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BIANNA GOLODRYGA, ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to “Amanpour and Company.” Here’s what’s coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: Trump’s D.C. takeover. I asked former FBI official Andrew McCabe about testing the limits of presidential power.
Then —
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NICK PATON WALSH, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: An American president and a Russian president without a Ukrainian there could
potentially give this bustling town over to the Russians after them fighting for it for so many years.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: As the world awaits the Trump-Putin meeting the people, it will impact a special report from Kramatorsk, Ukraine.
Plus, four years since the fall of Kabul, the Taliban’s war on women’s education.
Also, ahead, how Project 2025 is reshaping America. Journalist and author David A. Graham tells Hari Reen what we can learn from the blueprint for
Trump 2.0.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I’m Bianna Golodryga in New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
Taking the capital back, that’s how the President of the United States has framed his crackdown on crime. The streets of Washington, D.C. will soon be
patrolled by 800 National Guard troops. The city’s police will be under federal control for the first time in their history. And homeless people
will be forced to leave. And according to President Trump, it’s all necessary to tackle a purported wave of lawlessness. Here’s what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and blood thirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth,
drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore. We’re not going to take it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: And while crime is certainly a problem in the capital, Trump’s description of a public safety emergency told a slightly different story
from the statistics. There’s actually been a decrease in crime with violent crime at a 30-year low. So, is this really the right solution? And with
Trump hinting that Washington is just the first to face these measures, the first city to face these measures, what does this say about his exertion of
executive power?
Let’s bring in Andrew McCabe who was the acting director of the FBI during the first Trump administration. Andy, it is good to see you. So, President
Trump temporarily taking over control of the Washington Police Department. He has the authority to do so for up to 30 days. Explain exactly how so,
walk us through and describe Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act that gives him the power.
ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER FBI ACTING AND DEPUTY DIRECTOR: Sure. So, the D.C. Home Rule Act was passed in 1973 and it essentially restored to the
district — to the citizens of the District of Columbia the ability to vote for and elect their own local government. So, they of course, now are able
to vote for a mayor and they vote for city council members who together, the mayor and the city council, are responsible for things like law
enforcement, like selecting the person that is the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, which is D.C.’s police department.
But the Home Rule Act does grant the president the ability to essentially marshal the resources of the MPD, the Metropolitan Police Department, for
federal purposes. Anytime the president declares, you know, a state of emergency in the capital, and that’s usually limited to about 48 hours,
unless he also provides additional notification to Congress, to the committees that actually oversee the District of Columbia.
And if he does that, then he can stretch that 48-hour period out to 30 days. But that’s it. After 30 days, if the president wants to continue to
control the police department or to federalize the District of Columbia and take control of the entire place, that requires an act of Congress. We
actually have to pass a new law, giving the president those sorts of powers if that’s going to happen.
GOLODRYGA: So, 30 days’ time to take full control over the city’s police by having 800 National Guard troops roaming the streets, similar to, I
guess what we saw in Los Angeles. In addition to FBI agents, I want to get to that in a second, but what do you think could possibly be done? LoOK.
everyone would love to see a drop in crime, even if it’s at a 30-year low, why not go even lower? But what do you think that the National Guard and
FBI agents roaming the streets of D.C. will do to effectively continue to bring that rate down?
MCCABE: In 30 days, the answer is very little. The problems reducing the crime rate in D.C. or any other city, something that people in law
enforcement like myself spent their entire careers focused on and trying to devise strategies to accomplish those sorts of gains, it’s very complicated
work. It relies on many, many different factors. Some of them are economic, some of them are social, cultural, issues of poverty, homelessness, all
kinds of interventions that government can do to try to have a positive impact on crime.
D.C. has actually been doing well in the last couple of years, as you noted. They had their lowest crime rate ever or in 30 years, last year, and
this year they’re down like another 25 percent from there. So, things are definitely going well.
The condition of emergency that the president described in his press conference yesterday, it’s essentially fictitious. That is not what’s
happening in D.C. However, as you said, yes, do we always want the crime rate to go down? Sure. There’s always good things to do about that. But
bringing in federal troops who basically have no law enforcement experience taking federal agents like FBI agents, DEA agents who also don’t have any
experience or training in policing the streets of a metropolitan city unlikely to have a significant impact on the crime rate, especially over a
limited period like 30 days.
However, there are a couple of really significant things that the president could do but is not doing. One of those would be to return to D.C. the $1
billion of funding that was taken away from them by the Congress just this year. A billion dollars would actually pay a lot of police overtime and
could get you a lot of additional patrolling, additional police presence in those communities that are challenged, particularly by crime, policing by
the people who know the city, who know the criminals, who know the players, who know the victims, and are best positioned to do it. They need that
money to be able to support the overtime and the deployments of those resources.
The president could also work with Congress to address the horrible patchwork quilt of gun safety laws we have in this country, to try to stem
the flow of illegal weapons into D.C. and the rest of American cities. But he’s clearly not interested in doing that. He hasn’t said anything about
it. He could also try to fill the nine judicial vacancies that currently exist in D.C. That would be nine additional judges who could be out there
putting criminals on trial, putting people in jail, sentencing people to jail time. He didn’t mention any of that yesterday. He’s really much more,
it seems, interested in this very splashy, media worthy kind of performative political gesture of sending in the troops to do something for
a month.
GOLODRYGA: Well, let’s play what he did mention yesterday, and that’s specifically talking about, in his words, what a terrible record D.C. has
as it relates to crime and how it’s only increased over the last few years.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The number of car thefts has doubled over the past five years, and the number of carjackings has more than tripled. Murders in 2023 reached
the highest rate probably ever. They say 25 years, but they don’t know what that means because it just goes back 25 years. Can’t be worse.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: OK. So, let’s go through those numbers. You noted that a number of them discredit those figures of the president just laid out, but we’ll
put up a graphic. Violent crime is declining in Washington after a spike during COVID, violent crimes down 26 percent. In the past year, down 35
percent since 2023 compared to 2023. Homicides are also down 32 percent. Carjackings down 53 percent.
We do know that youth crime is a real problem in the city, truancy as well. It’s one thing to lay out statistics and say, listen, what the president’s
saying is wrong, crime is down. Washington is a safer city. It’s another thing as it relates to how people feel. And that is something that
President Biden experienced firsthand when his administration was pointing to numbers, showing that inflation was decreasing, that the economy was
rather healthy, and American voters did not feel that way.
So, does the president — is he playing to a certain audience here, perhaps Democrats too, that maybe not publicly, but at least privately feel that
it’s not a bad idea to see more police presence on the streets?
MCCABE: There’s no doubt he’s doing that. And I think you’re absolutely right that there is sometimes a variance between like what the numbers tell
us is actually happening and people’s perception of the way, you know, they feel about the crime rate or the economy or what have you.
But it would point out that much of what people’s feeling and perception is based upon is the comments that the president makes. And when the president
describes the city as some lawless hellscape patrolled by roving bands of murderous youth, that is a clearly a gross overstatement of what it’s like
to live and work and commute through D.C. every day.
Yes, there’s too much youth crime here. Yes, there has always been problems in D.C. with carjacking. Something that the metro — the MPD has spent a
lot of time researching and working on. Again, there are productive ways to address that. It takes resources. Youth crime is often ameliorated to some
extent by pumping in more youth resources into the city, places that — you know, providing places where young people can go and could be mentored and
can, you know, engage in like supervised activities instead of just like being left to themselves and wander the streets.
So, there’s all kinds of ways that the federal government can help. I think it’s curious and also questionable as to whether this method will actually
have an impact. I mean, it’s no secret that the president had to reach back to 2023 to find the numbers that he wanted to use to describe D.C. in 2025.
GOLODRYGA: He also said that this type of authority could extend beyond Washington, D.C., that New York, Chicago were next, notably big cities in
the country, notably Democratic cities in the country. There are crime statistics compared to some red major cities, I’m thinking of Memphis. I
mean, there — he didn’t note that, and there are red controlled or Republican controlled cities that have higher levels of crime. What message
is the president sending in your view? Because this had been sort of highlighted by the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, who had predicted that
this would be what we saw play out in Los Angeles, would be playing out in other Democratic controlled major cities in the country the president
seemingly acknowledging as much yesterday.
MCCABE: Yes, I think that’s absolutely right. And I think the mayor of Los Angeles is onto something there. You make a great point that he did not
mention places like Memphis or St. Louis, big cities and Republican controlled states that are suffering from much worse, you know, crime
problems right now than D.C. or Chicago for that matter. So, the president’s like very specific selection of only cities that are
administered or led by Democratic politicians is also quite curious and it raises the inevitable question of how much of this is just political
performance, an opportunity to, you know, strike out against his political enemies and prove some kind of point vis-a-vis, you know, Republican
approach to crime versus a Democratic approach to crime?
I don’t know. That’s for the political analysts. It’s not what I am. But you know, I will tell you that there is no place else in the country that
has the same unique legal standing that D.C. has. So, the president enjoys much more power and opportunity to deploy the National Guard and
potentially other troops in D.C. than he does anywhere else.
So, it’d be a little harder to do it in Chicago or New York, but Los Angeles shows us that it’s not beyond the pale. And I think that doing it
again and again, even if it’s just in D.C. where it’s easier, has the effect of making it normal for people. It’s normalizing this idea that we
have United States military personnel on the streets conducting law enforcement activity, which is fundamentally contrary to our constitution,
to the way civilian rule has been set up and executed in this country. It denies people of the right to have the local authorities they voted for and
who are accountable to them making these decisions about law enforcement in a way that people can have a bigger impact on. So, I think it’s very
concerning and it’s something that all Americans should really keep a close watch on.
GOLODRYGA: And deploying the National Guard, I mean, there, there’s a history, a rather mixed history of how effective that can be at in the
country. Something even more unusual perhaps is the deployment of FBI agents. And you note that is something the FBI is just not trained to do.
And perhaps even more alarming and worrisome is by deploying FBI agents to patrol streets in Washington, D.C. takes them away from their very
important day jobs, which is preventing terrorism and other work that they do on a daily basis to keep the United States and national security
interests safe in this country. Just talk about your thoughts on that.
MCCABE: Yes, that’s really concerning to me, Bianna. So, yes, FBI agents are not police officers. Most of them don’t come to the FBI from a
background as police officers. They don’t have the training and the skillset and the experience of doing that work, which can be dangerous,
both for them and for the people they would be policing.
Now, they’re all hardworking smart people who will try to do the job well. I have no doubt about that, but it’s somewhat pushing them well beyond
their authority and their comfort zone. Much more concerning to me is the fact that if you are sending 200 — I think I heard yesterday, 180, maybe
200 FBI agents from the Washington field office and from the Philadelphia field office out to patrol the streets with the MPD every night, that’s 200
agents who aren’t following spies around the nation’s capital, keeping track on their efforts to try to steal our top-secret information. They’re
not finding and uncovering and investigating and incarcerating terrorists for trying to stage attacks in our country. They are not looking for child
predators on the internet and saving our children from that sort of victimization. The list goes on and on and on.
There is no other entity that does that work if the FBI is not doing it. And that is really important stuff that needs to be done every day in this
country by a limited resource of FBI agents. And so, every time you distract them into doing something like this, you’re doing less of that. We
know that they’ve already drawn significantly on our joint terrorism task forces. So, those are agents who work on task forces around the country
chasing terrorists and investigating terrorism. They’ve told many of those agents they now have to spend at least 30 percent of their time supporting
ICE agents executing immigration detention.
So, the drains on the traditional FBI work, the work that we depend upon these agents to do every day are just mounting. They’re building and
building. And if we have a terrorist attack in this country, I think there should be very — some very direct and pointed questions at FBI leadership
and at the administration leadership about why some of those dots maybe didn’t get connected or some of those investigations weren’t pursued in
quite the way maybe that they should have been. But we’ll see. I hope that doesn’t happen. But you know, we might find ourselves there.
GOLODRYGA: Well, I guess we’ll see it in 30 days’ time, right? Something that stood out to me, Andrew, and what’s unique about this situation is you
have the president back in the Oval Office just a few years prior to his first term. And so, a lot of these players that he’s working with,
including the mayor of Los Angeles — D.C. are the same people. And yet, their tone and their approach to some of these policies are quite
different.
Muriel Browser, the — Bowser, the mayor of the city, her tone has changed significantly from 2020 when the president really took a sharp turn against
the protests, the Black Lives Matter protests in the city, and then reports later that he had wanted to take over control like he is doing now back
then, and it was stopped by some of his top advisers. Here’s what the mayor said then.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MURIEL BOWSER, WASHINGTON, D.C. MAYOR: We saw the American military moved around our country, like toy soldiers to intimidate Americans in
Washington, D.C. The finest military in the world should never be used in that way, and Americans across the country should be scared about that.
The fact that we have more law enforcement and presence in neighborhoods that could not — you know, that may be positive if people are — if it is
a positive action. So, that’s what the executive order says.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: OK. So, that second soundbite, I’m not sure if you were able to see, that was from yesterday, and quite a change in tone from the mayor
towards the president. And I’m wondering what you make of that. Is this an effective way of trying to work and cooperate with the president for the
sake of her residents there? The president even himself saying that he liked the mayor of D.C.
MCCABE: Well, you know, Mayor Bowser’s an astute politician and she has obviously chosen this course, the way to handle this situation very
specifically. So, obviously, from the clips you showed, it’s quite different from her reaction back in 2020 to the deployment of federal
troops in D.C.
She’s also someone who’s running — trying to run a city with a billion less dollars than she had in her budget, and she is hoping, I would assume,
to get that money restored from Congress. There’s been some motion here that the Senate is supportive of that, but that the House is not. So, I
don’t — I can’t say exactly how she’s making the political calculations.
But I will say that over the weekend, as this situation was kind of brewing and people were talking about it, it was shocking to me that she wasn’t out
on every single cable news show and any place she could get interviewed and really pushing back strongly against this.
I think as with many of the administration’s actions since January, some of them are overwhelming, some of them have clearly taken our political
leadership by surprise and have kind of backed people into a corner. And sometimes cooperation and capitulation is being chosen as the most
expedient path to get through the crisis.
My concern with that is longer-term, when we see National Guard troops being deployed by the president across, you know, American cities, I guess
Democratic cities around the country, at some point, people have to stand up and start standing for democracy, have to start defending their own
ability to choose their future, to choose their political leadership, to live in the city that’s run by the people they elected and not by the
president who decides to take it over one day because somebody from his staff ended up, you know, getting assaulted in the city, which is a
terrible thing, but maybe not the best reason to make a decision like this.
GOLODRYGA: All right. Andrew McCabe, we got through a lot today. Thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.
MCCABE: Thanks, Bianna. It’s always a pleasure.
GOLODRYGA: And a quick update on a story we brought you yesterday. Activist Dmitry Valuev told us that Russians seeking asylum in the United
States are facing more detention time, legal hurdles, isolation from families, and risk being sent back to Russia. The Department of Homeland
Security got back to our request for comment after the segment aired saying, in part, all detainees are provided with proper meals, medical
treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members.
GOLODRYGA: The countdown to the Trump-Putin summit continues, and with it, heightened fears that President Trump could push for a deal that calls for
Kyiv to make territorial concessions. As it stands, Ukraine has not been invited. And for the Ukrainian people, their own futures could be out of
their hands. Nick Paton Walsh has this report from Kramatorsk, a city in Eastern Ukraine.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK PATON WALSH, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): When President Trump talks about what parts of Ukraine to, quote, “swap with Russia,” this is ground zero, real towns where bomb shelters
loom over beaches.
MYKHAILO, SLOVIANSK RESIDENT: I feel like I just float away from this reality.
WALSH (voice-over): Here in Donetsk region, diplomacy has turned dark and surreal and threatens local journalist Mykhailo’s medicinal swim.
WALSH: What do you think about the idea of Trump and Putin meeting so far away in Alaska and deciding the fate of a place like this?
MYKHAILO: We all, people I know, will have to leave. But, frankly speaking, I don’t think it’s going to happen. What Trump did wrong, he just
pulled him out of the bog. The Putin was just drowning in the bog. And he took him out and said, Vladimir, I want to talk to you, I like you. He
didn’t care that every day Ukrainians died.
WALSH (voice-over): Beaches, births and deaths, they all persist in ravaged Sloviansk. They’ve dug defenses around it to stop a Russian
military advance, but never imagined high-level diplomacy might just give their town and future away.
Taisiya gave birth to Azul yesterday. The calm of her maternity ward bed now riddled with complications she never saw coming.
TAISIYA, NEW MOTHER (through translator): That would be very bad. I saw the news, but we have no influence over it. It’s not going to be our
decision.
People will just give away their homes.
WALSH (voice-over): Staying here has been, for many, an act of defiance and bravery. But for Sviatoslav and Natalia, it did not spare them pain.
This is their daughter, Sofia, with her husband Nikita and the grandson, Lev. They moved to Kyiv for safety. But 11 days ago, a horrific dawn
Russian airstrike killed them and 28 others in Kyiv, their three bodies found together in the rubble.
NATALIA HAPONOVA, SOFIA’S MOTHER (through translator): They left from the war and it was quiet there. And you see how it is in Sloviansk. But the war
caught them there.
SVIATOSLAV HAPONOVA, SOFIA’S FATHER (through translator): To come to terms with that as a person is impossible. Impossible to come to terms with the
loss of children.
WALSH (voice-over): They had been due to visit days later, bringing news that Sofia was three months pregnant.
WALSH: Do you remember the last time you spoke?
N. HAPONOVA (through translator): Yes, it was 8:30 p.m. She was talking to Lev. She really wanted to come to Sloviansk to tell everyone the good news.
But they didn’t come, they arrived in a different way altogether.
WALSH (voice-over): They came together to be buried on the town’s outskirts, where the war permits no calm for grief. A Ukrainian jet roars
overhead. At the nearest train station, Kramatorsk, as many are coming as are going. Serhiy was allowed two days off from his tank unit to see
Tatiana, his wife. Sirens greet the Kyiv train.
SERHIY, SOLDIER (through translator): Four years of war, how do you think it is? It would have been better if she had not come. Calm down.
TATIANA, SERHIY’S WIFE (through translator): I just want my husband to come home, I don’t care about those territories. I just want him to stay
alive and come home.
WALSH: Soldiers worried if they’ll see their loved ones again, families torn apart by this war. Imagine scenes like this to the thousand in the
event of what seems to so many people here to be the surreal idea that a deal on Friday on the other side of the earth, almost as far away as you
could possibly imagine in Alaska, between an American President and a Russian President without a Ukrainian there, could potentially give this
bustling town over to the Russians after them fighting for it for so many years and failing to take it.
So many lives lost here and those traumas borne out on this platform every time a train comes in.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GOLODRYGA: That was Nick Paton Walsh reporting from Kramatorsk. Well, now this week marks four years since the Taliban took back control of
Afghanistan, and it comes with a warning from UNICEF that more than 4 million girls could be deprived of their right to an education by 2030.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world to bar girls from studying beyond primary school. The policy is a cornerstone of the Taliban’s
repressive regime, which seeks to erase women and girls from public life. Those who managed to make it out have faced increased risk of being sent
back.
Here to explain Victoria Fontan, former Provost of the American University of Afghanistan, and Afghan student Mumtaz Islamzay. Victoria Fontan, Mumtaz
Islamzay, thank you so much for joining us.
Victoria, let me ask you first, what exactly happened with the USAID scholarships and why are so many Afghan women now at risk of being sent
back to Afghanistan?
VICTORIA FONTAN, RECTOR, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF MALTA AND FORMER PROVOST, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF AFGHANISTAN: Well, thank you for having us on the
show. So, the scholarships were frozen in January — on January 30, ’25. And as a result, many of our students didn’t really know if they would be
able to continue studying, either online or also face-to-face in the different parts of the world where they were. And so, we were left and they
were left with a choice whether to find other institutions where they could study or go back to Afghanistan.
GOLODRYGA: And, Mumtaz, how did you learn that your scholarship was ending? What was that moment like? What went through your mind?
MUMTAZ ISLAMZAY, AFGHAN STUDENT STUDYING ABROAD: Hello. Hello. Thanks for having us tonight. So, I was in a scholarship, Scholarship of the MDC. At
the same time, I was studying with, AUAF, American University of Afghanistan. First, they abounded our scholarship and we received an e-mail
from our scholarship that they don’t have the support of United State anymore. So, we have to leave Qatar and go to Afghanistan.
And the same time, AUAF, one of our biggest hope, they told us that we are with you and you can continue your education with us, in AUAF. If you have
any scholarship of — or if you don’t, you will be stay — in color (ph) with us and we will support you in any ways.
GOLODRYGA: And if you are sent back to Afghanistan, what will your life look like?
ISLAMZAY: I cannot imagine that, because if we go back, I don’t know what will happen to us because we studied — our higher education is in a
American university. So, they might put us in jail. They might kidnap us. They all have our information. They know our family. So, there’s no way
back to Afghanistan for us.
GOLODRYGA: And, Victoria, you’ve called this USAID cuts a death sentence for some students. I mean, just walk us through the stakes here. It’s not
just the risk of losing an education, it is something that most people can’t even begin to understand in terms of rights that are instantly taken
away from women if they go back to Afghanistan.
FONTAN: Absolutely. And not being able to study stem from life in general. Right now, the possibility to have interactions, the possibility to learn,
and the possibility also to plan a future is really what keeps the whole generation of women going and hopeful, not just for themselves, but for a
better future for their families, and also the prosperity of their country.
So, mitigating that and that risk, which is great, we have found a pathway for many women who are stranded in different parts of the world to actually
come and study here in Malta, the American University of Malta, in order for them to continue on their journey and also to integrate within a
workforce that doesn’t see them as victims, as refugees, but sees them as equal partners in the economic development of the country.
GOLODRYGA: And, Mumtaz, I believe you were in school, you were in class actually when the Taliban arrived. Just talk about what you recall from
that day and how your education and the process of going to school instantly changed for you.
ISLAMZAY: Yes, I was — I really remember so clearly that I was in Bakhtar University in a metastatic exam, a final exam. One day our professor told
us to leave the university for your safety and go home, be safe at the — when I got out of the university, I saw a bunch of traffic, which all
people trying to go to airport, to get the plane and get out of their mother land. So, it was so a scary scene that I remember every day that how
our country is take over — took over by some of — some group that we don’t know them well. So, that was so scary scene. And the first day that I
realized that my all plan that were meant to be in Afghanistan, they have changed.
GOLODRYGA: What are you studying now, Mumtaz? What do you hope to be professionally?
ISLAMZAY: I got my bachelor degree with help of a AUAF in computer science, specialization in data science. I will do my master degree in A.I.
in American University of Malta. Inshallah.
GOLODRYGA: And you’ve talked about bringing A.I. tools to Afghanistan so that girls there, at least for the time being with these repressive laws,
can keep learning in secret. I mean, that’s amazing.
ISLAMZAY: Yes. I have this plan to create an A.I., special A.I. for those who are left behind from school, from high school. So, from grade six to
12, I wanted to create an A.I., special A.I. for those who left behind from school. They can easily communicate with the A.I. and they can learn
whatever they lost during these years, and they can rejoin us in the university online or everywhere, but they have to got there 12th grade
certification first.
GOLODRYGA: That is incredible and no doubt risky as well. Victoria, what needs to happen in the next few weeks? What needs to happen here from the
United States specifically that will prevent and keep these girls from being sent back to Afghanistan?
FONTAN: Well, we are working — many partners are working on safe pathways for women to be able to study in other in other parts of the world that
will welcome — from the United States — pressuring the Taliban — this particular issue and not giving up on rights that so many different parts
of the Afghan population have gained for the 20 years of the Afghanistan Republic, I think is the most important.
GOLODRYGA: Yes.
FONTAN: And not giving up this particular story and on this particular stake that all those women are facing at the moment, not just in
Afghanistan, but also in exile in different parts of the world.
GOLODRYGA: Well, we are definitely not giving up on this story. Mumtaz, thank you so much for everything that you are doing and risking to keep
education and educating women in Afghanistan. Top of mind for all of us around the world. Victoria Fontan, thank you as well.
GOLODRYGA: Now, we return to the United States where President Trump is deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C. While he says his
administration aims to crack down on crime and homelessness, some are asking if this move is part of a Project 2025, that almost 8,000 pages
long, it is an ambitious and controversial right-wing blueprint for transforming executive power. And just over 200 days into Trump’s second
term, one online tracker says the agency is nearly halfway through completion.
Journalist David Graham joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss what this means for everyday Americans and the country’s foreign policy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, thanks. David Graham, thanks so much for joining us. Your book is titled “The Project:
How Project 2025 is Reshaping America.” So, set the table a little bit for our audience, especially the folks overseas who might be a little
unfamiliar with it here in the United States during the campaign season. We heard about this thousand-page long report that was written by a
conservative think tank. But you know, for people who haven’t been paying attention, what was the goal of this project?
DAVID A. GRAHAM, AUTHOR, “THE PROJECT: HOW PROJECT 2025 IS RESHAPING AMERICA”: So, the goal of Project 2025 was basically to have an agenda in
place for the next conservative president, whoever that would be. So, the Heritage Foundation, a long running conservative think tank, gathered a
bunch of writers and thinkers from across the right and the Trump friendly right to put this together and their attitude was that the first Trump
presidency had underachieved because of poor staffing and poor ideas.
And so, they wanted to put in place both a plan for how to achieve policies, and then a list of the policies they would want on a pretty
granular level across basically every department of the government. So, that a new president, whether that was Trump or somebody else, could hit
the ground running on January 20, 2025.
SREENIVASAN: Now, the president, throughout the campaign, have disavowed and distanced himself from the project itself, right? He said, quote, “I
have no idea who is behind it,” calling the ideas absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Yet, three out of four of the authors that are in this were people
who served in his first administration.
GRAHAM: That’s right. The author list is full of former aids. And you think about somebody like Russell Vought, who I think is a perfect example.
Russell Vought was the head of the Office of Management and Budget at the end of Trump’s first term. Then he went to work on Project 2025 and sort of
designed the executive takeover portions of this. He served as the head of the policy platform committee for the Republican National Convention
appointed by Trump in 2024. And now, he is in place as the head of Office of Management and Budget once again, and he’s been an important driver for
many of these Project 2025 priorities. So, I think the proof is really in what Trump is doing and in who he has appointed to these top roles.
SREENIVASAN: So, when you look at this document, you describe this as a skeleton key for understanding how this second Trump presidency is going to
work. How should we look at it?
GRAHAM: Well, I think the first few months, maybe the first five, six months of the presidency were really about taking over the executive
branch. So, we saw, for example, you know, attempting to close the education department or firing thousands of civil — tens of thousands of
civil servants, or attempting to take over the independent regulatory agencies, the sort of alphabet soup agencies. They traditionally have had
some sort of independence from the president, but we’ve seen Trump, you know, act to hire and fire leaders of those agencies.
All this part — are part of getting the power they need to do the things they want. And as we move into a second phase you see the administration, I
think, starting to work through a lot of the policy goals that were laid out in the document. Those are hard to do when they didn’t have power and
they didn’t have people in place. But now that they’re starting to get a team in all the top offices. they’re doing those things.
SREENIVASAN: So, what is the vision of America that Project 2025 is hearkening back to, forward to, in an ideal world, America would like blank
in terms of social vision?
GRAHAM: They would like to see a traditional family, nuclear families with fathers working and mothers mostly caring for children, and very much
fathers and mothers, because they’re very heterosexual vision. They want to write trans people literally out of the language of government by saying
they don’t exist and they believe there’s a sort of epidemic of gender ideology, as they call it.
They would like to see more religiosity in schools. They would like to see abortion banned. Sort of across the board they want to use — they want to
bring about this vision. And it’s not exactly returning to any one thing in particular, but it is a kind of idealized vision of what maybe they wish
the past had been like.
SREENIVASAN: The president announced that he is going to place the D.C. police under direct federal control and roll out the National Guard in his
efforts, he says, to try and decrease crime. Is this an idea that you would find in Project 2025?
GRAHAM: So, the specific idea of D.C. is not something you’d see in Project 2025, but I think there are several places where this dovetails
closely with it. One of them is, you know, the idea that federal troops are really useful way to enforce the laws. So, there’s a strong advocacy in
Project 2025 for using federal troops, particularly at the border, but also in places where there’s high crime.
Second of all, you have a sort of a war on cities and states, an idea that federal government should force cities and states to do what the president
wants and to use whatever means are at the White House’s disposal to do that.
And I’d say third, this is of a piece with a general idea that the president should have if not quite unfettered power, very broad power to do
kind of what he wants. And we see Trump doing that using emergency powers with this D.C. declaration.
SREENIVASAN: Assess the influence of this project on, say, for example, immigration, where we’ve seen not just a flurry of executive actions, but
we’ve seen restructuring of entire parts of the government and kind of new authorities, lots of things that seem like they’re — they come from
different parts of this plan.
GRAHAM: That’s right. And obviously, you know, immigration has been a focus of President Trump for a long time. What Project 2025 does is think
about how to use the government’s powers, existing powers more effectively. So, it’s not simply that they want to crack down on illegal immigration,
including using, for example, National Guard or other federal troops at the border, but it’s also, they want to reduce legal immigration. And that’s
something that you’ve seen in the administration doing as well, whether that is, you know, cutting down on the student visas, making it harder for
international students to study here, talk of a $15,000 fee for a tourist visa, for example.
Then we want to reduce the number of visas that are available and the kinds of visas that are available, because they envision, you know, a country
that is much more shut off from the rest of the world. And has basically the population that exists now rather than with a lot of immigrants coming.
SREENIVASAN: In terms of foreign policy, where do you see the impacts already of ideas that were expressed in Project 2025, whether it’s about
our place in the world, what kind of aid we should be giving?
GRAHAM: It’s interesting because Project 2025 has a kind of flat vision of the world. In their view, China is the major threat to the United States.
It’s an intellectual threat, it’s an economics threat, and it’s ultimately a military threat. And they want to reorient the world around taking China
on. Everything else is kind of an afterthought, including the Middle East.
Now, they do envision taking a lot of the existing humanitarian apparatus and converting that into more of a tool of power, directly pushing American
goals. So, the dismantlement of USAID is a little bit of an example of that, although the authors of Project 2025 don’t go that far. But they also
want to create coalitions to take on China. And I think Trump’s actions to levy tariffs, including on a lot of allies, has pushed some allies away and
makes it a little bit harder to create the coalition that they envision to take China on.
SREENIVASAN: Just recently, the EPA announced that it’s going to roll back the Obama era regulations on emissions. And I wonder, is that consistent
with some of Project 2025’s recommendations on what to do with the environment, their views on climate science?
GRAHAM: Very much so. So, Project 2025 is that the view that climate science should be largely eliminated from the federal government. It
doesn’t deny that the climate is changing, but it says that it’s a problem to be solved by private industry, and they would like to see more oil and
gas drilling. In fact, they treat the Interior Department largely as a sort of oil and gas extraction department.
They want to close down a lot of tracking of weather and they want to reduce a lot of regulation, that includes on things like pollution, carbon
dioxide, and other greenhouse gases, it includes also things like forever chemicals, PFAS. And their view is that — you know, they tell a story that
one time, you know, the water was dirty, the air was smoggy in the 1970s, but we’ve made great progress from then, and environmentalists are holding
us back. And if we want to prosperous a nation, we need to get rid of these regulations.
SREENIVASAN: You know, you mentioned privatization as one of the solutions. In the project, what do the authors envision? What kinds of
agencies, what kinds of work that the federal government does today does the project and the authors think should be privatized?
GRAHAM: I think the best example is climate science. You know, they would like to see large parts of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Administration privatized. They’d like to move a lot of other research into the private sector. They’d also like to see, for example, the federal
government start to move out of the business of education. Moving those things to the private sector, moving student loans to the private sector.
Even when — if you look at something like the Federal Reserve, they would like see the Federal Reserve eliminated, ultimately, and to move to a
system more to like what we had in the early 19th century where banks can issue their own currencies and move the federal government out of that
business.
SREENIVASAN: Now, how successful were these ideas in being implemented? I mean, we’re just, what, six, seven months into this now, into this
administration, but when you look at this — a thousand-page document, how much of that has already been set in motion or already come to pass?
GRAHAM: I think it’s really hard to quantify, and there’s so many policy goals, some of which are really granular and specific, and some of which
are very sweeping. So, I think it’s hard to say for sure. We’ve seen a lot of progress, particularly I think on things like the environment.
But in terms of the goal of taking executive power and transforming the way the presidency works, which I think is essential to getting so many of
these policies done, they’ve made a huge amount of progress. I think maybe more than they anticipated. Elon Musk’s DOGE was really helpful to them in
getting some of those things done. And one of the leaders of Project 2025 said this spring that Project 2025 had already succeeded beyond his wildest
dreams.
So, whatever happens now, it depends on the president having the power that they have managed to accrue for him. And you know, we see already the
Supreme Court could be ruling on other things that might give Trump even more power. So, that’s the focus so far, I believe.
SREENIVASAN: Has the Supreme Court made any kind of indications on which way it might rule about these things? I mean, we’ve got, you know, the
firing of thousands of civil servants. We’ve got the dismantling of the Department of Education. There’s other court cases that are going to wind
up in front of justices.
GRAHAM: What we’ve seen is the court is declining to block things, whether it is those firings, the Education Department, or the ability to fire the
heads of these independent agencies, which stood under a precedent from 1935.
Now, we don’t know how the court will rule, but the fact that they have decided not to block them seems like indication they’re at least somewhat
sympathetic to Trump’s arguments and may rule in favor of him and allow him to take these powers.
SREENIVASAN: One of the tenets inside the project that around the traditional family and the social values that the project is — wants to
see in America was a decidedly anti-abortion stance. And I wonder, are you surprised that the administration really hasn’t taken nearly as many steps
in that realm as it has in so many others?
GRAHAM: I am a little surprised. And I think there’s a couple things going on there. One is that Trump himself seems to have backed away from abortion
politics. I think he concluded that after the overturning of Roe he had gotten the political punch out of that, that he could get and to go any
further might risk political backlash.
I also think that by appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, he’s put in place somebody who,
one, has a kind of murky stance on abortion, but, two, isn’t focused on it. He’s much more interested in the kind of MAHA agenda we’ve seen.
I also don’t think it’s something though that is going to go away quietly, because for the people involved in Project 2025 who are now scattered
throughout the government in a lot of important positions, this a really essential moral question. It’s one of their most fundamental beliefs. So, I
think we will see them continue to work on this.
And there’s a lot of levers that they can pull short of a national ban on abortion. You know, they’re interested in tracking abortion at the state
level and creating kind of a surveillance apparatus around that, or in preventing the mailing of abortion drugs or attempting to withdraw FDA
approval for medical abortion drugs. So, there’s a lot of levers for them to pull and for them, it’s a long run. Obviously, the pro-life right was
willing to work for decades to overturn Roe. And I think they’re continuing to work forward for a full ban nationally if they can achieve it.
SREENIVASAN: Is there a counter movement? I mean, we have had this kind of soul-searching conversations from the Democratic party to say, OK. well
we’re going to have our own project three years out, four years out, here’s what we would like to do.
GRAHAM: You know, the Democrats have been talking about a sort of Project 2029 and you hear a need for it. You know, I think there’s a couple of ways
it doesn’t match up. One of them is Democrats are talking about which voters to target. And projects 2025 is validly not a political project. You
know, in fact, the authors say, it’s somebody else’s job to get a president elected. We’re just providing the policy platform. They start with a
worldview and they work to policies from there. And so, some Democrats seem to be, you know, attacking this from the opposite direction.
But I also think that if your concern is a president who is too powerful, one place to focus is the role of Congress, and I don’t see anybody really
talking about how Congress can serve as an effective counterweight to a strengthen executive.
SREENIVASAN: So, David, we talked a little bit about the different areas that we’ve already seen an impact of Project 2025, whether it’s foreign aid
or immigration or the Department of Education. What are you watching for in the next six months?
GOLODRYGA: You know, one of the things I’m interested in is the battle over federal funds. We have seen the executive branch insisting that they
can impound funds, which is basically to refuse to spend things that have already been appropriated by Congress. We’ve seen Russell Vought talking
about pocket rescissions, which is simply not spending the money before the year is up, and we saw the White House come to Congress with a bill on
rescissions. So, I think funding and whether the presidency is using the funds Congress has laid out I think is a really important question.
And then I’m just looking across the government at a range of possible policy areas. Recently, for example, we saw Trump taking on banks, accusing
them of discrimination for their business practices. The idea that the federal government should be investigating the choices businesses make of
who they serve is something that is really important in Project 2025, not a traditional conservative view, but certainly one that I think we’re going
to see more of.
You’ll likely see in climate science, you’ll see in family policy across the board, you know, there’s so many ideas in so many places for Project
2025 to be trying to make a new impact.
SREENIVASAN: The book is called “The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America.” Author David Graham, thanks so much for joining us.
GRAHAM: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GOLODRYGA: And finally, one man’s mission to address the climate crisis from his own backyard. Abdul Karim Abbas, a gardening volunteer in Iraq,
distributes thousands of seedlings to make his city greener, collecting seeds that have fallen from Baghdad’s trees.
Abbas says he turns them into free oxygen, a vital effort in one of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries. The 64-year-old was inspired to
start his work five years ago when he noticed residents flee to the countryside for a breath of fresh air. While locals have since embraced his
idea coming together to plant trees across the city, making their air cleaner one seed at a time. What one man can do. Good for him.
All right. That is it for now. Thank you so much for watching, and goodbye from New York.