>> people like kash patel. >> we're going to see whether he has the votes to be confirmed. as of now, pam bondi has the votes. so we're watching some of the other more controversial nominees as they work through senator sheldon whitehouse of rhode island. thank you for your time tonight, sir. appreciate it. that is all in on this tuesday night. the rachel maddow show starts right now. good evening rachel. >> chris hayes, my friend, i have to ask you how you are putting on the watch, what he says or watch what he does, not what he says. scale these comments from the president. tonight on, we're going to send u.s. troops into gaza. >> it's a great question and one we wrestled with and happened so quickly right before the show that i'm still not sure we have some reporting that indicates this was thought through, that this was the announcement of a new policy, that this was discussed in the meeting with netanyahu. i think it's much more than riffing. i think i

think what we saw tonight now, whether that will there will be follow through, who knows. but i don't think it was just off the cuff. i think this is an announcement of a new policy of this government. >> yeah. i think i mean, i think one thing that we are learning is everything is a trial balloon, right? that everything that he says is to see what the reaction is. and then he either says he didn't mean it or it was a joke, or he denies that he ever said it, or he goes ahead with it and starts saying it more. we will see. i'm grateful to you that you got it on the air as soon as it happened tonight, and we're going to be watching that over the course of this evening as it develops to. thanks, my friend. thanks so much, and thanks to you at home for being here with us tonight. really happy to have you here. do you ever watch track and field at the olympics? i never watch it any other time, but i always watch it at the olympics. the summer olympics in 2008 was in beijing. you might remember, during the trials for those 2008 olympics, an american on the track and field team, a man named tyson gay, ran an absolutely blistering 100 meter

dash, 9.68 seconds. arguably, that might have been a world record at the time. that might have been the fastest 100 meter dash ever run on earth. technically, there was some dispute over how windy it was that day, whether he benefited from a tailwind, so they didn't count it as a world record. but still, it was amazing with that just incredibly least an american all time record for that event. that time made tyson gay the fastest american sprinter in u.s. history. and because of that, it was really big news. got headlines all over the country, all over the world. headlines like these gay sets american record in 100m. that was in the los angeles times. also in this one, the new york times in 100 meter wind. gay pushes the limits. also, this one

homosexual eases into 100 final at olympic trials. wait. hold on. what? quote. tyson homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100m faster than anyone ever has. homosexual ran 9.7 seconds, breaking the american record that had stood since 1990. okay. homosexual. ran. what's going on here? what is. what is with this news story? put it back up there for a second so you can see how it is labeled. you see it says ap associated press up there. but this is important. there's a second logo, right? this article from the ap was reposted republished on a website called one news. now you see their logo on the right. at the time, again, this is 2008. one news now was trying to be a news website for a hard line american conservative group called the american family association. and among the many, many things that

that group is, they are they are quite stridently anti-gay. and here's where that tripped them up. just before this phenomenal american sprinter, tyson gay was gearing up to make headlines for breaking that record, the good people at the american family association decided that the word gay was a bad word. it was it was wrong. it portrayed the whole being gay thing in way too happy a light, way too positive a light. so they set up an autocorrect function, basically like a filter on their website that would catch that word anytime a news article used the word gay and it would automatically change that word to homosexual because that's a word they liked better. so instead of, you know, gay marriage, it would be homosexual marriage instead of gay rights, it would be homosexual rights, which was really working for them until, wow, tyson. homosexual. boy, is that guy

fast. homosexual eases into 100 final at olympic trials on saturday. homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat. there was also an nba basketball player at the time, a really good player named rudy gay. but not at one news now. there he was, rudy, homosexual. in their increasingly awkward coverage of the national basketball association. way to go, guys. yeah. around christmas time, you won't believe what kind of apparel they said everyone would be donning. the news director for the website said this whole episode, once people started pointing and laughing at them over this, they said it was a quote lesson for us to learn. indeed. that, however, is a lesson that has apparently not been learned by the current stewards of our federal government. in donald trump's quest to erase

anti-discrimination protections in the united states, to erase, in particular, all parts of governing that include advocacy for diversity or even reference to diversity, equity and inclusion. the trump white house is now having its own tyson homosexual moment. here's the headline of the guardian quote trump's demands to drop dei leads to deletion of unrelated federal pages and by unrelated federal pages. oh boy, is the word unrelated doing a lot of work. this is the internal revenue manual. it does not promote diversity, equity, or inclusion. it rather serves the very important task of telling irs employees how to collect taxes, which is their job. before the trump administration started willy nilly control-f deleting anything that had any quote dei reference, there used to be parts of this tax manual that made reference to, say, the inequity of the government holding on to certain taxpayer

money. also, the need to check for the inclusion of a taxpayer identification number on a particular form. but now that trump's in there, that's not in the tax tax manual anymore. they deleted those references because oh my god, inclusion. they don't say the white house, the trump white house never did anything for you. they're saving us all from the dangerous references to the inclusion of tax id numbers with certain forms. it was under the same anti dei guise that the white house removed thousands of government websites over the last few days, taking down information about everything from vaccines to substance abuse to veterans health care to census data. because, you know, there's somehow die in the census data. and as dumb as that is when it comes to scrubbing magic words from government documents, it's dumb and cruel

and perhaps irrevocably damaging when the same logic is being used as their means of targeting people. the washington post headline summed it up what is? i think this washington post headline summed up what is actually going on here pretty effectively. quote trump's die purge targets federal workers who do not work in die. i think it's i think it's pretty obvious now to everybody that they are using die as a, as a just a pretext. they're giving everything that, you know, unfashionable boogeyman label to try to avoid people in general, realizing that what they're really doing is just wrecking the us government, just knocking it down. that's that's the point of all of this. whatever label they're putting on it. but of course, none, none of the things they're trying to do will inevitably come to pass. they're not omnipotent, and they keep screwing up and they keep caving. when people push back.

so, for example, in the wake of thousands of cdc websites being taken down days ago, purportedly because of dei concerns about those websites, quote, by monday, some of the pages that had been deleted on the cdc's website had reappeared in response to intense media coverage, backlash from the scientific community, and concern for the public's health. when you push back on them, they cave. they want to do things that are easy for them to do, anything that seems hard for them to do. they stop doing. it's pressure works. but you know what? stupidity works too. when they behave in particularly ostentatiously stupid ways, when they behave in ways that are obviously and ostentatiously dumb. it has two effects. it undercuts the air of intimidation and omnipotence that they've tried to use to get their way. i mean, it doesn't mean that they don't have the worst and most malicious

intentions. they clearly do. but it. it gives lie to the fact that they're just not that good at any of the things they're trying to do. i mean, they're it. it may be, for example, that there's there is a real white power vibe behind all the anti die stuff they are doing. but if the way they're approaching it is to say in part, that there can no longer be the inclusion of a self-addressed, stamped envelope in any government mailing, or that you're banned from talking about the equity markets because, ooh, equity. well, that level of stupidity has the benefit of making us less intimidated by them because they're being dumb. it also has the benefit of emboldening people to push back. headline today at the wall street journal, quote, trump's gender order sparks revolt inside agency tasked with protecting workers. quote, since president trump fired the equal employment opportunity commission leadership last week, the

agency's new acting chair has instructed staff to change the agency's procedures and materials to reflect only two sexes. multiple eeoc attorneys and other staff have warned acting chair andrea lucas that they cannot comply with trump's executive order without breaking federal law. the eeoc enforces title vii of the civil rights act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. a 2020 us supreme court decision says the definition of sex discrimination includes sexual orientation and gender identity. so here's a clear case in which a stupidity problem has arisen here, right? this is an agency that is charged under statute with enforcing a particular federal law. the trump administration is telling them, while trump is now demanding that you break that law, what are the people who work there supposed to do? you guessed it. quote. some agency employees are

openly revolting. quote, an eeoc administrative judge emailed acting director lucas on monday, copying in most eeoc staff. the email said, quote, the tactics you are employing and the actions you have taken in lockstep with this new administration are illegal and unconstitutional. in a reference to trump's billionaire adviser elon musk, the judge wrote to lucas, quote, if upon reflection, you feel like now would be a good time to take a vacation and resign from your position, please reply all to this email and put i'd like to occupy mars in the subject line. in other words, you know, no, we're not doing these illegal things you are telling us to do, but also, while you're pondering that, why don't you resign and go to mars with elon? ta da! that's one way to do it. former eeoc officials tell the wall street journal in this reporting

that they do expect soon to end up in court trying to defend the law, trying to presumably save their agency and try to stop trying to stop what trump is doing. there's actually a lot of a lot of lawsuits that are already underway. we're going to be talking tonight about lawsuits, for example, trying to stop the wholesale purge of the fbi and the questions as to whether trump is actually complying with the court order he's already got against him, ordering him to restart all the federal funding that he stopped. as senators are starting to really sound the alarm on elon musk and his band of teenage hackers taking over the high security payment system that sends out 95% of all government payments. a new lawsuit has just been filed against the treasury department. that lawsuit says, quote, people who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with elon musk. and federal law says they do not have to. that's from the lawsuit that's been filed against treasury on this subject

today. democratic senator elizabeth warren was even more blunt about it. >> the system that makes sure that your granddad gets his social security check, the system that makes sure that your mom's doctor gets medicare payment to cover her medical appointment, and the system that makes sure that you get the tax refund that you're owed has been taken over by elon musk. and every organization from your state government that uses federal money on that bridge project to the local head start that takes care of little kids while their mommies and daddies go to work, is now at the mercy of elon musk. maybe you get paid, or maybe you don't. it's not just payments from the federal government that are now in elon's control. elon and his handful of friends now have full access to your personal and financial information. that's in

the system your payment history, your social security number, your bank account numbers. elon now has the power to suck out all of that information for his own use. now, whether it's to boost his finances or expand his political power, it is all up to elon. >> democratic senator elizabeth warren, speaking at the capitol, sounding the alarm, spelling things out in very plain english that as as a new lawsuit was being filed to stop what musk is doing inside that high security payment system at the treasury, and as elizabeth warren and other democratic senators were demanding a gao investigation into what has happened. they're already democratic senators are are starting to make real noise. yesterday, as we reported here, hawaii democratic senator brian schatz said that he will stop all state department nominations until they back off of usaid and

restore foreign aid. today, senator richard blumenthal of connecticut said something along the same lines. axios is reporting tonight that democrats in the senate are closing in on, effectively a total shutdown strategy, not allowing anything to go through the senate, no nominees, no nothing within the maximum power they can exert to try to stop it or slow it down. that maximum shutdown strategy is effectively the strategy that's been advocated by the group indivisible. indivisible did an organizing call, a national organizing call on sunday night? guess how many people turned up on that call? 50,000 people turned up on that organizing call on sunday night. >> we've got to ask ourselves, what could democrats be doing that they aren't doing? and how can we, all of us, how can we encourage them to take those actions? back? when lee and i were congressional staffers in 2009, democrats had a trifecta, and we were working to push a

universal health care bill through. and in response, senate republicans, who are led by mitch mcconnell, they circulated a memo that detailed all of the tactics available to the senate minority to slow down the operation of the senate and build opposition to the agenda. that's what they did. our roles are flipped now. we're in the minority, but our opposition is not yet unified. so here's my goal for senate dems. pretend like you're mitch mcconnell. ask what he would do. think about the tools you can use to block, obstruct, raise the temperature, deny, quorum block, unanimous consent, max out debate time, blanket opposition to nominees. some of these tools, i'll be honest. they're a pain in the butt to use. it forces a senator to stand for a long time. you got to call off your weekend plans. you got to off your colleagues. but the tools are there. they're there if you're determined enough to use them. >> that was on that indivisible call sunday night, with 50,000 people tuned in to that as an organizing meeting, 50,000 people tuned in while the grammys were on, and the grammys

were really good this year. people have in the in the two days since that meeting happened, people have been turning up at senate offices all over the country, people turning up in in ones and twos, in small groups, sometimes in large groups, to tell both republican senators and democrats senators to stop what trump is doing to show some spine. first of all, by voting no on the nomination of russell vote, who's the architect of project 2025? he's also the guy who's behind the day one halt to all government funding. they're prioritizing a no vote on his nomination, but they're also pressing democrats and republicans to say no to trump. here they are in in north carolina, outside one of thom tillis home state offices. you see the big vote no there, meaning no on russell. vote also on the right side of the screen there. send musk to mars. here they are at another office for senator tillis in north carolina. a bigger group goes all the way around the block. they're here's a little group,

just three people showing up to senator john fetterman's office in wilkes-barre to tell him to stand up and stop this stuff. they said when they weren't allowed to meet with anybody, they left a note explaining what their demands were as his constituents. i mean, even even when it's a smaller number of people making these visits to their offices, they're making contact there in some cases, frankly, producing intel on what senators might need an additional nudge here, for example, are some folks, some indivisible folks and other folks in washington state saying that they went to the offices of both senator patty murray and senator maria cantwell. they reported back from those meetings. quote, cantwell needs a lot more encouraging. okay. i mean, even when it's a hostile reception showing up in person, it makes an impact. here's some indivisible members and other folks outside the metairie, louisiana, office of senator bill cassidy. they said they were threatened with arrest if they didn't leave his office.

but they went. they showed up peacefully. he knows they were there. he knows what they were there for. they are his constituents in the house. democratic leader hakeem jeffries is telling all democratic members of congress to convene town halls and roundtables and meet with their home state constituents about what's going on, and do it now. the memo from hakeem jeffries to all democratic members of congress that went out last night, he's telling them, do it today, quote, or as soon as possible this week. he says, quote, we will track participation throughout the caucus, meaning you need to start having town halls with your constituents at home right now. we will hold you to it. in loudoun county, virginia, last night, congressman suhas subramanyam did just that. >> tonight, hundreds of people crowded into the loudoun county government building to ask questions and share their concerns. our drew wilder was there, as he explains the chaos

and disorganization of president trump's edicts are only amplifying workers fears. >> the room was at capacity beyond capacity. hundreds more listened from the lobby as democratic congressman suhas subramanian listened to concerns and answered questions from federal workers and federal government contractors who are living in fear and confusion. >> that was in loudoun county, virginia, last night. that congressman then ended up on the floor of the house today talking about what his constituents had told him, describing the actions of the trump administration thus far as illegal, unconstitutional and unconstitutional, and things that need to be stopped. expect to see democratic members of congress doing town halls like that, doing events like that in every congressional district they represent all over the country very soon. and if they're not, they'll apparently be hearing about it from hakeem jeffries, who's told them they must do it. they will likely be hearing from their constituents if they don't do it. public opinion is what democracy is all

about. and the things that trump is doing, broadly speaking, cut against public opinion. they also have the benefit of being very poorly conceived and poorly executed. i mean, just take this tariff humiliation of the past 48 hours. this was like his signature issue for the campaign. you thought you think he might have had some time to, like, think this through? no, apparently. and so it has been a humiliating 48 hours for president trump on this tariff issue. as soon as he announced these inexplicable tariffs on canada and mexico, the stock market fell through the floor. there was a widespread freakout on wall street, totally predictable. there was a widespread freakout in the press. lots of republicans and conservatives were among those freaked out. the wall street journal called it, quote, the dumbest trade war in history. yeah, everybody turns out, thought it was a bad idea, and it was going to be really expensive for us. and so trump climbed right down. within 24

hours, he had calls with canada and mexico, where canada and mexico reiterated that they would do things they had already offered to do. he got nothing new out of them. mexico, in addition, got trump to agree to do something for them. mexico got trump to agree to stop us guns flowing into mexico. so mexico ended up getting concessions from us. and there's no tariffs on mexico and there's no tariffs on canada. the whole thing evaporated because trump climbed right down except for the tariffs with china, where china retaliated against us with bigger tariffs than we put on them. and that's now the state of play. so now we have bigger tariffs on us from china that we have put on china. and now it would appear that trump can't get the chinese leadership on the phone. he was due to talk with xi jinping in china today. but that didn't happen. then they said no, maybe it's going to happen tomorrow. now they're saying we don't actually know

when that's going to happen, but never mind. we don't care if we don't talk while we're under larger tariffs from them than they are from us. great move. it is hapless and he is flailing and not for nothing. china can actually keep up those high tariffs on us as long as they want to. even if those tariffs do hurt their own economy and their own consumers, why can they keep that up indefinitely? because, oh yeah, they're a dictatorship. they don't have to care about their people or what their people think. they don't answer to their people. our government does have to answer to what people think. i mean, look, look at look at stopping foreign aid. that's one where they think they've got such a strong case and they've got such a good message. the american people, nobody cares about foreign aid. we can. absolutely. what did elon musk say? put that through the wood chipper and everybody will cheer. nobody will care. really? well, here are republican senators in good

standing. here's senator roger wicker, here's senator bill cassidy, here's senator jerry moran saying, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, wait a second. you can't stop all this foreign aid. that's american food aid that's going to rot in the ports, says jerry moran. that's that's an hiv treatment program that needs to be restarted immediately, says physician and louisiana republican senator bill cassidy. i mean, the pushback is real. it's emboldened in part by the stupidity and palpable incompetence of the administration that's trying to push everybody around. the pushback is real. it is emboldened, and it is coming from every direction. the protests we saw yesterday at the usaid building to stick up for usaid and foreign aid, that was a big deal, an impromptu demonstration that attracted tons of members of congress, tons of people, tons of media. there's going to be another

demonstration for that same cause tomorrow, again with members of congress. this time it's going to be 11:30 a.m. 11:30 a.m. at upper senate park, which is on constitution avenue in washington, d.c, standing up for usaid, standing up for foreign aid. there are some reports that we're going to see some level of protest at all 50 state capitals tomorrow. we'll see how that turns out. this was the us treasury building today. i told you yesterday there was going to be protests today at the us treasury building at 5:00 in washington, d.c. look at the people who turned out, look how big this was. this is formal federal workers. this is democratic officials. this is regular people turning up at the us treasury building today, telling elon musk and his little minions to get out of the treasury payment system, trying to stop this whole assault on the federal government. look at this today. what the trump administration is doing is unpopular and poorly thought out and poorly executed, and getting more so all the time. i mean, tonight trump i guess, is saying

he's going to send u.s. troops in to occupy the gaza strip to level it and depopulate it of its population. he says that's going to be a long term u.s. military operation. okay, sure. yeah. the american people definitely voted for sending troops into gaza. is that what this election was about? i think you've got a big trump mandate for that, corporal vance. you're going to suit back up for that. today. they sent out another, even more threatening letter to federal employees saying resign by midnight tomorrow. or else. i mean, their intent really does appear to be as radical and destructive as anything anyone imagined before they took office. what they are intending and trying to do, though, is unpopular. their execution is shambolic and often palpably dumb, and the opposition is now awake and increasingly emboldened. i told you it's on,

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sale and make your dream office a reality. >> we ought to be putting a hold on all nominees, and i am certain that we're going to stop as much as we can any of these nominees. we have a hold on all of them. we should continue that hold. i will put a hold on the department of justice nominees. necessary. >> do you? the nominees to hold our justice department. >> we have a hold on all nominees right now. >> democratic senator richard blumenthal today on capitol hill, telling reporters, essentially, that democrats are ready to make republicans work for it. senator blumenthal's office told us just this hour, democrats know they can't unilaterally stop trump's nominees from getting confirmed in the senate, but they do plan

to make republicans work as hard as possible for it. they can make republicans use up as much valuable floor time as possible on each and every nominee, and that's what they plan to do. slow the whole thing down as much as they are capable of. now, that is along the lines of the advice that's been coming from one of the driving forces behind some of the protests you've already seen this week, ezra levin of indivisible says democrats should look back to the republican playbook from 2009, just after barack obama was elected with a democratic trifecta when republicans were in the minority and democrats controlled the house and the senate and the white house. he says, think what you will about mitch mcconnell and the republicans plan. that was a very effective legislative tactic from a party that found itself in the minority. ezra levin, former congressional staffer, co-founder of the activist group indivisible. ezra, thanks very much for being here. i appreciate your time tonight. >> great to be here, rachel. >> so senate democrats are now talking about slowing down trump

nominations and senate action across the board. what are you. how does that sound to you? what are you watching for in their actions that you think might really make a difference? >> it sounds good, rachel and i will say, i think we are in a much better place right now with senate democratic leadership and the senate democratic caucus than we were a week ago. that said, today. today, 22 democrats voted for another trump secretary. 22 of them. so i like to hear from senator blumenthal. i like to hear from other senators that they are starting to agree to blanket opposition. i want to see the votes. i want to see the votes. and until we see those votes, i think what they're going to be hearing from their constituents is a demand that they fight back. >> ezra, i know you were at the protest at the treasury department that happened in washington, d.c. today. you talked about that. i watched the video of your call with indivisible activists on sunday night. and you talked about the fact that that protest was going

to happen tuesday at 5:00. tell me about what happened and what the aim was. >> well, let me tell you about ten minutes before that. >> sunday call, leah, my spouse and our co-founder of indivisible. she was texting with a lot of partners and said, hey, can we get this together? we ultimately got it together and were able to announce it on that call on sunday. no members of congress had agreed to it yet. we had gotten some pushback, but there is such palpable demand out there for leadership to fight back that once democratic leaders started hearing, oh my gosh, folks are going to be there outside of treasury, you know what they did? they started knocking down our door saying, can i speak, can i speak, can i speak? 31 members of congress got on up to that podium to talk about how much they're fighting back. and you know what? i view that as a huge success. i'm not in this game to just yell at dems and say, be better. i want to be cheering them on as a unified opposition. but what we've seen consistently is that what we

need to get these democrats in the senate to fully lead a unified opposition is they need to hear from their constituents back home. that's what we need. i think we can get there. i think we can get there because this is exactly what we went through back in 2017. it's not as if donald trump won in 2016, and suddenly the democratic party was the party of opposition. it took overwhelming pressure. it took the women's march, it took going to town halls in february of 2017. and then seeing with their own eyes, wow, there is demand for this. our constituents want this. that's when we got them to actually lead that opposition. i think we're on our way there. we're not there yet. >> hakeem jeffries, the democratic leader in the house, i was interested he put out last night. i think it was last night. might have been yesterday afternoon. a ten point plan for all democratic members of the house. and it had a lot of different things that they're going to try to do and ways they're going to brief each other and communicate on things. but the last thing was essentially, i command you as democratic leader of the house

to go to your home constituents, to hold town hall meetings and to hold other events with constituents and people who are in your district about what is going on right now, and i want you to do it, he said literally today. and if you cannot do it today, you need to do it this week. and we will be surveying every democratic member of the house to see whether or not they do this. now, as we have seen, democratic members, including in virginia last night, start to do these town halls. they're packed to the rafters. people are desperate to be able to hear from one another and also to be able to, in many cases, yell at their member to do more. but the energy palpably seems like it is there. ezra, if members of congress and senators are going to essentially follow their leadership's advice, hold these kind of events and hear from the people who voted them into office. >> i love this move. i love this move from leader jeffries. i think this is a very good move. what i would encourage every single democrat on the house side to do is use that convening power that you have. people are going to show up. if you build

it, people will come. if you are out in this country and worried about what's going on, you got to show up to these meetings. and one big benefit of jeffries calling for democrats to do this is, you know, who isn't holding public town halls to explain exactly what's going on in the treasury department, to explain exactly what was going on with the omb funding freeze that attacked meals on wheels and head start. you know who's not explaining that? republican members of congress, they're embarrassed by it. so what a great opportunity to create contrast with the republicans and say, look, we are here. we are listening to our constituents and what our role is. people around the country are worried, show up. show up not just by yourself, but get a group together, get indivisible members or working families, party members or move on members or whoever are your friends and family members and community. get them together and show up in person. that demonstrates to your elected officials that you actually care about this. >> yeah. and if, frankly, and if you live in a district where you've got a republican

representative or republican senator representing you, you should be demanding that they take town halls and asking them what's going on with this government that they're part of. it works whether you're in a blue state or a red state. blue district. red district. ezra levin, co-founder of indivisible. thank you very much. good to see you, ezra. we'll have you back here soon. >> great. good chatting. rachel. >> all right. one quick programing note. democratic leader hakeem jeffries, man of the hour. as we were just discussing there with ezra levin. he is going to be live with lawrence o'donnell on the last word tonight. you are not going to want to miss that. we'll be right back. >> you'll be back. emus can't help people customize and save with liberty mutual. >> and doug. >> well, i'll be. >> only pay. >> for what you need. >> liberty, liberty? liberty, liberty. >> skating for over 45 years has taken a toll on my body. i take kun all turmeric because it helps with healthy joints and inflammation support. why qanon? it has superior absorption

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provide basic legal information to immigrants about how the immigration system works. those nonprofits sued the trump administration after a white house order sent them, after the white house sent them a stop work order, those nonprofits sued the trump administration over that stop work order. and then two days after they sued, the trump administration caved and rescinded the stop work order and restored funding to those programs. funny how that works. earlier we showed you that protest outside the treasury department today, denouncing the takeover of that agency by by elon musk and his weird band of teenage underlings. there's also now a lawsuit on that score as well. federal employee unions

are suing the trump trump administration over what they claim is the treasury department illegally sharing americans private data with elon musk and his friends. we've also had two judges order a halt to the trump administration's freeze on all federal spending. one of those judges just issued the order again because she said it was not clear enough that the white house is actually following those orders and restarting the federal funding that they illegally stopped. politico reports today that despite the court orders, nonprofits and state agencies are still unable to access some federal funds from the epa. dozens of head start preschools say they're still locked out of their federal funding. they may need to close their doors if that does not get cleared up. also, just tonight, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the trump administration from transferring three transgender women into a men's prison and stopping their access to hormone therapy. this is something the trump administration was trying

to do under one of its several executive orders, singling out trans people for particularly cruel forms of persecution. but that prison one has been blocked by court order tonight. so that's sort of the track record of legal pushback so far. it is showing results. there, of course, are reasons to worry about how far it can go, how much the courts can be used as a mechanism to push back on what the trump administration is doing, particularly if they don't feel all that bothered about following court orders. but that track record, where it has been a source of pushback and that has had some results thus far, that is the context in which we've now got two big, important lawsuits brought against the trump administration in terms of their efforts to dismantle the fbi. this is a very live, very sensitive issue. tonight. we've got the latest on those lawsuits coming up here those lawsuits coming up here next. stay patients who have sensitive teeth but also want whiter teeth they have to make a choice one versus the other.

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termination. a not so implicit suggestion that all personnel who were involved in any of these cases might face termination because of it, even though there had been a little bit of noise that the trump appointed acting officials at the top of the fbi were somehow going to resist the this demand to hand over all this information. there were there was reporting that they were not happy with being asked to do this. today, we learned that the acting officials at the top of the fbi, they did hand over details on thousands of fbi employees who worked on these cases. so one of the two lawsuits that's now been filed is from nine fbi agents. it argues that the specific purpose of that survey, quote, is to identify agents and other fbi personnel to be terminated as a form of politically motivated retribution. that lawsuit asks a federal judge to stop the trump administration from compiling, effectively, a target list, a go get em list of fbi agents, which

they fear might be made public by the white house. they point to a social media post from the leader of the pro-trump paramilitary group, the proud boys, who was recently pardoned by trump and released from prison. he's now online urging retaliation against individual fbi agents by name. the second lawsuit is brought by seven fbi agents and the fbi agents association. it also asks the court for protection from the trump administration's, quote, anticipated retaliatory decision to expose their personal information for opprobrium and potential vigilante action by those who they were investigating. joining us now is one of the lawyers behind that second lawsuit, bradley moss. mr. moss, i really appreciate you taking time to be here. thank you. >> absolutely. good evening. rachel. >> what kind of relief are you looking for with this lawsuit? what do you want the court to do? >> sure. so at its core, this is a pretty simple, straightforward lawsuit. it's seeking to

maintain the privacy and the anonymity of these rank and file fbi officials. these are a number of individuals ranging from, you know, simple tech specialists, forensic examiners, even special agents who did their job. they were tasked with conducting an investigation into possible criminal actions by the former president. they did their investigation, and they turned the information over to the doj, which chose to then bring prosecutions. now they're being potentially retaliated against. their names are going to be publicly exposed in a way that's not standard for fbi practice and runs afoul not only of arguably constitutional provisions, but also the privacy act, which is federal law. and expose that to the public for one purpose and one purpose only, which is to let the proud boys, which is to let all these guys and gals who got prosecuted over the january 6th riots, let them know who these officials were and potentially put them in danger. that cannot stand.

that's what this lawsuit is seeking to prevent. >> we learned today that the fbi did hand over to the trump administration to trump's justice department, this list of thousands of employees who were involved in these cases, as you say, not just special agents, but also fbi personnel and analysts at all different levels of the bureau. we learned that the names, well, the information about employees was was handed over. specifically. their names were not directly included, although their employee numbers were handed over, which could be matched in government databases to produce their names. i wanted to ask whether that was a disappointing turn of events. did your clients hope the fbi leadership would somehow stand up more strongly against these requests, and actually refuse to hand over this data? >> well, certainly we didn't want them handing over anything. but what i will say for what fbi leadership did was they basically slow walked this. they're making the justice department, they're making the

white house do the work to actually match this up, to take these identifiers and match them to names. that's going to take time and is a question of obviously of how much time and effort both the justice department and the white house want to put into finding and matching up all these individuals. look, if the existing leadership at fbi had simply outright refused, had declined to provide anything, it's arguable they would have been purged and they would have kept purging people until they found someone, until they found their version of bork from the 70s to eventually just turn over the information. so what's happened has happened. it's right now. this is still not public information, and we're seeking to make sure it does not become public information. >> attorney bradley moss, representing fbi agents in this suit. thank you very much for helping us understand it, mr. moss. i appreciate it. moss. i appreciate it. >> have a good nigh tap into etsy for home and style staples to help you set any vibe. from custom lighting under 150 dollars to vintage jackets under 100.

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