Immigration Tensions in the MAGA Coalition

At a rally, President Trump declared that he now may suspending deportations for farmworkers and other migrant workers. Trump openly admitted this will anger the “radical right,” by which he likely meant Stephen Miller and others who want every last undocumented immigrant in this country removed—or else. Indeed, leading MAGA influencers sharply attacked the move: One declared that it will “break” the MAGA coalition. The other flatly demanded that Trump keep on deporting “grandmothers.” We think all this should be understood as a display of weakness: Trump badly wants the public to think he’s considering relaxing his mass deportation regime precisely when Congress has given him tens of billions of additional dollars for it. We talked to journalist, historian, and podcaster Garrett Graff, who has a new piece on his Substack about what’s coming. He explains why rapidly expansion of Trump’s paramilitary force is so dangerous, how his effort to pseudo-moderate on deportations has exposed serious political vulnerabilities, and why he has no easy way out of them. Listen to this episode here.

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