velshi continues our coverage now. good morning ali. >> good morning. i was i was going to talk to you about how unoriginal that little groundhog is and like, just turn the damn groundhog around and then winter can end. but but then, alicia, you. >> said something. >> that really got my attention off the groundhog, which is actually hard to do, but. >> the dhs. >> this is a really, really important point. the i don't. >> even. >> think i don't think immigration should be under the dhs. i think most other countries immigration is a it's a separate matter. it's immigration, it's economics. it's right. it's own thing. and it requires its own expertise. and we have so confused immigration with danger and terrorism and all of this stuff that i'm really worried about. what exactly what you said, alicia. what the dhs isn't doing, what they're not concentrating on because we have become an immigration obsessed country. we should really be talking about immigration policy at a very sophisticated level. but we've just mixed it all up with, with with security. and it's confused people. so i

appreciate you making that really important distinction. >> some might say it's groundhog's day all over again. >> one might say that that's a thank you for connecting this, the skill of a great journalist. right. you brought it all together. you guys have a great rest of your day. i'll i'll see you later on in the week. velshi starts now. hey. good morning. sunday, february the 2nd, groundhog day, as you know, day 13 of the second trump administration. and we begin this morning with brand new developments in the trump administration's ongoing purge of career fbi officials. for the past couple of weeks, we've been following the distressing changes happening across every level of the federal government. as donald trump's new administration aggressively tests the limits of its power. but within the federal government across the country, there are still people who are holding the line. since the new administration stepped in, federal workers have been demoted, transferred, forced

out. they've even been offered a deal if they agree to a deferred resignation. one federal employee, with whom nbc news recently spoke, even described it as, quote, psychological warfare. it's all part of the president's plan to clean house and purge civil servants from the government so that they can remake the bureaucracy to suit their needs. it's exactly what president trump campaigned on, and what he promised he would do if he won the second term in the white house. and those plans were all laid out in the open, as outlined in the pages of project 2025. on friday, trump administration officials forced out eight senior executives from the fbi as part of a larger purge of employees within the department of justice. but nbc news has learned that the acting fbi director, brian driscoll, forcefully resisted carrying out the order to dismiss agents involved in the january 6th investigations, to the point that some feared that the trump administration would fire driscoll as well. driscoll holds

the position of fbi director temporarily. he's the head of the fbi's field office office in newark, who was elevated to the position after fbi director chris wray and his deputy both resigned ahead of trump's inauguration. they were both going to be fired by trump anyway. in a message that was shared widely within fbi circles, one agent summarized it this way quote, bottom line doj came over and wanted to fire a bunch of j6 agents january 6th. driscoll is an absolute stud. he held his ground and he told the white house proxy doj to f off, end quote, i don't know how long he'll be in a job for. this is all unfolded in the days after the senate confirmation hearing for kash patel, donald trump's nominee for fbi director. the role that driscoll is temporarily filling now. at his hearing, patel told senators, quote, all fbi employees will be protected against political retribution, end quote. but the trump administration undermined

his testimony less than 24 hours later by ordering these dismissals of senior fbi officials. beyond that, the trump administration has asked driscoll and the fbi to compile a list of people who were involved in january 6th related investigations in any way across all of the fbi's offices across the country, no matter what their position was or what task they were assigned, assigned. remember, fbi agents don't pick their assignments they are assigned. it is estimated that the list could include thousands of employees. and a follow up memo sent around last night, driscoll suggests that a list will be made as the administration has requested, but he also offered a message to the entire fbi workforce that serves as a reminder to them of the bureau's values and their rights as employees. quote, as career special agents and fellow fbi employees, we know firsthand that none of us are assigned to matters based on anything other than the responsibilities of the

roles in which we serve, so let it be absolutely clear that we do not view anyone's identification on one of these lists as an indicator of misconduct. as you know, when there are allegations of misconduct, the fbi has a long standing and robust process for evaluating and adjudicating those allegations. this well-established process both ensures accountability and affords employees appropriate due process and review in accordance with existing policy and law, that process and our intent to follow it have not changed. end quote. once again, this is written by an acting fbi director who we don't know how long he's going to be in a job. won't be long because the fbi is going to have a new confirmed director very soon. joining me now is barbara mcquade, a former united states attorney for the eastern district of michigan. she's also an msnbc legal analyst. she's the co-host of the sisters in law podcast and author of the book attack from

within how disinformation is sabotaging america. also joining us, ryan riley, a justice reporter for nbc news. he's the author of the book sedition hunters how january 6th broke the justice system, a prescient title if i've ever seen one. good morning to both of you. thank you for being with us. ryan. let me just ask you this. i want to get clarity. one of these things is more sort of political and, and sort of makes bigger news than the other. the firing of high level people, the firing or the potential gathering of a list of low level people. this involves fbi agents, analysts, all sorts of people who were involved in the january 6th investigations. you've really studied this. it's very much like you and me as reporters, right? we don't pick our assignments. we get we get assigned things. sometimes they're good assignments, sometimes they're bad assignments, but they are what somebody else wants. that's how it works in the fbi. junior fbi employees and fbi agents are given an assignment. they were given the january 6th assignment. they didn't have a choice in the matter. >> yeah. and i will say, like, frankly, some of them weren't so

enthusiastic about it. like the. >> january 6th. >> cases have been. >> controversial within the fbi itself because, you know, these were some of these were lower level misdemeanor cases. now, that goes all the way up to seditious conspiracy. and i should say that i think, broadly speaking, that most of the fbi supported the cases against, you know, individuals who assaulted officers viciously. right. like that's something that i think most americans support. and i think it's something that most fbi special agents supported. but the handling of these cases was controversial within the fbi. and that's and it's not for nothing that the fbi is a generally conservative leaning organization full of people who with no law enforcement background, a lot of military background. so that's not to say they're political actors, but just generally speaking, it's i would say conservative leaning is a good way to describe it. and that's something, you know, well known for years within, within the justice department. and it's caused some, you know, controversies and some conflict over the years. but this really is a remarkable request, you know, as you laid out, because you're talking about more than 1500 cases and there's multiple individuals involved in cases every step of the way. so, you know, that's maybe someone was

just involved in executing an arrest, playing a pretty minor role all the way up to sort of like leading the case or supervising the case. so that's a long list for each one of these cases of people who were involved in these january 6th cases. and as you said, you know, weren't this wasn't necessarily something that they chose. >> barbara, let's talk about driscoll, acting head of the fbi. it was he was the field head in in newark. two people above him were resigned. he's not going to be in the job for long anyway because kash patel, if he gets confirmed, will be in the job. but it is a signal of something you and i have talked about in the past where he he drew some sort of a line. again, we don't know how long that line will last and how long it will hold. but he did say, this is ridiculous. this is not how we run government. >> yeah. and you know, i really applaud the way he's handling this. by all accounts, he is a career fbi agent, rose through the ranks to lead that newark office. and he likely is appalled by this request to

provide the names of all of these agents. and i really appreciate the line in that email, which i'm sure he knew would reach the public, that no one on this list is being accused of misconduct. there's a process for removing agents who engage in misconduct. the only sin of any of these agents will be handling a case lawfully assigned to them. these cases are about, you know, people who assaulted police officers, people who damaged property at the u.s. capitol, people who brought in confederate flags and disrupted the counting of the ballots on january 6th. the idea that these people are being purged from government just for doing their own jobs is, number one, a violation of the law, their civil service protections. but it is also, i think, an endorsement of political violence. now, kash patel talked to the fbi agents association and told them there would be no retributive firings. that's

false. now, maybe it's beyond his control, but it's false. congress is not without a remedy here. congress has the remedy of either stalling or denying the confirmation of kash patel to send a message to donald trump that this kind of corruption will not be tolerated. >> i should just run that on a loop. what? you just said that last sentence all day so that people can remind them. and by the way, you, the viewer, are entitled to call your your senator and remind them of that. you are not without power. you actually can call your senator and say, this is unlawful. you have to go on the record as not supporting this. let's see what happens. ryan, nbc's reporting on this called, we quoted somebody who said that the message that driscoll sent, they described driscoll as being an absolute stud for telling the white house and the doj to, quote, eff off. they use the full, full word. it was widely circulated around the bureau. talk to me about that. does it matter that that driscoll did

something that enhanced sentiment around the bureau, that driscoll is being seen as someone who is standing up for these fbi employees? i hasten to say, it's not just fbi agents, special agents, it's a lot of fbi staff. does that help? and does that matter or or does not it matter? >> i definitely think that that's a boost. right. the agents felt very supported, i think, by that message and him sort of standing up and saying no to this because that's a, you know, extraordinary sort of request that that they're that they're running here. and i think that that, you know, the, the, the way that this was supposed to work is he was sort of supposed to hand this over just sort of like, you know, was supposed to be this person in control of the bureau until the appointee of the administration gets in there. right? so you're not supposed to have these sort of mass sweeping changes during this temporary sort of holdover when they're supposed to be focused, you know, on the fbi's mission at hand. right? and that's something that a lot of i've heard from a lot of folks is that if they were to sort of go after a lot of these january 6th individuals, these individuals who handle january

6th cases, the amount of brain drain that you'd be taking away from the bureau would be extraordinary, because they handled so many cases and because they have a lot of courtroom experience. you know, january 6th cases were great experiences for what some of the threats that are going to be ahead, for example, looking at open source material, finding what you can on the internet, you know, that's something that the fbi has fallen a little bit behind on. i think it's a fair criticism of them on the tech front. and that's something that, you know, that they've talked about wanting wanting to fix. and, you know, that's that sort of experience on the january 6th cases can be very beneficial going forward for a lot of these agents. and i think there are a lot of lessons learned from that investigation. this is the major investigation of the fbi right now. this year there had been this was the largest investigation in terms of number of defendants that was there. so it, you know, makes sense that there's going to be a lot of agents who are involved in that. and i think that, you know, what they're sort of counting on, on the on the trump side is sort of, you know, exploiting the ignorance of the american people in terms of what exactly happened on january 6th, because that's something i've

heard over and over again, even from a prosecutor who was fired this this week, who had joined the justice department to get involved in these january 6th cases. they saw all of this from the outside. and then it wasn't until they got in that they recognized really just how violent it was on the west front of the us capitol. and then, you know, someone who would pay close attention. yeah, yeah. >> no, i mean, this is the weirdest part about this, barb, that, that, that mike johnson has said that they are forming a new subcommittee to look into the investigation by congress of january 6th. as ryan points out, this was the biggest fbi investigation in history. this was a massive investigation by the department of justice, the january 6th committee, interesting, though it was, was actually tertiary to the whole thing. we watched it. we have video. we know what happened on january 6th. and somehow congress still sees fit to litigate this. >> yeah, this is an effort to rewrite history. you know, you and i have talked before about disinformation, about people are so aligned with their tribe that they're willing to believe things, even when they know them

to be false. they are willing to disregard the evidence of their eyes and ears. you know, abraham lincoln once said that public sentiment is everything with it. you can do anything. without it, you can do nothing. and it seems that this is the effort to change public sentiment, to turn it against the fbi, and to let people believe that somehow this was weaponized and criminalized. we saw that memo from ed martin, the interim u.s. attorney in the district of columbia, who is trying to suggest that anybody who investigated the obstruction statute, 18 u.s.c. 1512, is the target of his 1512 project. this was the obstruction statute that the supreme court later said applies only to cases involving documents. but at the time of the investigation, that decision had not yet been made, and so he is trying to smear anyone who investigated a case that was inconsistent with the way the supreme court later adjudicated that decision, to suggest that they somehow did something wrong. they were doing everything right. this is an effort to rewrite history, and

all of us with a voice have an obligation to speak out against it. >> all of us. not just media, not just lawyers, all of us. the most important person in america today is the american citizen. reach out and tell somebody, perhaps somebody who's elected, about how wrong this actually is. thanks to both of you, barbara mcquade, former united states attorney for the eastern district of michigan and an msnbc legal analyst. ryan riley is the justice reporter for nbc news. all right, coming up, mexico and canada are hitting back at the u.s. today after trump implemented sweeping tariffs on most of their goods. welcome to the new trade war. plus, secretary of state marco rubio takes his first trip abroad to central america as the president vows to take back the panama canal. a live report from nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell correspondent andrea mitchell right after this. your best defense against erosion and cavities is strong enamel. nothing beats it. i recommend pronamel active shield because it actively shields the enamel to defend against erosion and cavities. i think that this product is a game changer

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dude, i really need a new phone. check out my new msamsung galaxy s25 ultra.. it's got galaxy ai. imagine this thing running on our superfast xfinity mobile network. and i also heard that it can do multiple things with a single command. —with google gemini. let me try it. add recipes with overripe bananas to my “dessert ideas” note. that's what you chose to ask it? i had other things planned. ask how to get up to one thousand dollars off the new samsung galaxy s25 ultra with xfinity mobile. by granger for the ones who get it done. >> in the. >> united states. built the panama canal in the early 1900s

to cut down the transit time for commercial and military vessels traveling between coasts. the u.s. controlled the canal zone, which became a critical trade route after its completion in 1914, and it used the opportunity to establish numerous military bases in the area. that military presence caused friction that led to anti-american protests and deadly riots in 1964, which in turn caused the evacuation of the u.s. embassy in panama city and dozens of deaths. in 1977, president jimmy carter signed a treaty with panama that allowed for panama to gain full control of the canal. in 1999 and ensured that it remained open to all nations to be used. it also gave the u.s. the right to use its military to defend the panama canal. the treaty was followed without any major incident, until donald trump claimed on social media, without evidence, that china had military stationed there and was controlling the canal. that was

the opening salvo of his bid to take back the panama canal and to annex canada and buy greenland. the seemingly far fetched and unserious post suddenly became a key trump talking point. began talking about it at rallies and social posts, and suggesting that he would consider using american military force to regain control of the canal, all culminating in a mention in his inauguration speech last month. >> panama's promise to us has been broken. the purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated. american ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form, and that includes the united states navy. and above all, china is operating the panama canal. and we didn't give it to china. we gave it to panama, and we're taking it back.

>> now. it's important to understand that the canal and the surrounding areas have been in an extended period of drought for the last few years because of the canal's reduced water level, fewer vessels can use it each day, and during the periods of reduced traffic. u.s. companies do pay a premium for preferred entry slots. there are two chinese companies managing the biggest ports on either side of the canal, and they're building a bridge in the area, but us and taiwanese companies, taiwan, as you know, is a us ally, also operate ports along the canal. china and the panamanian. panamanian president josé raul mulino have denied any chinese controlling or interfering with the canal, with mulino going as far as to audit the chinese ports to provide proof. panama is always is also where we find the secretary of state, marco rubio. this morning, he's on his first international trip. and joining me now from panama city is my friend and colleague, msnbc chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell. she's the host of andrea

mitchell reports on msnbc. we don't we don't get to talk to you enough on this show, andrea. and there are about a million things going on in the world right now that i want to pick your brain on. but let's talk about this one, because marco rubio is there. donald trump made the panama canal, which hadn't come up at all during the election, into some sort of a foreign policy priority for the united states. so. so what's happening now? >> well, you've set it up perfectly. all of those facts are absolutely correct. that's what i've been here for the better part of this week. i came in early just so that i could go to the canal, talk to the independent authority officials who run it for panama, see that the ports. >> are all along the canal. >> including one at the entry, one at the other side, at both ends. both ends because the traffic goes both ways, obviously, and see ships going through. here's the deal. as you pointed out, if you look at a spreadsheet. yeah, u.s. ships are up there in terms of how much they pay, not the navy. the

navy always pays the same. and that is according to the treaty. they do not get overcharged, but commercial ships, they bid there's an auction every day during the drought because during the drought the lake was down. so it takes longer to fill the locks. therefore, they they had a daily auction. and if you wanted to bid high and pay that premium, the u.s. ships were more, you know, eager to do that. 70% of the goods that go through this canal are ending up in the u.s, and the fact is that the canal is 51 miles long. it takes just hours to go through. it would take a month or more to go through. if you went all the way around, it would be 9200 miles to go all the way around. so it is in their interest to pay that surcharge. and other than that, you know, ships pay the same other than they get charged more for weight or the kind of cargo they're carrying. put that aside. and that's a completely false assertion. and it was in the inaugural address, which is another whole issue. the fact is that panama is, as

you know, it's one of the closest allies that the u.s. has in this region. so at first they thought it was a joke when they heard the inaugural speech, the charge that had never been made before. vice president pence was here in 2017. we talked to the top administrator from the canal who conducted vice president pence on that tour from the trump administration. no one made this charge until now. they thought it was a joke and they were mystified. and they were saying, you know, why us? we signed a deportation agreement last july. the planes started coming through in august. we've been cracking down on the border. we've cracked down on illegal drugs. they are less corrupt here than in many countries in the region, according to independent economists, according to the wall street journal. so they were saying, why are they doing this to us? and then it became anger. then you saw the flags. just this week we saw the flags going up all around us, all over the all over the city, all over the country. and people said to me, it's not a national holiday,

but these flags are our nationalism, our sovereignty. and you talk to people of all ages and the popular support for what president medina is saying. now, i have to say very shortly we'll be going. he's going right now to the presidential palace. i'll be going to his next stop to the embassy. and just a small number of reporters going with him, and we'll see what president medina says when they are face to face, because we saw how the president of colombia had to, you know, cave under threats of, of tariffs. and there's a lot of weight that the u.s. can bear on panama. but they are right now very resistant. ali. >> we're. >> going to watch it very closely watching mexico. we're watching canada. we're watching a lot of what you're describing going on in panama is happening in these other countries as well. there's a surge of nationalism to say, all right, maybe we can't win a fight against the united states, but we're going to try and stand up for ourselves. andrea, thanks as always. andrea mitchell, nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. all right. coming up on velshi, no

surprise here. but as we mentioned, canada and mexico are retaliating against the united states after president trump implemented sweeping tariffs against the countries. senator chris van hollen, democrat of maryland, joins me to discuss it maryland, joins me to discuss it right after this. i'm thinking of updating my kitchen... —yeah? —yes! ...this year, we are finally updating our kitchen... ...doing subway tile in an ivory, or eggshell... —cream?... —maybe bone?... don't get me started on quartz. a big big island... you ever heard of a waterfall counter?... for everyone who talks about doing that thing, and, over there. but never does that thing... a sweet little breakfast nook. chase has financial guidance. let's see how you can start saving to make this happen. —really? —really? really. at home or in-person. you could also check out a chase money skills workshop. that's guidance from chase. make more of what's yours. i'm not happy with the way that pg&e handled the wildfires. yeah. yeah. i totally, totally understand. we're adding a ton of sensors. as soon as something comes in contact with the power line, it'll turn off so that there's not a risk that it's gonna fall to the ground and start a fire. okay.

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want to talk to you about, senator, but let's talk about this one, because this is getting hot right now. canada and mexico imposing retaliatory tariffs. we had i think it was kristi noem saying that if prices go up for americans, it's because of other countries reacting to our tariff policy. that's just nonsense. i think you just need to read a pamphlet on tariffs to understand that. that's just not how it works. >> well, ali, that's right. this is pretty simple. >> math, right. >> when you have a big tariff increase on countries, in this case canada, mexico and some on china, it's the american people are going to pay the price. you know, president trump as candidate trump promised he was going to lower prices, lower costs. this is going to do just the opposite. we're going to see increased costs on, you know, fruits and vegetables. we're going to see increased costs across the board. and that's even before we see the damage resulting from the retaliatory tariffs. right. which will help hurt american businesses who are

trying to export to this, these countries. so this is this is effectively a big sales tax increase on the american people. >> let's talk about retaliation. there are two forms of it. one is retaliatory tariffs, which canada and mexico have both said they'll do. last time we got into this thing, we ended up subsidizing american soybean farmers to the extent of $28 billion. so again comes out of our tax money. if we have to subsidize. the premier of ontario has just announced this morning that as of tomorrow morning no american alcohol will be for sale in ontario, not tariffs. they're not adding to the price. it will not be sold in canada. so there are all these breweries and distilleries and winemakers across america who are now suddenly going to lose access to canada's biggest market altogether, and they're going to have to find somewhere else to sell their, their wine or their their their bourbon or their beer. this this costs you twice. >> that's exactly right. look, this is a double whammy. it has the effect of increasing prices

for americans here. and then, of course, it damages those businesses like you just mentioned, beer and wine. and i'm glad you raised the issue of the federal subsidies to soybean farmers, because what happened was when trump in his first term, imposed those tariffs on some chinese products, the reality was china's retaliatory retaliatory tariffs prevented a lot of u.s. exports from from being and we paid the federal government, the federal taxpayer. the american people ended up paying tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to big farmers. so at the end of the day, it's the american taxpayer and american people who are going to pay and pay dearly for this stupid move. >> talk to me about we're 13 days into the new trump administration, and this isn't the first time trump has used tariffs as a threat, or used them before he's followed through on it this time in a way

that is unprecedented. but we did see how it unfolded with colombia about a week ago, in which the threat of tariffs are leveraged for something else. sometimes they're leveraged for a better trade deal, sometimes they're leveraged for whatever trump actually wants to achieve for a moment. and don't waste too much time on this, because it's probably not worth the brain cells. but for a moment, is there a strategy here that we may be missing? is there something that that donald trump is trying to achieve that doesn't have anything to do with actual tariffs? >> i don't see that. i mean, take canada for example. it's just not clear what the president's endgame is with canada. there's not an immigration issue. there's not a big fentanyl issue with respect to canada. so the president is just using these so-called emergency powers to levy tariffs. but the price will be. paid by the american people. and without a strategy behind it. this is just folly.

>> there is some complexity in talking. these are our three biggest trading partners canada, mexico and china. but there's complexity in lumping them all together because as you said, we have the fewest issues with canada. there are a few more with mexico, largely because because of the southern border and there are many with china. and even china is complicated because its adversary, in some cases an ally. in some cases it lumping these things all together does them all a disservice. does our relationships and our trade relationships with all three countries a disservice? >> look. >> it does, and certainly treating mexico and canada like adversaries sends a terrible message. i mean, the highest increases in tariffs were on on them. china, as you know, we already have tariffs on on them. but look, i'm in favor of strategic targeted tariffs right. to protect key sectors. semiconductors like steel. i mean these these are important sectors. but across the board

tariffs are simply a tax hike on the american people. and they're going to be feeling it pretty soon because you know trump promised exactly the opposite. >> senator good to talk to you as always. >> thank you. this is a prelude. this is this is also a prelude to a big tax break that the president is planning for the wealthiest people. so i can tell you elon musk doesn't he's not going to feel the impact of the price increases from these tariffs. and then he's going to get a huge tax break windfall. >> so yeah. >> this is a betrayal of all the people that president trump said he wanted to help. >> your eggs are not getting cheaper. and the cost of cooking those eggs is about to get more expensive, because we now have a tariff on the energy that we're getting from mexico and canada. senator, good to see you as always. thank you. democratic senator chris van hollen of maryland. all right. coming up, new escalations in the war in the middle east. the idf confirms it has demolished several buildings in the west bank city of jenin. we're going to go live to tel aviv after to go live to tel aviv after this. after careful review of medical guidance and research on pain relief,

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>> really military strikes in the west bank? take a look at these explosions. it's remarkable. the video of this from earlier this morning in the occupied west bank city of jenin. look at it across the top of your screen. it's hard to see because it's the same color of the building. but these mushrooming clouds, latest i've read were 19 or 20 buildings were attacked. in a statement, the idf confirms that it, quote, recently destroyed several buildings in jenin. the idf says the residential block that it targeted was used for, quote, terror infrastructure. nbc news has not confirmed that the israeli military has been conducting raids in the northern west bank now for nearly two weeks. i want to get right to nbc's yasmin vossoughian, who is in tel aviv. yasmin, what do we know about this? >> yeah. >> i mean. >> you said it. ali. >> right? the pictures, the video there is remarkable. >> it's stunning, to say the least. >> they started streaming. >> in about two. >> hours ago, approximately. five hours or so ago is. >> when these.

>> explosions actually took place. when it comes to those building, we're looking at 20 or so residential buildings. and you have to understand that in jenin, the way in which these residential buildings are built, they're built vertically, right? so it's not one apartment, for instance, per floor. there are several apartments on every single floor in these residential buildings. so you're looking at a massive loss for many of these families who no longer have a home. let's talk about evacuations, because 15,000 or so confirmed at least 15,000, i should say people have been evacuated from jenin camp so far. so we haven't heard of any casualties from these explosions. but again, a major, massive loss of homes and personal belongings for many of these individuals, many of these palestinians, if we talk about fatalities here overall, since the cease fire deal was put into place right now, ali, we have confirmed creation of 25 people. at least two have been killed in jenin, in and around jenin, one of them being a young child. just yesterday, an elderly man this morning as well. so many folks looking at this as a shift away from what seems to be

quieting down of gaza over more to ali, the west bank. >> which which i remind people, was going on for over a year before october 7th. this we were all worried about what was going to happen in the west bank bank because of these, the increased violence there. and it looks like we are back into that place that we've been for a while. it didn't stop. it never stopped in the west bank. we just weren't really concentrating on all that much because we were concentrating on gaza. yasmin, thanks for your amazing reporting from there. yasmin vossoughian in tel aviv for us. all right. coming up, the consequences of president trump's plans to totally dismantle d e i in the government. nikole hannah-jones, the pulitzer prize winning journalist and the creator of the 1619 project, joins me to discuss the threat to racial discuss the threat to racial justice in the years to come. watch your step! that's why visionworks makes it simple to schedule an eye exam that works for you. even if you have a big trip to plan around. thanks! i mean, i can see you right now if that's...convenient. visionworks. see the difference. socks, underwear and t-shirts are the most requested items

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spotless house for $19. nicole boyce is now an academy award nominee for best adapted screenplay. >> you can't muster a bigger hug than. >> that and best picture of the year. it's one of the great american movies of the 21st century. nickel boys, rated pg 13, now playing only in theaters. >> where do people find the. strength to speak truth to power? right now? you've got an administration. you've got a president ready, willing and able to take legal action against people doing their jobs. >> i think in 2025, politically engaged people can find the strength. >> to make their voices heard and try to help create a climate of opinion that enables these institutions, these people who run these institutions, to do the right thing. >> well, jon meacham, you have certainly my light tonight. >> since donald trump took office on january 20th, he has launched an all out assault on the federal government, working

to dismantle it, agency by agency and bulldozing through norms. no surprise here, though, because this is exactly what he promised he would do. it was all written down in a 900 page book that i carried around and read to you weekly for months, and written into that book. i'd say between the lines, but you didn't actually have to look between the lines to find it was a sentiment that went far beyond consolidating power in the presidency. it was about re entrenching hierarchy from christian nationalism to the patriarchy to white supremacy. within days of taking office, he signed an order gutting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across our federal institutions and pressuring private industry to follow suit. within hours of the worst airplane crash in more than 20 years. he blamed diversity without citing any evidence whatsoever for a crash that killed 67 people. meanwhile, the so-called tech industrial complex is working hard to roll back existing regulations and to prevent new ones at the expense of the american consumer, at the expense of your safety, your privacy and your rights. this

trajectory where unregulated capitalism and racial entrenchment go hand in hand, is nothing new in american history. the pulitzer prize winning journalist nikole hannah-jones argues that this reality traces back to this nation's very founding. american power and capital were built literally on black exploitation. any attempt to dismiss the link between american capitalism and race, deriding it as identity politics. for example, only allows structural white supremacy to persist. note that i'm saying structural. this is not to suggest that most or even many americans are racist, but that we live in a society whose economic strength was built on and perpetuated by a system of racialized economics. and that system didn't end with the abolition of slavery. that's because the same forces that uphold racial hierarchies also protect and concentrate wealth in just a few hands. and these are the same forces that helped

usher in today's oligarchy. hannah-jones is the creator of the acclaimed 1619 project. she has long criticized efforts to downplay the role of race in donald trump's rise to power. in 2018, reflecting on his 2016 victory as president, she wrote, quote, even before election day wrapped up one of the most racist political campaigns in recent memory, white observers on the left, center and right began telling us that what we had just witnessed was not about race. we were supposed to understand the hurting heartland. they warned the far left to be careful with the white supremacy label, and suggested that those who pursued wrongheaded identity politics owed middle america an apology. end quote. to understand trump's ascent, hannah-jones says, we must first understand how capitalism and white supremacy in america have historically reinforced one another. trump's inauguration speech last month, in which he promised a complete restoration of america, echoes

the defeated confederate cry that the south will rise again. in the decades following reconstruction, the country experienced the great nadir, a period of racial retrenchment and violent enforcement of white power, hannah-jones writes. as once conquered, confederates snatched black people's legal protections, the courts and congress elevated corporations to their current status as rights bearing citizens in their effort to secure even modest concessions from capital. white workers abandoned and turned on black comrades, splintering interracial labor movements. end quote w.e.b. du bois captured the era's brutality, writing, quote, god wept and still is weeping, for there began to rise in america. in 1896, a new capitalism and a new enslavement of labor. end quote. with trump's ascent, hannah-jones argues, we are witnessing a second nadir, triggered by recent civil rights gains.

today, just as then, white capital firmly holds the levers of politics and media in americ. in the decades leading up to trump, america shifted from explicit racial violence to institutionalized inequality, all cloaked in the rhetoric of colorblindness. following the civil rights era, overt racism was replaced with coded rhetoric that allowed white supremacy to persist under new guises. officials, for example, masked racism by calling for law and order and the need to protect property rights. they condemned the so-called welfare ethic. race was pushed to the background, hannah-jones argues, obscured by slogans about the economy, about small government, about so-called traditional values. this societal shift was buoyed by the supreme court decision that not only dismantled federal protections for black people under the guise of neutrality, but also erased the violent history that triggered those protections in the very first place. a key example is the court's 1978 decision in regents of the

university of california versus becky, which barred academia from considering past discrimination when evaluating applicants, effectively severing the connection between current inequality and its historical roots. according to hannah-jones, this shift effectively undermined the civil rights movement's hard won gains, enabling white supremacy to persist through more subtle institutional mechanisms. and then came trump. he called our collective bluff, bringing to the forefront the racism that is at the core of many of these policies. as hannah-jones observed, quote, he repeatedly broke the discursive norms that had been greasing the wheels of american capitalism since the passage of the civil rights act. because indiana born judge gonzalo gonzalo curiel was a mexican, trump deemed him unqualified to adjudicate the trump university fraud case because nbc debate moderator lester holt was black, trump decided that he was a democrat and thus part of the phony

system propping up hillary clinton. lester holt, by the way, was a republican. trump, in other words, refused to play by the old playbook with its thinly veiled attempts at racial tolerance. and he won. trump's victory can be traced to decades of efforts to discredit and dismiss america's racist history. but confronting these historical forces and their enduring impact is crucial to be able to resist them. today, in trump's america, it's going to require restoring a broader institutional awareness of our nation's racist legacy, writes nikole hannah-jones. quote, the president elect elect safely mocked the disabled, african-americans and latinos, performing his best in those areas where americans enjoyed none of the intellectual and cultural infrastructure required to reject his brand of politics on race, specifically, our institutional priorities continue to undermine the formation of a racially literate public. you cannot topple racial injustice, sexism, or class

exploitation without race, gender or class thinking early and often and in public. and that requires, in place of mere diversity, a restoration of historical thinking. after a quick break, i'm going to dig into this with the pulitzer prize winning journalist nikole prize winning journalist nikole hannah-jones. —hi! —hi! ♪♪ chocolate fundraiser. ♪♪ with the chase mobile app, things move a little more smoothly. ♪♪ deposit checks easily and send money quickly. [coins clinking] ♪♪ that's convenience from chase. make more of what's yours.

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>> all right, before the break, i told you about the historical connection between unregulated capitalism and racism and how it helped in usher in today's oligarchy. i do want to just mention something, because nikole hannah-jones is a remarkable academic and a journalist and all that. i mistakenly attributed some quotes that were by mdb connelly to nikole hannah-jones in the thesis that i just delivered to you. i think nikole has a lot of views on that, on the specific stuff. but this this quote about the conquered confederate states snatching black, black, black people's legal protections, that is from the boston review and by mdb. connelly. because, nikole, i don't want you to have to deal with anybody who's saying you said somebody else's words. so that's that's our error, not yours. but great to see you, nicole. thank you for being with us. nikole is a pulitzer prize winning reporter from the new york times magazine. she's the creator of the 1619 project. she's the founder of the center

for journalism and democracy at howard university. she's the co-founder of the ida b wells society. nikole, let's talk about this idea. this idea i was talking about it with with eddie glaude yesterday, that as we see progress, particularly for black people or people of color or marginalized groups in america, this happens. we get remarkable pushback. and some people think that in 1865, the civil war ended and slavery ended, and things marched happily on. not true at all. it was it was fully 100 years later that we even got close to the equality that most people think we got in 1865. and now we're in this sort of a period again. >> absolutely. >> thanks for having. >> me on. and just to clarify, everything you read from the boston review piece was not written by me. so i definitely don't want to take credit for someone else's scholarship. so i. >> think what's. >> important to understand in this moment, i called it the second nadir, that that phrase, the nadir, was coined by the

historian rayford logan, and it talked about this. period that we now call jim crow. so why is that important? because right after slavery, we have this remarkable period called reconstruction and black americans just coming out of slavery achieve remarkable rights. this is where we get the 13th amendment ending slavery, the 14th amendment guaranteeing birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law, and the 15th amendment, which guarantees black men the right to vote and says, you can't deny people the right to vote based on race. we also get the 1866 civil rights act, which was one of the most, to this day, expansive civil rights laws ever passed in america. it bans housing discrimination and other types of discrimination. and then we have jim crow. so we have to ask ourselves, i think sometimes it is not within the imagination of americans that you can gain rights and then lose those rights completely. but that is exactly what happened. so if we look at the 100 years later that you're talking about the period of the civil rights movement, which of

course was a deadly period where black americans were literally being killed trying to fight for basic rights, they had earned those rights a century earlier and had to wage a battle against their country to regain those rights under the civil rights movement. i fear we're in another one of those periods where we see this kind of initially a slow pace of the pulling back of rights that black americans and therefore all americans have earned. and then we see this moment where all three branches of government align, and then you can see a massive withdrawal of those rights. and so we have to be very careful. we can decide in this moment, as americans, are we going to enter another nadir, or are we going to push back against that and continue to pursue an egalitarian society? but this is an inflection point, and i fear because we don't understand that history, we don't know that you can gain rights in the united states, and you can lose those rights almost completely.

>> as we also saw with abortion rights. you have long argued, you know, people tell me the election was all about economics. and as an economics guy, i remind people, apparently all elections all around the world are always about economics. but you have made the argument that trump's rise was not simply about economic anxiety, but that racial retrenchment, retrenchment. it does play a role in this. so what do you say to people who insist that race is always secondary to donald trump's economic populism and the price of eggs? >> i would say, look at how he has spent the first few weeks of being inaugurated as president. so, yes, what we're often calling economic anxiety is actually demographic anxiety. and we can see how many executive orders did trump sign into office that were targeted at helping everyday americans pay their bills, at lowering costs, at lowering prescription drug costs, at lowering grocery costs? you didn't see any. but what you did see was attacks on

what they're calling diversity, equity and inclusion. you saw the rolling back of executive order 11246, which which outlawed discrimination in hiring in the federal government and its contractors. you saw the purging of anything having to do with diversity. you saw mandates that they cannot actually acknowledge the juneteenth or black history month. so he has come out of the gate with a racial agenda, not an economic agenda. so i think all we have to do is look at what he's done, and there's an understanding that you can actually divide people from each other who have a common economic concern by dividing them and wedging them by race. and that's what we've seen. so if people really want to say this election was about economics, look at your price of eggs. look at the fact that prescription drug prices are not getting cheaper. look at what he has done since he came into office. and we see that it has been a