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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On the eve of his second inauguration, Donald Trump did something no U.S. president had ever done: He launched a meme coin. The cryptocurrency — whose value hinges more on hype than utility — surged to an all-time high of $75.35 a token. The next day, First Lady Melania Trump dropped her own meme coin, debuting at about $13 a share.

Both coins have since tumbled, but on Wednesday Trump’s token briefly bumped up again to $15.47 before dipping. The latest surge came after the coin’s official website announced that 220 top meme coin holders will be invited to a gala dinner with the president in May — black tie optional.

These tokens, that are not tied to any real world assets, have proven lucrative for Trump and his family. Last month, the Financial Times estimated Trump made upwards of $350 million from the project. While small traders have lost big, the Trump Organization and its affiliates — controlling 80 percent of the token supply — have made hundreds of millions in just trading fees.

Trump, once a crypto skeptic, is now the industry’s most powerful advocate.

“ He went to a big bitcoin conference in Nashville last July. That's where he declared he would make the U.S. the crypto capital of the planet,” says Intercept reporter Matt Sledge. “And the crypto industry started showering money on him. They saw somebody who would be friendly to their industry.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Sledge, who covers crypto’s political reach, discusses how investing in the president has paid off for the industry and for the Trump family.

“So far in Trump's presidency, things have gone great for the crypto industry. Even as the rest of the economy is on pretty perilous footing, a bunch of crypto companies have seen the SEC and other regulatory agencies drop investigations or lawsuits. Trump has created a 'bitcoin reserve,' and in general, regulators and Congress are behaving much more friendly toward the industry.”

For more on how Trump is reshaping the crypto landscape and what it means for the rest of us, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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