What Next | Is Trump Running the Fugitive Slave Act Playbook?

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A federal force—often defying local governance—coming to take people away without due process has happened before. What lessons can be drawn from parallels between a law that led to the Civil War and what’s happening today with Trump’s hardline immigration enforcement? Guest: Jamelle Bouie, columnist at the New York Times Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:00.0	Jamel, do you believe the hype about history repeating itself?
1:08.8	I believe the aphorism from Mark Twain, I believe, that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
1:14.2	Jamel Bowie is a columnist at the New York Times.
1:21.7	I'm skeptical of history repeating itself literally because the past is just a different place than the present, right?
1:23.0	But there are certainly recurring forces and archetypes.
1:30.3	I call Jamel up because I've been noticing him draw parallels between what's going on in the
1:36.0	U.S. right now and a totally different period of American history.
1:41.2	Most people label this period of time antebellum, the decade or two right before the Civil War.
1:47.6	Back then, the country was a loose coalition of states. About half of those states allowed slavery.
1:54.3	The others didn't.
1:56.9	If you received a certain kind of education, you will hear something to the effect of the Civil War was fought over states' rights.
	...

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