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All In with Chris Hayes - Season 2025 Episode 186
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00:00Uh, well, it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat.
00:04The Secretary of Defense faces heat in Congress.
00:08What the hell is going on in the Caribbean?
00:11Tonight, Norm Eisen on his new call for investigation into Trump's lethal strikes.
00:16Then...
00:17What grade you would give...
00:19A plus.
00:20A plus.
00:20Yeah, A plus, plus, plus, plus, plus.
00:23The President visits a resort casino to Trumpsplain your economic pain.
00:27The tariffs are making him rich.
00:31It's going to be, you're going to see.
00:33Plus, Sherrilyn Eiffel on the high-stakes election fight in the Supreme Court.
00:36Jasmine Crockett joins me live on her bid to become the next Democratic senator in Texas.
00:42Somebody said the other day she's one of the leaders of the party.
00:45I said, you've got to be kidding me.
00:47An all-in starts right now.
00:55Good evening from New York.
00:56I'm Chris Hayes.
00:57Something interesting is happening right now on Capitol Hill.
01:01A few leaders of both parties are doing their jobs, taking small but important new steps
01:07to check the power of Donald Trump, to demand accountability for what looks to many experts,
01:13like the flat-out murder of dozens of people on the high seas with U.S. military might,
01:19ordered by U.S. commanders, effectuated by U.S. service members.
01:22The top Republicans and Democrats on the Senate and House Armed Services Committee held classified
01:28meetings today with this man, Admiral Alvin Halsey, the head of the U.S. Southern Command,
01:33days before he's set to retire and leave that post.
01:36Now, Halsey wasn't even a year into this role at Southcom, which is obviously incredibly prestigious.
01:41You spend your entire career working towards a commander role like this.
01:44It's responsible for U.S. operations in Central and South America, where, of course, all these
01:48strikes are taking place.
01:50And when he announced his retirement in October, suddenly, without warning, it was a job he
01:56was expected to hold until 2027.
01:58And in more than 37 years, Halsey served as a helicopter pilot and commander of some of the
02:03Navy's newest warships.
02:04There have been no issues with his leadership.
02:07But last week, two Pentagon officials told the Wall Street Journal that Hegseth asked Admiral
02:12Alvin Halsey to step down, a de facto ouster that was the culmination of months of discord
02:17between Hegseth and the officer.
02:19Discord that came to a head after Halsey had initial concerns about, yes, the legality of
02:25lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, according to two former officials
02:29aware of the discussion.
02:30Now, the armed services committees in both chambers have opened investigations into the
02:34first of those strikes back in September.
02:37That, of course, the one that we've been covering on this program, the one that killed 11 alleged
02:42drug runners off Venezuela, including two men who survived the military's initial attack
02:47on their boat and were struck again.
02:51Republicans are increasingly breaking ranks with the Trump White House on this, something
02:55we haven't really seen them do until recently.
02:57I mean, we first started to see it in this term for the first time happening last month
03:02with, of course, that vote to release the Epstein files.
03:04And it wasn't a ton of Republicans, but enough.
03:06And then there was a flood.
03:08Well, now we have a second issue where what the White House is doing, lawlessly killing
03:14anyone they say is a, quote, narco terrorist, maybe engaging in a just obvious and manifest
03:20war crime with that second strike on helpless shipwrecked men, that this is just a bridge
03:25too far for some congressional Republicans.
03:28And so what's really striking about this in some ways is how banal it all is, how normal,
03:33which is that they're just actually starting to do the basics of what would recognizably
03:41happen in a normal government and normal Congress and not just acting like Donald Trump's staff.
03:47It's interesting to me to see that in action because it's illustrative of just how flatly
03:53absent it's been, right?
03:55I mean, consider this.
03:56So on Sunday, the House and Senate leadership, the Republican leadership, released the text
04:01of their annual defense policy bill, which means the Republicans wrote it, right?
04:04Congressional Republicans wrote it.
04:06It authorized nearly a trillion dollars in military spending.
04:08And this is one of those big must-pass bills.
04:10And it comes up and it authorizes the entire defense budget, right?
04:14Well, lawmakers added language in that bill, demanding the Pentagon hand over unedited video
04:19of the strikes against drug cartels and threatening to withhold a quarter, just a quarter, but a
04:25quarter of Hegseth's travel budget if it does it.
04:29Now, that's the power of the purse.
04:31And they're using it.
04:32The bill would also require the Pentagon to provide the orders behind each attack.
04:36Again, that's bipartisan legislation authored by Republicans to get answers to the administration
04:41on this question.
04:42That's on top of bipartisan investigations and interviews with key military officials.
04:47So at this point, it's pretty clear.
04:49Top Republicans, at least the ones who are sort of most invested in this issue on those
04:53committees of jurisdiction, the House and the Senate, they're not just falling in line
04:57with Trump on this one.
04:58They're not just sort of knee-jerk saying he can do whatever he wants.
05:02And you've got to ask, well, where exactly is the president in all this?
05:04The answer is, all over the place.
05:07Depends on what time of day and when you ask him.
05:09Last week, when he was asked if he would release the full video of the first boat strike, or
05:16at least the second strikes in that boat, including the killing of the last two men as they apparently
05:20kind of floated in a capsized boat in the Caribbean, here's what he said.
05:27Mr. President, you released video of that first boat strike on September 2nd, but not the
05:33second video.
05:33Will you release video of that strike so that the American people can see for themselves
05:39what happened?
05:39I don't know what they have, but whatever they have, we'd certainly release.
05:42No problem.
05:44Again, we all heard that, right?
05:46That's the president.
05:47We'd certainly release.
05:48Whatever we have, comma, we'd certainly release.
05:50This week, Trump said something completely different, and he got typically very nasty about it.
05:56Mr. President, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that
06:00strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela.
06:03Secretary Hegseth now says...
06:04I didn't say that.
06:06You said that.
06:06I didn't say that.
06:07This is ABC fake news.
06:09You said that you would have no problem releasing the full video.
06:11Okay, well, Secretary Hegseth...
06:12Whatever Hegseth wants to do is okay with me.
06:15He has already admitted to releasing the full video.
06:18Didn't I just tell you that?
06:19You said that it was up to Secretary Hegseth.
06:20You're an obnoxious reporter in the whole place.
06:23Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious, a terrible, actually a terrible reporter, and
06:28it's always the same thing with you.
06:30Notice how he does that more and more, always with women reporters, right?
06:34Cool guy.
06:35And he had another interview yesterday.
06:37He pushed the entire thing off on his underlings.
06:41Should he testify, Pete Hegseth, under oath before Congress about that controversial second
06:46strike on the alleged drug boat on September 2nd?
06:49I don't care if he does.
06:50He can, if he wants.
06:51I don't care.
06:52Do you think he should?
06:54I don't care.
06:55I would say do it if you want, Pete.
06:56Do you believe that that second strike was necessary?
06:59Well, it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat, but I don't get involved
07:03in that.
07:03That's up to them.
07:04Oh, you don't get involved in it?
07:06You don't care?
07:07You just work here?
07:08You just punch it in?
07:10Is that how it works, Mr. President?
07:13Unitary executive and all that?
07:14Well, today, members of the Gang of Eight in Congress, that's the leadership of both
07:19houses and the folks who are on the intelligence committees, called in Trump's defense secretary
07:23to explain these boat strikes.
07:25Democrats like Chuck Schumer called that briefing very unsatisfying, perhaps not surprising.
07:29But the chorus of voices demanding answers is growing on the left and the right, and not
07:33just in Congress.
07:34Today, three legal groups, including the ACLU, filed suit against the Department of Justice,
07:39asking a judge to order the release of the secret memo by department lawyers that gave
07:43Trump a rationale for those attacks.
07:46That's in addition to an ethics complaint filed with the DOJ today by former ethics advisors
07:50for Presidents Obama, Clinton, and Bush.
07:53They're calling an investigation to whether the department's lawyers violated their professional
07:58responsibilities when they wrote that memo.
08:01Norm Eisen is one of those three former White House ethics advisors calling for investigation
08:05into whether the Trump administration contorted the law to justify those strikes, and he joined
08:09me now.
08:09Norm, tell me about this ethics complaint.
08:12What are you trying to get the Department of Justice to review and look at?
08:17Chris, in this terrible story about the vote strikes on civilians, one element that has been
08:29missed, hasn't gotten enough attention, is the legal advice that has been given by the Office of Legal Counsel
08:39within the Department of Justice.
08:41We haven't seen the reported 50-page memo, but there has been a media discussion of its contents
08:52saying that these strikes are legal.
08:56We think that if the memo is as reported, that that is so beyond the pale that it raises serious
09:06questions under the ethics rules.
09:09Lawyers are not allowed to counsel or facilitate conduct, for example, that they know to be criminal.
09:17And experts across the political spectrum have said killing civilians in international waters
09:25is not justified by international or U.S. law.
09:30And so that's why we joined together at the Democracy Defenders Fund with the ethics advisor,
09:37Richard Painter, for George W. Bush, Ginny Cantor, the ethics advisor, Clinton, myself, Obama's ethics
09:45advisor, to say we must have an investigation of this and fast because people are continuing to be killed.
09:53Yeah, the legal regime here is interesting.
09:56You mentioned some of the bipartisan sort of cross-ideological criticism, outrage over this.
10:03Interesting.
10:04Jeff Blake today, who's, of course, former Republican senator and ambassador, saying the administration
10:08has resisted releasing full video of these incidents citing national security.
10:12The more plausible concern is political moral.
10:15It knows what the public reaction to be.
10:17Once confronted with the footage, most Americans would question not only the legality operation,
10:21but the instinct behind it.
10:22For you, question, do you believe both videos and that OLC memo itself should be released immediately?
10:28Absolutely.
10:29There's precedent to provide the legal reasoning for these kinds of strikes, far less controversial
10:38ones than this, and that video crystallizes the issue because, based on the reports we have,
10:47Chris, you can see that it's the killing of civilians.
10:52We're not in a non-international armed conflict, even if we were.
10:58That's the terminology that the government is using that purports to allow this.
11:03But that refers to things like organized, sustained armed terrorist activity, not sporadic drug cartel activity.
11:13That's a law enforcement problem.
11:15Chris, even if we were in that kind of an armed conflict, you're not allowed to kill civilians.
11:20But because we're not, experts across the political spectrum from all administrations,
11:26irrespective of party, are saying, hey, either way, this is murder.
11:32We must see that video footage.
11:34We must get this memo.
11:36And we must investigate this legal advice that is kind of providing a golden shield for those involved.
11:44I've been wanting to ask this question of someone who has some experience in government lawyering,
11:49and you have quite a bit.
11:51If the Venezuelan government or another government blew up a boat of Americans,
11:56say a dozen of them, 10 miles off Long Island, and they said they were running drugs,
12:02how would the U.S. government understand that?
12:04Would we be OK with that?
12:05Would we say, well, if you say so?
12:07Chris, in fact, what you would see is the same kind of condemnation,
12:16the same demands for action, and the same concern that, depending on the facts,
12:24it appears to be out-and-out murder.
12:27So I think it's so important, as you noted, to see that, however, preliminary and cautious,
12:36members of the president's own party are now breaking with the corruption represented by the Epstein files
12:44and, frankly, the corruption of the rule of law and human decency represented by what experts say
12:54is the murder of civilians by our armed forces.
12:58No wonder Admiral Halsey, the outgoing head of Southcom, is reported to have said he doesn't want to participate
13:06because those who participate in this can be held personally liable,
13:11and the lawyers who give the advice can also face legal and professional discipline for doing that,
13:20lose their licenses.
13:22All right, Norm Eisen, thanks for your time.
13:24Thanks, Chris.
13:25Coming up, as the pain from Trump's economy grows, the president hits a resort casino?
13:31To tell you why that's not actually true.
13:34That's next.
13:37If you had to grade the Trump economy at this point in the term, what would you give it?
13:42B- charitably?
13:44Worse?
13:45Maybe better?
13:46I don't know.
13:47Okay, now what grade do you think Donald Trump would give himself?
13:50I do want to talk about the economy, sir, here at home, and I wonder what grade you would give your economy.
13:58A-plus.
13:58A-plus.
13:59Yeah, A-plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus.
14:02Is that five pluses?
14:03Trump, of course, is desperately trying to revive his economic standing with voters,
14:07but the country's just not having it.
14:09And so, he's going back on the road.
14:11In the last hour, he did his first rally since early July.
14:14He did it at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania,
14:18to tell everyone just how great things are right now.
14:23They say, oh, he doesn't realize prices are coming down very substantially.
14:28But they have a new word.
14:29You know, they always have a hoax.
14:31The new word is affordability.
14:33So, they look at the camera, and they say, this election is all about affordability.
14:41But in the real world, his approval on the economy is down to a dismal 36% in a recent Gallup poll.
14:49The self-inflicted economic struggles stumbling from his latest trade war with China
14:53have him grasping for anything he can use to soften the blow.
14:56And so, guess what he's doing?
14:58He's going to bail out the farmers the same way he did back in 2018.
15:03We're not reprinting the same article.
15:05Those are seven years apart, all the way down to the exact same $12 billion bailout package.
15:13John Tester is the former Democratic senator from Montana.
15:15He's also a third-generation farmer who still runs his family farm.
15:18He joins me now.
15:20Senator, a few things in politics that I've covered
15:24have so symmetrically and neatly sort of reenacted themselves beat for beat, move for counter-move,
15:33that Donald Trump picking a trade fight with China,
15:37China dropping all its purchase of U.S. agricultural imports, chiefly soybeans,
15:42Donald Trump then having to kind of turn tail and find a face-seeming deal
15:47and ending with a solution of mailing checks to farmers as opposed to allowing them to farm their product.
15:55What do you think about this version of it?
15:58Some would call it socialism, Chris.
16:01The truth is that we did see the same thing in the previous administration
16:05where prices at the farm gate were incredibly low.
16:11The only thing that's different with this one is in the first administration,
16:14he didn't give $20 billion to one of our economies,
16:18to another country, Argentina, to undercut our own economy, which is what they did.
16:25This is, what can I compare it to?
16:27An arsonist coming to a house and setting it on fire,
16:30and then the same arsonist shows up in a fire truck and says, I'm here to help.
16:33The bottom line is, I don't care if you call it affordability or the economy or inflation,
16:39but on the farm today, the price we're getting for our products is incredibly low because of the tariffs.
16:47And the inputs that we have to buy to grow those crops and to harvest those crops
16:53are incredibly high because of the tariffs.
16:56And are we appreciative of the money that the American taxpayer is going to give us?
17:03It's probably a debt, more debt on our kids?
17:05Well, sure, because there's going to be a lot of folks go broke.
17:08And I don't think some of these chests can be big enough to offset the impacts that these tariffs have had in rural America.
17:15And, Chris, if you combine that with what the big, beautiful bill did on health care,
17:20and especially as that bill is going to impact rural America,
17:24it's almost like there's a war against rural America with this administration.
17:28Well, let me ask about the politics of this, because it did occur to me as I was going back
17:32and reading about all this the first time around, which, again, the scale of it was a bit smaller.
17:35Like, the trade war with China was a bit more targeted.
17:38Their drop in purchases wasn't quite as dramatic as this time around.
17:42This is all happening at larger scales.
17:44You know, you can make the argument that it worked for him politically the first time around, right?
17:47I mean, you know, people got checks.
17:49That sort of helped tie them over.
17:51He won rural America by enormous margins.
17:53He won it in 2020.
17:55He won it by even bigger margins in 2024.
17:57And so, like, people seem fine with it in the end.
18:02Well, look, this could work again.
18:04I can tell you that most of the folks that I know that are in production agriculture
18:08want to get their check from the marketplace.
18:11They don't want to get it from the federal government.
18:13They're concerned about the debt that this country is carrying right now.
18:17They're concerned about what this president has done to traditional buyers of our product.
18:22We raise more grain and cattle in this country than we can consume.
18:26We need those foreign markets.
18:28Those foreign markets have been pushed away, and it's going to be hard to get them back.
18:32And the $12 billion is a Band-Aid.
18:35And what we need is we need a fix.
18:37We need a long-term fix if we're going to have family farms in this country continue.
18:42If not, there will be more consolidation.
18:44There will be fewer people living in rural America.
18:46And our food security will be put at risk.
18:48So this is really important stuff.
18:50And as I talk as a farmer about the impacts in rural America, this really does impact everybody.
18:57And it's bad policy.
18:58You know, farmers deal with drought, and they deal with disease.
19:01They deal with bugs.
19:02But I'm telling you what, nobody ever planned on these kind of policies coming forth that
19:08really has driven our prices really to rock-bottom levels.
19:13We're seeing a lot of polling sort of all saying the same thing on the economy.
19:18It's one of the kind of, I would say, strongest signals right now in the data we have of public
19:23opinion.
19:23I thought this was interesting.
19:24Just asking people in the most recent political poll, who's more responsible for the economy?
19:30Fully or mainly Joe Biden, 29 percent?
19:32Fully or mainly Donald Trump?
19:34Trump asked about who you trust to manage the economy.
19:37Democrats and Republicans are now even.
19:39Democrats have pulled even with Republicans.
19:42They were behind.
19:43Do you think Trump and his people around him seem to think it's a messaging thing?
19:47And if he goes to beautiful Mount Dairy Lodge in the Poconos, he can, with an affordability
19:52sign, they can kind of message their way out of this?
19:55How can they?
19:56Do you think that's going to be effective?
19:57Look, I mean, I think every time folks go to the store, whether they're buying food or
20:02buying a house, it doesn't matter.
20:04They're seeing prices go up, up, up, up, up.
20:07And I think you can say one thing, but when people are experiencing another, that's going
20:12to be the impact.
20:13You know, elections of economy, stupid, is what they've been about for a long, long time.
20:19And I'm telling you that costs continue to go up.
20:23Groceries continue to go up.
20:25Everything continues to go up.
20:26You know, this is, it's really, it's a situation where I think every family's in this situation.
20:35I think small businesses are in this situation.
20:37And that's kind of, you know, I'll be very thankful if the government cuts a check to
20:41farmers.
20:42But the truth is, what about those Main Street businesses that were impacted by tariffs?
20:45Yeah, exactly.
20:47Yeah.
20:47Why are they any different than I am?
20:49We're both small businesses.
20:51I mean, the bottom line is this.
20:54I'm not opposed to tariffs.
20:55But wait, the president has implemented these tariffs has really ruined the economy of this
21:00country.
21:00When the president took over, the economy of this country was the best in the world.
21:04Was there inflation?
21:05Yep, there was.
21:06And the president ran on reducing that inflation.
21:09And he has done nothing to reduce the inflation in this country.
21:13And that's just not me talking.
21:14That's a fact.
21:15Go to the store.
21:16Former Senator John Tester of Montana, thank you so much for some spend some time with
21:21us tonight.
21:22Thanks, Chris.
21:24Still ahead, the Supreme Court's latest steps to give this man as much power as possible.
21:29Next.
21:29Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an attempt to knock out what are essentially
21:40the last remaining federal campaign finance regulations we have left in this country.
21:46Basically, the plaintiffs here want to lift all caps on how much party committees can directly
21:50spend on races.
21:51It would be something akin to Citizens United 2.0, just sort of complete reins-off.
21:58Republicans believe this case, which was first brought by Vice President J.D. Vance when he
22:01was a Senate candidate, is going to be one of several rulings from this court to help
22:05them ahead of the midterms.
22:06In fact, the Trump Department of Justice isn't even offering a defense of the current rules
22:10before the court.
22:11Instead, the court had to reach in and appoint a lawyer.
22:14They also allowed experts like Mark Elias, backed by the DNC, to join the case.
22:18It's unclear how the court will rule, but if the court does strike down the regulations,
22:22it would be the latest step by this 6-3 Trump majority to put their thumb on the scale for
22:27billionaire money in politics and, frankly, Republicans ahead of the next November.
22:32I mean, remember, last week, in a temporary ruling, they struck down the lower court's finding,
22:39clearing the way for Texas to use, at least for now, its blatantly racially gerrymandered
22:43pro-Republican maps in these upcoming midterms.
22:46Sherilyn Ifill is the founding director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy
22:50at Howard University, previously the president and director of counsel for the NAACP Legal
22:55Defense Fund.
22:56She has a new piece about the 14th Amendment titled, Is It Too Late?, and she joins me now.
23:01Sherilyn, since I ended that on the Texas case, I want to start with that.
23:05We had a lower court do some real fact-finding, and they found that, basically, these were unconstitutional
23:11and unlawful. In fact, they were explicitly racially gerrymandered in contravention of this Supreme
23:18Court's own jurisprudence on what's permissible. The Supreme Court came in, and one of their unsigned,
23:24you know, docket, shadow docket rulings said, eh, it's fine for now. What do you make of that?
23:30What do I make of it? Well, first of all, it's obviously incredibly consequential, Chris. We have
23:37the 2026 elections coming up. But we have, as you alluded to, this incredibly detailed district court
23:45factual set of findings. The court conducted hearings, heard from witnesses, saw exhibits,
23:50and in a 160-page opinion, made clear that this was, in fact, a racial gerrymander. It's interesting
23:58because there's no question that the goal was to get a partisan advantage. Remember,
24:03this is the re-redistricting of the Texas congressional seats, called for by Trump,
24:09who called the governor of Texas and said, we need five more seats, kind of hearkening back to,
24:14we need 11,000 more votes. This is his attempt to insulate the House next year.
24:20So there's no question that the ultimate goal was to establish partisan gain. And of course,
24:26the Supreme Court years ago said they can't do anything about partisan gerrymandering.
24:30So that was what allowed Trump to do it. But the question is, what is the means by which they did
24:36it? And what the district court found was that they used race as a way of effectuating the partisan
24:42gerrymander. And of course, we all know from the SSFA versus Harvard case that, you know,
24:47if you wanted to have more students from cities at Harvard, you couldn't just go and pick all of
24:53the black applicants, right? So the Supreme Court made very clear, you can't use race to effectuate
24:59the outcome. And here, that's clearly what happened. That district court we're talking about was
25:05actually a three-judge court. So it was a two-to-one decision on that court, finding that this was a
25:10racial gerrymander. And for the Supreme Court to allow a racial gerrymander to go forward to allow
25:16this re-redistricting and to disenfranchise the representation of black voters in Texas is
25:23frankly astonishing.
25:25It is a maddening bit of contortion here, this sort of emerging race blindness jurisprudence in
25:35which if you want to, say, have more poor kids from the west side of Chicago in your university,
25:42you can't use race. You have to be racially blind. But if you want to knock out a few Democratic seats,
25:47you can just pull up the census data about who's black. And like, one is impermissible,
25:52but the latter is.
25:55Yeah, it's, it's, Chris, we've reached a point where I find it difficult to even try to do kind
26:01of real analysis of some of these decisions that the court is coming forward with. I felt the same
26:07way with the Kavanaugh stops in the Nome versus Verdoma case earlier this summer, where it just,
26:14it defies logic. But what's key here, Chris, is that it also is really breaking our system
26:22of litigation and adjudication. Because in our system, it is the trial court that has the power
26:28to find facts, find facts like this was a racial gerrymander, right? Race was used. And what we see
26:34in this decision is the Supreme Court, as they have been doing in a number of cases, overtaking the role
26:41of the federal district courts and deciding to do the fact finding themselves. And in Justice Alito's
26:48concurring opinion attached to this order, that's precisely what he did. He reached his own
26:53conclusions. Yes. About what was happening with this gerrymander. Yes. As Justice Elena Kagan said,
26:58over a holiday weekend, this is Alito saying, ruled that it was indisputable. The Texas motivation for
27:04ridiculous thing was, quote, pure and simple partisan advantage, which the court has previously
27:08ruled as permissible. He rejected the argument. They engaged in racial permitting. And you, you point to
27:12something that to me is, is really one of the defining weird legal features. I'm going to read you what I
27:16thought was a funny and sort of viral post about the legal landscape by a commentator who said,
27:22every legal story is now either ancient circuit judge delivers crystal clear hundred page rebuke
27:28to Trumpist overreach, or in unsigned shadow docket decision, 6-3 majority declares Trump can hunt
27:34people for sport. I think the distinction there between what we have seen about from lower courts,
27:41including Trump appointees, W. Bush appointees, Reagan appointees. I mean, the co-author of the
27:47infamous torture memo ordered George W. Bush, who just recently found that Trump was denying people
27:52being deported due process. Across the ideological spectrum, these lower courts coming out and being
27:57like, no, this isn't right. For sure. And then the Supreme Court coming in, sometimes signed and
28:02sometimes unsigned to be like, eh, seems fine to us. Yeah. I mean, you, you know, Justice Kagan says,
28:08you know, over holiday weekend, but you know, you have to balance that against a district court
28:13taking two weeks to have hearings and hearing, you know, scores of witnesses and seeing, seeing exhibits
28:20and hearing testimony and so on and so forth. This, this is a deep and sustained investigation of
28:27what happened in this redistricting. And the Supreme Court, which now believes that it has
28:32the power not only to say what the law is, but to say what the facts are, decides that it can see
28:38the facts better. And that is not as a litigator. That's not how our system works. In fact, appellate
28:43court judges are supposed to be restrained. They can't even overturn the factual findings of lower
28:49courts if they would disagree with them. It has to be that some clear error was made. And it's clear that
28:54that standard was not met in this Texas redistricting case. I want to ask you about
28:59something that happened tonight, which I thought was pretty interesting. Uh, judge Emil Bovey, he is
29:03now a federal circuit appellate judge. He of course, uh, was the kind of number two at the department of
29:09justice. He was widely reported in, in, in, in almost all the reporting we had about the department to be
29:14kind of the president's kind of bag man, hatchet man. Um, he is now a federal judge and he is there
29:21in the third or fourth row at the president's rally tonight. It's not like some official event.
29:26It's a presidential rally. He's going off on partisan harangues, uh, as you would imagine.
29:32Uh, he, he told us at MS now that he was just a citizen coming to watch the president speak. You
29:38think it's appropriate for him to sit in the fourth row there? It's absolutely inappropriate and he knows
29:44it's inappropriate, but they are all feeling quite heady, uh, with their impunity. And, you know,
29:49to be honest, the fish stinks from the head. If you have, uh, observed over the last six or seven
29:54years, this Supreme court scorn, uh, you know, the, the bounds of ethics that actually bind,
30:00uh, many lower court judges, I think we're going to see more of this. We're going to see more
30:04misbehaving, uh, of this particular sort, but I think they feel, you know, it's almost as though
30:09Trump's impunity is covering all of the people who support him. We see it with Pam Bondi. We see it
30:15with Kristi Noem. Uh, we, you know, we see it with all of the, with cash Patel, uh, with Pete
30:20Hegseth, you know, they don't, they don't think war crimes apply to them. It's, it's as though they
30:24took the Supreme court's decision saying that the president has this immunity and they have
30:30cloaked themselves in it. But the truth is they are not covered by that immunity. Uh, and so time
30:36will tell whether, uh, these folks will be able to enjoy what they think, uh, is this lifetime immunity.
30:42Yeah. We should know that the first ever judicial impeachment, which was unsuccessful. Salmon
30:46Chase was, uh, for accusations of him being essentially an overly partisan hack. Um, partisan.
30:51Yes. Uh, yes. Last question for you is how important is it for Democrats and others in
30:56kind of civil society to send the message to all these actors, whether they're commanders
31:02in the chain of command, whether the people, the department of justice, whether they're federal
31:05judges, whether they're corporations that just because Trump has immunity doesn't mean
31:09that, that, that lasts in perpetuity or covers other people, whether that's civil, criminal,
31:15ethical, um, other means of holding people to account when, and if we get through this.
31:21Now you asked exactly the right question because, uh, you know, there is no immunity for
31:28these other actors. And I think that it's really important for Congress. And here, I mean,
31:33the Democrats in Congress, because Mike Johnson has decided that he works for Trump, uh, that,
31:38that they use their powers, that they use their bully pulpits, that they, they use their investigatory
31:44power, that they use their disciplinary power, that we all do the same to hold these individuals
31:49accountable because they, they do not have impunity and they must be accountable. And I think, um,
31:55firing that shot across the bow, when these actors, um, step outside of what is appropriate,
32:02either ethically or legally, they must face some swift push, pushback, um, certainly from elected
32:09officials, but also from the people. We have powers too. And, um, I think it's very, very important to
32:15separate them out from this cloak of immunity that the Supreme court decided to give to the president.
32:22All right. Sherilyn Ifill, as always, uh, learned so much from you. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.
32:26Thank you, Chris. Still to come just a day after she announced a run for U S Senate, I will speak
32:32to Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett about the political landscape in the Lone Star State. Next.
32:42Texas Republicans are getting very, very nervous about what is shaping up to be a brutal and strange
32:48primary for U S Senate in their party. You see, Senator John Cornyn, right. Who's served for over 20 years
32:53is now facing a tough race for reelection. He's marred by low approval ratings, but crucially, he's fighting
33:00off a primary challenge. Two of them, actually one from the state's far right attorney general, Ken Paxton
33:04and Republican Congressman Wesley Hunt. Now on the democratic side, a rising star in the party, Congresswoman
33:11Jasmine Crockett has just thrown her hat in the ring, announcing her candidacy hours before the state's filing
33:17deadline yesterday. She will now face off against just one primary opponent, young charismatic state
33:22representative, James Tallarico. That's after former Congressman Colin Allred, who ran in the last
33:28cycle and did his Senate campaign yesterday to run for a new house seat instead. Joining us now is
33:33Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas. Congresswoman, it's good to have you on. This was, um, as far as I
33:38could tell, there was even reporting saying that you had kind of like twin forms filled out and twin
33:44cashiers checks about whether filing for the house or the Senate race. So this came down to the last
33:49second. Like take me through what pushed you over. Yeah. So I'll tell you that I might have been telling
33:56a lot of people that I was closer to a yes than a no, but I was really concerned. Number one, I was
34:01concerned about democratic unity. I talked a lot about the fact that I really wanted us to have a very strong
34:06ticket. And instead of kind of having our star power, but put into one race, I wanted to see if we
34:12could somehow make it to where you could have an option for governor. Say if you had nothing but
34:16state experience, see if we could have an option for, you know, Senate, see if we could have lieutenant
34:21governor, attorney general, and really give different parts of the state of Texas, someone to vote for and
34:27be excited about. And it's kind of hard to get around a state of 30 million people. We saw that Beto did
34:33it. He went to 254 counties, but Beto also literally worked himself into a sickness. He ended up
34:39being hospitalized more than once. And so I didn't feel like it made sense that we should just kind of
34:45have, you know, maybe one big, big, big kind of race. But Hey, at the end of the day, I thought
34:50that once the Supreme court did what they did, that we absolutely needed to do something about getting
34:55the right person into the Senate. And it was interesting listening to your previous conversation,
34:59the oversight for the Senate, for the Supreme court, it comes from the Senate. So those are the things
35:05that I was looking at as well as my actual experience on the federal level, as well as being an attorney,
35:09and knowing that we need to change the Senate map. If we're really going to get things like voting
35:14rights, if we're going to get reproductive access, if we're going to get healthcare,
35:18we've got to change what's happening in the Senate. So there's, there's a bunch of stories
35:23today about how your entrance into the race is welcome news for John Cornyn. Uh, there's like
35:29anonymous quotes from his staffers saying like, we're thrilled. There was people citing the fact
35:33that the Senate campaign arm of the Republicans had commissioned a poll that showed you ahead in the
35:38primary, that they were essentially trying to kind of pull you into the race with the logic being
35:42that your perception and coding among Texas voters is as too anti-Trump, uh, or as too sort of polarizing
35:51to plausibly win a statewide election in a state that Democrats have, as we all know, not won a statewide
35:57election in, in like decades. What's your response? People will say, even people were sympathetic to you
36:03who were like, is this the person that could win like eight to 10% of Republican voters necessary
36:09to win this race? So I actually disagree with the characterization that we have to get eight to 10%.
36:17What we know is that in this last election, approximately 51% of eligible voters in Texas
36:22voted. What we've not had is someone that could energize our base. That is abysmal. We are always one
36:28of the lowest voter turnout states. When you look at when we ended up getting two democratic senators
36:32in the state of Georgia, just know it was because they got their voter participation up. And so that's
36:38what we planned to do. What we were testing for was we wanted to know, can I excite people that normally
36:43don't vote? And the answer was simply yes. In addition to that, we looked at Beto's results because that
36:48is the best election for us to look to. It was a Trump, um, you know, uh, response type of election.
36:55Yep. And ultimately we know that he won black and brown folk over overwhelmingly. And, and so am I
37:01in polling. So in the, the Warnock and Ossoff examples, which do strike me as the closest model,
37:07right? In both those cases, it was a bit of both and though, right? They, they definitely juiced
37:11turnout. Um, and they, and they, they definitely got, they got high levels of turnout, but they also
37:16did win crossover voters. I mean, there's a pretty significant slice. And particularly if you look at
37:20those precincts and those Atlanta suburbs, particularly, um, so, so it does seem like
37:25both of those are necessary, particularly when you're looking at the numbers that you're staring
37:30down in Texas, which is, uh, again, numerically, it's like a tough, it's not an easy place to win.
37:38No, I think that you're absolutely right when you say that, but I think what we've got to look at is
37:42that when you look at say the district in Tennessee and the fact that Trump had won by
37:47a little over 20 points yet somehow it swung to a single digit race, then we know people that voted
37:53for Trump. Well, some of them are regretting those votes. We just saw an election today down in Miami
37:57where a Republican was outed. And we know that they hadn't been able to win in 30 years down
38:04in that area. We also know what happens in Mississippi, where they flipped two Senate seats.
38:08We also know what has happened in Georgia, where they were able to get two statewide seats.
38:12So here is the reality. I don't think anyone who is super in love with Trump would ever vote for
38:18me or any other Democrat. That is just the reality. I think what it is, is who is going to talk to
38:23people and make them understand that they will fight for them. That is why you have Mondami Trump
38:28voters. That is why you have AOC Trump voters. That is why you had Obama Trump voters. Let me tell
38:34you something. Mondami has not backed down whatsoever from his rhetoric against the president
38:38in the Oval Office. He stood there and he said what he said about him being a fascist,
38:43yet he was able to win those voters. So Democrats that believe the only way that you can win
38:48is by being soft and sounding like a Republican. That is not true. What people are looking for are
38:54people that are tough and are fighters and are going to fight for them, fight for better health
38:58care, fight for access to jobs, fight for education. That is what they're looking for. And that's what it
39:04is that I have to offer. Yeah, I want to just, you mentioned this, so I want to bring it up. In
39:08Miami, Miami had a mayoral election tonight. It was a runoff. That city has not had a Republican,
39:14has not had a Democrat, Democratic mayor, I think since the 1990s, nearly 30 years. The last election
39:21in 2021, the incumbent ran for a second term and he won by like 75 to 15, essentially. So tonight,
39:27the Democrat ran, is going to win by 10, between 10 and 20 points when all is, I mean,
39:31so there is something happening in, in the country right now. I want to play very quickly your ad
39:38that I thought was pretty interesting. This is the first ad I've seen from your
39:42very new campaign. Take a listen. She's a very low IQ person.
39:49Somebody said the other day, she's one of the leaders of the party. I said, you got to be kidding.
39:54Now they're going to rely on Crockett. Crockett's going to bring them back.
39:58This is obviously a shot across the bow that this is going to be a campaign about Trump. Do you think
40:06Trump, that, that, that Trump is going to figure prominently in this one way or the other?
40:12I think so. I think it's hard to say that he's not. I mean, when you see election wins,
40:16like the one that you just referenced, obviously it's Trump's policies that are on the ballot.
40:21Right now we have a Senator that has decided that he won't fight for Texans, but instead he's decided
40:27that he will do whatever Trump tells him to do. We are one of the largest trade states in this country,
40:33in this nation. And unfortunately we have somebody that will not go up against the president to protect
40:40our people that are doing trade in Texas when it comes to the tariffs. Or we can talk about the
40:44record breaking number of farmers and ranchers that are filing for bankruptcy. And we do everything
40:50bigger in Texas, including agriculture, and he's not fighting for them. So I think right now it's
40:55just going to come down to the basis. Who's going to have your back? And the answer is Jasmine Felicia
40:59Crockett. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, a new entrant in that U.S. Senate race. We'll be right back.
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