Trump Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

Immigration Detention

Season 2, Episode 5

March 27, 2026 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Hiroshi Motomura

Guests Mekela A. Goehring (Executive Director, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network) and Laura P. Lunn (Director of Advocacy & Litigation, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network) join the Unsettled hosts in a conversation about immigration detention in the second Trump administration. The administration has been greatly expanding detention facilities by buying ...

Podcast

Rights in the Era of ICE Raids

Season 2, Episode 4

February 26, 2026 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Hiroshi Motomura

In this episode, guest Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, joins the Unsettled hosts in discussing immigration enforcement in the United States from the perspective of civil liberties, assessing the broader implications of contemporary enforcement practices for constitutional rights and the rule of law.

Podcast

“I’m an Immigration Lawyer. Trump Is Shattering My Clients’ Lives.”

Season 2: Episode 3

January 29, 2026 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Hiroshi Motomura

Please note: This episode begins with a discussion of the events in Minneapolis, but was recorded prior to the January 24, 2026, shooting of Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis, MN.

“I’m an Immigration Lawyer. Trump Is Shattering My Clients’ Lives.”

North America

One Battle After Another

With ICE in Minneapolis: An eyewitness account

January 21, 2026 • by Emily Condon

On Tuesday morning, January 13, I was driving home after dropping my 9-year-old son off at school. There were ICE vehicles everywhere, I was surrounded by them on Park Ave. After a block or two of this, I parked and got out of my car. I saw that there were many ...

Politics

“Things Happen”

On one’s sense of impending doom

January 20, 2026 • by Arthur Goldhammer

Americans have long enjoyed a robust and righteous sense of impunity. No matter how badly our government blundered, we nevertheless clung confidently to the notion that we would always land on our feet. It has been said (allegedly by Bismarck, but there is little evidence to support the attribution) that “there ...

Podcast

H-1B Visas

Season 2: Episode 2

January 20, 2026 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

David J. Bier, Director of Immigration Studies and the Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration Policy at the Cato Institute, joins Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M. Rodriguez to discuss the implications of 2025 Executive Order on H-1B visas, what might be motivating that Executive Order, and the ins and outs of ...

Politics

“Things Happen”

Staging sovereignty

November 19, 2025 • by Arthur Goldhammer

We have become accustomed to the Oval Office ritual by which Trump stages his pugnacious primacy. The protocol of the traditional press conference, in which the president stands and the press remains seated until recognized, is inverted. Trump sits as if enthroned on one of his gilded chairs, though not ...

Podcast

The Trump Administration’s War on Venezuelan Migrants

Season 2: Episode 1

October 24, 2025 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

Jonathan Blitzer, staff writer for The New Yorker, discusses his recent article “Enemies of the State: How the Trump Administration declared war on Venezuelan migrants in the US.” In telling the story of a Venezuelan couple living in Chicago, one of whom was sent to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador, and one ...

The Trump Administration’s War on Venezuelan Migrants

Economy

Panama Against Trump

A country’s fate hangs in the balance as protestors take to the streets

October 13, 2025 • by Nolan Young

As Donald Trump prepared to take office in late 2024, the American president-elect issued a stunning threat: to “take back” the Panama Canal, almost a quarter century after the United States had returned control of the canal and the zone around it to the sovereign state of Panama. Once in office, ...

North America

A Martyr and a Meme

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Walter Benjamin’s politics of spectacle should serve as a warning to Trump’s America

September 17, 2025 • by Benjamin Andrew Schupmann

Within minutes of the deadly shot, millions of viewers across the digital public sphere saw right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s last moments in full graphic horror, from multiple angles. Each clip was pared down to shareable content. His death made him at once a martyr and meme. German philosopher Walter Benjamin, writing ...

Democracy

The Revolution Against Legitimacy

To the new revolutionary class, legitimacy itself is an unjust claim of power

August 26, 2025 • by Roger Berkowitz

“[Stalin] changed the old political and especially revolutionary belief expressed popularly in the proverb “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” into a veritable dogma: “You can’t break eggs without making an omelette.”—Hannah Arendt We are living through a revolution, though not the kind we are used to. Most today ...

Podcast

The Democrats and Immigration

Episode 10

July 30, 2025 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

However, the Trump administration has overreached. Even among Republicans, the change in sentiment is noteworthy. Can the Democrats can come up with a narrative and a set of policies that can appeal to a wide swath of the American public. But what should those policies be? And can the Democrats shed ...