No Mercy / No Malice: ICE Age

As read by George Hahn. https://www.profgmedia.com/p/ice-age Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing increasingly is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It To Me: How to Mind Your Manners. New episodes Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:32Scott Galloway?

  This week, we're re-airing a post originally published in July of 2025. The conversation around AI and the labor market has shifted since then. Sadly, the rest remains relevant. As we wrote this last year, Donald Trump is building an American mass police force. ICE killings, inhumane detention centers, and a lawless mass deportation campaign reflect we're not on a slippery slope, we're in a vertical drop. I think these developments have been incredibly depressing. However, I have been encouraged by the everyday Americans standing up to these forces. If that's you, thank you. Keep going. And if you're ready to get off the sidelines, welcome to the resistance.

• 1:20George Hahn?

  President Trump is no longer fighting inflation, China, or AI. Instead, he's declared war on a manufactured threat: the enemy within. Immigrants, journalists, and professors. Our biggest threat, apparently, isn't Russian aggression or economic inequality, it's your Uber driver or anthropology professor. This is not only cruel and depraved, but stupid. As the chill being cast across the agriculture, services, and construction sectors will likely be more inflationary than the tariffs. More stupidity. Trump's goal is to deport 4 million

• 2:05George Hahn?

  undocumented people over four years. That's about 3% of the US workforce. 10% to 15% in several sectors depended on immigrant labor. The big, beautiful bill signed into law on July 4th isn't about border security. It's a blueprint for mass detention and deportation. A $75 billion hammer in search of a scapegoat. Under the law, ICE gets funding that rivals the military budgets of Italy or Israel to build sites like the facility in the Everglades, nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. The goal? Fear. This isn't law enforcement. It's authoritarian

• 2:49George Hahn?

  cosplay designed to scare the electorate and silence dissent. Trump's war doesn't punish behavior, but identity, as immigrants from certain countries and ethnicities are targeted. Federal agents in full tactical gear swept through a park in Latino-heavy LA this week just to make a point. The mayor said, "It's the way a city looks before a coup." Question: What do stormtroopers, the KKK, and ICE have in common? A mask. ICE has become Trump's personal Praetorian Guard. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz,

• 3:34George Hahn?

  Vice President Harris's running mate, was excoriated for comparing ICE to the Gestapo. But spare us the bullshit indignation. Masked agents in fatigues raiding churches and schools, separating families, is not modern America, but 1930s Europe. Or is it? In the 2026 fiscal year, ICE will receive over $11 billion, a 10% increase from current funding. The new law will more than double that. It authorizes the hiring of 10,000 agents,

• 4:12George Hahn?

  bringing ICE's force to nearly 30,000. In 1944, Nazi Germany had 32,000 Gestapo officers and $2 billion, inflation-adjusted, in funding. They were fighting a world war. Trump is fighting home health aides and Uber drivers. ICE claims it's targeting "the worst of the worst," but fewer than 1/3 of the record 59,000 immigrant detainees have been convicted of any crime. The rest? A: immigrants who

• 4:52George Hahn?

  didn't look like the typical Iowa voter. Trump's reach even extends to his political rivals. He publicly questioned the citizenship of NYC mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani and his former first friend, Elon. Mamdani has been a US citizen since 2018. Doesn't matter. Criminal now also means "not for Trump." The argument that immigrants are stealing jobs is a lie, told by people who've never built a business or managed a P&L. Immigrants create jobs. They work jobs native-born Americans

• 5:34George Hahn?

  won't touch. They pay into Social Security but rarely collect. Deporting them is an economic own goal. The Cato Institute estimates the cost of mass deportations could eventually exceed $1 trillion. The Peterson Institute projects a 1.2% drop in GDP if 1.3 million people are deported, growing to 7% if deportations hit 8 million. That's not policy, but see above: stupidity. Hurting others while hurting yourself.

• 6:18George Hahn?

  Instead of militarizing immigration enforcement, we should be investing against the real challenge: AI. The World Economic Forum says 9 million jobs globally may be displaced in the next five years. Anthropic's CEO warns AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Imagine the population of Greece storming the shores of America and taking jobs, even jobs Americans actually want, as they're willing to work 24/7 for free. You've already met them. Their names are GPT, Claude, and Gemini. Want to protect

• 7:02George Hahn?

  American workers? Train. Don't terrorize. Trump's war on domestic enemies doesn't stop with ICE. He's coming for the press and the academy. Disney, Meta, and Paramount have all settled nuisance lawsuits with Trump for a combined total of about $60 million. All the funds go to his presidential library, where truth will go to be laundered, not learned. Newsrooms are folding or playing defense. Breaking with a longstanding tradition, the White House is handpicking press pool participants. Harvard, once America's aircraft carrier

• 7:44George Hahn?

  strike force of soft power, is now a MAGA speedbag. Autocrats always come for universities, which train people to ask questions. The White House is threatening to defund billions in research, choke off international student visas, and criminalize campus dissent. Nearly 300 top researchers have applied for scientific asylum. In France! In the '30s and '40s, some of the world's premier academics fled Europe for America. They brought quantum theory, chemotherapy, modern computing, and other breakthroughs with them. Oh, including

• 8:28George Hahn?

  the bomb. The rivers of elite human capital are now flowing in reverse, and we're sending the scholars back. How can we be this fucking stupid? This isn't a slippery slope, but a vertical drop. Trump has Congress kneeling, courts folding, and corporations cashing in. What's left is us. This was never just about immigrants, professors, or journalists. It's about unchecked power that, unchallenged, is metastasizing.

• 9:09George Hahn?

  Democracy doesn't defend itself. We won't fight this with hashtags, but with votes, lawsuits, and courage. This is the moment we decide: are we citizens of a republic? Or spectators to its collapse? Life is so rich.