Donald Trump’s all-caps executive order on policing — “STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS” – is less about policy and more about intent. And that intent is clear: To give Trump direct control over local law enforcement and further shield police from accountability.

As journalist and author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop” Radley Balko puts it, “It’s a statement of intent and whether or not Trump is able to do a lot of the more pernicious and unconstitutional things he wants to do.”

The executive order calls for “military and national security assets” to assist in local policing, directs federal resources and protections for state and local law enforcement, and enhances police protections, among other proclamations. But it reflects a deeper ambition.

“He wants more federal militarized law enforcement under his thumb instead of under the thumb of governors or mayors,” says Balko. “He wants to use them to help with immigration deportations. He wants help with cracking down on protest.” And the concern and fear, says Balko, is that Trump will also “use law enforcement to go after his critics and people he perceives to be his enemies.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Balko joins senior reporter Akela Lacy and host Jessica Washington to break down the Trump administration’s push to federalize local law enforcement and “unleash” police who already face minimal meaningful restraint.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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The Intercept Briefing is sharing a recent live podcast recording The Intercept's Senior Politics Reporter Akela Lacy joined about the unlawful detention of Rümeysa Öztürk — a graduate student who was seized by federal immigration agents for co-authoring an op-ed in her school's newspaper. The live event, hosted by Question Everything with Brian Reed – which you can listen to on KCRW – and the Tufts Daily where Rümeysa published her op-ed, gathered journalists, editors, and attorneys, including Carol Rose, who is part of Rümeysa's legal team and executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU. They discussed the status of Rümeysa’s case and the conditions she’s enduring under ICE detention, and the chilling effects her case has had on speech, journalism, and academic freedom.

Full episode description:

Where better to huddle up and discuss what to do about Rümeysa Öztürk and the chilling effect that is happening in journalism than on campus at Tufts University with the student journalists at The Tufts Daily?

This week Brian and Question Everything co-host a live event with the editor-in-chief and associate editor from The Tufts Daily – Arghya Thallapragada and Ellora Onion-De. Together they interview journalists and attorneys, including Carol Rose, part of Rümeysa's legal team and executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU, to learn what all happened to Rümeysa and why. What did her abduction by federal agents a month ago have to do with her immigration status as a Turkish graduate student studying child development, here on a student visa? Why did Secretary of State Marco Rubio say her Op-ed was cause for incarceration? Why is she still in ICE’s custody? And what happened to the constitutional protections around free speech and a free press that we depend on in a free society?

Joined by former editor-in-chief of both the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, Marty Baron; First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche; and senior politics reporter at The Intercept Akela Lacey; the group wrestles in real time with the gravity of this moment, not just for Rümeysa Öztürk, but for all of us.

Read the Op-ed Rümeysa and others wrote that ran in The Tufts Daily a year ago in March.

Watch the video of federal agents in plainclothes, forcing Rümeysa Öztürk into an SUV on March 25, 2025.

Quick thing: In our discussion Carol Rose says the ACLU has filed 100 legal actions in President Trump’s first 100 days. The specific count on those is actually higher: the ACLU filed 110 legal actions in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.

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“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.

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This week, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., joined forces with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., to introduce ambitious Medicare for All legislation that would provide comprehensive coverage to every American without premiums, co-payments, or deductibles. The move comes at a striking moment — with Donald Trump in the White House and Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, the bill's passage remains unlikely.

In this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, Jayapal delivers a candid assessment of Democratic strategy in the Trump era. "You can't just be an opposition party. You do have to also be a proposition party.” It's why Medicare for All was so important, she explains. “We have to show people that we are willing to un-rig the system.”

Jayapal acknowledges critical missteps by her party. "A lot of my colleagues may have gotten scared off and somehow thought that what the American people wanted was for us to play footsie with Donald Trump instead of go toe to toe with him," she says. "And I think it is very clear now, after the first three months of destruction and chaos and cruelty, that that is not the way to go. This is not an administration that you want to try and get in bed with. This is an administration that we have to fight if we want to preserve our democracy."

She has been particularly frustrated by her colleagues in the Senate. "The Senate had the ability to confirm Trump's Cabinet, and you saw many Democrats going along with those confirmations as if somehow this was OK to put these people who are completely incompetent and have no understanding whatsoever, and even worse have lots of things in their backgrounds that never should have allowed them to be confirmed as Cabinet members." The Senate, she adds, had “a certain power to stand up early that they didn't use."

Now is the time, says Jayapal, to offer a clear roadmap for resistance. "My job now is to use the platform I have and the relationships I have to build the resistance movement on the outside and on the inside. And that is really on every level from Congress to the courts to the public."

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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