SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And NPR senior contributor Ron Elving joins us now. Ron, thanks for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: So millions more pages from the Epstein files released - on a Friday, and 43 days after a law passed by Congress said that all the files should be made public. Where do we go from here?
ELVING: Probably to a doctor for eye strain, Scott.
SIMON: (Laughter) Sure.
ELVING: All that much reading on top of everything else crowding our screens this weekend may be just too much. And mind you, we still don't know that this is all there is. The Friday night news-dump tactic is one we've seen back over the years from presidents and candidates in both parties. It works especially well in a week that's already loaded with big stories, like this one. Plus, Friday night's a time when most people want to start thinking about their weekends. And the sheer volume here has to be the ultimate in flood-the-zone strategy. We've talked about that before with regard to Epstein's stories and others. So the reading and digging have begun, and there will be much more to learn and argue over.
SIMON: Now, let's turn to the funding compromise on Capitol Hill - just part of the government's operations. What are the details?
ELVING: Fortunately, from the standpoint of people who depend on government services, this package of five funding bills left over from last fall will keep the government running until October, assuming that this latest deal gets through the House next week and the president signs it into law. Now, there's one big exception. That's the Department of Homeland Security, the home of ICE, which is only in for two weeks of funding. And that gives Senate Democrats time to negotiate reforms in ICE with President Trump.
Now, the focus here is on the leadership. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, ICE, is at the center of all this controversy this month in Minneapolis. All the Democratic senators and quite a few of their Republican colleagues got together last couple of weeks. And they stymied the DHS spending bill overall this week and broke it off - broke, that is, that one department off - for more negotiations on reforms to ICE. They are not prepared to go back to their constituents and say they voted to pay for more of the tactics that everyone's seeing on TV.
SIMON: Justice Department says the Civil Rights Division is now investigating the shooting of Alex Pretti last week in Minneapolis. Course, there's been a visible change on the ground with the arrival of Tom Homan, who says ICE operations - this is a quote - will be "safer, more efficient" and "by the book." But does that indicate any real change in the aggressive tactics of federal agents there?
ELVING: We'll just have to see in the coming days. There hasn't been enough time yet to assess this change of leadership, and there is lots of room for ICE to demonstrate some kind of improvement. But if you're talking about the basic mission of these raids, that seems unlikely to change. Tom Homan is a different guy at the top, not the face we've been seeing for the last couple weeks, but the overall mission here is coming from the White House and from the president's chief of staff for domestic policy, Stephen Miller. He has made no secret of his desire for mass deportations or his willingness to use force and to risk sweeping up people who are legally present in the United States, including some who are U.S. citizens. Now, can that be changed from the top? Yes. Do the top decision-makers on this issue in this administration want it to change? Doubtful, but we will see.
SIMON: And a new Fed chair is in the offing - Kevin Warsh, former governor of the Fed. What stands out to you about his selection?
ELVING: Mostly that he is not Jerome Powell, the chairman Trump appointed in 2017 and President Biden reappointed. Powell is now finishing his term atop the Federal Reserve apparatus. That's what governs the money supply in the U.S. and thereby affects markets and whole economies around the world. Powell making it through his term was in and of itself a story because Trump has been pressuring him to resign for months, calling him names, sending investigators to look into the Federal Reserve's business.
The entire idea behind having a Federal Reserve and a board of governors for it and a highly professional staff is to have an independent regulator for the money supply. Too much easy money juices higher inflation. We've all seen the results of that on household budgets and also on the political fortunes of incumbent presidents. Kevin Warsh has been on the board of governors before, knows the system well, knows the financial system well. And on first blush, he seems a conventional choice - someone, some claim, to distance from Trump - but that doesn't make his job any easier. But it may at least make it possible for him to do it.
SIMON: Ron Elving, thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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