Hello listeners and welcome to another edition of Politico's Nerd Cast.

I'm Scott Bland, your host.

This week on the nerd cast, immigration hardliners are ascendant at the White House.

Now you might wonder what that means given that President Donald Trump is an immigration hardliner himself having run very explicitly on that from 2015 onward.

However, some new developments this week, a big purge at the Department of Homeland Security with a bunch of top officials out there all over immigration and the

the implementation of the president's vision so we're going to talk through what exactly that means from policy perspective

and what it might mean for the president politically heading into 2020.

Plus, the authors of Politico Playbook are going to be in here talking about their new book, The Hill to Die on.

Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman on the back-breaking loyalty that President Trump demands from people

and how that has shaped Congress. And interactions with Congress the way Congress has

behaved by itself over the last two years. Plus they're going to talk a little bit about

what it's like to gossip with the President. As always, we are taping this a little bit

before noon eastern on Thursday.

Today, that's April the 11th.

So everything's all up to date as of then.

All right, let's get started.

I want to welcome our two guests for this first segment.

Two members of our White House team. We've got Nurdcast regular Nancy Cook.

Nancy, Nancy, good to see you.

Oh, thanks for having me.

And Nurdcast newcomer, Gabby Orr. Gabby, so good to have you on the show.

Thanks, it's exciting to be here.

...