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>> today on inside. >> politics, a unilateral upheaval donald trump is making fast, furious and frenetic changes to the federal government. his latest move ordering the suspension of trillions of dollars in federal aid, loans and grants, which could impact millions of americans. plus, the justice department fires more than a dozen career attorneys who played key roles in prosecuting president trump when he was out of office. it's just the latest example of trump's effort to reshape the doj. and we have new cnn reporting on kash patel detailing his years long feuds with the intelligence community. he'll be expected to work alongside, if confirmed, as the next director of the fbi. i'm dana bash. let's go behind the headlines and inside politics. donald trump is a disrupter. he

promised to reshape the federal government. his rhetoric was about retribution and rooting out what he and his allies call the deep state, or what others call career specialized public servants. at 5 p.m. eastern today, that's five hours from now. a new directive to freeze federal programs and grants will go into effect. the realities of that order will go far beyond what many people took away from his campaign promises. the white house is offering up very few details on the scope and the details of its order, so there is a lot we don't know, but there are some details we do know about the impact programs that are part of this order, how it could impact americans across the country. cnn's tom foreman will break some of that down. tom. >> hi, dana. >> you're right. we do. >> not know a lot. >> about this. from what we do know. >> until the white. >> house specifies otherwise, is that millions and millions of

people who voted for donald trump could be on the chopping block in these in some fashion school breakfast and lunch programs, for example, are among the things that are being potentially impacted by this section eight rental assistance. that's not just for poor people, but it's also for senior citizens. it is for disabled people. title one education grants. that's to help struggling schools and struggling neighborhoods that could be cut back on temporary assistance for needy families. state grants for child care. head start, a program to help with the education of children up to the age of five. not just their education, but also their their mental health, their physical health, their all the things they need to start off life in a productive way. special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children. hud's community development block grant programs. epa grants to states and localities for clean water. all of these are potentially up for grabs here. in addition, there are advocates out there who are saying programs like suicide helplines, hotlines, you

could have women who are abused by their husbands tonight and who go to a shelter and are told, you can't come in here because we can't be open because of this cut. same could be true for homeless people out there. there are all sorts of programs out here that are potentially affected. again, millions and millions of people, many of them the people who voted for donald trump, maybe, dana, they will not be affected. but the white house has so far refused to offer any details about what this really means. and yes, you can look at a program like head start. there is just a recent government study that said there are endemic problems there that need to be studied. maybe that's what this aims at is trying to solve all those problems. but until we have more details, dana, all we know is that communities all across this country who may not think they're going to be affected literally within hours, could be feeling tremendous impacts from what is being done. >> thank you so much. that is so important to lay out. and that is just some of what could be

impact some of the people, some of the programs, some of the needs across the country and down to the most local of communities. tom. thank you. now, whether or not donald trump or any president has the power to do what tom just described to freeze grants and programs approved by congress and signed into law, that is an open question. what is not an open question is what the constitution says about checks and balances, and which body is in charge of how taxpayer dollars are directed to be spent. that is traditionally seen as a congressional prerogative, and that comes from article one, section nine, clause seven of the u.s. constitution. no money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law and more common parlance. congress has the power of the purse. donald trump and his allies clearly want to test this in ways that affect those many aspects of everyday american life. i'm lucky to be surrounded here by a talented

group of reporters to help break all of this down. cnn's phil mattingly, kayla gardner of bloomberg and molly ball of the wall street journal. i have the benefit of seeing your emails at phil mattingly, trying to make us all smarter here at cnn. so why don't you impart that to our viewers? >> can actually start by taking a step back for a second, because i think it's important to to watch what's been happening over the course of the last 7 or 8 days and not think that these things are happening in isolation. right. and this is a really good example of it. donald trump campaigned on impoundments, campaigned on being able to take away congress's power of the purse. if he didn't think that that that's wild, that he's campaigning on something that is illegal because of a 1974 law signed by congress that banned presidents from withholding congressionally appropriated funding, he campaigned against that and said explicitly he was going to do it. his nominee to be budget director was on capitol hill testifying just a few days ago, saying he agreed with the

president that this thing that is law is unconstitutional. >> they want to test it. >> they want that fight. and so when you see things like the birthright citizenship executive order, they want that fight. they know that that fight is coming. and they believe based on the reality that currently surrounds them, which is so dramatically different than it was in 2017 that they can win that fight. and if they don't win that fight, there will be no other repercussions other than they just get it struck down. there are no lawmakers on their side of the aisle in which they hold both majorities of the house of congress that are going to fight them on this or punish them for what they're doing, which is wild, by the way, that appropriators on the republican side are not going bonkers right now. chairwoman susan collins hasn't put out a statement yet. it's wild to me. they believe that the courts, particularly in the wake of what the president did in his first term with the circuit court judges and the 6 to 3 supreme court majority, largely is a very different environment than they were facing in the first term. they want the fights and they're willing to not just wait and see. like this is the process.

we're not supposed to do this. we'll wait and see how this happens. maybe we'll get there after we try everything else. no, they're doing it now right off the bat because they want the fight. >> i'm so glad you said that. i want everybody to clip and save and send that around. because what you just said is critical to the way that we need to approach this. number one, we are starting with real people and whether they want the fight or not, whether they want to make a constitutional or a legal point or change the way that all of this is done, that is clearly what their goal is. as you just laid out. in the short term, though, a lot of people, including those who voted for him, are struggling with how this memo, which i'm just going to read, part of it, how would this memo affects their communities, whether it's firefighters or local law enforcement? never mind the food and

sustenance that a lot of people who are in need get from these federal programs. okay, the memo, let's just talk about where this came from. this is the memo that went out overnight. federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, non-governmental. organizations die woke gender ideology, and the green new deal. first of all, just keep that up. the green new deal is not a thing. that is the law. um, the beginning, i, you know, kind of i'm following day. i certainly is a list of programs, but woke gender ideology. i mean, some of this is just maga mad libs. >> well, i mean, i think that the administration would argue that many of the policies the biden administration implemented, it amounted to, you know, codifying what they would term woke gender ideology. certainly. certainly the biden administration had executive orders enshrining rights for

transgender people in the executive branch. and same with the green new deal. they would argue that the aspects of the inflation reduction act, which was actually a big spending bill for green energy, was a sort of backdoor green new deal passed. >> by congress, was. >> passed by congress, passed by congress. right. but which, you know, was was implemented through the executive branch in various ways. so it's not just maga mad libs. i mean, if it were, it wouldn't have any effect, right? if there wasn't anything, it was actually. >> i guess my point is, is that the way it's written, it does seem to be intentionally vague and and to intentionally, um, not entirely clear to the people who are trying to figure out, again, on a local level all across the country right now, if the programs that they are involved in that help their local communities are still going to be functioning at 5:00, right? it's that plus sending a message to the base with the language that they're using. >> absolutely. and look, i mean, the effect of this on the

civil service, on the existing employees of the executive branch, is, is like a bomb went off. and as phil was saying, that's intentional. the point is to to put the fear of god in a lot of these civil servants. the point is to give latitude to a lot of the new political appointees and cabinet heads that that trump is installing to give them the room to operate, to root out all of the things that they see as problems in all of their different agencies and departments. and i think what remains to be seen is what are how does this all go over with the american people? how do people like it? you know, there was a surprising finding in our wall street journal poll a couple of weeks ago. we asked people whether they supported the president getting rid of thousands of civil servants to replace them with his own appointees. it was surprisingly unpopular. you know, i would have thought that, you know, people don't like government bureaucracy, but actually only 31% approved of that and 61% opposed it. so the federal government is more power, is more popular than you might

think. and i think it's going to take a little bit of going through this sort of shock and awe period before we get start to get a sense of, you know, you know, our republicans on capitol hill hearing from their constituents about this, is there a widespread public backlash and uproar, or do people sort of look at this like a temporary government shutdown and things will get better afterwards? well, i. >> think that. >> clause. >> that you mentioned. >> including but not limited to, shows how vast. >> this could be. >> omb says. >> the total funding that we're looking. >> at is. >> about $3 trillion. and we know. >> that doge is. >> targeting $2 trillion. and the thinking had been, if you don't touch. >> social security, if you don't touch medicare, which this clause says that it's not going to do, that they would never be able to get to that goal. and this shows that they're really willing to go outside of the bounds of what was previously thought as being on the table in terms of cuts to potentially get to that $2 trillion goal. >> can i just bounce off something you said, which was the memo itself was like contradictory, convoluted and nonsensical as you went graph by graph, like the actual amount

that the government spends, which they pegged at $10 trillion, is known to be $6.75 trillion. like the numbers were wrong, how it was supposed to work was wrong. how it was laid out was wrong, and that caused significant disruption. last night i was talking to a federal program administrator. last night i called saying, you know, what does this mean? i don't quite understand. it's so vague. there's so much ambiguity in it. had no idea. we're trying to figure out, like, does this just mean die climate programs, those types of things, cultural issues, or is this everything? and it took really until this morning until folks started to realize, oh, this is this is everything you're really saying. everything right now. and that that's wild to me that they weren't really fulsome in how they were explaining this really dramatic action, even though they very clearly had planned to do it. >> you know, uh, you mentioned the president's nominee to be the director of the office of management and budget. mr.. vote. he is known to a lot of people, particularly

in the in the political world, as one of the, if not the main author of project 2025, which was something that maybe became a campaign 2024 buzzword, but is a very thick now. it looks like more and more as democrats did warn roadmap to what donald trump is doing. just some examples. this is what it says in that project 2025. uh, treatise. rescind all climate policies from its foreign aid programs. implement a hiring freeze for career officials, maximize hiring of political appointees, the next conservative administration should scale back on usaid global footprint. and time and time again, donald trump said the following about project 2025. >> i have nothing to do with project 2025 that's out there. i haven't read it. i don't want to read it purposely. i'm not going to read it. >> this was a. >> group of people that got together. they came up with some ideas, i guess some good, some

bad, but it makes no difference. i have nothing to do. >> so he purposely didn't read it, which is, you know, very likely true, but it's still also true that the people who are doing what we're seeing and what we're reporting on right now, not only read it, a lot of them wrote it, or at least parts of it. >> well, it's convenient that he didn't read it because he never had to say what it was he didn't like about it. right. so he over or that he liked announced it and said, i have nothing to do with it. i think it's terrible. but he never said, what about it was terrible. and so now he can say, well, we just happen to agree on all of these things. i just happen to like all these ideas that i didn't even know that they had. but because we don't know what his objections to it might have been in the first place, he can then say, well, you know, that's not where i'm getting this stuff or whatever. but yes, i mean, it was always clear that, you know, the reason they wrote project 2025 was in order to help the new administration have a menu of conservative ideas that they could then use to implement over the course of the transition and

over the course of the new administration, so that they could hit the ground running in exactly this way. so, you know, heritage has been producing this type of document for a generation for exactly this reason. and they've helped multiple republican administrations in exactly this way. and this is exactly what it was intended to do. >> and we haven't even gotten to the foreign aid programs that were also frozen, which we're going to try to do later in the program. i guess, again, this is strategic. >> just quickly add, you know, who hasn't been confirmed yet. but we'll talk about who has power and leverage. and can they swing the pendulum back. if you're a lawmaker and you're a republican, you're hearing from constituents who are concerned about this or you're an appropriator who doesn't like the idea of losing some of your authority, they have a lever, but this will be a test. >> that they are the republicans. >> yes, yes. >> we'll see. it's a really good point. thank you. phil, coming up, donald trump told us to expect revenge. >> well. revenge does take time. i will say that. >> it does. >> and sometimes revenge can be justified, though i have to be

honest. >> and now he's doing it. how his team is justifying purging more than a dozen of the president's perceived enemies. that's next. >> i lay on my back, frozen, thinking the darkest thoughts, and then everything changed, dana said. you're still you, and i love you. >> super man. the christopher reeve story sunday at eight on cnn it. >> are you ready for this? >> are you ready. >> for this? >> are you ready for this. >> new alka-seltzer plus cold or flu? >> fizzy chews? shou chew fizz. you're better fast. >> no water needed. new alka-seltzer. >> plus fizzy juice, advil liquid gels are faster and stronger than tylenol. rapid release gels, also from advil. advil targeted relief, the only topical with four powerful pain fighting ingredients that start working onon and lasts up to eight hours.

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more fully under president trump's control. as the great cnn oracle stephen collinson put it, the president is wasting no time in following through on his frequent campaign trail vows for retribution. trump's sending a chilling message through the u.s. government officials who cross him and investigate his alleged abuses of power, or join his critics once they leave office, must beware of his fury. my panel is back, along with our senior justice correspondent, evan perez. evan, you have been talking to your sources in that building. those who are there and maybe those who aren't. i won't ask you to reveal, but what are you hearing about the actual reality of what we saw? >> well, look, i mean, it's clear that there was an enemies list for the people who were coming into the justice department, and they went in and, you know, targeted especially in the in this latest round were the people who had anything to do with prosecutions of donald trump. and one of the

things that is really remarkable is the wording of the letter from james mchenry, who is the acting attorney general. and he says that, in essence, that the reason why is because you played a significant role in prosecuting president trump, which again, these people were doing. >> there. it is on the screen. >> right? right. and he says that, you know, i do not believe you have the leadership. leadership can trust you to carry out his agenda. look, the justice department is part of the executive branch. they are they have a political role. but the reason why traditionally people believe you need to have an independent justice department is because it gives the imprimatur of, of of nonpartisanship. whenever you do bring a case. right. and that stuff matters. it matters to juries. it matters to judges, it matters to the public at large. and so these people who they targeted, i mean, one of the people that they've targeted is brad weinsheimer. he is a, you know, the the top ranking career official, and he is the type of person who might stand up when you want to bring a case, for

instance, that might be highly partisan, and he would be one of the people who would say, no, you can't do that. and traditionally in the justice department, people listen to him. these guys are saying not so much. >> not only not. >> so much, he won't be there. >> you're out of here, right? you're out of here. we're. they were moving him. i mean, that's a key example. and he was put in that job, by the way, by. jeff sessions. jeff sessions, donald trump's first attorney general. >> and i should add, right. you know, he is not like he was not beloved by the biden administration. he, after all, signed off on rob herr's report that that called president biden an elderly man, well-meaning man. right? i mean, so that's really kind of. >> yeah, forgive me, but this is really the key. and i just want to underscore one point that you're making that this letter from the acting attorney general, james mchenry, saying, we're going to remove you because you don't support what the president wants. you don't support his agenda. and we are not talking about political appointees. we're not talking about people who come and go with each administration because

they support any president's agenda. we're talking about the career people who tried to deal with law and justice in the federal government. >> in a nonpartisan. >> way, in a nonpartisan way. and they were basically told, because you were involved in prosecuting the president, now president of the united states, that is inherently partisan. whereas they were like, you know, doing their job potentially, and following the law and following the orders of jack smith. >> what's so striking? and i feel like this has been a theme throughout the course of the first week. and end of the day, they're just saying it out loud, right? like there's no caution, there's no subtlety, there's no trying to politically message or massage actions that they're taking. they're just saying it out loud. and i think that just goes to the idea of they feel very unencumbered right now, both because of their experience, because they've learned a lot of lessons, but they don't feel like there's any kind of

crackback that they're going to face for doing what they're doing. and i think there's a broader element here, which this has a dramatic effect across the government. right. when we're reporting on the omb stuff last night, the number of people who are scared to talk to reporters, the number of people who are scared to raise major issues because they've seen colleagues that have gotten hit or gotten kind of moved, they're trying to get people to quit. what happened at usaid with their lawyers or legal counsel's office that was trying to shift funding around when it was frozen, and dozens were removed, reportedly, everybody's seeing that. and i think it's certainly the case at doj as well, with careers where everyone there is seeing what's happening and are trying to figure out how they fit into this new kind of reality. >> and it's so it's the people, it's the cases that they froze, the civil rights cases. they said, we're not doing this anymore. and by the way, the attorney general hasn't even been confirmed yet. >> and it's on purpose, right? i think they're doing all of this before she gets there. so her hands are clean. >> yeah. well, but there are other people that i don't want to lose sight of. and they are

others tapped to lead the department of justice. todd blanche, nominated to be deputy attorney general. he, of course, was donald trump's attorney. in all of these cases, on the defense side of the federal government, cases against trump emil bove same thing. principal associate attorney general, who, by the way, was running around being part of the the raids over the weekend, the immigration raids and jon sauer nominated to be u.s. solicitor general. >> that's look, i think to phil's point before, this is something that trump campaigned on very explicitly, and it was always very clear that one of the first things he was going to do when he got into office was eliminate that traditional independence of the justice department from the president. it was a norm. it was not a law. and it is something that he objected to very strongly. and of course, they would argue that he wasn't the one who politicized the justice department, that that was his predecessor in choosing to

prosecute him. now, be that as it may, i thought that your point about the credibility of the department was really interesting. right? are we going to now see when they try to bring cases, a wave of defense lawyers using this to say and that's and that happened during trump's first term as well when he was interfering in roger stone's case and others, where you would have defense lawyers saying this is the president's justice department, and he's picking on people and and they're saying it out loud. so is that going to actually make the department less effective in its crime fighting mission? >> i just want to quickly allow you to weigh in on this. >> i mean, there's a reason why president biden issued those preemptive pardons, because there is a real fear that anyone opposed donald trump, whether it's january 6th or any of the legal cases, that they could be targeted. and i think you all make a great point that it's not just loyalists in these political positions. it's also loyalists in these civil servant positions. and i think we're going to see that across the federal government. >> okay, everybody stand by. coming up, donald trump's pick to run the fbi, kash has spent years feuding with the intelligence community. we have brand new reporting on the battles that he has picked with

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surely going to be a contentious public hearing, more than any other nominee in recent memory. patel's battles with the fbi, the very agency he is poised to run, have defined his rise to political prominence. he frequently rails against a litany of alleged abuses by intelligence agencies and the fbi, from the russia investigation to the fbi's seizure of classified documents from trump's mar-a-lago. residence. zach cohen and evan perez were part of this team who did this. great reporting. zach, i want to begin with you tell us what you learned. >> yeah, dana, this reporting really. >> shows how the. >> distrust between kash patel. >> and. >> the intelligence community runs both ways. now, a lot of this centers around patel's efforts during the first trump administration to declassify and release documents related to the fbi's investigation into connections between russia and donald trump's 2016 presidential campaign. an investigation that patel believes was driven by the so-called deep state. now, our reporting shows this came to a head in 2020, at the end of

trump's first term, when the cia referred patel to the justice department for a criminal investigation. now, details of this referral have not been previously reported, but we're learning from our sources that the cia asked doj to investigate whether patel shared classified information about the russia probe with people inside the government who lacked the proper level of clearance to see it. now, it's important to note that patel was never charged criminally by either trump or biden's doj, and there's no indication that national security prosecutors at doj took steps to escalate the referral beyond an initial review. patel also denies that he ever mishandled classified information. however, we're also learning that intelligence officials placed what is known as a red flag on patel's security clearance file to document their broader concerns about his handling of classified information during trump's first term. we have a statement from a spokesperson for patel saying, quote, the leaking of years old bogus referrals is evidence our government is in desperate need of reform. it's ironic that the same people who tried to stir up the phony narrative that kash

would abuse power are the very ones abusing power to attempt to damage kash. >> and as you point out, there is a history here, not just of policy fights or of sort of being out there to protect donald trump. for him, it is personal. >> yeah, this feud has been going on for years. patel has accused the fbi and the intelligence community of carrying out a, quote, deep state plot against not only trump, but his allies, including himself. but patel points to the fact that he had his communications seized by the government as part of a separate investigation that was hunting for leaks. he was among a dozens of congressional staff targeted, a dragnet that came under criticism from the justice department inspector general. patel even sued trump era officials, including former fbi director chris wray, the man he would replace as fbi director if confirmed for obtaining his communications without his knowledge. so patel has also suggested the fbi should curtail its intelligence responsibilities and instead focus on law enforcement, which would essentially be rolling back reforms made since the 9/11 attacks intended to facilitate

better cooperation between the bureau and other u.s. intel agencies. >> thank you so much. zach. and evan is here at the table. i know there's a lot more to this reporting. what else do you want to add? >> well, you know, i think the the interesting thing is his fixation on the idea that the intelligence part of the fbi is the problem, and he has suggested various ways to deal with it now. look, you know, 9/11 showed us that when you have the intelligence side and the criminal side of the fbi walled off from each other, that there are problems, right? the plot, the 9/11 commission found that this really did miss a key, key elements that could have prevented the nine over 11 attacks. so it's going to be interesting when when kash patel finally gets to the fbi and it appears he's going to have the votes, right. i think he's going to learn from people inside. what a mistake that would be. and we'll see whether he can change tack. you know, in the way he approaches the job. >> really interesting. thank you so much to you and of course to zach. don't go anywhere. coming up, what, if anything, are

democrats going to do about what? we started the program with the white house pausing all federal grants and loans. i have senator chris as a guest next. >> it's the news. >> welcome back. >> but it's also kind of not the news. >> we don't fact. >> check here. we don't care, man, once all the information on this show. >> so terrible. >> have i got news for you returns. >> february 15th on cnn. >> okay. >> ready to watch. >> this? one second. i got to. >> finish my laundry. >> jess. >> it's girls night. >> one second. i use rinse. what's rinse? >> the company. >> that will. >> pick. >> up, wash, fold and deliver. >> your laundry. >> and dry cleaning at the touch of. >> a button. >> i do not. >> trust other people with my laundry. >> rinse guarantees your satisfaction. >> i've been. >> using it for months now. >> with no issues. >> okay, let's watch this. >> wait. >> i'm gonna do my laundry. better hurry then. all schedules sign up. for rinse@rinse.com to get $20.

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nonprofits announcing lawsuits against the trump administration. i'm joined now by democratic senator chris of delaware, a member of the senate appropriations and judiciary committees. thank you so much for being here. not only that, you, before coming to congress, were a county executive. so you have worked on a local level and dealt with how these federal dollars have real world impacts on local communities. what are you hearing from those communities in your state right now? >> well, thanks, dana. first thing this morning, i started receiving texts from lots of different organizations. in delaware that are concerned about this freeze on all federal grants. it will impact firefighters, police officers, veterans, construction projects, kids and their school lunches, seniors and their nursing homes. the federal government distributes hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of grants to state and local governments, and to lots of

nonprofits, and i understand that as a result of president trump being elected, he. >> gets to have. >> a fight with us in congress. a discussion about policy priorities for spending going forward. but that's not what this is. this is a blatantly illegal and unconstitutional attempt at shutting down federal spending that was voted on and signed into law by the last congress and the last president. if there is anything that defines congress in our constitutional order, it's the power of the purse. and i hope other senators communities, from their fire companies and police chiefs, from their schools and their head start programs, with concern bordering on alarm that if they get frozen out, if they're locked out of the federal aid portals, as some senators just shared with me on the floor that their governors are calling them, saying their states are locked out of their medicaid portal, they won't be

able to draw down funds. they'll have to lay off staff, shut down programs, and hurt americans. certainly, this is not what a majority of americans voted for when they asked president trump to reduce their prices and costs and to help deal with security issues. this is making us less safe and less prosperous. >> i'm not sure if you're hearing some of that from your republican colleagues in the senate, i do, i. okay. well, that's that's interesting because i do want you to listen to what republican member of the house representative rich mccormick, told my colleague pam brown about school age child lunch programs. >> who can actually go and actually produce their own income, who can actually go out there and do something that makes them have value and work, work skills for the future? i mean, how many people got their start in fast food restaurants when they were kids versus just giving a blanket rule that gives all kids lunches in high school who are capable of going out and actually getting a job and doing something that makes them have value, thinking about their

future instead of thinking about how they're going to sponge off the government when they don't need to. >> so i hear what you're saying about the constitutionality of this, potentially about the fight that the president and his people clearly want to pick to go through the courts to test a lot of these, um, these laws, these norms that congress and the white house have followed for a long time. but on the policy, what do you say to that? >> look, the executive order says that what the president's goal is, is to challenge woke ideology, to try and test the green new deal, which, by the way, doesn't exist, wasn't signed into law. and in this sweeping freeze of all federal aid, of all federal grants to state and local governments and communities, to force this fight over spending priorities, that's not how our system works. it will result in lots of waste and lots of harm to real people and local

communities. as you said, dana in the introduction, i was a county executive. the county police force relied on federal grants for training, for equipment, for recruiting, and so do police departments all over the country. so do fire companies all over the country. federal grants aren't just all waste. most of them have a clear and defined and immediate purpose that helps make our communities safer, that helps feed our children, that helps strengthen the quality of health care, that helps ecate folks in our communities. and i hope that my colleagues are hearing from as many of their impacted communities and community organizations as i am, and i hope that president trump will reverse this order. i just voted against his nominee to be secretary of transportation. i was going to vote for him, but i don't know if he's going to follow this unconstitutional order and shut down infrastructure projects currently underway in delaware and lay off construction

workers. if he does, then i think he's breaking our constitution. so i voted against him and will vote against other nominees until i get clarity about the path forward. >> is i just want to you know, we're talking about all of this within the confines of what you're talking about. the constitution, the way that congress has followed that and and presidents, certainly. and then the laws have been updated even up until the impoundment act, which i'll let you describe. but the reason i bring that up is because this is the this is kind of the point. and my question to you is, is there kind of a failure of imagination or a not really a full understanding of the lengths to which president trump and the people around him genuinely, genuinely want to go to test and to, uh, disrupt the laws and the way and the practices and the way that this town has worked in for many

years, for decades and even hundreds of years. >> that's right. so on the one hand, supporters of president trump are out there saying, as you just showed in a clip, this was the point. we elected him to shake things up and to challenge the assumptions of washington. but that's not what's happening. what's happening is that dollars that come from washington to our communities to our schools, to our senior centers, to our police departments and fire companies are being frozen so that money stays here in washington so that trump can spend it in expanded tax cuts later this year. that's exactly what they're discussing at the doral golf resort in florida right now is how they can cut taxes further for wealthy individuals and profitable companies. and to do that, they want to stop spending on priorities that are already in the law, that help children, help seniors, help keep us safe and help make us strong. whether it's sba loans for small

business start ups or it's emergency disaster response, it's not just wrong on policy, it's wrong on the law. and i expect there to be immediate challenges in federal court. and i frankly think this is what we predicted when those of us who campaigned saying president trump would cause chaos would do so. and here we are. >> yeah. and look, i think that he he would agree with you. chaos is what he wants, which is why he's doing this. the question is what comes after that? senator, thank you so much for coming on with me today. i appreciate it. thank you. coming up is the gulf of america about to become. google maps official. we have some details. next. >> february 20th. >> to the 23rd. join us at the food network wine and food festival. >> this is a world. >> class food and wine festival. i don't think there's anything. >> like this. >> proceeds benefit fiu. >> eat, drink and educate. >> get your tickets now at sobe wtrf.org. >> my plane has mechanical problems. i'll try to get there

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>> 360 tonight at eight on cnn. >> goodbye. gulf of mexico. so long. denali. president trump signed the order on inauguration day, and now it looks like google could make it official by relabeling google maps with the gulf of america and mount mckinley. and you can see it hasn't happened yet. but in a post on x, google explains it has a long standing practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources uh, molly, i guess that's going to be seen here, but not necessarily everywhere. >> that's right. apparently it will be american users of google maps who will see this change, but users in other countries will not, at least for now, until other countries decide whether they're going to go along with this. >> i mean, this is what happens when you rename international waters. not everyone is going to recognize it. and someone who is not so happy about this was the president of mexico who suggested that the united states of america should be renamed

america. mexico. so. >> i find the gulf of mexico and or america, whatever style says to be remarkably trivial and a waste of our time. i think the most interesting thing about mount mckinley now is that the alaskan delegation and the alaskan people wanted it to be denali, and lisa murkowski made very clear this was not a decision of the people. mckinley. of course. let's talk about tariffs. talk about mckinley's history. we've got a lot. we've got we want to do that. you know, we're out of time. >> we want to do that. we can. we can do that. i mean. >> it's a personal trump is fascinating. >> i'm sure brianna and boris will be fine if we just kept talking. keep talking because. history lesson. we just want to talk a lot about mckinley. but we do have to go. uh, i, i don't disagree with you about it being trivial, but guess who signed the executive order? donald trump, thank you so much for joining inside politics. cnn news central starts after the break superman. >> the christopher reeve story sunday at eight on cnn. >> subway's got a new meal. >> of the day with. >> chips and a drink for just 6.99. or if you're big, hungry.

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