Welcome to The Lost Debate, a show for political eclectics. I'm Robbie Gupta. And in a bit,

we're going to hear from our friend Mike Shear from the New York Times, who's fresh off a stint as a White House correspondent during the Biden administration and a little bit of the Trump administration.

And we're going to talk about the tariffs mostly, all the ups and downs over the past couple of days about Trump's major announcements on that front.

And we'll talk a bit about immigration as well, which is Mike's area of expertise.

He wrote a book about the immigration policies of the first Trump administration.

And he's going to update us on what is surprising to him about Trump's immigration

policies a few weeks into that administration. But before we get there, I wanted to just address

a few of your voicemails. We've had some really wonderful and interesting voicemails over the past

few weeks. Let's jump in to our first voicemail, this one on DEI.

Hi, Robbie. I'm an adjunct college teacher, and I listen to your episode on the DEI.

And I have been thinking this for years as I teach English, and I tap dance my way through not focusing on identity. I've done it the whole time. It's been,

you know, steamrolling out of control because I really think it limits students' experience of

their lives. And we see all this rise in anxiety and happiness and there's many causes, of course, but I don't

think that focusing on, you know, which slot you fill in and how that negatively affects

you is helping anybody. So I do a lot of, I mean, it's a little humberman, it's a little

self-helpy in a certain way, but it's using critical thinking to make life better.

And through that lens, we analyze text and do all the critical thinking, rather than, which is greatly emphasized at this community college discussing origins and privilege and the whole kitten caboodle,

which is not to say in the Seinfeld episode, not that there's anything wrong with it,

it's just only one topic.

And the emphasis with which it is received now is completely out of whack with higher learning and critical thinking.

Well, thank you, Liz. That's really wonderful to hear that you're grappling with these issues.

And I love to hear anybody saying, like, look, it's not like it's like this big evil, but it's just not working for my students and I have a different way. I just love the way that you're going about it and keep us updated on how it goes. And, you know, I think community colleges are, you know, it seemed to be a little bit more immune to the crazy because there's a pragmatism to community colleges

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