846: This Is the Cake We Baked
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Join them this giving season. Donate at OxfamAmerica.org slash American. A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. So, this week, lots of people looked at the election results and thought, yeah, this is the country that I thought it was. And for some people, that was a really hopeful thing. And others, kind of the opposite. And let's start with the winners.

I'm joined in the studio right now by Zoe Chase. Hello. Hey there, Zoe. So election night, you and I were in Michigan together. And you got to go to the Republican victory party. I did. Let's bring in the sound. There it is. As I walk in, the polls were closing. The results were starting to come in.

I have to say, I walked in kind of prepared for the last war, like the last election. Explain what you mean. Well, I know a lot of these Republicans in Michigan. I know they've been mobilizing for years an army of poll watchers and poll challengers and lawyers to challenge the results of a fraudulent election. So I come in expecting super tight results and a long fight and tension and anxiety and suspicion. And?

That is not what I found. What are people cheering for? We're up in Pennsylvania. We just tied in Michigan. Look at that. I'm so happy. My heart's going to pop out of my chest. Feels like it. It's Eric Castiglia, longtime Republican activist. He runs a PAC called Brighter Michigan. He believes the last election was rife with fraud. Not this one.

In fact, there was never a moment once the count started where anyone in this room wasn't believing the results. Well, yeah, because it was all breaking their way. I know, but also these are the people on the ground who ran the ground game in Michigan, and they were feeling really good about what they did. All right, Aerie, what's going to happen? I think he's going to win, baby. He's going to win. I'm so happy.

So it was obvious to them they were going to win way before it was obvious to you. Yes, very much. Like when I was talking to Amber Harris, we first met last year. She's a Republican activist. I didn't honestly expect the night to go this way in general. Oh, I did. Really? I did, yeah. We worked really hard for this. And I'm happy. I'm very happy.

We worked really, really hard. We knocked a lot of doors. We went into territories that we never would have, whether it's Detroit, because we had nothing to lose. As a party, we have nothing to lose besides talking to people. And I think that this is a very...

This is what came when you just talked to people. She's right that more people came out. The Republican vote in Michigan was unprecedented. Trump got more votes than he did last time he ran, in Detroit, in the surrounding suburbs, in almost every county in the state of Michigan. Okay, so then at some point in the night, Trump wins. Yes, much earlier than I was expecting. Let's hear some sound of that. Trump! Trump! Trump! Thank you.

And I see a guy breaking down crying at the front of the room. He's the regional director for Macomb County. What was it that you think did it? What did it? I think people realized that we were better off with President Trump, that he provided a great, great way of living for us, that he provided a way for us to provide for our families. And I think people...

miss that. I think people truly miss that. I think they just yearn to go back to where we were. And I think people believed in them. That's true. Some people. And some did not. Yeah, I believe I've heard that. Somebody I checked with a couple days after the election was Danny Hodges. He's a Washington, D.C. policeman who was one of the officers who defended the Capitol building back on January 6th.

He was beaten. Somebody tried to gouge out his eye. He was trapped by the crowd at one point, and a man took his nightstick and hit his head. In the wake of that, he's testified in Congress and at the trials of a number of people who attacked the Capitol, including one last week. And when I talked to him, he said something that I heard from a bunch of Democrats. It's like it wasn't just disappointment he was feeling, but a whole feeling that I can only describe as, whoa. Like many people, I'm sad and confused. Um...

Still wrapping my head around how so many people could vote for Trump after, you know, everything we know about him, everything he's done. I don't understand it. I don't get it. Since January 6th, you know, you've spoken so much about what happened to you at the Capitol over four years. When you started on that path, like, what did you hope it would accomplish? The opposite of this. I hoped that...

I would communicate to the people that what happened was real, that Trump sent an armored mob to stop the peaceful transfer of power. I wanted people to understand this and in the hope that they would respect the rule of law and that they would have respect for the Constitution and choose their leaders with that in mind in the future. But I guess that wasn't at the top of everyone's priorities.

And what's it like to look at the possibility that President Trump might do what he said he would do and let all these people free from January 6th? It's hard to process. I don't know. I don't know what to say about that. Except that, you know, I have no influence over that. I've just got to roll with it, however it happens.

Today, after the billions of dollars spent and the countless hours of literally hundreds of thousands around the country who knocked themselves out for this election, canvassing, donating, poll watching, doing everything they knew how to do, now, here we are, still a divided country, staring at each other across an abyss, but with a clear winner. We thought what we could do here on our show...

is spend some time with a few of the people who felt very strongly about the outcome of this race, who have a special personal investment in it, looking ahead with them to what's next. I'm WB Easy Chicago. This is American Life. I'm Eric Goss. Stay with us.

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It's His American Life, Act 1. All our act names today, by the way, are quotes from the president-elect. The largest deportation operation in American history. So, mass deportations are coming. Donald Trump promised it. People waved. Mass deportation signs at his rallies. It was the first item on the Republican Party's platform this year. And at the Republican National Convention, Tom Homan, the guy who ran ICE under Trump, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement,

had a message for undocumented immigrants, you better start packing now. President Trump has claimed he's going to be able to deport between 15 and 20 million people. His vice president, J.D. Vance, said the number's lower, that they could do 1 million people per year. But Donald Trump and his team have never spelled out exactly how they would do this. Our producer, Nadia Raymond, wondered about that and looked into what mass deportation could actually look like if and when it comes to pass.

I was kind of unfazed at first when I heard about Trump's mass deportation campaign promise. I've been covering immigration for years. There are so many undocumented people here that we can't even keep count. The closest estimate is 13.3 million. So it's a big job to round up all of these people and to send them back to countries that may not take them. It's expensive. It's time consuming. It's a crazy task.

But then I was talking to a source inside the Department of Homeland Security, and I said something like, I mean, I know there's no way Trump can do this mass deportation thing. And they stopped me. They were like, oh, sure it can happen. They said it so casually, like it was a given. So I wanted to talk to someone who could break down how. Like, exactly how could you do something so massive?

I tried talking to Tom Homan. He's rumored to be the next ICE director under Trump, but has denied there's a written plan for mass deportations. And he ghosted me. Jason Hauser, however, was eager to talk. He was the chief of staff for ICE under Biden for a couple of years, has been working for DHS on and off since 9/11, mostly in enforcement. He's passionate about all of this, in his wonky government guy way.

I talked to him for three and a half hours. Asked him basically to play pretend. Gave some stuff out with me. What would happen in the first hundred days? If he was in charge of ICE, what could he do to carry out this mass deportation mandate? Jason thinks that, first of all, the new Trump administration will immediately start to prep for this. Like, the day after the election. This week. They would start talking to law enforcement in different cities and getting them to agree to cooperate. Hit the ground running in January.

ICE would talk to home countries to get them to agree to take people back. And after those two things align, Jason says, ICE could decide to deport someone and they'd be out of the country within 24 hours. I think the first 90 days is going to be hell. You're going to see the buses.

You're going to see the migrants in your home, not just blue cities, red cities, Miami, Houston, Charlotte, like red states, Kansas City, St. Louis, right? You're going to see kids not in your schools.

You're going to know where they're at because they're waiting in a detention cell and they have cell phones. You're going to see it in social media. You're going to see businesses not be able to open up because their workers didn't show up. You're going to see businesses being raided and it's going to become more intimate. This isn't going to be about like separating a family at the border that somebody doesn't know that family member.

You're talking about separations and movements in your communities where you're going to know the guy. Bill, Juan, Luis, you're going to know the individuals. One of the things ICE would have to work around is which nationalities to deport first. You know, if you wanted to make the most impact. A lot of countries don't take their own people back. Venezuela, for example, hardly accepts any immigrants back. Brazil only accepts two to four flights of immigrants a month.

So who are the first people who would be deported like in the first hundred days? Haitians and Guatemalans. Haitians and Guatemalans. These countries take back the most flights. So I have a ability to remove at volume individuals, um,

A lot of them have entered, you know, through pathways that we've developed where we've gained biometric. We've gained vetting. Meaning we know where they are. Yeah, we know where they are. Right? We know where they are. They're working. Non-criminal. We go out. We find them. We're going to find nationalities that are easily removable. And we're probably going to do it at volume with single adults first because removing, you know, families is more complex. You've got to hold them, detain them, put them in hotels. It's very staff intensive.

So I'm going to target down on single adults and nationalities where I know the country will take them back very, very quickly. Okay.

So Haitians and Guatemalans. There's other populations. Who's next? Who's next after those two? Hondurans, right? We're talking about Guatemalans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, you know, the ones that the countries that are where you see daily just in, you know, in the news and the reporting by DHS and Homeland Security, where are the most removal flights occurring? Those are the countries that accept those flights. But if I'm in this

this scenario where I'm the head of ICE for Trump, all the rules of engagement and policies are out the window. Why not load up a few plane loads of Cuban nationals and send them to the Bahamas and just send them to a third party? Why not just, I could go find a country that says they'll accept three or four plane loads of Cuban nationals and I'll send them to a third party country.

Jason says ICE can focus on getting people in eight major cities with airport hubs. Philadelphia, D.C., Chicago, Houston, Miami, Denver, New York, and L.A. Those have access to quick ICE flights to people's home countries. Jason thinks ICE can get people out before they can get to a judge or a lawyer.

And one way to catch a lot of people quickly, especially the ones who snuck in and ICE has no info on, is to bring back worksite enforcement, a.k.a. large-scale raids. The Biden administration stopped doing those. Do you think there would be raids then in the first hundred days? I think there would be raids within the first three weeks. Really? Yeah. Those are not hard to, like, turn on. Like, those are not—to operationalize those, those aren't on. Like, where? Where would they do them?

You know, you would go back to where there's big ICE and Custom and Border Protection resources to do sort of enforcement. And you would do them in communities that would show the most, you know, the most cruelty. Right. So there's nothing that would stop, you know, a Trump administration from going into the workplace. Right.

Going into, you know, our hospitality sector, going into like restaurants or businesses and arresting individuals at scale. Can you like walk through what that would look like? What do you think that would look like? Well, I mean, I think it would be very easy to focus on industries that have large numbers and high numbers.

high numbers of migrants working within them. What would stop them from going within into a meat processing plant in Virginia, right? Say there's a couple hundred migrants, there's 80 on shift that day. You go in, you know, there's one individual there that has a final order removal, maybe has a nonviolent criminal background. You go in, you do the raid, you line all the workers up and you start checking status of each and every one of them, right? And then, or maybe you just arrest them all, bring them into detention, right?

and then do the checks to see, you know, who was removable. There's nothing that could stop ICE at that point from just bringing people into custody, detaining them, and then figuring out who was removable at that time. Tom Homan has not denied this, by the way. He said publicly something like this would be necessary. Homan also said he would do national security threats first. But then, raids, sure.

Jason says the raids under a 2.0 Trump administration could be more militarized, with SWAT-style teams. That's not how they've been done in the past. He also told me he thinks nothing would stop ICE from going into hospitals or schools or churches. Normally, ICE doesn't do that. But this is just a policy, not a law. So, after doing these raids and trying to get people out quickly, ICE would be left with lots of immigrants that they have to hold until they can get them deported.

I wanted to know, where would you hold all these people? Would you build tent camps to hold people? If it's I'm not looking out for the care of the law enforcement officers that are overseeing it or the migrants, yes, you could. When we did all the evacs and ICE had a very big support in the evacuation out of Afghanistan,

We brought on soft-sided facilities at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and other places around the country. But again... Soft-sided facilities? Is that euphemism for tents? Well, I mean, that is, yes. They're just, they're big sort of like, like fair tents, like carnival tents. They're very thick plastic and they're soft. Yeah. But what I'm saying is, is let's say we put a thousand... They're weatherproof. They're weatherproof, but they're tents. They're not just like, they're not just like, you know, Coleman tents, you know, that you would get to go camping. But what I'm saying is like,

But the problem here is, is those Afghanis were coming to safety. Now you're saying I'm going to bring on a soft side tent to hold people so I can remove them in like 90 days. The idea that they're just going to like, OK, I'm going to live in this deplorable conditions and not cause unrest. That's that's where it gets very dangerous. Dangerous because Jason thinks there would be fights, riots. People would be hurt, possibly even die, he thinks.

And just so I'm clear here, yes, he means immigrants, but also officers. Jason's very concerned about the safety of the ICE officers. Where else can you hold people you want to deport? Can you house migrants in jails? Yes. Could you lower jailing standards to put more people in a cell? Yes. Well, yes, absolutely. Right. Like I'm saying, could you? Our standard before was three people per cell. Now we're saying it's six. That is policy. It is not law. So yes, of course you could.

Okay. Could you turn places quickly into detention centers or camps? Like, can you change the standards to make it faster? Yes. I could have, between FEMA and ICE and DHS, we could have, we could turn on 25 old warehouses, old department stores in a week. Wow. In a week. So definitely doable in the first 100 days. It would just be a cement building.

With some mats. And then I make sure we have porta potties, some food, right? I have a couple of docks there in case somebody gets really sick. And then I bring in, you know, a couple hundred security guards. I could do that in a week. At the end of the hundred days, how many people do you think will be gone? Let's just say this. Let's say all rules are out there and I can remove people that aren't removable. Like I'm going to send them to third party countries. ICE has 48,000 people in its custody now.

ICE has 14 ICE planes that are hardened planes. They hold 135, 135 souls. I need more of those. But why I'm sending those 48,000, I'm probably going to go out and bring another 50,000 to 100,000 into custody. So if you're talking 30 to 60 days, you could remove 150,000 to 200,000 people. So 200,000 people in the first 60 days? Yeah. So in the first 100, that gives you what, like—

How many? I mean, you could get, if all rules are gone and I can remove them anywhere, you could get, you know, you could do a million. A million people. Of course, Jason's predicting here, assuming there will be no major roadblocks. But the Brennan Center did this thing where they stress tested with experts and government people whether mass deportations could be done. Gamed this all out. In their simulations, funding was a big obstacle right away.

So their deportation numbers weren't as large as Jason's. But that was also assuming that the House wouldn't go Republican, which is looking like it will be as I record this. That would make Jason's math of a million people more possible. And when a million people disappear from the country, it's more than just bodies gone. There's ripple effects. One, we'll see massive inflation continue in this country because we just pulled a million people out of our workforce.

GDP, businesses, small business especially, and then we'll see thousands of people losing their jobs and small businesses closing, etc. Two, law enforcement activity, federal specifically, and in cities and states where state and local law enforcement is supporting this mass deportation program will halt. Halt. Going out and arresting the rapist and murderer in your county will stop why your sheriff is over...

playing grab ass with Homan and these individuals and trying to do some big mass deportation scheme and throwing grandma back to Cuba. So law enforcement will be chilled. Three migrants will go deeper into the shadows. They will do the steps they need to stay in this, our country,

Because it's so much better than going back and risking death in another that they will hide even more into the shadows. And so, those that are left behind, it's like they become ghosts. They might stop showing up to work. Maybe they'll move. You'll notice them missing. At your local grocery store, your bar, your daycare. And at the same time, your screens will be broadcasting the deportations. On TV, on social media.

shouting the images of a million who are actually gone. Jason thinks this will be strategic. I think there's going to be like lined up planes, engines running imagery of mass removals. I think they're going to grab people and intentionally break our policy, like break the law and throw some people back to their home country. And then when the courts push back, they can be like, see what the courts made us stop.

And then because then they can go, hey, look at these bureaucratics, bureaucratic pencil necks getting in our way. This is the deep state. This is the deep state. I guess I guess my thing is to to to what end, though? Winning the midterms. You think it's all political? You don't think there's any ideological thing that he wants out of it? Sure. I think he's ill equipped. I think he's a bit like there's eight million on the just on the immigration docket now.

How many people have status here on our first generation migrants or like from immigrant families? I mean, we're talking this would affect like 50 million to 100 million people like these sort of actions. The idea that there isn't political consequences to that, even for Donald Trump, I don't I think the pendulum would swing back. I'm not so sure. I think it's way harder for the pendulum to swing back.

If you look at the Democrats' immigration platform, what you see is the border bill that Biden tried to pass. That bill is the most restrictive immigration bill we've seen in years. It's a child born out of the Trump administration, but also parented by the Democrats, making a harsh agenda seem way more middle of the road. Think piece after think piece uses this failed bill as an example of how far to the right we moved on immigration.

How much enforcement and severity have taken over? How much the idea of a nation of immigrants is dusty and Pollyanna-ish? This fall, a Brookings poll said that about a third of Americans agree with Trump's quote that undocumented immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country. Poisoning the blood. This phrase chills me. It's not about legality or order. It's visceral. It's guttural repulsion. It is a violent feeling about a massive group of people.

And when the precedent is the one that leads it, it's not just a feeling anymore. It becomes an action. Nadia Raymond, she's an editor on our show. Two days after the election, two of our producers, Emmanuel Jochi and Lily Sullivan, went to this church near our office in New York City, where on certain days there were migrants and asylum seekers getting free legal advice and meals. And they met this guy, Roberto, who told them that he arrived in the U.S. five months ago from Ecuador,

And he's been having trouble sleeping ever since Election Day. Lili now joins me in the studio. Hey, Lili. Hey, Ira. So you spoke with him? Yeah. He's been staying in a shelter nearby. And he says he can already picture it, what the ice rates there would be like.

He says, let me describe it like a movie. He pictures a group of 100, 200 men arriving who lock up the building and go floor to floor. No one would be able to get out.

And they load them up into buses or cars or whatever ICE uses. And deport them. Like, that's what you hear about. So that's what he imagines about how it might go. I feel a little more free in the streets.

On the streets, he feels a little freer, he told me. Because if someone tried to grab him, he could just run. Like he'd have that option. But in the shelter, he's between four walls. There's nowhere to run. I don't feel safe either on the street or in the refuge.

I asked him, where do you feel safe? He told me, here, in the church where I talk to him. There's no other place where he can feel calm. Because he tells me, ICE can't come into the church. Though, of course, in President Trump's next term, that might not be true. Yeah. Like, we have this idea of sanctuary spaces. But anytime ICE decides they want to go into churches or hospitals or schools, they can do that.

Fact two, nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do. So Donald Trump won record numbers of Latino voters this year, more than any Republican candidate since they started tracking that demographic in exit polls back in the 1970s. So how did it happen? X. Reese Condoraja spent the day with a guy who's been gunning for this for years.

I first met Sam Negron a few weeks ago outside a Trump rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He's waiting in the VIP line because, one, he's a constable. That's like an elected sheriff. And two, he volunteers a lot for the campaign. Knocks on doors, does phone calls, is something called a Trump force captain.

and works with Latinos for Trump. Nice to meet you, Sam. Ike. Sam? Yes, sir. Pleasure. I never had no cool nicknames like Pookie or Tito. It's just Sam. Sam's a proud Puerto Rican. Big guy, classic cop haircut, and he gets personal fast. When I tell him Ike is my nickname, he says, we tend to do that in America, shorten things.

Then he calls me his brother. Go ahead, brother. You should be recording this. We're surrounded by long lines of Trump supporters who start chanting because they see a protest coming down the street. It's maybe a couple dozen people waving Puerto Rican flags. They're with the Latinx social justice group, here to protest the island of garbage comment that a comedian recently made at a Trump rally. A couple of Sam's friends from Latinos for Trump rush over.

They're going to cross the street to go confront the anti-Trump protesters. And they ask Sam to join. He tells them, I don't like to fight. Let them speak. To do the combating thing. I didn't hear what they were saying, but...

Another Trump supporter nearby, a white lady in a red shirt, is shouting over us at this whole scrum of Spanish speakers, not really differentiating between the Trump supporters and the Trump protesters.

She says, they don't even speak English. Go back to your own fucking country. Yeah, see, that's not cool. What do you do with that? Things like that, it's not cool. But you know what? I'm Puerto Rican, puppy. I grew up in the South Bronx in the 70s. I've gotten racism from everybody because you see my color, right? I'm very light-skinned. Growing up in the South Bronx wasn't easy in the 70s. It doesn't get under your skin, is what you're saying. No. So I tend to ignore that.

You know what I found out working on this campaign? That it's not the majority. For most of his life, Sam supported Democrats. But in 2016, he broke with the party. Protests voted for Jill Stein. He got into Trump from videos shared by a Latino Trump supporter. Then, just in the past two years, he lost both his son and his son-in-law. They overdosed on fentanyl. He says it's a big problem in Allentown.

And he felt like the Democrats and Biden weren't helping. It made him want Trump back even more. So he started evangelizing, trying to convert people. He's got lit and signs, Boricuas for Trump, Dominicans for Trump. He's got these little scratch-offs for Trump. It was lonely at first in this Democratic city. But slowly, it started to feel like it was working. He'd been stepping it up for months.

And then, island of garbage dropped on him. I hear my wife going, look what just came out of, look what they said. You know, she was furious. It was hurtful because that's where they're from, but also frustrating because he's been out here in these streets trying to pull his people one by one towards Trump. I was double upset because I'm like,

One, that's an ugly joke. Two, there goes all the work I've done for the last four or five years. Did you think those comments might just cost him the whole election? Totally, brother. I said, oh my God, there goes everything we've done. Right out the window. So how to reconcile all this? Being a proud Puerto Rican and a diehard Trump supporter? For Sam, it took 20 minutes of Googling. Anytime something controversial comes out of that campaign, there's something else behind it. You know what I found out?

Here's how he explains that there was actually a deeper message hidden inside that joke. Puerto Rico's drowning in trash. They haven't been able to get rid of their trash for the last four years. There's 29 dump sites all over Puerto Rico that are mountains of trash because they can't burn because of carbon emissions. And who did that? Back four years ago, it wasn't as bad. It went way overboard four years ago. So that's what I believe was the reference that was being made to it.

20 minutes of research got Sam from livid about a potentially campaign-derailing bad joke to outrage at an environmental disaster he lays at the feet of the Biden administration. If that sounds like opportunistic reasoning, Sam gets that. Did you need to find a reason for it? Heck yeah. I needed a reason for it. So he went on a mission the weekend before the election to do damage control.

tell people what he learned, and get them to vote for Trump. He also wanted to give people a chance to talk through the ways they felt let down by Democrats. I tagged along because I wanted to know if people would buy it. And part of what I heard helped me understand why Trump took a historic share of the Latino vote. And the way Sam's doing it, he's not following an orderly list of registered R or independent voters. He's going off-book.

Here in the Supremo grocery store parking lot in the heart of a Latino neighborhood, it's a busy Sunday. There's a lot of shoppers, steady flow of people on the sidewalk. It's a target-rich environment. Hi! Good, mommy, how you doing? You voting this year? Come talk to me, come. Sam spots a Puerto Rican woman he knows pulling into the parking lot. You parking? Go park, come talk to me.

Right. That's the problem. Damned if I do, damned if I don't, she yells from the car. This is Melissa. Sam and her clearly go back, but he says he doesn't know how she's going to vote. Don't do it. I got a bad filter right now. That's all right. No. How are you feeling right now? Upset. Uh-huh. But what are you upset about? What I'm upset is that I'm a taxpayer and I don't get shit. And you got other people that come into our country and they give them everything.

But then you want to sit here and you want to downgrade Spanish people.

Make that shit make sense. She's upset about Democrats giving support to new arrivals in the country instead of focusing on the people already here, people like herself. She also doesn't tolerate insults against Spanish-speaking people. So she doesn't like her options. What could we talk about Sunday, a week ago, at the garden? A joke the comedian made? Yeah. About the honor of the garbage? Okay. How do you feel about that?

How you feel about it? Livid. Sam walks her through how he figured out the island of garbage comment is actually a sneaky PSA about landfill mismanagement. Melissa listens. So that's what I believe was the reference that was being made to.

How does that sit with you? That's facts. That's what you call facts. But again, everybody's so much into their social media. Their social media only portrays one side of each story. You understand what I mean? So if you sit here and you analyze both sides of the stories, like I said earlier in my car, damn if you do, damn if you don't. You understand what I mean? Because here we got...

— Our friends couldn't never vote, right? — How come illegal immigrants are able to vote now? — Exactly. Why? — Not true. Illegal immigrants can't vote. — Where does that put us? That have been here all our lives. And that's a right. That's a citizenship right.

You know, that's not a human right. That's a citizenship right. You want to vote, go back to your country and vote. Not in a bad way, not meaning that you should go back to your country. But you know what? Get in line and wait like everybody else. Because there's been a lot of illegal immigrants in this country that have been here for years, still waiting for their papers. Thousands on lawyers. And can't even vote.

And pay their taxes. And pay their taxes. The backdrop here is that Sam and Melissa are Puerto Rican. They're already citizens who can vote if they live on the mainland. They don't have to wait in any sort of line. Eight years ago, Melissa supported Hillary. She says Bill Clinton was a hell of a president. Now, she likes Trump.

in spite of the comment. Was I in the same boat a couple of years ago? Absolutely not. I wanted him out. You know, I didn't want to keep dealing with that. You understand what I mean? Great businessman. Great businessman. What fucked him up was his filter and how he speaks to people. You understand what I mean? On my tongue. But let's be realistic here.

The way he spoke in front of our kids, "You're the president." But he put it out there. And again, me being a person who doesn't have no filter myself, I can understand that, but there's a time and a place for everything. But at this point, I'd rather go here than go there, 'cause I don't want to get more digged in a hole than what I am now and get the same shit that I got for the past four years.

Melissa ends the conversation by telling Sam she'll vote for Trump. Sam approaches another Puerto Rican guy, a soft-spoken young man named Marcus, and asks him how he felt about the insult. I think he said it was, do you guys know there's an island of garbage floating in the ocean? I think it's called Puerto Rico. How did that make you feel, puppy? I mean, as a Puerto Rican, it made me feel like shit.

Trust me, I was livid, bro. I was mad. I was, bro. But what that did for me, I went online and started looking up, is there a problem with Puerto Rico with any type of garbage or anything? You know what I found out? Sam takes Marcus through his spiel, from livid to landfill.

seems like it's sinking in. They talk more about the price of eggs, just smart, given Marcus just left the grocery store. And after Sam finishes, I ask Marcus how he feels about Sam's explanation about the island of garbage. I mean, when I first heard it, I was appalled, you know what I mean, that our leadership could speak so disgustingly about us that way.

And even as he was just mentioning it right now, it's just, it's disgusting. He's still pissed about the comment, but he was planning to vote for Trump anyway. And Sam's explanation? It just made it feel all the much better, you know what I mean, that there's a valuable explanation as to his comment, because that's who I'm leaning towards is Trump. So it feels very, very good to know that.

The next guy, a Spanish speaker carrying a large bag of dog food, didn't even need to hear Sam's explanation. He just wants to share his critique of the Democrats' failures. Here's Jose. Jose is saying that neither party wants to fix immigration.

Obama had two years to do something when the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate, and they didn't. He's informed. And is he going to vote for Trump? He's voting for Trump, too. The garbage joke? People can get past that. But what they can't get past is how Democrats have been letting them down in a bunch of different ways. Sam is pleased.

I'm feeling a lot more positive than I was a couple of days ago. And I'm glad that, especially the Puerto Ricans that we did talk to, we're still going to support them regardless. We all feel the same way. We're mad about the comment. It upset us. But it's policy over feelings, brother. You cleaned up today. I feel a lot better, brother. Because I was worried. I thought I was going to come out here. I had to put on the boxing gloves. You know, to get out with people. And it hasn't been that at all. I don't think you've met...

— A Harris supporter? — Nope. — And they're out here. — Samp did talk to one Harris supporter, a younger Dominican man. — The man says he can't vote. He'd like to become a citizen, vote someday. Again, this is where a traditional canvasser would pivot.

That's not Sam. If he could vote, he'd vote for Kamala. Hey, there's one! Now this close to the election, campaigns are a numbers game of maximizing turnout of eligible, like-minded voters.

This guy's neither. The guy says he wants a change. Sam sees an opening. A change from what?

Sam makes his pitch for Trump and asks him to think about it. I left him thinking. He's almost flipped. My whole mission is to wake people up in my community. To me, it's not about the vote. To me, it's about our people. And that's the way I look at it.

To Sam, it's the long game. This isn't just about the election that just happened. It's about the next one, and the next one, and the one after that. Aix-Riz Kandaraja is a producer on our show. Coming up, all those people on Trump's enemies list who he's been calling for retribution against. How are they packing their bags? We check in with a couple. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. For details, see mintmobile.com slash American. It's American Life from Ira Glass. Today's program, this is the cake we baked. Today we have stories of people who have some special personal investment in the outcome of this week's election. And we look at what's coming for them. We have arrived at Act 3 of our show. Act 3, come retribution.

So in the final weeks of his campaign, Donald Trump only stepped up his threats of retribution against his political enemies, including saying he'd use the military to go after the enemy within. Two people who've been keeping an eye on these sorts of comments are Alexander and Rachel Vindman. Alex is the army officer who officially reported what seemed like an improper phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine, which led to Trump's first impeachment trial. Rachel's his wife.

Back in March, I visited them, and they did not agree about what they were going to do if President Trump won another term and started taking revenge. Rachel said they should consider leaving the country if things got bad enough. Alex said he'd never consider that. No, not possible. I think the fact is that I've served a full military career to protect this country, and I'm not going to give it up.

My argument is, if Donald Trump is reelected, this will no longer be that country. This will be the place where that country was. I want to be able to leave if I feel like that's what I need to, to protect mainly my daughter. We were doing this interview in their living room, and we were standing because they hadn't bought furniture for it yet. They wanted to wait and see what the outcome of the election was going to be first. For Alex, this was just prudence and saving money against an uncertain future.

For Rachel, it was maybe we'll have to leave this house. When I reached out this week, after the election, Alex didn't return my text to set up an interview, but Rachel was happy to talk. She told me they did finally bite the bullet and buy furniture.

In those early days when Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic nominee. We have two sofas and we have a coffee table and like a side piece thing. I don't know. So that's my shift. We ordered it kind of after all the buzz about her. And, you know, everyone was very excited. And we are just like, we're going to stay here. And I think we were very optimistic. In the months leading up to the election, Alex and Rachel have both been campaigning actively for Harris, speaking at fundraisers, that kind of thing.

Rachel said she's probably done three events a week for the last six weeks on video or in person in all seven swing states. We had plans to talk on election night once the winter was clear. But when I texted them, Rachel wrote back, she didn't feel up to talking. I am freaking out, she said. When we got on the phone later in the week, I asked if their views had changed since we talked in March. Was it still that she would consider leaving the country and he wouldn't? Nothing is off the table, but...

I want to stay because this is my country. And I think there's a possibility to continue to be here and to be part of the discussion and make a difference. Alex absolutely wants to say. It's not even a question. So maybe my decision is just based on his obstinance that it's a non-starter. So I have to bring myself around to that reality. I thought of you guys in the last weeks of the campaign when it seemed like

Donald Trump was increasing his calls for retaliation and talking about going after the enemies within the country. Like, what do the two of you think this is going to mean for you? Do you feel like you're going to be facing some sort of retaliation? Do you feel like it's just a complete open question? Like, where are you on this? We have no idea. I mean, it'll depend on signals from their actions. That's the only way we'll know is to see what they're doing.

But there is this guy who has a retaliation list. It's a long list. It's like 350 people or something like that. And Alex's name is on it. This is a list that was circulating on social media, put together by a Trump supporter of people that he thinks deserve revenge. He has no affiliation with Trump. There's no sign that anybody in Trump world listens to him. But seeing Alex's name there was alarming. A reminder of how visible Alex is as somebody who stood up to the president.

And how likely a target he is for the real people in power. So that's a concern. But are they going to retaliate against all of those people? Will it be all at once, like Kristallnacht? Or will it be over time? And, you know, do we have time? I don't... If that's the road they go down, I mean, I don't know. Or will they just do it on January 20th? Yeah. But we'll definitely be watching the indicators and...

kind of a list of criteria, you know, to say if this, then this, you know, some kind of places or inflection points, which is terrifying. But we certainly haven't gotten to that point. Like everyone, we're trying to process all of this. Can you name another one of the indicators that you're going to keep an eye on? Let's say ramp up talks about retaliation, then yes, you know, but maybe it was election rhetoric and that's not something that's going to come up.

There are so many unknowns with Trump. He says he's going to do a lot of things that he doesn't do. They're going to keep an eye on his appointments, especially who he appoints as Secretary of Defense. Rachel pictures that retaliation against Alex could be as small as they'd try to take his retirement benefits, his health care and pension, or as big as they could put him on trial for his actions in the impeachment hearings. She really doesn't know what to expect. What's your feeling? What's your gut? My head says it'll probably be okay.

Rachel Vindman. We reached out to the other people we interviewed in March for the episode we did about possible retribution Donald Trump might take to see how concerned they are about what might happen to them now. Former Trump aide Stephanie Grisham didn't return our calls.

Fred Wellman, who used to be at the Lincoln Project, said he was watching to see how things are going to unfold. And he's gaming out possible scenarios for what he might do. So I think as everybody knows at this point, Kamala Harris and the Democrats were betting that abortion rights would help put her over the top. And 10 different states had abortion rights measures on their ballots. Seven of those passed. And there was a very particular kind of TV ad that aired in many of those states.

All of the very particular feeling and particular music, very similar language. In these ads, women whose lives have been put at risk from complications with their pregnancies told their stories to explain why abortion bans needed to be lifted. One of our producers, Miki Meek, became interested in these commercials. This week, she checked in with a few of the people who appeared in them. Here's Miki.

Since Roe was struck down two years ago, I've been reporting on pregnant women and doctors in states with abortion bans. And I've noticed that it's almost always the same group of women, about 20 in all, being called on again and again to recount the worst moments of their lives. In media interviews, in court cases, at their state legislatures, and in Congress.

I don't love it, to be perfectly honest. That's Kimberly Pasica, who was denied an abortion in Nebraska. She shared her story in one of those ads. It's disheartening that we are putting the toughest conversation on the people who are affected the most and having to relive that trauma and just relive the worst parts of their life to try and make change. And even today, I'm sitting here and I'm exhausted. It's like, how...

Nebraska's abortion rights measure failed this week. Yeah.

Until we resolve the issue, I feel like I'll always say something, but I am going to have to step away from it for a little bit just for my sanity, I think. I don't think I'll ever stop pushing how important the issue is, though, because until there aren't any bans, some woman's always going to be affected. Some girl's going to be affected. And I hate that for this country.

Of all the ads I watched, Deborah Dorbert's really got to me. It was so emotional, I almost couldn't finish it. Deborah's 34 years old and from Florida. She's got a six-year-old son. Two years ago, she was 23 weeks pregnant with her second child when she went into her doctor's office for a routine scan and learned that her baby had a lethal and rare condition called Potter syndrome. He had no kidneys. His lungs weren't developing. If he survived birth, he wouldn't live long, maybe just minutes.

Her doctor recommended she terminate the pregnancy as soon as possible. She was now at higher risk for preeclampsia, which could kill her. Debra agreed. She also didn't want her baby to suffer. But Florida had just banned all abortions after 15 weeks, with some rare and vague exceptions. Debra says the hospital told her that because her baby still had a heartbeat, it couldn't help her. They were actually wrong about this. Florida's law allows for abortions in cases where there's a lethal fetal anomaly. Up to 28 weeks.

But there's a lot of fear and confusion among doctors and hospitals, in states with bans. So Deborah had to carry the baby to term, knowing all along he wouldn't survive. She and her husband named him Milo. He lived for 94 minutes. Deborah's husband told me he didn't expect her to speak publicly. Seemed out of character. And it felt that way to her, too. Deborah describes herself as shy, reserved, conflict-averse.

But while she was still pregnant with Milo, she was so angry and depressed that she decided to talk to a reporter from the Washington Post. And after she gave birth, she decided to keep talking. Is there a specific conversation or interaction you had with someone where you realized, like, I did change their opinion about Florida's abortion law? My parents. My parents. They are very conservative people. And it was my dad having witnessed...

What I went through when, you know, he found out the news and then he found out that I could not get induced and I was being forced to carry to full term. And he had to watch his daughter suffer for months. And he didn't understand why I could not get the care I needed. Her parents are Catholic, and before this, they were against abortion. But seeing her experience up close changed them.

So when the organizers of the ballot measure in Florida approached her to do a TV ad, she said yes. The measure would put abortion rights into the state constitution. I remember the doctor handing me a baby boy that was blue, and I just held him because he was so cold. In the ad, Deborah is sitting on a couch in a green dress. Her husband, Lee, is right next to her, his arm wrapped around her.

Government had no right to do that to my family. The spam is torture. Governor DeSantis fought the abortion measure hard. He sent plainclothes police to knock on doors looking for fraudulent signatures on the petition for the ballot measure. The Florida Health Department sent cease-and-desist letters to TV stations airing a different ad that supported the measure. A judge siding with the TV stations wrote, "...to keep it simple for the state of Florida. It's the First Amendment, stupid."

On election night, Deborah and her husband headed to a watch party with organizers of the ballot measure, a group called Yes on 4. There were balloons everywhere, a full bar. Deborah felt hopeful and had a speech prepared if the measure got passed. Ever since Roe was overturned, whenever voters got a chance to vote on abortion measures like this one, they passed, even in red states. Around 9 p.m., the results were in. A clear majority of Floridians voted in favor of the ballot initiative.

But it still failed. Because in Florida, ballot measures need 60% of the vote to pass. It got 57%. We were upstairs in a private little room just waiting for the results. And once they told me that yes on four failed, it was just, honestly, it was a shock. It was like,

a punch in the stomach, and it just brought me back to that day in the doctor's office. And it was just that shock and that numb. We did go downstairs to hear the director speak. And after she spoke and a few other guests spoke, I remember getting up out of the room and going outside. And that is when I just broke down crying.

And my husband came and found me, and I was just, I was on my knees and crying. Because it just, the law took everything from me. It's one thing to decide to tell this painful story over and over. But it's another thing to do it and not get the results you wanted. It's hard. You feel like a lot of weight is on your shoulders to try to get the government and legislation to understand why.

Like, look what these laws are doing. You know, I do feel tired. I, you know, just sharing my story is a lot of work. Do you ever have the feeling of, when can I be done and stop talking about this? So yesterday we spent a lot of time navigating, do we keep fighting this fight or do we just step away? And for me, like...

I'm up on the fence. Like, I don't want to back down now. Like, I want to see through that the law gets changed. What people don't see when Debra tells her story in public is how hard she's still trying to get back to real life. Just enjoy small moments again. Karate classes on Thursdays. Pizza night on Fridays. With her husband and her six-year-old son. Miki Meek is a producer on our show. ♪

♪ You can hear her, baby, as the trains in New York City ♪ ♪ Roll thunder, devil's Americopa ♪ ♪ Say your man is busted, it's morning in America ♪

Our show today was produced and edited by Laura Starczewski and Emanuel Berry. The people who put together today's program include Ben Marounmi, Fia Benin, Dana Chibis, Sean Cole, Michael Kamate, Emanuel Jochi, Hanny Hawassly, Valerie Kipnis, Henry Larson, Seth Lynn, Katnum Ray Mondo, Stone Nelson, Ryan Rumery, Alyssa Shipp, Elise Spiegel, Lily Sullivan, Christopher Sotala, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our managing editors, Sara Abdurrahman. Our senior editors, David Kestenbaum.

Special thanks today to Andrea Flores, Aaron Reikland-Melnick, Jonathan Blitzer, Miriam Rosenbaum, Colin Jackson, John Smith, Patrice Johnson, Fields Mosley, Jen Fifield, Ben Giles, Yvonne Winget-Sanchez, Ben Terrace, Neil Mahiga, Rebecca Tyrell, Drew Ressinger, Kathy Klein, Paul Choi, Jordan Green, Lee Dorbert, Adama Ba, and Candice Braun and Power Malou of Artist Athletes Activists in New York City.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. To become a This American Life partner and get bonus content, ad-free listening, ask me anything sessions, and a greatest hit archive of hundreds of favorite episodes right in your podcast feed, sign up at thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. Thanks this week to life partners Kira Ellert, Rachel McFarlane, Martha Stroud, and Lauren Tallerman.

Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torrey Malatia. You know, he is such an annoying person to meditate with. Seriously, every time we're finally into it and have quieted our minds, he starts chanting super loudly. This is the deep state. This is the deep state. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life.

Next week on the podcast for This American Life, this animal rights activist gets a call one day from a Hollywood producer who gave him a mission. He was like, nobody else can do this. You have to do this. The kids are depending on it. Will you try? That mission? Take a captive killer whale, a tame creature that does tricks, somehow teach it to be wild again, put it on a plane, and fly it home to set it free. In real life. True story. Next week on the podcast on your local public radio station.

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This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics, presenting The Room Next Door, the first English-language feature film by Pedro Almodovar, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. After years of being out of touch, two friends meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation. Winner of the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, The Room Next Door is now playing in select cities, coming soon to theaters nationwide.