Governing the strain

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, March 25th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Washington Wednesday!

Joining us now is political scientist Hunter Baker. He is a WORLD Opinions Contributor and our regular Washington Wednesday political analyst. Good morning Hunter!

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning!

EICHER: Hunter, two really big Supreme Court cases—and we’ll cover the legal arguments in due course after our legal affairs team has had at them. But today I want to talk with you about the political importance of both, because whatever the Court decides, these are huge issues.

So let’s start with the most recent one first: asylum claims. The legal question turns on when someone has “arrived in the United States.” But politically, this is about control of the border. These claims can take years to resolve, and in the meantime people may be here in a kind of limbo—or simply beyond effective control.

So politically, is this case likely to re-ignite the immigration debate, regardless of which way it goes?

BAKER: It's just going to add to the the ongoing controversy. I mean, it's interesting that there are many of us above a certain age who can remember when immigration was a very minor issue in American politics, and that has obviously changed. It's become a really serious one. I mean, there was a time in the past when the border was relatively porous and people came and went, but now things are different, and part of that is because we have, you know, a much broader social safety net and more ways to provide for these people and and people are sending tons of money back across the border. So it has a much larger impact, not to mention the employment competition, than perhaps it once did.

And you know this case about asylum? Well, asylum laws make a ton of sense, particularly when you think about the old Cold War context. People might be seeking asylum, and we would want to help them. But I think that what's happened is is, like many parts of our immigration system, it's become unmanageable. You know, people have realized that claiming asylum is a sort of a magic key that opens the door to being here for some indefinite time, knowing that the administrative and judicial overload is there. It's going to be a long time before anybody is able to adjudicate it. And so now they're trying to decide, right? You know, can you, can you actually prevent people from stepping foot into the country and therefore making some kind of asylum claim? When is somebody actually in the country able to make such a claim?

My view is, is that we need to step back and and re look at the whole immigration system. I think that we probably need some kind of comprehensive legislation to address these problems. But until then, we're going to continue kind of piecemeal working through these issues. And of course, the Trump administration's approach has been just to make it real clear that it's not going to be easy to cross the border, and therefore to discourage a big part of that mass of people trying to come over.

MAST: Well, Hunter, similar thread, but different. I'd like to jump to the case argued Monday, that one was a case about mail in voting. The legal issue is going to revolve around deadlines, but this seems, again, like part of a much larger argument, not unlike the debate over the SAVE Act, election integrity, public confidence and what the rules of voting are supposed to guarantee. So again, regardless of what the court does, the court isn't going to settle the issue. It seems more likely it may reawaken it at some level. Don't you think it really could?

BAKER: I actually think that a ruling from the court on this will be welcome. You know, we've talked about the SAVE Act. We've talked about when you discuss the idea of a really solid voter ID plan for Americans. We all know that the polling has indicated the support is high in my time working with a political depolarization project, one of the things that we talked about was elections, and we gathered a diverse group of people, and one of the things that they were pretty united on was the idea of being able to have election integrity, to be sure that the result is a real result, to be sure that citizens are voting and to have voter ID.

So this is the same kind of a thing, right when we talk about votes that come in after an election, and when you have close elections, and we're having an awful lot of close elections these days. It's just devastating to have this idea that late ballots could come in and affect the outcome in some way, that we could have electoral votes of a state decided, you know effectively after the election, after we sort of think we already know the outcome. And so I think the court has taken a really hard look this idea of what, what is, what does election day really mean? And trying to, I think they have the opportunity to really improve the confidence of Americans in the electoral process.

There are other things, and the SAVE Act addresses some of those other things. But to me, this, this question of, How late are ballots going to be allowed to come in? This is a huge question. The court, I think, can really help us with this one.

EICHER:Shutdown deal in progress, we’ll see if they get it done before Easter recess. But we’ve reported about the pressure building as lines at airport security checkpoints grow. TSA reports that more than 400 agents have quit since the partial shutdown began. 41% called in sick Sunday in Atlanta, at one of the world’s busiest airports, and of course now President Trump has deployed ICE agents to help keep lines moving.

Former acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf served in the first Trump Administration, and he told FOX sending ICE in is all about security.

WOLF: When you get a two or a three hour line in a place like Atlanta or any other major airport, that becomes a soft target in and of itself, those baggage claims and a lot of the places where you see those lines are not secure areas of that airport, meaning anyone from the public can come into those areas. And so again, ICE is being surged into there, making sure that those travelers are safe before they even get into that secure part of the airport.

So Hunter, do a political risk assessment here. How does that work in a situation like this?

BAKER: First of all, I just want to say that you are talking to a three hours early to the airport guy.

EICHER: Even before, right?

BAKER: I think that the reason that I am that is because I remember that post 9/11 period when the security thing could really stretch out long. And so, you know, here I am, over 20 years later, still reacting to that. So it really affects people, and certainly people like me.

With regard to this question about putting ICE into the airports to help with TSA, I think this is kind of a political master stroke. I mean, it's a it's a different look for ICE. You've got them helping out in a situation that is very frustrating to a lot of people. So you know, here they are. They're present. They're they're helping to alleviate the the burden on the traveler and on those brave TSA agents who are showing up despite their paychecks not being delivered. And so this kind of takes the focus off of Minneapolis and gives you a different sort of a look, right? It kind of pushes the idea of ICE back into our vision of the regular Federal workforce, the regular law enforcement. You know, they're not just out there on those icy streets of Minneapolis, they're doing something that probably just about everybody is happy that they're doing now in terms of the broader issue of what's been going on with the shutdown.

I mean, I think that most Americans are probably deeply frustrated with government not taking care of business, not dealing with the nuts and bolts of what they're supposed to do. If the government cannot handle TSA, we could just as easily hand this over to some sort of a private workforce to handle. But instead, the government has taken control of this function, and now everybody is subject to when government breaks down.

So what I would say is I think that we're seeing that politics is eating government is taking the American people hostage with with what I think are ridiculous battles that should not be going on. If you want to change policy, don't use shutdowns to impose changes of policy campaign on your change make it obvious what the change is that you want and win elections. Don't create misery in the midst of an administration, but that's what's going on so far.

MAST: Well Hunter, the President said in the Oval Office yesterday that talks with Iran are ongoing…that leaders in Tehran agree to never have a nuclear weapon. He also indicated a deal might be near.

But the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the President will deploy 3,000 troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East. Officials the Journal talked to say that doesn’t mean there will be boots on the ground… but this also doesn’t seem to indicate we are nearing the end, either.

Is this boiling down to a test of who can outlast? If so, which side do you think has the will to keep going?

BAKER: Yeah, this is some very high wire stuff for the American president. I think that. I think that Donald Trump, when he managed to win that second term, after losing in 2020 comes back in 2024 and wins, I think that it just made him believe in himself more than he ever did before, and that was already a lot. And so, you know, he was able to take on this very ambitious plan of tariffs, and then Venezuela and Cuba, and now tackling the big bad guy, Iran. And you asked who could outlast? Well, that's for Iran, that's the only question, right? I mean, if this was a straight up military battle, they lose. It's over, right? Most of their military is destroyed. Much of their leadership has been killed. But that's not the game in the modern world. The game is an asymmetric one. And everybody understands that if you're going to beat the United States of America, you're going to do it in an asymmetric fashion by creating discomfort, particularly among American citizens, and facilitated by the American media. So that's the game. You're right. Who can outlast all of this pain and discomfort.

But one thing that our founders knew when they talked about the things that you had to take account of reason revelation and the law of fashion. And when I say the law of fashion, I do not mean you know, the length of skirts or the type of hats that men might wear. I mean public opinion. And Americans have always recognized that public opinion is a powerful force that may be the most powerful force that we deal with outside of the sovereignty of God. And have the American people been convinced? Not yet, it appears polling indicates that probably below 40% of people support the action. They may not like Iran. They may think it would be better if Iran was gone, destabilized, defeated, but they're not sure this was necessary. And so they're encountering pain in the pump, pain in the 401(k), and those gas prices will also eventually hit the stores if they haven't already.

So people need to believe in a successful ending of this thing. They've already been traumatized by our failures in the Middle East, and they're dying to believe that he's telling the truth about productive talks with Iran right now. If that happens, it's going to be a tremendous win. But if we're still where we are or anywhere close to it at the midterms, I can't even imagine how painful that will be for Trump and the Republicans.

EICHER: Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University. Thank you, Hunter. We’ll see you next week.

BAKER: Thank you.

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