Return to Transcripts main page
Amanpour
Interview With Harvard University Professor Of History And Law And "X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story" Host Jill Lepore; Interview With University Of Oxford Professor Of European Studies And "Homelands: A Personal History Of Europe" Author Timothy Garton Ash; Interview With CNN Correspondent Isobel Yeung; Interview With "Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America" Author Elie Mystal. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired May 02, 2025 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH, PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD AND AUTHOR, "HOMELANDS: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF EUROPE": We're never going to
have America back in the same way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: A bitter, maybe long-lasting American struggle. Historians Jill Lepore and Timothy Garton Ash put this Trumpian moment into context.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ISOBEL YEUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The small cannabis than I've ever seen in my life. The scale of drugs here is just enormous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- Mexico's cartel crackdown correspondent Isobel Yeung reports on grief, violence, and drugs among the most powerful criminal gangs in the
world.
Also, ahead --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELIE MYSTAL, AUTHOR, "BAD LAW: TEN POPULAR LAWS THAT ARE RUINING AMERICA": There are many laws, many of them are terrible. I have not read them all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- bad law. Bestselling author, Elie Mystal tells Hari Sreenivasan about the 10 laws he thinks do more harm than good.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
For more than a hundred days, President Trump has tested the very limits of executive power, defying the courts, pressuring universities and law firms,
deporting people to foreign gulags. It is prompting some soul-searching abroad and at home. What exactly does America now represent on the world
stage?
But behind this identity crisis lies an assumption that this is a departure from the past, that America has always been a bastion for democracy,
equality, and human rights. So, today, we start by asking, has it really been? How much of an outlier is this current chapter of the American
Experiment?
Jill Lepore is a history professor at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker and Timothy Garton Ash is professor of European Studies
at Oxford University. Welcome both of you to the program.
So, Jill Lepor, let me ask you, because you write a lot about this. Explain what the liberal world order is, in short, obviously. And is America
actually departing from it right now?
JILL LEPORE, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND LAW, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, the liberal world order has its origins in the Second World War, really in the
alliance between Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But in the aftermath of the war in which the United States assumed authority on a
global stage, as a beacon of liberal democracy, and put money behind that promise, there are many ways in which the United States fell short of those
ideals, as many critics of American imperialism would suggest, but American commitment to peaceful resolution of disputes around the world through its
own economic force has been crucial to what stability there has been for the last 80 years of world history.
So, this is an incredibly important turning point, an inflection point. No one knows which way this has headed. But Trumpism represents a great
retreat from those commitments.
AMANPOUR: The bottom line, apparently, is that liberalism requires power to be contained within its authorized and constitutional boundaries executive
power. Jill, who is going to limit the stretching of this executive power by President Trump? Congress doesn't seem to be doing its job. That is
presumably its job.
LEPORE: Yes. The separation of powers means that it's the job of everybody but the executive to exercise a breaking force on any kind of overreach.
That's true of any branch of government. Congress has been feckless for some time now, really since the 1980s. It is a function of the incredible
polarization of the United States, part of which is a consequence of our two-party system, but also, really that's a function of widening income
inequality in the United States. Those two are really closely related.
So, Congress has been extremely ineffective even without this situation in which Trump enjoys a Republican Senate and a Republican House. The Supreme
Court has been in some -- to some degree, a break on Trumpism. The Supreme Court did not allow, for instance, Trump to overturn the results of the
2020 election, which had been his hope and desire.
But I think in the end, really, we're not seeing a lot of pushback against the executive overreach, partly because of just the whirlwind of the
executive orders. This is an emergency presidency. It's a whole new thing in American political life where Trump is issuing a record number of
executive orders but under the authority of emergency declarations.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Timothy Garton Ash who studies European history and also, obviously, America's role in the world, what is Europe seeing and
interpreting in this moment? Because, obviously, the United States and Europe witness to the end of the Cold War played a pretty significant role
in that. And now, again, it does seem to be turning its back on that tradition, certainly in foreign policy.
ASH: What many Europeans are saying is this is the end of the West, not as a historical or cultural entity, but as a geopolitical actor. Because as
Jill Lepore said, it starts with Churchill and Roosevelt during the Second World War, and then gradually the Transatlantic West has expanded. So,
we've lived with it as a geopolitical actor for the last 80 years.
And this is, you know, the Trump shock coming on top of the Putin shock, and I would say the Xi Jinping shock. And Europeans are saying to
themselves, if anyone is going to defend Europe, it's going to be us. And if anyone is going to defend what's left of liberal international order,
it's going to have to be us.
AMANPOUR: And what do you think -- you know, has -- is it just Trump or is it America's reputation and what America stands for, as somebody suggested,
that's been shot in these 100 days? In other words, what do people think about Americans today having imbued so much, you know, good intentions into
America over the years?
ASH: So, I would say two different things. The Princeton scholar, John Ikenberry has a great term. He talks about the U.S. having been a liberal
leviathan. And to the extent that liberal international order worked, it was often because there was a kind of hegemon, which was the United States.
NATO being the obvious example, right? I mean, NATO is effective as a military alliance, as a deterrent to the Soviet Union and to Russia because
it really works and it has a hegemonic power. So, that's the impact.
But the other bit of it is the soft power, and I can speak for myself. I'm in -- for the whole of my life, I've had a basically positive default view
of the United States and seen the United States as a natural friend of freedom in Europe and elsewhere, and I, like many others, are now very much
having second thoughts so that -- and actually, I was at a high temple of Anglo-American friendship, Ditchley Park, which you will know very well,
Christiane, where Churchill used to go in the Second World War. And great triggers of the British establishment were saying the same, we're never
going to have America back in the same way.
So, it's both the loss of the liberal leviathan in hard power terms, and of course as a defender of free trade, but also the loss of American soft
power and credibility.
AMANPOUR: Jill Lepore, the word liberal sends certain people into hyperventilation and conniption fits. They think it automatically means far
left progressivism and all the rest of it. You wrote recently in The New Yorker about the hundred days saying, Trump felt so much timber not because
of the mightiness of his axe but because of the rot within the trees and the weakness of the wood.
So, I want to know where you think that rot and that weakness started. What is the history to I guess America's -- well, American history. It wasn't
always the liberal world order. It has a very pronounced illiberal past.
LEPORE: Yes. I think what's different about this moment is how much a liberalism has come as well from the left. There has been, throughout
American history, a tremendously continuous force of illiberalism from the right. You can -- it rises and it falls. And when you tell the story of
American history, it is always a braided history of a kind of contest between liberalism and illiberalism in American politics and in American
culture.
[13:10:00]
But the illiberalism of the left really, you know, started in the 1990s, I would say. And progressive overreach has been the downfall of the
Democratic Party for many years now. I think kind of misidentifying the mood of the public or the interest in the public -- of the public in
progressive causes, which has really spelled, I think, if not the death, the quiescence of liberalism in the United States, because I think
progressivism and liberalism may be, from a European context, those words seem indistinguishable. But in the U.S., progressivism is one thing and
liberalism is another.
So, I think Trump has been an incredibly canny political actor in sensing that there was so much opportunity to drive reactionary politics in
response to progressivism. And I think that's where he gained a lot of his electoral following.
AMANPOUR: So, Timothy, where does Europe stand on these words and definitions, you know, liberalism? And how do you, as a student of history,
trace actually some of America's very, you know, late 1800s, early 1900s, very illiberal roots?
ASH: There's plenty of illiberalism in the history of the West. But I think the word liberalism has two problems. One is that it means so many
different things in different places. In California for conservatives, it means something close to communism. By the time you get to Siberia, it
means something close to fascism with Vladimir Zhirinovsky's party, which was notionally a liberal party. And much of continental Europe, it's
associated with (INAUDIBLE) Thatcherite free market economics.
So, we have a problem of definitions, and then we have the problem that Jill Lepore started referring to, which is there've been things associated
with liberalism over the last 40 years that a lot of people have been very unhappy about. One of them was the identity politics that Jill mentioned,
which is progressive rather than genuinely liberal, because liberal absolutely requires equal liberty for all.
The other is neoliberalism, globalized capitalism, which has produced extraordinary inequalities and has left, for example, the American middle
and working class feeling neglected economically as well as culturally. So that if there's to be a liberal fight back, which I think there needs to
be, and clearly, a lot of Canadians also think there needs to be, it has to address both the enemies of liberalism from Putin to Recep Tayyip Erdogan
in Turkey to Viktor Orban in Hungary, and the problems that liberalism has created.
And actually, what I would say, Christiane, is that, you know, we had a kind of global liberal democratic revolution. According to Freedom House,
in early 1974 there were only 17 free countries in the world. By 2004 89 free countries in the world. Unprecedented spread of liberal democracy.
Now, what we have is a global anti-liberal counter-revolution and much of what is happening in the United States, not everything, but much of it
we've seen before in a country like Hungary or Turkey.
AMANPOUR: Jill, let me ask you about some of the key touchstones. You know, there are not just in the United States, but in Europe as well, an
obsession with immigration, migrants, that side of the identity piece, right? And I guess I'm trying to figure out whether America has showed its
face. We're going to talk about Europe as well because they have gone towards, you know, restrictions on migration and free trade as well.
But they wanted a president who would stop migration into the U.S., at least they say illegal migration. Now, we've got polls on the first a
hundred days, which suggests the American people feel that he's gone too far, that the mass deportations ignoring the courts are just a step too
far. What does America stand for?
LEPORE: I think America is truly divided on this question. And I think on the whole, a lot of Americans are fairly ill-informed about it as a
consequence of just the disruptive force of social media over the last 20 years, I mean, I think that immigration in a way kind of parallels the
issue of liberalism.
If you think about the end of -- the aftermath of the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, American politics became really tribal, partly because there
was no communist enemy to demonize that sort of united the parties and the demonizing of liberalism became kind of the commitment of the conservative
insurgency. And one piece of that demonizing involved demonizing immigrants.
[13:15:00]
Not to say that immigration isn't as a substantive policy issue on which Americans have really clear policy differences and preferences, but I think
that is gotten bound up in the tribalism of American politics. So, it becomes hard to know what Americans really think about immigration, because
it's kind of a proxy for all the other issues that divide Americans.
AMANPOUR: And as I say, we're seeing some protests, certainly to Republicans who go to their constituencies and whole town halls on a whole
load of issues, including the economy.
But let me ask you, Jill, from a U.S. perspective. America has gone through illiberal periods. Great and grave ones, going way back to Jim Crow, the
Japanese internment during the Second World War, the Red Scare. How does America look to the past and figure out how to emerge from this one if
indeed it ever will?
LEPORE: You know, I actually think the last burst of democracies is the best model for our understanding historically at this moment. So, thinking
about that rising number of democracies since 1974, there was a similar rise in the number of democracies after the First World War, right? Wilson
said he was going to make the world safe for democracy, and as European empires collapsed, democracies were born. And then, during the economic
crises of the 1920s, they began collapsing.
And in the U.S. that seemed possible as well. The 1930s in the United States were -- you just couldn't open a magazine without coming across a
series of essays or a symposium or forum on the future of democracy, everyone was concerned in the United States that the United States might
fall prey to fascism or to communism or to technocracy, the movement that was led in North America by Elon Musk's grandfather.
There was this real sense that liberal democracy might not survive in the 1930s because the forces of illiberalism were on the rise all over the
world. Same was true in Britain, of course, a kind of brown shirt moment.
And I think that how Americans confronted that challenge in the 1930s as a possible model for this moment in that those conversations well, what do we
do if democratic behavior seems to be on the decline? If people's commitment to the separation of power seems to be falling, if our sense
that the country can endure as a self-governing entity is one that we are questioning, people got together in essentially versions of town meetings
and tried to talk through issues.
The broadcast media was really important to American democracy in those years, the way that radio was used to try to bridge divides among
Americans, to try to restore faith in democracy. And then, of course, the leadership of Roosevelt. So, we don't have a Roosevelt in this moment,
obviously, but I do think there are lessons to be learned from the 1930s in particular.
AMANPOUR: That's really interesting. And, Tim, from an outside America point of view, we just saw Mark Carney, the head of the Liberal Party,
basically rise his party from underwater polls by essentially running on an anti-Trump platform. I just want to play what he said when he won.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK CARNEY, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: Throughout our history, there have been turning points. Throughout our history, there have been turning points
when the world's fortunes were in the balance. That was the -- at this -- that was the case at the start of the Second World War, just as it was at
the end of the Cold War. And each time Canada chose to step up, to assert ourselves as a free, sovereign, and ambitious nation, to lead the path of
democracy and freedom. And because we are Canadian, to do so with compassion and generosity.
We're we are once again at one of those hinge moments of history. Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily
increasing integration is over. The system of open, global trade, anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second
World War, a system that, well, not perfect has helped deliver prosperity for a country for decades is over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, that's pretty profound in its bleakness and its realism. Do you think, Tim, when you think about how, you know, illiberal democracies
can be pushed back outside the United States, like you mentioned Hungary and elsewhere, there is a playbook?
[13:20:00]
ASH: I do. First of all, trump is actually a gift to the opponents of Trumpism in much of the world. Without Trump, Mark Carney would not have
that victory. We have an Australian election coming up next weekend, and again, it looks as if the conservatives will suffer from their association
with Trump all over Europe, hard right populists are deeply embarrassed by their association with Trump. So, that's point number one.
Point number two, because quite a few other countries went into this dismantling of democracy, this anti-liberal revolution, which is what
you're seeing in the United States, sooner we have some experience about how you get out of it. For example, Poland had a populist government for
eight years, which nearly succeeded in doing what Viktor Orban did in Hungary, and what indeed Trump is trying to do in the United States,
because, of course, Trump is famously a great admirer Viktor Orban, but has come out the other side.
And one lesson is very, very simple, win the next election. The polls came out of it because despite it not being a free and fair election, not a
level playing field, they had the biggest turnout in Polish history. More young people voted than old people, more women than men, and they just won
the election. So, one lesson for the United States is win the midterms.
AMANPOUR: It's really fascinating. And next time we talk, hopefully, we'll talk about a potential world without the U.S. as the defender of the
liberal world order that it created. Timothy Garton Ash, Jill Lepore, thank you so much indeed for joining us.
LEPORE: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: And after the break, a special report from the frontlines of Mexico's cartel crack down.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: President Trump has been pressuring his Mexican counterpart, Claudia Sheinbaum, to take decisive action against her country's cartels
who sent huge quantities of drugs like fentanyl into the U.S. In response, Mexico has sent hundreds of troops to the State of Sinaloa.
Correspondent Isobel Yeung has been there to see the impact that's having. And just to note, some of this report is difficult to watch.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
YEUNG: Right now, we're just racing through town following this group of volunteer paramedics on that motorbike.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I can't stand the pain in this arm.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): If I take it off you'll bleed to death. He has a hemorrhage, which could be fatal. Here, hold this.
YEUNG: This area is very heavily populated by cartel members. And right now, this guy losing a lot of blood. So, it's a bit of a race against time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This is risky for us because the ambulance is very late and we are exposed here.
YEUNG (voice-over): Violence erupts almost every night here in Sinaloa, Mexico, the heartland of one of the most powerful criminal gangs in the
world, the Sinaloa cartel. Once led by the notorious drug lord El Chapo, this cartel is responsible for selling huge quantities of drugs to U.S.
consumers.
[13:25:00]
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: The cartels are a waging war in America, and it's time for America to wage war on the cartels, which we are doing.
YEUNG (voice-over): President Donald Trump is pressuring Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to crack down on the cartels, threatening tariffs and
even military strikes. In response, hundreds of soldiers have already been added to the troops here in Sinaloa.
We've come here to understand what that looks like, from hidden drug labs and defiant cartel members --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The situation is ugly.
YEUNG (voice-over): -- to grieving families, and soldiers on the frontlines.
YEUNG: We're with the (INAUDIBLE) military right now flying over the State of Sinaloa over this massive expanse of rural land looking for any signs of
cartel activity.
There's more cannabis than I've ever seen in my life. The scale of drugs here is just enormous. I mean, this is the whole field of marijuana here
that these guys are going to be camped up here for the next few days just trying to destroy field upon field of cannabis, of poppies.
So, is this area safe?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Secured area. We need to make aerial reconnaissance and then, vehicle and then, on foot. And here is the poppy field.
YEUNG: Oh, wow.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, they slice the poppy to get the opium and they start the process to get heroin.
YEUNG: So, how much heroin does a field like this produce?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two kilos.
YEUNG: Two kilos?
YEUNG (voice-over): The soldiers burn the poppies and marijuana. But it's synthetic drugs that are responsible for most of the 87,000 Americans
who've died of overdoses in the space of a year. These drugs, like fentanyl and meth, can be produced in much bigger quantities, generate enormous
profits, and are easier to hide.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The criminals build their work area in places least accessible for authorities to discovery.
YEUNG: I can smell it from here. It's very strong.
BRIG. GEN. PORFIRIO FUENTES VELEZ, MEXIXCAN ARMED FORCES (through translator): OK. Look over here. This is an area with the chemical
products. The cartel come, work two or three hours, produce 20, 50, 100 kilos of methamphetamine. They finish, they leave, and they take the
production with them.
This laboratory won't be rebuilt elsewhere. Everything here will be destroyed.
YEUNG (voice-over): In the first six months of Sheinbaum's presidency, thousands of suspected cartel members have been arrested, and more than 140
tons of drugs have been seized. But the reality is more than 1,200 people have also been killed in Sinaloa in the past year, hundreds more have
disappeared. An uncomfortable fact for the Mexican military.
In downtown Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, the military's narrative that they are fully in control begins to unravel.
YEUNG: The rates of violence are still extremely high here since September when this war between two factions of the Sinaloa cartel exploded, people
have been dying on a daily basis. Very stark reminders here of people who are missing, who've been disappeared as part of this cartel war between the
two factions that's playing out right now. All very recent cases. This was last week, 23-year-old went missing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Those, you cannot say if they are real.
YEUNG: What do you mean?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Those fliers are old.
YEUNG: No, this is the -- post the date here. 22nd of March they went missing, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Yes, but this is a copy. It's a copy. Who put this? We not with the know.
YEUNG (voice-over): As we're talking a soldier blocks our camera.
YEUNG: You mean it's not verified? Yes. Presumably people aren't just putting up posters for the fun of it, they're look putting them up because
they're missing family members, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't know.
YEUNG: What's up? You don't want us filming it?
YEUNG (voice-over): The military steer us off and invite us to film something else. But we call the number on the poster of the missing woman.
Her name is Vivian Aispuro. Her family tell us she disappeared 17 days ago. We promised to follow up on her story.
But who are the men running this criminal network, wreaking havoc on people living here? We part ways with the military.
[13:30:00]
YEUNG: So, we've just entered an area of the city that is still very dangerous. After weeks of trying our contact here on the ground, just
managed to secure a meeting with a member of the cartel who's involved apparently in the production of drugs. And so, we're meeting him now in
somewhere around here in an undisclosed location.
YEUNG (through translator): How are you?
YEUNG (voice-over): This man is talking to us on the condition we hide his identity and location.
YEUNG: Can I pull up a chair?
YEUNG (voice-over): He says he produces fentanyl for the Sinaloa cartel.
YEUNG: How safe or dangerous is this area to be in?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Right now, all areas are dangerous.
YEUNG: The Mexican military making a big effort to crack down on the drug production here? How are you responding to that and how does that impact
your work?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They're doing a good job. There are more of them now. So, we have to find a way to keep doing this, to keep
working. Of course, on a smaller scale, not the same as before. But it continues.
YEUNG: I mean, according to the Trump administration, you are a terrorist, meaning the cartels have been labeled a foreign terrorist organization.
What do you make of that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Well, the situation is ugly. But we have to eat.
YEUNG: What's your message to Donald Trump if he's watching this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): My respect. According to him, he's looking out for his people. But the problem is the consumers are in the
United States. If there weren't any consumers, we would stop.
YEUNG: There was a lot of violence playing out on these streets here at the moment, every day, right? I mean, people are dying on a daily basis.
Children are afraid to go to school. Do you have any sense of remorse over your role and your involvement in this group?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Of course. Of course. Things are sad, but -- well, things are sad.
YEUNG (voice-over): His phone is pinging. Someone is nearby. He tells us we need to leave for our own safety.
It's because of the actions of cartel members like these that civilians too are caught up in this violence. Vivian Aispuro, the missing woman from the
poster, was one of them. Her body has just been found.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Don't take her away from me, please.
YEUNG: I am so sorry for your loss. I really am. Are you able to tell me a little bit about your sister?
ALMA AISPURO, SISTER OF VICTIM (through translator): She was a happy girl. She had everything she ever wanted. She was very loved. She really likes
cats, Harry Styles, Lady Gaga. We wanted to go to her concert together. Not anymore.
YEUNG: I mean, there has been -- you know, there's massive escalation in violence here over the last few months with these conflicts taking place.
Do you feel like your sister's death is related to that?
AISPURO (through translator): Yes. Yes, I think that -- I don't think she got involved with any dangerous people. But the violence raging here in
Cullacan led to this. Because before, there were codes. Women and children were respected.
YEUNG: I mean, the authorities are saying that they're going after the bad guys. They're making a lot of arrests. They're going after the drugs.
They're going after the weapons. Do you feel like they're not doing enough?
AISPURO (through translator): No, they're not doing anything. Cullacan has become a place where it's impossible to live.
YEUNG: Thank you for talking with us. I mean, you being so strong, she'd be so proud of you.
AISPURO (through translator): Thank you very much. Really.
YEUNG: Thank you.
AISPURO (through translator): Thank you for telling my sister's story.
YEUNG (voice-over): For Vivian's family, the authorities' efforts amount to nothing more than anguish.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): My daughter.
AISPURO (through translator): I love you. I love you forever. Rest in peace. I love you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: The high cost paid by just about anybody living in Sinaloa. And Isobel Yeung is here with me now for more on this report. Congratulations.
It's really revealing, really interesting, and really of the moment.
When you were in Sinaloa, we don't know whether Vivian was caught up in any drugs thing, but she was killed. She's dead. What kind of atmosphere did
you feel there? I mean, you were obviously, you know, following various military and other units, you spoke to the cartel people. What's the
general atmosphere?
YEUNG (on camera): Yes. I mean, obviously, completely heart wrenching to see this mother burying her own daughter, to see this woman burying her
baby sister. And what you didn't see in the footage there, but what was -- what happened was that just a few meters away, there was another funeral
taking place.
[13:35:00]
We were on the ground for just a few days, and every single night there was violence erupting there. So, it is still extremely dangerous. You know,
people are getting caught up in cartel shootouts and then, there's a lot of collateral damage as we've seen, men, women, and children are getting
caught up in that.
AMANPOUR: I was actually fascinated by what I believe the sister said to you was that, in the past years, because, I mean, drug cartels have been
there forever, there was a sort of an unspoken rule that women and children are not targeted.
YEUNG: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And it's changed.
YEUNG: It's changed because this alliance between these two factions of the Sinaloa cartel have broken down. And so, now, violence is just everywhere.
You know, thousands of people have been killed, hundreds of people are disappearing, as we saw Alma's sister disappear before she was -- her body
was then sadly discovered. And so, yes, this is really a complete breakdown of society and it's impacting every facet of society there.
We spoke to a school principal who was saying that attendance is down, children are afraid to show up to school. The nightlife, which is actually
normally very vibrant, very famous there in Cullacan, has almost disappeared. It's very, very eerie. You saw we were with the paramedics
there as they're responding to violent incidents on an almost nightly basis.
AMANPOUR: Yes. So, I mean, everybody is involved in one way or another. What made the cartel member talk to you?
YEUNG: Well, this was weeks and weeks of our contact on the ground, who is from Cullacan, went to school with a lot of these people who ended up
joining the cartel itself, negotiating with them, talking with them, reassuring him that we weren't the DEA. We weren't the CIA. We weren't law
enforcement. We weren't about to do anything to him. And eventually, you know, he sat down with us.
I've been reporting on the Sinaloa and on other criminal gangs for a long time in Mexico. And you know, I was really surprised to hear him say that
their position has been weakened. That, as you saw, he said, we have respect for Donald Trump for putting pressure on the Mexican government
through the form of tariffs, through the form of --
AMANPOUR: Against their own interest.
YEUNG: Yes. But he says that this is something that is working there. What we also need to bear in mind is that President Claudia Sheinbaum is -- has
a very different attitude to her previous predecessor who had a hugs not bullets attitude to the cartels. And so, in the first six months of her
presidency, she's arrested over 17,000 high impact criminals, including a lot of cartel members, seized over 140 tons of drugs. And so, this has had
a real impact there.
AMANPOUR: I wonder if they're afraid of getting those famous, you know, U.S. military strikes the threat. But you know what I found interesting was
the cartel member you spoke to essentially said, when you said, what do you think about, you know, Trump's methods? And he said, well, my respect, and
you said, why? And he said, because he's trying to do the best for his people. But then, he said, it's his people, essentially the Americans who
are keeping this industry, this illegal industry going, because they're the addicts. They're the ones who are buying it.
YEUNG: Exactly. And what he was also saying is that, you know, they are responding to this by being increasingly agile. You know, you've got to
remember this is one of the most powerful criminal networks in the world, and they have a lot of many, many years of experience in evading the
authorities, you know, moving production outside of the state, as they told us they were doing now, using smaller production facilities, smaller --
more mobile equipment.
And yes, they said that for as long as President Trump is not addressing the bigger issue of addiction in the U.S. then they will continue feeding
that demand.
AMANPOUR: It's an endless cycle. Isobel Yeung, thank you.
YEUNG: Thanks.
AMANPOUR: Thanks very much. And coming up after the break, bestselling author Elie Mystal on the 10 popular laws which he says are ruining
America.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:40:00]
AMANPOUR: Now, as the Trump administration's battle with the courts escalates, one legal expert is taking a step back to reimagine what a more
representative U.S. legal system could look like. Bestselling author, Elie Mystal tells Hari Sreenivasan about his unconventional theory explored in
his latest work.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Elie Mystal, thanks so much for joining us.
Your new book with a fantastic title, I might add, "Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America." It focuses on 10 laws that you say if
repealed would make America better. First of all, where do you even start? How do you figure out which 10 to go after to write a book about?
MYSTAL: Thank you so much for having me, Hari. Yes. Scoping is obviously the very first problem for a book like this. There are many laws, many of
them are terrible. I have not read them all. So, there is a large universe that you're working from.
But the way that I started to whittle it down and scope it, was to try to think of laws that could just be repealed. There are many bad laws that
need to be reformed, updated, massaged, brought into our modern age, and I kind of left those to the side and focus on the ones that we could just be
rid of. We could be rid of today and would make our world better tomorrow. So, that's kind of where I started the scope.
And then the second valence I looked at was the subtitle of the book, "Ten Popular Laws that Are Ruining America." So, I tried to focus on laws that
were -- that enjoyed broad bipartisan support at the time they were passed. You see this book is about laws that are working as intended. The racism or
the misogyny or the anti-poverty. The stuff that the laws are doing was what the people who passed the laws wanted them to do right?
And so, I tried to really hone in on laws that people liked at one time, both parties, both of them, again, a lot of this book is -- it is a
bipartisan look at mistakes that both parties have made. Now, belatedly, in a lot of cases, Democrats have been like, well, oh, it was a terrible
mistake. We never should have passed it. But the law is still there, and you don't see Democrats agitating and organizing to repeal to fix their own
mistakes of the past. And so, that's kind of how I scope the book down to just 10.
SREENIVASAN: You say in there, if it were up to me, I'd treat every law passed before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as presumptively
unconstitutional. The government of this country was illegitimate when it ruled over people who had no ability to choose the rules. Explain.
MYSTAL: Well, I wouldn't give the laws passed before the Voting Rights Act, which I argue is the most important piece of legislation in American
history because it's the first piece of legislation that made us anything approaching a democracy or a republic as opposed to an apartheid state.
And so, if you bring to me a law that's passed before everybody who was living here had a reasonable opportunity to vote on the law and vote on the
representatives who would make those laws, then I'm just not going to give it a whole lot of deference, right. I'm not saying that you can completely
ignore those laws, but certainly, when you think about how a court gives deference to the will of Congress or the will of the people when it's
making their decisions, I wouldn't give a deference at all, right?
And you bring me a law from 1921, I'm like, yes, whatever. Do you have anything supporting your case from after apartheid? Do you have anything
supporting your case from, I don't know, the 1970s? Right? And if you can't give me a reason for your law to exist or your argument to win with a
modern argument, then I would disregard your antebellum arguments.
SREENIVASAN: Well, let's talk a little bit about who gets to vote. You lay out in the book that America is sort of different than other democracies.
What is America not getting right or could get better?
MYSTAL: OK. So, one of the -- I would say the key stupid thing that we do. Is that we don't have one national electoral system. Our electoral system
flows up from the states. So, instead of one federal election system, we have 50 different federal election systems, and each states has its own
rules for who's eligible, who has to register, when you can start voting, whether or not you can early vote, can you cure your votes after the
they've been cast? What's the process for mail-in ballots? When's the registration date? It's ridiculous.
It is -- and it's different in every state, depending on what side of the river you're -- you happen to be on, whether or not you're allowed to vote
on Saturday or not. That is not what all of the other major democracies in this world do.
[13:45:00]
They've fixed this problem. They have one national electoral system, and that not only allows for, I think, more confidence in the system, it also
allows for less friction in the system. And that, to me is the real key point here. It makes it easier for people to vote when there's only one
system that they have to familiarize themselves with, right?
SREENIVASAN: Yes.
MYSTAL: So, at an alpha kind of 30,000-foot level our inability to have a national election system is a fundamental problem with our country.
SREENIVASAN: You have a whole chapter called, "How Did Immigrants Become Illegal?" You say it was invented basically with the stated intentional
goal of keeping america white and protestant. How do you think we should be approaching it?
MYSTAL: Yes. So, again, throughout my book, I don't ask people take my word for it, I go back and I look at the actual language from the people who
passed the law. In the case of the 1921 Immigration and Nationalization Act, which is what is our foundational immigration law in this country.
This law was -- this law heavily relied on the science of America's leaning eugenicist, Harry Laughlin. So, you know, that's kind of a problem.
And the congressman at the time, as they were passing the law, said that this law was necessary to stop the mongrelization of the white race by the
inferior races. I don't think a law that is based on such obvious and stated bigotry and racism should be allowed to exist today in modern
America.
The simple fix to me for the immigration problems, and to be clear, Hari, if I had a complete fix for the immigration problems, I wouldn't be telling
it to you, I'd be telling it to the good people in Stockholm and I'd be waiting for my price. All right. Like it's a large issue. I don't have all
of the answers here, right.
But I think the first and most simple fix on the immigration issue is to make it a civil offense as opposed to a criminal offense, right? We have
criminal laws for people who commit crime, including immigrants who commit crime. That is taken care of.
What we don't need to do is to criminalize people who have committed no crime, simply because they're here out of status, simply because they
overstayed their visa, simply because they didn't fill out the right paperwork in the right form, in the right triple (INAUDIBLE) with the
carbon copy and get it notarized, like that is not a criminal offense, that is a civil offense.
Now, civil penalties can be significant. Civil penalties can be harsh. Civil penalties include deportation. That is a civil penalty in this
country and we can do that if we feel that a person has violated our laws in a civil sense. But throwing people in jail, taking them away from their
children, throwing their children in jails, or holding pens or concentration camps, or whatever euphemism we're calling it today, that's
immoral, that's wrong, and that doesn't need to happen.
And the only reason why that does happen is because the 1921 Immigration and Nationalization Act supported by people with the very most racist
intentions possible made it so. Before the 1921 Act all immigration offenses were civil penalties, not criminal, and they could be again if we
repealed that section of that law.
SREENIVASAN: You also write in your book about the stand your ground law. Most Americans became familiar with it in 2012 when George Zimmerman
fatally shot, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin because he thought he was well within his rights to do so. A little background on the law for our audience
and what your problem is with it.
MYSTAL: The law is the most provably racist law that we have. What stand your ground says is that if you are legally in a place that you are allowed
to be, right, and somebody, whatever, accost you, annoys you, bothers you, threatens you, you can respond with deadly force, you can stand your ground
as it were, right? I mean, that's literally -- and stand your ground is not just the tagline of the law, it is literally in the language of a lot of
the laws in the various states that have them, right.
When I say it's the most provably racist law that we have statistical evidence for, if you are a white person standing your ground and you are
allegedly threatened or accosted or bothered or annoyed by a black person, and you shoot that black person to death, you are 218 times more likely to
be let off with no charges than if you -- than if the races are reversed.
[13:50:00]
If you are a black person and you stand your ground against a white person who threatens or accost or assaults or annoy you. And that's how the law
was kind of intended to function.
The thing about stand your ground that a lot of people don't understand, what it does in terms of the legal structure of it, is that it immunizes,
the person who shot it immunizes, the shooter from even being taken -- from even being charged with a crime and taken to trial.
So, if I'm white and I shoot a black person, I say, I was standing your ground. And the cops, believe me, I cannot be charged. I cannot be
investigated. If the cops just take my word for it, understand your ground, that's it. That's the end of the inquiry. And that's also one of the
reasons why the law is so disproportionately racist.
SREENIVASAN: So, what's to prevent the reform route, not just for stand your ground, but a lot of the laws that you're talking about in the books
versus complete repeal and overhaul?
MYSTAL: Well, what's the -- well, again, if you think about what the law was intended to do, what's the benefit of reforming it? Like what's the
benefit of reforming stand your ground. We have laws protecting your right to self-defense. That's already a law. We don't need -- the stand your
ground is a perfect example of a law that is only there to do bad things.
If you are threatened with deadly force and you defend yourself with deadly force, we have an entire legal canon. That's designed to figure out if your
shooting was justified. Let's call it a justified homicide. There is an entire statutory -- not statutory, there's an entire common law background
for that. And it's very -- and it's not easy, but like you can prove that you shot somebody in self-defense. It happens all the time. What do you
need to stand your ground for?
SREENIVASAN: So, where do we go from here? I mean, what do you think people can do to make any kind of meaningful change if there are so many kind of
structural and codified hurdles?
MYSTAL: You got to change the structure. You got to change the structure. And one of the arguments that I make in the epilogue of the book is that
one of the first places that I would start is changing the structure of Congress. Right now, most of your viewers know we are stuck at 435
Congressmen, but a lot of your viewers don't know why.
There's not a -- there's nowhere in the Constitution that says Congress can only be 435 people. We started with, you know, 90 something. We quickly
went to 137. We used to add Congress people every decennial census, right? So, everybody now knows that you do the census and then you have to
reapportion and so, like, you know, New York loses two representatives to Arizona because you're -- well, before we used -- instead of taking
congressmen from one state and putting it in another state, we just used to add more congressmen. We stopped doing that in 1920.
If we had just kept going with our population increase and adding more Congress people and keeping the level of per capita representation, that is
how many people one congressman represented, we had kept it steady from the 1920s, we'd have 1,200 people in Congress right now.
Do you know how different our system looks with 12,00 congressmen instead of 435? It changes our entire polity. If you make representation in
Congress, which is supposed to be the house of proportional representation, if you actually make it proportional, it changes the entire country.
America is the least representative democracy in the world by the measure of per capita representation. One congressman here represents about 760,000
Americans, right? The next least representative government is Japan where one member of their lower house represents around 520,000 Japanese people.
So, we are off the charts in terms of an unrepresentative place to live, and we could fix that.
My solution in the book is called the Wyoming planet ties representation to the -- representation of the least representative -- of the least populous
state, right? Because every state, no matter how small, gets one congressman. So, the idea is that every congressman should represent the
population of the least populous state. Right now, that's Wyoming. Wyoming has about five 50.
If you made every Congress person represent around 550,000 people, you would immediately go and get about 200 to 300 more congressmen. We can
change the number of representatives in Congress by a simple piece of legislation, just like we artificially limited the number of Congress
people with a simple piece of legislation.
[13:55:00]
SREENIVASAN: The book is called "Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America." Author, Elie Mystal, thanks so much for joining us.
MYSTAL: Thank you so much for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And that's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you
can always catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media.
Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
