Path to the Presidency: Policy priorities
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We're another week closer to the start of President Trump's second term. And this week, the President-elect vowed to end automatic citizenship for anyone born in the United States, and to do that on his first day in office. We're going to end that because it's ridiculous. We're the only country that has it. He also reiterated his plans for mass deportation for undocumented immigrants.

What impact would that have on agriculture, a sector that relies heavily on migrant labour? Or could promises to roll back regulation and environmental protections mean farmers benefit from Trump 2.0? And is there a potential split on the horizon between two of Trump's closest allies, Elon Musk and J.D. Vance? They may find they have very different reactions to the administration's approach to social media.

We're never short of things to talk about. So as the countdown to inauguration continues, let's map out the path to the presidency.

With me today, as always, my fellow BBC chief presenter, Sumi Somaskanda. Hi, Sumi. Hi, Katrina. And we're joined today by our North America correspondent, Anthony Zerker. Hi, Anthony. Great to be here. It's a long path to the presidency. You've already been traveling it for a while, but I'm glad to join you in your journey. And a long way still to go. A long way to go. And we're in December now. Are you guys holiday partied out? I didn't realize what a season this is in Washington, D.C. Can you have too many festivities?

It's exhausting. I went to my first one last night. I think I've got another two next week. And that's what it really kicks in. I've got a cookie party tomorrow or Saturday night at a friend's house where everyone has to bring a holiday themed cookie and share it. So by the time you leave, you walk out with a huge box of all these different cookies people made. And with many cavities and calories. Yeah. What's your theme, Anthony? What are your cookies looking like?

We're lazy. We end up going to the local German bakery and buying something nice there. So I'll see what catches my eye. Maybe we need to start a path to the presidency cookie party for Christmas.

But on serious matters, I mean, a lot going on yet again on our path to the presidency. And Anthony, this issue of immigration flaring up again last week in that interview that Donald Trump did with Meet the Press on NBC. And it's really kept going, hasn't it?

It has. I mean, this is another example of how Donald Trump could drive the agenda, drive the conversation. I'm sure you've noticed that over the past month and in Donald Trump's first term where he says something and it becomes something that all of us start chasing around. And what he said in that interview was that he wanted to do away with birthright citizenship rights.

on day one of his next term in office. You promised to end birthright citizenship on day one. Is that still your plan? Yeah, absolutely. Do you know, if somebody sets a foot, just a foot, one foot, you don't need to, on our land,

Congratulations, you are now a citizen of the United States of America. Yes, we're going to end that because it's ridiculous. Now, birthright citizenship, as I'm sure you know, is the idea that someone born on American soil, regardless of who their parents are, is an American citizen by birth. It's grounded in the U.S. Constitution and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that says people born in the United States are

uh and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are american citizens and courts and governments and politicians have interpreted that for more than 150 years to mean what it says that if you're born on american soil even if your parents are undocumented you're an american citizen now donald trump wants to get rid of that because he and his supporters view that as a driving force of undocumented migration that people are coming to this country

from South America, from Central America, having kids. And they're using that, and I think the term they use is anchor babies in order to become citizens. And they want to do away with that. They think that will help stem the tide of migration to this country. I've heard it from Republicans that this is a driving force.

I'm not convinced that it necessarily is the driving force. If you go to the border and you speak to many of the people who are crossing the border, what they say is that it is economic woes in their home countries and political violence, gang violence, that are the driving factors. And in fact,

I think the most recent time was at the border was a little bit earlier this year on the California side, where you saw really hundreds of people a day crossing over and from all over the world. And many of them were young people who were not necessarily thinking about family planning and having children at that moment, but were thinking about their own future. So, of course,

Of course, it is something that for Republicans could be an attractive way, they say, to reduce the number of people coming into the country. But I wonder, first of all, how effective it would be. And then, you know, you also have to ask, is that even possible? Because that would involve a change in the Constitution.

In their view, it doesn't involve the change of the Constitution. They look at that subject to the jurisdiction thereof language in the 14th Amendment. They say, well, if you're an undocumented migrant, you aren't subject to American jurisdiction that you're here without permission. And therefore, they can be carved out. Now, that would be a huge legal battle. You can guarantee that if Donald Trump tried to do this on day one with a wave of a pen,

of the lawsuits would be coming that day, within hours even. They're preparing for this. And it would be bogged down in the courts as federal judges litigate it. And they may find a federal judge somewhere, maybe in Texas, who would say, OK, you're right. You can do away with birthright citizenship without a constitutional amendment.

And they may find an appellate court that will do that. And then it could get to the Supreme Court. And you never know with the Supreme Court is a conservative tilting court. But it would involve upending 150 years of jurisprudence, which is a big state is a big step to take, even with these Supreme Court justices.

And originally this birthright citizenship came in because of slavery in this country. So aside from all those legal challenges that would be taken, you have to anticipate that there would be an incredible sort of emotional and moral objection to that happening as well. And Anthony, are there any statistics for how many people are coming here and having these so-called anchor babies, to use that term?

I mean, the total number of undocumented migrants in this country is estimated to be around 14, 15 million. Obviously, they're not all having children here. So you've got to figure, you know, that's a much smaller number of people born here in the United States who have become citizens that way. And there have been attempts to try to address that.

what you do with families that have citizen children and undocumented parents. And actually, some Democratic administrations and the Biden administration, and particularly the Obama administration, tried to extend protected status, normalized residency to the parents of US citizens

Because that is one of the things that's going to be hard for the Trump administration to do is to deport, to have these mass deportations and deporting undocumented migrants.

when they have citizen children. You're tearing apart families, in other words, if you try to round up all the undocumented migrants. If they have a one-year-old American citizen, are you going to let that one-year-old stay in the country? Are you going to deport them? Can you deport an American citizen? It creates a lot more challenges to what the Trump administration wants to try to do, which is, I think, one of the reasons why they're targeting this. It's not just stopping the flow of undocumented migrants.

it's making that deportation process more streamlined because it's much easier to deport an entire family of undocumented migrants rather than to break up a family or deal with an American citizen child as a claim to living here. There were press specifically on this point and President-elect Trump on that point in his interview on Meet the Press. And he said, the anchor, Kristen Walker, asked him specifically, so are you going to break up families or how does that work? And he said, if the child...

is a U.S. citizen and the parents are not, then the child would go with the parents. So it's not a question of deportation. In the language that he used, it's not a question of deporting than a U.S. citizen, but the decision for the family to stay together. And what's interesting about that is that's the exact same language, of course, that his incoming borders are Tom Homan has used. And that's the way that they believe that they can address this question of breaking up families, which is

You don't want to have the children stay here by themselves. They would choose to return with their parents, which in reality, we don't know if that's going to be the case. And if these children are small, I mean, they're not making that decision for themselves, right? I mean, it's the parents making the decision. But it's interesting how I think the Trump administration have sought to frame this because they are aware of, you know, all that uncertainty.

Like those awful images that we saw the first time around of children separated from their parents. And we know from statistics out earlier this year that there are still thousands of children in this country who remain separated from their parents who have not been reunited. And I think they're anxious to avoid any repeat of that. So this, I think, is where, you know, partly the genesis for this idea is coming from, that they're trying to somehow make it...

I don't know, more palatable or something, what they're trying to do? I mean, there is political risk, right? I mean, we saw the damage that those family separations at the border, and those were people who were coming across and had just been caught with children, and then they were being separated because it's harder to deport even undocumented children than it is

is their parent. So you saw how bad that was for the Trump administration then. You could see why they're trying to avoid it now. They may not be able to. It's still a risk to try any of these mass deportation plans that they have. As soon as you get beyond the violent offenders who are in prison somewhere, assuming you can cross those off the list and find someplace that will take them, which is

a whole nother challenge for the Trump administration. Once you get through those easy ones that the public probably isn't going to be too up in arms. And then you start getting to people who are members of the community, people who have jobs and families and friends and relations, and you're pulling them out of the country and deporting them or putting them in camps, pending deportation. And that becomes much, much more of a,

of a emotionally tenuous sort of situation. And the public may not go along with that the way they are, you know, these killers that Trump talks about who have committed heinous crimes that need to be set back.

And some of those people who are working in this country, albeit without paperwork or undocumented, many of them are working on farms, doing those sort of lower paid, hard, hard jobs, picking berries and fruit, caring for animals and so on. And the farming community has really raised concerns.

quite a lot of concerns about some of these plans, what it might do to their labour force. I mean, I've actually been looking into the farming community, the agriculture community this week. I mean, we've seen farmers protesting in the UK. It got me thinking,

What lies ahead for the farming community under the Trump administration? Of course, his nominee, Brooke Rollins, as for agriculture secretary, another Trump loyalist. She worked in his first administration. Then she went on to the America First Policy Institute.

But it's kind of hard to find exact policies from Donald Trump and his administration as to what actually they're going to do when they come into office. Now, Brooke Rollins does have a background in agriculture. She grew up on a farm in a small town in Texas, studied agriculture in high school, actually went to Texas A&M University on an agricultural scholarship to get a degree in agricultural development.

I don't know if you guys have kind of picked up on anything that people are concerned about or interested in or excited about with the Trump administration in the agriculture field. You know, I was in Pennsylvania in October and there was an event that Donald Trump participated in. It was a roundtable forum outside of Pittsburgh, kind of rural area in Pittsburgh. And it was all about farming. The thing I heard from the farming community

The farmers there and the farming industry people there, they were mostly concerned about costs, the cost of energy, cost of running the farm, cost of inputs that were driving up the prices of their agriculture, making it harder for them to make a profit.

profit, the cost of land prices are too high. Energy prices are too high. That's what they wanted to see change when Donald Trump becomes president. Yeah. You see a lot of those same cross currents with other parts of the population, but it's interesting. I remember having a conversation with Republican Senator Kramer around the time of the Republican national convention about migrant workers on farms. And, uh,

how a crackdown on immigration on the southern border could also affect farm work in a state like his. And his point was one that we've heard, I think, from quite a few Donald Trump supporters and Republicans and those who are going to be going into his administration, which is, look, these are not necessarily the types of migrants who we want to...

who we actually want to be caught up in this deportation wave. So that then gets into the question, OK, are there going to be special visas for farm workers? We know that seasonal workers are a huge, huge part of, you know, getting food out in this country and the food that the U.S. exports as well. So I'm curious to see how they take that on. But I also saw some reporting and interested to see, hear what you guys think on this, that you

You could see some of Brooke Rollins' priorities in standing up for the farmers of this country perhaps clash a little bit with RFK Jr.'s policy of healthy food, which you would think they don't necessarily clash, but that some of the farming policies and deregulation that the farmers might want to see might not actually lead to the best healthy food outcomes. And I wonder, you know, obviously, RFK Jr.,

we know would have to still be confirmed in that post. And he is a controversial pick for various reasons for health and human services. But it does give you a bit of a sense of maybe how there are different priorities in the administration. And I think this interplay is going to be really fascinating. And obviously, as you say, they both have to be confirmed. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture says

is in charge of school lunches. RFK Junior has pledged to remove ultra-processed foods from American school lunches to push forward healthy eating. There's a food stamps programme here as well in this country where if you're less well off, you kind of get vouchers towards buying food.

but that you would not be allowed to use those to buy fizzy drinks, sweets, candy, junk food, etc. You'd only be allowed to use them for healthy foods, which in a way you think might help American farmers, that there would be potentially a greater demand for produce, fresh produce, and not those kind of hyper-processed things. But I think they...

there is a clash potentially coming in terms of what priorities are and what priorities get pushed to the top of the list and which are kind of secondary or tertiary down the line as well. But, you know, it's so core to this country, food to any country, and the farmers in particular are a strong lobby. And it kind of,

over into so many other departments. Like we've mentioned, you know, RFK and the health department, also the trade department, the tariffs. We saw what happened the last time around with China imposing retaliatory tariffs on soybeans and corn. And Donald Trump had to basically do a billion dollar bailout to farmers as a result. And just, you know, how it all interplays, how those cabinet discussions are going to take place. And,

And, you know, given that Donald Trump is kind of stacking the cabinet as well with so many loyalists and people that he can rely on,

whose viewpoints come out on top will really be the thing to watch. And there's another thread here. You have Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk with their DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, talking about having these massive cuts to discretionary spending. I think Ramaswamy just a couple of days ago highlighted that those food stamps, the SNAP benefits as a

a source of fraud and abuse that needed to be trimmed dramatically. If they start talking about cutting other areas of spending, subsidies, farm subsidies, that's going to directly impact the Department of Agriculture. I mean, the world, the universe in which there is room to make

cuts that without touching the big entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicaid, the health insurance program and the Department of Defense and interest on the debt, you get to discretionary spending. And that is much smaller. And a lot of that are these kind of programs that are subsidies and support for farmers and things that they're going to be constituencies who are very, very upset if that's what ends up on the chopping block.

So, we've looked at some of the potential implications from President-elect Donald Trump's approach to immigration. Next, what might he have up his sleeve regarding online safety? I'm Nicola Coughlan, and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Youngest Heroes.

Rebellion, risk and the radical power of youth. She thought, right, I'll just do it. She thought about others rather than herself. 12 stories of extraordinary young people from across history. There's a real sense of urgency in them. That resistance has to be mounted, it has to be mounted now. Follow History's Youngest Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Katrina Perry, and this is The Global Story, where we bring you one big international story in detail. And every Saturday until the inauguration of Donald Trump on the 20th of January, we'll be bringing you an update on his path to the presidency. If you don't want to miss an episode, do follow or subscribe to The Global Story wherever you get your podcasts. Today, I'm catching up with my colleagues, Sumi Somaskanda and Anthony Zerker. ♪

I've been really interested in looking at this week tech policy in the incoming Trump administration. You know, as we see this lame duck Congress winding up in these last few weeks, obviously you see some of those bills that haven't been passed bubbling back up again. One of them is COSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, and it was one that passed in the Senate in July 2017.

pretty overwhelmingly with a lot of bipartisan support. And this is an act that looks to create some sort of regulations for the kinds of features that you have in tech and social media, what they offer kids online, in particular, some of those

harmful features that create addictive behavior. I mean, we adults, of course, are addicted to our phones as well and to our social media platforms. We've all been doom-scrolling in the past. I can't deny it either, but it's particularly harmful for children, of course. And Elon Musk, who, as we know, is now a very close advisor to President Trump, President-elect Trump,

He and X actually worked on the language of this bill and now supports this bill. And it just made me think about the different, again, countercurrents that you'll see coming in in this administration. On the one hand, you have people like the vice president-elect, J.D. Vance, who's been very critical of big tech. He's talked about breaking up Google. He's talked about Meta and other companies having an anti-conservative bias that needs to be tackled.

And some of the incoming administration picks have echoed a very similar line. And then, of course, you have that bastion of free speech, Elon Musk as well, who in this case has gotten on board with this bill in a way that he thinks respects those free speech measures for X, for his platform. But at the same time, you have other Republicans, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who've said, yes, the language has been massaged, but we have to get this right because we're talking about free speech.

So I wonder what you guys think about how those different voices in the administration on this huge issue, tech policy, social media, are going to play together. Donald Trump has made a lot of promises and he's made a lot of promises to a lot of different people. And a lot of them are

contradictory uh and you know it's easy to do for a politician who's running for office to promise the world and i think it's been particularly easy for donald trump to do because uh he he tends to to go off script a lot and to not have to stick to uh his his

Policy platforms and papers and things produced by his age. He's he's happy to just grab things kind of willy nilly and and and promise them out but I think we are going to see it in tech policy in particular the the the embrace of some of these tech tycoons like Elon Musk Who have supported his presidential campaign? while also having that segment in the

Republican Party that really does want to curtail the power of these big corporate institutions that they view as being antithetical to conservative values. So I will be watching this really interesting to see. It seems like Elon Musk right now has the upper hand and that he has a lot of influence. But will there be a falling out? Will there be Donald Trump pulled away towards a different kind of priorities from some of the other members of this constituency?

And then you have, of course, the AI and crypto czar, David Sachs, who's going to be in the White House. And it seems to me that he's going to take that role on in a part time basis. It's not a Senate confirmation post. So he'll be there on the first day when Donald Trump comes into office.

And, you know, again, an area that Elon Musk has a very particular knowledge set about. And I think, though, potentially these are areas where we may see some collaboration with the Democrats. I mean, we've been talking about how the Democrats can work with the Republicans, albeit there's just that very, very slim majority that the Republicans have in the House.

But these issues, particularly around online safety and children, and we've seen in the past bereaved parents giving testimony before committees on Capitol Hill, that's potentially an area where everyone can come together. And the other one being the threat

from China as well. I mean, just this week we saw senators raising the issue of the hack known as Salt Typhoon, which was the alleged efforts to infiltrate American telecommunications companies and potentially steal data about calls that were happening on those US networks. So,

It kind of veers into national security as well, doesn't it? I mean, it's another issue that sort of crosses all those departments and has a lot of people involved. It does. And, you know, just this week, we were also talking to the chairman and the ranking member of the China Committee in the House about TikTok. Because, of course, on January 19th, that bill is supposed to go into effect that ByteDance, the owner, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, either has to divest or...

or be banned here in the U.S. And really curious because, of course, Donald Trump said it in September, you know, not that long ago, just a few months ago, that anyone who wants to keep TikTok should vote for him. Now, of course, he was angling for that younger vote at that time. And you don't know if that's actually going to affect the policy that he decides to take. But he could come into office and say, look, TikTok is an important platform for me and,

you know, if ByteDance were to sell TikTok, it certainly wouldn't be with its algorithm. So it would be a very different platform, wouldn't it? So what Donald Trump chooses to do with that, we're going to have to wait and see. But I did ask the Republican Chairman Molinar, Congressman Molinar about it. And he said, you know, Donald Trump understands both the need to make sure that our free speech is respected and that we have this platform available, but also to your point, Katrina, the national security threat that China poses with the access to our data. So,

You know, you have to read between the lines there. But from what I see, Republicans believe that Donald Trump would uphold this ban. Yeah, I mean, and it's a law, right? Donald Trump may not have a choice. Yeah, but we should say that TikTok is taking a legal challenge against that. So we'll see what happens. But yeah, even that TikTok law itself, I mean, politicians voting for it who are also on TikTok, like posting campaign videos, you know.

And it was a bipartisan law, which shows that there is another one of these examples where there is bipartisan support for curtailing the power of social media, in particular because of the national security component of that as well. I think that really created an interesting coalition behind it. But I think there are going to be some people who are pretty shocked come mid-January if TikTok's turned off without someone else stepping in to take over the service. And there's

And they're going to be looking for an explanation, despite their promises from people like Donald Trump that this isn't going to happen. You know why? Why this ended up taking place. We'll see TikTokers marching on Capitol Hill and the White House demanding dancing, dancing, dancing their way of Pennsylvania.

I think that's all we have time for, guys. But it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Anthony, I promise if you come back, we'll bring cookies. Excellent. All right. Well, I will hold you to that. Great. See you guys soon. Bye. Goodbye. So that's a wrap from us. Thanks for listening. As always, if you want to get in touch, please do. You can email us at theglobalstory at bbc.com. Wherever you're listening in the world, this has been The Global Story. Thank you for having us in your headphones. Bye-bye.

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by.

And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After the yoga classes, I felt amazing. But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards, I have nothing. The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave.

You just get sucked in so gradually.

And it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. And it's like this, the secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that...

Whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice.

And for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future. To bring it into the light and almost alchemise some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power. World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.