a towering beauty that in 2020 caught the eye of the rockefeller head gardener who knocked on michael's door. >> he said do you think he's an angel or something? >> reporter: you see, just days earlier his wife leslie had passed away. they got a card from the family that donated last year's tree with this message. >> you'll never forget the flip of the switch, the roar of the crowd. it's overwhelming emotion. >> it will get to me, i'm sure. >> reporter: what do you think you'll be thinking of in that moment? >> leslie. how much she enjoyed trees. how much she enjoyed christmas. >> reporter: and how this holiday, their family will be much bigger. >> honestly it's a tribute to my mom. it's a new beginning for the tree. it's a new beginning for our family.

>> i love this story so much. so glad i got to share it with you. this year's tree lighting cannot come fast enough. i cannot wait to see celebrate it. on that note, a wish you a very good night. from our colleagues across the neat work everworks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late. i'll see you at the end of tomorrow. do you remember how earlier this year south dakota governor kristi noem thought it was be good to put in writing that she shot and killed her dog cricket because cricket was quote untrainable. the reason she thought it was a good anecdote to recall is because she wanted to illustrate her willingness in politics as well as south dakota life to do anything difficult, messy, and ugly if

it simply needs to be done. now, even after that story didn't exactly land the way the governor thought it might, she doubled down, tweeting that shooting her 14 month old dog wasn't easy, but often the easy way isn't the the right way. this is the person that donald trump is planning to nominate to run the department of homeland security in his upcoming administration. and just to be clear, south dakota is closer to the canadian border than it is to the southern border, but for whatever reason, donald trump has picked noem to be his homeland security secretary, dog killing and all. and the wildest part about that choice is that so far, out of everyone trump has tapped to run his immigration policy in the next term, dog killing kriti kristi noem is probably the most normal of

the bunch. >> you grab the immigrants and move them to the staging grounds, and the planes are waiting to move them home. you deputize the military. >> that was trump advisor stephen miller expected to be named trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, and we don't have to imagine what his plans are when it comes to immigration. late last year miller spoke to the new york times laying out plans that involved sweeping raids, giant camps, and mass deportations. and by mass deportations, the goal here is millions of people a year. a project that miller and noem will be aided in by tom homan who trump has named his quote unquote border czar. he'll have a wide portfolio overseeing border policy and its implementation. and while he's not as familiar

as miller and noem, you're probably familiar with a policy he championed from the last trump administration. family separation. also known as the zero tolerance policy. it separated more than 5,000 families in trump's first term, and dhs published a report this year showing that for more than a thousand of those children, the u.s. government still does not know if they were ever reunited with their parents. so that was the policy tom homan championed in trump's first term, something he defends to this day. just last month when homan was asked whether the biggest deportation plan in u.s. history would be possible without family separations, here was his response. >> is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families? >> of course there is. families can be deported together.

>> families can be deported together. there are 4.7 million households across the country where the residents are of mixed immigration status. some are undocumented, some are permanent legal residents, and some are american citizens. so the idea that you could just deport families together does not comport with the reality, the scale of this situation. and that happens to be true about a lot of homan's ideas. they're somewhere between half baked and just not baked at all. for example, when homan speaks about immigrants coming over the southern border, he describes all of them as criminals whether or not they have actually committed a crime. >> if i'm in charge of this, my priorities are public safety threats and national safety first. >> first implies others follow, right? >> absolutely. >> so game that out for me. >> it's not okay so enter a country illegally, which is a crime. >> so it's a targeted enforcement operation, grandma

is in the house, she's undocumented. she getters aced to? >> it depend -- she get arrested too? >> it depends. >> the issue here, and the reason homan thinks it depends when it comes to whether or not he arrests grandma too, is because he's purposefully vague about who gets deported first. about who exactly is a criminal. this is him last night on fox laying out the different categories of immigrants as he sees them. >> you came to this country illegally, which is a crime. you committed crimes against united states citizens. some heinous crimes. you get no grace period. but for the non-criminals, if you want to self-deport, i'm all for it. >> so in his mind you either came into the country illegally and should be deported, committed a crime, and should be deported, or you're not a criminal, but should leave too. the gist appears to be criminalizing immigrants and immigration as much as possible, and there's a reason

for that. the trump administration would like to deport as many immigrants as possible. stephen miller even laid out the plans. he wants to end daca, the deferred action for childhood arrivals program that would strip more than half a million americans of the legal right to stay in the united states. he wants to use title 42 to refuse to hear asylum claims all together. and that would mean even people with valid asylum claims fleeing war and violence and dictators, even they would not have a legal path to citizenship in the u.s. it is essentially a criminalization of immigration writ large. and these are the people donald trump has tapped to carry out what he says will be the largest deportation in u.s. history. there are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the u.s. today. trump's aim is to deport more than a million of those people

a year. but even just logistically, that is a nightmare. right now immigration and customs enforcement, i.c.e., only has around 6,000 agents. so trump has floated using the national guard and even potentially the u.s. military to pull this off. the national guard and the u.s. military going into communities and ripping people out of their homes. >> stephen miller said this will involve large scale raids. >> i don't use the term raids, but you're probably talking about enforcement actions,. >> work place enforcement, that's a round up. >> and that's going to be necessary. >> okay, this is what that sort of raid actually looked like in the first trump administration. i.c.e. conducted a work place raid in a small town in nebraska arresting 133 immigrant workers. the superintendent of the local public schools told the washington post that she suspected anywhere between 50 to 100 kids in her district

may have been separated from a relative or family member by that raid. at least three children were separated from both parents, one was in third grade, another in fifth. one was a baby. and that whole operation to arrest a grand total of just over 100 people? that operation took 15 months to plan. and trump wants to do raids like that to round up more than a million people a year. nbc news reports tonight that the incoming trump administration is already talking to private prison companies to find potential new immigrant detention centers near major u.s. cities. they're contemplating building detention sites, camps, near cities like denver, los angeles, miami, and chicago. even though trump and his incoming officials seem woefully unprepared for the gigantic task they have assigned themselves, immigration lawyers across the country say they are ready for

whatever donald trump brings their way. becca heller, founder of the international refugee assistance project told the new york times this week, we literally have a blue print of what they're planning to do, so we have had months and months to figure out how to protect people. joining me now is becca helle, ceo and cofounder of the refugee assistance project, and i'm also joined by jacob soberoff, my colleague at nbc news. he also wrote the book separated and the movie based on the book. becca, can i first start with you because i think there's just an astounding amount of fear and trepidation and concern about the people trump has named in the last 24 to 72 hours and the plans.

first of all, the definition of who's going to get deported first seems like a real moving target. everyone appears to be a criminal in the eyes of tom homan. how are you guys looking at this situation? >> i mean, we're anticipating chaos. and i think chaos is people who thought they were voting for a trump immigration policy thought they were voting against. trump ran on a campaign saying there's chaos at the border, which is factually not true. encounters have been down with biden. and now they have beds to create mass concentration camps to deport a million people a year. yet people out of hospitals and schools and work places. what he's talking about is chaos on a level we can't even imagine. >> jacob, you listen to tom homan. you know this character, you know this individual. and when he's asked about

family separations, it's clear that while he knows it's not a good thing to announce that's going to be a part of it, it's an inevitable feature of all this. i just want to play a clip. this is aoc interviewing homan in 2019 about how and why people get separated from their families. let's take a listen to that. >> zero tolerance was interpreted as the policy that separated children from their -- >> if you get arrested for dui and i have a young child in the car, i'll be separated. when i was a police officer in new york and arrested a father for domestic violence, i separated that father. >> this gets at the heart of it. he thinks of everyone as a criminal, which is a permission structure to deport anybody who's involved in immigration. >> what he's describing is a prosecution as a reason for a separation. in the case of family separation as jonathan white, the career official told errol morris in the film, separation

was the purpose, prosecution was the tool to make that separation happen. separation was the goal all along. it wasn't a crime committed that necessitated a separation like a criminal act, basically what john kelly said would be the reason they'd separate people in the first place. i loved your quote in the new york times about having a blue print. you and i together at the convention saw the blue print. it was a sign that said mass deportation now. the the piece from julia ainsley about i.c.e. detention centers in big cities, but they already exist. i've been inside. just outside los angeles, it was one of the only times i met a separated parent inside i.c.e. immigration detention. that's a facility where i saw grown men curled up in the fetal position in solitary confinementment it's a place

where inspector general reports cited nooses being found inside those facilities. and the idea that on a broad scale, if this reporting bears out to be true, that they want to use those facilities for families as well, and julia's article says they want to bring back family detention which was done away with under the current administration. the idea of holding, sometimes indefinitely, families, young children, inside. which is barred by law today. it's a very clear sign of where they want to go with all this. and my final thing on this is mass deportation is family separation. it's just family separation by another name. we're talking many as many as 20 million people with an undocumented family member inside this country. while it's not ripping children away deliberately from their parents at the border -- >> it's ripping their parents away. >> exactly. >> let's unpack the prospects. from a legal perspective, where are the biggest challenges for a trump administration that wants to set up mass deportation centers in big metro areas in

blue states? >> i think there's a bunch of potential legal challenges. i think ultimately what it will come down to is the supreme court figuring out if it's a body of politics or a body of law. i think there's a lot of questions about the legitimate city of the supreme court right now, and we'll be seeing what that is. are they going to uphold the constitution and uphold due process rights or just let this happen the way that it's been being discussed. i think that as the law is written, there are a lot of potential legal challenges. i think blue state governors and mayors who are being targeted by the new detention policy could choose to stand up for it. the federal government could then say we'll withhold federal government. will the legality be upheld? that's a question. >> this is a huge stress test on the sort of federal versus state government. ironically the republicans are the ones pushing against state rights.

jacob, there's also just the question of who's going to do this, right? i mean, you know rounding up people, first of all, it's not like the biden administration is like murderers, rapists, come across the border! tracking down criminals and getting them out of the country is still a priority of this administration. the trump administration says they're going to prioritize those people, but even, you know, small scale raids like the one we talked about in nebraska is an incredible tax on resources, staffing, agencies, i mean, this is something if you're talking about a million people a year, how is dhs going to manage this, how is hhs, how is the ors? >> it's a, it's a fair question, but i guess what i come away with having covered and seen the family separation policy, i believe them when they say they intend to do something at this point. during the obama administration, they had a policy called, and this was president obama's words, felons not families. they ended up deporting more people, including families, and family members, than any other president in the history

of the united states of america. and that's the baseline for this administration. they may not have the resources today, but they also didn't have the national guard at the borders, and then they did all of the sudden. they said they wouldn't separate, and then they did all of the sudden. i don't necessarily know how they'll do it or carry it out or if they'll do it, but when they said last time they would deliberately take children away from their parents to scare people from coming into the country, and everybody including john kelly said we're not doing that, we're only doing it in the worst case scenario, 5500 children were taken away from their parents. >> and over a thousand, we don't know if they were reunited as of today. becca, i want to drill into like, stephen miller is out there saying we'll take dea agents and put them on this task. we'll take the national guard and repurpose them. they have some leeway with these agencies, but can you

really do that in a time of, i don't know, fema agents, you know, there's a lot of natural disasters that happen in this country. >> i think that's the question. we're talking about a multibillion dollar operation. i think ironically at the same time elon musk is here to cut down on federal bureaucracy. i hope there's like a cage fight on that, fun to watch. >> elon musk, an immigrant fighting the cage match on immigration policy. >> everyone wants to close the door behind them, i think. but yeah, it's a massive undertaking. you have to ask yourself what else would the national guard be doing that they'll be persecuting immigrants instead? should the dea be enforcing drug laws and trying to cut down on trafficking and fighting the opioid epidemic or be persecuting immigrants? i think there's a real cost they haven't thought through. >> and jacob, reporting is so essential in this moment because in many ways, you and

a handful of other reporters on the front line of the family separation policy when it first started, that moved the needle in terms of this administration, the coming administration, then the past administration changing its position. , and i'm not sure the public will be down for family separation. >> it's my colleagues like julia, lomi, ginger thompson, they've been reporting on these issues for a long time. people like dr. william lopez at the university of michigan who wrote a book before someone like me ever came on the scene. i think that this administration forgets that donald trump reversed the separation policy because he said i didn't like the sights and the feeling of the children being separated. and maybe what was one of the more awkward moments in the oval office to watch, watch him sign that executive order reversing the policy that he himself put into place with kirstjen nielsen standing over his shoulder because it was

not bipartisan condemnation, it was universal condemnation. the pope spoke out against that policy. i think that's what they're up against again if they go forward with this, but that's a decision they'll have to make. do they want to revisit, what was in the words of the george w. bush appointed judge, one of the most shameful chapters in our country. >> absolutely. jacob, becca, thank you so much for your perspective. coming up, trump picks a fox news host to be the secretary of defense. the headlines write themselves. george conway will weigh in on that. but first, it's been a week since the election, and the house still remains up for grabs. i'll discuss the role of congress in a second trump term with connecticut senator chris murphy. that's coming up next. while loading up our suv, one extra push and... crack! so, we scheduled at safelite.com. we were able to track our technician and knew exactly when he'd arrive.

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♪ ♪ chase. with so much great entertainment out there... wouldn't it be easier if you could find what you want, all in one place? my favorites. get xfinity streamsaver with netflix, apple tv+, and peacock included, for only $15 a month. >> i think president trump's return to the white house is a great thing for the country.

i think having republican control of the senate is really important, and we're going to run a very impressive house, and i think people are anxious and excited to get about that business. house speaker mike johnson is feeling optimistic about congress today. a sharp contrast to the infighting and back stabbing that defined most of the recent republican-led congress. a week after the election, nbc news has yet to project who will win control of the house. republicans currently have 216 seats, democrats 207 seats. nbc news has 12 races undecided. over in the senate, republicans have 52 seats to democrats' 47. and even though the last race in pennsylvania has yet to be called by nbc, the republican challenger has already been invited to senate orientation this week. joining me now for his first tv interview since winning election and a lot of other folks didn't is senator chris murphy, democrat of

connecticut. senator, thank you being here. i'm thrilled we get to talk to you. let me just first get to big picture thoughts on while we haven't called the house, it looks likely that republicans will control the house, senate, white house, and for all intents and purposes the judiciary as well. how do you look at the landscape right now? >> yeah, i think election day was a cataclysm for democrats. there's no way to sugar coat it. there's a path back to an electoral house majority. it's very difficult in the senate right now. we have an effective cap of 52 seats, and you saw this massive demographic movement away from democrats among some core constituencies. i think this is a red alert for the party, and we're beyond small adjustments. i don't have all the answers, i don't think anybody does at this point, but my sense is we're a party that claims to

fight for and care about poor people, and yet they started voting in droves a few years ago for republicans. and that's probably due to the fact that we're not listening to them. that we let think tanks and public interest groups tell us what poor people want instead of listening to them. so it's our job to reconstruct an agenda around people we're trying to lift up, something we haven't done a good job of doing for translating the past few years. >> you talk about it being a red alert moment for the democratic party. i would think that some version of alarm bells should be ringing for whatever normal republicans there are left in the senate given the fact that the incoming president, the president-elect donald trump, is already saying he wants republicans in the senate to be down with recess

appointments. now, that's basically by passing the senate to get his nominations through. can you explain and weigh in how concerned you are about that? >> yeah, so recess appointments are a limited ability for the president to appoint people to posts normally confirmable by the senate when the senate is in recess. but that's normally done when the senate is out for a long period of time and there's an dire circumstance. when trump is asking republicans in the senate to do, as i understand it, is essentially voluntarily recess the senate for the explicit purpose of allowing him to put into place people who probably couldn't get 50 votes in the senate, and frankly just to avoid the scrutiny that comes with a debate and confirmation process in the senate.

that is extraordinary. it is not likely to be upheld by the supreme court, who have had misgivings about the recess power. but it's a sign that trump is already starting to propose the shredding of democratic norms either because he knows he can't get his people confirmed or he doesn't want to bother with the normal constitutional checks on his power. it's an early sign we may be in for some really dysfunctional days as trump acts so cavalierly about the democratic checks and balances that held this country together and held in check the executive branch for the existence of our republic. >> given rick scott is the sort of maga pick to lead the senate, also thune and cornyn who are front runners, do you feel like with trump in charge

and with an ally maybe even more extreme than mitch mcconnell or decidedly more extreme than mitch mcconnell, can you help me understand how you're thinking about the way the senate does its business if a radical, i mean, i'm not suggesting mitch mcconnell was a moderate by any stretch of the imagination, but if someone like rick scott is running the upper chamber, what does that mean practically for you and your colleagues? >> well, listen, i've worked with john cornyn and john thune, but i don't know that there will be much of a practical difference between them and rick scott. donald trump is in charge. republicans won't cross him. i saw this up close and personal when we negotiated the bipartisan immigration reform bill. many republicans were going to support that bill until donald trump told them to vote against it, and they all fell in line within hours.

so i don't necessarily think that the narrative here is establishment republicans running against a maga republican for senate leadership. i think whoever runs that caucus will be taking his instructions with donald trump, and perhaps instructions to dismantle some aspects of our democracy to allow trump to govern as an authoritarian. >> senator chris murphy, you have your work cut out for you. thanks for chatting with me about how you're looking at this moment and what lies ahead. appreciate your time. >> thanks. coming up, trump's selection of a second term cabinet has kicked into overdrive this evening. george conway joins me to discuss the rogues gallery of trump nominees next. you. your laundry feels way fresher, softer. so you start to wonder. if i put a sheet of bounce on the finance guy, will it make him softer? bounce can't do it all but for better laundry, ♪ put a sheet on it with bounce. ♪ our right to reproductive health care

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the first person donald trump ever appointed to be his national security advisor was this guy, general mike flynn. flynn lasted in that position for all of 24 days before he was indicted for lying to the fbi about his contacts with russian officials and had to resign. trump then cycled through several other national security advisors. there was h. r. mcmaster, john

bolton who called trump unfit to serve as president. robert o'brien might have stayed in the fold if he had not admitted that biden won the 2020 election and promising a smooth transition of power in the weeks after trump lost. and now donald trump has found the guy he wants to be his next security advisor, republican mike waltz. he cosponsored a bill to rename dulles airport after donald trump. he showed up outside trump's criminal trial to defend his hush money arrangement, and worked with other election denying republicans to try and overturn the results of the 2020 election leading its hometown paper to retract their endorsement of them saying they had no idea at the time he was not committed to democracy. so that's the man donald trump has picked to be his national

security advisor, and he find himself in rare company. tonight trump announced fox news host pete hegseth is his pick for defense secretary. he lobbied to pardon two service members accused of war crimes, which trump did. he also has some questionable views on personal hygiene. >> i don't think i've washed my hands for ten years. really, i don't really wash my hands ever. >> help me! >> i inoculate myself. germs are not a real thing. i can't see them, therefore they're not real. >> gross. today trump also tapped two of his favorite cheerleaders, vivek ramaswamy and elon musk, to head his new department of government efficiency or doge, which is an internet pun i'm

not going to bother explaining. trump says they'll dismantle government bureaucracy, slash wasteful regulations, and cut expenditures to make the government more efficient because nothing says efficiency like tapping two people to do one person's job. and trump selects mike huckabee. he said there's really no such thing as a palestinian. that's been a political tool to try and force land away from israel. all of this is part of huckabee's world view as an evangelical christian zionists. their support for israel is rooted in the role of the

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donald trump has been an a tear the last 72 hours appointing loyalistings, many entirely unqualified. marco rubio is expected to be named secretary of state. elise stefanik the un ambassador, and because he's donald trump he's also been clear about who he's not choosing for key roles posting on social media that nikki haley and mike pompeo will not be invited to join his second administration. joining me now is george conway, a contributor for the atlantic and a wealth of information and feelings about donald trump. first of all, we have some

reporting that, that the vetting process or the sort of the deliberation process involves a lot of television. here's what, um, the war room at mar-a-lago where these decisions are being made contains multiple large television screens, which can be used to show multimedia about individual candidates or screen clips of their cable news appearances as needed. it's how you look on tv that gets you the job. >> it's how you look on tv, but also how you suck up to the boss and tell the boss he's great and tell the boss how much he's persecuted and how wonderful he is. that's the main purpose of the people surrounding donald trump. it's not to actually run anything. god forbid. it's to basically assuage his ego. that's what this sequel, where the writers seem to have jumped the shark before we got through the opening credits. >> pete hegseth, a fox

newscast with a questionable history, a person who successfully got trump to pardon war criminals. i mean, this person is going to be the defense secretary? there's clearly no thought about how -- >> he wasn't even a weekday host on fox and friends. he was a weekend host! >> first of all how long, the churn here i think would be remarkable. >> the churn is going to be remarkable. it always is remarkable. but there may be less churn for the following reason is these people are not going to challenge him in any way. >> yeah. >> okay, there was churn in the first trump administration people would occasionally stand up to him or slow things down or take paper off his desk or say no to him. and, you know, there's all sorts of instances where people were kind of resisting

his stupidest urges. because he's not very bright and doesn't know anything about how the government works, and they all treated him in the first administration, they understood that he didn't know anything and kind of treated him that way, and he got mad about it. and sooner or later, he fired the people, and then they claim that they were terrible and who hired those people, by the way? and then, you know, later we don't see, we didn't see many of them supporting him in 2024. but somehow he's back, and the people who are coming in this time are, you know, they're being vetted the way he wants to vet them by watching tv to see what they say about him. makes perfect sense. it's perfect for a narcissist. >> but marco rubio was a bit of a critic, so do you hold out hope?

>> well, i don't a full opposition research file on marco rubio. i try not to pay too much attention to him. but, um, you know, he's been all over the place on all sorts of things. he was very pro anti-russia at one point. now he's like let's sell out the ukrainians. it's whatever, he will do whatever trump wants. and now, at least when you're in the senate, it's kind of a cushy and secure job relatively speaking. you don't have to run except every six years, and people say oh senator and follow you around and they're respectful to you. it's like that's not going to be true anymore. he's an employee at will. he'll be an employee at will now. and that's not, you know, for a guy who, i mean, i don't know where he goes from here if he loses that job. >> perhaps it's his away of appeasing the maga right as he sharpens his tools for another potential presidential run in

2028. who knows anything about what's happening? vivek ramaswamy and elon musk being offered jobs in a fantasy football league. >> in a nonexistent department >> the department of government efficiency. it doesn't actually exist. can they just, um, can they bring it into existence by the sheer force of their own will? what do you think is the plan here? >> i, first of all it's not going to be a governmental department, as i understand it. and then, you know, there are actually rules and statutes that apply, i think the federal advisory committee act talks about regulates from ethics standpoint people coming in and being consulted on how to run the government. and, you know, i'm not an expert in that, but we'll end up knowing a lot more about it in the not too distant future. >> george, we're becoming experts in confirmation processes during senate

recesses, we'll understand appropriations like never before, parliamentary procedure, it will be an education for the american public. thank you for your time and your incredible disbelief at everything happening right now. still to come, the justice department is bracing for big changes when donald trump reenters the white house, but who's going to be left in the building? that is next. if you have heart failure, farxiga can help you keep living life with the ones you love. ask your doctor about farxiga today. farxiga can cause serious side effects, including ketoacidosis that may be fatal, dehydration, urinary tract or genital yeast infections, and low blood sugar. a rare, life-threatening bacterial infection in the skin of the perineum could occur. stop taking farxiga and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of this infection,

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two months after president trump abruptly fired the fbi director james comey in 2017, he nominated christopher ray for a ten-year term, but ray is reportedly preparing to be fired before that term ends. and he's not alone. if trump makes good on his promises, the entire justice department could be holleyed out and replaced by a cast of

trump loyalists. many career attorneys do not plan on sticking around enough to find out if trump's threats are real or just campaign bluster. joining me now is the author of that piece, senior legal affairs reporter josh gerstein. thanks for joining me tonight. i'm curious to hear your assessment about how much of this is attrition and how much is just trump coming in and, you know, inciting mass lay offs here. what is the mood inside the doj in terms of the career lawyers who still work there? >> well, alex, it's pretty grim and pretty glum at the moment, i would say. how many of those people will decide to actually leave their jobs voluntarily before january 20th i think is still an open question. people i talk to seem to be inclined to try and stick it out until they find it untenable to do that anymore. but at the moment, they're

very nervous. and one key reason is that a lot of these people have been through this already. they've been through this from 2017 to 2021. they saw what a chaotic scene it was at the justice department. you know, i've been covering the justice department for a long time, and we remember being called in because a, you know looks like jeff sessions is going to get fired today or rod rosenstein is going to get fired or bill barr is going to resign. and you had that kind of tumult over a four-year period, and everyone i've talked to only expects it to be more chaotic, unpredictable, and perhaps off the rails than the previous administration. >> yeah, you talk about the jeff sessions and rod rosensteins of the world. trump likes to fire people. he likes to fire acting heads or heads. but, you know, vivek ramaswamy, who we have reporting tonight is going to be, have a role in the new trump administration, in 2023

proposed mass lay offs, firing as much as 75% of the federal work force. he believed the supreme court would back him up. is there any expectation this may not be a case by case basis, am i staying or going, just a massive blood letting. is that even being discussed? >> i think the main concern is sort of an ethical and moral concern that people don't want to be put in a position of defending something like family separation or something worse than family separation. but there's another concern, which is a mass blood letting, a mass lay off. there's this thing called schedule f where trump, at least in project 2025, you see it there and at the end of his previous term talked about massive cutbacks and eliminate the civil service protections so you wouldn't only have fewer people in federal government agencies, but political appointees could choose which career people to keep and which to get rid of,

which is basically the end of the civil service, which is supposed to be merit basedth and have criteria other than politics. so there's definitely widespread concern among the justice department both among lawyers and other career staff that have been there for a long time and might have a harder time finding a job than a talented lawyer that's already at the department. >> and then there are the people that trump suggested he's going to run out of the country like special counsel jack smith. can you talk a little bit about that predicament and how the very prominent heads of investigations or garland the ag, what the kind of consensus or feeling is about how worried they need to be about the future? >> well, there's always some change in how republicans handle it. maybe more emphasis on civil rights or environmental enforcement. but what we have potentially coming in is not normal, which

is all the people around trump saying they'll be investigating the special prosecutors. people like jack smith might be on the line, but anyone that might have worked with jack smith at any time or capacity could find themselves potentially prosecuted, investigated, could be very expensive for them and throw them out of government. that's a very abnormal and unusual situation, and that's part of what's inspiring the fear inside the walls of doj at the moment. >> nothing about this is normal. josh doing some really important reporting from inside the doj. thanks as always, josh, for your time tonight. >> take care. >> that is our show this evening. now it is time for the last word can lawrence o'donnell. good evening lawrence. >> good evening alex. amy klobuchar will join us. she helped confirm another biden judge today. this is after donald trump made sure to make sure no biden