- 8 hours ago
The Rachel Maddow Show - Season 2025 Episode 101
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00:00instead of MSNBC. Very exciting, right? Many years ago on this show, for some reason,
00:06we acted out most of the plot of Moby Dick during the show. Honestly, we did all of this just to
00:14prove a very small point. Something about John Boehner and what Republicans were doing in the
00:20debt ceiling. I don't know. We had a boat. We had waves. We had a whale. Now that we are MSNOW
00:28instead of MSNBC, what that means in practical terms is that we had to just move offices.
00:33We moved studios, moved offices. For us on The Rachel Maddow Show, that included us having to
00:39unscrew our whale from the wall in our old offices. That whale has lived there for 12 years.
00:48He's very comfortable there. But we took him down off the wall in the old offices. We brought him
00:53outside. This was the first time the whale had ever been on the streets of Manhattan.
00:58We took him on a field trip through Times Square along with our plant. We introduced our whale to
01:07our new offices. And now he is proudly swimming free on our new office walls. Proudly our office
01:17mascot once again in our new MSNOW office space. So this is, I'm telling you this and I'm showing you
01:23this to prove to you that nothing is changing except the name. Not even the whale is changing.
01:30It was the MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show whale before. Now he's the MSNOW. Rachel Maddow Show whale. And who
01:38can tell the difference? Anyway, but we are happier than ever to have you here tonight, especially
01:43on this first show with our new name. Last week at this time, you may remember, I tried to give you a
01:49little bit of a heads up that we were heading into a week in which a lot of legal stuff was going to
01:56come crashing down on the Trump administration. And so we talked about that last week to sort of kind
02:02of get you ready for what was going to happen over this week that just passed. And I got to say, I
02:08think we were right. I would love to take credit for seeing all of it coming. I didn't see all of it
02:12coming. I did not see, for example, this coming. This is what the headquarters of the U.S. Department
02:18of Justice looks like tonight. This is this evening. You see projected onto the outside of
02:24DOJ's headquarters there in Washington. It says, release the files now. Release the files now.org.
02:31That's, of course, about the Jeffrey Epstein files at the Justice Department. Those are the files
02:36to which they reportedly assigned more than a thousand FBI agents to make sure Trump's name was
02:43scrubbed out of them. These are the Justice Department files, which have so flummoxed Trump
02:47and Republicans. They are now running in circles on this issue. We do expect a vote to release the
02:52Epstein files in the House of Representatives tomorrow. We're going to have more on that in a
02:57moment and what we can expect in the wake of that vote. I got to say, I also didn't see coming the fact
03:04that the FBI, for the first time in its history, has assigned a full-time protective security detail,
03:11a SWAT team, no less, to guard the girlfriend of an FBI official. The FBI has never before had a
03:19taxpayer-funded security detail for an FBI official's girlfriend, but that's what we're paying for now.
03:27The girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel has members of the FBI SWAT team protecting her as if
03:34they are private bodyguards, but they are paid for by you. Ken Delaney and Carol Lennig from MS Now,
03:40first to report that story today. At the FBI, Kash Patel's office reportedly also sought to increase
03:47the monetary value of gifts that he is allowed to receive as FBI Director, because simply, he wants
03:56to keep more of the free and valuable stuff people offer him as Director of the FBI. So his office
04:02reportedly sought an increase in the ceiling on the monetary value of gifts he can keep.
04:09There's also, frankly, repulsive new reporting in the New York Times that the Trump administration has
04:15now stopped the FBI and other Justice Department personnel not only from working on counter-terrorism
04:20cases, but also the Trump administration has stopped federal law enforcement officers in multiple
04:24agencies from working on child sex trafficking and child exploitation cases.
04:30Quote, earlier this year, special agents at Homeland Security Investigations, HSI, found online videos
04:37showing violent sexual abuse of an unidentified young child. The HSI agents who are trained to hunt down
04:43pedophiles who use the internet to distribute illegal imagery spent weeks analyzing the footage to try to
04:50identify the child and to infiltrate the online networks that had shared and may have directed
04:55the abuse. But the agents working that case have since been asked to go out in the field and help
05:03arrest undocumented immigrants. Those agents' reassignment has hindered progress toward identifying
05:10and rescuing the child in that case. The agents, no longer able to spend as much time undercover online,
05:17have now lost contact with a key source they had cultivated over years in the online world of
05:23abusers. That is reportedly part of a larger pattern in the Trump administration, according to a new
05:28investigation from the New York Times. Quote, HSI teams that investigate sex crimes against children
05:34in cities including Newark, New Jersey and Los Angeles have had significant numbers of their special agents
05:40dragooned into immigration work instead. At one point, an entire unit of roughly five people
05:47investigating child exploitation in L.A. was working immigration duty instead, with agents trying
05:54to advance their child exploitation cases on nights and weekends, meaning effectively in their free time.
06:03There's also new reports, new reporting that in addition to seeking more than $200 million for
06:09President Trump himself from the U.S. Justice Department, Trump's DOJ is also reportedly considering
06:14giving a huge check to Trump's disgraced former national security advisor, the conspiracy theorist
06:20Mike Flynn, the one who pled guilty to lying to investigators about his secret communications
06:26with the Russian government. Bloomberg reporting that the Trump Justice Department is in talks
06:30to give $50 million to Mike Flynn. That would be $50 million of your dollars, taxpayer dollars.
06:38Because sure, why not? Law and order. Then there's the new top lawyer Trump has just moved to install
06:45at the General Services Administration, the GSA. GSA is in charge of federal real estate. This usually is
06:51not a very high-profile agency. But in this administration, we've got the president literally
06:56bulldozing the White House and, like, dumping the debris randomly on public golf courses. So all of a
07:02sudden, this previously low-profile agency is right at the heart of Trump weirdness and destruction.
07:08Trump has reportedly now found a perfect candidate to be a new top lawyer at the GSA. He is reportedly
07:14installing there a guy whose nomination for a different job had to be polled a couple of weeks
07:19ago when it emerged that he had said about himself, quote, I do have a Nazi streak in me.
07:25Well, now Mr. Nazi's streak will be a senior official in charge of federal buildings and
07:33federal real estate. Just a little streak of Nazi, self-proclaimed Nazi. Just a little bit.
07:42Then there's the news that President Trump was caught apparently using an auto pen,
07:46or at least somehow producing an exact replica signature, to sign multiple new pardons
07:52for people convicted of other crimes besides just the January 6th crimes for which he had already
07:57given them pardons. The White House removed images of the apparently auto-penned pardons
08:02and replaced them with new signatures when they were caught out. There's also new reporting in the
08:09Washington Post that in the bizarre conspiracy theory case they are trying to bring to relitigate
08:15the Russia investigation from the 2016 campaign, the federal prosecutor's office they have given
08:20that case to, is reportedly having to seek outside lawyers to prosecute that case because I guess
08:28no actual prosecutors in that U.S. attorney's office are willing to do it. So yeah, that is all broken
08:35over the last few days. When I said last week at this time that some legal stuff was going to be
08:39coming due this week and it was likely to be bad news for the Trump administration, I was not wrong
08:44about that, but I wasn't expecting any of that stuff I just described. That's all gravy. What I just
08:51described is all in addition to what I was actually warning about. What I was actually warning about this
08:56time last week was the collapse that has now apparently started of Trump's marquee headline
09:06revenge prosecutions of his supposed political enemies. Headline, New York Times,
09:13judge says Trump Justice Department may have committed misconduct in James Comey case.
09:19Quote, a federal magistrate judge said today that the criminal case against James Comey,
09:25former FBI director, could be in trouble because of a series of apparent errors committed in front of
09:31the grand jury by Lindsay Halligan, the inexperienced prosecutor picked by President Trump to oversee the
09:37matter. The judge's statement is what the Times describes as a, quote, remarkable rebuke of Lindsay
09:46Halligan. Headline of what remains of the Washington Post tonight on the same, on the same subject,
09:53quote, federal judge blasts potential government misconduct in Comey case. And indeed, the judge's
10:00ruling really is blistering. It accuses the Justice Department of illegally, quote, rummaging through
10:07evidence of, quote, inexplicably failing to obtain proper search warrants, of putting an FBI agent before
10:15the grand jury in a way that was, quote, highly irregular. Worst of all, the judge's ruling accuses
10:21Lindsay Halligan herself of making, quote, fundamental and highly prejudicial misstatements of the law
10:27to the grand jury. The judge describing a, quote, disturbing pattern of profound missteps. Quote,
10:35the court finds that the government's actions in this case, whether purposeful, reckless, or negligent,
10:40raise genuine issues of misconduct. That's not going very well. And, oops, that finding from that judge
10:51in the Comey case came today immediately before New York Democratic Attorney General Tish James was due,
11:00also in the same court, to file her own motion to dismiss the prosecution that's been brought against
11:07her. Quote, this indictment is the product of months of illegal and unethical behavior by government
11:14officials, only made possible by the misuse of a federal agency, the disregard of exculpatory evidence,
11:19the systematic removal of ethics officials and career prosecutors who stood in the way,
11:23and the improper attempt to install an unqualified U.S. attorney with nothing to offer except undying
11:28loyalty. If this brazen, continuous disregard for the law and the Constitution is not outrageous
11:36government conduct, nothing is. From the motion to dismiss. And that, of course, follows new reporting
11:43in the Wall Street Journal that the Trump appointee who crusaded to bring this case against Tish James,
11:49his name is Bill Pulte at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, there's new reporting in the Wall
11:54Street Journal that he reportedly had to fire his way through basically all the oversight and ethics
11:59officials at his own agency because they were looking into whether he was breaking the law, whether he
12:04was acting improperly in accessing information about Tish James to try to gin up this case.
12:10If this is not outrageous government conduct, nothing is.
12:18So that's all of that blown up all at once. And you could see it coming, right? You could see it
12:25coming from like the way the two sides were arrayed each other there, against each other there, right?
12:31With James Comey and Tish James and the real lawyers who they brought in to defend them
12:35against the clown car that the Trump administration has made of the U.S. Department of Justice.
12:44And I will tell you, this is a consequential thing. It's not just like point and laugh,
12:48although it is point and laugh. It's consequential. They're shambolic and terrible,
12:55irretrievably delist lawyering. Their failure to get even the basic stuff right when it comes to the
13:02legality of what they're trying to do turns out to be a compounding problem for them.
13:08Because when they take actions against their perceived enemies or they take actions to try to
13:14advance the president's radical agenda or they take actions to fire people they're not allowed to fire
13:19or to close agencies they're not allowed to close or to do things they're just not allowed to do,
13:24they inevitably get challenged. And when they get challenged, almost all the time they lose.
13:30And when they lose, the courts brush them back and not only stop them from doing what they're doing
13:36in that instance, but the courts frequently enjoin the Trump administration from trying to do anything
13:43like it again. And so this is not just stupid. It's really consequential for them and getting more
13:49so over time. It means their bad lawyering on their bad ideas is narrowing and narrowing and
13:56narrowing their room to act and their room to maneuver against the American people.
14:01Take, for example, the city of Chicago, from which Trump's federal immigration agents have just
14:07retreated in defeat. On their way out the door, Trump's immigration agents left behind them
14:14a federal judge ordering the release of more than 600 people who Trump's agents just arrested in
14:21Chicago. Why did those people all get released? Because Trump's agents allegedly arrested those
14:26people illegally in a way they should have known the courts would not allow. So all those people
14:31have now been sprung. Remember the big showy made for TV apartment building raid they did in Chicago
14:39early on where they smashed in all the doors of this apartment building. They had people literally
14:44rappelling out of Blackhawk helicopters like they were playing a war game. They made lots of TikTok videos
14:49and YouTube videos about themselves doing that operation because they thought it made themselves
14:53look so cool. That whole thing, turns out, we now know, resulted in precisely zero criminal charges
15:00being brought against anyone. And I don't know, maybe that's because who in the government
15:08is going to want to explain to a judge that, yes, your honor, this arrest was part of that thing we
15:13filmed for YouTube where we pulled little kids and old people and dozens and dozens and dozens of
15:19U.S. citizens out onto the street in the middle of the night in their pajamas and zip-tied their
15:25hands together and reportedly segregated those people by race while we left them sitting outside
15:32for hours with their hands tied while their apartments were ransacked and the building was
15:37all but destroyed and then we left. You want to explain that to a judge? You want to try to make those
15:43charges stick in that case? Literally zero criminal charges brought against anyone from that operation.
15:54And yes, they did succeed in terrorizing and brutalizing the people of Chicago,
15:59but that also had the effect of galvanizing the people of Chicago against the Trump administration
16:05and his immigration agents. Big protests, small protests, instantaneous instinctive neighborhood
16:13protests everywhere they showed up. Thousands and thousands of people in Chicago starting to carry
16:18whistles with them everywhere they went so they could sound the alarm whenever Trump's immigration
16:23agents showed up anywhere. Rapid response groups forming in every neighborhood to surround churches
16:29and schools and businesses to try to make sure that those masked agents not only felt like they were
16:35being watched, but they knew that they were being both watched and recorded every single second they
16:40were on the street being berated by the good people of Chicago. At the Broadview ICE facility,
16:47the protests never let up. And the brutal tactics used there against protesters of all kinds,
16:53including multiple ministers who were beaten and hurt while protesting peacefully there. Many,
17:00many of them in their clerical clothing while they were beaten. In Broadview, images like these seem to have
17:09only had the effect of drawing out yet more clergy of all kinds, more faith communities to stand up even
17:15more, including at Broadview to say, we are against this. We stand with the people who are being terrorized here.
17:21What the government is doing is wrong, and we feel called to respond.
17:26The whole Chicago misfire by the Trump administration, I will say, it seems, among other
17:33things, to have galvanized and maybe even radicalized the American Catholic Church in particular on this
17:40issue. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lining up to stand with immigrants, to stand with
17:45immigrant communities against what Trump is doing. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops just
17:50issued their first special message since 2013, their first message like this in more than a decade,
17:57opposing what the bishops called the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.
18:02Listen, I mean, whether or not you're Catholic or you care about the political suasion
18:08of the Catholic Church, the brand new pope, the first ever American pope, is from Chicago.
18:15You decide to commemorate that occasion, Trump, by shooting less than lethal munitions at priests
18:24on multiple occasions in Chicago, arresting them for trying to give people communion
18:31in Chicago? Great move. What did you think was going to happen?
18:36Trump's immigration agents are not only constrained in terms of their available tactics for use of
18:44force, thanks to a federal judge reviewing the use of force by Trump's agents in and around Chicago.
18:50The Broadview facility specifically just got an in-person visit from a federal judge,
18:55a judge who was weighing whether or not the conditions at that facility are so abominable
19:00that that facility should potentially be shut down.
19:02How is the Trump administration doing in handling the legal responsibilities of that big deal
19:08challenge? Oh, I don't know. Headline, quote, irretrievably destroyed. Trump administration
19:14says video footage inside ICE facility at Center of Class Action lawsuit, quote, cannot be produced
19:19in line with court's discovery order. The U.S. Justice Department admitted to the apparent snafu in a
19:2610-page joint written status report on discovery. Chief among the missing files is 13 days
19:32worth of video footage recorded at the ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview. Defendants have
19:38indicated that some video between October 19th and October 31st, 2025 has been irretrievably destroyed
19:44and therefore cannot be produced on an expedited basis or at all. Oh yeah, the court's going to love
19:52that. Judge is going to love that. That's going to go great.
19:58They're really bad at this. And in particular, they're terrible lawyers. And because of that,
20:06increasingly, the people they arrest will be set free. The places they want to lock people up will
20:11be shut down. Their tactics will be constrained by court orders. And at the same time, the American
20:17communities they are terrorizing will, over time, get better and better and better at standing up to
20:26them as they learn from one another. You probably saw the AP headline this weekend. Immigration
20:31Crackdown inspires uniquely Chicago pushback. That's now a model for other cities. A model for other
20:39cities. Coverage like this is focused in the last couple of weeks on the rapid response groups in
20:46Chicago. The whistles that everybody in Chicago is carrying now. The protests, large and small,
20:51the know your rights trainings in Chicago. I will also note a new development in the protest tactics
20:59there. These protests this weekend in Chicago and actually all over Illinois. This tactically,
21:04I got to say, is very smart. These folks are protesting not generically against the Trump
21:09administration. They are protesting at AT&T stores because they are trying to pressure AT&T
21:15to give up their gazillion dollar contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE and
21:20Customs and Border Patrol. They want to keep enjoying. They're telling AT&T, if you want to
21:25keep enjoying retail customers in communities where ICE and CBP are terrorizing people, you should give up
21:31your contracts with ICE and CBP or it's going to be very uncomfortable. There's effectively going to be
21:37protests and pickets outside AT&T stores that are going to cut into your bottom line.
21:41Protesting against public facing entities and businesses that are helping the Trump administration
21:47with the worst of what they are doing. This is an emerging tactic. We saw it was so effective at
21:53getting Elon Musk out of the Trump administration when protesters targeted Tesla. We saw it was so
21:59effective when protesters targeted not Brendan Carr and the FCC and the Trump administration,
22:05but ABC and Disney and Nexstar and Sinclair and the other public facing entities that were doing Trump's
22:12dirty work. We saw it with the targeting of Avello Airlines. Private wants to be a private contractor
22:20to Trump for ICE and also provide commercial flights to the American people. No, not without a lot of
22:27hullabaloo, not without a lot of protests. We're going to see more and more of tactics like these.
22:31This weekend, we saw protests starting big ones in Charlotte, North Carolina, as Trump's
22:37immigration agents moved to Charlotte for some reason. Protests in Charlotte this weekend, also in
22:43Asheville, North Carolina, and in Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capitol. Big protests in both of
22:49those places. People coming out all over the state. Advocates for immigrants in North Carolina have
22:54created already this online map showing where federal immigration agents are known to be operating in
22:59North Carolina. We're going to be checking in live in just a moment with one of the groups that's been
23:04organizing furiously in Charlotte in preparation for the attack that Trump is now launching on that city.
23:09We've got a reporter at one of their trainings tonight in Charlotte. It was a full house, not an empty seat
23:15in the place. But Trump's agents, you know, they attacked L.A. first and L.A. stood up against them.
23:21Their pushback in L.A. helped Chicago fine tune its own response when Trump next attacked Chicago.
23:27The pushback in Chicago is now helping Charlotte scale up its own response now that Trump is
23:31attacking there. But again, never underestimate just how dumb they can be, especially when it
23:38comes to their lawyering, when it comes to the basic legal reasoning and defense of their radical
23:43actions. Right. Trump's new attack on Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, they say it's not being
23:49led by ICE. It's being led by CBP, by Customs and Border Patrol. Now, by CBP's own admission,
23:56they're only supposed to be operating within 100 miles of the U.S. border.
24:03Charlotte, North Carolina is way more than 100 miles from any border. Charlotte, North Carolina
24:08is more than 170 miles, even from the coast. So what's CBP doing there?
24:16I mean, with the kind of legal eagles these guys have working for them, maybe they're thinking
24:20nobody will check that. Maybe they didn't know that 170 is a bigger number than 100.
24:25I don't know. How do you check that?
24:29Protests against Trump are going to take on a slightly different cast this week,
24:33and this is worth watching. Today, you might have seen footage of people protesting in Washington,
24:38D.C., right around the White House. In fact, they wrapped the White House in yellow crime scene tape
24:44today. This protest today in D.C. was under the banner of Trump must go. And I got to tell you,
24:51it was, I think, intended to be a bit of a warm-up for what they're expecting later on this week.
24:56They're expecting to be large numbers of people protesting in Washington later on this week.
25:01And that's technically interesting, because unlike the No Kings events and the hands-off protests
25:07and the 50-51 events of various stripes, which have really deliberately been decentralized,
25:12they've happened all over the place, all over the place, all 50 states, everywhere, all at once.
25:16This week, organizers are asking people to come to Washington, to come on Thursday to lobby Congress.
25:25They say they want Congress to impeach, convict, and remove Trump from office. They're expecting it
25:30to be a really large lobby day on Thursday in Washington. And then on Saturday, one big central
25:36protest in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial with that same demand to impeach him, convict him,
25:43and remove him from office. Do you know the band, the Dropkick Murphys, legendary Boston band?
25:49The Dropkick Murphys are not shipping up to Boston. They are going to be shipping down to D.C.
25:53to basically headline that protest at the Lincoln Memorial this Saturday at noon, which means
25:59it should at least be loud and in the best possible way. Tonight, we've got live reports from
26:07Charlotte coming up. And we've got a live report from Oregon, where a little town in Oregon appears to
26:12have succeeded in standing up and maybe stopping Trump from putting an ice facility in their town.
26:17There's a lot to learn from in that story and what that town has done. That's coming up here tonight.
26:24Lots to get to. Stay with us.
26:29As the Trump administration launches attacks on one American city after another, Americans are learning
26:35strategies from one another about how to defend themselves, how to fight back, how to keep our
26:40neighbors safe, how to stand up to what Trump is doing. As he attacks city after city serially over
26:46time, people are learning best practices from the cities that have already been attacked.
26:52Serially, that knowledge is accumulating over time. And the American people in each new city he attacks
26:58are getting smarter and better resourced at how to stand up to him. In the city of Charlotte,
27:05North Carolina, organizers and community members were already doing on the ground work in preparation,
27:10even before Trump's latest attack started on that city over this weekend. A local immigrant
27:15rights group called Siembra NC, Siembra North Carolina, started a project they call Defend and Recruit
27:22in Charlotte. They've published guides. They've published videos for what to do if federal immigration
27:27agents show up on your block or in your community. They've made posters for people to put on their
27:31doors. I got to say, this is my personal favorite. It's in the style of those live, laugh, love signs.
27:39You'd see it like home goods or whatever. Look what it says. In this house, we live like there's room
27:45for everyone. We laugh at least once a day and we love a judicial warrant. If you are a federal agent,
27:52you must present a signed warrant to enter. That is very well done. Tonight, the group behind those
27:59resources held a community training at a local church in Charlotte. MS Now's Jacob Soberoff was
28:05there and got to look at the turnout. Look at this. Not a single empty seat in this church tonight.
28:11On a Monday night, over 300 people showing up to learn what they can do to try to protect their
28:16community from Trump's agents, who again started their attack on Charlotte this weekend. People
28:22tonight did role-playing exercises, talking about how to conduct safety patrols in your own
28:26neighborhood, how to react if you see Trump's masked agents beating people up or snatching people off the
28:32streets. Jacob spoke to one of the organizers tonight, a pastor from a nearby town, about what
28:39it's like to see his community show up like this. How does it make you feel to know that all these
28:45people showed up on a Monday night and you got many more of these to do? Yeah, it makes me grateful
28:51and reminds me of how much our community loves each other and our community wants to support that
28:57people don't come out on Monday nights to anything. And so that people are showing up right now and
29:03spending their valuable time to learn how to care for each other and protect each other. I don't even have
29:07words for it. Joining us now from Charlotte, North Carolina, is Jacob Soberoff, senior national
29:13correspondent for MS Now. Jacob, I'm so glad you were able to get to this tonight. What can you tell
29:18us about the event that you were at and what you saw? Rachel, it was exciting and it was inspiring here
29:26at the church tonight in Charlotte in a very, very dark time. There were, as you saw in the video,
29:33hundreds of people here on a Monday night when they could be doing just about anything else. And I think
29:39it's fair to say, based on some unofficial counts that I've heard from sources here in Charlotte,
29:44that may be as many people in this church tonight. And there were four other trainings. Others have
29:49been scheduled here in North Carolina as federal agents on the ground conducting these operations. And
29:56Siembra has been in existence for a long time, since 2017. They have been preparing for this moment
30:01since the first Trump administration. But it was only now with these community meetings already
30:07planned, and then the Border Patrol and ICE showed up, that they're really able to sort of effectuate
30:13all of this. And it isn't just kumbaya and holding hands. Some of the people that have been inside
30:18have already been to some of the trainings. And one woman, Jenny, I want to show you this. She told me
30:23that these trainings are not only for people to stand up and resist, but they actually work.
30:27They're protecting their fellow residents here. Watch this.
30:33What's the most important thing that you've taken away from being at these trainings and
30:37actually being out in the field in the face of the Border Patrol being here?
30:41I think, obviously, watching someone literally being detained. But I felt like our presence and
30:50the way that the rest of the folks in the parking lot at the grocery store where we were located,
30:55the community coming together, prevented that from being executed. They let them go.
31:02They let them go. They let them go.
31:07Rachel, it's all very practical. I mean, in that case, Jenny, this teacher said they let someone go
31:12when the Siembra volunteers showed up to one of these raids. They hand out flyers like this to say
31:19what to do if you're detained. And I think, you know, perhaps most importantly, like you said,
31:25they are learning from the other cities. And it's not just all doom and gloom.
31:30They even were teaching the people that were inside this church tonight songs to sing
31:34this little light of mine. I'm going to let it shine when they show up to protect the people of this
31:39community so it doesn't get violent, so it doesn't get adversarial, so it stays positive and uplifting
31:45in a moment that's really hard for so many people here. I see people with whistles. We're seeing the
31:51singing that you're describing. It does seem like there's kind of an iterative process where each
31:55new city that gets attacked by Trump's agents learns something from the tactics that happened
32:01and that were employed by people standing up in the earlier cities to have been attacked.
32:08Charlotte didn't have much notice that this was all going to be being brought down upon them as of
32:14this weekend. Do you think the organizers are surprised by the turnout that they're getting
32:18in terms of these packed houses for the trainings and the large protests that we're already seeing
32:23the way people are responding? I think in the wake of the No Kings Day protests and there were some
32:29leaders of Indivisible locally here this evening, they know that people want to stand up and they
32:35know that people want to push back and they actually know that these tactics work. They work for
32:39family separation in 2018 when hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people came to the streets
32:43and not a bipartisan but a universal condemnation that resulted in the reversal of that policy and I
32:49think that they believe that the same thing can happen now. There is nothing that Stephen Miller
32:52wants less, folks inside that church believe, than to hear people and see people smiling and
32:58celebrating fellow members of their community in the wake of these tactics where they want
33:02nothing more than for, Stephen Miller wants nothing more for them to be throwing rocks and to be
33:06agitators and to play into the narrative that they are creating about a place like this. But I can tell you,
33:10I got to Charlotte this afternoon. It is as beautiful as ever. The people are as inspired as
33:15ever and the organizers feel very emboldened that there will be many more people showing up at these
33:19trainings in the days and weeks to come. And the timing couldn't have been better, obviously,
33:23for the operation that's happening on the ground.
33:26Jacob Soberoff, MSNOW Senior National Correspondent. It's great to have you there tonight,
33:30Jacob. Thanks for covering this for us. I really appreciate you being here,
33:34my friend. Thank you. Thanks, Rachel. All right. We got much more news ahead here tonight. Stay with
33:39us. Two weeks from now is the start of Dungeness crab season off the coast of Oregon. Dungeness crab
33:48is one of the world's great seafood delicacies. There's nothing like it. But the path to get
33:53delicious Dungeness crab onto your plate is a tough and dangerous path. Fishing for Dungeness crab
33:59is one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States, statistically speaking. It's difficult work.
34:06It's really risky work. And the busiest port for Dungeness crab fishing on the whole West Coast is a
34:13cool, beautiful little town called Newport, Oregon, population just over 10,000. Last week,
34:19the people of Newport, Oregon discovered something that is worrying to them, given the town's main
34:25industry and how dangerous that industry is. At the small municipal airport in Newport, Oregon,
34:32there is a Coast Guard rescue helicopter there. And that is really important in case the Coast Guard
34:37needs to spring into action to help one of the fishing fleet vessels that's doing the very dangerous
34:43work of fishing for Dungeness crab off of Newport, Oregon. For some reason, last week, the town learned
34:52that the Trump administration was taking the Coast Guard rescue helicopter away. That crucial resource,
34:58the local Coast Guard rescue chopper, was being moved from their airport in Newport to a new place
35:04that is a half an hour away by air, which is life or death, right? There's a group in Newport called
35:12the Newport Fishermen's Wives. Their treasurer said in response to this news, quote,
35:17we aren't saying people might die. We're saying people will die.
35:23The same day Newport, Oregon learned their rescue helicopter had inexplicably been taken away,
35:29officials in the town made an announcement to local residents about what they thought was going
35:34on here. They told everybody in town that they thought the Trump administration, the Department of
35:38Homeland Security, was laying the groundwork to convert the Coast Guard facility at their little
35:44airport where the rescue helicopter had been. They were laying the groundwork to convert that into
35:49an ice prison instead. So town officials let everybody in town know also that a federal defense
35:57contractor had contacted the city about leasing land at the airport facility. Immediately, people in
36:02Newport, Oregon started raising hell. They clearly did not want an ice prison, and they certainly didn't
36:07want to give up their Coast Guard rescue helicopter in order to get an ice prison instead. So the town
36:14called a meeting last week, Wednesday. Judging from the turnout at the meeting, that was a smart
36:20decision. A reporter from the local station, KATU2, described just a remarkable crowd trying to get in.
36:29It is extremely packed. In fact, let me show you, this is the back of the room right now. I'm going to
36:34walk you through this right now and flip the camera. Here is a makeshift overflow area. A lot of people
36:40watching a monitor, watching what is happening inside of that chamber. This is the entrance. This
36:45is how difficult it is to get in. They're stopping people. They're only letting members of the media in.
36:52But this is the line to get in. It is so long and so packed that they actually have an overflow room
37:00nearby at a rec center. Earlier, we saw a bus that believed to have dropped a lot of people off here
37:06so that they could voice their concerns. But you can see protesters out here right in front of the city
37:12hall sign and on the sidewalk protesting the possibility of this ice facility.
37:18That's how many people turned up. Again, this is Newport, Oregon, which has a population of 10,000
37:28people. And that's how many people turned out, just rip roaring mad about what the Trump administration
37:33is apparently doing to their town. Well, after that meeting, we have learned that the defense
37:38contractor that had contacted the town about leasing land at their airport, that defense contractor
37:43has now backed off, backed out and said, okay, we're not doing it. This is all still a very live
37:50issue. The rescue helicopter is still not returned, but the fight is very clearly joined here in this
37:54small town in Oregon. As one Newport city councilor put it, quote, maybe somebody thought, oh, it's a
37:59small place. It's rural. They're probably quiet. We can overpower them. Quote, we've been underestimated.
38:07I can say that again. Marhead, stay with us.
38:13When Newport, Oregon, population 10,000 heard last week that its Coast Guard rescue helicopter
38:19had been taken away and that Homeland Security might be trying to build an ice facility at the
38:25airport where that helicopter had been, it was hard for local officials to know with any certainty what
38:30was really going on. Oregon State Representative David Gomberg said there was, quote, credible evidence
38:35that our federal government is pushing to site an immigration detainment facility in our community.
38:40Disturbingly, he said, we are receiving no communications or confirmation from the government
38:44as to what they are planning. They're operating in the shadows and trying to fast track this project
38:49with zero transparency or public engagement. Joining us now is Representative David Gomberg. He's
38:55an Oregon State legislator who represents Newport, Oregon. Mr. Gomberg, thank you very much for being
38:59with us tonight. I appreciate your time.
39:02Well, and thank you so very much for your interest tonight.
39:04Have you learned anything else about the possibility that ICE is looking to put a facility
39:10in your town? Well, you just shared the information that the proposal to lease property
39:16at the airport has been withdrawn from city property. But don't be misled. We have now learned that
39:24somebody on behalf of an unnamed federal agency is looking to lease other properties in the area.
39:30And at the same time, at the same time, we've got people reaching out to local small businesses to
39:36talk about delivering water to the airport, somebody to remove up to 10,000 gallons of sewage
39:42each and every day. We have now discovered online recruiting ads for detention officers,
39:49for bus drivers, for medical personnel. And with the removal of this critically important helicopter
39:56and with all of this new evidence, I mean, it's becoming increasingly clear that somebody somewhere
40:02believes that detaining people here is more important than saving people here. And that's
40:07very disturbing to our small community. How do you think that the people of Newport and
40:12surrounding communities are going to react once it becomes as clear as you're describing that
40:18an ICE facility may be on its way?
40:20Well, you know, you described a situation a little while ago, a town of 10,000 people in a public
40:25hearing on Wednesday night, 800 people in a town of 10,000 showed up to protest the possibility of
40:34a detention facility here and to demand the return of this life-saving helicopter. 800 people lining up
40:41for hour after hour after hour expressing their concerns. Not one single person in that lineup,
40:48by the way, said that we would welcome a detention facility here.
40:54Is there a menu of options that you and your fellow state legislators or indeed town officials
41:01may have to choose from in terms of what to do next, how to try to stop this? If you, like your
41:08constituents, are as strongly opposed as it sounds like you are to what the federal government may be
41:12trying to do here, what can you do to try to stop it? If you're willing to share what you think
41:18your plans might be?
41:19Well, we are amassing evidence, but we really don't know what's going on. Our U.S. senators
41:24have asked, our governor has asked, the city has asked, I've asked. Nobody will tell us exactly
41:29what the plan is. If we knew what the plan is, then we can start to look at how does this affect
41:34zoning? What are the consequences to our local economy? What about the fact that this airport is
41:41just a few feet above the tsunami inundation zone? If, God forbid, we should have a major earthquake
41:47while people are locked up there. There are a lot of different things that we can do once we know
41:51what the plan is, but nobody is telling us what the plan might be. That's not how government is
41:58supposed to work. We expect transparency. We expect honesty. We expect clarity so that we can respond in
42:04the same way. Now, when you have to do something secretly to try to avoid what you know will be the
42:11local backlash and resistance, that's a sign that maybe small-D democracy isn't proceeding
42:17along the lines we learned about in school. Oregon State Legislator Dave Gomberg, who represents
42:23Newport, Oregon, which is now in this fight. Sir, thank you for helping us understand. Keep us
42:29surprised. We'll be happy to do so. Thank you again very much for your interest tonight.
42:34Appreciate it, sir. Thank you. We'll be right back.
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