A migrant carrying a toddler stands in front of the border wall that divides New Mexico, United States, with Ciudad Juarez, state of Chihuahua, Mexico.HERIKA MARTINEZ/Getty Images
A federal judge struck down late Tuesday night the Trump administration immigration policy that disallowed Central American migrants from applying for asylum upon arrival at the U.S. southern border, ruling the government did not provide sufficient justification for the change in policy last July. Under the Trump-era border policy, the White House effectively barred asylum seekers from even applying for protection at the U.S. border if they had not first applied for asylum in the countries they travelled through to get to the U.S. The sudden change was intended to dramatically curtail the number of migrants coming in to the U.S.; the Trump administration argued that Central American migrants were using the asylum rules to live and work in the U.S. while their case was being evaluated.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, found the administration’s implementation of the so-called “third-country asylum rule” unlawfully bypassed the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires the government to inform American citizens of changes and give them sufficient time and opportunity to respond to such a change. “There are many circumstances in which courts appropriately defer to the national security judgments of the Executive,” Kelly wrote in his opinion. “But determining the scope of an APA exception is not one of them.”
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The case against the government brought by nonprofit groups representing immigrants and asylum-seekers argued that the Trump administration policy marked substantial and unwarranted change to the Immigration and Nationality Act, a decades-old federal law passed by Congress that grants nearly anyone arriving on U.S. soil the right to at least apply for asylum. At the time of the change, the Trump administration provided essentially no justification for the sudden change, other than to say if the government abided by the normal public comment period as required by the Administrative Procedure Act it would result in a surge of migrants before the change went into place.
In his 52-page opinion, Kelly found the Trump administration’s underlying argument flimsily and cherry-picked from a single newspaper article. “The article does little if anything to support Defendants’ prediction that undertaking notice-and-comment rulemaking would have led to a dramatic, immediate surge of asylum applicants at the border,” Kelly wrote. “And other articles from the administrative record that Defendants cite either do not support, or even undermine, their prediction of such a surge.”
“Asylum filings nearly quadrupled between 2014 and 2019,” according to the Washington Post, “and fewer than 20 percent of Central American applicants prevail in immigration court.” Texas-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) hailed the ruling in a tweet: “The Trump admin’s third country transit ban - barring asylum for crossing through a 3rd country - was JUST thrown out effective immediately. A HUGE win for asylum seekers.”
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This is an installment ofVeepstakes, Slate’s series on who Joe Biden should pick as his running mate.
Last November, in an interview on CNN, Sen. Amy Klobuchar lamented the double standards she saw in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Neither she nor her fellow female senators would have made it to the debates with the diminutive résumé of Pete Buttigieg, then the mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city, Klobuchar said. She was pointing to a persistent gender discrepancy in politics: Men who run for office are judged on their leadership potential, no matter how young or inexperienced they may be, while women usually have to demonstrate a robust history of relevant experience and expertise before they’re taken seriously as candidates for executive office.
The Democratic primary ended with the most diverse group of candidates in history being whittled down to a contest between two white men, an optical disaster that Joe Biden tried to alleviate by promising to nominate a woman to serve as his vice president. If one good thing is to come of this tacky, tokenizing quest to give a woman second billing in his administration, it might be a lowering of the barrier to entry for capable women in politics. (Raising the barrier for ambitious young men would have been a better outcome, but here we are.) In recent weeks, as the Biden campaign has purportedly been expanding its shortlist to include more Black women, several politicians who’ve previously been skipped by the national spotlight have found themselves in its path. With so few Black women in the usual positions from which candidates source their veeps—governorships, Senate seats—the Biden campaign has had to expand its sights to include some people who might not have otherwise gotten consideration.
This doesn’t make Biden’s gambit any nobler. If Biden had truly wanted to improve the pipeline for women seeking office and help Americans get used to seeing women in charge, he could have quietly chosen a woman as his running mate without the showboating fanfare. Now, any woman who makes the ticket will face even harsher accusations of being an undeserving “diversity hire” than she would have if she hadn’t been delivered as the keeping of a campaign promise. By reducing value of political representation to an ideology-neutral gimmick, Biden elevated his own image at the expense of his future vice president’s.
On both issues, Bottoms has proved herself capable of many things Biden isnot.
But I digress! Let’s talk about the silver lining. One of the Black women currently being vetted who wasn’t on Biden’s original shortlist is Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former city council member and judge who would make a worthy choice for vice president. Bottoms is one of several U.S. mayors and governors who’ve earned outsize places in national media coverage by filling the vacuum left by the White House’s lack of leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and persistent protests against racist police brutality. As mayor, Bottoms has enforced strict guidelines to prevent viral transmission in Atlanta even as Gov. Brian Kemp began reopening Georgia while infection rates were still climbing. She’s also been a formidable presence in national conversations about police violence. In a wide variety of forums—including Sesame Street’s CNN special on the protests, the New York Times opinion page, and Oprah’s town hall on racism—Bottoms has delivered personal and passionate analyses of the current Movement for Black Lives and the problems with policing.
On both issues, Bottoms has proved herself capable of many things Biden is not. In her public appearances, she’s what Biden wants to be, and maybe used to be, but isn’t: a compelling and charismatic off-the-cuff speaker. She’s able to speak to the challenges and opportunities of this moment with clarity, humility, and warmth. Biden is prone to dubious, unprompted self-glorification and has rarely finished a train of thought. She can hold up actual policies she’s enacted, such as eliminating cash bonds for nonviolent crimes, as national models for criminal justice reform. Biden is about as far from a progressive reformer as you’ll find in the Democratic Party. Biden hasn’t been directly accountable to a constituency since 2008, but as a current elected official, Bottoms has a very recent record of decisive leadership for voters to judge—both the good, like her swift response to a recent instance of police brutality, and the bad, like what progressives have deemed her inadequate protection of Atlanta residents displaced by gentrification.
Bottoms is no leftist insurgent; like Biden, she’s thoroughly embedded in the Democratic establishment—so much so that she was recently named the chair of the Democratic National Committee platform drafting committee. On race, her rhetoric, though heartfelt and urgent, is more measured politician than militant activist. Though she’s only 50, the way she talks about Biden and race is in line with the worldview of an older generation, at odds with many progressive readings of the issue. “I didn’t know him personally at the time, but I knew his heart,” she told the Los Angeles Times of her early support for Biden. “What was most striking to me … is that he was an older white man willing to stand beside and behind a younger black man to help lead our country.” This reasoning—more concerned with Biden’s personal beliefs and relationships than with his policy platform and leadership record—ignores the systemic racism hundreds of thousands of Americans have been protesting in the streets.
Still, Bottoms’ actual record on racial justice is more impressive than these lackluster statements. In addition to her strides on criminal justice reform, she refused to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to continue detaining immigrants in an Atlanta jail. While Biden is out here calling for more police trainings, Bottoms acknowledges that racism transcends lesson plans. “I don’t think that we can out-train our way as a country out of where we are and how we view race,” she said in a CNN town hall. On June 11, she formed a new advisory board on police use of force and asked them to deliver initial policy reform recommendations within two weeks. And, though Bottoms took some deserved heat for scolding protesters who were damaging property, she comes by her caution honestly, as the daughter of a man who spent time locked up and, as she noted at that press conference, the mother of four Black children who she knows would be disproportionately likely to be harmed if police caught them in proximity to unlawful protest.
But the most important reason why Bottoms would make an excellent vice president has nothing to do with her and everything to do with Biden. The presidential candidate doesn’t react well to being told he’s wrong. When confronted with bad behavior from his past and pressed to do better, Biden usually doubles down with defensiveness, half-truths, anger, and blame. Bottoms is well-positioned to get past that shell of egotism and wield some real influence. She has proved her loyalty to Biden by backing him early, before most Democratic officials had picked a candidate, so he may be more likely to listen to her. Her politics appear to be a bit to the left of Biden’s, but he still sees her as an ideological peer. To the extent that a vice president can influence her administration’s broader policy agenda, as many progressives hope a veep to the left of Biden might, Bottoms has a better shot at being heard than some other candidates on the list.
Bottoms, meanwhile, has been praised for her open-mindedness and willingness to learn. “When advocates first began talking about [bail bond reform], she wasn’t familiar with it,” civil rights lawyer Tiffany Roberts, who co-chairs Bottoms’ commission on criminal justice reform, told Atlanta magazine last year. “When she learned more, she was receptive of implementing it.” With Biden leading the ticket, the best progressives can hope for is a vice president who has his ear, and who’s willing to lend them her own.
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This illustration does not depict the actual ride. The real thing was way more dangerous.Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by kaisorn/iStock/Getty Images Plus, RossHelen/iStock/Getty Images Plus, Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash and Lucian3D/iStock/Getty Images Plus.
The ball was a giant plastic sphere at least 10 feet in diameter. It resembled the kind of thing you stuck a hamster in, except this ball was scaled for a human. A human who would, by virtue of being willing to climb inside, presumably possess an intellect comparable to that very same hamster.
I don’t know how the ball had been transported here. In the spring of 1980, it had been absent one day and here the next. No one thought it unusual. Workers walked by it without comment. In my father Gene’s orbit, the sudden appearance of a medieval-looking contraption in the notorious amusement property he owned and operated for 20 years known as Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey, was simply not remarkable.
As it loomed in front of us, I considered myself fortunate I was still employed as a water slide attendant, not a 16-year-old inspector of giant ball safety.
“Go on and get in the ball, Frank,” my father said.
Frank was apparently an employee of the resort’s wintertime operations. I had never seen him before. Depending on what my father had planned, I might never see him again.
Frank touched the surface as though it were an alien spacecraft made of a strange alloy. He nudged it as though physical contact might reveal its mysteries. The ball wobbled a bit before going still. He slid a hand behind the railing surrounding the exterior. It got stuck, prompting a brief panic. With a sheepish grin, Frank plucked it out.
This would soon be the least of Frank’s problems.
Inside this ball was another ball, one equipped with a seat and a shoulder harness like the kind found in race cars (just not Action Park’s race cars, which were engineered for bone-smashing mayhem). Ball bearings separated the inner ball from the larger exterior ball, which allowed the inner ball to swivel independently and orient itself so the seat always remained upright. Behind Frank, stretching in a zig-zag pattern down the foot of the mountain, was a long track made from PVC piping like the kind used in plumbing, five or six inches in diameter. On the outer surface of the ball were casters and wheels like the ones found on office chairs. With these context clues, I began to understand Frank’s apprehension.
“Once you’re in the ball, Frank,” Gene said, “you’re going to roll along that track …”
“I don’t think—”
“Don’t worry,” my father said, acting as though climbing into a giant ball was routine. “You’ll roll along the track and come to a gentle stop. You get in there and try it out and we’ll take it for a spin when the ride inspectors come.”
Before Frank could protest further, my father handed him a 100 dollar bill. Frank stared at the cash, temporarily placated. He opened a hatch on the ball and peered inside. Charlie O’Brien and Big Al Lazier, my father’s dependable but not strictly sober maintenance men, helped him in. Once Frank was strapped to the seat, the two began rolling him around the grass like they were bored children playing with a toy.
“You’re not gonna find this at Disney,” my father said, beaming.
Rarely did he stop to consider there might be a very good reason for that.
Ken Bailey was the man who came up with the idea for the ball. He called it the Man in the Ball in the Ball. When everyone got tired of saying that, which happened immediately, we just called it the Bailey Ball.
Bailey was a very excitable man who had a childlike enthusiasm for rides. He peddled the ball, his most sensational idea, at the amusement conventions my father frequented. Ken said he got the idea while working as a custodian in a Kmart and accidentally spilling a bunch of whiffle balls on the floor. As they rolled around, Bailey imagined a person inside of each one.
Now it was free. The ball had achievedautonomy.
My father enlisted him to build out his track. When he was finished, we gathered at the foot of the mountain—me, my father, Charlie O’Brien, a physician who inexplicably advised on the safety of rides named Doctor Sugar, and Ken. Also present was an inspector from the Department of Labor, who seemed to recoil at the sight of the mountain track. That he was there at all was something of a formality. Normally, the state had little idea how to evaluate my father’s participatory rides and had no clue how to verify their safety profile. The Bailey Ball would nonetheless need to demonstrate some basic regard for human life in order to be rubber-stamped.
My father had wanted to see the ball in action first thing in the morning, hoping to get it open to the public the following day, but the inspector was running late. Because of the delay, Frank had been in the ball and cooking for more than a half hour, during the first day of hot weather we’d seen. He was already at the mouth of the track, 600 feet up the mountain.
When everyone was in place, Ken gave a thumbs-up. Big Al pushed the ball from its starting position down the graded slope. Things went well for the first 15 seconds or so, with Frank remaining upright in the center of the ball. But, on the first turn to go back across the mountain, the ball didn’t remain in the groove. It broke free and began rolling straight downhill.
Ken’s face fell. He had been working up until the last minute, gluing the PVC together, not realizing it was warping under the heat. I could already see gaps in the tubing. Damaged by the hot sun, the plastic was expanding, severing the rail that was supposed to give the ball direction. Now it was free, unburdened by the track. The ball had achieved autonomy.
It gained momentum, tumbling uncontrollably down the face of the slope and picking up tremendous speed. Inside, Frank spun helplessly, unable to stop. He could not abandon the craft, as the door opened only from the outside.
When the contraption made it to the bottom without any visible damage, and Frank still appeared conscious, I exhaled. But it didn’t stop. It began rolling at high speed toward us like the boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark. We scattered, my dad and I scurrying to the left, and Ken and Charlie to the right. Doctor Sugar and the inspector were frozen, each of their faces a rictus of terror.
The ball cleared a small hill, briefly going airborne, then zipped right across Route 94, the two-lane road splitting the park. Cars honked and slammed on their brakes. If there had been opposing traffic, Frank would have become part of a real-life game of Pong, volleying from one bumper to another.
Still in pursuit, we followed the ball toward a small lake in Motor World that had been earmarked for a fleet of tiny bumper boats for children. The area wasn’t open yet, but the empty boats were being tested and floated on the surface. The ball soared over the grass and smashed into several of them, scattering the others with rippling waves from the impact, which launched some of the boats several feet in the air.
Charlie and Ken waded into the water looking for the hatch. After some difficulty, they got it open. Charlie pulled Frank out by grabbing him under his armpits like a baby. Frank crawled up the bank, coughing and sputtering. He splayed across the grass as we all stared at the ball, which bobbed in the water like it was attached to a fishing lure.
We did not ask for the inspector’s report, nor did we ever hear of one being filed. Ken Bailey returned to Canada. The snowmakers cleared away the PVC. Told to dispose of the Bailey Ball, they rolled it into the woods, where it remained for many years.
My father was unbowed. He kept drawing and doodling attractions, telling us about things that were not yet in the park but soon would be. “Just wait,” he said. “Just wait.”
By Andy Mulvihill with Jake Rossen. Penguin Books.
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Jo-Anna Burnett is three years older than I am, and like me she grew up in New Orleans. In 1989, when she was 12, she noticed that one particular story was dominating the local news. “I remember it was almost every single day there was coverage on this former Ku Klux Klansman who was running for office in an American city,” she told me.
“I had just found his name and number in the White Pages. And, uh, I think I was surprised it was just right there.”
Burnett grabbed a tape recorder and her parents’ speakerphone and headed out to the garage. And then she started dialing. She tried the number several times, with no answer. After about 10 tries, somebody picked up.
“I’m like, oh, wow. Like, this is David Duke. Really, finally, OK. And then I just immediately start asking questions.” Duke immediately tried to parry them.
Burnett: How do you think you got elected?
Duke: I got elected because people believed and agreed with what I talked about.
Burnett: OK, but, OK. You say you’re not, like, you know like a bigot anymore?
Duke: I never was a bigot, ma’am.
Burnett: OK, but you call yourself a racialist.
Duke: No, I don’t.
Burnett: Well …
Duke: I call myself a white civil rights activist because I believe in equal rights for everybody. That’s what I call myself.
Burnett is Black, and she knew that Duke had been in the Ku Klux Klan. But she says she wasn’t afraid of him. “I think I was just still really puzzled and trying to understand, you know, this person’s type of thinking,” she said. Duke, in turn, wanted to get inside Burnett’s head. To do that, he needed to know who he was talking to.
Burnett: Do you think that you should be removed from the Louisiana legislative?
Duke: Well, of course not. I was elected legally. Wait, is this for a report? Or what’s this call about?
Burnett: Uhm, it’s for my social studies project.
Duke: Oh, OK. What school do you go to?
Burnett: Audubon Montessori.
Duke: Uh huh. How old are you?
Burnett: 12.
Duke spoke in a calm, even tone. He told Burnett that he opposed “forced integration of education.” He said that “the best qualified” people should get jobs and promotions and scholarships, and that “racial discrimination goes on today in America against white people in those areas.”
When Burnett asked if he’d really changed since leaving the Klan, he turned the question back around.
“Well, I think that we all change, and I think that we all grow. And I think that my statements have been recorded and photographed,” he said. “I’m sure there are some things in your life that maybe you’d change if you could, that you’ve done, whether to individuals or, you know, or to parents or teachers or friends.”
Duke’s goal in interviews isn’t to explain himself. It’s to manipulate therecord.
Burnett was skeptical. She’d heard a lot of stories about Duke’s past, and she wanted answers. She asked him about his use of racial slurs, whether he’d been affiliated with a Nazi group, and if his wife had left him because he was in the Klan. Duke denied everything. He was defensive and cagey and manipulative. He also criticized the 12-year-old’s interviewing technique.
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “All you’re doing in this interview is repeating allegations and attacks made against me by the media.”
Duke told Burnett that she needed to have an open mind. He suggested that she read the book Race and Reason. The author, Carleton Putnam, believed that Black Americans were genetically inferior to whites.
Duke talked to Burnett for 20 minutes that night. She’s not sure why he stayed on the phone that long. She thinks that Duke may have thought she was white, and that she’d pass on his talking points to her parents.
Burnett’s parents weren’t Duke supporters. They did believe in good manners, though, and they asked their daughter to write Duke a thank you note. Duke printed Burnett’s letter—and her home address—in the newsletter for his National Association for the Advancement of White People.
“I received at least three letters that I remember from prisoners, from inmates telling me that they were, you know, 5-foot-whatever or 6-foot-whatever, brown hair, blue eyes, and, you know, they were Aryan,” she said.
There’s a moment at the very end of Burnett’s tape that really got to me. It comes when her conversation with Duke is over, but before she stops her recorder.
“You heard it,” she says. “God, that guy is a jerk. Well, maybe not. He was just getting his points through, and he was like, ‘you should look at two sides of every story.’ ”
Burnett was puzzling through her conversation with David Duke in real time.
“I mean, he’s saying I should get the book Race and Reason!” she said. “ ‘You should learn and listen to both sides of an argument.’ Yes, but—should I really be letting David Duke tell me this?”
Should we be letting David Duke give us his side of the argument?
I’ve thought about that question a lot as I’ve been doing my research for Slow Burn. It’s standard practice in journalism to reach out to any subject you’re reporting on. For one thing, people have a right to respond to accusations you’re making against them. Plus, a story typically benefits from the perspective of its main subject. But David Duke is not a typical subject.
Consider Tom Snyder’s interview with Duke on NBC’s Tomorrow show in 1974—the one we excerpted in the second episode of our series, where the host and the white nationalist sounded almost chummy.
Snyder introduced Duke to a huge new audience, and I don’t think he understood the gravity of that choice. The 37-year-old late-night host wasn’t as prepared as the 12-year-old Jo-Anna Burnett: He allowed Duke to define himself. and to spread his white nationalist message nationwide. Other TV anchors have done a much better job confronting Duke. (You’ll hear about one of them later in our series.) But sometimes, the best choice is to keep someone like Duke off the stage entirely. And that’s why I won’t be interviewing David Duke for this season of Slow Burn.
In the episodes we’ve already released, listeners have heard plenty of Duke’s voice. I don’t think there’s any doubt about what he believed in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, or today. Duke told Burnett that we all change and grow, but he’s still using whatever platform he has to foment racism and anti-Semitism.
Duke is also congenitally dishonest—he made himself a mainstream political candidate by lying about his views and his background. His goal in interviews isn’t to explain himself. It’s to manipulate the record.
I’m doing this series because I think the Duke phenomenon warrants close scrutiny, and because the ideas he espouses are still with us, and still dangerous.
But Duke the politician is not currently a threat. Yes, he attached himself to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, and yes, he supported Donald Trump’s run for the presidency. But the last time he ran for office, in 2016, he got 3 percent of the vote in a bid for the U.S. Senate. Talking to him now would serve no one’s interests but David Duke’s. We’ll be sure to include Duke’s responses to allegations leveled against him. But his core beliefs—that Black people are inferior to whites, that the Holocaust never happened—don’t deserve to be debated. So we’re not going to hand him the microphone.
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Trump is yet again trying to sue an unflattering book out of existence.SAUL LOEB/Getty Images
A New York judge halted the publication of a tell-all book by President Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, granting a temporary injunction Tuesday after a court filing claimed the book violates a decades-old nondisclosure agreement signed by Mary Trump as part of an inheritance settlement. Mary Trump’s hotly anticipated book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man is set to be published by Simon & Schuster on July 28. The publisher describes book as a firsthand, lived account by the daughter of Trump’s older brother of the “toxic family,” including the “nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse” that made Trump the man he is today. Mary Trump went on to get a PhD in clinical psychology and turns her expert eye inward on her family history.
The order from Judge Hal B. Greenwald essentially pauses the dissemination of the book until a hearing on the matter scheduled for July 10. The book is already in the ether however and numerous news outlets have reported on portions of Mary Trump’s account as part of the standard public relations build-up of such a newsy, high-profile book launch. Simon & Schuster said in a court filing that it was unaware of Mary Trump’s NDA that was part of an inheritance settlement upon the death of her grandfather, President Trump’s father, Fred Trump. Mary Trump’s own father, Fred Trump Jr., died in 1981 of an alcohol-related disease. A lawyer for Mary Trump and Simon & Schuster said that any intervention by the courts would amount to prior restraint of Mary Trump’s First Amendment right to free speech.
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Last month, the Daily Beast reported that Mary Trump was the primary source for a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 New York Times investigation into the Trump family finances. Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp said in the court filing “knowing that no litigation resulted from the Times article, we were entirely confident in Ms. Trump’s ability to tell her story regarding her own family.” Simon & Schuster said it had already printed 75,000 copies of the book and many are already with retailers ahead of the book’s publication date.
The legal action taken against the publication of presumably damning details of Trump’s life is one of many legal rainmakers thrown by the Trump legal team, and comes on the heels of the president’s legal efforts to suppress former national security aide John Bolton’s own tell-all book about his time in the White House. Often the legal squabbles have the opposite of the intended effect and gin up interest rather than tamp down disclosures. Mary Trump’s book, for example, is already No. 1 in Amazon book sales based on preorders even before its official release.
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In 1989, a Black 12-year-old girl in New Orleans found the David Duke phenomenon, and Duke himself, hard to comprehend. So she called Duke on the phone to ask him some questions.
In this Slow Burn interlude: how a budding journalist outdid the professionals. Plus, why we won’t be interviewing David Duke for our series.
Season 4 of Slow Burn is produced by Josh Levin and Christopher Johnson. Mixing by Paul Mounsey. Slow Burn’s production assistant is Madeline Ducharme and Sophie Summergrad is the podcast’s assistant producer.
