last thing. the rockefeller center christmas tree lighting was all about this evening. kelly clarkson and our friends from the today show hosted the 92nd annual lighting earlier this evening. let's watch the moment that everybody was waiting for. >> i'll start the countdown. can we get a drum roll please? five, four, three, two, one! >> ♪ joy to the world, the lord is come! let's earth receive her king! let every heart prepare him room and heaven and nature sing and heaven and nature sing and heaven and heaven and nature sing. ♪♪ >> and with that absolute magic, the holiday season is

officially underway. and on that spectacular note, i wish you a very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late. i'm going to go see that tree. see you tomorrow. so, you know things are getting bad when you have to call your mom to bail you out. today, fox news host pete hegseth's mother went on fox to vouch for her son and why he should still be donald trump's pick for secretary of defense. for context, the new york times obtained an email ms. hegseth wrote to her son while he was in the middle of an acrimonious divorce. it wrote in part you are an abuser of women. on behalf of all the women and i know it's many, you have

abused in some way, i say get some help and take an honest look at yourself. on fox today, penelope hegseth disavowed what she wrote and was very direct about who she was hoping was listening. >> i am here to tell the truth. to tell the truth to the american people. and tell the truth to the senators on the hill. especially our female senators. i really hope that you will not listen to the media and that you will listen to pete. >> now, donald trump only chose pete hegseth to be his nominee for secretary of defense thee weeks ago. but in those three weeks we have learned that hegseth was accuse of sexual assault in 2017. he paid that accuser an undisclosed amount of money to sign an nda. earlier this week, the new yorker reported that hegseth was forced out of multiple

veteran's groups for financial mismanagement and there were allegations of sexist behavior and being repeatedly and belligerently drunk in public. last night, nbc news spoke to ten current and former fox news employees who said while he was at fox, hegseth drank in ways that concerned them. and yeah. despite all of this swirl, all of this controversy, he is not going anywhere. he published an op ed saying i faced fire before, i won't back down. he did his first on camera interview saying he still has donald trump's blessing. >> how is it going with trump right now? is he standing by you? >> i spoke to him this morning. he's amazing, he's a fighter. he has been through this himself. pete, i got your back. it's a fight. they are coming after you. get after it.

i think he will be delighted we are talking today. it is our time to stand up and tell the truth. and our side. he knows that. i won't betray what we talked about specifically. but he said you go out and meet those senators. >> that is how pete hegseth is describing donald trump's support for him right now. the new york times tells a different story. not only is the times reporting that trump is considering swapping out hegseth and nominating in his place florida governor ron desantis, but the times is reporting trump made clear to people close to him he believes hegseth should have been more forthcoming about the problems he would face getting confirmed. i mean yeah, probably so. we might not yet know the full extent of all of pete hegseth's issues. just today, npr reported

another allegation against him. a former colleague of his at fox told npr hegseth got handsy repeatedly while inebriating even groping her once at a manhattan bar. maybe donald trump chalks that allegation up to war donald trump usually chalks up allegations of sexual impropriety to. last night cnn unearthed this video of hegseth talking about donald trump himself back in 2016. >> it is typical trump. all bluster, very little substance. he talks a tough game. he is an armchair tough guy. i hate to say it but this is a guy who said that john mccain is not a war hero. >> it is unclear if trump was aware his potential defense secretary once called trump a draft dodger. but in potentially related

news, yesterday, trump's transition team finally agreed to let the fbi do background checks on trump's nominees. i wonder why? but trump is not the only person pete hegseth has to convince. his real battle will be in the senate. today he was on the hill meeting with senators including joni ernst and john thune. one senate republican told the washington post these are controversial appointments and that hegseth ranks among the toughest trump nominee to make it through the senate. these are controversial appointments. there are multiple reports right now citing anonymous sources in the senate who all have different takes as to who actually takes the cake as the hardest nominee to get past the senate. another anonymous aid smoke about tulsi gabbard.

she is at the most risk. people think she might be compromised. it is not hyperbole. members of our conference think she is a russian asset. yeah. definitely seems like a tough call. who is the harder one to get confirmed? the abuser of alcohol or the russian agent? totally a tossup. trump has already had to have one of his choices withdraw his nomination. and yesterday, trump's pick to run the dea claimed he was withdrawing himself from the nomination only for trump to swoop in today to clarify that no, no, no, no. it wasn't a withdrawal. trump just canned the guy. just got rid of him before he even started the actual job. today trump also announced he was replacing his pick for white house counsel. yet again. replacing someone who had not even started the job yet so

maybe matt gaetz's nomination falling apart wasn't an anomaly but the start of a pattern. donald trump has nominated what i think is safe to say is the most controversial group of cabinet nominees in american history. almost all of them have their own scandal or red flag or red flags that would make them the main character of the transition process. but in trump's cabinet of nominees they are all in good company. so as this caravan make its way to the senate, what happens next? joining me now is someone who may have some ideas on that. senator elizabeth warren. the democrat from massachusetts and member of the armed services and finance committees. senator warren, thank you so much for being here tonight. what is strange chapter of american history we find ourselves living through. first let me ask you about the

outreach that pete hegseth is doing on the hill and elsewhere. he seems focused on women. his mother seems focused on female senators. is any of it working? >> let's look at his allegations. there is the question of what he has said about women serving in the military. remember, he has been nominated to be the secretary of defense meaning the person over all of our military. 18% of active duty military right now are women. and without those women, we don't meet our recruiting targets or have the ability to field an army, a navy, an air force, marines. and what has he said? those women should not be allowed. no women should be allowed to be in combat. and that's like saying you know, here we are. we will run the military and for men it is a great deal.

come on in, do every job we have here. tell us what you like. we'll get you in there. let you climb that ladder and do whatever you want. women, not really. you will be confined to a different set of jobs and have no chance of ever meeting any of the top positions in the military because you won't have any combat experience. that is a problem. it's a problem for our military and ultimately for our national defense. because if we can't have the talent of those tens of thousands of women who right now signed up and joined the military voluntarily, we will lose them and we will lose the next generation and the next generation. wave after wave and that is a problem for our entire national defense. you can't have a secretary of defense that starts out saying

to nearly one fifth of the active duty military you are not really welcome here as a full member. go somewhere else. >> i believe and the control room will correct me senator, today mr. hegseth reiterated his support for the work that women have done in the military. and that he believes, i'm paraphrasing here, they are strong fighters but did not to your point go out and say he would ensure they continue to have combat roles. i think what you are talking about is very significant. it is something that has been less covered in all of the controversies around pete hegseth. do you see any through line between the allegations surrounding his behavior toward women and his treatment toward him and his attitudes toward women in the fighting services? >> i think those two are very closely linked and i'm glad you drew that connection.

again, i want to go back to all the women we have in the military. we have a problem right now and have for a long time with sexual harassment and assault. 29,000 women filed active complaints last year for sexual assault in the military and everyone who studies this understands that is a way underreport of what is actually happening because many women understand in the military, if come forward and file that complaint, you can kiss your career good-bye. and many leaders have been far too protective of men. so we already have a problem. and it is a problem for recruiting women into the military. it is a problem for retaining them. and now donald trump has

nominated someone who has a long history and whose own mother called him out as a harassment of women. and the problem with that is he can say i didn't do that one and i didn't do that one. now i got my mom to vouch for me. but the reality is what woman says i want to dedicate my career to defending my country when i know that the guy at the top who is going to set the tone for the entire military is somebody who himself is credibly accused of having been one of those guys on the front line who was one of the ones who was after women over and over and over including in the workplace and he's the guy who is supposed to be in charge and make this a military. it is open to both men and the woman we need in service.

that's not going to work. and i say this by way of saying whatever else you want to say about it, this is a problem for our national defense. that does not mean he is unqualified to be the secretary of defense. he is disqualified to be the secretary of defense. >> do you think that line of argument and that reasoning and all this information coming out is resonating with the senators on the hill that could very well decide his nomination? i'm thinking in particular of joni ernst who is a woman, a senator and said i appreciate pete hegseth's service to our country. something we both share. today as part of the confirmation process, we had a frank and thorough conversation. frank and thorough. do you have a sense of where this is going? >> i don't want to speak for any other senator. but i will say this. we have two women who have been

in combat. tammy duckworth and joni ernst. we have a lot of men and women on the republican and democratic side who work hard to try to make sure that this is a military that can actively recruit the best and the brightest men and women. i am the chair of the subcommittee. senator scott of florida, a republican. both of us hear the complaints, get the complaints and work to try to make sure that our military is responsive and the reason for that. i keep trying to stress this. we are not meeting our recruiting targets. being in the military is tough. it is a tough job. to say to effectively one out of every five people that is what they want to do, you are not welcome, to be a full

participant just because you are a woman? cuts them off from active duty military service and that undermines our national security. that has got to be a concern to every single member of the armed services committee. we are the ones who will hold the hearings and do the first round of voting. >> there is a lot of concern about the future of the u.s. military. including the concern about how and whether the president-elect may try to weaponnize the u.s. military or direct it against u.s. citizens. out of that concern, you have urged president biden and the defense secretary lloyd austin to issue a policy directive that prohibits the mobilization of active duty military or federalizing national guard personnel to be deployed against their fellow americans

unless specifically authorized. the criticism is trump could rip it up once he is president. but certainly he would have to explain himself in doing so. and that in and of itself is something. have you gotten a response from the president or heard from the secretary of defense? >> so, we are still in talks but you put your finger on it exactly. right now, there is no proh mission. what we want to do is get something very specific in place so if he wants to make a move, donald trump is going to have to do it out in public in front of the whole country and explain himself for doing that. and sure, maybe he will do that. but it is not nothing to put curbs in place and force him to actually if he wants to do something, to have to step up and explain why he is ripping

those curbs up. so that is what we are pushing the president of the united states and the secretary of defense to do right now. and we have a lot of support for that in the senate. we don't need to vote on it. it is a matter of trying to get the administration to move right now to make it very clear there are curbs on the president using the military or using any part of our defense industry against citizens of the united states. >> wow, we are in the zone of preemptive pardons of people who have not committed crimes and trying to curb the president from turning the military against american citizens. these are the guardrails that people like yourself are trying to establish in the waning hours of president biden's administration. senator elizabeth warren, thank you so much for helping us to understand the moment. >> thank you. coming up, the supreme court today heard a case that may very well roll back decades

of anti-discrimination protections. court experts join me on that later this hour. but first, president biden issued one very controversial pardon this week. but new reporting reveals that might just be the beginning. that's coming up. stay wases. oming up. stay wases.

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when president biden pardoned his son hunter earlier this week, he cited fears of retribution from the incoming trump administration. which prompted a number of people to raise the question what about all the other people against whom trump has vowed retribution? apparently, that has also been on the minds of white house officials as well. tonight, politico report it is biden administration is debating preemptive pardons for prominent figures who have spoken out against trump. biden's aides are concerned about a range of current and

former officials that could face inquiries and indictments. people like adam schiff, liz cheney and anthony fauci. white house officials are carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons to those who have committed no crimes. because those offered preimive pardons may reject them. joining me now is michael steele, host of the weekend. and, the great michelle goldberg. michael steele, do you see, i know trump will try to make hay out of any preimmaterialive pardons but do you think the american public at large would take issue with them. >> yeah, probably to some

extent. because of what you said, that a pardon is somehow linked to a crime. you have been adjudicated by a court or your peers. so when you come with a presidential pardon, they either give you a pardon that takes you out of jail or clears your record. so when you have no record it becomes a little more confusing for people. i get what the administration is looking to do. potentially. but i just think that narrative makes it more difficult to have a conversation with the american people. everyone knows trump to a certain extent. a lot of people don't believe he is going to do what he is going to do. i don't know if the pardon is

the way to address that. hunter is a different situation. he was convicted. but liz cheney, what's the crime? because donald trump was off they investigated his behavior? so here we go. >> paul, we talked about this a little bit last night. he make it is point that setting even the non- criminality of all these actors, there is what they would face without being convicted of anything just by virtue of not being pardoned and in trump's cross hairs. i will read you some of paul's writing on this. liz cheney would suffer the repewational harassment of indictment and having to bear an investigation. biden owes it to trump's most prominent critics to save them from this burden. how do you feel? >> i agree with that argument.

i disagree with michael. there is a way to do this i think that would make the narrative clear cut for the american people. it is not ideal to have kash patel who has published enemies list. we know exactly who he has threatened to go after without cause. just tar pardon everyone on it. give a speech and say i wasn't able to save the country from donald trump. but this is what they have threatened to do. i think we should take them seriously. and it is important to do that also just to give the american people some graeme work for

what's coming. because these people have not committed crimes, i am giving them blanket pardons because the list of potential, the list of potential investigations is boundless, you could keep going back to they have published an enemy's list and made it clear who they want to go after. if you look at these list, it should be clear. just pardon all of them. >> i think the essence of this sort of debate if you will happening largely inside the democratic party is how aggressive should democrats be in both focusing on trump and trying to stop him and putting up guardrails?

the election is finally over. we know what the house majority is. the republicans hold the house with five seats. it is really a two seat majority. one rogue republican could sink their chances of doing trump's bidding. the question is how do you think democrats should position themselves as a party governing in the minority with a republican majority that slim? are there opportunities there or does this sort of magnet, the magnetism i guess, the pull of trump basically kill any potential connection to reality? >> there is no bipartisanship here. let's take that off the table. can we stop that bs conversation. because it doesn't exist. we need to stop pretending that is a real thing. it isn't.

you certainly won't get it with maga congress and a maga president and maga adjacent on a good day senate. the reality of it is if democrats couldn't articulate the success on the infrastructure bill and the inflation bill and the chip act, and i listened to michelle and i'm like okay. good luck explains this to the american people. when you can't explain it or crystallize it for them, guess what? you lost the argument before you have made it. that's the political reality here. a party that cannot speak to the moment in a way that clarifies for the american people why they are taking such an unprecedented step. so that is my hesitation. at the end of the day, i don't care. because the reality of it is donald trump will do what donald trump is going to do.

and the senate will play the role they are going to play. republicans will do what they are going to do. democrats have to figure out how do we manage this? and move now to stem some of that. tell me the conversation. i haven't heard it. i don't know how they communicate that when this is a complicated thing. because there is no crime involved. >> a preemptive pardon. >> to the question, though, of like, where democrats should be in this moment, dan to your point michael about the political realities here, michelle, dan pfeifer has advice to democrats who feel like they are in the wilderness. our messaging cannot be so

trump-centric. we must discuss the republican party writ large. he was talking about democrats. we were talking about trump. we paid the price. what do you think of that? >> i think that is writ large, that is correct. what biden does in the last few months is not going to set the agenda for the next democratic congress and so, i don't think there is a contradiction. trump is empowering this group who are going to loot the government and sell it off for parts. to me that should be the criticism. they will pass another obscene tax cut geared toward the rich. they are going to loosen regulations specifically to benefit elon musk and other

trump donors so i think that, and it is interesting because trump used to get a lot of credit among the some of the crossover voters for being the sort of republican who rejected paul ryan's economics. now you have elon musk and vivek ramaswamy and these other republicans talking about this extreme version of of austerity. cutting $2 trillion which you cannot do without cutting into the meat of government programs that are essential to a lot of people's welfare. so i think there is a good opportunity for democrats to speak correctly about this as the party of you know, come up with better words than this. but the party of plutocratic plunder. >> it rolls off the tongue. listen, it's a work p shotter hitting period for the democratic party.

throwing out ideas. many welcome. it is an ideation session. michael steele, michelle goldberg. thank you both for your time and thoughts tonight. >> all right. still ahead tonight, today the supreme court heard arguments in yet another case that could roll back health care rights for generations. sound familiar? i'll explain next. for generati. sound familiar? i'll explain next. go-friends, gather! keke! chris! jason! boop! friends. let's go, let's go, friends! money, power, friendship. let's go! ♪♪

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today, the supreme court heard oral arguments in the case that could change the lives of americans across the country. in the united states, the nine justices are considering whether to intervene in a tennessee law that bans puberty blockers an hormone therapies for minors. but only if those therapies are meant for transgender minors. arguing on behalf of the biden administration today, solicitor general claimed that the tennessee law is unconstitutional because it singles out and bans one particular use. to allow a minor to identify with or live with a gender inconsistent with the minor's sex assigned at birth. the biden administration is not alone in this argument. the aclu is also challenging tennessee's law arguing that it discriminates on the basis of sex.

but the court's conservative leaning justices appeared inclined to keep it in place. >> my understanding is the constitution leaves the questions to the people's representatives rather than denying people, none of whom is a doctor. >> it strikes me as pretty heavy yellow light if not red light for this court to come in and constitutionalize the whole area when the rest of the world are pumping the brakes on this kind of treatment because of concerns about the risks. >> the justices are expected to release their ruling some time this summer and if the justices do decide to uphold the ban in tennessee it will prevent minors there from receiving gender affirming care and it will also entrench over existing bans across the country and embolden other states to adopt similar restrictions. in her closing argument, she outlined what it means to restrict medically necessary

care for children. >> i think the court should think about the real world consequences, consider its effects on ryan rowe as justice sodomeyer noted. his gender dysphoria was so bad he was throwing up before school. and getting the treatment has saved his life. his parents say he is now thriving. but tennessee has come in and categorically cut off access to ryan's care and they say this is about protecting at he sent health. but this law harms his health and these transgender adolescents. >> the administration's argument comes into sharp focus when you consider the suicide rates among trans and non- binary youth. the national surveillance images fair found about half of both trans girls and trans boys considered suicide in the

previous year. that is almost twice the rate of non-trans minors. state laws targeting trans people caused up to a 72% increase in suicide attempts among trans kids. on the other hand, gender affirming care including puberty blockers and hormone therapies can reduce the odds of considering suicide by 73%. counter to what the state of tennessee argued it is not a risky experiment on american childrenment every major medical association including the ama, the american nurse's association and the american psychiatric association recognizes that treatments for gender dysphoria are medically necessary. and while many of these treatments including puberty blockers are reversible, most trans people do not seek to reverse their treatment. a national study by the national center for transgender equality found that only 13% detransitioned at some point in

their life. i will talk more about this next. talk more about this next.

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ing. mr. chief justice. tennessee lawmakers enacted sb1 to protect minors from risky unproven medical interventions. its application turns entirely on medical purpose, not a patient's sex. that is not sex discrimination.

>> we do not think that giving puberty blockers to a six-year- old who has started precocious puberty is is the same as giving it to a minor who wants to transition. those are not the same medical treatment. >> what you are saying is, you are still depending on sex to identify who can get it and who can't. >> today, the tennessee solicitor general defended his state's anti-trans law before the supreme court arguing that the denial of gender affirming care is not a form of sex based discrimination. it eroded the equal protections clause ruling that ending abortion access at the federal level does not constitute sex discrimination despite the fact that abortion care directly affects the health of one sex and not the other. in other words, dobbs opened the flood gates for the rollback of anti-discrimination protections across the board.

joining me now to break down the avalanche effect this ruling might have. professor leah it willman, cohost of the strict scrutiny podcast. and mark joseph stern. senior writer at slate magazine. i'm so eager to have this conversation with both of you guys. leah, first, just how is denying gender affirming care for a specific group of individuals based largely on sex, how is that not sex-based discrimination? >> it is. there is no way of getting around it. this entire law is imbued with sex. the law's text talks about sex and says its purpose is to encourage people to live in accordance with their sex. it prohibits individuals from receiving certain care depending on their sex assigned at birth. a girl who was assigned female sex at birth can get some

hormones as a person assigned male sex at birth cannot. it is that simple and there is no getting around it so the tennessee lawyer and the republican appointed justices were left with word play to insist it was about something else like age or medicine even though of course it is also about sex. >> and the reason they are doing that, mark, there is a very canny reason they are trying to avoid saying this is based and rooted in sex based discrimination. because it would be subject to higher scrutiny if it was. is that right? >> that is exactly right. if this is sex based discrimination which it obviously is, courts have to subject it to something called intermediate scrutiny. they have to ask whether it has an exceedingly persuasive justification. if the state has a really good reason and a lot of evidence for what it did here and for all the reasons you mentioned, the state has no good reasons for doing this. all of the major medical associations have said these

bans are bad for children's health care. they are bad science. and bad medicine. and so, tennessee is desperately trying to avoid that more searching level of scrutiny desperately trying to avoid triggering the equal protection clause by using this kind of blizzard of word play to pretend as though this doesn't differentiate on sex. but it so clearly does that is supreme court will do a lot of damage to the doctrine of gender equality in order to get around this very basic fact. >> you know, i mean putting this in a broader perspective, chase who argued the case for the aclu and happen to be the very first openly trans person to argue before the supreme court. in an interview in slate magazine. chase said if we take a step back and look at this moment and the obsession with trans people during the 2024 elections, it wasn't really about trans people. they are using these attacks on

trans people to reentrench old notions of what is the proper role of men and women in society. you can see that extending to the arguments around abortion. and contraception access and no- fault divorce. all of this comes back to sort of traditionalism versus the vanguard of where the civil rights movement is headed does it not? >> yes. it is all very much related. i mean, the gist of the law is the state is saying we want boy to be boys and girl to be girls and here is what we think boys are and here is what we think girls are. you look at abortion restrictions, well, we think the proper role of women is to be mothers and to bear children. and of course, this is also relate today the restriction of divorce laws. the proper role of women is to be wives and for them to stay in marriages with husbands. and you saw the long shadow of

dobbs repeatedly throughout the argument in the trans health care case as well. you had justice alito evoking his decision in dobbs saying we upheld a law that restricted health care for women and jeopardized their lives so why not just do that here? the court facilitating states enforcing traditional notions of gender at great cost to people is definitely a throw line in all of this. and it is really concerning because we have now seen the consequences of the abortion restrictions playing out. and we are likely to see really tragic consequences. >> yeah. mark, to that point, this is coming as the court is really seeing in the media thanks largely to propublica. the result of dobbs overturning roe. the deathly cost. and they have been armed.

they execute suicidal thoughts at a vastly greater rate than non-trans minors especially if they are denied gender affirming medication. i wonder if you think any of that is crossing the radar in a meaningful way. where is your expectation here? >> i don't think it is. justice kavanaugh kept bringing up detransitioners who are very rare saying we have to protect them. we have to protect children who think they want this treatment. he is setting up this kind of paradigm where the bans are doing good for people by protecting them from getting this allegedly experimental treatment. as always, i think it is fascinating to look at who this court has empathy for. this is a court with boundless empathy for people who want to own and carry guns with corporations that want to pa lute or scam people and get off

scot-free. and with states, that want to outlaw abortion and subject women to you know, having to develop sepsis or hemorrhage before they can get emergency care. those people who tend to mostly be men, they get so much sympathy and empathy from these conservative justices but when it comes to children who are just coming, pleading for basic equality, a basic application of equal protection from this court, they get turned away. it is pretty clear, they will be given the cold shoulder. >> really, there are two no better people. well, i mean, i love yogis. i shouldn't say that because everyone is so brilliant. you are so brilliant on the courts and the law. thank you guy sos much for your time and insight. >> thank you. we will be right back. ight >> thank you. we will be right back. arket? no. i can do some research. ya know, that's backed by j.p. morgan's leading strategists like us. when you want to invest with more confidence... the answer is j.p. morgan wealth management

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before we go, and just in time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell, i want to point everyone's attention to this, a truly joyous thing that just happened right outside of our studio here in new york city, and that is the lighting of the rockefeller center christmas tree in all of its holiday glory. even with a light dusting of snow. because sometimes you need to end the show on a high note. and there it is. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good everything, lawrence. >> the biggest tree in town, alex. alex, as you may have noticed, it is senate confirmation season is upon us. >> yeah, not only christmas trees but senate confirmatio