it shows the direction that the Democrat Party is heading. You look at the recent election of Zoran Mamdani in New York City, an open Democratic socialist whose ideas by public polling are extremely popular right now. You see

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also a Democratic socialist who's among the forerunners for the 2028 presidential nomination for the Democrats. So this is the direction that their base is leaning and the representatives are having to go with their base. And the reason that their base is leaning that way, and that's the other thing that I wanted to point out about this House resolution, is that many people in the United States, particularly the younger generations, are feeling a huge pressure right now when it comes to affordability, when it comes to the economy. They're feeling like, I'm never going to be able to buy a house. I'm not going to be able to get a high-paying job because the job market is getting worse and worse, particularly for

recent college graduates in the United States. Grocery prices are still very high. The only thing that's really gone down price-wise has been gas prices since the Trump administration came into office. They stopped the drastic rise of prices, but we've yet to see prices really go down in anything other than oil and gas. And at the end of the day, like it or not, people are less loyal to their party than they are to their pockets. It's a pretty easy trend to trace back people vote based off of their perception on who would create a better economy. That was a huge issue for President Trump in 2024. A majority of voters thought that he would create a better economy than Kamala Harris would and President Trump won. The same thing could be said

for 2020 when people thought that the Trump economy was failing during COVID and thought that Biden could create a better economy and Biden won. People vote with their pockets. And so that should be a wake-up call for the Trump administration, especially going into the 2026 midterms, that the crisis of affordability in the United States is something that needs to be addressed if Republicans want to keep their electoral victories that they've had over the last few years going. So to recap this week, we had the bill that officially released the Epstein files and a House resolution condemning socialism. We had two court cases, one about whether asylum seekers can be turned away outside the border, and one blocking Texas's gerrymandering efforts, and we had an executive order aimed at aiding domestic steel producers. Tune in next week for more.

Well, that's all I have for you today on Under the Radar. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and I want to thank you for listening and encourage you to tune back in next time for more coverage of the news that fell under the radar. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Thanks for listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller, here on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.