Welcome to the first issue of Steady State from KCRW.

I’m Arnie Seipel. I spent years covering politics and policy for NPR in Washington, D.C. Now, I’m the content chief at KCRW. My whole career has been devoted to public media and its core journalistic values: truth, context, and human connection. They bring steadiness to an unsteady world.

With this new weekly analysis of political news, I want to help you keep your head on straight when the onslaught of stories emerging each week has you spinning.

It’s an important time to start this newsletter. This is a major election year. My optimistic side would also call it an accountability year.

It can be frustrating to watch candidates do things for purely political motivations. Making morally ambiguous decisions, or just doing nothing at all — it’s disingenuous politics — merely to get reelected and maintain power.

Political motives can also produce meaningful action when they’re driven by voter sentiment.

Republicans are on defense over ICE tactics. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, once a leading Trump opponent-then supporter-then opponent, recently bemoaned that Republicans are on the wrong side of public opinion on immigration, which has been a strength for the party for decades. It helped Trump get elected twice.

This shift in public opinion has given Democrats an opening to force a vote in Congress on substantive changes to ICE tactics, like removing masks, wearing identification, and requiring judicial warrants to pursue individuals. It’s certainly not swift action since this is coming more than eight months after the raids began across Los Angeles, but it is action.

(BTW - KCRW’s Left, Right & Center debated the call for changes to ICE’s tactics, and it’s worth a listen. It includes a cogent explanation of the fight over requiring warrants to arrest and detain people.)

Political motives are also why we saw Department of Homeland Security leaders called in front of Congress to answer questions on Tuesday.

They weren’t called by Democrats. The hearing was actually called by New York Republican Andrew Garbarino, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, in the immediate aftermath of federal agents killing Alex Pretti.

Garbarino took a bipartisan tone in the hearing, with criticism for both Democratic leaders who criticize ICE and for the Trump administration officials who rushed to falsely label Renee Good and Alex Pretti as “domestic terrorists” after they were killed.

“When officials or elected leaders rush to conclusions about law enforcement, or their fellow Americans, public trust suffers,” Garbarino said.

In the hearing, some Republicans called for two major changes to ICE enforcement: the use of body-worn cameras, which DHS is already implementing, and an end to roving patrols in major cities.

Whether other reforms, like changes to warrants, will get through Congress in the coming days is a big unknown.

This is still a far cry from Congress really doing its job.

To be clear, it’s important for Congress to hold oversight hearings and vote on ICE tactics so the people can judge their actions. But the ICE reforms are being forced with another government shutdown threat, tacked onto a must-pass spending bill that could trigger more TSA chaos at airports if it fails. (Must-pass = bare minimum of lawmaking.)

This underscores how Congress hasn’t actually taken up reforms to the immigration system, even those that members of both parties support, like a path to citizenship for Dreamers and high-tech border enforcement, among others. That kind of comprehensive immigration reform has repeatedly fallen victim to electoral politics, including when conservative Republican James Lankford negotiated a deal with Democrats in 2024, only to have Trump blow it up because he wanted to run on the issue.

Even though immigration is a drag on the GOP right now, that doesn’t mean there has been some big paradigm shift that will help pass true immigration reforms. That would require, at the very least, a 2026 midterm election where voters send a clear message against Trump’s immigration policies.

By addressing pieces of the issue now, Republicans are trying to avoid that kind of referendum in November.

THIS WEEK’S OPEN TABS

Here are some of the things I have been reading this week and find particularly clarifying.

• This reporting from POLITICO on Kurt Olsen, the election denier in Trump’s inner circle who is getting big access inside the government. He sparked the recent raid on the elections center in Fulton County, Ga.

• NPR has been on an impressive streak of breaking stories inside the Trump administration, including this important reporting about nuclear safety rules being secretly rewritten and a head-shaker about the State Department deleting old tweets.

• The New York Times spots the massive grift around America’s 250th birthday.

That’s all for this week. I’m grateful you’re part of our community and eager for your feedback.

Take care,
Arnie

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