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00:00Welcome to The Beat. I'm Melissa Murray in for Ari Melber, and tonight we are tracking two big stories.
00:06Today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before Congress for the first time since the start of the Iran war.
00:14Hegseth took direct questions about the rationale for the war, the expected timeline, the mounting costs, and more.
00:22Also today, the United States Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act.
00:29Liberal justices warned that today's decision may sound the death knell for this landmark civil rights law.
00:36But we start tonight with Pete Hegseth testifying before the House Armed Services Committee amid a deeply unpopular war that
00:45is grinding toward a second month.
00:48And the mood was contentious even before the questioning started.
00:52Protesters confronted Hegseth on his way into the hearing.
00:59You should be disgusted with yourself.
01:03You need to be arrested.
01:07Not to be outdone, Hegseth then used his opening statement to attack the war's critics, calling them the, quote, biggest
01:16challenge.
01:17Take a listen.
01:19The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional
01:29Democrats and some Republicans.
01:33In return, those reckless, feckless Democrats accused Hegseth of breathtaking hypocrisy, namely accusing his critics of being reckless and feckless
01:44while leading a war that has proceeded in the absence of congressional approval and any clear end point.
01:51Take a listen.
01:53You have been lying to the American public about this war from day one, and so has the president.
02:00The strategy has been an outstanding example of incompetence.
02:05This war of choice is a political and economic disaster at every level.
02:10You were incompetent then.
02:11You're incompetent now.
02:13Do you believe that the president is mentally stable enough to be the commander-in-chief?
02:17Did you ask the same question of Joe Biden for four years?
02:20Joe Biden is not the president.
02:22You need to resign immediately.
02:24It's the incompetence.
02:28Hegseth testified that the cost of the Iran war has hit $25 billion so far.
02:34That is an enormous figure.
02:36But according to Politico, it, quote, falls far behind many outside estimates.
02:43Hegseth dodged other critical questions on the Hill today.
02:46He refused to give an estimate on the timeline for withdrawal from Iran.
02:51He refused to say whether he is, quote, beholden to the president or whether he's beholden to the Constitution.
02:58He also refused to say whether he had advised the president to go to war.
03:03And then there was this.
03:04He got tripped up on a key point.
03:06Take a listen.
03:08Their nuclear facilities have been obliterated underground.
03:12They're buried and watching 24-7.
03:14So we know where any nuclear material reclaiming my time for watching a second here.
03:19We had to start this war.
03:22You just said 60 days ago because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat.
03:28Now you're saying that it was completely obliterated.
03:31They had not given up their nuclear ambitions.
03:33And they had a conventional shield of thousands.
03:36So Operation Midnight Hammer, a common moment, nothing of substance.
03:40It left us at exactly the same place we were before.
03:46Joining me now to kick things off tonight is the admirable Admiral John Kirby, the former White House National Security
03:53Communications advisor.
03:54He is also an MSNOW National Security Analyst.
03:57Admiral, even some of the Republicans say that the Trump administration has failed to provide a compelling rationale for this
04:05war or to articulate what the endgame is here.
04:08Do you think that Secretary Hegseth provided any clarity today with this jaunt on the Hill?
04:15I think there were some missed opportunities for the secretary today.
04:18I think this would have been a terrific chance for him to lay out what the strategic objectives are and
04:24how they're going after each and every one of them.
04:27And I don't I didn't see anything in the hearing today.
04:30And I watched a lot of it that convinced me that they were actually trying to answer that that question.
04:36It was a missed opportunity for sure to lay out to the American people finally.
04:40I mean, it's been 60 days before the secretary testified finally to lay out why we're doing this and why
04:46now.
04:47Well, I thought it was interesting that he did take the opportunity to do some political mudslinging.
04:53So what did you make of the secretary calling both Democratic and Republican critics of the war the, quote, biggest
05:00problem and the biggest adversary here?
05:03I was really sorry to see that.
05:05I was I was not happy to see that very early on in the hearing, you know, it got so
05:10political and so partisan.
05:12And and the rhetoric coming from the secretary was so vitriolic about the critics of the war.
05:18It's not unpatriotic to question your government when your government takes you to war.
05:25And given the fact that this administration did not go to Congress before they went to war, did not try
05:31to lay the predicate for why they were going to war with the American people.
05:34I think it's fair for critics and supporters to have an opportunity to express those views and ask those questions
05:42here at this hearing today.
05:43So, again, I think it was a missed opportunity for the secretary.
05:47And I'm really sorry to see that that it got so vitriolic so soon, because, again, it's not unpatriotic to
05:53question your government.
05:54It's actually one of the most patriotic things you can do, particularly in a time of war.
05:59Well, there have been a lot of questions about the strike on the Iranian girls school.
06:03This happened in the early days of the war.
06:06And today, Democratic Congressman Adam Smith brought it up.
06:09Let's take a listen to that exchange between the congressman and the secretary.
06:15The girls school that got hit in the first days of this war.
06:20There is absolutely no question at this point what happened.
06:24We made a mistake.
06:25And that happens in war.
06:27We identified this target based on earlier charts.
06:30And yet, two months after it happened, we refused to say anything about it, giving the world the impression that
06:37we just don't care.
06:39We do not care about the casualties and the chaos that is caused by our war.
06:43And we should care.
06:47What do you make of the fact that military leadership has refused to take ownership of what many are regarding
06:54as a colossal mistake?
06:57I think it's important for the United States military to complete this investigation as quickly as possible.
07:05I'm frankly a little surprised that it's taken this long, although I know there's a lot of interagency coordination that
07:10has to go into to laying out the findings conclusively.
07:14But I think it's important to wrap this up quickly and to be completely transparent with the American people about
07:19what happened, why it happened, and more critically, how we're going to prevent it from happening in the future.
07:26I know that the U.S. Central Command did a thorough job here.
07:30I've talked to some officials there.
07:32I think there's a process problem here that it has taken too long to work its way through.
07:37But it's imperative, and Representative Smith is not wrong.
07:42I mean, we should come clean on this so that we can, more importantly, learn from it and prevent it
07:47from happening again.
07:49What does it mean, though, that we won't acknowledge that perhaps a mistake was made here?
07:53Even in the absence of a conclusive investigation, something obviously went wrong.
07:58I want to believe, Melissa, that what's slowing this down is the interagency coordination process.
08:04Because the preliminary findings, at least as reported in the press, made it seem like it was the intelligence was
08:12perhaps old that was applied to the targeting solution.
08:15And the intelligence that was provided to the military came from outside the military.
08:20So I want to believe that what's slowing this down is the coordination process with the intelligence community.
08:26And they'll wrap this up quickly.
08:27That's the generous view of this.
08:29And that's the view that I plan to take.
08:31I think the cynic's view would be that this administration doesn't like to admit mistakes, doesn't like to apologize, doesn't
08:37like to show what they consider weakness.
08:39But it's not weakness.
08:41If you've made a mistake, if you've hit something in error, then admit it as soon as you possibly can
08:46and tell the public what you're going to do to try to prevent it from happening.
08:50Again, that's not weakness.
08:52That's strength.
08:52That's confidence.
08:53That's security in your process and in your military capabilities.
08:57And that's not what's that's not what's being transmitted to the American people right now.
09:02Again, I want to believe this is a process problem and not a policy problem.
09:06But the cynics, I know I understand, are out there thinking that this is more of a policy issue.
09:11Well, the cynics are not just focused on that particular issue.
09:14They also have raised concerns over Hegseth's personnel decisions.
09:18Take a listen to Congressman Don Bacon.
09:23I share a bipartisan concern of the firings that we've seen at the Pentagon for the six service chiefs, for
09:30example, the Coast Guard.
09:33We we had a huge bipartisan majority here that had confidence in the Army chief of staff and the secretary
09:40of Navy.
09:40And I would just point out it may be constitutionally right.
09:43You have the constitutional right to do these things, but it doesn't make it right or wise.
09:50So there have been a lot of discussion of these personnel firings within the military.
09:55And some news outlets, including The New York Times, have noted that women and minorities appear to bear the brunt
10:00of these firings.
10:01What do you make of this shift in the personnel?
10:05And what does it mean for the fighting force that is incredibly diverse, as our armed forces are,
10:10to have a leadership structure that may be less diverse in terms of race and gender than it has been
10:16in the past?
10:17It's hard to know to know exactly how to answer that question because they haven't been transparent about why these
10:25individuals are being fired.
10:27Now, Representative Bacon is right.
10:30They certainly have the constitutional authority to hire and fire as needed.
10:34If you lose the trust and confidence of the commander in chief, then you need to go.
10:37I get that.
10:38But the congressman is also right that that doesn't necessarily make it the proper thing to do.
10:44And you have an obligation to explain to the American people why you're doing it,
10:48particularly when you're doing it at the scale that this administration is doing,
10:52the numbers of generals and admirals that are being let go with no explanation whatsoever.
10:57And the math bears the math, right?
10:59It is largely people who are minorities or women.
11:04And I think that that requires explication.
11:08I think that they, with an all-volunteer force, to your second question,
11:11when you're not governing conscription, when you're not making people join the military,
11:16it's an all-volunteer force, you have a special obligation, maybe a higher obligation,
11:20to explain how you're recruiting and retaining individuals and just as importantly letting them go.
11:26It sends a horrible message to the rest of the force to open a question to them as well whether
11:33their service is even needed
11:35because they're not white and they're not male.
11:37Again, I hope that's not the case here, but we don't know because they're not explaining it.
11:42And the numbers do certainly contend a very worrisome pattern here of getting rid of people who are in the
11:53minority of the American population.
11:55Look, when you're an all-volunteer force, you can't afford to ignore any segment of the American population.
12:02And when our service members raise their right hand and swear that oath to the Constitution,
12:08they're swearing an oath to defend all Americans, no matter who they are, no matter who they voted for,
12:12no matter what they believe or where they worship.
12:15And that's a really important traditional foundation of our democracy and the U.S. military today.
12:22All right. Admiral John Kirby, thank you so much for kicking us off so admirably tonight. Thank you.
12:29We will be back in just 90 seconds with Congressman Seth Moulton, who is also on the Hill today directing
12:35some hard questions to Secretary Hexa.
12:42Earlier, you called us feckless for questioning your war.
12:45Do you think Congress was smart or feckless when it failed to ask tough questions of the Bush administration and
12:51gave them a blank check for Iraq?
12:53How is this war going? Do you think we're winning?
12:55Do you call Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz winning?
12:58They blockaded us, and then we blockaded their blockade.
13:02That's like saying, tag, you're it.
13:03Are you afraid to take ownership of this? Do you think it was a good idea or not?
13:10As promised, joining me now is Congressman Seth Moulton, Democrat from Massachusetts and an Iraq War veteran who you just
13:17saw grilling Pete Hexa.
13:19Congressman, those were some tough questions for the secretary.
13:23But what did you make of his answers?
13:25I mean, first of all, he confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that he still has absolutely no plan for how
13:30to bring this war to a conclusion.
13:32And he's becoming very squeamish about even admitting that he advocated for the war to the president and that he
13:39thinks it's a good idea.
13:40Now, of course, he insisted on saying that it was winning.
13:43But when I went through the various measures by which you might judge whether he's actually winning this war, it
13:48seems like they're losing on every count.
13:51And at the end of the day, he should not be losing a war that he should not have even
13:55started.
13:57Was that the biggest takeaway from today's hearing, that there's no plan here, there's no path forward, and there's no
14:03reason for us to be in Iran right now?
14:06I mean, look, there is a reason to recognize that Iran is a national security threat.
14:11We don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and Democratic and Republican administrations over the last 50 years have
14:18agreed on that.
14:19In fact, the first Trump administration agreed on that.
14:22And guess what?
14:23Iran has never had a nuclear weapon under any of these administrations, and they've all been able to achieve that
14:28without starting a war.
14:30So the fundamental question is, what are you gaining from this war?
14:33Because we know some of the costs, 14 Americans dead, a cost to taxpayers of about $600 apiece if we
14:42go with the $100 billion estimate,
14:44which is revised down from their initial request to Congress of an additional $200 billion.
14:50At the same time, they're advocating for a $1.5 trillion defense budget, $1.5 trillion.
14:57What does that mean?
14:58We throw these numbers around Washington, and I asked the secretary if you could just explain what that means to
15:03the average taxpayer.
15:04Look, that's $9,000, $9,000.
15:07If you have an extra $9,000 lying around to pay for Hegseth's Pentagon, let me know, but I certainly
15:13don't.
15:15Congressman, you have served in the armed forces, and you know that leadership matters.
15:20Did today's testimony make you more or less confident about whether the secretary is the right person to be leading
15:27this war effort right now?
15:29Less confident, although I can't say I was surprised.
15:31He's the most incompetent secretary of defense in American history.
15:36Remember, he was only barely confirmed by the Senate.
15:38And what you heard from not just Democrats but Republicans on the committee as well is that we really do
15:44not have any confidence in this decision-making.
15:46And when asked questions about decision-making, he cannot justify what he's doing.
15:59All right, Congressman Seth Moulton, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
16:03All right, still ahead, the Trump DOJ's Comey indictment, the second one, is already backfiring, with many legal voices on
16:11the right objecting.
16:13Take a listen.
16:15There's no crime here.
16:16I think the case is frivolous.
16:18Just showing the picture is going to be a weak case in terms of a threat.
16:24But first, the Supreme Court guts the venerable Voting Rights Act, triggering an extraordinary dissent from the liberal justices.
16:32We will get into it.
16:34That's up next.
16:40We now turn to a landmark Supreme Court decision with stark implications for American elections.
16:46Today, the court's conservative supermajority struck down a Louisiana voting map as unconstitutional,
16:53finding that lawmakers, quote,
16:56illegally used race when drawing a new majority black district.
16:59The six to three decisions split along predictable ideological lines.
17:05The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, asserted that the ruling preserves a central tenet of the Voting Rights
17:13Act.
17:13His opinion reads, quote,
17:25In a scathing dissent, which she read from the bench,
17:29Justice Elena Kagan slammed the majority for laying the groundwork for what she called
17:35the largest reduction in minority representation since the era following Reconstruction.
17:41Justice Kagan wrote that the majority's ruling licenses states to, quote,
17:46dilute minority citizens voting power.
17:49And while the majority claims that this is merely an update to the law,
17:55Justice Kagan, writing for the three Democratic appointees,
17:58disagreed sharply, maintaining that the decision, quote,
18:02quote, eviscerates the law.
18:04She called the decision, quote,
18:06the latest chapter in the majority's now completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.
18:12During oral arguments back in October,
18:15Justice Kagan asked Janae Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,
18:19who represented a group of black voters,
18:21what the stakes were in this case.
18:24Take a listen.
18:27What would the results on the ground be?
18:29I think the results would be pretty catastrophic.
18:32If we take Louisiana as one example,
18:36every congressional member who is black was elected from a VRA Opportunity District.
18:42We only have the diversity that we see across the South, for example,
18:46because of litigation that forced the creation of Opportunity Districts under the Voting Rights Act.
18:55Today's ruling is a sad departure from decades of precedent.
18:59And it is also a very sad development for a law that was a signature key accomplishment of the civil
19:05rights era,
19:06landmark legislation that sought to protect minorities from discriminatory voting practices.
19:12Critically, today's ruling is the latest in a series of decisions from the high court
19:18that over the last decade have incrementally hobbled the Voting Rights Act.
19:23Louisiana, a state with a sizable black population,
19:27will likely now lose one majority black Democratic district.
19:31And the ruling also opens the door for other states to redraw their congressional maps
19:36ahead of an already contentious midterm election year.
19:39Today, lawmakers spoke out about the ruling.
19:44This decision today by the Supreme Court is a slap in the face.
19:51This is one huge step backwards for racial justice and for the health of our democracy.
20:00It is an attack on a crown jewel of our democracy.
20:04It's not Donald Trump or his Supreme Court majority
20:09that should be the ones to decide who gets to represent you in Congress.
20:13It's the American people.
20:18Joining me now to break all of this down is the Reverend Al Sharpton, host of Politics Nation here on
20:23MSNOW.
20:24He is also the president and founder of the National Action Network.
20:27Also with us tonight is Leah Lippman, a law professor at the University of Michigan,
20:31and my co-host on the Strict Scrutiny podcast.
20:35Rev, let's get right into it.
20:37The Voting Rights Act was already hobbled after years of the Supreme Court incrementally chipping away at it.
20:43What does this ruling mean for voting rights in the United States for African Americans and other minorities?
20:48Well, it was hobbled.
20:50Now it's destroyed, in effect.
20:52And this shoots at it shoots in the heart of voting rights and civil rights,
20:59because what they're saying is that you can no longer deal with the fact that there was racial exclusion
21:05and therefore you must be able to hold people accountable for continuing a racially exclusive kind of policy.
21:15And if you mention race saying that there was being exclusionary, then you can't do it.
21:20Well, then how do you remedy the fact that we were, you know, people act like we're asking for something.
21:27We only are saying to remake what you did to us.
21:32That's an affirmative move was made against us.
21:34So this is an important point.
21:36The map here was a remedial map drawn after Louisiana engaged in what the black voters termed a racial gerrymander
21:44and what a court found to be a racial gerrymander.
21:46And so the court ordered Louisiana to draw a new map that created an additional black opportunity voting district.
21:53And the court in this decision now says that the consideration of race in drawing that district is itself unconstitutional.
21:59And what you then have the effect.
22:02So you have the huge population of blacks in Louisiana.
22:06We'll put you all in one district.
22:08And the ones of you that don't live in that district, you won't matter anyway.
22:11Yeah. And so we can end up with several white congressmen from Louisiana and one black.
22:19And that's fair and equal because you can't bring up race.
22:22And that's what they will try to do all over the country is lump lump one district to it the
22:29most and have the rest of the state and smaller populated districts.
22:34Because you're not even talking about the same population, smaller populated districts.
22:39Right.
22:39So in effect, you will have the number of blacks in Congress and in state legislatures and in city councils,
22:48minimum, minimum.
22:50So we will have minimum input, but we're going to have to pay the same taxes.
22:54All right. Leah, speaking of paying the same taxes, we called this right on strict scrutiny.
23:00We said this is going to happen.
23:01We listened to the oral argument.
23:03Let's take a listen to some of the sounds from that oral argument last fall where Justice Kavanaugh and some
23:09of the other justices basically signaled where they were going on this.
23:12Take a listen.
23:14This court's cases in a variety of contexts have said that race based remedies are permissible for a period of
23:24time.
23:25They should not be indefinite.
23:28If it happens to be that people of one race or another race overwhelmingly prefer one of the political parties,
23:37does that transform the situation into racial voting?
23:42Is it acceptable under Section 2 for a court to intentionally discriminate in a remedial map on the basis of
23:48race?
23:51So, Leah, we called this.
23:52We said that this is a court that's extremely skeptical of any use of race, even if it is for
23:57remedial purposes.
23:58Did this opinion translate the way you expected after listening to the oral argument, or was it even worse?
24:06It did translate what we expected, but that doesn't make it any less appalling.
24:09The oral argument clips you played signaled some of the things that Justice Alito, Justice Jim Crow-Lito, wrote into
24:17this opinion, basically declaring that time's up on multiracial democracy.
24:22Since things have changed so dramatically, racism is apparently over that we no longer need the Voting Rights Act's protections.
24:29You also heard Justice Alito's question, which basically signaled that, in his view, racial gerrymandering just doesn't exist in a
24:36world where there is racially polarized voting.
24:39That is, it's not permissible for minority voters to argue that they are entitled to a separate opportunity district if
24:47they don't align with the state's partisan objectives.
24:50And then you have Justice Gorsuch just saying it is equivalent for the Voting Rights Act to require states to
24:57consider enfranchising racial minorities with Jim Crow segregation.
25:02He's treating the two as equivalent, calling them both intentional discrimination.
25:07And this really prompted outrage from inside the chamber.
25:11So Justice Kagan chose to read her dissent from the bench.
25:14It's a very unusual step.
25:16Insiders in the courtroom said that she struck a defiant tone and was clearly upset when she was reading this.
25:22And she was especially aggrieved when she read the parts where she disagreed with the majority's claim that they were,
25:28quote unquote, preserving the central tenets of the VRA.
25:32Is this a preservation of the Voting Rights Act or has the court effectively overruled Voting Rights Act, decades of
25:40precedence and basically hobbled the statute?
25:42I think they've effectively nullified it.
25:45Justice Alito's majority opinion made it all but impossible to establish a violation of the Voting Rights Act, saying that
25:53in order for plaintiffs to succeed on a Section 2 claim to establish illegal racial discrimination in redistricting,
26:00they have to show that you can create an additional majority minority district, including a majority Black district that would
26:07result in the same partisan breakdown as the state's chosen partisan breakdown, i.e. that the majority Black district would
26:14have to vote Republican.
26:16This is, of course, describing a null set.
26:18So by making it impossible to establish a violation of the Voting Rights Act, he's all but nullified the law.
26:25You know, Justice Kagan obviously read her dissent with passion in the oral argument later that morning.
26:30She said, I'm losing my voice.
26:32I lost my voice, indicating maybe how emphatic she was.
26:36All right.
26:36Rev, this ruling, many commentators have noted, will likely create new GOP districts across the South.
26:44The New York Times mapped this out, what this region might look like.
26:49Here's what the map currently looks like, with Democrats holding around 24 seats.
26:54And here is the plausible redistricting scenario without the input of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
27:01It shows Republicans gaining 12 more seats.
27:05Can we expect other states to begin pushing to take advantage of this ruling ahead of the midterms?
27:10Florida has already passed a law through its legislature to redistrict their seats going forward.
27:17I think you absolutely can look for other states to try to take advantage of it.
27:22I think that this is something that was projected when many of us were saying that don't ignore Project 2025.
27:30They're doing exactly what they said they were going to do.
27:33And those of us in the civil rights community that was warning of this, we were alarmists.
27:38Well, we're here now, and we're now going to have to deal with the fact.
27:42And let's remember that blacks and whites went to the South and fought to get the Voting Rights Act.
27:48Goodman, Cheney, and Swern, the two Jews and a black, were killed for fighting for the Voting Rights Act.
27:55So was Viola Luisa.
27:56So this was not just blacks saying this.
27:59These were blacks and whites saying, let's uphold democracy.
28:02And here we are getting ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country.
28:07And going in, we're reminding blacks, oh, you can't bring up race.
28:11You're not equal.
28:12In fact, you weren't even independent in 1776.
28:16All right.
28:17There's so much more to say.
28:18In fact, I'm going to make you all stick around.
28:20Leah and the Rev are going to be with us for another black.
28:23We have so much more to discuss after this quick break.
28:29We're back with Reverend Al Sharpton and Leah Lippman talking about this landmark ruling in the Voting Rights Act case.
28:36Leah, I want to come back to something that you said about Justice Alito's majority opinion.
28:39As you mentioned, he seemed especially concerned about the question of polarized voting and partisanship in these redistricting cases.
28:47And he seemed to be saying that while partisanship is fine, it's fine to draw districts according to partisanship.
28:54It's not OK to rely on race.
28:57What's the relationship between race and partisan affiliation, though, in many of these areas in the South?
29:04Race and party are very closely correlated.
29:07There's racially polarized voting.
29:09You know, by some estimates, 70 to 80 percent of minority voters might be registered Democrats.
29:15And so the correlation between them makes it virtually impossible to disentangle them.
29:20And he seemed to be saying that when these claims are presented as racial gerrymanders, in fact, they're just permissible
29:26partisan gerrymanders.
29:28Can they be both?
29:30They can be both.
29:31And it can still be a racial gerrymander, even where a state says it is advancing partisan aims because they
29:37are still suppressing and diluting the voting power of racial minorities.
29:41But essentially, Justice Alito gave them a green light to engage in partisan gerrymandering and in so doing, dilute and
29:48suppress black voting power.
29:50Another member of the conservative block, Justice Thomas, said that he would have gone further and would say that the
29:56Voting Rights Act doesn't even apply in circumstances relating to districting at all.
30:02What do you make of that?
30:03Is that an invitation for new litigation to further hobble the Voting Rights Act?
30:08Well, he said he would have gone further.
30:10He also indicated he was basically fine with the majority opinion, which would do well enough since it would basically
30:15bring the redistricting litigation to a close.
30:18So while Justice Alito's majority opinion protested that they weren't ending the Voting Rights Act, Justice Thomas has always kind
30:24of let the cat out of the bag and said, no, no, no, no, no.
30:26We're basically ending any districting challenges under the Voting Rights Act.
30:30And that's a good thing.
30:32All right.
30:33Reverend Sharpton, let's get down to brass tacks.
30:35The South has one of the largest shares of black eligible voter.
30:40D.C. actually has the largest share and they can't vote.
30:44And so they're not represented in Congress at all other than by a non-voting delegate.
30:48But the South has a huge share of black voters.
30:51And now it stands that their representation in that region is going to be severely impaired going further.
31:00What do you make of this?
31:01What are the prospects going forward?
31:03What can we do in this situation?
31:05Has the Congressional Black Caucus indicated that they have plans?
31:09Is there legislation that they are thinking about, challenges that they're bringing?
31:13What's the next step here?
31:14We've been on the phone all day, back and forth, members of the caucus, members of the civil rights national
31:19organizations.
31:20And I think that, one, clearly we have to get people out in huge numbers to vote so that if
31:29you put in a different Congress with a different speaker, you can then talk about legislation, which will then have
31:36to be challenged by them in the courts.
31:39And so the numbers have to be huge because the distortion in the electoral landscape from gerrymandering and suppressive voter
31:47laws is already so vast and profound.
31:49You have to have a ton of new.
31:52You have to have a huge turnout and they have to understand what's at stake here is our right to
31:58vote.
31:58It's not about which person you think has the most charisma or whatever, that this is about our right.
32:04And we must really get that huge turnout and then have that new Congress, that new Senate, that new city
32:11council all the way down, push for new laws, knowing there'll be challenged, but having it go back up through
32:19the system to give us time to really not lose a lot of representation.
32:24Because we're really talking about losing representation for blacks in America systemically, because the only way we did get the
32:33representation at the level we did was we changed the system.
32:36So as discouraging as this is, how do we get it in the first place is how we're going to
32:43have to do it again.
32:44All right. The only way forward is through Reverend Al Sharpton and Leah Lippman.
32:49Thanks so much for joining me.
32:50Still ahead, why even conservative analysts admit that the Comey indictment is bogus and new backlash to Trump's attack on
33:01free speech and Jimmy Kimmel.
33:03That's all after the break.
33:07I wonder if the Justice Department's decision that anybody who posts the numbers 8-6-4-7 is subject to
33:14potential investigation and potential criminal charges.
33:17Look, every case is different.
33:19Every threats case is different.
33:23That was acting Attorney General Todd Blanche facing questions about the prosecution of James Comey.
33:30The former FBI director appeared in court today to hear the charges that Donald Trump's Justice Department has filed against
33:37him in a second indictment.
33:39This new indictment accuses Comey of threatening to kill the president by taking a photograph of these seashells.
33:50Comey's lawyers said that they plan to ask a judge to throw out the indictment on the grounds that it
33:55is part of a vindictive prosecution.
33:58And they may have a point.
34:00Even right-wing analysts admit that this flimsy criminal case is likely to go nowhere.
34:07Take a listen.
34:09I must be in a parallel universe to be talking about the shell artwork of James Comey.
34:14There's no crime here.
34:15I think the case is frivolous.
34:17Just showing the picture is going to be a weak case in terms of a threat.
34:20I think Comey's people will move to dismiss it, that it's protected speech, and I think that motion will be
34:25granted.
34:26It would very likely be viewed as protected speech if it was the basis of a criminal indictment.
34:31That alone would have a hard time standing up in court.
34:37It's a common theme.
34:39One analyst for the conservative National Review says the case is simply bogus.
34:44Comey is just one of many targets in Donald Trump's personal revenge campaign, abusing the powers of the federal government
34:51to hurt his political enemies.
34:54We're also seeing this pattern of retribution in Trump's latest attempt to attack Jimmy Kimmel.
35:01As payback for a recent joke about the Trumps, the FCC is now reviewing the licenses of ABC stations that
35:09carry Kimmel's show.
35:11And many voters are not amused.
35:16I just look at it like, you know, he's telling a joke, you know.
35:19I mean, same thing Richard Pryor, Fred Sample, the rest of them did.
35:22So I wouldn't get offended.
35:25I think he likes to take away free speech when he doesn't agree with what is said.
35:30That's literally the whole point of the First Amendment is being able to speak your mind.
35:34If you take it in all the way than a joke, then maybe you need to check yourself.
35:41Legally, all of these prosecutions or persecutions are on very shaky ground.
35:47And politically, they are creating big headaches for the GOP in the midterms.
35:53Joining me now to discuss all of this is Alexis Loeb, former January 6th prosecutor who served as a deputy
35:58chief at the DOJ overseeing the Capitol siege investigation.
36:02Alexis, Jim Comey's lawyer said that they are going to try to get this dismissed on grounds of vindictive prosecution.
36:08Are they likely to succeed?
36:10I think they have a decent likelihood of success here, Melissa.
36:15Maybe even a higher likelihood of success than they had when they challenged Comey's last indictment on those grounds.
36:22And the reason for that is that...
36:24A shell game.
36:25No.
36:26One of many puns I've heard, including...
36:30The lowest form of humor, I apologize.
36:31People are shell-shocked at the charges.
36:34We could probably spend the whole segment talking about those.
36:37But vindictive prosecution looks at whether the defendant is being targeted because they exercised a protected right.
36:45And here, compared with the last time around, Comey's lawyers can also point to the fact that he challenged his
36:51first indictment successfully.
36:52And on top of everything they could argue before about being the target of retaliation, now they can also say
37:01that Mr. Comey has been targeted for challenging that first indictment successfully.
37:07Jim Comey is not the only Comey who has been in the news.
37:11Recently, Maureen Comey, his daughter, who was a prosecutor of the Southern District of New York, was also summarily dismissed
37:16by the Trump administration.
37:17And she has recently been allowed to continue in her suit against the administration.
37:21What do you make of these personnel purges at DOJ and the related U.S. attorney's offices around the country
37:28and what they mean both for morale inside the department and for the rule of law more generally?
37:32They're one example of how the administration has targeted its perceived enemies in who who hold a whole variety of
37:43positions, both individuals and organizations.
37:46And I think you you also see them come together in in the new indictment in in another way that's
37:53concerning, which is that the the DOJ and the FBI simply don't have the manpower that they used to have
38:00in part because of these purges and all the departures.
38:04And so I think that that has to make you question the administration's choice to spend law enforcement resources, federal
38:11law enforcement resources that arguably are now more scarce than ever right on the picture of seashells that was posted
38:19many months ago.
38:20So that's a really important point. You have fewer prosecutorial resources because you have fewer people in the department.
38:26You still have the same number of crimes that need to be prosecuted around the country.
38:31And instead, you're focusing on this stuff, this kind of personal retributive stuff that's about one person.
38:37That's not the way the department has ever operated. Is it going to be possible to put the DOJ back
38:43in order after this administration or a subsequent administration?
38:48I think that that is a great question, and I think it will probably require some combination of law reform
38:57and people willing to be to come back.
39:01And perhaps being inspired by by a mission to come back and and rebuild the department.
39:07Let's pivot to the First Amendment. It's not the first time we've seen the president take aim at his critics.
39:15He has sued media institutions for making statements that he doesn't agree with or making statements that he views as
39:22defamation.
39:22They've never actually proceeded to an adjudication determining that they were, in fact, defamatory.
39:27What do you make of the FCC's attempt to get in here and target TV stations that broadcast Jimmy Kimmel's
39:35show?
39:35Is this just a show of brute force on the part of the administration to cow individuals into compliance with
39:42this administration?
39:42Well, I think it's not just targeting individuals, too.
39:46It's targeting corporations and the organizations who those individuals are affiliated with,
39:52because in addition to directly targeting or potentially even threatening individuals,
40:00it's possible that organizations or corporations might then retreat in the face of pressure
40:05and also themselves can exert pressure on the people who work for them.
40:09Which is something we have heard in the wake of a number of these lawsuits and firings.
40:15All right. Thank you so much, Alexis Loeb, for joining us and sharing all of this really dark times
40:21in terms of where we are in terms of free speech in the Department of Justice.
40:24We will be right back after this short break.
40:30The Voting Rights Act, sections 2, 4, 5, were the cornerstones of providing political power to African-Americans
40:43that then led to a whole range of other steps to make America more just and more equal.
40:53It was the cornerstone and the culmination of years of struggle, blood, sweat, tears, in some cases deaths.
41:08I might not be here as president had it not been for those who courageously helped to pass the Voting
41:16Rights Act.
41:19That was former president and former constitutional law professor Barack Obama speaking on June 27th, 2013,
41:26the day that the United States Supreme Court issued its first blow against the Voting Rights Act
41:31in Shelby County v. Holder.
41:34That does it for me.
41:35The weeknight is up next.
41:37The weeknight is up next.
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