♪♪ okay. that does it for me tonight. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. hey, rachel. >> nice to run into you in washington. >> you, too. and to see susan. we love her. >> susan -- any time you see susan anywhere like 28 to 38

days around christmas on either side of it, she's ten times happier than she is any other time of the year. so you got to see susan as peak susan happiness because we're this close to christmas. >> she was glowing near the christmas tree. i believe it. i take your word. >> thank you, my friend. much appreciated. good to see you. >> thank you for joining us this hour at home. really happy to have you hear. so speaking of holidays, two years ago on thanksgiving day, so thanksgiving day 2022, the leader of one of the world's highest profile car companies made a surprise thanksgiving day announcement. he told people who owned his company's cars that as of that day they no longer had to drive their cars. starting that day, thanksgiving day, the cars would be able to drive themselves. from here on out. quote, tesla full self driving

beta is now available to anyone in north america who requests it from their car screen. assuming you have bought this option. congratulations to tesla auto pilot/ai team on achieving a major milestone. so this is two years ago, again 2022, thanksgiving day. not really any warning this was coming. just, hey, hey, if you bought a tesla when you had the option, when you bought it, to pay a little bit extra so it would be capable of driving itself some day, if that day ever came, well, that day has come. happy thanksgiving. so tesla, like lots of cars now, they send software updates over the air to their cars. so your car gets its operating system updated while it's parked in your driveway. the company's ceo was announcing that day in 2022 was, hey, while you've been inside, enjoying turkey and stuffing and, i don't

know, six to eight glasses of wine with your family, lucky you. your kaur car out there in the driveway has just been upgraded to one that can drive itself. if you want, feel free to give it a go. just click the switch on your screen, on the dash board and the car henceforth will drive you wherever you want to go. it was thanksgiving day the company's ceo put up that announcement within a few hours, it had led to some news. >> 16 people including 18 kids were part of a multicar crash on the bay bridge causing major traffic tie-ups. >> they say it happened so fast a chain reaction crash eastbound on the bay bridge and inside the tunnel. >> i thought i was a goner at first when it happened. i mean, you see something like that, it's like coming towards you at full speed, i thought, well, this is it. >> that was thanksgiving day, 2022, just a few months later, the news outlet, the intercept,

obtained video that showed that accident as it happened. it turns out it was a tesla whose owner says the car was in full self driving mode and the car just randomly braked super hard the middle of the tunnel. which is what started that huge pile-up of cars in the tunnel, the one that injured all those people. >> until today we only saw the aftermath of the chain reaction crash last thanksgiving day. drive-by video of cars stacked up in the tunnel, eastbound on the bay bridge. and a traffic jam that lasted hours, but bay bridge surveillance video now shows how it started. a 76-year-old lawyer from san francisco told the chp his white 2021 tesla model s was in full self-driving mode when it suddenly deployed the brakes. a total of eight vehicles crashed. nine people injured, including a

2-year-old boy. just hours before the crash, tesla's ceo elon musk announced the launch of the full self-driving beta version where he called a major milestone. but, there are a growing number of reports of the tesla technology unexpectedly slamming on the brakes. the national highway traffic safety administration assigned a special crash investigation team to look into what happened. they're already investigating dozens of incidents involving advanced driver-assistance systems from volvos, cadillacs, hyundai, genesis and cruise but mostly tesla. >> mostly teslas. and you know, car crashes happen. we humans aren't all that great at avoiding the problem of hurting and killing ourselves and each other with your cars. car crashes are a plague. and who among us can say whether robots might be better at driving than us overall, writ large. but in a country with more than 280 million cars and trucks on the road, clearly it's worth

studying if we're going make this change, right? it's worth studying whether letting robots drive our cars is going to be more or less safe than having us humans drive the cars. well, the u.s. government is doing that studying. you saw a reference in that news report there to the national highway traffic -- national highway traffic safety administration looking into that particular crash and others like it. well, the year before that big thanksgiving day crash in the bay area, that government agency started a program where car companies have to report when crashes happen while a car has been in auto pilot or in full self-driving mode. they have to tell the government when that happens. so that means crashes like that one that happened in the tunnel in 2022, in the san francisco bay area, also from this other terrible crash that was right nearby the following year, this was a fire truck that got slammed into at speed by a tesla that was on auto pilot.

the tesla driver was killed. four firefighters were sent to the hospital in that crash. earlier this year the agency released its report on its findings after collecting all this data for several years that led to headlines like this, quote, tesla's auto pilot and full self-driving linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths. government report described the data about these hundreds of krashs but also gave the specific details of some of them including one particularly her harrowing one from north carolina. a 10th grader stepped off of a school bus, school bus was doing everything right. it was pulled other. it had its lights flashing, all the warning signals that a school bus activates when it's letting off students that let everyone know they need to stop. the kid was doing everything right. but a 2022 model y tesla on auto

pilot mode nevertheless whipped around the stopped school bus and slammed into this kid. this 10th grader had to be medevaked to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. by the time that government report was issued, not only had individual crashes like that received a lot of local attention in the areas where they happened, but the overall problem was starting to come into focus. reuters, for example, had already reported that criminal -- that a criminal investigation into these matters was under way targeting tesla. tesla already discussed in an s.e.c. filing that it had received federal subpoenas about information for his full-self driving mode and auto pilot mode. then just a few weeks ago, the government announced the opening of a formal federal investigation of tesla's full self driving mode in more than 2 million teslas. more than 2 million cars. and that's a big deal.

but you might have noticed i said that report happened a few weeks ago. to be specific, that happened -- the announcement of that federal investigation, that big potentially very consequential federal investigation the announcement happened in mid october. what's happened between mid october and now? since then, you might have seen that tesla's ceo, elon musk, has basically had himself surgically attached to donald trump's body. i mean, seriously. are they stitched together? can either one of them get dressed alone at this point? and of course, donald trump won the presidential election last month. and so what happens now to anybody who is unsettled by the idea of a robot controlled car driving itself into a nearby fire engine full of firefighters? or a robot controlled car slamming on its brakes without warning the middle of a crowded tunnel full of cars going 55 miles an hour while people are all driving to go see family on thanksgiving day.

what happens to anybody who might have those kinds of concerns? reuters headline, quote, exclusive:trump team wants to scrap car-crash reporting rule. the trump transition has apparently surveyed the landscape of public policy in the united states of america and has decided, you know what really needs to go, what needs to go as a matter of priority is this thing that we've had for a few years now where car companies have to report it when their car is on auto pilot and it crashes into something. that's the new priority apparently. quote, the trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by elon musk's tesla a move that could cripple the government to regulate the safety of vehicles with automated driving system. musk, the world's richest person, spent more than a quart other f a billion dollars helping trump get elected president in november, removing the crash disclosure provision would particularly benefit

tesla, which has reported most of the crashes, more than 1,500 of them to federal safety regulators under this program. tesla has been targeted in national highway traffic safety administration investigations, including three stemming from this specific data. now, what is the proported justification for getting rid of this rule and getting rid of it now? they can't just say, well, this guy paid for the presidential election, therefore he kind of bought himself a government so he gets what he wants, right? you can't just say that. hey, you kids getting off school buses watch yourself unless and until you can start paying for your own president, you're fair game on the side of the road. you can't say it that way. so how do you -- they have to say something that sounds better than that. well, this is what they came up with. quote, the recommendation to kill the crash reporting rule

came from a transition team tasked with producing a 100-day strategy for automotive policy. the group called the measure a mandate for, quote, excessive data collection. oh. oh. excessive data collection. that's the problem that needs to be addressed here in this photo. excessive data collection. we have way too much data. our thumb drives are all full. if we keep collecting all this data about self-driving cars killing people, eventually our phones will slow down or something. too much data clogging everything up. excessive data collection. quote, a reuters analysis of the nhtsa crash data shows tesla accounted for 40 out of the 45 crashes reported to the agency through october 15th. 40 out of the 45 fatal incidents

reported. that sounds bad if you're tesla, right? if you're tesla, better to not have people ever hear numbers like that. therefore, don't collect the numbers anymore. stop collecting all this excessive data. problem solved. problem solved for tesla. and for elon musk. problem not solved for the firefighters who were in that truck. problem not solved for the eight kids in the giant smash-up in the thanksgiving day tunnel crash. problem not solved for the 10th grader medevaked to the hospital in north carolina after stepping off the school bus that the tesla slammed into, right? problem not solved for them, but it is solved for the billionaire. i should note that this reporting from reuters is based on a document that reuters saw. we haven't seen the document ourselves. we also reached out to the tesla and the trump transition for comment. so far we have not heard back. i'll let you know. but when you're thinking about this dynamic and sort of our

government, you know, i acknowledge, maybe worrying about car crashes isn't your thing. maybe this is just generally not what you're worried about. maybe you're thinking less domestic, more global concerns. i can imagine you out there right now being like, come on maddoe. there's a war in gaza, a war in ukraine, drug cartels and the opioid epidemic and nuclear armed rogue states. why are you talking about this? there's so much more to worry about. well, behold the man who has been tapped to be your next secretary of commerce in the united states, that's him there with the microphone standing next to jd vance. as the co-chair of the trump transition team, this man was, quote, in charge of identifying 4,000 new hires to fill the second trump administration, including anti-trust officials, securities lawyers and national security advisers who have global expertise. quote, but he himself has not stepped away from running financial firms that serve

corporate clients, traders, crypto currency platforms and real estate ventures around the world. all of which are regulated by the same agency whose appointees he is helping to find. this is about howard lut nick tapped to be the next cochair of the trump transition commerce secretary. you saw the mention of crypto currency. that's about one very specific thing that's worth hearing. his firm, the trump transition co-chair, the guy who will be trump's nominee for secretary of commerce, his wall street firm, is up to its neck, like more than $80 billion up to its neck in one particular crypto firm, that is reportedly now the subject of a major federal criminal investigation. and it's also reportedly, potentially on the hook for being subject to sanction by the u.s. treasury department. this is reporting from "the wall street journal," quote, the criminal investigation run by

prosecutors at the manhattan u.s. attorney's office is looking at whether the crypto currency has been used by third parties to fund illegal activities such as the drug trade and terrorism and hacking. the treasury department, meanwhile, has been considering sanctioning the company, tether, because of its crypto currency's widespread use by individuals and groups sanctioned by the u.s., including the terrorist group hamas and russian arms dealers. sanctions against tether would generally prohibit americans from doing business with the company. the crypto currency is, quote, a vital financing tool for several of the u.s.'s top national security concerns, including, check out this list, including, the north korean nuclear weapons program, mexican drug cartels, russian arms companies, middle eastern terrorist groups and chinese manufacturers of chemicals used to make fentanyl. that criminal investigation first reported literally two

weeks exactly before the presidential election. but then trump won the election and this guy gets named to be secretary of commerce and also is named as the guy who is going to staff up the whole federal government while his firm is, again, up to its neck in managing tens of billions of dollars for a firm that is reportedly being criminally investigated for alleged links -- just put up the list again. what is the list again? alleged links to the terrorist group hamas, russian arms dealers, the north korean nuclear weapons program, mexican drug cartels and for good measure, chinese manufacturers of chemicals used to make fentanyl. so maybe car crashes aren't your thing. are any of those things any of your concerns? if any of those things are important to you for any reason, sorry. unless and until you are buying

yourself a president, the government is going to be taking care of the school bus slaloming auto pilot teslas and the alleged money launders for hamas russian gun runners and people who bring you fentanyl. they're not going to be working for you. when we use the word oligarchy or hear people talk about oligarchs. it always sounds foreign, right? but second of all, i will admit, as a person who is sort of interested in the drama that goes along with the news, sometimes the whole idea of oligarchy or oligarchs sounds kind of interesting, right? maybe i've got a sick sense of what counts as drama and an interesting story, but you've got really, really, really, really rich people, relatively small number of them, taking over the government and changing the government so it only works for them. it can sound like interesting drama to watch, right? like succession style, really rich people fighting and

maneuvering among themselves to see who comes out on top, to see who gets to control what piece of the pie, right? there's a reason we watch shows like that. maybe there will be interesting drama to mime, succession style from watching trump's various billionaires scrap amongst themselves to see if the guy with $80 billion worth of links to the crypto firm with the alleged hamas and north korea ties, oh, is he going to be commerce secretary or maybe treasury secretary? or maybe he's out? or will the one billionaire who wants to live in space when earth goes to hell, will he totally take over nasa himself or will the other billionaire with his own space company make big enough smoochy noises he, too, will be handed some portion of america's space infrastructure, you know. there's a way to think about this as real high school drama. these kitty cats hate each other. mee owe. this should be an interesting fight. there is a way to look upon the

oligarchization of the american government as draw marx as a kind of theater of greed and maybe there will be some good stories there. and of course, there's also the low down crassness of it all as well, which is its own low brow drama. one sons girlfriend gets to be an ambassador. sure, why not. the other son's wife maybe gets to be a senator? one daughter's husband gets an ambassadorship for his felon dad. and his college roommate gets to be america's hostage envoy. right? because, sure, why not. jared's roommate for the hostage envoy job. not like anybody's life depends on it. and the other daughter's husband, he'll get a middle east envoy job for his father who seems to have persuaded everyone he's a billionaire but apparently that was all an act and his family just owns a truck dealership. now he is exposed as a con

artist? it's low brow. it's hilarious and interesting to watch and maybe good drama unless god forbid you have a family member who is a hostage somewhere and is counting on the help from the u.s. government to save his or her life and you're starting to worry if maybe jared's roommate wasn't the best point person to head that up for the u.s. government. maybe there's somebody more qualified? it's hilarious unless you have a loved one trapped overseas in some sort of problem in an important foreign country who needs help from the u.s. embassy in that country and it turns out don jr.'s girlfriend with no diplomatic experience is the ambassador there? i mean, it all could be very interesting drama unless you've got a reason to worry about fentanyl and opioids or unless you've got a kid getting off a school bus somewhere. or unless you find yourself on thanksgiving day driving a car full of kids through that tunnel

at 1:00 p.m. what people like ann applebalm and timothy schneider have been teaching about, kind of warning americans about for the past couple of years as we have started this slide in our country, as we have started this slide toward a form of government that exists all over the world but has never before been here, one of the things they have been telling us is that oligarchy, you should an authoritarian leader, you have very, very rich people dividing up the spoils of the government and the country under an authoritarian leader who lets them have at it, one of the things to know about that kind of system, it isn't just about the leader and the oligarchs helping themselves. it is that. and it's a sight to be hold, right? untold piles of ill gotten gains all over the world to show for that. but for most of us, what's more important that be what they do

for themselves is what it does to everyone else. when government exists to serve the people who have been made very rich by technology and industry and business practices that have a side effect of hurting and killing regular people, the effect of that is that more regular people are going to get hurt and killed because there will be nowhere to turn for redress or for protection because the authorities you might once have called, they're no longer there for you. they're there now for the guy at the gala, the con artist in-laws of the leader's second daughter or whoever. i mean, that's what oligarchy is everywhere. the important thing is not the drama among the oligarchs. and i can feel our media system right now sliding into soap opera coverage of the drama among the oligarchs. sure, that drama is there. but the real effect on our

country is not just about which kitty cat comes out with the biggest spoils, right? the drama among the oligarchs is drama, but the consequence for our country is what that kind of a system, what that kind of a spoil system does to all of us, does to regular people. how do we prepare ourselves better for that? based on what other countries have been through with that. is there anything that we can learn about how we can try to slow it down or stop our country from becoming that? if in fact, we want to protect ourselves from dissolving into that kind of a system. that is a question for which there is expert help available. and timothy schneider is here in person with me here next. stay with us. le love to find me. but me, i love finding the perfect gift. like for my friend wenda, who loves coffee. or for my little dog woof, who eats big. ♪ ♪ gifts that say i get you. etsy has it. inez, let me ask you, you're using head and shoulders, right?

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dwlnchts will be an open u.s. senate seat in the state of florida next year if marco rubio is confirmed as donald trump's new secretary of state. it will be up to the sitting governor of florida to replace rubio until there could be a special election. the choice belongs therefore to governor ron desantis, but that has not stopped the president-elect from picking up the phone and calling ron desantis and reportedly telling him that he should give this senate seat to his own daughter-in-law, to lara trump, who is, of course, married to trump's son eric, the blonde one. then there are the jobs that the president actually is supposed to fill himself. trump has selected his daughter

tiffany trump's father-in-law to be his senior adviser on the middle east. he has named his other daughter's father-in-law, jared's dad, to be ambassador to france, first time i believe we've ever had an ex-con in that role. he's reportedly giving jared's college roommate a really important job. he's going to be in charge of hostage negotiations for the whole u.s. government. also, his other son, not the blonde, don jr. the dark-haired one, his ex-fiance gets to be ambassador to greece. i don't know why greece. this is a fun one. it's kind of like a nesting doll. his pick for surgeon general, she's related to the guy who trump picked for national security adviser. the new trump national security adviser is married to the new surgeon general's sister. hey. same idea with the ambassador to the dominican republic. her brother-in-law is trump's pick to run the transportation department. i wonder why she got -- i wonder why he got -- i don't know. to lead the dea, trump picked

the son-in-law of an nfl owner who he pardoned in his first team, apparently the heat was too hot for that guy, he has already withdrawn his name from contention. and that kind of mess on its own, it's a lot to take in. any one of those appointments would be kind of a show-stopping scandal in any other presidency. but that's just, you know, stuff that nobody is even noticing amid the tsunami of candidates who aren't related to trump but who have varying degrees of legitimately alarming biographical details and lack of qualification, plus the never ending parade of ing policy proposals floated by the trump administration. let's get rid of fdic, postal service, weather service, vaccines. what else do we need? it does feel like a fire hose right now. but psychologically that has an

affect on us. because it feels like too much, does that mean that we're not able to focus on any one of these things enough to potentially make a difference as to whether or not it comes to pass? how do we strategically align ourselves to this moment of information, this moment of transition in our country in a way that keeps us psychologically engaged and strategically sharp in terms of how we think about defending our system of government and our country. joining us now is timothy schneider, professor of history at yale university, you know him on this show, author of this seminal book "on tyranny." his latest book is called "on freedom". >> thank you for coming in. >> happy to see you. >> i talked about the idea of oligarchy in the first segment. i wanted to ask if i talked about that in a way that resonates with you or if you think i got that wrong or any thoughts about that? >> no, i thought it was

absolutely right. it was the ancient greeks said oligarchs will be stronger than democrats because they'll collect the money, they'll have the propaganda. that's right. it will always be a problem for democracy. and then we borrowed the word from the russians who have seen this story happen in the 1990s, weak, anyoning president, surrounded by rich, clever people who fight amongst themselves to divide up the good goodies and bring the state down. >> it's important for people who are concerned about their everyday lives. there are things that the government does, even if we don't appreciate your government, that we will miss when their gone. and if the oligarchs capture the government so that it only serves their purposes, the american people will be worse off and poorer and less safe and ultimately dislocated from the levers that we can currently use to make our government more effective and more responsive, right? >> yeah. americans like to think that we're special. but oligarchs in our country

will always have more in common and be more affectionate and loyal towards oligarchs in other country. so if you want to see how things can go in our country, we have to see the world through their eyes which is a world of billionaires, not of citizens. all the people that trump admires abroad, rule countries which are less effective where people have shorter lives and where they're poorer. >> when you look at the examples from our contemporaries and other countries who are contending with systems like this, but also the history of this type of government. are there lessons to be learned about how to stop a slide into oligarchic domination? how to resist it? or how to try to retain our rights and the things we enjoy about our government against those kinds of forces? >> first of all, we have to be able to keep it positive, not in the sense of saying everything is great. it's not. it's terrible. they are trying to break the government which means breaking the country. but positive in the sense of, we should have a shadow cabinet.

we should have a list of people who alternatives to these same people, so we can look and say, hey, this person could have been secretary of the treasury. that person could have been secretary of defense. how would those people -- so they can give positive alternatives as people and give positive alternatives as policy, but also to have someone so the journalists can talk to them for the next four years so we don't both sides. vaccines plus minus. hey, let's talk to somebody about how good vaccines actually are and what we actually could do. let's talk to someone about how we can prevent car crashes and what that would look like. we have to think about opposition in the sense of what an america could look like if we had other people f we had a real elite. more practically the states can make it harder for oligarchs to function and we can look at other countries to help us make it harder for people like musk to function. those things can happen, too. >> look to other countries -- talking about what do you mean there? >> i mean the things that musk and our oligarchs do are sometimes illegal in other countries and we should observe

that and be supportive of that. but it's the states that actually control a lot of financial flows. states concerned about oligarchy can do things too. >> what do you tell people who feel overwhelmed by, as you say, how bad sit right now. i think one of the things that has rocked a lot of people since the election, even people who didn't like the election result, is that sort of the worst things you could imagine, particularly in terms of nominees, tulsi gabbard for the director of national intelligence, the worst choice, robert f. kennedy jr. for health secretary is the worst choice. kash patel definitely the worst choice you could imagine for fbi director. and the succession of those. it wasn't just matt gaetz, all these others that are as bad as i think it could probably get. i think is overwhelming to people in the sense -- and also cumulatively makes people i'm not sure what to focus on. maybe i should just check out and not focus of any of these. >> none of these people should

hold any responsibility at all at any level in any country. we can classify them. some will destroy the government because they're incompetent. some will destroy because of conflicts of interest. some will destroy it because of ideology. some like musk will destroy it so they can pick up the pieces. in terms of what we do about it, we have to try to get over the line as many of these people as possible. respectable republicans should not be voting for these people. and then once they do, we have to move on to, thinking about the six terrible months that follow chronically not, the democrats should be thinking, not about this lost election but about what things look like in june of '25 and how things could be so much better than the terror that this group is going to bring us to. >> and that's in part that idea of a shadow government that democrats are saying should be standing up a respectable republicans or never trump republicans should be stepping up and saying, no, this is actually what the director of national intelligence should be doing in this situation.

this is what the transportation department should be doing in this situation. >> i think harris or pelosi or somebody else should have a list of people who are the shadow cabinet whose job it is to talk to the press everyday. not just about what's wrong, hey what the government could do. it's that lack of imagination. when things get terrible, we'll think, okay, terrible, let's have less terrible. hey, we have great people in this country and could have had a much better version of all of this and we can get to that. >> timothy schneider, professor of history at yale university, it's an honor to have you here. thank you for coming in first time. >> it's my pleasure. >> thank you. we'll be right back. stay with us. back. st wayith us wash my work shirt. just wear it again! i added the unstopables now with odor blocker and it keeps our clothes fresh all day! [sniff] ooo imma be feelin it at work today. she smells so good i'm actually paying attention! smell unstopable. it's a lot to be a caregiver and a daughter. because you kind of have to take a step back.

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the quite unexpected news this weekend that abc news would settle a defamation suit with president-elect trump and pay him $15 million had the president-elect licking his chops today at a press conference talking about the prospects he imagines for going after more media outlets. he said he plans to sue somebody -- the people of iowa, their newspaper. wasn't totally clear. he plans to sue someone over a poll late in the election season that showed trump doing well in -- sorry, trump not doing as well as he did in iowa. since he eventually won iowa, he thinks that's grounds for a

lawsuit because that poll said he might lose it. the especially hairy thing he said today was that actually he shouldn't have to bring suits like this himself. he expects that the justice department, the u.s. department of justice, should bring lawsuits like this on his behalf. but the dynamic that's emerging for the second trump term is not just that powerful people want to be able to use their own power to harass their perceived critics it's that the new president-elect, he expects, he expects that he'll be able to use not just his own power and influence, but he'll be able to use the u.s. government to harass and punish his critics. and it's not just the justice department he plans to use. today the outgoing chair of the fcc, the federal communications commission responded to trump's demands that the fcc should strip licenses from news network that made him mad. the outgoing chair said, quote, the fcc has no business threatening to take away

broadcast licenses because the president doesn't like the content or the coverage on a network. head of the election trump talked about using the u.s. military, domestically, to target americans who oppose him or protest against him. the so-called enemy from within. now he's reportedly planning on creating a new board overseeing promotions and senior officers in the u.s. military which would allow him to purge military leadership of anybody who is disloyal to him or disagrees with him or who has different politics. trump and his allies are also reportedly considering with holding federal money from states or cities that don't go along with plans like his mass deportation idea. it feels like a lot because it is a lot and happening all at once. how do local governments and news organizations and ordinary citizens think strategically about this when trump is threatening and saying he

expects to use the most powerful government on earth against its own citizens to attack his critics? what can your mayor or your governor or your local paper or some voluntary organization you might be part of do to stand up against that in a time like this? just the person to ask. joining us now is anthony ramiro, executive director of the american civil liberties union. thank you for coming in. great to see you, anthony. >> having you and tim schneider feels like i won the lottery. >> great to be here. >> tell me how you at the aclu are thinking about your plans to try to defend american civil liberties in this term versus the last term. >> we were anticipating he would win this election. we studied project 2025, tracking the campaign promises, going back and playing back what happened in trump 1.0 to see

what might happen with trump 2.0. so we have been trying to get ready for this whole period of time. we clearly can't run the same play book. they're going to be more aggressive. they're smarter. they're faster off the block. they are really going for -- they're running the gauntlet on many of the policy issues they didn't dare try last time, they'll run the ball down the field. so we have to be much smarter and much better prepared. litigation will be key. the courts still are a place where we have to turn to. we have to be wide eyed that the courts are also increasingly conservative and he will appoint new judges on to the courts. it's also true that biden appointed a record number of judges on the courts, so not all is lost. but good lawyers will have to earn their pay by picking the right clients, the right cases, the right theories where do you file? where do you settle? where do you really push the envelope. and that's where we're working through right now. >> when you talk to regular americans who aren't lawyers, who aren't people who are engaged in this fight in a

practical paid to do it part of their job kind of way, and you hear people feeling intimidated. >> sure. >> feeling overwhelmed by the pace at which we're getting sort of alarming news about the extremism of their plans what do you tell them about the prospects for holding line? >> local governments, you know the state attorney's general, the governors, the mayors, we have this whole plan around a fire wall for freedom we call it. the idea that these local officials can really play an important role in stopping the worse of the government abuses. >> how so? >> for instance, when they try to detain and deport all these hundreds of thousands, up to 1 million people, that's an operation that they have the legal power to do, to do the raids. but the logistics. and they're going to need mayors and governors or city council to either give them access to police officers or not, jails. where are you going to house all these folks, right? so part of what we're doing is we're preparing executive orders

and organizing our folks to put pressures on elected officials so they don't roll over. they should sever these relationships they have with the federal government on immigration enforcement. they should make sure that prisoners in our jails are off limit. they should begin to think about what actions they could take to pardon immigrants who have a criminal record because they drove on a suspended license. let's take them out of harm's way. >> they could do that now. >> let's commute. >> they could do that now in the transition. >> yes. part of what we have to do, we have to swarm our allies in some of these places and even in red states. you have some blue mayor. and so there's a whole game plan for this. and i think part of what we're trying to do is breaking it down. what can be done by the courts and lawyers. what can be done by citizens. what can governors do and mayors do and really have a game plan for that. >> when people look at the fact that there haven't been large scale protests thus far the way there were pretty soon after the election in 2016, i tend to look at that and think the american people are smart people, people are marshalling their resources

and choosing for the right moment. >> they're waiting. >> do you see it the same way? >> totally. when he starts deporting these folks, ripping apart communities, the idea that -- you're never going to move that many people without ripping apart citizens and immigrants. it's going to rip the basic fiber of our lives. that's when -- that's not what we bargained for. we have to turn out. >> anthony ramiro, there's a lot on your shoulders, my friend. thank you for being here. >> i have a lot of friends helping me. thank you. we'll be right back. stay with us. thank you. we'll be right back. stay with us with hiv, imagine being good to go without daily hiv pills. ♪♪ good to go binge-watch. ♪♪ good to go out even later. ♪♪ with cabenuva, there's no pausing for daily hiv pills. for adults who are undetectable, cabenuva is the only complete, long-acting hiv treatment you can get every other month. it's two injections from a healthcare provider, as few as 6 times a year.

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today in a courtroom in los angeles, one of the most spectacular debacles of the current republican congress came to an embarrassing and pitiful conclusion that you will not hear about anywhere in right wing media. you may or may not have been following every twist and turn of irkts but republicans in congress really spent other a year trying to impeach president biden. at the heart of the impeachment effort was a star witness, man with the smoking gun, was an fbi informant who supposedly had the evidence that president biden took bribes, that a ukrainian energy company had paid millions of dollars in bribes to president biden and his son hunter. now problem one for the republicans with this scenario happened when that guy, the fbi informant, the star witness for the republicans against president biden, problem one for them is when he got arrested and

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