The panel unpacks President Trump’s latest executive orders on cash bail, National Guard enforcement, and flag burning—are they strong reforms or constitutional overreach? The panel also examines the uproar over Chinese student visas and considers how the U.S. should weigh talent acquisition against national security. Plus: Will the Travis Kelce–Taylor Swift engagement spark a marriage and baby boom?
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Audio Transcript
Charles Fain Lehman: Welcome back to the City Journal Podcast. I’m your host Charles Fain Lehman, a senior editor at City Journal. Joining me on the panel today are Daniel Di Martino, Neetu Arnold, and Rafael Manuel, all variously of Manhattan Institute, immigration, higher education, lower education, all kinds of education, Neetu really. You do the full spectrum of education and everything, everything, right? It’s good. And all things crime, which is related to education.
Neetu Arnold: Yeah, everything, everything.
Rafael Mangual: Sure.
Charles Fain Lehman: You’re the school and Ralph is the prison and Daniel is the pipeline, I guess.
Rafael Mangual: There’s a pipeline in the middle, right?
Daniel Di Martino: Hey, hey, immigration and crime and education, it’s all related actually. You know, and it’s all about merit.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah.
Charles Fain Lehman: It is. It is.
Daniel Di Martino: Or it should be. Or it should be.
Charles Fain Lehman: True.
Neetu Arnold: Everything’s related.
Charles Fain Lehman: Some, some people, right. Some people deserve to go to college and some people deserve to go to prison. I do. I do think that’s true.
Daniel Di Martino: I’m going to America versus, I don’t know, you know, China or Spain.
Charles Fain Lehman: I would say nobody really deserves North Korea, but that’s me. All right. I want to take us into some of the news. We’ve been doing a lot on the president’s executive orders, but that’s because he’s been giving us a lot to talk about. Let’s jump into earlier this week, President Trump signed new executive orders penalizing states for abandoning cash bail, expanding the use of the National Guard both in D.C. and also gearing up for potential National Guard deployment in Chicago or somewhere else. And also doing something that is sort of like trying to prosecute flag burning, but not really. So I want to talk about all those and then, you know, maybe we’ll have an agreement, maybe we’ll have a disagreement on the flag burning EO. I wrote about this in City Journal. So I obviously have opinions and I’m curious for the rest of the panels. Well, let’s start. I’m curious what Ralph’s take. Ralph was like, I never get to talk about crime on the show. So Ralph, what do you make of the EOs?
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, mean, look, the cash bail EOs are interesting, right? Because they’re directionally right, right? Trump is onto something. You have a lot of jurisdictions, particularly in deep blue cities, that are not doing enough to incapacitate pretrial defendants, right? So, you know, for the listeners who aren’t really sure how this works, generally speaking, when you’re arrested and you’re arraigned, you go before a judge, and one of the decisions that they’re going to make in addition to whether or not there’s probable cause in your case is whether or not you’re going to be released pretrial. The vast majority of defendants in America get released pretrial, they get released on the recognizance, which means that they just get a court date and they have to come back. But for some defendants who are more dangerous, who are facing more serious charges, right, they might actually end up in jail.
And there’s really two ways that people end up in jail as pretrial defendants. One way is that a judge says, well, you’re a maniac, so you’re staying inside. We’re not going to release you because we think you’re going to end up killing somebody or hurting somebody or going on a crime spree. And then there are people who are a flight risk and judges will impose a monetary condition on their release, which means that they will have to put up some amount of money in the form of bail in order to basically buy their freedom during the pretrial period, right? We want to make sure you come back, so we want to give you some skin in the game. And so if you don’t come back, you lose whatever it is that you were forced to put up by the court. Now, some people will be able to come up with that money. In fact, most people who have bail set will be able to come up with the money to get out. But some people won’t be able to come up with it, and so they’ll end up in jail just simply by virtue of the fact that they weren’t able to come up with the money.
A subsection of that population is going to be made up of people who would have committed crimes and so society benefits from the fact that they’re inside and didn’t come up with their bail. But some of those people probably wouldn’t have committed an offense. And this is where kind of the bail reform debate has kind of kicked off. Now, what I think Trump is right about is that the blue jurisdictions have gone too far, right? Too many people who shouldn’t be getting out pretrial are getting out pretrial.
Where I would sort of quibble with how he did it is just kind of by zeroing in on the cash bail issue. It gives off the impression that the most efficient or the best way to keep the public safe in this context is to just make people pay to get out. Now, here’s the thing. If you are an offender who poses a high risk of committing more crimes, the fact that you had to put up some money in order to buy your freedom doesn’t necessarily insulate the public from the risk that you pose. And so why center the conversation on the bail aspect, right? What I wish Trump would have done is kind of taken the more nuanced approach, which makes it a little harder to sell. It’s not as marketable, right? Cash bail is a very easy term. It kind of rolls off the tongue. But what he really should have zeroed in on was just pre-trial detention in general, to say, look, more people need to get locked up. You know, making them pay money and hoping that the dangerous ones aren’t able to come up with the money is not a particularly efficient way of going about that.
Daniel Di Martino: Can I ask you a question about that, Ralph? So, you know, years ago, I didn’t even know that that’s how it worked with bail. And so it’s a newer topic for me. But I can see two arguments on this issue. On the one hand, you might say, well, yes, it’s not efficient or fair that it’s about money. If you’re a flight risk, just keep you in pretrial detention, regardless of how much you can pay. Right. So I think that that’s a compelling argument. And on the other hand, you can say, actually, you know, yes, the financial side is not only a good incentive to come back, but some people who might be able to come up with the bail money because their family, friends would give it to them, their family and friends wouldn’t give it to them if they know that person is not going to show up. So it’s a market mechanism. So I can see both sides here. What do you think?
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, look, I mean, I do think that there is a class of offenders for whom you could sufficiently mitigate the risk of flight by having them put some amount of money at risk. I don’t think the system has been super great at assessing right where that sweet spot is. Part of it is…
Charles Fain Lehman: Yep. And we have evidence of that, that looks at does cash bail actually reduce flight risk? And the answer is no.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah. So, but I think part of the reason for that is that judges just aren’t really good about thinking about what those incentives look like and sort of calibrating the bail amount to… Yeah.
Daniel Di Martino: We need economics consultants.
Charles Fain Lehman: Well, so, and this gets to something that you’ve talked about, Ralph, that I’ve talked about that I think has been a big theme for us at MI in the Policing and Public Safety Initiative, which is like, and my concern about this EO is there are some states that have just gone cash bail is bad, let’s have no bail and just let a lot of people out. New York, Illinois, California had this like temporary no bail policy during COVID that measurably increased crime. That’s bad. And then the other end, there were states that have done this experiment with what you talked about as algorithmic bail, where the idea is instead of putting up a surety, you have a risk assessment protocol that says, how likely are you to re-offend? How likely are you to be a flight risk based on prior data and what we know about you? And then the judge makes a decision based on that risk assessment tool. These exist in, I think, dozen, two dozen states, somewhere between that. And those have been fairly effective as like a tool for a…
Daniel Di Martino: I like that. I mean, shouldn’t it be obvious that if it’s a person that is charged with, say, their second theft offense, that perhaps they should be detained pretrial? And ideally, you know, I mean, I guess the solution to all of this is to be able to have trials also quicker. If you have quicker, you know, like less weight, this matters less.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, this is… That’s a really important structural point and I’m glad you made it because one of the things I always try to make sure I say in these discussions is that the only reason that bail reform became a thing was primarily a function of how long people stood to spend in pretrial detention. And that, I mean, it can take nine months, over a year for some cases, two years.
Daniel Di Martino: How long does it usually take?
Charles Fain Lehman: Varies by jurisdiction.
Daniel Di Martino: Nine months. And is that because crime went up or because we are under funding courts? Because this is getting me back to my immigration expertise.
Rafael Mangual: Because we’re underfunding courts. Yeah, this is exactly the right point.
Charles Fain Lehman: It’s because we’re underfunding courts, but it’s also just that courts have gotten measurably slower. There’s interesting research on this in the National Center for State Courts, where they find that judges have just forgotten how to make expedite their calendars in a way that…
Rafael Mangual: Yeah. I mean, it’s almost like.
Daniel Di Martino: And they’re lifetime appointments.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah. Well, sometimes, right.
Rafael Mangual: Well, in the federal system they are, right? I mean, in the state system, no. But I mean, it’s almost as if, like, 30 days has become the default period between hearings. You know, and judges don’t even blink at a 60-day, you know, period between hearings. And so that’s something that absolutely has to change. But yeah, I mean, the amount of time that people are lingering in pre-trial detention is largely a function of the resources that the system has to process cases quickly. And if we just invested in the system, we could actually move people through the criminal justice process more quickly.
Daniel Di Martino: Right. And save. And save because sentencing comes quicker, so you save future crimes. So not only do we need, like, pretrial detention for dangerous people, we also need to shorten pretrial detention and so funding courts. I think that we don’t talk enough about that.
Rafael Mangual: For sure.
Charles Fain Lehman: I want to hop in here and get everybody’s temperature on the most culturally inflammatory, to deliberately make a pun, component of the EO. And me too, I’m curious what your takes on this. I think I have a sense of where Ralph and Daniel are. One of the EOs was sort of to go after the burning of the flag, except it doesn’t really because the Supreme Court has said that burning the flag as protest is protected by the First Amendment. And so what it actually does is say, you can’t burn the flag while involved in some other crime or active unprotected speech and if you do, we’ll prosecute you. But this has like prompted and indeed, you know, I think there’s disagreement among folks at MI about this. Like our colleague Colin Wright is pretty aggressively pro, I think he’s anti-burning flags when he’s pro the right to burn flags, which is a respectable position. I’m, you know, I wrote a piece for City Journal saying we need a flag burning amendment. So I think reasonable people disagree about this one, but I’m curious what people make of the broader…
Rafael Mangual: Well, those two positions aren’t in tension.
Charles Fain Lehman: Well, maybe, right? You know, do you favor an amendment is a big question about free speech.
Daniel Di Martino: No, not necessarily In tension because for example, I’m again, I think alcohol is bad for your health. I don’t think alcohol should be prohibited. You know what I mean?
Charles Fain Lehman: No, no, he’s saying…
Neetu Arnold: The unpopular thing in here.
Charles Fain Lehman: A man after my own heart. Yeah, I mean, so what do what do people…
Daniel Di Martino: But even then, even then it’s different than the burning the flag. I think that’s more objectively bad. And yeah, what do you think?
Charles Fain Lehman: No, so let me…
Neetu Arnold: Just got to say, so my understanding of the Trump executive order on flag desecration really more broadly is that he’s within the laws, he’s within the confines of the law. It sounds like he wants to prioritize prosecutions that involve flag burning. And so to me, that executive order as it stands, I’m fine with that. I think if he were to expand it, and just go after all flag burnings, that’s a line for me. I’ve heard various different arguments on this. Sometimes it’s about just respect for the country and compelling a sort of respect, which I don’t think you can compel that respect. I think it has to be genuine. It has to come from the heart. I think that’s how you’re going to have true support for this country. I’ve heard some people say that flag burnings used to be illegal, you know, pre-1989. But to that, I would say that a lot of things used to be illegal. A lot of rights didn’t used to exist. You know, women didn’t used to have the right to vote, but just because something wasn’t a right previously doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be. So that’s where I stand.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah. So look, I mean, I think is actually a really important point because what the president’s EO, as I read it, does, it doesn’t articulate any new stance on prosecuting flag burning per se. What it’s saying is that, in a lot of cases of flag burning, there are other crimes being committed. For example, I think someone was just arrested and charged recently for burning a flag in protest of this executive order, but they burned it in a park and you can’t set a fire in a park. And so they prosecuted the individual for setting a fire in a park. And so I think what the Trump administration is saying is that, in a lot of these instances, right, we actually do have an opportunity to sanction people who are burning the flag, not for burning the flag, but for the other things that they’re doing in violation of the law. Now, I will say, I mean, I’m sure a lawyer is going to make what’s called a selective prosecution argument, right? And so, you know, in the law, it is a defense to say that, I committed this crime, but the only reason that they are prosecuting this crime is because, you know, I’ve engaged in speech that they don’t like, for example, and therefore I’m going to raise a First Amendment defense claiming that this is a selective prosecution based on speech. And I think…
Charles Fain Lehman: Jed Rubenfeld made this argument at the Free Press.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, so I mean, I think that’s a legitimate argument that courts are going to entertain in the various cases. But I think more importantly, really what this EO comes down to is Trump once again getting Democrats to take the least popular position on what is an 80-20 issue. This is like a skill of his and he does it every other month. And I don’t think that Dems have learned the lesson. The flag is an incredibly popular symbol. A majority of Americans support prosecuting people who burn the flag and banning flag burning. So he’s absolutely on to something. He’s illustrating the fact that he’s more in touch with the American people than his political opponents. And he’s just inviting them to remind Americans of that separation.
Charles Fain Lehman: My proposal here was, so after Texas v. Johnson, the 1989 case where the Supreme Court says burning the flag in protest is protected by the First Amendment, there are a bunch of efforts to pass a federal flag burning amendment, flag desecration amendment to the Constitution, which says actually Congress is empowered to prohibit flag desecration. They failed a bunch of times. They couldn’t quite get it over the two thirds threshold in Congress.
You know, my proposal is, if we agree that Texas v. Johnson was right, which I don’t necessarily concede, but let’s concede that for the purposes of argument, you can still do this. And I would like to see Chuck Schumer take that vote. I would like to know, you know, Ruben Gallego, how’s he going to vote on that one when it gets to the Senate? How is Marie Gluesenkamp Perez going to vote on that one?
Daniel Di Martino: You mean like they can still do it as in the Biden proposal that just bans it overall without intent? Because Biden had a proposal to get around it, and I actually think would be very dangerous because it means that if you accidentally burn it, that’s a crime.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean, think, yeah, I would be surprised if that survived scrutiny is the actual answer.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, I don’t think it would survive scrutiny.
Neetu Arnold: Can I ask why is burning the American flag so important that it requires a constitutional amendment?
Charles Fain Lehman: Okay. So right. And this, think, is the core of the conversation is, so there are two answers, right? When we talk about it was banned for a long time, it’s like, yes, of course, there were things that were prohibited that are legal that should have been illegal and things that were legal that should have been illegal for a very long time. At the same time, know, William Rehnquist in his majority, in his minority, excuse me, in his dissent in Texas v. Johnson says, like, it is very hard for me to deviate from the consensus of the people as represented in 48 state legislatures and the Congress who say, this is obviously repulsive to us and we as a moral community have the right to say that. I think that what they’re getting at there is that the flag is more than just a particular expression of an idea. It’s representative of the nation as a whole and more relevantly, the set of values that undergirds our liberty, right? Like my right to speak freely, my right as an American to speak freely is undergirded by a concrete constitutional order that the flag stands for. And I think it is fine to say that we should not be able to attack that fundamental set of rights as embodied in the flag.
Rafael Mangual: And I also think our constitutional order fundamentally recognizes the legitimacy of a consensus as large as the consensus that you would need to have to achieve a constitutional amendment.
Daniel Di Martino: Okay, I’ll ask you a question. What if they changed the flag? Let’s say the United States became a socialist country. They changed the flag and it was red with a big star. Would you burn that one?
Charles Fain Lehman: I would be against-
Rafael Mangual: Right, that would have.
Charles Fain Lehman: I would not have free speech rights in that country. Like, I’m not sure I see the relevancy.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah.
Daniel Di Martino: I don’t know. Okay. I’ll tell you one thing in the Venezuelan protest, you know, from Venezuela, right? We never desecrated the flag. The opposite. We marched with the flag, right? You march the flag that the regime changed. They did add an extra star to our flag. They changed it because this is part of authoritarian regimes. But so, so I don’t quite understand why people would want to burn the American flag, unless they really didn’t even want to live in America, in which case just go, leave.
Charles Fain Lehman: I mean, I think….
Neetu Arnold: The counter argument would be that it’s
Daniel Di Martino: But I do understand the principle that people should not go to prison for doing something like that. That seems very radical to me.
Neetu Arnold: Well, I mean, the counter argument is that if you are protesting the government or if you bought your own flag, you know, if you burn it, is like, is that the property of the American government?
Daniel Di Martino: Well, technically, dollars are not your property. They’re the property of the reserve. So if you burn dollars, is it a crime?
Rafael Mangual: But you can’t burn money. You can’t destroy a treasury bill. I mean, look…
Charles Fain Lehman: You also can’t destroy a draft card. Yeah.
Daniel Di Martino: You can’t? Is it illegal? Oh, really?
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, yeah, it’s illegal.
Neetu Arnold: Wait, what if someone rips it? Like I’ve seen some people draw on dollar bill signs, like is that legal?
Charles Fain Lehman: You can’t deface the money.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, I mean, technically you’re defacing a Treasury bill. That’s illegal.
Daniel Di Martino: Okay, that’s kind of crazy, it’s your money.
Charles Fain Lehman: You can’t do that. I mean, the argument in Johnson is the state has a compelling interest in preserving the integrity of the flag as supported by the fact that basically every state thought they had a compelling interest in it. And again, by it being a symbol of our liberties.
Daniel Di Martino: No, I think the legal argument, you’re right, Charles. I think that historically, you know, it’s right.
Rafael Mangual: Look, yeah, I don’t think Charles is right about the argument in Johnson. You used an interesting word, Daniel. You called it radical. I think that is true. But I also think that the United States is a radical political experiment insofar as it sort of consecrated this commitment to free speech at the highest level. Is it repulsive to me? Yes, which is why I would support a constitutional amendment to have a special carve out for this. And if a large enough segment of the American population could get behind this to the point that that constitutional amendment passes, I would be extremely happy to see that happen. Right? But I do think that it’s important that speech, even repulsive speech, cannot be banned until that threshold is met.
Daniel Di Martino: Well, but even if the threshold is met, Rafa, I do think that if the threshold was met to ban hate speech, then they would stop being a free country. It doesn’t matter that the threshold was met for the constitutional amendment. Like a constitutional amendment can’t whitewash a bad policy, right?
Rafael Mangual: Sure. Well, I mean, under our constitutional order, it can, right? In the sense, right, legally, but not from more of a moral philosophical perspective. Yeah, no, absolutely.
Daniel Di Martino: Well, it can legally. I’m talking about ethically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I would support a right to life amendment. I would support a balanced budget amendment. Because I think those are good policies. So I think it’s, I’m honestly turned, Charles.
Rafael Mangual: Sure.
Charles Fain Lehman: All right, all right, this is a much longer conversation and we’re going to get on to the next topic. So I’m going to take us out. What was I going to take us out with? Oh, yeah, so let me just ask very concretely. One symbol of dysfunction in D.C., just to go back, is Union Station, which is the main train station in D.C. This is a yes or no question. Do we believe the administration can durably, we were talking in the section before we started, like how durable this stuff is going to be, but here’s the symbol. After 30 days is up, can the Trump administration keep Union Station clean? And actually they just took over governance of it from Amtrak, so that might be longer term, but can they keep Union Station clean? Yes or no? Neetu?
Neetu Arnold: In 30 days? I think you need to be there longer.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah. Okay. Okay. That’s a no. Daniel?
Daniel Di Martino: I just came from Union Station like last week and it was fine. It was great. The National Guard is there. I mean, it’s not dirty. Like, I mean, Penn Station is dirty. Maybe my comparison here with New York is bad, but Union Station is great with the National Guard, and I think they’re going to keep it fine.
Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, Ralph?
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, I think the Trump administration can absolutely do it. The question is what happens after the Trump administration.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. I think it’s… will it be durable? I’m skeptical. All right. Let’s talk very briefly and you know, we’re going to move from crime to immigration a little bit. There’s sort of an uproar last week. Actually, I guess earlier this week. It’s a little unclear. It seems like basically the president said that he wants May or may not have said that he wants to admit 600,000 Chinese student visa holders to the US the administration sort of subsequently clarified this is two years’ worth of visas which is equivalent to basically the current rate of visas admitted to what?
Daniel Di Martino: It’s not even two years worth of visas. It’s not even two years worth of visas. Nobody knows what they’re talking about. That’s what’s happening.
Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, Daniel, Daniel, tell us what happened in this debate. Break it down for the listener.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah, Trump said a comment that he thinks it’s a good thing if there are 600,000 Chinese foreign students in America. The actual number of Chinese foreign students in America, including people who are not enrolled in school but working post-school is 270,000 across all levels. Among those, the only ones who are undergraduates is 87,000. That is less than 0.5 percent of all the undergraduate students in America. It’s nothing, okay? It’s totally overblown out of proportion. And the most important thing, 600,000 is not reachable, not because the legal structure isn’t there, 600,000 Chinese students could come to America if they wanted to. It’s just that there aren’t 600,000 Chinese international students who have even applied to come to America. So that’s why I think the whole debate is misconstrued and then you saw like a lot of people who are very nativist saying, these students steal the spots of Americans in undergraduate institutions and they, you know, exaggerate the numbers. They think that there are 600,000 Americans who are not going to college because 600,000 Chinese are. They get the numbers wrong, get the effects wrong, they get everything wrong.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, fixed pie, right?
Charles Fain Lehman: I’ve been told there are 100 million illegal immigrants in the United States right now.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah, there are 100 million immigrants. The country’s population is 500 million. Do you see people on the street, Charles? Do you even walk?
Charles Fain Lehman: So, I, okay, but so I want to I want to get into sort of the there’s one bad argument against this, right, which is sort of like objection to Chinese people qua Chinese people. But I think there’s a more interesting split here that I want to talk about, which is, you know, on the one hand, we have an interest in high-skilled immigration. We want people to come here, go to our universities and then ideally stay here and like contribute to our economy and make us stronger. And the other hand, like I think basically everyone on the American right and like, well, okay, many people on the American right and some people on the American left agree that the People’s Republic of China is our primary, like foreign adversary. And I think there are real security risks when it comes with admitting Chinese students to American universities. So what do we make of that trade off? Right? I think, you know, I think the president is a little unclear and the president often changes his views day to day on many issues, including immigration. So, so what do we, what do we make of that bigger, of that bigger conflict? Sorry, Daniel, go ahead.
Daniel Di Martino: Well, on this issue, he’s been very consistent. I think he’s been very consistent on that issue. But I will say that not everybody agrees with you. I do, that there’s a trade-off. A lot of people actually say, don’t need high-skilled immigration, and these people steal the spots of Americans. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of the Chinese students and just foreign students are in graduate programs paying a lot of money that is used to open spots on the undergraduate level for Americans. And there’s been many studies on this. And then the question about spying, I think it’s totally true. And that’s why I’m very happy about Secretary Marco Rubio of State that has been vetting finally who is a communist, right? Who participated in CCP activities in China. Some people say we can’t trust any Chinese or whatever, but that’s ridiculous. There’s so many great Chinese Americans. You know, like the children, the amazing American kids who are like competing all over the world are the children of these people who came earlier. You know, like how do you think we got these great Asian Americans in America? They didn’t grow up here. They’re the children of the immigrants who came here.
Rafael Mangual: So there are absolutely costs associated with an expansion of immigration from what is a country that I think is our sort of number one geopolitical foe. There’s the intelligence threat. There’s the influence threat. I mean, these are kids that can come and sort of raise hell on college campuses and push people to the left and promote a more radical ideology. so just discord here in America, but there is also a potential benefit in the opposite direction, which is to say that by exposing some people who have been vetted to the beauty of American life and the freedom associated with the privilege of living in this country and hoping that they go back and with them take a lower level of tolerance for the kind of oppression that I think is embodied by the CCP. It could actually be a weapon for us in a way. What better tool to have in our arsenal than the ability to turn Chinese immigrants against, or temporary Chinese immigrants against the CCP and send them back with not just the education that they’re going to get, but with the power of the experience of living in freedom.
Neetu Arnold: Well, mean, the trade off, we can address this trade off by addressing the contracts that universities are signing with these foreign countries because there are many students that are coming here and they’re funded by the foreign government and their students are coming here, who are paying on their own. I’d be more concerned about Chinese students who are part of a contract from the Chinese government because then they’re usually strings attached to those contracts, they may not be able to say bad things about China, which again, we’re not getting the truth as American citizens, as American students. So, you know, they’re usually strings attached. They may not be able to say things that are honest about the country. You know, they may have certain obligations to the country. And so I think that’s where the real problem is. It’s the contracts. You know, I think if we address that issue, you wouldn’t really have to worry about the visas in the first place.
Charles Fain Lehman: Can you give an example of this? Because I’m only vaguely familiar with this as a concept, and I think many of our listeners would be interested.
Neetu Arnold: Yeah, so mean, there are countries like Saudi Arabia, China, they have contracts, the governments of those countries have contracts with the universities and they’re going to send a certain amount of number of students to the universities. And, you know, we have documented evidence, you know, for example, with the Saudi students, they could not say bad things about the country. If someone asks them about it, they could not say it.
Daniel Di Martino: Yes. That is absolutely true.
Neetu Arnold: And so, like. if you’re an American student and you want to learn about another country you want to know what it’s like to live there I think we benefit from having the full knowledge both the good and the and, you know, I think when the students are not allowed to say certain issues, you know, that’s a problem. We’ve also seen the censorship issue with Chinese students. There have been reports about this. You know, they interview the students, you know, usually under confidentiality. And they’re saying, you know, they’re Chinese, there are other people that are spying on us for the Chinese government. We cannot say, we cannot say critical things about the government.
Daniel Di Martino: You saw the recent report that the consulate of the Chinese government in New York City had been sponsoring political activity to influence the mayoral, council member elections, state assembly. I think we have to understand we’re in a new Cold War against China, and the US government needs to take radical steps. And among those perhaps is we need to close down the Chinese consulates. And perhaps there only needs to be diplomatic representation in D.C., and we need to go after the spies, which by the way, they’re not all Chinese ethnically or in citizenship.
Rafael Mangual: Sure. Yeah.
Daniel Di Martino: Many of them are paid actors from other countries and native-born Americans. And so I think there needs to be a lot more focus on the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party, but at the same time, we need to recognize that the reason America overcomes China economically. The reason America is so prosperous is because there are so many intelligent people innovating. And a lot of those people happen to be born in other countries. And if you can steal a really smart person who supports American values from China, that is a win-win for the Chinese people, for the immigrant, and for Americans.
Rafael Mangual: 100 percent, 100 percent. I think what people are worried about though is like, are we stealing talent from China or are we unwittingly importing a foreign agent? Yeah.
Daniel Di Martino: Yes.
Charles Fain Lehman: You end up doing both, right? Like necessarily, because your search is never going to be optimal.
Daniel Di Martino: With Saudi, it’s an example. People don’t talk enough about Saudi. They’re the worst offenders on this whole government surveillance of their international students here, which are actually paid by the government because it’s a free money source for American colleges, which by the way, I think people don’t appreciate how much American small towns will be devastated if their local college closed down when they’re the main employer in dozens of towns.
Think about like, how the steel industry and the coal industry were decimated. This would be a new Rust Belt in America if these colleges closed down because there’s some restriction on foreign students, right? Which are mostly not Chinese, they’re Indian, they’re Arab, they’re Latin American, a lot of European. But there’s also these agreements that need to mention with Chinese universities and American universities that I think the U.S. government is to scrutinize much more. They’re not directly with the CCP, but they are with Chinese universities that are state-owned.
Neetu Arnold: Would we be so upset though if a college was shutting down because they relied so much on foreign students?
Daniel Di Martino: Well, it depends on what you mean by so much. I mean, if they lose 1 percent, let’s say this college has 1 percent of enrollment, and that’s the break-even point and they’re closed down, is that relying so much?
Neetu Arnold: But I mean, I just don’t know if that’s something that appeals to me in terms of an argument. I mean, what I would care about is, you know, because I think we’re also seeing a lot of small towns that are dying, not just because of colleges closing down, just because of a lot of reasons. And you’re seeing a lot of migration from small towns to larger cities. So I don’t know if that’s a good reason to keep around foreign students. But to your point, you know, I agree that they can offer knowledge that we don’t have or they’re filling the spots that we’re just unable to at this moment. And I also think that we should be having better math and reading education so that citizens of this country are more prepared. But I think that’s a big step.
Daniel Di Martino: Sure. Yeah, and increase high school graduation rates. Increase high school graduation rates, improve high school so that more people can go to college and be qualified to do it. Sorry, Charles, you want to say something?
Charles Fain Lehman: No, I was going to say, I should cut us off there. There’s a great deal more that we can go, but I want to be mindful of time. So I’m going to exercise moderator’s privilege and ask, I mean, I it seems like the consensus is we should issue better Chinese visas. We should issue better visas. We should be more cognizant of the influence that the CCP and other potentially hostile foreign actors exercise over American universities. But still let me ask, in an ideal world, should we be issuing fewer the same number as or more visas to Chinese nationals. Fewer the same or more? Daniel, I’ll kick it to you.
Daniel Di Martino: I think that if my ideal policy was implemented of vetting against communists while allowing anybody who is not a commie to come in, there would probably be fewer Chinese students than there are right now.
Charles Fain Lehman: Interesting. Okay. Okay. Neetu?
Neetu Arnold: I don’t really care about the visa issue. I care about the contracts. I think if you address the contracts with the universities, then you address a lot of the issues right there.
Charles Fain Lehman: Fair. Ralph?
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, I mean, I’d go with fewer. It should never be zero. And the reason for that is, is that talent, you know, especially at the high level, when you’re talking about tail ends of a distribution, there’s no reason to expect that they’re not going to be in other parts of the world. And we shouldn’t cut ourselves off from that potential benefit. But at the same time, security has got to be taken seriously. So I think if you do that, like Daniel said, that means the number is going to go down.
Charles Fain Lehman: All right, before we go, we got to do our light item. We have to talk about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, who got engaged earlier this week.
Rafael Mangual: Oh, do we? Do we have to? We have to?
Charles Fain Lehman: We do, we do, it’s obligatory. Our producer Isabella will be very unhappy with me if we don’t do that. Yeah, so I want to, I want to, I assume everybody heard this news, but Taylor Swift and her NFL boyfriend, Travis Kelce, are engaged to be married. Some people, here’s my question I’m very interested in is some have predicted that this will induce a minor marriage and baby boom as millions of Taylor Swift fans follow her lead. Do we think that’s going to happen or is that all hot air? Ralph, Ralph is very invested in this topic. Ralph, I want to hear your extended opinions. Please start with Taylor’s early work and move forward. Now I’m making fun of him.
Daniel Di Martino: Wait, you’re invested, Ralph? okay.
Rafael Mangual: No, I could care less. I could care less. think most normal Americans could care less. No, I don’t think that it’s going to cause a boom in marriage or procreation or anything like that. I mean, you know, it’s not as if Taylor Swift doesn’t have a sort of ideological like tenor to her. Right. I mean, so that I think is already kind of taking care of whatever potential effect it would have had on marriage. It’s not like, you know, this is a person just who’s adopting conservative lifestyle. You know, it’s just someone marrying another famous person, potentially even just for the sake of publicity, right? Like, I mean, who knows how cynical these people are, whether they’re actually in love.
Daniel Di Martino: We have no idea.
Rafael Mangual: But yeah, I don’t know. Celebrity gossip culture is just not a world that I ever want to be a part of. It’s not one I claim to understand. And if you are looking to people like Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift for cues about how to live your life, let me suggest to you that you have a problem.
Daniel Di Martino: Yes.
Rafael Mangual: There are likely much better standards against which you can measure yourself in your immediate life. Your parents, your family members, your teachers, your mentors. Start there. End there.
Charles Fain Lehman: Daniel?
Daniel Di Martino: Yes, I don’t think we should ever look up to celebrities, Hollywood singers, or really any of that industry generally for examples. They generally are much worse off than the average person in their personal lives, as you can observe. And I’ll say if anything, because the overwhelming majority of fans of Taylor Swift, let’s, the stats are, it’s women, right? If anything, it could actually set a standard that she got engaged at 35. Maybe for them it’s like, then I can wait like Taylor Swift. First, the people who are waiting or getting married, just like Ralph said, because Taylor Swift did, they have bigger problems. But for those people, I think it might even have a negative effect, right? Because they might wait too long.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, no, don’t do that.
Charles Fain Lehman: Me too, are you more of an optimist? Are you more of a believer than these guys?
Neetu Arnold: Okay, so let me say this. So the day her engagement was announced, my phone was blowing up because I was in several group chats. Like some people were super excited, mainly the women. And then some people, like it was kind of split, like some men don’t really care and some were like, great, like I’m going to have a headache about this now, because now we’re going to hear about the marriage and you know, her album’s coming out October 3rd, you know? So like. Not that I’m endorsing Taylor Swift, but it was just like blowing up and all of us were joking that, you know, we’re going to see a baby boom because of the marriage. But I wholeheartedly agree with both Ralph and Daniel that I think if you’re making big life decisions based on what celebrities do or don’t do, you have a problem. know, marriage is a great thing. Having children is a great thing. Nut I don’t think you should be looking to celebrities. I, in general, I don’t like this whole idea of making celebrities into these idols or as role models because they’re people at the end of the day, they make their own decisions. And I don’t know, I think placing too much pressure on them is not really good for anyone.
Charles Fain Lehman: You guys are all cynics. Look, yes, of course, of course people shouldn’t, you know, follow what most celebrities do, but they do, right? That’s actually what happens. And why is it? Why do people, why do people get married? It’s because their peers or perceived peers get married, right? It’s all network effects. It’s all who you know, what the community values. What?
Neetu Arnold: What? It’s not out of love?
Charles Fain Lehman: It’s related, but people can be in love for very long time.
Rafael Mangual: And we’re the cynics.
Daniel Di Martino: It’s love but with expectations, with social expectations. No, no, no, I understand what Charles is saying. I just wish that the peer wasn’t this distant person that you have never met in your life and that you admire because of her songs. I wish your peers were the people around you.
Charles Fain Lehman: Listeners, we all consider you our peers. We hope that we’re influencing you towards a…
Daniel Di Martino: Reach out! We have social media, we have events, you can go!
Charles Fain Lehman: When Daniel gets engaged, we’re going to make it as big as Taylor Swift. That’s the plan. We’re going to blow it up on CJ.
Daniel Di Martino: Exactly, Yes. And then I will cause a baby boom.
Charles Fain Lehman: That’s the plan, yes. I encourage all of our listeners, by the way, to go watch Daniel. Posted a video of him doing the Pete Hegseth RFK fitness challenge that he did for Fox Latino. It was great. Yes.
Rafael Mangual: In an impressive time!
Daniel Di Martino: Yes, I did 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups in 5 minutes and 40 seconds.
Rafael Mangual: I tried it yesterday. It took me 12 minutes and 45 seconds. I couldn’t…
Daniel Di Martino: I honestly, I couldn’t believe that, Ralph. I think you need to do it again because I have higher expectations for you.
Rafael Mangual: I’m almost 40, man.
Charles Fain Lehman: All right. On that note, that is about all the time that we have. Thank you as always to our panelists. Thank you producer Isabella Redjai. Listeners, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, even if you haven’t, if it’s encouraged you to get married or even if it hasn’t, please don’t forget to like, subscribe on YouTube and all the other platforms where you listen to us, Spotify, et cetera. Leave us comments, questions down below. Until next time. You’ve been listening to the City Journal Podcast. We hope you’ll join us again soon.
Photo: DanBrandenburg / E+ via Getty Images
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