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i'll find a summer soiree. see you all there! hey, guys, we've talked so much about the pace of this trump white house, but, my gosh, wednesday night was something else entirely, wasn't it? i mean, the lesson this week is beware of the summer soiree. president trump hosting a whole pile of loyalists and political operatives at the white house, coming out to speak for just 14 minutes. and then, i think, within half an hour we had the travel ban, we had the new harvard

foreign student visa ban. we had an investigation into joe biden. we had these texts going between elon musk and donald trump. beware of the summer soiree. it was such a good example, i thought, of flooding the zone and that, you know, we, the media in general, had to pivot from headline to headline so quickly. it was really hard to focus on one thing in particular, wednesday going into thursday... and i think that was quite intentional, which is interesting. i would just say that beware of the summer soiree would be a great band name for the three of us. i think that would work out really well if we ever wanted to start a band. yeah, a garden party in a balmy june evening in washington, dc, what's not to love about that? exactly. but i mean, yeah, we've, week after week, talked about flurries of activity and i just think there's... it's interesting to see this real america first immigration policy taking shape on several levels. if you look at the harvard aspect that you mentioned,

caitriona, of cracking down on foreign students coming to coming to the us, the aspect of mass deportations that we've been covering of people across the country being swept up by ice agents. and, of course, you know, the crackdown on the southern border that we've seen the numbers fall dramatically there. and on top of this, the travel ban, which many campaigners have said they did expect some sort of travel ban to be introduced at some point with donald trump back in the white house. but the way in which it was done so clearly marks the strategy behind this entire immigration policy that brings together what donald trump is trying to do in his second term. i mean, the cynic would say the timing of that travel ban on wednesday night was coming at a point where pressure is really building on the one big, beautiful bill moving through the senate. that's when the first elon musk tweets were coming about it being an abomination and, you know, he felt so cheated and whatever, and there is no better person at taking back the attention or the focus or the news cycle

than donald trump. and the timing was particularly interesting in that maybe half an hour or 45 minutes before we heard of the travel ban, he was in there with republican senators from the finance committee for a really quite long meeting, in which it sounds like nothing in particular happened. they were very optimistic about it at the end, but obviously the attention and the questions to them were about elon musk. and then, you know, 45 minutes later, no-one's talking about that at all, that... on that same evening, which, you know, i think, as you said, i hate to be a cynic, but the timing was just kind of perfect from a pr perspective, from the white house, i thought. the other thing that really struck me about this travel ban, and this is to your point, sumi, about, you know, fulfilling that america first agenda and the strategy behind it was, of course, we had a travel ban in the first trump administration. started life as a muslim travel ban, moved through a few iterations and changed to a point that the supreme court eventually sanctioned it

and approved it. but this one, i mean, the document, i still have it here cos i'm still reading it, it's so long and it goes through in really quite fine detail the reasons for listing each country. it's very considered. there are statistics in there about the particular types of visas that certain countries overstay, particular arguments about other countries who don't have adequate passport-issuing processes themselves within their country. and, you know, we've talked about this with so much else that this trump administration has done, that they used those four years that they were out of office to really plan for the things that matter to them, to go through the existing legislation to make sure that they had dotted the i's and crossed the t's. and, you know, in the period, even from january 20th, when the president signed that executive action, signalling that this travel ban would come, and then tasked marco rubio, kristi noem, pam bondi and others with kind of coming up with the fine detail on it,

they've used that time well, it would seem. um, in terms of just the level of detail here to make this a bit more perhaps watertight to withstand the legal challenges than it did the first time around. indeed. and there's a sense that you get that the trump administration very much wants to portray its immigration policy and strategy as a well-oiled machine, hitting on all cylinders. as you said, having looked through over the last four years, what legal pitfalls there might be, or there were in the first travel ban and addressing some of those, giving very specific and clear exemptions to who can come to the country and when. and also in its deportations... mass deportation programme that we're seeing as well, we've seen the trump administration continuously come back to some of the legal challenges we've seen on that, judges who have stayed some of the orders, for example, to deport people to el salvador, to their home country, they've come back to that and continue to challenge those judges and those court rulings, you know, over and over again. it does give you the sense that, as you said, caitriona,

they have a programme and a policy and a plan that they very much believe that the american people want to see implemented and are happy about. and the last poll numbers, to be fair, that i checked, did indicate that on immigration, donald trump still does seem to have the support of voters in the us. to that point, i think one thing we'll hear from the white house in the coming days and weeks about this is, you know, they keep using that phrase, "promises made, promises kept" and i think that's how they're going to frame this, because this is something that donald trump specifically said on the campaign trail that he would do. so, we don't have a choice. vote republican and we will begin the largest deportation operation in american history. he specifically said he wanted to prevent people from, quote unquote, terrorist nations from coming into the us as part of a broader public safety measure. and i think the recent attack in colorado just kind of provided him that opportunity to kind of galvanise that argument as the way to frame this and frame the broader immigration issue

and the dispute over foreign students at american universities. it's all part of one kind of broader campaign. and he seized on an opportunity to kind of make this, uh, that, in terms of being a public safety measure. there are clashes, though, in there in terms of what they're trying to do. like, as you say, he began speaking about this on wednesday in the context of the attack in colorado. that individual came from egypt originally. egypt is not on the list. the president was asked about it during the week when chancellor merz was with him in the oval office, and he said, you know, something along the lines i'm paraphrasing here of, um, "well, you know, we have great relationships with egypt, "and they're kind of an ally of ours, "so we didn't include egypt. "they have good processes there." and then on the students' point, again one of the measures that they've brought in in recent weeks has been against chinese students and restricting visas for chinese students who have connections to the chinese communist party. and again, he was

asked about chinese students coming to the us. and he said something along the lines of, "oh, no, we're honoured to have them here. in fact, "we'd like to see more of them. "bring them here, bring them here." so it's kind of... some of the things the president is saying doesn't necessarily match up with the action that the administration is taking, either. yeah. i think it's important to note that it appears that the crackdown on foreign students really is specifically tied to harvard. you know, we've seen this escalation that we've talked about on this pod before between harvard and the trump administration. and there was a judge who said that she intended to stop president trump from barring foreign students from enrolling at harvard. so it's also somewhat unclear how this latest move by the trump administration to stop foreign students from coming, how that lines up with the legal landscape at this point. but, you know, if i think also about the mass deportations and the promises that the president made on the campaign trail to deport... you know, he talked about millions of people who are undocumented in this country. we are seeing some cracks there

as well. you know, we've seen in some liberal cities and towns where ice agents have gathered to deport migrant workers, for example, at restaurants or in a school, that we've seen communities actually come around and try to obstruct their path. i've seen, you know, we've seen some of those videos come out on social media. and it does make you think, ok, you know, there is broad support for the immigration measures, whether it is foreign students, whether it's, you know, reducing the number of people crossing the southern border or a foreign travel ban. we haven't seen those protests at airports, have we? even if there is support, whether that will also start to wear thin as the reality of these deportations also start to set in. and i also think there's a political risk for him in, at least in some parts of the country, in the travel ban, for example, cuban nationals and venezuelan nationals are named as part of the partial bans, at least. that's going to go down not well in communities in florida, for example, with large cuban-american

or venezuelan-american populations that have generally been, at least in the last election and the one before that, kind of bedrocks of support for president trump. um, you know, i think if there's more backlash there, i suspect in the future we might see that finessed or that be tweaked a little bit because, i mean, he is kind of going after a community or communities that in large part support him, at least, for example, in florida. so i think, you know, there is a political risk for him there, but he seems willing to make that for now. and do you think, is that why he put cuba and venezuela on that kind of secondary list, then, rather than the first list? i mean, the partial restrictions mean that people just can't come permanently to the us, for those countries, and they can't get these very specific tourist-grade and student-grade visas, where they've seen what the trump administration would see as problems with people overstaying their visas. and he has said people in that category are kind of

incentivised to get off that list and to do more domestically. i do think that's why they were on the partial list rather than on the full list, i mean, besides that kind of political danger of draining support in those communities that otherwise would have supported him. um, you know, i think in putting venezuelans, for example, in the list of partial, you know, that directly goes back to something he criticised joe biden for and that many people were allowed into the country, for example, to wait for, uh, proceedings. um, and then just ended up staying. so i think, you know, he's addressing an issue that he kind of identified as a winner politically in the election, and one that the white house is still very eager to talk about. almost every press briefing, for example, starts with immigration at the top, uh, unprompted, before the questions begin. um, so i think, you know, that kind of allowed him to kind of straddle both sides of that argument, to a certain degree. statistically, they are having great success with the immigration, you know,

clamp-down, as they would see it. i mean, the number of border crossings are way down, the number of ice arrests are way up because of the policies that they're doing. and they can't say that to the same sort of statistical degree, at least, about their economic measures, which was the other major issue on the campaign trail. i mean, the big, beautiful bill, who knows where that's going to end up? not looking great at this point in time. and still great uncertainty, still, consumer prices are going up, consumer confidence is still going down. so all of those indicators are not doing as well as perhaps they would have hoped for. yeah, again, a reason, as you said, to focus on immigration. i mean, we have heard that there's been some frustration within the trump administration over the deportation numbers in particular. there was some reporting that stephen miller, who we know is very close to the president, architect of many of his policies, particularly on immigration, had gathered ice field agents here in washington, dc, to demand that they pick up the numbers of deportations

taking place. and, of course, the first mandate was to sweep up those who had criminal records or had been convicted of crimes who could be, in their view, easily deported. but as that has proved more and more difficult, you know, we have seen stephen miller, from this reporting, as we understand, say that he wants ice agents to be able to sweep up far more people. so, i mean, it gives you a sense, perhaps, of where the administration is heading for the next step of this immigration policy, but there will be challenges along the way. yeah, i mean, we saw them round up about 1,400 people, i think, in massachusetts in the month of may. the administration saying that 750 of them had some criminal activity, but it hasn't gone into detail as to what that criminal activity is, whether that's charges, arrests, convictions, we don't know. and equally, speaking to colleagues in massachusetts who've been trying to get lists of the names of people who've been detained, details about them, where they're from, what their status is, and so on,

none of that information has been forthcoming. so in some places, the numbers are high, but we don't know how many of those people end up going on to be deported or who are released. and one of them in massachusetts was, you know, it got a lot of publicity here this week, didn't it, the 18-year-old high school student who happened to be driving his father's car, and the ice agents were coming for the father. they found him and they detained him in place of the father, because his status was undocumented as well. and what one wonders, over time, hearing more and more of those stories, for example, we've also heard reporting about small children being deported back to central america, for example, or people being detained coming out of ice hearings or immigration hearings, rather. you know, i think, over time, one wonders if that won't have some sort of effect on the public opinion of this. i mean, those stories often are quite heartbreaking. and i think, you know,

the people opposed to those deportations are kind of going to be focusing on them just to highlight the human aspect of this, rather than the administration, which prefers to focus on kind of the broad picture, thousands deported, hundreds of criminals, etc. one wonders if that won't have some sort of impact on the public opinion of how this goes over time. and i think it's notable that the administration has stopped publishing regular deportation figures, as they did in the first few days of the administration. they don't publish, "1,000 deported today, "1,500 deported today." that stopped quite early on. and i think that's reflective of them being dissatisfied with the pace compared to how much focus they're putting on it, at least publicly. i think, as well, immigrants in this country are hiding, you know? i mean, there's so much fear in many communities, isn't there, that, you know, in those initial few weeks, people were unaware of what the situation was. and now, i mean, you hear time and time again in communities where people are waiting till the middle of the night to go and do their grocery

shopping. they won't drop their kids to school, that there's a real nervousness there. so, um, that could be also contributing to some of those figures. is there a consistent way, bernie, that you've seen the white house address some of these specific cases that have got a lot of attention? like the 18-year-old in massachusetts, like the mother from hong kong who has been detained and hasn't been able to see her children. that's raised quite a lot of attention as well. how is the white house addressing some of these specific cases that are brought up? well, it's interesting. i think they come very prepared for those questions to the briefings, for example. and they always have an explanation they say explains why a certain raid or a certain detention case happened as it did. you know, they'll either blame the immigrant for breaking the law in the first place, we hear that quite a lot, you know, "they're here illegally, full stop." or, you know, there's other explanations given. for example, of someone deported with their children, even if those children are us citizens, that they would rather be together as a family, so they all have to go.

but i've always been kind of impressed in the briefings that karoline leavitt gives, how prepared she is. and the white house seems to be kind of anticipating these sorts of questions. i think, you know, given that the focus is so much on immigration, they're really kind of doing their homework in terms of at least having a public explanation and not being caught off-guard by a particular case or by a particular trend. you know, that's one thing that probably more than any other issue, because they see it as a winner, they really know what they're going to say ahead of time. the other big issue this week as well, of course, is ukraine, russia. i mean, we saw ukraine striking back in a really dramatic way, didn't we, in russia? chancellor merz was here. ukraine, russia came up a lot, particularly in the questions after their meeting. and some kind of interesting lines from president trump as well about his phone conversation with president putin. and then the remark he made,

it was something along the lines of, "well, you know, they're like two children in a park. "maybe we should just let them fight it out a bit more." and he said he'd said that to president putin. which makes me wonder, how did president putin respond to that? the way he described it, the analogy that he said he delivered to president putin himself was, you see two kids playing in a park or fighting in a park, and, you know, you try to pull them apart and you can't... sometimes you let them fight for a little while. ..and you let them continue to fight, and that's what you might have to do here. what does it actually mean for us policy with ukraine and russia? does that mean that the us considers this pretty impossible to actually solve at the moment, and donald trump is essentially saying he wants to step away from this conflict? does it mean that he believes there is kind of a certain course of events that needs to take place before peace can happen? i mean, it raises quite a few questions. and of course, you know, chancellor merz, when he was in the white house, he was quite clear to say, look, you know, it's clear to us that russia is the aggressor and that ukraine here is the one that when it strikes back at russia, it's striking at military targets,

at infrastructure, but not at civilians. but that was as far as it got, really. i think kind of the most telling line of trump's was the one he didn't say. he's not talking about peace any more. if anything, he's... you know, in months previous and in weeks previous, we had seen him kind of very optimistic, saying that, you know, these two sides are coming to the table and that, you know, perhaps peace is just around the corner. i remember it wasn't too long ago when at one point they were saying peace could just be weeks away. but now, after the phone call with putin, for example, he said, "this phone call won't lead to immediate peace." he's kind of setting expectations much lower than he did earlier in the administration in terms of where this could all head. and, you know, he's been short on details. he's said now twice, or two or three times that he's kind of self-imposed a deadline, but he doesn't say when that deadline is or what happens on that deadline. during the merz meeting at the white house, he said, "you know, i have a deadline in my brain, full stop", without expanding on that idea

at all. so i think, you know, there's just kind of a lot of things he's not saying that i think a month ago or two months ago, would have sounded much more optimistic in terms of where this is all headed. i thought as well, it was really interesting when he, president trump, was asked about the senate bill on sanctions on russia that senator lindsey graham is kind of leading. and someone asked him about that, and he was like, "oh, no, i haven't read that. i haven't looked into that. "it's about sanctions, isn't it? well, i take the lead "on that or they take the lead from me. "i'll be the one who decides what happens there." which again was a much kind of watered down position from that threat you're talking about, bernie, that he made a week or two ago about if there isn't action, i'm coming in with sanctions, whereas now i feel he was very clear in his, "i'm stepping back from this and leaving ukraine "and russia to carry on their war for a little bit more." and i do think chancellor merz did quite a good job, as we have seen more recent world leaders, as they watch and learn from their previous visits,

doing that diplomacy in front of the tv cameras where he was saying, "well, you know, "all those limbs that you're talking about, "president trump, and those devastating photographs "that you're seeing from the battlefield, "it's russia targeting civilians. "it's not ukrainians targeting russian civilians. "ukrainians only target military sites." and, you know, he was very much pushing back in a very gentle and polite way on some of the narrative that we've heard from president trump. so, i mean, it's kind of where the follow-on comes from here, bernd, whether we continue to see that same position from president trump or, you know, i mean, he's chopped and changed his position so much at this point. i was speaking to someone this week and they said, you know, it's all talk in a way. he can say what he wants. he can take this position, take that position, change it, go 180 degrees, whatever. but it's actions that actually matter. and we've yet to see any actions from president trump here. we have, and in that oval office meeting with chancellor merz, it was quite interesting

in that when the topic of sanctions came up, because he's under a lot of pressure to increase sanctions on putin and russia, he said he's thinking about it for russia and other parties, kind of implying that ukraine could also be sanctioned. so i think, you know, that will raise a lot of alarm bells in kyiv and in some sectors here in washington, that he still kind of sees this as an issue in which both sides are at fault. so i think he'll be facing a lot of questions over this over the next few weeks, in terms of, what concrete steps are you actually doing? there's not been sanctions yet. there's not been, you know, an increased flow of weapons to ukraine past what was already promised and is being delivered. um, so i think there's just kind of... one really doesn't know where the white house's thinking is on this because it changes so regularly. it'll be interesting to see as well how the eu seeks to move things on here. i mean, it's come in obviously with more rounds of sanctions, but whether there's another

deviation in position, essentially, between the us and the rest of the eu. you know, we had pete hegseth there this week at the nato defence ministers' meeting calling for even more spending from nato members, and eu defence members very much moving towards that position of military involvement and security. and there's been a suggestion of the european union, without the us, unilaterally seizing some of the 200 billion euros that are primarily in belgian banks, that are russian... russia's central bank assets. and i think if the us and the european union don't find themselves in lockstep about those sanctions, that becomes a much more attractive option on the european side in terms of a concrete step. and i think there could be some friction there, both between the us and the eu and within members of the eu, some of whom are much less enthusiastic about the prospect of seizing that money and repurposing it for ukraine. ok, well, another wild, busy

week, guys, and we'll be here again next week. maybe there's another summer soiree we can look out for. looking forward to it. i'll find a summer soiree tonight. that sounds like a good plan. see you all there! bye. see you, guys. bye. and you can catch up with all of the episodes of the president's path on bbc iplayer if you're in the uk, and on bbc sounds, which is available globally. just search "the president's path." it'll be under the global story banner for sounds users. each episode will be published at the end of the week.

live from london, this is bbc news. national guard soldiers deployed by president trump are taking up positions in los angeles after days of unrest over immigration raids. this is the scene live now outside the prison in la, where some of the 300 national guard are stationed. the marines have also received preparatory orders for deployment billions more in funding for schools in england, as the government prepares to reveal its spending plans this week. "if we save the sea, we save our world" - prince william speaks ahead of the un ocean conference, calling for urgent action to protect oceans and their ecosystems. watching human activity reduce beautiful sea forests to barren deserts at the base of our oceans is simply heartbreaking.