The Rachel Maddow Show - Jan. 12 | Audio Only

Thanks, Stewart Home for joining us here this hour. Really happy to have you here. Now, I am not going to start here tonight where you think I might be starting.

Um, but just hear me out, stick with me, you will see where this is going in good time.

All right, today, uh, amid just the the blitz of headlines on what has been a gigantic news day following a gigantic news week, uh, you might not have noticed the news today. You might not have seen the headline today that today a federal court blocked the Trump administration from cutting energy funding just for blue states.

This is billions of dollars Congress appropriated for clean energy projects of various kinds all over the country.

Trump administration decided, and they admitted this, they decided that just in blue states, just in states that didn't vote for Trump,

they would cut all of that funding. They'd leave the funding in place in states that voted for Trump.

They would cut it in states that didn't vote for Trump.

A federal court today ruled that that is illegal and stopped the Trump administration from doing that.

That ruling today came after another federal court today stopped Trump from shutting down a big offshore wind farm in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Trump's shutdown of that project, according to the courts today, was also illegal.

And so yet another federal court blocked Trump on that as well, so that work on the wind farm will be able to go ahead.

Both of those rulings today follow last night yet another federal court blocking Trump.

This time from cutting funding to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

This is a doctor's group, a pediatricians group that criticized the flock of ducks level insane quackery.

At Trump's Department of Health and Human Services under RFK Jr., Trump responded by canceling federal grants for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

A judge has now ruled that that was illegal retaliation, and so Trump is blocked from doing that.

That funding has to be reinstated.

That ruling comes after another federal judge.

Just blocked Trump from cutting off federal election funds to states in retaliation for them not changing their election rules.

In ways that Trump wants. The judge said, quote, the Constitution assigns no authority to the president over federal election administration.

And so Trump got black got blocked on on that one too.

Shall I keep going? I could keep going.

Uh, another federal court just blocked Trump from freezing billions of dollars for child care and social services for kids.

Again, in Democratic run states as some kind of punishment against those states for electing Democrats.

Punishing them for that by cutting off the temporary assistance to needy families program.

Because, you know, you know, what would Jesus do?

Trump was also just blocked from a by from doing that by by yet another federal court.

It's it's almost like he is losing all the time and everywhere now.

There there may still be people in America who are shocked that Trump keeps breaking the law over and over again, blatantly and insistently.

The courts no longer appear to be shocked by that, and the courts now are just telling him no.

Very bluntly every single day and often multiple times a day.

And it's not even just the courts.

Um, as I know you are aware, last week in in one 48-hour stretch, we had a Senate vote for a war powers resolution to block Trump from any further military adventurism in Venezuela.

Five Republican senators crossed over to side with Democrats to pass that war powers resolution.

It was enough to advance that, it's going to get another vote in the Senate this week.

That came right on the heels of 17 Republicans in the House breaking ranks with Trump and siding with Democrats on the Affordable Care Act.

To try to at least temporarily undo the disastrous decision Trump and Republicans made in their so-called big beautiful bill.

The decision to send tens of thousands of American families health insurance rates through the roof.

Seventeen Republicans crossed over, defied Trump and joined with Democrats to pass that health care matter in the House.

Now it's going to come to the Senate. Trump is now whining about how he might have to veto it if and when it passes in the Senate as well.

Because he definitely wants to make sure that people's health insurance premiums double or triple in cost.

For nothing other than something that he personally did.

He apparently wants that.

I mean, what we've just seen in Congress is one of the worst rebukes Trump has had from congressional Republicans since he has been back in office.

This whole disastrous year.

And I got to tell you, this didn't get as much attention as it should, but right on the heels of that biggest rebuke that Trump has had in Congress.

Those series of decisions both in the House and the Senate.

Republicans crossing over to join with Democrats to rebuke Trump on multiple policy issues.

Right on the heels of Trump the Senate giving Trump a one-finger salute on Venezuela.

And the House giving him a one-finger salute on what he did to people's health insurance.

This did not get enough attention.

But did you see this?

Look, headline, Congress is rejecting Trump's steep budget cuts to science.

Lead, Congress is racing to undo thousands of cuts to federal science programs that President Trump called for last year.

Trump is trying to cut the National Science Foundation 56%. Congress is now saying they will cut it less than 1%.

Trump wanted to slash Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

You know, the weather.

Congress's budget for Noah is no cuts to Noah, flat funding for Noah.

Trump wants to cut basic research, which has been the lifeblood of American technological innovation since World War II.

Trump wants to cut basic research more than 33%. Congress instead is bumping up their budget.

Bumping up the budget for basic research by more than 2%.

Trump is demanding all these cuts to science and Congress is saying no.

And this is a bipartisan thing.

This started in the Senate as a bipartisan agreement, last week the House voted for it as well.

I know it's like like muscle memory to assume A that Congress does nothing and B if they ever defy that rule and do something, it's always something bad.

But that is changing a little bit here.

And it's changing all against Trump.

And Republicans in the House are down to such a slim margin there now.

That if every Democrat is present at the moment, Republicans can only afford one defection on any given vote.

They can only give up one Republican vote in the House and still pass things that their leadership supports.

And they know they're going to get walloped in the midterms.

And with moderate Democrat Mary Peltola announcing today that she's going to run against the unpopular Republican Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan.

That means that Democrats are getting pretty close to a shot at taking over the Senate in the midterms as well.

They've got a shot at taking over the Senate.

In addition to the near certainty that they will take over the House.

We've got the courts pushing back harder and harder and now apparently losing that sense of shock they had.

That the administration really is just blatantly breaking the law all the time, the courts are finally getting it.

And pushing back and seeming to understand what it is they're up against.

We've got the Congress, believe it or not, in some ways pushing back.

While simultaneously Republicans are losing any hope of hanging on to power in Congress, it looks like the Democrats will be taking over.

Today Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Kelly brought a new kind of fight against the Trump administration.

He brought a high-powered lawsuit against Trump and against Pete Hegseth and the Rando art collector fundraiser guy.

Who Trump inexplicably named to be Navy Secretary, Trump Senator Kelly is is suing to block their efforts to reduce him in rank.

And dock his retirement pay for the grave crime of saying out loud the true statement that U.S. service members are supposed to disobey illegal orders.

He's now suing them for that.

Speaking of suing the Trump administration, the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois.

And the state of Minnesota and the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis have all brought major lawsuits tonight.

Against the Trump administration to try to stop the attack by Trump's federal agents on those states and those cities.

Trump's attack on Minneapolis in particular has been absolutely chaotic and bizarre.

And totally incoherent, even more so in the wake of the killing of Renee Nicole Good last week by an Ice officer.

Who who last week shot her three times through her windshield and her open driver side window.

I mean, it's just been nuts in Minneapolis.

In this one Minneapolis home, these totally out of control heavily armed officers broke down the door and rammed their way inside.

As the homeowner demanded to see a warrant allowing them to enter, the Associated Press reporting tonight that those agents didn't have a warrant from a judge.

Authorizing their forced entry into a private residence.

But they just did it anyway into a home with kids inside.

Apparently completely disregarding any applicable law.

This was today in Minneapolis as well.

A man named Christian Molina, a U.S. citizen, was driving south on 36th Street in South Minneapolis.

He says he inadvertently made eye contact with an Ice officer who was lurking in an alley watching cars go by.

The Ice agent then chased him and literally rammed his car into Mr. Molina.

Rammed his car into Mr. Molina's vehicle into the rear driver side of his car and then demanded that Mr. Molina show his papers.

Mr. Molina is a U.S. citizen.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune tonight, quote, as agents confronted Christian Molina, dozens of community members came outside to disrupt them.

The people who responded to that scene included a Minneapolis City Council member who told the paper that after Mr. Molina told the agents he knew his rights.

And that this was an illegal stop and he didn't need to show them anything.

And after all those people poured into the street to support this guy, the agents, I kid you not, what did they do?

They set off two tear gas canisters in the street and then ran away.

That was their contribution to public order and safety in South Minneapolis today.

Here's another standoff from this weekend.

A woman in Minneapolis ordered DoorDash, and Ice apparently chased the woman doing the delivery for DoorDash.

Chased her into the customer's home where she was dropping off the food because she works for DoorDash.

The homeowner in a fit of righteous rage absolutely stood her ground and told Ice that they were not coming into her home to get this woman.

That they needed a warrant to do it and if they didn't have that warrant, she was not letting them in.

And she called the cops on them, and she called her neighbors, and her neighbors came out.

And everybody was standing there blowing whistles and yelling at them.

And eventually they left, and they drove away without the freaking DoorDash driver.

Who they were trying to pursue like she was Osama bin Laden into the caves, right?

They fled, they left, they drove away after terrorizing everyone in that home and on that block.

Even in today an hour outside Minneapolis, in St. Cloud, Trump's agents, dozens of them.

Tried to muster some some kind of military style show of force at a mini mall parking lot.

In St. Cloud, Minnesota. They were soon surrounded by hundreds of local residents telling them to get out.

They were so overwhelmed with the way the neighborhood responded, Trump's agents got stuck there in the mini mall parking lot.

A Democratic state senator had to intervene to ask the crowd to please let the federal agents leave because they otherwise couldn't.

Finally, after about an hour, people allowed these tough guy masked agents to turn tail and leave with their tails between their legs.

This is how they're conducting themselves.

They would appear to have absolutely no clue what they are doing.

This is not what professional immigration law enforcement looks like.

What this looks like is military style weapons and gear given to masked unbadged secret police.

Who appear to have learned their tactics by playing video games about real wars and fantasizing about being scary to women.

And if they think by what they're doing, they are attracting people to their cause.

Or intimidating people into not turning out to protest against them or into to not turning out to to watch what they're doing.

To record what they're doing.

Well, they are very seriously wrong about that.

I mean, this is also today in Minneapolis, local school kids in Minneapolis on mass.

Walking out of their school to tell Trump's federal agents to leave them alone.

And get out of their town.

Tonight we're going to talk about what Minnesotans are doing to try to protect their schools, forming human chains around Minnesota public schools.

At pickup and drop off, the Wall Street Journal reporting this weekend on a surge in quote.

Volunteers, many of them moms already involved in their schools, using Google Docs to divvy up tasks such as delivering groceries to immigrant families.

Volunteers are on hand at drop off and pickup at schools with whistles to blow in case Ice agents show up.

The Immigrant Defense Network telling the Washington Post that they have trained about 2,000 people total to be Ice observers in the Twin Cities.

About 2,000 people total, but then the day after Ice killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, they got a huge surge.

They had 354 people show up in one day.

The very next day.

To be trained to be Ice observers.

354 people showed up in one day.

Here today is Minneapolis's mayor, Jacob Frey, flanked by the state attorney general and other state leaders.

Talking about their big new lawsuit against the Trump administration.

The mayor saying, quote, Donald Trump should know that as long as federal agents are in our city acting unconstitutionally against our neighbors.

We will continue to push back with everything we've got.

Here are Democratic members of Congress turning up at the local Ice detention facility.

The local Ice jail in Minnesota, demanding to be let in.

Because as members of Congress, they are allowed by law to inspect any federal facility like that at any time with no notice.

But these members of Congress were nevertheless turned away.

Today Democracy Forward went to court to force Ice and force the Trump administration.

To let those members of Congress in because that in fact is the law.

And again, if they were hoping that their shambolic and chaotic violence would dissuade Americans from standing up to them.

Well, they do not understand Americans.

They do not understand how we are wired.

It is having the opposite effect.

These were some of the huge protests.

This weekend against Ice and Trump in Minneapolis.

And it wasn't just in Minneapolis.

It was literally everywhere.

Over these last few days.

This was downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Renee Nicole Good is originally from.

This was a big protest this weekend in New York City.

Against Ice and against Trump.

And it wasn't just big cities like Minneapolis or even New York City.

This was Clayton, Missouri this weekend.

Clayton, Missouri.

This was Memphis, Tennessee this weekend.

This was Washington D.C. this weekend.

Including protests outside the White House. And hold that thought because there's something else that's going to be happening in Washington D.C. tomorrow.

That you're going to want to know about.

We'll have more on that in a moment.

Uh, this was Boston this weekend, really big crowd in Boston protesting against Trump and against Ice.

This was Carson City, Nevada this weekend.

This was a protest this weekend in Huntington Beach, California.

A famously Maga city in Southern California.

People out this weekend there protesting against Trump and against Ice.

This was a really big protest this weekend in Texas, San Antonio, Texas.

This weekend there were big protests in Houston and in Dallas and in Fort Worth, but a big one in San Antonio.

This was South Elgin, Illinois.

This was Providence, Rhode Island this weekend.

Last week we told you about locals in Roxbury, New Jersey protesting furiously and repeatedly.

Against plans to build a new Ice facility in Roxbury, New Jersey.

They protested this weekend against Ice and Trump.

We're told that Roxbury's considering a resolution on that proposed Ice facility tomorrow.

The mayor is expected to speak on it.

This was Fairbanks, Alaska.

Protest against Trump and Ice.

The the temperature at this protest in Fairbanks was minus 25 degrees.

And look at people turning out to protest against Ice.

And the Trump administration.

I have to tell you, I'm I'm only scratching the surface here.

Usually when we have this many protests to cover all over the country.

It's because there's been some long planned thing where people had weeks of notice, right, for some, you know, upcoming next big protest.

That was true with the first No Kings Day and the second No Kings Day.

Also the big hands off protest that happened last spring.

People had weeks of notice for those, there was lots of national organizing around them.

People had a chance to get ready and make their plans.

What happened these last few days was not that.

This was essentially spontaneous, a spontaneous reaction to the killing of Renee Nicole Good.

And it happened everywhere, well over a thousand protests taking place.

Over these last few days in every state in the country.

And some of them, yes, were loosely organized under the same banner under the name Ice Out for Good, honoring Renee Good.

But again, this was not a this was not a big long lead time national organizing thing.

This was spontaneous and instinctual everywhere.

And so today's one of those rare days.

When I can actually show you the protests not by just me individually.

Giving you like first person coverage of every protest by people who were in them.

I can actually today show you media coverage and headlines about the protests.

Because every news outlet in the country.

Covered these protests over the past few days.

They were big, they were instant, they were instinctual.

They were spontaneous, they were self-explanatory, they happened for a clear and obvious reason that everybody in the country instantly and instinctually understands.

And so every paper in the country.

Every news source in the country had headlines like this.

The Associated Press, anti-Ice protesters assemble across U.S.

After shootings in Minneapolis and Portland.

USA Today, thousands march in Minneapolis and elsewhere to protest Ice.

New York Times, anti-Ice protests spread nationwide.

CNN, anti-Ice protests held across U.S. after agents fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis.

NPR, nationwide anti-Ice protests call for accountability after Renee Good's death.

Daily Beast, anti-Ice protesters flood 500 cities days after Minneapolis killing.

The Guardian newspaper in London, U.S. protests condemn Ice killing of Renee Good.

And quote, a regime that is willing to kill its own citizens.

Looking around the country, you see this everywhere.

Salt Lake Tribune, Ice Out for Good protests unfold in Salt Lake City and other Utah cities.

After Minneapolis killing.

WFAA in Fort Worth, Texas, hundreds gather in Fort Worth for Ice Out for Good protest.

In Nebraska, KETV, Ice Out for Good protest draws protesters to Central Omaha, Nebraska.

KSHB in Missouri, a thousand demonstrators attend vigil and protest against Ice in Kansas City.

Spot on Alabama, locals protest Ice shooting of Minneapolis woman outside Huntsville, Alabama City Hall.

In South Carolina, WACH.

Protesters at South Carolina State House demand justice for Renee Good, shot by Ice.

In Kentucky, WLKY, hundreds gather in Louisville to protest after Ice agent fatally shoots women in Minnesota.

Calo News or Calo News in Arizona, quote, she was assassinated.

Tucson residents pour out in protest after Ice kills Minnesota woman.

The Bonner County Daily B in Idaho, over 200 attend Sandpoint, Idaho, Ice Out for Good protest.

WSYX in Columbus, Ohio.

Killing our own citizens, Ohio protesters call for Ice to leave.

Outraged by shootings.

WTXL in Tallahassee, Florida, protest and vigil at Florida State Capital after deadly Ice confrontation in Minnesota.

I mean, all over the country.

Wichita, Kansas, Charleston, West Virginia, East Cobb, Georgia, Rapid City, South Dakota.

Everywhere.

The American people are reacting instinctively to what Trump is doing to us now.

The American people are using their small D democratic muscle memory to respond reflexively.

To what is happening, to use our right of free of free speech, our right to freedom of assembly, to use it to say no.

And from this point that we're in, this place of profound weakness for this historically unpopular president.

No president at this point in his second term has had approval ratings this low other than Richard Nixon.

And at this point in Richard Nixon's second term, he was less than a year away from resigning.

From this point of profound weakness and unpopularity for this president, fueled by near universal moral revulsion at what he is doing to the American people.

Something that he apparently thinks he should respond to by becoming more extreme and more violent.

And more morally repulsive, thus radicalizing more and more American citizens against him every day.

From this point of profound weakness.

And political malpractice.

Now he has decided to take a wild swing at the American economy and the U.S. dollar.

By threatening the chair of the Federal Reserve with criminal prosecution.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell responded last night in an I will not be intimidated video statement.

Multiple Republican senators have responded with their own moral and political revulsion.

Saying not only that they're against what Trump is doing and they're supporting Jerome Powell, but crucially, if this is how Trump is going to use the U.S. Justice Department.

Then maybe it's the U.S. Justice Department that needs to be investigated by Congress.

Two Republican senators saying that.

The Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee is condemning this Jeremiah against Jerome Powell as well.

The rapidly right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board.

Is out tonight with an editorial calling this a quote, self-defeating fiasco and a self-defeating scheme that should result in the quote, firing of those responsible.

Before they can be the cause of quote, any more embarrassment.

And, you know, economically.

Maybe you voted for the Republican because you thought, oh, Republicans good with money.

Trump has brought job growth in this country down to a 16-year low.

Trump has dragged factory activity and manufacturing levels back to the Stone Age.

At the micro level of individual American families finances, Trump's policies.

Not random external factors, but Trump's specific and deliberate policies.

Have created deliberate man-made financial harm.

On health insurance costs.

Which he apparently accidentally exploded.

On electricity costs, which he apparently accidentally exploded.

And now for millions of Americans, he's going to be garnishing their wages for their student loans too.

Again, none of these are externalities.

None of these are economic factors that are imposing on his presidency.

These are all policies that Trump chose to choose.

All of which are deliberately hurting American families economically.

While he has broken the job market.

And absolutely failed in any rational attempt to tackle inflation.

And now he's threatening to jail the Fed chief.

Which should devalue the dollar.

And inch us that much closer to needing a wheelbarrow full of bills to buy a loaf of bread.

Who's on his side at this point?

Who's he winning over?

They said it couldn't be done, but Congress is waking up.

Yes, this Congress.

And I can hear you scoffing at me through the television.

I can.

Look up what I said about the science funding.

I know you don't believe me, just look it up.

The Congress in its way is waking up.

The courts are waking up.

The people are absolutely fully awake.

We are getting there, you guys.

We are not even a year into this mess yet.

And already it is all systems go.

Stay with us tonight. We got a lot to get to.

All right.

This involves both a scoop and something to watch out for tomorrow.

Back in September, the White House put pressure on Trump's hand-picked U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.

That he had to bring charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Tish James.

Um, Trump's U.S. attorney in Virginia quit in response to that pressure.

So Trump replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who had never before prosecuted a case.

She actually did manage to bring charges against Comey and Tish James for a hot minute before a federal judge dismissed the charges.

Finding among other things that Lindsey Halligan had been illegally appointed to that job.

That she was not, in fact, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Um, the Justice Department is appealing that, but but apparently the administration has nevertheless been trying to resurrect the case against James Comey anyway.

And now they have failed at it again.

Today MSNBC's Carol Lennig and Ken Delanian were first to report that uh Trump Trump's Justice Department.

Has fired now the the second in command under Lindsey Halligan at that U.S. attorney's office because he also declined to pursue the Comey case.

And this is maybe not the best time for Lindsey Halligan.

To be without a second in command in that office because get this.

In a totally different case.

A different federal judge has ordered that Lindsey Halligan has until tomorrow to explain to the court.

Why she is still going around calling herself the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

When legally and plainly, she is no such thing.

The judge has ordered that quote, Miss Halligan shall further explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement.

The judge says that could quote, constitute misconduct and be grounds for discipline.

Again, she has to explain why she's still calling herself a U.S. attorney.

That response from Lindsey Halligan is due tomorrow.

Watch this space.