Zolan Kanno-Youngs
speaker
266 appearances
9 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 5d ago
Zolan Kanno-Youngs’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Do we shy away from it? Do we rename it? Is it just that the acronym is toxic in itself? You've seen multiple actions at this point. to follow through on what during the campaign was fiery rhetoric, but now seems to be an attempt to be at least one piece of reshaping this administration in a way that's aligned with the president.
It's worth remembering, too, that the previous administration signed executive orders to put racial equity essentially at the center of almost all their policymaking, including the hiring practices, you know, of the administration and just how sort of the structure of each agency, too.
DEI, you know, even if it doesn't say it on your title, the fear here is palpable because people, even if you were working on, say, infrastructure investing or, you know, climate programs, there was still a focus on racial equity there the past four years. So you do have agency employees here almost wondering, you know, will they be next in a way?
You were just talking, Maggie, about also just how much loyalty is important to this president when it comes to the people that he brings in, when it comes to the actions that he's doing.
It is just interesting to square the argument of our previous topic of, you know, going after these DEI programs to have a government that's more based off merit when at the same time this president also we know is doing loyalty tests for people coming in. Hmm. That's not exactly merit. That's not merit as a top priority. That's loyalty as a top priority.
And the president's going to be asked about this topic. You know, he already has been asked about it in the White House while he was signing an executive order. He was pressed and asked, now that you've done these pardons, do you think there's essentially a place for the Proud Boys, for these groups, quote, in the political conversation?
And the president responded by saying, well, we'll have to see and then criticize their sentencing as well. So we'll have to watch, too, now that this has happened, will the president of the United States also continue to amplify these groups as well?
Yeah, that's right. I mean, we've been talking about this topic of retribution, right? And we have heard comments from the president's allies, including some in Congress, who have talked about wanting to pursue investigations of those that were on the committee set up to investigate the attack on the Capitol. That is looking back.
It's just looking back in a way that aligns with the president's political priorities.
Some of the Democrats who received a pardon didn't think it was a good idea as well. Members of the committee? You had Adam Schiff saying that he thought it was unwise to receive a pardon. Got a pardon anyway. Yeah, he did. He did. Now, some did want one. Benny Thompson, who was also on the J6 committee, was in conversations with the White House about this.
And he did say that he was open to receiving one. But just by the comments of some of those who received it and sort of the mixed responses, you can see just how sort of polarizing this was.
The Daily · Trump 2.0: A Criminal Sentencing, Presidential Legacies, and Greenland · 10 Jan 2025
podcast
On paper, it was almost advertised as something that I think many would characterize as somewhat presidential about economic investment. The president-elect came out with a business leader from the UAE that actually has close ties to the Trump family. And started out by talking about a $20 billion investment to data centers, a sort of normal press conference as one goes into office.
But it really only took minutes for this thing to move off topic and to devolve into something that was a news conference that I think we all saw when Trump was first in office. Well, inevitably, it turned to Greenland.
It's straight out of his playbook. Economic coercion is straight out of his playbook.
And it's not just Denmark and Panama, which he focused on in the press conference, leaders there that are rattled by this. He also talked about Canada and potentially using economic coercion there. Also, the tricky thing with these press conferences is we focus on in one example, Trump said, I want to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. Right. The focus is there.
But also, he did have comments about Mexico and the Mexican government not doing enough to stop migrants, to stop drug trafficking. We know that he has also threatened tariffs against Mexico before. So while there might be sort of a flashy statement at the top of this, I do think there's a real through line behind it.
And it does, you know, rattle leaders, including some of our biggest trade partners.
So I'll start with policy and sort of the actions that he's been taking. You know, he recently signed an executive order in the vein of environmental justice and climate. It would basically ban drilling in about 625 million acres of US coastal waters. Biden has also used his final days to issue clemency action as well for those on death row. Right.
When I talk to administration officials privately, they're honest that they're limited in what they can do with the president-elect coming in. You know, Trump has said that he's going to gut Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and his environmental investments. He has said he's going to peel back some of that money. And there are laws in place that basically say that appropriated funds have to go out.
Right. There is not much you can do for, say, Biden's executive actions on immigration. Trump's going to be able to peel much of that back. So, yes, Biden is taking action to try to protect some of these policies. But privately, administration officials are a little bit more candid about how little they can do here to protect this agenda, particularly that which wasn't signed into legislation.
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