On today’s show: The Washington Post’s Silvia Foster-Frau explains why lawyers worry that migrants sent to Guantánamo Bay are in a “legal black hole.” The Wall Street Journal’s Brian Schwartz examines the role of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and why Trump has turned his attention to it. The Trump administration negotiated the release of Marc Fogel, an American teacher imprisoned in Russia. NBC News details how the move plays into larger talks about ending the war in Ukraine. Plus, Trump insisted the U.S. will take over Gaza during a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, flu cases surged to a 15-year high, and women actors have reached parity with men in Hollywood. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: Why are migrants being sent to Guantanamo Bay?
But first, just over a week ago, a military aircraft carrying around three dozen detained migrants departed for Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base in Cuba. Officials with the Trump administration say these migrants are dangerous criminals, describing them as, quote, the worst of the worst. But right now, we don't have a way of verifying that.
We know very little about who's been sent there, how long they'll be kept at Guantanamo, or the crimes they're accused of committing. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told CNN over the weekend that the administration intends to move people slated for deportation quickly in and out.
My goal is that people are not in these facilities for weeks and months. My goal is that there's a short-term stay. They're able to go incarcerate them, take them, follow the process, and get them back to their country.
But Sylvia Foster-Frau, immigration reporter for The Washington Post, has been talking to some human rights lawyers who say they are troubled by what little they've learned so far.
Chapter 2: What are the legal concerns regarding migrants at Guantanamo?
They have not been able to make contact with these immigrants and make sure that they have legal access. And according to them, because they're coming from the U.S., all due process rights go with them now to where they're being taken in Guantanamo. And really, in general, there's so little that any of us know about who these people are, what their immigration status is.
Do they have a history of violent crime or was their only crime crossing the border?
Fosterfrau told us where these migrants are being housed at Guantanamo also has lawyers concerned.
They're actually being held on the side owned by the Defense Department. That's a military prison.
It's called Camp 6. It's where suspected terrorists were sent after the September 11th attack. Lawyers and aid groups say the living conditions there are inhumane. Some prisoners have called it a tomb above ground. Under U.S. law, this facility is only authorized to be used for suspected members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or terrorist organizations affiliated with those groups.
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Chapter 3: What is the Trump administration's stance on Guantanamo migrants?
The Trump administration has said the detained migrants at Guantanamo are part of a violent Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua. But that gang has not been designated a terrorist group by the administration or connected to the terrorist groups affiliated with September 11th. So lawyers say migrants at Guantanamo cannot be held at Camp 6 legally.
The Defense Department responded to these allegations by saying they technically consider migrants to be in custody of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, not the Department of Defense, despite where they're currently detained. But one lawyer Foster-Frau spoke to said that distinction is difficult to make.
He said basically it's pretty impossible to detach the military facility from ICE custody because it was completely built to hold suspected terrorists, that it's been completely modeled and configured to suit a group like that and not immigrants.
Trump says he wants to send up to 30,000 migrants to Guantanamo, and he's ordered the construction of new detention space. This week, a federal court in New Mexico blocked his administration from sending three Venezuelan men to the island. Other legal challenges are expected as well. Let's turn to President Trump and Elon Musk's efforts to reshape Washington by gutting federal agencies.
Chapter 4: How is Elon Musk involved in federal job cuts?
Yesterday evening, Musk joined the president in the Oval Office as Trump announced a new executive order aimed at drastically cutting federal jobs. The White House said agency heads would be ordered to consult with Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and prepare to initiate a large-scale reduction in the workforce and limit hiring to essential positions only.
Meanwhile, one of Musk's recent targets is the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency within the Federal Reserve that oversees financial products and services used by Americans and aims to protect consumers from predatory or fraudulent behavior. It was created by the Obama administration in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
Chapter 5: Why is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under scrutiny?
It's been kind of this Wall Street cop, and it's been taking on banks big and small for quite some time.
That's Brian Schwartz, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal who covers economic policy. He told us about one recent occasion when the CFPB went after a big bank.
They ordered Bank of America to pay over $100 million to customers for systematically double-dipping on fees imposed on customers with insufficient funds in their account. And the Bank of America was accused by the CFPB of withholding reward bonuses explicitly promised to credit card customers and misappropriating sensitive personal information.
After the CFPB's orders, Bank of America said they voluntarily reduced overdraft fees and eliminated insufficient fund fees. But this week, as we mentioned on Monday's show, the entire agency was put on pause when Russell Vogt, the new head of the Office of Management and Budget and acting director of the CFPB, ordered it to close for at least the week.
The CFPB has been a real target of Republicans for years. The Republican lawmakers have been questioning the concept of CFPB's funding, that there's not enough congressional oversight on how CFPB is funded, and that the CFPB sometimes goes too far with their enforcement actions.
The agency has a budget of $823 million for the 2025 fiscal year, and the money comes from the Federal Reserve. In his first term, Trump proposed slashing the agency's budget and rolling back regulations. He's raised concerns without providing evidence of possible fraud, and he's accused the agency of weaponizing its power.
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Chapter 6: What are the criticisms against Elon Musk's proposal to delete the CFPB?
Elon Musk, meanwhile, recently proposed on social media to, quote, delete CFPB, calling the work it does duplicative of other regulatory bodies. However, consumer advocates and ethics experts tell CNN Musk's involvement in trying to gut the agency is a concerning conflict of interest because he owns several businesses that could benefit from looser financial regulations.
There's a financing arm of Tesla, for example, that provides car loans, which are subject to CFPB oversight. Just last month, Musk's social media platform X announced plans to launch a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment platform in partnership with Visa. And there are concerns about whether Musk now has access to information about digital payment systems from his direct competitors.
The CFPB has investigated the owner of Cash App, to name one.
So the concern from the CFPB side about Doge gaining access to the CFPB is, of course, that the Doge officials are gaining access to sensitive information, particularly around investigative details. And people, particularly Democrats, would argue that they should not be getting access to those types of things.
Democrats in Congress say the CFPB's work is critical to protect consumers and it can't be shut down without congressional approval. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who serves on the Committee for Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and who helped create the CFPB, joined protesters and some of the Bureau's employees who were protesting the stop work order in Washington on Monday.
The CFPB is the cop on the beat. And that cop is the one that caught the crooks and so far has made them give back $21 billion.
Vote, for his part, has restored at least one key function that the CFPB performs, the weekly publishing of the average prime offer rate. That's a tool used by the mortgage market, signaling that some of the agency's functions are vital to the economy.
But as one industry analyst notes, Vote has broad power over the direction of the agency, including slowing it down or, as this analyst said, putting it to sleep. Now to international news. Mark Fogel, the American teacher imprisoned in Russia since 2021, is back on American soil.
He addressed reporters late last night from the White House alongside President Trump, whom he thanked, with an American flag draped around his shoulders.
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