. that does it for me tonight. the rachel maddow show starts right now. hi, rachel. >> thank you very much, jen. much appreciated. hope you had a great holiday. so in the 1950s police in washington, d.c. assigned a whole squad of police officers, a surprisingly large part of the overall police force and made it their job to police bathrooms and public parks and other places where they thought men might secretly be meeting up to have sex. they had officers who were

trained to come onto people, to make passes at them basically and lead them onto see if they could get the other guy to initiate some kind of a sexual encounter. and then they would slap the cuffs on them and arrest them, haul them downtown. they called this the perversion elimination program. you'll not be shocked to learn what they called per version was not eliminated by this police program, but this program in the 1950s, it did arrest a lot of people. it did ruin a lot of people's lives. that said, they didn't throw the book at everyone. if they picked up somebody in one of these sting operations who was a first time offender, no other trouble with the law, not employed in some sensitive position in which the person could be conceivably blackmailed, right, they tended in those instances to give a warning. yeah, maybe they would make the

poor guy spend a night in jail to scare the bejesus out of him, but in these kinds of circumstances generally they would let the guy go. and that is what happened when a young seminary student was arrested in washington, d.c. in lafayette park in 1953. he was a very bright young man. he had a seemingly very bright future ahead of him. he was a seminary student, after all. he had no other offenses on his record, no involvement with the law whatsoever, but he was picked up in one of these sting operations, they gave him a warning, and then they let him go. pretty much standard operating procedure for how you'd handle that kind of a sting, that kind of alleged defense, and that kind of a defendant. but then with this particular young man it turned into something else because this young man's father was a united states senator, a democratic u.s. senator from wyoming. and as a senator he had made some very powerful enemies on the other side of the aisle.

specifically he had squared off against and stood up against one particular republican senator named joe mccarthy. and when joe mccarthy and his friends in the senate learned that wyoming senator lester hunt's son, buddy -- his name was buddy hunt. when they learned lester hunt's son, buddy, had been arrested in a washington, d.c. park for a so-called morals offense, they learned he had been left off with a warning the way most first-time offenders are, and then they decided that they had a better idea for how this particular arrest should be handled. they summoned a police supervisor to their offices on capitol hill, brought him up to the united states senate from the police, and they demanded that this particular young man should have his case reopened, that buddy hunt should not be left off with a warning, that he should definitely be charged criminally and put on trial.

and then after intimidating the police into agreeing to do that, they then went to the kid's dad, they went to lester hunt the senator and said, hey, shame about what's happening to your son, we could make this all go away if you'd just resign from the senate and give up your seat. and senator lester hunt told them to pound sand, and so buddy hunt went to trial, and he was convicted whereupon joe mccarthy's allies in the u.s. senate came back to lester hunt and said, huh, that was pretty terrible for you and your family. wouldn't it be a shame if we put a flyer in every mailbox in the state of wyoming explaining just what buddy was arrested for and what he did, and it's your family, and wouldn't that be a shame, and are you sure you don't want to resign from the senate? senator lester hunt worried so

much about his son buddy, he worried about his wife as well, buddy's mom, that trial -- the trial itself had already almost killed her. senator lester hunt's friends in the senate said he was basically reduced to a shell of himself by the worry. he had been really gregarious and outgoing and friendly by some contemporaneous press accounts he was kind of the most personally popular member of the senate among other senators, just a great guy, very outgoing. but when all this started happening, he retreated into himself, stopped talking to people, he used to eat alone in his office. he was just profoundly worried and upset by what was happening to his son. and it was happening to his son because of politics. because these republican senators wanted to wage political war against him, a father, and they knew that the son was the way to get the father. and lester hunt had previously told those republican senators when they threatened him, he had

previously told them to shove it. but in the end they did get him out of the senate. there had been a one-seat democratic majority while democrat lester hunt was in the united states senate. but when he vacated his seat in the u.s. senate, that flipped senate control to the republicans. they got their way when lester hunt indeed vacated that seat. and lester hunt vacated that seat in the senate by killing himself in his senate office in june 1954. those republican senators, those allies of joe mccarthy, they used their political power for political reasons to abuse and pervert the legal system into pursuing a young man for, yes, something that he did but for something which anyone other than him would never have faced serious legal consequences. and they did it because of who his dad was, and they did it

because they knew this young man's dad loved him. and they decided that father's love for his son would be their best and most effective weapon against the father. get him right in the heart. one of the most despicable episodes i know of in the entire modern history of american politics. just a shakespearean crash of -- of evil against love. with the result being a good man shooting himself at his desk in the united states senate. that was 70 years ago. it was 1954. last night president biden put out a statement explaining his pardon of his son hunter. the statement said, quote, from the day i took office i said i would not interfere with the

justice department's decision making, and i kept my word even as i have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted. without aggravating factors like use in a crime, or multiple purchases or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely how they filled out a gun form. those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, those people are typically given noncriminal resolution. the president says, quote, it is clear hunter was treated differently. the charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in congress instigated them to attack me and my election. then a carefully negotiated plea deal agreed to in the department of justice unraveled in the courtroom with a number of my political opponents taking credit.

no reasonable person who looks at the fact of hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion that hunter was singled out only because he is my son, and that is wrong. he says, quote, there has been an effort to break hunter who has been 5 1/2 years sober even in the face of unelenting attacks and selective proscuse. in treeing to break hunt, they have tried to break me, and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. enough is enough. it says, quote, for my entire career i followed a simple principle. just tell the american people the truth, they'll be fair minded. well, here's the truth. i believe in the justice system, but as i have wrestled with this, i also believe raw politics has infected this process and it has led to a mischaracter of just. i hope americans would understand why a father and a president would come to this decision. a father and a president. he says there's no reason to believe it will stop here.

enough is enough. it is true that president biden had said he wouldn't pardon his son. and it may or may not be related, but would it change your mind at all if after you made a pledge like that the incoming next president then announced he planned to remove the director of the fbi and instal in his place someone who's literally published a hit list of people he wants to go after once trump is back in power. there are 60 names on this list. this guy published it as an appendix, as appendix "b" to one of his recent books. not his series of books that describe trump as king donald. no, those are three books for kids. no, the s with the 60 names of those he's going to get those are presumably for adults. what would you do after you made that pledge to not pardon your

son? that's what the next president said he was going to do to u.s. law enforcement. what would you do? what is reasonable to demand of a man after what's been done to your son already, right? you ready to put him back in the barrel? honestly, maybe what president biden should have done is not just pardon his son, hunter, but name him ambassador to france. maybe then the response and criticism would be a little more muted. i mean consider it, right? donald trump, the president-elect, used his pardon power to give pardons to his longest serving political advisor, his campaign chairman, his campaign manager, his national security advisor. he gave pardons to seven -- count them seven different republican congressmen convicted of dozens of felonies. he pardoned the father of his

son-in-law. his daughter is married to jared kushner. he pardoned jared kushner's father. this man tried to blackmail and intimidate a witness in a federal case against him by hiring a prostitute to seduce the witness and lure him back to a hotel room, he filmed the sexual encounter and sent the tape to the wife of the witness to intimidate both the witness and the wife into not testifying against him. and that is an astonishing thing to do, to go to witness intameidation. it is a whole other level of insanity considering the woman he sent the tape to was his own sister because it was his brother-in-law, his sister's husband who was going to be the witness against him in this criminal investigation along with potentially his sister himself. so this is what he did to his own sister in order to try and shutdown the case, in order to try to shutdown those witnesses. his name is charles kushner. his son jared is married to ivanka trump, and so he got a

pardon. charles kushner served two years in federal prison, but then i'm sure just on the merits of the case he got a full pardon from donald trump in trump's first term, and now this weekend -- this weekend trump named him that same guy, that ex-con, he just announced he will name him ambassador to france. and he did that announcement right after he announced the father of the guy married to his other daughter, tiffany, he will be trump's senior advisor on the middle east. and so, yeah, cue all the hang wringing and gnashing of teeth today about a president using his power, his pardon power, his powers of president to do something for a family member. i mean, trump pardoned a family member and then named him ambassador to france. a man who has no qualifications whatsoever to be america's ambassador to france. trump pardoned the owner of the 49ers football team and has now

nominated his son-in-law to be the head of the dea. the guy is a local sheriff. he has no apparent qualifications to lead the drug administration other than being a local sheriff and being related to a rich guy trump pardoned. the surgeon general trump just announced, she is a random doctor who has her own line of vitamins. she has no qualifications to be the surgeon general at all other than he's the sister of -- the guy he just hired to lead the navy has zero experience with the navy or literally anything to do with any part of the united states military, but the guy did hold a $12 million fund-raiser for trump at his multi-million dollar home which famously features a mirrored floor, so you can see up

people's skirts. he named an accused child sex trafficker to be an attorney general. he named an hhs secretary who says heroin -- heroin helps him read better and wi-fi gives you leaky brain. and i'm just going to mention this one more time. he named his convicted felon relative to be our nation's ambassador in paris. maybe his french is excellent. i don't know. but, yes, tell me more about how outraged we all are about president biden's pardon for his son. because that -- somehow that is the thing that looks bad. trump himself responded to the pardon news by asking sarcastically whether the pardon includes all the convicted defendants from the violent attack on congress waged by his supporters on january 6, 2021.

if nothing else that reaction from trump serves to confirm and remind us all that trump plans to use his pardon power to pardon all of those january 6th convicts apparently as soon as he's sworn ip. and so if this is our national moment to be tut-tutting about pardons, right, to be saying that the use of the pardon power might be a problem, it might deserve like, i don't know, four different simull tapeious headlines on the front page of "the new york times" right now tonight, then let's talk about this other one. let's talk about a 33-year-old man who lives in henry county, georgia, just southeast of atlanta. well, used to live there. he doesn't live there anymore. now he lives in prison where he is serving 4 years and 9 months in prison and this is why.

[ chanting "fight for trump" ] [ chanting "usa" ] >> so trump is indicating that that guy's going to get a pardon. trump is indicating that he's going to pardon all of the patriots who were convicted for what they did for him on january 6th, which presumably includes this guy wailing away on police officers, using a crutch to try to smash their faces in. i mean this was trump's sarcastic response to biden's pardon announcement today. does the pardon given by joe include the j 6 hostages? this isn't what hostages look like. this is what january 6th looked

like. from police officer's perspectives. and that is the behavior on january 6th, you see him here dragging a police officer down the steps of the capitol. that's the behavior on january 6th that trump is praising and promising to use his pardon power for. so, yeah, tell me all about the scandal of the use of the pardon power. trump's announced nominee to lead the fbi has made the january 6th defendants his main cause since leaving office at the end of trump's first term, celebrating january 6th attackers as patriots who all need to be freed and celebrated. we will see what happens with the cache patel nomination to lead the fbi given the explicit in writing hit list he has published, given his celebration of the violence on january 6th. that fbi nomination is arguably

a more extreme nomination than the accused child sex trafficker guy trump wanted to make attorney general, and that would-be nomination already failed. but you know what, with kash patel and all the rest of the em, it's all up to republican senators. god help us, we shall see. it was only after trump publicly named his choice for defense secretary, pete hegseth, that trump's transition team reportedly learned that mr. hegseth had been the subject of a police investigation for an alleged rape. this is the police report from that alleged incident. you can see the alleged offense listed there. rape, victim unconscious of the nature of the act. it was also reportedly a surprise to the trump transition team that after this allegation was made against hegseth, he paid off the woman who made the allegation to keep her from talking about it in public. surprise. hegseth obviously knew all of that about himself, but he

didn't tell the trump team and it turns out they didn't figure it out on their own. wow, turns out vetting and background checks might be a good thing sometimes. hegseth denies the allegation here, but the woman went to the hospital and submitted herself to a rape kit examination, and that resulted in a report to local authorities for potential prosecution of hegseth. hegseth himself apparently received a copy of the police report of the investigation in 2021 after local authorities in california decided that he would not be charged in the matter. but none of this was apparently known to the trump transition team, which again appears to have not done any formal vetting or background check of hegseth at all, other than turning him on the weekends to watch him on "fox and friends." tonight we're going to be joined by legendary new yorker jay mayer who has broken new news on

pete hegseth that might have turned up through any effort to vet and before naming him. joins us with that new reporting here next. new reporting here next. you can sell your policy - even a term policy - for an immediate cash payment. we thought we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized we needed a way to supplement our income. if you have $100,000 or more of life insurance, you may qualify to sell your policy. don't cancel or let your policy lapse without finding out what it's worth. visit coventrydirect.com to find out if your policy qualifies. or call the number on your screen. coventry direct, redefining insurance.

so there's new reporting today from a legendary reporter jean mayer in the new yorker about the man who's been announced as the defense secretary in the incoming

administration. according to her reporting before pete hegseth was hired to be a tv host at the fox news channel in 2017, he had been been forced out of two small right-wing veteran advocacy organizations that he had been involved in. the first one was a group called veterans for freedom. they hired him onto lead that organization in 2007, according to mayer's reporting. by 2008, the very next year, the group's finances had collapsed amid concerns about wild spending and, quote, sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace. the group's donors soon folded the organization into a different veterans group. basically according to mayer's reporting in order to get hegseth's hands off the checkbook. so that was veterans for freedom. then it was concerned veterans for america where hegseth was in charge from 2013 to 2016 before he was forced out of that

organization, too. from mayer's reporting, quote, the previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on hegseth's tenure as the president of the concerned veterans for america describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events. the detailed report which was compiled by multiple former employees and sent to the organization's senior management states at one point hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage at the louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team from the organization. the report also says that hegseth who was married at the time and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization's female staffers, whom they divided into two groups. the, quote, party girls and the, quote, not party girls. in a separate letter of complaint which was sent to the organization, a different former employee described hegseth being at a bar in the early morning

hours of may 29, 2015 while on an official tour by cuyahoga falls, ohio. he was drunkenly chanting at the bar, quote, kill all muslims, kill all muslims. mayer says, quote, i spoke at length with two people who identified themselves as having contributed to the whistle-blower report. one of them said of hegseth, quote, i've seen him drunk so many times, i've seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. to have him at the pentagon would be scary adding, quote, when those of us who worked at concerned veterans for america heard he was being considered for secretary of defense, it wasn't, no. it was hell no. according to the complaint at one such cva event in virginia beach on memorial day in 2014 hegseth was, quote, totally sloshed and needed to be cared to his room because he was

intoxicated. hegseth was described as completely drunk in a public place. according to the report, quote, several high profile people who attended the organization's event were very disappointed to see this kind of public behavior, but the report does not identify them. nevertheless, in october 2014 the group instituted a no alcohol policy at its events. the following month, however, hegseth and another manager lifted the policy, lifted the no alcohol policy while overseeing a get out the vote field operation to boost republican candidates in north carolina. according to the report on the evening before the election, hegseth who had been out with three young staff members was so ineeberated by 1:00 a.m. the staffer who drove him to his hotel asked for assistance to get him to room. quote, pete was completely passed out in the middle seat slumped over. it took staff members to get hegseth into the hotel after one

young woman vomited in some bushes, another helped him to bed. in the morning a team member had to wake hegseth so he didn't miz his flight. all of this happened in public while concerned americans for veterans. once again according the report hegseth was noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to his room. the report stated, quote, his behavior was embarrassing in front of the team but not surprising. people had simply come to expect pete to get drunk at social events. a 2015 tax filing by concerned veterans of america has an unusual note saying that major programs developed in the last fiscal year were paused. filing also describes pete hegseth as, quote, president outgoing. by start of 2016 hegseth was out of his job.

i should tell you nbc news has not independently confirmed the reporting in "the new yorker." pete hegseth would not comment for the piece. though someone described as an advisor to him told the magazine the claims were, quote, outlandish. outlandish or not what jay mayer's reporting is describing is how things apparently went with the last two tiny organizations that he ran. two very small right-wing advocacy groups that had a handful of staff. now trump wants him in charge of the largest department in the u.s. government with an $800 billion budget and 3 million people to be in charge of. in 1989 george h.w. bush, newly elected president, nominated this man, john tower, to be his secretary of defense. john tower was then accused of womanizing and drunkenness on a scale significantly smaller than

this. john tower then made history by becoming the first cabinet nominee the senate had ever rejected from a newly elected president. when pete hegseth was announced as trump's choice for defense secretary, the trump transition team was apparently completely unaware of the rape allegations that had been leveled against him in california. they apparently were unaware of all this stuff as well. and you know, that's why vetting is a good idea. i've got to say that's why journalism is too. joining us now is jane mayer, chief washington correspondent at "the new yorker" magazine. did i get that the other way around, or is there anything else from your reporting you want our audience to understand in terms of what you learned about mr. hegseth? >> well, thanks so much. thanks, you did a great summary.

and the one thing i would say that is also clear from this report is that we gave a spokesman, a lawyer for pete hegseth two days basically to respond, and they have not denied a single thing in this report. so they just said no comment after being given sort of very careful questions. the other thing i'd like to say is just that it's been almost a day since this story came out, and my phone has been ringing off the hook. i have been hearing from many more people who worked with pete hegseth who have come out of the woodwork to say they too have stories along the same lines. stories of just drinking himself into sort of oblivion, all of which i think is -- you know, i've got nothing against people having a good time in life, but it's when you combine it with

running the defense department that it really does get to be an alarming picture. >> i wanted to ask you about the first veterans group, chronologically the first veterans group hegseth was involved in, veterans for freedom. you say under his leadership veterans for freedom soon ran up enormous debt and financial records indicate after 2008, it was unable to pay its creditors. the group's primary donors became concerned its money was being wasted on inappropriate expenses. there were rumors of parties that could politely be called trysts, a former associate of the group put it. one hegseth sympathizer said i wasn't surprised to hear there was money sloshing around and sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace. i don't mean to be dense here but can you explain or put in simple terms what exactly that allegation means about the sort

of combination of a fiscal problem at the organization, a financial problem at the organization under his leadership but also something about what was going on in the workplace and with these parties. >> well, i mean, it's no secret to anyone who knows pete hegseth that he's had -- gone through three two marriages and there are many, many, many allegations of infidelity that are recent and his marriages ended. and there's been a long pattern here we've seen of sexually inappropriate behavior by him in the workplace and overspending as well. and so that's -- that is what people saw even in the beginning. way back -- that was back 2007. and as you said by 2008 -- i mean that organization was on the brink of bankruptcy. and the thing is if you think about it as a test of whether

this person might be a manager of the largest federal department in america, it was an organization that had between 5 and 10 employees and a budget between 5 and $10 million. i mean it is minuscule really. there's just no history that he has that shows that he's capable of managing a large organization. >> senator richard blumenthal told you, much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn't be at the top of our national security structure. it's dangerous. the secretary of defense is involved in every issue of national security. he's involved in the use of nuclear weapons. entrusting these kinds of issues to someone who might be incapacitated for any reason is risk we cannot take. jane, last question for you. as you were reporting on this and trying to get comment from hegseth, did you get any indication the trump transition

or former president trump himself was aware of these problems in hegseth's past when he was announced, when trump announced him to be the choice for defense secretary? >> i mean it's actually not clear. the lawyer for pete hegseth said that he was -- that he was consulting with the transition team when we asked all these questions, but it's unclear whether pete hegseth came clean on this extraordinary back history in his professional life. and, you know, i mean he certainly -- he certainly did not disclose that there'd been a rape allegation against him and that he'd paid off a woman and signed a national -- you know, an nda, nondisclosure agreement with her in order to keep it secret, so i mean that was definitely not disclosed to the transition team. i mean, as you've been saying i think if nothing else this shows you what a tremendous mistake it is not to do background checks.

the press, we're doing the best that we can, but, you know, we're not the fbi. and i was just -- it was jaw dropping what i learned about pete hegseth. >> yeah, and the fact your phone like you said has been ring off the hook today since this has been out there with more people calling to corroborate these kinds of allegations, we will look -- we won't look forward. we will expect your continued reporting on this, jane. thank you for your understanding. i appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> jane may, chief washington correspondent at "the new yorker" magazine. we'll be right back. stay with us. right back. stay with us

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so at the time it was the most destructive wildfire season california had ever had. dozens of people died. thousands of buildings burned. and then came the political fallout. conspiracy websites started falsely blaming the fires on an undocumented immigrant, saying it was all arson and that's who started it. the sheriff of sonoma county, california, issued a statement debunking that false claim. but, of course, this happened in 2017, the first year of the first trump administration. and any story that blamed an undocumented immigrant for a blue state tragedy was just too good for trump officials to pass up no matter how unfounded it was. and so trump's acting director of i.c.e., immigrations and

customs enforcement, a man named tom homan, he jumped on it. he criticized the sheriff, he said the sheriff had left the community vulnerable to dangerous individuals. the sheriff responded then to tom homan with clarity, a pledge to take care of the people that he served. he said, quote, i.c.e.'s misleading statement stirs fear in some of our community members who are already exhausted and scared. despite i.c.e.'s misleading statement we'll continue to protect and serve our community members. well, now that same i.c.e. official, tom homan is going to be back, one of the first decisions trump made after his re-election was to announce he's bringing back tom homan this time to be his border czar, whatever that means. but the resolve of california officials to stand up to donald trump, that is also back and in a big way. according to "the washington post" by the end of trump's first term in office, california had filed more than 120 haw

lawsuits against the trump administration. california in trump's first term sued trump over everything from immigration policy to health care to gun safety. now with trump set to return to the white house, california lawmakers today opened an emergency special session of the state legislature specifically for the purpose of funding a new legal fight, starting a new legal fund to fight the incoming trump administration in court. california governor gavin newsom has asked the state legislature to set aside $25 million for potential california state lawsuits against trump's federal government. california's top lawyer, state attorney general rob bonte says that he's ready to do that work. >> we've been here before. we lived through trump 1.0, which means we won't be flat-footed come january.

you can be sure that as california attorney general if trump attacks your rights, i'll be there. >> joining us now is rob bonte. he's attorney general for the great state of california. mr. attorney general, thank you very much for making the time to be here tonight. >> glad to be with you, rachel. thanks for having me. >> what should our viewers understand about how you're sort of strategizing for the days ahead? the end of next month trump will be taking power in washington. he's talked a lot of big talk on what he wants to do on day one and what he wants to do out of the gate. how are you thinking strategically about what california can do and defend some of the state's rights against the interests of donald trump? >> my plan in the department of justice is to hold mr. trump and his administration accountable if and when they violate the law. they did it repeatedly,

consistently during trump 1.0. my office took him to court over 120 times. we won and prevailed a vast majority of the time because he was violating the constitution particularly the 10th amendment and separation of powers at the time. he was violating federal law including the administrative procedures act. he was misusing money that was budgeted for other purposes than the purpose he was seeking to use it for. we will hold him accountable. paced on what his inner circle would do, what project 2025 indicates he will do, we have a good sense on where he's headed on immigration, on reproductive freedom, on common sense gun safety, on the environment. so we've been preparing and readying for weeks, months, in some cases years. we've written briefs that are eddy to press print. just need to dot the i's, cross the t's and file it in court based on actions he's signaled and telegraph he will take. so we're ready. we are committed to making sure progress prevails in california,

that our forward movement continues. we're not looking for a fight, but if he picks a fight with us, gets in the way of our progress here in california, we'll be ready. >> this $25 million request to the legislature is obviously a big chunk of money. it's not, however, the same amount of money that say spent in california. it doesn't actually match the amount that was spent by the state to bring those 120 lawsuits, those 120 challenges against the trump administration when trump was first in office. can i just ask you what were the lessons learned of california's strategy along these lines in the first term? both in terms of, you know, spending the taxpayers money wisely but also in acting most effectively, when to act alone, when to act in concert with other states, when to get things into federal court, and when to expect that maybe holding back on that might be the better part of valor given the constitution of the federal courts right now.

what were the lessons learned from the first time that you had to do this as a state? >> yeah, i'll first say that the $25 million litigation reserve is not the same as the $42 million that was spent over four years, but this is year one. it's a reserve to draw on as needed, as necessary. and what we do will be fully based on and related to the actions that mr. trump and his administration takes. if he doesn't violate any laws, unlike he did in trump 1.0, if he doesn't violate constitution or federal law or misuse budget. there's a couple of things. the return on investment of the additional funds coming to the california department of justice is huge. we were able to save california billions of dollars, for example, in striking down the citizenship question on the 2020 u.s. census.

by our accounts it saved california billions of dollars in funds we received based on getting an accurate count that wasn't suppressed. there were federal funds that violated the 10th amendment because they were conditioned on providing assistance to federal immigration authorities on immigration enforcement. and those were two grants of about $30 million. we sued in court because of those unlawful conditions that violated the 10th amendment. we got those grants. so we have seen some of the patterns in the violations. mr. trump likes to do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants regardless of the constitution, regardless of federal law and regardless of the processes in place, regardless of what the budget is supposed to be used forch he wants to use it frut he wants to use it for, so he can't help himself. he will violate the law, and it's our job to be there when he does. we know it's better to go together. we can go further when we go together than when we go alone, and so we have been preparing

for democratic attorneys general and other states across the nation, new york attorney general letitia james, others in nevada, illinois, delaware, connecticut, teaming up and preparing. we all have expertise and institutional knowledge, deploying our expertise and talent as most effective is part of our game plan. there's a lot to do and we have a lot of members on our team to do it with. we're also working with advocates in various policy spaces from immigration to reproductive freedom, common sense gun safety, and working with them for best ideas, getting best thinking, best strategy, best litigation strategy. so we know what courts to file in and where it's best. and so we thought it down to the tee. >> california attorney general rob bonta, thank you very much for helping us understand this tonight. we look forward to having you back in the days and weeks ahead as i'm sure these battles take

shape. thank you, sir. >> look forward to it, too. thanks for having me, rachel. >> all right. we'll be back. stay with us. rachel >> all right we'll be back. stay with us

ah, these bills are crazy. she has no idea she's sitting on a goldmine. well she doesn't know that if she owns a life insurance policy of $100,000 or more she can sell all or part of it to coventry for cash. even a term policy. even a term policy? even a term policy! find out if you're sitting on a goldmine. call coventry direct today at the number on your screen, or visit coventrydirect.com. while blue state california's legislature was meeting today to fund a litigation reserve for challenges against the incoming trump administration, today in north carolina people turned out again at the state capitol there including the chair of the state democratic party. it's all part of what's turning out to be a really spirited opposition in north carolina to an effort by republicans there to strip power away from

incoming democratic officials. >> the debate started, the protests did, too. one woman was escorted from the building. >> this is ridiculous! >> things escalated quickly. >> clear the gallery. just clear the gallery. everybody's got to go. >> clear the gallery. everybody's got to go. with the opposition physically removed republicans in the state senate pushed through an override of the governor's veto of this power stripping bill. it's far less clearly whether republicans in the statehouse will manage to do the same next week, but people are pushing back hard against republicans trying this big power grab in north carolina. this is an ongoing fight in that state. we're watching it closely. watch this space. >> we felt like it was necessary that they know we're watching. you know, this is our house and we have a responsibility to show

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programming note. this weekend, this coming saturday night, 9:00 p.m. eastern saturday night, msnbc is going to premier the new documentary from the legendary filmmaker. this is the film "separated" you have heard about. it tells the inside story of the forced child separation policy during the first trump administration. it's going to premier here on msnbc saturday night 9:00 eastern. right before it airs i'll be joining ayman hyeldin. that does it for us tonight. "way too early" is up next. donald trump's pick for secretary of defense sat down with lawmakers yesterday following new allegations from whistle blowers