presented by BP.

Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard.

And I'm my award.

It is Tuesday, July 1st.

And this is the Playbook podcast, and it's the start of July.

And as you can hear, Dasher Burns is still away in Aspen, lucky thing in the

mountains. And we have a new voice on the podcast this morning. Maya Ward, our White House

immigration reporter. Maya, thanks so much for coming on. It's good to be here. It's great to have

you. And especially on a day when we're going to be talking a lot about immigration, so it's

going to be brilliant to have your expertise.

The big story from Donald Trump's movements today are that he is headed to South Florida to visit the new migrant detention camp that is being set up there, known as Alligator,

Alcatraz, and we are going to get into that in a minute on the podcast, Meyer, because

that is an absolutely fascinating and controversial scheme that is being set up there. Obviously, the big headline that everyone's going to be talking about this morning is the progress of the big, beautiful bill through Congress. We're a bit stymied to talk about that on this podcast, because as we're recording this, very, very early in the morning, the bill is still making its progress. And by the time you guys hear this, what we say will be out of date. So your best bet for the latest on the Big Beautiful Bill is to turn to the Playbook newsletter, which, as you all know, comes out at 6am and we'll have the latest on that. The third headline, just to keep your eye on today, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is speaking in public at

830 this morning. And that's interesting because he, once again, is coming under huge pressure

from the president about his refusal to lower interest rates. And so we'll be watching what he

says about tariffs and about interest rates avidly. Maya, before we get on to immigration stuff, the one aspect of the sort of shenanigans

that we've seen in the Senate over the last few days that I would love to talk to you about

is what's happening in North Carolina, because rather brilliantly, as well as an expert on

politics and immigration, you're literally from North Carolina, so we could talk a little bit

about that. Were you surprised to see Thomas Tillis announce he won't be running again at the weekend?

Yeah, I mean, it was surprising, and it's always a good day when I get to talk about North Carolina.

So he has kind of emerged as this figure.

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