if sparks are right for you at ronco sparks. >> good to be with you. >> i'm katie to a federal judge in boston. has put a temporary stop on president trump and elon musk's attempt to buy out the federal workforce, ruling that both the administration and the labor unions who brought the suit need more time to brief

their arguments, meaning that until next hearing, the next hearing, which is, by the way, scheduled for monday, all employees who may have taken the buyout must be told the offer is blocked until at least next week. there are still major questions, though, about what's going to happen after that. first and foremost, whether the offer is legal, but also, even if it is, whether the government has the money to fund the buyouts. after all, congress has not allocated any money for that purpose and there is still a looming fight over a shutdown. then there's the bigger question of what this will do to the functioning of the federal government, which, by the way, doesn't exist in washington, dc alone. in fact, most federal employees live outside of dc and its neighboring states of maryland and virginia. 147,000 live in california, 130,000 in texas. florida has 94,000, georgia, 80,000. pennsylvania

66,000. set aside defense and the postal service, both of which are exempt from this offer, and most of those employees work in health care, a lot of them in veterans health care. how many of them take the buyout and work in the private sector? what about high level tech workers who can surely make a lot more money elsewhere? or civil engineers or architects or biological experts, or quality control and safety inspectors or prosecutors or investigators? it's clear that donald trump and elon musk want to break the government, they say, to fix it. but what's not clear is if there's any actual plan to put it back together, and whether they have any clue about what exactly they're taking a hammer to. joining us now, msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubens, brookings institution senior fellow in governance study elaine kamarck. so happy to have her for this conversation, and

staff writer at the atlantic and author of the atlantic daily newsletter, tom nichols. lisa, i want to begin with you on the legality of this. you got this judge putting a hold on it so that the sides can brief their arguments. what legal footing does the trump administration have to try to offer this many 2 million employees a buyout? >> it's not really clear, katie. and i think one of the things that's even less clear now is when that offer, to the extent that it's legal, even expires, because in the wake of this judge's ruling, you have the white house press secretary now going out and saying that they are grateful to this judge in boston for extending the buyout offer. you'll recall that we have public reporting, including from our own nbc news, saying that they weren't going to extend the buyout offer, that the deadline was the deadline. but now, faced with this ruling from a federal judge essentially saying any implementation of the buyout plan, they are now embracing that and claiming that this gives more people an opportunity to take a buyout offer, the legality of which is in question to begin with.

>> i'm curious about what this is going to mean. i mean, the republicans have been arguing the federal government is bloated for years now, for decades. and there are probably a lot of people out there, elaine, who say, yes, the federal government has too many employees. the bureaucracy is too big. we could probably cut it down. but the way in which they're doing this by offering a buyout. are you going to get the people? you don't necessarily need to take the buyout. i mean, they're implying that everybody is just lazy. they don't want to go to work, and they're implying that all those folks are just going to want to take the buyout so they can stay at home and watch netflix. is that who's going to take that money? >> listen. >> nobody knows, okay? back in the. >> clinton. >> administration, we passed a buyout bill in 1994, and it said that the government could offer 25,000 up to $25,000 to have people leave, leave office. now, first of all, there is a legal another legal question other than the one i just mentioned, which is if you run through the

$25,000 in the first couple months of your buyout before september 30th, are you going to get all your money, or is the government going to say, oh no, sorry, $25,000 is the limit. so that's one problem. the second problem is this is being done in in a blunderbuss way, right? it's just being done sort of in a silly way because you don't know who's going to take it. what if 10%, 15% of the 14,000 air traffic controllers in the country took the buyout? we're in trouble. we don't have people to land planes. we don't have people to take off planes. suddenly you don't have landing slots at airports. travel slows down and everybody's mad at you. so doing this in this way has a lot of unintended consequences and a lot of blowback. >> i want to just focus on that. i mean, you're talking about air traffic controllers. that would be crucial. tom, what other

agencies would you be looking at? what other positions would you be looking at that that help make the government function and function well? >> this is part of the problem. >> i think. >> most people don't. >> understand exactly how the government. functions and that. >> even. >> you know. >> a person. >> who's a. gs9 or a gs. >> ten who. >> works in. >> administration helps to. >> keep the government running. >> every day. >> you know, support staff. >> everybody from. >> scientists to the. >> people that make. >> sure that the internal. >> mail gets delivered. these are large organizations. >> and there's. this goofy. >> notion that. >> somehow, again. >> as you said. >> people are just sitting. >> around, you. >> know. >> watching netflix and plodding around their homes. it's such a it's. >> such an inane. >> approach to reducing the federal workforce, which can be reduced. there are i'm a let me just say i am a former federal worker. i retired two years ago,

so i did my part. you're welcome america. but you know, that's not the way to do it. and the other the other unintended blowback here is that you might get people who were going to retire anyway, who are just taking this now as making their retirement that much more expensive to the government. if the government can actually do any of this or pull it off, i mean, then you're going to have situations and agencies where people have kind of retired in place and you can't replace them because you don't have hiring authority, because of course, that's the point of this, is to just empty out offices. but that takes a lot of power away from the agencies to talk about which, you know, which people they can live without. this could affect every agency from, you know, stuff that deals with nuclear weapons all the way down to, you know, whether your checks get delivered every month from the government. they've accepted. >> they've accepted defense. they say they're exempting folks who work on national security. i just looked up buyouts for air

traffic controllers because i wasn't sure if they were exempt. elaine and i got a note saying that they were initially offered buyouts, but then that was rescinded after the deadly plane crash. but just to keep going on that point, tom, on who exactly is going to take this? i want to talk about the people that aren't obviously workers in the national security apparatus. i mean, if you're not, like if you're not one of the obvious, i sit here and i monitor these direct phone lines and i'm, you know, i'm the one who has the monitor that says, like, you know, there could be a dirty bomb coming from this place or that place, whatever. if you're not one of those direct employees, how much of the apparatus is there to support those specific jobs? and are we really pti our national security, risk and security at risk by offering willy nilly buyouts to 2 million federal employees? >> well, you know, there are people who work in national security. i worked for the defense department. i was a professor for the navy. i could

retire and i wouldn't be missed. but you you don't want to keep pulling sticks out of this giant jenga pile to start trying to figure out where the one place is where things start to come unraveled and the whole thing falls down. so, you know, you can talk about exempting people at certain agencies or in certain positions. but i don't think that that's going to be very helpful. again, i think that, you know, people, the people at the top who would be told, look, you can't retire or you can't take this deal. you're, you know, you have a crucial job. they rely on support staff. they rely on on dozens, thousands, hundreds and thousands of people who do other jobs. and i think that's that's part of the problem is that, you know, just saying everybody can retire at will is i think can have unacceptable, excuse me, unexpected consequences. even if

you carve out those senior positions above them. but, you know, this is they want to reduce the federal workforce. this is one way to do it, i guess. >> lisa, talk about the what tom mentioned on the buyouts and the freeze and hiring. >> well, the intersection of these two things is what's so potentially dangerous, katie, because there's an executive order that president trump issued in his first week of office that freezes all federal hiring across a panoply of programs. it was so vast that even interns at the department of justice had their offers to become summer interns next summer rescinded. given that, and given how indiscriminate the federal buyout program is, given that we don't know where people are going to come from, that, in combination with the hiring freeze makes it impossible to for us to project exactly what the results are going to be. but if it does have an unprojected or even unwanted impact on a particular function of the government, that hiring freeze is a huge impediment to fixing any unexpected consequences.

>> it's so clunky it's not done with any precision. precision, elaine. and part of it is, you know, it's kind of like if you're going to do a takeover of a tech company, just fire as many people as like elon musk did with twitter. just fire everybody, see what stops working, and then i can rebuild that thing and make it work again. i'll know how many people i need and whether there was too many there in the first place. the federal government isn't like a tech company. it's much more complicated, much more convoluted. there are so many more things that are at risk. it's not just does twitter does the like button on twitter function or my direct messages protected, which, you know, we could be concerned about. but i mean, this is like, are you going to get your social security check? you know, are you going to be able to go to the dmv and get your license? is your passport going to get renewed? are the airport workers going to be there in customs and immigration? i mean, there's all sorts of things that go into the federal government that you don't. i think when you think of off the top of your head is it's a bunch of bureaucrats, paper

pushers who walk into an office every day and just, you know, are checking boxes. there's probably some of those folks that that are probably not necessary to the federal government, but there's so much more going on there. if you were going to do this surgically and effectively, how would you go about it? >> well, i'd copy the way we did it in 1993 through 2000in the clinton administration. we had teams that looked at every single agency. we looked at what was going well, what was going badly. we offered buyouts to people who we didn't think were necessary anymore, who were in middle management jobs, that really the internet and computerization had made obsolete. we took a targeted approach, agency by agency, function by function, so that you didn't have people who are 67 and trying to apply for social security. you didn't have them waiting on the telephone for five hours before somebody could talk to them. so again, i would do an agency by agency approach. and you look at your

goals before you offer the buyouts and before you go into any reform or downsizing. >> i mean, that seems straightforward. and if you really did want to shrink the federal government, you wanted to save the federal government money, that would you'd go about it some something like that. it would be a version of that. tom. so i guess the other question that arises is, are they intending to put it back together? was it intentionally clunky, intentionally going to leave the federal government? not functional? >> the goal of all this is to break the government and make sure that it doesn't work, and that when people are finally replaced, they're replaced with loyalists. this is just a spoil system in in effect, this isn't about the effective administration of the government of the united states. this is about a kind of diffuse contempt for anyone working in public

service. and this notion that, you know, most people who work for the government don't do anything useful. they can all be dispensed with, which is what people always think, because when they don't understand how their own government works, that's a very common problem. and then to make sure that whoever is left is either too scared or so loyal that they'll do whatever they're told to do. so in a way, you know, this is very much this is kind of the way authoritarian governments, you know, sort of offer quick amnesties to get rid of everybody. right? they just say, all right, you can leave the country or you don't, you know, you can just go away. it's kind of the same thing here. everybody who's unhappy just get out. because then the only people that are going to be left are the people who have to be there, or the people who really want to be there and will do whatever donald trump tells them to do. so there's a political project underneath this that's that's really, i think, pretty, pretty dangerous. it's not just that the government won't function well, it's that when the people that are left there, they will see their function

either as being very quiet and cautious or doing exactly what they're told from the top, which is not the role of a civil servant. >> the thing that i keep wondering about, and that that gives me pause, is you're going to start missing stuff. yeah. there's the social security checks that we mentioned a moment ago, but there's also like we're there's a very big, complicated world out there. and there are a lot of people that that seek to do a lot of damage to this country and in many different ways. and if you're going to go back to the clinton administration, there's an argument that the clinton administration was too distracted ahead of the attack on nine over 11 ahead of osama bin laden. i'm not saying that it was a parallel in any way, that they were too focused on trying to deal with, you know, trying to shrink the government. but when you are distracted with something else, things fall through the cracks. and, elaine, when we're talking about just gutting the federal government, taking a hammer to it, seeing what happens, it feels to me like a you're putting you're putting the country in a pretty vulnerable position, especially when you add on top of the not

just the buyouts of the federal workforce, but the pushing out of fbi employees, the firing of prosecutors. the buyout was offered, by the way, to the cia. i mean, it's not just civil servants, it's folks who are who are focused on keeping the country safe. >> well, and the big the big difference between the private sector and the public sector is people can live without twitter. i know some people may think that's, you know, impossible. please. >> can we get rid of it forever? >> yes we can. we can live without it. you. if you don't have people investigating, say, food outbreaks and trying to figure out where the poison is coming from, how it got into the food chain. et cetera. people get sick and they die. okay? there are consequences to federal government action that are really quite serious. and it's not akin to changing from classic coke to new coke, which some of you may remember they tried to do some years ago and

it fell flat on its face. so when there's a flop in the business section, mostly investors lose money, people lose money. okay, flop in the government section, people die. >> such a good point. it's not not classic coke. coke versus new coke. i love that elaine kamarck, thank you very much, john nichols, lisa rubin, appreciate you guys starting us off. still ahead, pam bondi's first day as ag was a big one. from launching immigration lawsuits to investigating the trump investigators, what she has already done to remake the doj. day one and what prime minister benjamin netanyahu is doing on capitol hill. a day after praising president trump's, quote, remarkable idea on gaza. plus, what the first woman to lead a branch of the military is saying after being evicted from her home by the trump administration with just three hours notice. we're back three hours notice. we're back in 90s. my moderate to severe crohn's disease...

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relief. work, play. blink relief. relief. >> the only here's to getting better with age. here's to beating these two every thursday. help fuel today with boost high protein, complete nutrition you need, and the flavor you love. so, here's to now... now available: boost max! bit of extra pep in his step because despite the efforts of the trump administration officials who are trying to walk back or reframe the president's proposal for a u.s. takeover of gaza. the president himself has been pretty clear about what he wants. posting this on social media overnight, saying gaza would be turned over to the u.s. after the fighting stops, gazans

would be moved out and teams working with the u.s. would construct, in his words, the greatest and most spectacular development on earth, something the speaker of the house says he is interested in. >> we're trying to get the details of it, but i think this is a good development. we have to back israel 100%. and so whatever form that takes, we're interested in having that discussion. but it's it was a surprising development, but i think it's one that we'll applaud. >> so would you. >> joining us now, nbc news chief capitol hill correspondent ryan nobles and the atlantic contributing writer, contributing writer yair rosenberg. all right, ryan, he's waiting for the details. is he expecting a powerpoint? >> yeah. you know, i think, you know, there's only just a matter of time between donald trump proposing something and then someone like mike johnson coming in and saying that he supports it on some level. what was interesting about the speaker yesterday was i specifically asked him, you know, is this an america first proposal to suggest that the united states

was going to go into a war torn region with american troops and then reclaim a piece of land, especially given the fact that donald trump has been so critical of previous efforts by the united states federal government to take this sort of action. and his response was, well, it's just an idea. we need more details. but then he also said he was impressed that the president was decisive and bold. i mean, it seems pretty clear that lawmakers here on capitol hill were caught off guard by this proposal to reshape gaza and donald trump's image. but at the same time, they don't want to step away from donald trump. they know that even a slight criticism of the president could lead to political consequences for them down the road. but up here on capitol hill today, you have the prime minister, benjamin netanyahu. i think it's safe to say he's had somewhat of a lukewarm reception to donald trump's proposal to move the united states into an interest into gaza, and even specifically said today, when asked by reporters if he thought u.s. troops in the region was a smart

idea and said that he had no expectation for that and wasn't looking for it. so congress has a very delicate balance here in terms of how they approach this. republicans specifically want to show support for israel. they want to show support for netanyahu specifically. but at the same time, they don't want to cross donald trump. and so there's no doubt a delicate balancing act here, katie. >> all right. let's talk about what donald trump has been able to do, shifting the conversation. at the very least, there has been a conversation over decades now that the only solution is a two state solution and that it can it can be achieved as long as there are willing partners in the negotiation. it has failed multiple times. the two sides have never been farther apart than they maybe are right now. and while donald trump's idea that's been offered is getting panned, very rightly so for the idea that they're just going to move gazans off their own land. the conversation has changed. you write about this. >> yeah. >> so what trump. >> has always been very good at

doing is. >> identifying pieces of the expert. >> consensus that haven't. been working and. >> saying, hey everyone, the emperor has no clothes. >> we keep. >> doing these same things over and over again, whether it's, you. >> know. >> hollowing out our industrial base in america and then, you know, not dealing with the consequences and saying it's all going to work out in the economy or looking geopolitically and saying, we keep doing the same thing in the israeli-palestinian conflict and not getting anything better. in fact, it's gotten worse. yeah. then he proposes something like a half baked pseudo solution, which people rightly then deconstruct and say, this is a terrible idea. it's not going to solve the problem. makes no sense. but he has he has identified something that obviously isn't working and that does need something else. >> so i wonder, does this spur? does the virtue of him being so extreme on this? does it spur some other governments in the region to come out and say, all right, we're going to get involved in a way that they maybe haven't wanted to be involved in the past? >> i think that's a good way to put it, which is to say that this is a trump throws out proposals, and then they go through a whole workshop where lots of people give him feedback

and input, and then he starts, you know, shifting and changing. and people will call it a negotiating tactic. that gives it a lot of conscious credit. it's more like a stream of consciousness thing. and then other people come and they help, you know, shift his thinking by making clear what their needs are. he's going to be meeting with leaders from other middle eastern countries, not just netanyahu in the near future, from egypt, from jordan. all of these people are going to be quite clear to him what their redlines are. and by the end of that process, we might find, okay, something here has shifted, but it won't look like what he started out with. >> i mean, egypt and jordan have both said that they're not going to take palestinians. they don't want to take large numbers of palestinian refugees, essentially, that that has never been part of their plan, especially in jordan, which already has a great number of them. they would feel like it would be destabilizing for jordan. so is there this idea of just voluntarily having people leave if they even want to leave, which is a pretty big if for a lot of palestinians. yeah. where is the where is the room to negotiate on that? where is the room for a solution.

>> so trump has waffled. he said, oh, i want them all to leave permanently. and then he says, well, actually no, it will be temporarily and then they will come back. it's easier for us to. >> reason to believe it wouldn't be temporary. >> there, given palestinian history and also just the fact that palestinians themselves might say not a certain percentage, like we've had a terrible life here. we'd like to live somewhere else and stay. it's not clear whether there is a better version of this, but there is a possibility not in jordan or egypt, but in other countries saying that we will, you know, house some palestinians, but with guarantees that they can go back. you could do gaza piece by piece and rebuild it and bring people back. the issue is that would then become probably a difficult conversation with israel's far right coalition. >> so what. >> israel. >> i mean, donald trump talks about how israel is going to hand over gaza after the fighting is over. is israel would they want to hand over gaza to the united states? >> it's a great question. israel and netanyahu's phrases israel will always defend itself by itself. the ethos of israel is that, you know, this is a persecuted people that now stands up for itself, fights its

own wars. it does rely on diplomatic and a lot of other support from the united states, but it's always its own soldiers. this would put us soldiers in the way it would diminish israel's security capacity, and would also mean that us soldiers might die for israel, which is not something israel wants. >> all right. yeah. rosenberg. thank you very much for joining us. always really good to have you. still ahead, what was behind the decision to evict a four star admiral and former coast guard commandant with just three hours notice? and it was a busy first day for a newly minted ag pam bondi, what directives she's issued so far to reverse several core justice to reverse several core justice department principles. with fatigue and light-headedness, i knew something was wrong. then i saw my doctor and found out i have afib, and that means there's about a 5 times greater risk of stroke. symptoms like irregular heartbeat, heart racing, chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, or light-headedness, can come and go. but if you have afib, the risk of stroke is always there.

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independently. >> the number one job is to enforce. >> the law. fairly and even. >> handedly. >> despite telling senators that politics will not play a part in the way her department enforces the law, newly minted attorney general pam bondi issued 14 different directives within hours of being sworn in. that seem awfully political. each order redirected the justice department's significant law enforcement authority toward addressing president donald trump's grievances within the agency, and refocusing efforts on his political agenda. joining us now, nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken dilanian, and national law and intelligence correspondent tom winter. 14 different directives. what stood out to you, tom? i mean, to you, ken. >> well. >> look, there were some that were expected, like katie, like restoring the federal death penalty and targeting sanctuary cities. and this weaponization task force, which is designed to investigate those who

investigated donald trump. but the one that surprised me and stood out to me and i thought was really notable, was that she disbanded the fbi's foreign influence task force and related justice department programs, and she also announced that the doj or she ordered the doj to change the way it enforces the foreign agents registration act, that the lobbying, the foreign lobbying law to do fewer criminal cases, essentially. and so. taken together, that that is an effort to essentially halt a years long project at the justice department and the fbi to tackle the problem of foreign malign influence. it actually started in the trump administration. christopher wray launched this thing in 2017. rod rosenstein gave a speech highlighting it in 2018 and said, the american public deserves to know when foreign governments are trying to manipulate public opinion through secret propaganda. but there were some prosecutions that really angered donald trump and his supporters, including of mike flynn and paul manafort, under the terror statutes. and there were some complaints that the foreign influence task force was going to social media

companies and flagging disinformation, some of which was right wing propaganda. and so conservatives didn't like that. and so here we are with this situation where they're essentially doing away with this stuff. katie. >> farah farah is complicated or it's not complicated. it, it it's not political. i mean, it caught up a lot of democrats as well. sure. bob menendez just got convicted and sentenced quite a long prison term. if you roll back these sorts of things, are you basically saying, yeah, the folks that work within the federal government are elected officials. they are for sale. >> right. >> so the main. >> thing when we when we look at justice department cases, the big cases, the things that really get people's attention, it often centers around money. we're going to exclude terrorism for this conversation. for now, when you talk about money, you're talking about whether it's russian oligarchs that are being investigated, whether it's senator bob menendez is his own attorney, referred to him as

gold bars. bob, when you talk about the types of people that ken, we're talking about, people that are in private business that are getting money from other countries. that's really the root of all of these cases. so there's a bit of a dispute in law enforcement circles today about whether or not the memos that were sent yesterday, by now, attorney general pam bondi, whether or not those would clip the prosecutions into manafort or into bob menendez and michael flynn. some people believe that it might. some people believe that it wouldn't. but either way, some of the stuff was pretty well directed at some of the things that we've been talking about, frankly, for the past eight years. number one, the easy headline operation klepto capture is to be disbanded. that's a direct quote from the mandate from the from the memo that had focused on the oligarchs, many of whom we've been talking about for the past ten years, the models, bottles and yachts portion of that program had long since gone away, and they were starting to really focus on the money facilitators. these are the people that make the payments to pay for that condo, or for that yacht to shield the type of

payments that that are affected there. and so that's something that is now going to go away. those cases will remain. they're open. they're being prosecuted actively. so there's not a concern about that. but clearly the attention on russian oligarchs stops. so that's something that's there. but it does shift a little bit because those resources will now be focused on other areas, including drug cartel organizations, the transnational crime that supports them, as well as those that are supporting hamas through their funding as well. >> ken, i want to bring this back to the beginning of the show where we were talking about just the sledgehammer that that this administration has taken to the federal government. if you couple what we're seeing at doj with stages, farah and also with the pushing out or the targeting of senior prosecutors, senior officials of the doj or anybody that might have had anything to do with the january 6th prosecution or investigation, what is that doing? not just to department morale, but department effectiveness? >> oh, this is there is talk

around here, katie, that donald trump is fundamentally changing the way the justice department has run since watergate and compromising the independence of the justice department and the fbi. what fbi agent or justice department prosecutor is going to be willing now to take on a public corruption case involving a trump administration appointee or a trump ally, knowing that this administration will take retribution? look, they got elected to make change. and it's one thing to come in and try to disrupt departments and even fire senior executives. but when you start directing this campaign against your obvious enemies, people that investigated you, people that prosecuted you for doing nothing other than following lawful orders and acting ethically within their agency, it becomes pretty obvious what's going on, and it's really sent a chilling message throughout the law enforcement, the federal. >> law enforcement. >> message to anybody who might be close with trump, tom, that you can do whatever you want or you can, if not whatever you want, you could do quite a bit. >> well, it lays out some boundaries as far as things that

we're not going to be focusing on, we not being us, but the justice department, things that we're not going to be focusing on so much anymore, which might give people a little bit of a path as to if they're not focused on this, they might be focused on other areas. what can i get away with? and i think that's going to be. >> a question. >> i asked one too many questions in my ep in my ear said, gotta go. that's why you saw me make that face. all right. tom winter, ken dilanian a gentlemen, thank you very much. we got to stick to time. all right. what's behind the big bump we're likely to see in jobs numbers tomorrow? and why the new administration can't exactly take credit. also, first, she lost her post. now a four star admiral and the first woman to lead a branch of the military has been forced to abruptly. and we do mean abruptly leave her home. we'll explain what home. we'll explain what happened. [♪♪] are you one of the millions of americans who suffer from an upset stomach after a big meal? try pepto bismol. unlike some products, pepto coats and soothes your digestive system, to provide fast 5-symptom relief. stock up on pepto today.

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and they're sensations too. get started today at sitter city. >> on day two of his administration, donald trump fired the four star admiral, leading the coast guard, claiming she had a, quote, excessive focus on diversity. two weeks later, this past tuesday, he abruptly evicted her from her home, giving admiral linda fagan just three hours to pack up and move out, according to reporting from nbc news. joining us now, nbc news correspondent covering national security and the military, courtney kube. this is your reporting, courtney. what happened? >> yeah. with with our colleague john allen. of course. so you you have it, right, katie. the way we were told is that the commandant of the u.s. coast guard, the first woman ever to

lead a military service branch. she was fired on day two of president trump's administration. so on, just over two weeks ago, she was the first flag officer fired under donald trump. well, fast forward two weeks. yesterday, she was told just about 2 p.m. eastern time that she had to vacate the commandant's quarters on joint base anacostia-bolling, the base right near us here in d.c. she had to vacate her quarters in three hours. not even enough time, katie, to get most of her personal effects out. now, it's not clear exactly why this order was given. we are still digging into that, frankly. but the reality is, we've spoken to a number of people who are very familiar with the process of senior officers leaving houses, base housing, military housing after they leave a job. and this is extremely uncommon. so we're still digging into the cause, as i said. but the reality is, admiral fagan, she was given a waiver of 60 days by the coast

guard to stay in the house. so viewers may say, well, she was fired two weeks ago. why wasn't she packing up? that's why she was told that she had up to 60 days to find her next place, and then the military would be responsible for moving her things. katie. so i have to say, this is this is not very common. it's not something we're used to seeing. and i've watched a lot of general and flag officers transition out of houses and out of jobs. >> it's not common. it seems kind of mean and unnecessary. we keep talking about the admiral as the first woman was. what is that a part of? this? is it is it clear that donald trump fired her for. do we know why he fired her? he says yeah. an excessive focus on diversity. what does that mean? >> yeah. so that that's an excellent question. the official reason, when she was fired again on day two of the trump administration, was that, as you said, she had an excessive focus on diversity. and then officials started to say, well, she's coast guard. and because she was

focused too much on these social issues, she wasn't focused enough on defense of the homeland, on homeland security. so that was the official reason. but the reality is, when you look at the facts, it's not readily, easily easy to back up that claim. so again, a lot of people have been telling us that this looks personal. the actions yesterday of telling her to get out of her house and out of the commandant's quarters again, this is the house that the commandant of the coast guard generally occupies in that position. to get out of that in three hours seemed very personal. katie. >> yeah. courtney. well said. thank you very much. coming up next, what's happening with the job market that might make the numbers released tomorrow look a lot better than. than not than they are, but make them look a lot better. let's let's get the lot better. let's let's get the reporting after the break. the freestyle libre 3 plus sensor tracks your glucose in real time, and over time it can help lower your a1c. ♪♪

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department of labor will release the first jobs report of the year. and because of an update to u.s. population estimates from the census, it's going to look like millions of jobs have been added to the economy. joining us now, cnbc senior economics reporter steve liesman explain it. >> well. >> it's a complicated. >> story. >> but. basically the. the census has missed the huge surge of immigrants into the country, and they've been working over several months to count them over the course of a three year period from like 21 to 24. and what they have now estimated is there were some 3.5 million additional people in this country, of which it's estimated some 2.3 million were working. so this will be tomorrow the largest upward revision to what is called the household survey. now, just to be clear, the household survey gives us the unemployment rate. it gives us

different ethnic data by race and gender, whereas the one that's really followed by wall street is the payroll survey. this one has been pretty good and showed pretty strong job growth all along. the separate household survey was weak and people would say, you know what, maybe the economy is weak because that's what the household survey shows. well, there'll be some downward adjustment to the payroll survey, but a big upward adjustment to the household survey showing that we indeed did have strong job growth over the past several years. we just did not really do a good job of counting the immigrants. >> all right. so keep that in mind when those numbers come out. can i ask you a broader question on how the economy is doing right now and where inflation is? there's the egg price issue is a big one. do you have a good sense of a diagnostic on the economy at this early date? >> well, as best as anybody can i'll give it a shot. we're doing pretty well. the, the gdp numbers have been very strong,

stronger than what we call the potential of the economy. the productivity numbers have been pretty strong. we've had a growth in efficiency, some of this coming out of the pandemic and businesses finding new ways to do to do things more productively. we've had very strong job growth. the one achilles heel of this economy has been inflation. and there's two ways to think about this. the first thing is prices rose and remained high. but the increase of prices, that's the inflation rate that has been coming down. it's come down to about call it two and a half, 3% where the federal reserve is aiming for 2%. so we're still a bit above the rate of inflation that the federal reserve wants, they think is the normal rate of inflation. but it's come way down. that has not helped bring down the price level. eggs are a separate thing. eggs have to do with bird flu, the killing of massive numbers of chickens. to avoid that, that price is running on its own, and it's not strictly related to what's happening in the broader economy, which is doing pretty

good. >> all right, steve liesman, thank you so much for joining us today. appreciate it. and before we go. nbc news obtained a letter that is being circulated around the fbi by one of its agents. this was obtained by ken dilanian, my colleague. the letter in to help people understand who the trump administration is targeting and what those agents do to keep all of us safe. i'm going to read it in full to you, because it's pretty powerful. for those seeking to raise their awareness, i offer this vignette. the letter reads. free of political bias or moral judgment is not. it is not about any one person, but an amalgamation of multiple fbi special agents. i am the coach of your child's soccer team. i sit next to you on occasion in religious devotion. i am a member of the pta with friends. you celebrated my birthday. i collected your mail and took out your trash while you were away from home. i played a round of golf with you. i am a veteran. i am the average neighbor in your

community. this is who you see and know. however, there is a part of my life that is a mystery to you and prompts a natural curiosity about my profession. this is the quiet side of me that you do not know. i orchestrated a clandestine operation to secure the release of an allied soldier held captive by the taliban. i prevented an isis terrorist from boarding a commercial aircraft. i spent three months listening to phone intercepts in real time to gather evidence needed to dismantle a violent drug gang. i recruited a sourceo provide critical intelligence on russian military activities in africa. i rescued a citizen being tortured to near death by members of an outlaw motorcycle gang. i interceded and stopped a juvenile planning to conduct a school shooting. i spent multiple years monitoring the activities of deep cover, foreign intelligence officers,

leading to their arrest and deportation. i endured extensive hardship to infiltrate a global trafficking organization. i have been shot in the line of duty. something else about me. i was assigned to investigate a potential crime. like all previous cases, i have investigated, this one met every legal standard of predication and procedure without bias. i upheld my oath to this country and the constitution and collected the facts. i collected the facts in a manner to neither prove innocence nor guilt, but to arrive at a resolution. i'm now sitting in my home, listening to my children play and laugh in the backyard, oblivious to the prospect that their father may be fired in a few days, fired for conducting a legally authorized investigation, fired for doing the job that he was hired to do. i have to wonder when i'm gone, who will do the quiet work that

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