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insurance when you need it. with abacus. >> very good day to all of you from msnbc world headquarters here in new york. welcome everyone to alex witt reports new today. president trump firing joint chiefs of staff chairman cq brown jr. the country's highest ranking military officer. the president writing on truth social i want to thank general charles cq brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. he is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and i wish a great future for him and his family. trump announced his nomination of air force lieutenant general dan kaine to replace brown. and democrats today accusing the president of firing brown and other top military leaders who don't agree with his politics. >> there's never been a president in history who has tried to politicize the military

like this. and, of course, the great irony is that he says he's not politicizing the military. he says he's depoliticizing the military. that's what hegseth wrote about in his book. ali, this is the definition of politicizing our military. and that's dangerous not only for our national security, but for the fundamental tenets of our democracy. >> and the pentagon also announcing it will fire more than 5000 civilian probationary workers at the defense department that starts next week as part of an effort to slash the government's biggest agency as much as 8%. also new today ranking member of the budget committee sounding the alarm on the latest sweeping budget proposal by republicans and dramatic cuts to key programs. >> what i'm saying $880 billion to medicaid, hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts to the affordable care act cuts as you laid out to food stamps. that's actually the bare minimum they have to. on top of that, now find $500 billion worth of

additional cuts to those programs. so again, all told, we were talking about what would be the biggest cuts to medicaid and other programs in american history. >> a newly sworn in fbi director, kash patel, is moving to send 1000 agents from washington to field offices across the country. in keeping with his plan to reduce the size of the bureau's footprint in the nation's capital. we have got reporters and analysts in place covering all these new developing storylines. we're going to begin with nbc's yamiche alcindor at the white house, with more on the very latest round of federal layoffs. yamiche. >> good afternoon. alex. these cuts are affecting nearly every federal agency so far, with dueling court rulings on what the president can actually do. but it's the cuts to the military that are raising eyebrows. sweeping changes at the pentagon. president trump firing the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the country's highest ranking military officer, air force general charles brown junior, only the

second black general to serve as chairman, was serving a four year term that was set to expire in 2027. for months, trump and his allies have vowed to immediately fire military leaders they deem to focus on diversity initiatives, often referring to brown specifically. >> you got to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs, any general that was involved, general admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the die woke has got to go. >> several other high ranking defense department officials are also being fired. the pentagon announcing it expects to terminate 5400 employees beginning next week. meanwhile, courts offering roadblocks and pathways to president trump's plan to enact other sweeping government changes. one federal judge blocking some of trump's executive orders to end federal support of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. another paving the way for him to gut usaid workforce. the president friday defending the downsizing. >> won't affect many people. it will only affect the people that get caught stealing. >> many of those fires include veterans, and the white house

has not provided any evidence of stealing. and at the internal revenue service, at least 3500 workers are expected to be laid off. trump also saying his administration may merge the u.s. postal service and the commerce department. >> i think it will operate a lot better than it has been over the years. >> trump also reassigning the acting director of immigration and customs enforcement. the move comes after a source familiar with trump's thinking said the president was getting angry that more people are not being deported. meanwhile, friday, trump got into a heated exchange at the white house with maine's democratic governor, janet mills, over her state's refusal to comply with the president's executive order seeking to ban transgender women from women's sports. >> you better comply, because otherwise you're not getting any any federal funding. every state. good. i'll see you in court. i look forward to that. that should be a real easy one for me. and enjoy your life after governor, because i don't think you'll be in elected politics. >> today, president trump is spending his first weekend in

washington, d.c. since being reelected. he is set to speak at cpac, the conservative conference, and meet on the sidelines of that gathering with the presidents of poland and argentina. alex. >> okay. big reporting there. thank you so much, yamiche, for that. let's go now to nbc's vaughn hillyard. he is a national harbor, maryland. that is where the president will speak at the conservative conference coming up. so, vaughn, what can we expect to hear about an hour or so from now? >> right. about an hour. >> or so from now is when president trump will take the stage. notably, he is going to be with president duda of poland backstage prior to his remarks, of course, due to has been seen by president trump as an ally, somebody who visited him before the election at trump tower. yet at the same time, due to, of course, from neighboring ukraine, has been a staunch defender of president zelensky, who came under fire from president trump here in these last days. and so i think internationally, we'll be looking at high stakes meeting

here, taking place this afternoon before he addresses the adoring crowd of conservative activists of thousands that are here in attendance. and i want to let you listen to one of the speakers ahead of president trump here, his own deputy chief of staff, stephen miller, will talking about the restructuring of the american government over the course of the last month and the message to civil servants and career employees who are still employed by the federal government, not among those who have been either placed on administrative leave or terminated as to their roles in this administration and the executive branch going forward. take a listen. >> any federal bureaucrat who defies the lawful orders of this president will be fired. whether you work at the department of homeland security, the department of justice, the department of health and human services, career civil servants, also known as bureaucrats, work for the american people, and

they work for the president. the american people elected. >> that shutting down the government is a political loser, that we have to go along with the democrats. >> and as we saw on social media this morning, it was president trump that directed elon musk to be even more aggressive, to which musk responded, i will, mr. president. and so while we have watched a restructuring of the federal government and calls to go even further, of course overseas in terms of the us foreign relations you're looking at individuals like president of argentina as well as prime minister meloni, who i'm told from italy will be transmitting a video in just prior to president trump's own remarks here inside of this ballroom outside of washington, dc. so there is a very much a rejiggering of the us's role abroad. and this is, i think, a cpac in so many ways. it's very representative of not only a changed republican party, but a change american posture

domestically and internationally. >> yeah, it has been something that's been quite apparent ever since the munich security conference. so thank you for that update and we will see you again, vaughn. let's bring in peter baker, msnbc political analyst, chief white house correspondent for the new york times and coauthor of the divider trump in the white house, 2017 to 2021. i don't know, peter. you may have to write a second book, given that there's a second term here. but my friend elon musk with the chainsaw. i mean, that appears to be kind of the star image. he the star of this year's cpac. stephen bannon also delivered some remarks, and he's been very critical of musk. but today trump posted on truth social he doesn't think musk is being aggressive enough. how do you assess all of this? oh, peter, turn on your microphone. >> sorry. >> sorry about that. yes. no worries. go ahead. >> look, you know. >> chainsaw tells you everything you need to know. what they want to do is send the image of, you

know, a person whacking away at the federal bureaucracy. they love the image of a sort of wrestling federation style approach to government. now, this is not a serious approach to figuring out how to balance a budget that's way out of whack, which is a serious issue for the country. chainsaws are not actually they're good visuals, but they actually have nothing to do with the way government works. and instead what they're doing is, you know, going through agencies and kind of almost at random, it seems like, you know, paring the workforce here or there, none of which is actually going to be meaningful in terms of bringing the budget to balance, because the things that really drive the deficit right now are not whether you have, you know, x thousand number of employees at this agency or that agency, those are important but relatively small in the scheme of things. what matters are the big ticket items, things like medicare, social security, medicaid, defense spending, payments on interest, on the debt. those are the big ticket items. and if you don't find ways of addressing them, you're never going to actually balance the budget. you can close the entire federal government in terms of all these departments he's looking at and

still not balance the budget. >> and he is facing. i'm talking about musk here, lots of criticism for his efforts to slim down the federal workforce. the firings have been described as chaotic and disorganized. thus the chainsaw, often with workers fired, and then they're told, oops, we want to rehire you again. how long can dodge apply this tech world mantra of move fast and break things? in its approach to government agencies? >> well, it does seem to be that many people stopping him at the moment. you know, the president seems to like it. you remember, you know, this sort of chaos is, you know, part of his political shtick. so he doesn't mind the fact that people's lives are being upended one way or the other. it doesn't seem to bother him. obviously, congress isn't going to stay, isn't going to make an issue out of this. it seems like so far, thin republican majorities, some of the courts are making different decisions depending on which agency and which order we're talking about. we'll see how that plays out. but for the moment, they see this as a political win. you know, whether

or not it actually, you know, they got science research in this country, whether they got, you know, nuclear security, whether they got bird flu prevention, all these issues that they have seemingly gone after without really providing much of an explanation. it doesn't really seem to be daunting to trump or musk. >> hey, peter, do we have any idea who these doj's employees even are? i mean, the ones who are going to federal agencies assessing where to cut the budget, who vetted and hired them? do they have government employee id ids? who's paying them? is it the taxpayers? >> yeah, they've been brought on to the federal workforce in some fashion or another. i think musk himself is termed a special government employee. so they're allowed to, you know, bring people in on this kind of a format. they are generally, as we have discovered, young people in their early 20s, one as young as 19, who don't have a lot of experience, obviously, in anything, but particularly in government. and so they go into these agencies and they take

this, as you say, the tech world, you know, view of things. and they they see a piece of information and they extrapolate great things from that. this must mean x, y or z without doing the deep diligence of research to figure out what they're actually talking about. and they bring it to musk's attention. they bring it to the president's attention, and they go out and they make all these sort of false claims. they claim, for instance, based on a misreading of data, that they were sending $50 million worth of condoms to hamas. that's obviously not true, but they continue to say it even after it was reported that it was not true. so trump i mean, musk has said, look, i'm going to make mistakes. that's true. he has. and i think the question is whether or not, you know, those mistakes have costs down the road. >> so this week some lawmakers and that includes republicans, heard some pretty harsh words at the town halls that they were holding in their districts. let's take a listen to some of this. not the president. >> and you are doing us a disservice to set that down and

not stand up for us and you. >> know, when i say effective, it may be for the best. as hard as it is, as hard as it may be for. >> a lot of what happened was in republican leaning districts. is this a growing sentiment among republicans? >> well, they're afraid that it is, no question about it. for a lot of people who've been in washington for a while, it brought back pretty haunting memories from 2009, when president obama was trying to sell his affordable care act, and there was a big backlash among a lot of voters, particularly on the on the political right at town halls that summer. that really freaked out a lot of democrats and republicans and had a real impact on how that program was eventually formulated and passed. so there's a fear that this is the beginning of something bigger, but we don't know that it will be. obviously, a town hall or two can get out of control. or or be pretty vocal. it doesn't necessarily mean that there's a popular backlash to some of the things

that trump and musk are doing. the polls show some of that. the polls show that there is certainly a fair number of americans who are troubled by what's happening. trump's approval rating in the last poll i saw was around 45%, which is pretty much where it was through much of his first term. so at the moment he's holding, you know, in that relatively weak position, but holding at the same position he's been in for a while. and i don't think he sees that as a problem. >> well said though a couple points higher perhaps during that first week right after the inauguration. but anyway, there you're right. it does settle about 45% now with approval. okay, peter, you can't go too far. i'm going to bring you back in just a few minutes. meantime, a new development after hamas did something this week that could have upended its ceasefire could have upended its ceasefire with israel. we're back in 90s. (man) got one more antoine. (vo) with usps ground advantage, it's like you're with us every step of the way. ♪

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because when you experience europe on a viking longship, you'll spend less time getting there and more time being there. viking. exploring the world in comfort. >> breaking news hamas releasing six more hostages in its latest exchange with israel. the six include four men captured during the october 7th attack, as well as two people who'd been held for years since they entered gaza on their own. the exchange comes a day after hamas returned the remains of another hostage, siri baba. after handing over the wrong body the previous day. and abc's gorani has the very latest from tel aviv. so hello. welcome. what's the latest where you are? well. >> alex, after more than 500 days, the last batch of living hostages to be released in phase one of the cease fire agreement

between israel and hamas made it out. there were some emotional reunions between young israeli men who were taken from the nova music festival on october 7th with their families. they were then taken to hospitals for physical and medical evaluations. now, in exchange, israel was meant to release in this first phase, over 600 palestinian prisoners, several dozen serving life sentences. so far, we have not seen those prisoners released by israeli authorities. there seems to be some delay when it comes to that particular step. now the big question, alex, going forward, is whether or not we are able to get from here to stage two. stage two would require the israeli military to withdraw entirely from the gaza strip. however, some of the demands already expressed from the israeli side that, for example, the gaza strip demilitarized

completely might create some obstacles that would be very difficult to overcome in any negotiation. stage two would see the release of the remaining living hostages, as well as the remains of hostages who died in captivity. will we get there? it is going to also be a question of us pressure. now, president trump said just in the last 24 hours that he is, quote, really fine with any decision that benjamin netanyahu makes either to move on to the next phase or to restart the war. now, this is seen perhaps as the us not deciding to apply the kind of pressure that it did in phase one. according to many analysts and observers of the process over the last several weeks, and in that case, it would add some question marks as to whether or not we are able to progress to the next phase of this

agreement. alex. >> okay. hala gorani, thank you so much for that report. let's bring back peter baker. so, peter, with the release of today's hostages, israel and hamas have now wrapped up this phase one of the ceasefire agreement. where does phase two stand? >> yeah, i think that that's really the up in the air question, because the idea behind this, when biden first negotiated it, was that this first phase would lead to a second phase and ultimately lead to the end of the fighting. but that doesn't seem to be where netanyahu wants it to go. and not sure that's where hamas wants to go. and it doesn't seem to be necessarily where president trump wants to go. he has encouraged netanyahu to continue to, you know, to take on hamas and in fact, to not let there be any remnants of hamas left in gaza. the goal that netanyahu had once set out for the war was to make it not possible for hamas ever to operate again out of gaza, and there's some dispute as to whether or not they've reached some version of that. but, you know, you see these pictures and i think it's alarmed and

electrified some of the israeli public and offended them by reminding how much hamas has, has, you know, mistreated their citizens and killed so many of them. so it's a very up in the air moment. >> well, for sure. and when you see hundreds dressed in camouflage fatigues and they've got plenty of weapons with them, too, i mean, it makes you wonder how vibrant are they still? but let me talk about the confusion on thursday when hamas returned the wrong remains of the israeli hostage, although they correctly returned her remains home on friday. israel threatened revenge for this mistake. hamas maintains it was an accident. could this threaten the already fragile framework moving forward? i mean, could either side point to it as a reason to not trust any agreement? >> well, look, if they don't have an agreement, they can point to anything. yes, obviously, but i think that one was one of these really macabre wrinkles that was resolved. and if they want to move forward, they'll move forward. you know,

time and time again, with these agreements in the middle east, particularly between israel and, and various, you know, proxy militant terrorist groups, you know, there are violations or alleged violations or, you know, disagreements about details that then quickly get resolved. if the two parties really want to get to a goal. and that's the real question here. do they want to? is there a will to find an end to this war or, you know, are they going to decide that it's this is a pause that in fact will not last beyond this stage? >> well, let's look at the washington post reporting that the us and ukraine are nearing a deal to hand over ukrainian mineral resources to the united states, but in exchange for continued security assistance. zelenskyy, as you know, previously rejected this idea. so what happened and how does this relate to the peace talks between ukraine and russia? >> well, it's pretty central to it. if you listen to trump and administration officials the last few days, they talk more about this deal in some ways than they do about what would

bring peace to ukraine. right. that they felt offended that zelensky at first refused what they called this offer. now, you might call an offer. you might call it a demand for ukraine's own mineral rights. and ukraine is left in the middle. they've got, on the one hand, a neighbor who has invaded them and killed and slaughtered all, you know, so many of their people and destroyed so much of their country. on the other hand, they've got the country that, in theory, has been their number one ally saying, yeah, we're only going to keep helping you if you turn over your resources to us. now, from trump's point of view, he wants to get something back on investment. that's the way he thinks of foreign policy. it's not about, you know, geostrategic gold. it's about who pays up. and so this is at the heart of the way trump sees this at this moment. >> he's very transactional, as we know. peter baker, we'll see you again next weekend. thank you so much, my friend. president trump gave them a golden ticket. what they did one month later might surprise you month later might surprise you next. so, what are you thinking?

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you sign up as a new fabletics vip. >> msnbc presents a new podcast hosted by jen psaki. each week, she talks to some of the biggest names in democratic politics, with the biggest ideas for how democrats can win again. the blueprint with jen psaki. listen now. the first 100 days. it's a critical time for our country. and rachel maddow is on five nights a week. >> now is the time. so we're going to do it. settle in. >> the rachel maddow show weeknights at nine on msnbc. >> two big developments today from the trump administration. d.o.j. first, the sweeping moves by newly sworn in fbi director kash patel announcing a plan to relocate more than 1000 fbi employees and the proud boys and oath keepers after an event on capitol hill say they plan to sue the doj over january 6th. joining us now we have nbc's ryan riley. okay, let's get into this. first of all, ryan, what

exactly are the proud boys and oath keepers suing the doj for? >> a good question. i mean, i think they're basically going to be suing over the cases themselves. and the interesting component of this, of course, is that, you know, now that trump is in charge of the executive branch, and he has so much power over the justice department and some of these traditional norms between the relationship between the justice department and the white house are being knocked down. there is the possibility, certainly, that the trump administration would choose to settle this and use taxpayer dollars to pay out to individuals who assaulted at the capitol on january 6th. here's what enrique tarrio had to say at the press conference yesterday. >> i'm not talking about violent retribution. i'm talking about something much more powerful. accountability and the rule of law. >> yeah, exactly. >> that is why today we are announcing a lawsuit against the doj. >> who?

>> yes. >> for their murders, their lies and the endless suffering they have put us through. >> and moments after that, enrique tarrio was actually arrested after an interaction with a counter-protester. there were counter-protesters sort of all around. this was on the grounds of the capitol. the capitol police made them move away from sort of the center mark and more of the traditional spot where individuals would hold press conferences. this was sort of on the edge of the capitol grounds. it ended up being held, and some counter-protesters had showed up, and tarrio ended up chucking one of the counter-protesters phones. >> oh, i was wondering why he'd gotten arrested. so that was that. he took a phone and chucked it. okay, let me ask you about fbi director kash patel. he's been in the job one day and already announced a major relocation plan. what kind of details can you share about that? >> yeah, i mean, this is something that kash patel has spoken about for a while. you know, it was something that he talked about wanting to shut down the hoover building altogether. and this is sort of an incremental move at that and moving a lot of people out of

headquarters. but, you know, i think this will be interesting to see how this plays out, because i think there are some people within the fbi who do feel as though headquarters had been too large, but sort of the blunt force instrument that they're using here to do this so suddenly and immediately after kash patel takes office, i think will be something that, you know, there could be collateral consequences down the road for. certainly. so this is, you know, going to be a very different time for the fbi. we've never had an fbi director who had this sort of incredibly close relationship with the white house and with donald trump himself, and, you know, has even written a children's book calling describing donald trump as king. so, you know, we're sort of in a new era, i think, for the fbi here. alex. >> yeah. not having a close relationship with the president. i mean, good reason. but again, a new era. thank you very much, ryan riley, it sure was a wild week for the mayor of new york city, including one development you might not have seen coming. you might not have seen coming. we'll the first time you try bounce, it hits you. your laundry feels way fresher, softer.

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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. and i want you to be able to feel the improvements. we've been able to reduce wildfire risk from our equipment by over 90%. that's something i want to believe. [skateboard sounds] the pontiff. you may know that he has been in the hospital for the last couple of days in rome. he had been having a problem with pneumonia in both lungs, and we're just getting word that his condition continues to be critical. he is not out of danger, and that is as a result of an asthma crisis that he had today. it apparently affected his lungs. is that would with

asthma. and it was of prolonged magnitude they're describing. it also meant that he had to be administered oxygen and some blood tests that were taken show a level of anemia. so he has had to have some blood transfusions as well. but the good news is he continues to be alert. he spent the day in the arm chair, although he was in a bit more pain than yesterday, so he is still listed in critical condition. but of course doctors are working round the clock for him and we wish him the very best. we're keeping a very close eye on this for all of you. meantime, let's talk about a sigh of relief for new york city mayor eric adams after a judge vacated his april corruption trial date. the judge on friday did not immediately dismiss the charges, saying he wants to hear from an independent attorney who will challenge the justice department's decision to drop the case. well, joining me here in the studio is my friend mimi roca. she is a former assistant u.s. attorney for the s.d.n.y. and former westchester county district attorney. and you've been on this show a long time

ago. so we go way back. but anyway, i'm glad to have you here. all right, so at this hearing this week, the attorneys for eric adams and the doj, they denied there was any kind of a quid pro quo. right. they denied this. they said that they were just dropping the charges in exchange for delivering on trump's immigration policies. that would be a quid pro quo. but they're saying no, no, no, it wasn't that. but that's what the expectations are. give me a sense of the judge's justification for delaying the trial and the questions the judge wants to be answered by this independent conservative legal advisor. >> yeah. >> so the. >> way i would think about this, alex, is essentially the doj. emil bove, who's a deputy acting deputy attorney general, went in and he and adams, mayor eric adams, basically, and his lawyer said, take our word for it, that there was no quid pro quo. we're telling you. yeah. i mean, and despite what i said in my letter

to us attorney acting us attorney danielle sassoon, you can't take that into account. he actually said that. and he said even if there was a quid pro quo, you judge don't really have any authority to deny this, all of that. i'll just say for now, i disagree with the judge. didn't really push back much at the hearing, but clearly he took that in and is saying, wait a minute. you know, there's a lote there are these letters where they said things that are now he's trying to contradict and walk back. he did say in those letters, the only reason we're telling you to dismiss this is we want eric adams to be able to do his job and enforce the immigration laws the way we want him to. eric adams went on tv the next day and basically, you know, sort of laughed about this quid pro quo. so the judge doesn't need to find a quid pro quo here to say that this is inappropriate. part of what he's

asking this independent counsel, paul clement, former solicitor general under bush. >> conservative. >> very conservative. but but but a law person. right. a person who will follow the rule of law. i don't think he's being appointed to find one thing or the other, but rather to help the judge answer very complex questions in a very unique scenario. what is what is the standard for the judge? what does he need to find? should he have a hearing? can he take into account those other letters and statements by bove and others in the administration? all of that is really consequential and complicated. >> it sounds legally, though, just because emil bove says, don't take this into account legally. does he have a leg on which to stand to make that claim? >> i was. >> surprised when he said that because judges take judicial notice of things all the time. i mean, i've been in front of judges where they say, i'm going to take judicial notice of the fact that it's sunny outside. i

mean, they can literally take judicial notice of almost anything. i think the judge part of why and one of the explicit questions he asked this new counsel, clemente to look at is what can i take into account? and i think on that question, we will see that he will be able to take more into account. i mean, one extreme version would be getting other people like danielle sassoon to come in and testify. i don't think he's going to do that, but there's a lot that is sort of in the public record that the judge could consider in his ultimate decision in ruling. >> here's kind of an interesting turn of events, because you had yesterday, mayor adams suing the trump administration. this was to return the $80 million that disappeared from the new york city coffers overnight. that happened last week. it was a biden era payment for sheltering migrants. you know, in different hotels and elsewhere throughout the city. right. so in this court filing, the city says removing the money was lawless.

was it lawless? >> yes, i think it was. >> and they just take it back, right? >> i mean, it's a clawback, right? but this gets to the heart of two issues, right? one is the trump administration over and over, taking money that was appropriated or by congress and by the prior administration. and just saying we're going to undo that. and it's not that they can't make policy choices. of course they can. but it's the process and whether it is lawful and constitutional or not, the way they're doing it here and in other cases. and then the second thing that i think is important here is the administration's attempted use at leverage. right. saying we're going to if you don't comply with certain things that we want, we're going to either use the criminal process. that's what we're seeing with adams. we're going to hold that over your head or we're going to take funds back from you. and i think adams is trying to say, look, i don't have anything hanging over my

head. i'm suing the trump administration. i don't know that he had much choice, but i do think he's trying to use that to show his independence. >> let's get to the major setback in trump's di order that a federal judge yesterday blocked the administration from terminating federal grants and contracts for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. why did the judge rule? trump's orders likely violate the first amendment. what happens next in the case? >> so the judge had two bases for his ruling several but two main bases. one is that it was an unconstitutionally vague order, right. if you're going to tell someone you can or can't do something, you the government, you have to be clear in your directives. just saying. all dei programs must be stopped and you have. >> to give reason for it. >> you have to give clear guidelines. what is the dei program like? what you know. and so the judge said, this is too vague. how could anyone how could any school or administrator comply with this?

the other thing he said, and this gets back to our theme we were talking about a minute ago about coercion. using the criminal justice system is that it impedes would impede first amendment rights because the order required people in government to sort of tell on report on colleagues who still might be trying to enforce or continue dei efforts. and the threat was literally, we will come after you with, i think, criminal charges and that is threatening someone with criminal charges. again, that's a theme we're seeing here, this this use, this corruption of the criminal justice system. i'm not even going to use the word weaponization because it's kind of beyond that. it's a corruption of the criminal justice system that they keep trying to use to exert leverage. and the judge said, you can't do that here in the context of the first amendment. so this is a preliminary ruling. there will be more on the merits to play

out. as with many of these rulings. but, you know, i think we're seeing that the courts are slowing down what they're trying to do. and again, it's not about policy choices. it's about the process and the procedure. >> okay. >> well, since there's more to come, we'll see you again. mimi rocha, thank you so much. president trump's new idea in his deportation plan, where thousands of undocumented immigrants could land. >> i feel like new sunglasses, like a brand new pair of jeans. brand new. >> learn more about celebrity cruises. >> latest offers. >> when my hair started thinning. >> i didn't want to hear the wisecracks. >> i was ignoring. >> my hair because i was a full time working mother. but luckily i found nutrafol. >> oh. >> my hair was getting stronger and. >> thicker and i finally feel like myself again. >> is your.

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that. >> a major escalation of president trump's promise of mass deportations. the new york times reports the administration now plans to use military sites across the country to detain undocumented immigrants before deporting them. the first of those deportation hubs, fort bliss, near el paso, texas, and it could hold as many as 10,000 immigrants as part of a plan to make up for a shortage of space at ice facilities. joining me now is nbc news investigative reporter laura strickler. laura, welcome to you. so yesterday, president trump reassigned the acting ice director, rather director. he's been frustrated that his deportations aren't reaching that 400 1400 arrests per day goal that he had. now, the administration declined nbc news's request on the current pace of arrests and their cost. but what does your reporting tell you about ice reaching its goals? and would these new military detention centers mean the number of arrests sharply

increase? >> right. well, actually, at. >> the beginning. >> of this week, alex, we got. >> some new. information about how many people are currently in detention. and it's almost at the, you know, the upper reaches of their capacity. so they they can hold 41,500 detainees there at about 41,001 69 at this point. and that that is what really paints the picture of a real need and a pressure that they face to get more space detention. so we've seen that and we've reported that there has been this conversations and, you know, new agreements happening with dod to try to use more locations, military locations, as you mentioned. in particular, we've heard that that the first location would be fort bliss in texas. and i think that it it really it shows that while they were able to use guantanamo as a deportation

location temporarily, they did clear all of the detainees out on thursday. nbc news broke that story on thursday. and that was significant. so now there are no detainees there. the administration is telling us they will continue to use guantanamo as a staging area for future deportations, like the folks who the detainees who left there went straight to venezuela. >> yeah, i think they didn't make a stop in honduras as well. i mean, it sort of it was a zigzag, if you will, through the caribbean. and then and then there. let me ask you about the administration saying the beginning stage of its mass deportation plan, that it would involve prioritizing non-citizens with criminal histories. but you've reported 41% of the more than 4400 people detained by ice over those first two weeks of february do not have a criminal history. so what is the administration's response to this? laura, how does it compare, by the way, to non criminal immigration arrests during the biden administration? >> that's right. so these so the way ice categorizes its

detainees is criminal and non-criminal. so the non criminals are folks who do not have criminal conviction. they do not have pending criminal charges. they have what's known as other immigration violations. we asked the administration for a breakdown of these 1800 people who were non-criminals that were taken into detention. and in early february, we asked for a breakdown of what are those other immigration violations. did not get a response on that. so these could be people who came across the border and were taken into custody, as they are considered to be collateral arrests. people who are there when criminals are detained. but we don't have a lot of further information about those immigration violations. >> let me ask my director, sean, to put up some video for us. and what it shows is pretty gut wrenching images there. about 300 asylum seekers, most of them from asia. they've been locked

inside a hotel in panama. they were deported there from the us again, 100 of them, about eight children. we believe they did not want to return to their home country. so they go to this detention camp and it's on the outskirts of a jungle. and i'm just curious the legality of this under international law. is it complying with the law? >> well, what we're what we're seeing is that there are more and more countries that are in central america that are offering to provide this waystation for individuals before they are returned to their countries. and there's many, as you said, there's many different scenarios that play out. some of these people want to be heading home and are waiting for the us government to arrange that. and some of these people obviously do not. so it's and it is it obviously sets up a situation where you have people in a country they've never been

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