a real opening for policy here to make like the diet that we're eating right now much better for the climate, too. >> all right. robinson meyer, thanks a lot for joining us. that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, chris. have a great weekend, my friend. >> you too. >> good evening to you at home for joining us this hour. happy friday. pulitzer prize winning david fahrenthold will be here tonight with another jaw-dropping scoop in what has now been a couple of years of jaw-dropping scoops from david fahrenthold, particularly about this president and the president's business record. what's always amazing about david fahrenthold's series of scoops about president trump and bad behavior and misbehavior in the president's business is that whatever david fahrenthold newly reports about them, whatever it is, and there have been a long series of these stories, whatever it is, the president's business, the president's family, the white house itself,

they never have anything to say about it. they are always completely blindsided, they always have had no clue as to what it is that david fahrenthold is about to report about them next. well, david fahrenthold will be with us here live tonight to talk about his latest scoop, which, again, both the trump white house and the trump organization appear to have no response to whatsoever, at least thus far. today in el paso, texas, authorities publicly released the affidavit filed by an el paso police detective about the arrest of the shooter who killed 22 people this week in el paso after apparently posting online a diatribe about why he was doing it and how he wanted to stop what he saw as an hispanic invasion. he wanted to target immigrants and target the hispanic community, because he thought he was, you know, saving the white race or whatever. i say that man "apparently" posted that diatribe online, because while that appears to be

sort of statement of purpose from this mass murderer, no law enforcement authorities have definitively said that it was he who posted it online, although it seems like it probably was. if there was any doubt, though, as to the motivations of the el paso killer, this police affidavit about his arrest that was released today would seem to lay any such doubts to rest. this is from the affidavit. agents and police officers at the intersection observed a male person, the defendant, to exit out of the vehicle with his hands raised in the air and stated out loud to the agents, "i'm the shooter." the defendant was placed under arrest and transported to police headquarters. the affiant, meaning the detective who was filling out this affidavit and another detective, met with the defendant inside interview room number 4. they read him his miranda rights, he waived his right to remain silent and agreed to speak about the incident. the defendant stated that he drove to the listed location in el paso from allen, texas, which is like nine or ten hours away.

he entered the store with an assault rifle/ak-47 and multiple magazines. the defendant stated once inside the store, he opened fire using his ak-47, shooting multiple innocent victims. the defendant stated his target was mexicans. mexicans. there has been a little ripple that you can start to see growing on the right. a little ripple of denialism about the el paso attack. anti-immigrant groups in particular have been sort of softly, softly suggesting that maybe race and immigration wasn't the motivation for the shooter at all. maybe he was just some crazy kid. i mean, beyond what appears to be the online statement from the shooter explaining his motives and now what the el paso detectives say, he said to them, as soon as he was arrested, having volunteered that he was the shooter, it does seem like his motive, the racial lly specific nature of his motive

should now be considered a settled issue. this weekend will mark the two-year anniversary of what is now just shorthanded in this country as charlottesville. the neo-nazi/white supremacist gathering in charlottesville, virginia, in august 2017, during which neo-nazi and white supremacist protesters marched around holding torches, saying things like "you will not replace us." that's another paranoid white supremacist theory that was cited by the el paso gunman this weekend, incidentally. the day after the march in charlottesville, another neo-nazi who had driven to charlottesville from ohio, he killed a counterprotester named heather heyer and injured dozens of more people when he deliberately drove his car at speed into a crowd of an anti-racist protesters in charlottesville. this weekend being the anniversary of that murder and

that big proud racist white power display in an american city, that anniversary coming this weekend, so closely on the heels of our country's worst-ever terrorist attack targeting latinos and immigrants. this self-proclaimed racist massacre in el paso just this week. you know, if the president of our country were so inclined, because of this anniversary and because of what just happened in el paso this week, this would be kind of the obvious moment -- this would be a propitious time, one might imagine, for the president to finally take back what he said about charlottesville in the immediate wake of that riot and murder. as you no doubt recall, the president described people on the neo-nazi side of those protests in charlottesville two years ago as very fine people. if the president wanted to, this weekend might be a symbolically appropriate time. if it's ever going to happen, this might be the symbolically

appropriate time for the president to say, he didn't mean to say that. he takes back what he said about there being very fine people on the neo-nazi side in charlottesville. he could do that. i mean, it's interesting, as we head into this weekend, i have felt this charlottesville anniversary looming more than i do most things. and as that has been approaching, i have been stuck all week on something sort of big-hearted and i think wise that was said by the congresswoman from el paso. the congresswoman whose district includes the site of the massacre this past weekend. it was said by veronica escobar. it was said here on our air on msnbc. in the immediate aftermath of the el paso massacre, on monday night, after the massacre had happened on saturday. i didn't expect congresswoman escobar to say this at all or anything like it, but since she said it on monday night, i have to tell you, i have not been able to get this out of my mind all week long.

>> we need the president to accept responsibility, apologize, and take back those words. so that his followers, the people who cling to his every word, who follow his rallies, who get riled up and excited about the bigotry that comes from his speeches at those rallies, they need to hear that the president acknowledges that he was wrong. and that his words were wrong, and that every human being has value. >> that was congresswoman veronica escobar on monday. the congresswoman from el paso. so soon after the el paso massacre in her district and in her community. and she was answering a question there about why she had say that she didn't think it was appropriate for president trump to come to el paso in the wake of the massacre, given his own words about an invasion at the border. words that were echoed, if not quoted, by the shooter. the way he had talked about

immigrants. the way he has talked about people from mexico in particular. the way he has talked about border communities, including el paso. she was asked to explain why she thought, given the president's remarks of those kinds, he shouldn't come to el paso after the shooting. but that idea that she expressed in response to that question, that the president actually could do something here, that he could help, that he could redress some of what's wrong, that he could apologize for his hurtful words, that he could take them back, that he could say he knows those words are wrong and that they cause harm and here's why i know they're wrong and here's why i take them back, i mean, that is not a huge and unimaginable thing to ask for from a national leader at a time like this. especially if you're in a position of moral -- if you're in the kind of moral position that the congresswoman from el paso is in after what just happened in her town. and i don't know that congresswoman escobar expects that from president trump, you

know, that he'll, you know, take back the things he said about el paso. that he'll take back the things he said against immigrants. but this weekend, on the anniversary of charlottesville, on the two-year anniversary of charlottesville, on the one-week anniversary of el paso, if the president wanted to, this would be his chance to take back his words. to apologize. to express that he understands the hurt caused by, among other things, his compliments to the very fine neo-nazis who, among other things, killed someone in charlottesville immediately before he made those praising remarks. i'm not holding my breath. i'm just saying. one of the things we have been keeping an eye on this week as we approach this charlottesville anniversary this weekend is an effort by the victims of the neo-nazis and white supremacists in charlottesville to try to get justice for what was done to them. ten people who were hurt by these violent white supremacists in charlottesville two years

ago, including three people who were hit by the car that killed heather heyer, are now plaintiffs in a lawsuit that is designed to go further than the individual criminal charges that were brought against individual rioters and killers among the white supremacists from that weekend. this lawsuit by the victims from charlottesville targets the leaders of white supremacist organizations. and in fact, it targets the organizations themselves and the websites that they run, basically, to try to dismantle them. to hold them to account for having not just organized that white power event, but specifically for having planned and organized the violence that took place at that white power event. so we've been watching that suit by the charlottesville victims really closely. and today, as we head into this weekend's anniversary of charlottesville, today, a federal judge decided to hand down a little bit of an anniversary present. today, a federal judge ordered sanctions against some of the primary organizers of the white

power violence that took place in charlottesville two years ago. one organization, a group called vanguard america, the guy who killed heather heyer was seen at the charlottesville riots holding a shield that had the vanguard america logo on it, that organization and two other white supremacist leaders who took part in organizing the violence in charlottesville, today, they were all -- that organization and those two people were ordered by a federal judge to pay the attorney's fees of the plaintiffs. to pay the attorneys' fees of these ten victims that were injured by the violent white supremacist in charlottesville. that organization and these two white supremacist leaders are among two dozen individuals and groups who are defendants in the charlottesville lawsuit. they have been flouting court orders and ignoring the judge in this case from the very beginning. well, today, the federal judge hearing that case had had enough. saying, quote, defendants have continually failed to fulfill even their most basic obligations to this court. their behavior has, quote,

stalled the litigations process for months on end. the judge said today, quote, this behavior is unacceptable and will be sanctioned. quote, ordinary defendants must participate in the ordinary process of litigation, even if they do not want to. according to the nonprofit group that is supporting this litigation against the neo-nazi groups and the white supremacist groups that organized the violence in charlottesville, their called integrity first for america, they see these sanctions today as basically a wholly appropriate way to mark the anniversary of what happened two years ago in virginia. quote -- excuse me. over and over and over again, these defendants have defied court orders in an attempt to avoid accountability for the racist violence they planned and caused in charlottesville. these sanctions make clear, that time is up. today marks one more important step forward in holding these neo-nazis, white supremacists, and hate groups accountable for their actions.

so, like i said right at the top there, happy friday. just a little something to hold in your heart this weekend. literally, the neo-nazis and the white supremacists who did what they did in charlottesville, not only are they being sued by the people who got hurt there, but those white supremacists have just been ordered by a judge to pay the victims' attorneys fees, which means the neo-nazis are now being ordered by a court to pay for the privilege of themselves being sued and to pay the costs of the attorneys who are suing them. hold that in your heart a little bit. let that keep you warm this weekend. because of president trump's attitude toward this particular type of violent extremism, because of his public indifference or even indulgence of this type of extremism and even this type of violent extremism, there is now this super unsettling prospect that we're confronting now as a country, particularly in the wake of el paso, that the

federal government, which donald trump controls, might not be the best place to turn to for our country to try to address this specific type of terrorism. because of that. because of the president's sotto voce alliance with white nationalism in this country, it's been interesting to look at the civil cases where it's the victims themselves taking it upon themselves to to try to identify the terrorist groups that have encouraged this violence with violence, finding them out, and through these lawsuits, disrupting them as organizations, particularly bankrupting them as organizations. it's a really interesting tactic right now, in large part because it doesn't depend on donald trump's justice department doing the right thing about these kinds of crimes and this kind of organized terrorism. and as we head into this weekend and this anniversary, i think it's worth noting that these types of cases are really on a roll right now. it's not just the charlottesville case, where they

got that bang up order just today from that federal judge. it's also a new ruling today from a different federal judge involving the country's most long-standing and frankly most putrid online neo-nazi gathering place. it's a website called the daily stormer. it's named as an homage from a nazi newspaper from the third reich. you might have heard over the last couple of months that the daily stormer has been on the receiving end of some really expensive lightning bolts thrown at them in court by some of their past victims. in june, it was comedian and commentator dean obeidallah. a couple of years ago, dean obeidallah had written a column for the daily beast in which he had described a bunch of murders that had been committed in the first year of donald trump's protest by killers who had expressed white supremacist beliefs or motives. the column said in part, quote, trump refuses to call these acts what they are, white supremacist terrorism. well, the neo-nazis at the daily stormer, a website that, it

should be noted, endorsed donald trump for president, they did not like that criticism against president trump in that column by dean obeidallah and they responded the following day by making up some fake tweets that they attributed to mr. obeidallah, and they published those fake tweets online, which made it look like mr. obeidallah was actually a terrorist. they had these fake tweets made that -- where he appeared to be taking credit for various violent terrorist attacks around the globe, using this false information that they put online. they then directed white supremacist trolls and neo-nazis around the country and around the world to go get dean obeidallah and to go threaten them, to which they did to massive and terrifying effect. well, you can't necessarily do n that. and in june, a federal judge handed down a $4.1 million judgment against the daily stormer, against that neo-nazi website and the guy who runs it, ordering the website and its

publisher to pay $4.1 million to dean obeidallah. now, it is a good question as to whether or not they're going to be able to get that money and how, but mr. obeidallah told "new york times" in response to that judge's ruling that he full-on plans to pursue all of their assets in the united stat states. quote, we want to collect some money, because that's a more powerful message than just a judgment on paper. we're going to give their money to organizations that fight white supremacy, run by the very people that these guys hates, like muslims, african-americans, jewish americans and the lbgt community. that was june. then in july, last month, it happened again. the same neo-nazi outfit and its same publisher was hit this time with a $14 million judgment for having directed an anti-semitic terror campaign against a jewish woman in montana who ran a business in the hometown of white supremacist leader richard spencer. that $14 million judgment was ordered by a magistrate judge.

it's now being reviewed by a federal district court judge. but you're starting to get a sense of how these things are going. if you are ever motivated in your life, god forbid, to make a donation to the daily stormer, your donation will now be garnished, will now be taken by the court and instead given to these victims of online racist and anti-semitic attacks waged by the daily stormer and its adherence. it's nice. and now today, again, happy friday! it's happened again. there's a new one. again, this just happened today. it's been kind of a bang-up day. this time it concerns this young woman, seen here in this footage we're about to show you in a very happy moment after winning an election. this is footage from then campus tv station at her school. >> president taylor -- >> crowds cheered when taylor's name was announced. we caught up with taylor and

here's what she had to say. >> i don't have words for this. i just -- i don't have any words. i'm shocked. i'm so ecstatic. honestly, like, i can't help but thank god for this. >> her name is taylor dumpson. and in the spring of 2017, she won. march 2017, she was elected student body president at american university in washington, d.c. the first african-american woman to ever be elected to that position. great day. the day after she actually took office as student body president, though, somebody on campus took it upon himself to tie up a bunch of little nooses to hang up all over the american university campus. there were nooses made out of black cord and they were holding bananas, in case the racial implications weren't quite clear enough. also on some of them were written the initials "aka" for alpha kappa alpha, which is the sorority to which au president dumpson belonged.

so this was this shocking racist incident at american university in washington. it got some news pickup when it happened. but what happened after that is what brings us to the judge's ruling today. because when news articles appeared about this racist taunting at this college, these nooses and bananas that had been posted on campus in response to this young woman's election as president, when those news articles started circulating, they were seized on by this neo-nazi online hub, by this daily stormer website, where the founder of the website thought this harassment campaign against the new university president was excellent news! and he thought that what all the neo-nazis and white supremacists on his site should do in response is ramp up their own kinds of harassment and attacks on her as much as they could. they posted personal information about her, they explicitly encouraged their members to attack her, and that unleashed a torrent of neo-nazi abuse and

violent threats against this kid, right? against this young woman, who had done nothing whatsoever, other than to be an african-american woman and to be recognized by her peers, by her fellow students, by the student body of american university as the one best suited among them for the top leadership role that they had. well, today, a federal judge in the united states district court for the district of columbia awarded that young woman, taylor dumpson, more than $700,000 in damages and attorneys' fees to be paid by the nazis. to be paid by the daily stormer and its founder that directed this tirade of abuse and violent threats against her. that case was brought on taylor dumpson's behalf by the lawyer's committee for civil rights under law. the lawyer who led that case joins us next. stay with us. ed that case joins us next. stay with us you're covered. (dramatic music)

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today, a lawsuit brought by the national lawyer's committee for civil rights under law made a lot of people's day. it couldn't have come at a better time.

their lawsuit today resulted in a federal judge ordering a neo-nazi website publisher to pay more than $700,000 to an african-american college student body president, who had been attacked by those same neo-nazis. joining me now is kristen clark, she's president and executive director of the lawyer's committee for civil rights under law. miss clark, thank you so much for being here. i really appreciate you coming in. >> thanks for having me. >> let me first ask you. i tried to summarize the case, what happened to your client and what happened today in court, did i basically get that right? >> you did. and let me just say that taylor is a remarkable young woman. she is a courageous young woman, but she suffered tremendously because of the incidents that you described. the noose that was hung on campus, the banana bellepeels, racist trolling. and the daily storm unleashed people on her and instructed them to go out and racially harass her and she did. she's suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, she's suffered tremendous weight loss, anxiety, depression.

she was fearful walking around campus. she feared for her life. so she truly suffered. but she found the courage in her to fight back. and that's why we filed this lawsuit on her behalf. so today is indeed a good day. a federal judge, judge collier, found that the daily stormer violated the law and violated her rights. and in particular, found that by unleashing this racist troll storm, they essentially denied her the right to enjoy equal access to her campus, american university. so it's a groundbreaking win. no federal court has issued such a ruling before, and so this essentially provides a road map that can now be used by other litigators across the country who want to fight back and find other ways to hold white supremacists accountable. >> part of what is obviously so compelling about this case is story of your client, who is this remarkable and blameless young woman, who had this brought down on her for absolutely nothing that anybody

could have ever associated with her. nothing imaginable. part of it is that story and her getting this redress in her story is her strength in deciding to pursue it in this way. it's also fascinating as a civil rights tactic, and as an anti-terrorism tactic. and we are seeing -- i've been sort of following over the course of this week, looking at different civil suits and other ways that activists and attorneys and civil rights organizations and people trying to get justice for these victims have basically been trying to dismantle the groups that are the pillars of the white supremacists terrorist movements in this country. i don't know that you're ever going to get this money from these guys. >> that's right. anglen is on the run. his lawyer claims he's out of the country and on the run. if he steps foot on u.s. soil, he cannot resurrect this operation again, because we now have a judgment that's been issued by a federal court that he has to pay up. so it's all about kind of ripping the heart out of these

operations and dismantling this infrastructure of white supremacy that is unleashing terror on people like taylor dumpson all across our country. i'm really proud of the work that we are doing here. you know, online hate, i think, is a crisis in our country right now. we have white supremacists who are marching hoodless in the streets, but then there are the white supremacists who are operating behind their computer screens. and that's how they are fund-raising and recruiting new members and doxing victims and unleashing troll campaigns like what happened to taylor dumpson here. we are using the law to say that we're going to hold you accountable. you are not above the law. we are going to paralyze your operations and bring them to grinding halt. we're not going to wait on the justice department that, you know, is just simply not doing enough, we're going to use every tool in our arsenal to fight back and let victims of hate crimes across our country know there are civil rights lawyers

that are prepared to stand up for them and fight back. >> let me also just ask you as last question, how's your client doing? you opened here by talking about what she went through here. it happened to be heartening to her to be affirmed in her fight here by this judge. obviously, she's in a different place in her life now. this has been a very difficult couple of years. how does she feel about this? >> she feels good. the court found that what she experienced was based on her race and gender and that's important to her. and she's in law school now and wants to fight for justice some day. we're tremendously proud of her. >> that is a perfect quota to this story tonight. kristen clark, president and executive director of the lawyer's committee for civil rights under law, keep us apprised. i'm really interested in as a tactic, i'm really interested in this success. >> much more to get to tonight. as i mentioned at the top of the show, david fahrenthold will be here in just a moment with his latest scoop, which the white house has zero answer for.

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immigration and customs enforcement handcuffed hundreds of immigrant workers and loaded them on to buses, as coworkers and family members watched in disbelief. >> por favor. >> please, can i just see my mother, please? >> please. >> kids left not knowing where their kids were being taken. this 11-year-old says her father was among those detained. >> i need my dad.

>> after the chaos and the visceral upset of the huge anti-immigrant raids the trump administration carried out in mississippi this week, stranding little kids without their parents, stranding families, it was interesting to see this report last night in "the washington post." u.s. defends secretive mississippi i.c.e. raids as local state officials decry effect on children. but it was amazing to see way down in that story the reporting that officials at i.c.e. specifically and deliberately did not tell the president before they carried out that raid. right, of course, you can't tell him. if you tell him, what will he do? he'll tweet about it in advance, like he's done before. and apparently, they did not want that to happen this time. but then on top of all of that, it was super amazing to see this in "the washington post," which has spent months uncovering the trump organization's, the president's businesses' own

hiring of undocumented employees across all of trump's properties. along with his colleagues at "the washington post," reporter david fahrenthold has spent the last several months interviewing more than 40 undocumented immigrants who have been employed by the president at his various clubs. that reporting turned up at least eight different trump properties where the president is employing undocumented workers, even as he travels around the country inveighing about how terrible they all are. this reporting in "the post" has already shamed the trump business into saying that they'll stop hiring and stop using undocumented immigrants at their -- at trump properties. but according to fahrenthold's latest reporting, which was just out this afternoon, the trump organization is still going on with hiring undocumented immigrants. here's the lead to fahrenthold's latest story. quote, for nearly two decades, the trump organization has relied on a roving crew of latin american employees to build fountains and waterfalls,

sidewalks and rock walls a to the company's winery, and its golf courses from new york to florida. other employees at trump clubs were so impressed by the laborerers who did strenuous york with heavy stone that they nicknamed the spanish word for the flintstones. their ranks have included workers who entered the u.s. illegally. another employee still with the company said that remains true today. that remains true today. despite the trump organization's promises that they wouldn't do that anymore. and today's report is not just that trump's golf clubs are continuing to employ undocumented workers, even as the president makes his vitriol and hatred of undocumented immigrants the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. the centerpiece of this reporting today is that the managers at trump's clubs not only hired people who were undocumented immigrants, they explicitly told these employees, these ultimate immigrants, that they should get illegal papers to fake their status.

one undocumented worker named edmundo told "the post" that his manager, a man named frank sanzo, quote, instructed the crew to buy fake social security cards and green cards in new york so they would have something to put in the trump organization files. the employee said he bought his papers for $50 in 2002. frank said, you can go buy a social, meaning a social security number in queens, they sell them in queens, it's no problem. said mr. marocho. in a phone interview this week with the post, frank sanzo said he didn't remember marocho. when asked whether he told employees to buy fake documents, sanzo said, they can get them on the street, too. he did not directly address the problem. joining us now is david fahrenthold. thank you very much for joining us tonight. appreciate you being here. and gre

>> great to be here. >> what is the trump organization's response or the trump white house's response to your reporting at this point? >> the white house's response was nothing. we sent them questions asking how much contact has president trump had with this company, has he had contact with i.c.e. to push them away from enforcing the immigration laws at his company. the response was nothing. they declined to comment. president's company responded very briefly. we'd sent them a lot of questions about this. as you can imagine, there are a lot of complexities here. we wanted to make sure we understood their side of the story. they sent back a photograph saying, we're doing our best to identify any workers who have given us false documents. and if we find them, we'll terminate them. >> is there any difference in terms of potential liability for the president and his business here, that there are these allegations, and we've now seen repeated allegations from multiple trump properties that trump employees, trump managers, trump supervisors didn't just hire people who they knew to be undocumented. they explicitly directed those undocumented immigrants that they should go get fake papers.

is that a different type of misbehavior? is that a different level of potential liability for the president or the business that he owns? >> well, it's certainly a different level of liability, potentially, for his company. as you said, this is not just -- it's a step beyond just looking the other way, which they seem to have been doing on a pretty broad scale. in those case,s, you're right, the trump supervisor said, go get a social security number or this document you gave me is bad, go get a better one. that is taking in the knowledge that their workers are here illegally and asking the workers to go out and sort of further the fraud. if this ever comes a legal liability for the trump organization, the question will then be who knew about? how high up the chain did that go and did it go to the president? >> one of the other developments here that seems important to me is that after previous reporting by you and your colleagues at "the post," the trump organization, having been exposed publicly for all of the undocumented workers they have been using at all of their properties for so many years,

they have made a sort of quasi-public affirmation that they don't want to do this anymore, that they maybe did this in the past but now they'll stop or try to get a handle on it. this new reporting from you about what they're now calling the mobile payroll construction firm, right, this company that trump is operating, that's using these undocumented workers, this seems to be not only current, but it seems to post date the affirmations from the trump organizations in the past that they wouldn't do this anymore. >> it does, you're right. in january, which was three to four years after president trump had sort of built a political career on the idea that undocumented immigrants were a threat to american jobs, american lives, the trump organization at that point, three or four years later, they undertook an effort to sort of purge their ranks of undocumented workers and they found a lot of them. many of whom had given -- they had been working for them for ten years or more. so they said at the time, look at us, we're now doing the right thing, we're enrolling our business in e-verify, auditing

their documents and getting rid of the folks that shouldn't be here. what we learned with this story is that that was not a complete, thorough purge. for these focus that work for the in-house construction crews, these are valuable workers, they know how to build everything to the trump organization's specifications. these valuable workers, to them it's like nothing ever happened. as workers were being purged at other golf clubs, to them, nothing had changed. they just kept working. >> david fahrenthold, thank you so much for joining us, particularly appreciate you being here on a friday night, david. >> thank you. >> lots more to come tonight. stay with us. >> lots more to come tonight stay with us

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stning be done... behr presents: outdone yourself. and stay done through every season. behr semi-transparent stain. find it exclusively at the home depot. mr. meyer, your first census was when? >> in 1910, april, 1910. >> how do you feel about doing all the climbing in the apartment houses? >> i don't climb as fast as i used to. after 50 years, you slow down, here, there, everywhere. >> any other changes you're seeing? >> yeah, years back, we used to

take the horses and the cows to the stables. we used to get paid for that. today, we don't find any around. in fact, years back, i found where they kept a horse in the house, and i had to designate a number on another street where the horse was grazing, so i could get a dime. we got two and a half cents those years and ten cents for the stable. and that dime, i needed 50 years ago. >> they kept the horse in the house! i gave the horse a fake address so i could get the dime, because i otherwise wouldn't count as a stable, it had to be a house and a stable. the horse was right there in the house. that was the late, great, wnbc correspondent, gabe pressman, my friend, gabe, interviewing a u.s. census worker back in 1960. that employee, you know, lamenting the fact that he no longer got paid for counting horses as part of his census work. whether they were in the house or in the stable. not like the good old days, back in 1910, when we got paid for counting the horses. decades from now, when we are

looking back on old news packages about this census, the 2020 census, one of the big takeaways will be about this census, that the trump administration tried to rejigger it. they tried to hotwire it, basically. they tried to turn this year's census into a political weapon by changing it in ways that would undercount latinos and immigrants, which would undermine their voting power. now, that effort by the trump administration was, of course, stopped by the supreme court earlier this year, when the court in part upheld a lower court ruling from the southern district of new york. that ruling had found that the trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the census to change the census, it was against the law. because the decision to add that question was, quote, arbitrary and capricious. basically, the trump administration decided they were going to change the census and add that question for their own reasons, only later they tried to shoehorn a false rationale on to it for why they needed to do

it. the supreme court didn't buy it. well, now a similar situation seems to be playing out at the u.s. agriculture department. for the past few weeks, we have been covering the way the agriculture department under president trump has been trying to decimate science at that agency. presumably because scientists at that agency keep producing work that has inconvenient scientific findings that this administration doesn't want to confront. scientists at usda were given a month to decide whether they would move halfway across the country for no good reason at all or else be fired. about two-thirds of the scientists chose door "b." well, today, those employees started receiving their termination letters, telling them that they will officially be out of a job come the close of business on september 27th. the union representing the workers at usda today announced that they have won a few concessions from the agency for employees who have decided to accept this forced transfer.

but at this point, the move would seem to be a done deal. except for the fact that there are two important data points worth keeping an eye on here. the first is that on monday, the usda inspector general released a report concluding that the agency didn't actually have this authority to pay for relocating the science departments without budgetary approval from congress, which they absolutely do not have and will not get. people like virginia congresswoman jennifer wexton have been waving the flag on this point, calling into question the legality of the move. but then there's also this from the white house chief of staff, mick mulvaney. >> you've heard about drain the swamp. what you probably haven't heard is what we're actually doing. i don't know if you saw the news the other day, but the usda just tried to move or did move two offices out of washington, d.c., i think to kansas city, missouri. yes, you can applaud that one, because that's what we've been talking about doing. guess what happened? guess what happened? more than half the people quit.

now, it's nearly impossible to fire a federal worker. i know that because a lot of them work for me and i've tried, and you can't do it. but by simply saying to people, you know what, we're going to take you outside the bubble, outside the beltway, outside this liberal haven of washington, d.c. and move haven d.c. and move you out into a real part of the country and they quit. what a wonderful way to stream line government and do what we haven't been able to do for a long time. >> it's nearly impossible to fire a federal worker unless you pull a move like we just did. they're all quitting. this is how we're going to get them to quit. you just said that out loud. you got that big round of applause. you know what else you got? throughout this relocation the agricultural department had stressed it only wanted to do this sort of thing because it had the best interests of its staff in mind. they want to improve usda's ability to attract qualified

staff. also they'd be saving money, an argument that has already been disproven. this is not saving money. but now the white house chief of staff has let the cat out of the bag. they did this not because they wanted to do everything by retaining their staff but they wanted everybody to quit. the question is now that mulvaney has made this admission, does this change anything? we've already seen the trump administration get slapped down for making up bogus pretextual reasons to justify what is bald faced political move. isn't that just absolutely exactly what's happening here as well? solutely exactly what's happening here as well ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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this time next week we will no longer have a director of national intelligence. the current dna dan coats is out effective next week. the president's first choice to replace him was a rapidly pro-trump texas republican congressman named john radcliffe. when the congressman bragged about lots of things on his résume that were not things he'd actually not done. you'd think the president would be careful about his second choice for the job.

this morning reporters asked the president about hoekstra. it's possible there's a different pete than the one we're all thinking of, i hope so. because the one i think the president is talking about for director of national intelligence is the man who earned himself the nickname the human sieve because of his terrible track record of leaking like a sieve and being unable to keep even the most basic secret. like the time in 2009 he went on a congressional delegation to iraq, a trip he was supposed to keep secret for operation security reasons and he ended up live tweeting and he complained that leak tuesday the news media have seriously undermined

anti-terrorist and then two paragraphs later in the same essay he himself leaked the budget in front. the pete i'm thinking of in 2006 convinced the bush administration to publish a whole bunch of documents seized from iraq on the internet. turns out the documents included sfru instructions in arabic for making an atomic bomb. he leaked about the ties between a shooting suspect and on and on and on. the man is colander. that's the pete hoekstra i am thinking of. if the president is seriously thinking of the same guy to be director of national intelligence, i should be miss america. i mean that guy? but watch this space. i mean tha? but watch this space

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thanks for being with us tonight. before i go i just want to put one little item on your watch list for monday. we're going to be watching the start of the criminal trial for former white house counsel in the obama administration, gregory craig. he's the only democratic administration official who's been caught up in any of the prosecutions that derive from the mueller investigation. mueller's team passed on the greg craig prosecution to other federal prosecutors. that trial is going to start on monday. they had initially charged him with two felony counts. a judge this week threw out one of the two felony charges so he's just going forward wn one felony count he did to work related in conjunction he did with president trump's campaign chairman paul manafort. we'll be watching that before we get back to you here on monday night. now it's time for the "last word." ali velshi is in for lawrence tonight. >> you have yourself a fantastic we