Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second grade challenger school class.

They're studying Charlotte's Web.

What words did this author use to describe this barn?

Descriptive words.

Wonderful. Can you find some adjectives in there? New is an adjective describing rope.
Rubber is an adjective and it modifies boots. Those students are seven.
Starting early and starting right makes a real difference. Learn more at challengerschool.com.
Happy Friday. There is so much to talk about tonight.
There is so much to cover. When we had our news meeting this afternoon, we had enough news in the like things we could put on the show column to do 17 shows.
But naturally, because it's me, I got to start with something weird. All right.
When the new president decided to hand over a big part of running the government to his largest campaign donor, that meant inevitably that the United States government would soon start doing lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of favors for that campaign donor and his businesses and taking government action against his business rivals, etc. It was very easy to predict.
It is a dynamic that is as old as time, and so we're going to talk about some of that tonight. But in addition to that donor being invited into the government and then the government starting to do things for the donor and his businesses, turns out it also cuts in the opposite direction as well in terms of what the public gets to say about this arrangement.
Because if you think about it, what we've got now, thanks to Donald Trump essentially ceding his presidency to his top campaign donor, what we've got now is somebody who really does appear to be mostly running the government, somebody who's definitely destroying big parts of the government, but he's doing those things. He's taking that incredibly,

incredibly controversial, destructive government role, while he simultaneously is also

running a bunch of companies, including the big one that accounts for most of his fortune,

a company that is very much a public-facing company,

not just in the stock market,

but also in terms of storefronts and the nation's roads.

That dynamic, the fact that he is taking this government role,

this incredibly controversial and destructive government role,

while he is also the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla, the car company,

That has turned out to provide a quite unique opportunity for public feedback on his actions in the government. Did you know that the tailgate of a Tesla Cybertruck is a perfectly flat, light-colored, sharp-edged rectangle? Basically, it's a projector screen.
If you have a projector and you shine the projector at the tailgate, it works really well, like it's a screen. Road & Track magazine today highlights a new effort that's been taking shape on TikTok this week in which people are apparently driving around at night.
At night is crucial for the projector part of this. Driving around at night looking for Tesla Cybertrucks.
And then they project things on the tailgate. Like this one.
Tesla Cybertruck, the most recalled truck of 22 in 2024ed on the back of that truck.

And there's a bunch of these that are way too crude for me to show on television, but they are circulating widely on TikTok. Some of them have millions of views already.
This one says, no, the price of eggs aren't falling, but the price of this piece of junk sure is.

And then the K falls off the junk. This one says, hey, don't hate me.
Musk sold me this S-box, and the effer stole my social security number. this one says, figures the guy who made a truck shaped like a coffin gets pleasure out of killing Sudanese children.
That presumably is about Musk's chest-pounding glee over, in his words, feeding USAID into a wood chipper, while USAID in, does provide aid to prevent starvation among millions of kids in Sudan. This one's just a playground taunt, honestly.
Musk, this truck really is like you. And then it says, tons of hype, underwhelming in bed.
Get it? It's a joke about the truck bed. I know.
Yeah. Like I said, there's a bunch of these I should not show on TV.
A bunch of them making crude jokes about what this big truck is compensating for. References to Elon Musk's stiff-armed salute on Inauguration Day, which he says was not a Nazi salute, but then he followed that immediately with lots of jokes on his social media platform about how hilarious Nazis are.
But again, this projection prank that's taking shape on TikTok, these videos only started appearing about a week ago, but they've already got millions of views. Road & Track reports today that the comments on the videos are overwhelmingly supportive of the pranksters, quote,

and many are begging for more videos.

So that's happening.

This was a protest today in Houston, Texas, at one of the Tesla dealerships in that big city.

It's one of a lot of protests we have seen at Tesla showrooms and Tesla dealerships, both in red states like Texas and in blue states. This, for example, was Wednesday this week in San Francisco, Northern California.
A message for Musk tonight, a protest outside a Tesla showroom in San Francisco. People frustrated and fearful of the future, ready to stop what they're calling the looting of public services to benefit the ultra rich.
It is part of a nationwide effort to push back and save services as layoffs and cuts continue in D.C. NBC Bayer's Gia Vang is in San Francisco.
This corner of Van S. and O'Farrell taken over by federal workers and allies.
The location, deliberate, outside of a Tesla store. We have the power to break Tesla, which is where most of Elon Musk's wealth comes from.
We have the power to undo it. We have the power to not cooperate.
The same day as that protest in San Francisco, there was a really big protest outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of SpaceX, of Elon Musk's space exploration company.
Protesters blocking traffic and shutting down the streets there. Some new video tonight as demonstrators march to the D.C.
headquarters of Elon Musk's SpaceX, protesting what they call his takeover of government, calling it a direct attack on the American people. This is a look at the march towards the SpaceX headquarters in D.C., about two blocks away from the Wilson Plaza in downtown.

And these protesters are chanting right now, Elon Musk has got to go.

Again, that's just over the last couple of days in Washington and in Texas and in Northern California. But the world headquarters of Musk's SpaceX company is in Hawthorne, California,

which is in Los Angeles, actually right near the airport, right near LAX. Next weekend, March 1st, there is expected to be what looks like it might be a large scale protest at that SpaceX world headquarters building in Los Angeles, given that that's in L.A.
and it's in a location that's just easy for a lot of people to

get to, and honestly, given that they're giving people a week in advance heads up that they are going to do that protest on March 1st, I'm guessing that that might end up being the largest-scale demonstration yet, targeting the president's top campaign donor, targeting musk and whatever it is he thinks he's doing to the u.s government um

that the president's top campaign donor, targeting Musk and whatever it is he thinks he's doing to the U.S. government.
That one protester who we saw there in California explaining in that clip from local news, explaining that most of Elon Musk's net worth is tied up in his car company, that is correct. The vast bulk of his wealth is based on his shares in his car company, Tesla.
Tesla shares have dropped 20% in value since Inauguration Day. Tesla sales in Europe have taken huge hits recently, down 40% or 50% or more in the largest markets in Europe.
Overall, in the last year, globally, electric

vehicle sales are up 25%, but Tesla sales are down 1%. And down 1% may not seem like that big

a deal, even as the overall market for that type of vehicle is going up. But consider that that

minus 1% of that drop in Tesla sales this year follows the last two years in which Tesla sales

So, But consider that that minus 1% of that drop in Tesla sales this year follows the last two years in which Tesla sales were up 38% and up 40%. And now this year, they're minus one.

Now, how does that kind of thing affect his ultimate role in what he's doing to our government and what he thinks of his public image and what he's making the public think of him? I don't know. But I think the most reasonable thing to expect is that it's going to be unpredictable because I think there's a lot of weird variables at play here.
I mean, obviously, this is a personal crusade of his to destroy as much of the constitutional republic as he can without any regard at all for him having any legitimate government authority or following any laws. The personal dynamic in addition between this campaign donor and the president himself is very unusual given that the president seems to have personally empowered this guy without actually giving him a government job.
So the personal dynamic between them is all that Elon Musk has to stand on in terms of what he is doing to our government. The dynamic between them is weird, in which the president is effectively sidelined while Elon Musk takes center stage.
The president, in contrast, appears to be weak

and sort of beside the point, while his campaign donor regularly upstages him and talks over him, both in interviews and in the Oval Office. I mean, that would be hard to take for even the least egotistical president.
It remains to be seen how we'll play out with this one. along those lines i have to to say, this is also very strange, late-breaking news.
I'm not quite sure what to do with this at all, but you should know. CNN was first to report today that the Trump administration has made an unusual decision with regard to Elon Musk's phalanx of private personal bodyguards.
Now, NBC has not confirmed this, but CNN is reporting, based on three law enforcement sources, that the administration had the U.S. Marshals Service officially deputize members of Elon Musk's team of private bodyguards.
And that may sound like kind of a bureaucratic designation, but one practical consequence of that is that the Marshals Service may now allow Musk's team of personal bodyguards to carry weapons on federal property. Loaded weapons.
CNN reports, quote, some people close to Trump's White House have been taken aback by the scale of security that has surrounded Elon Musk since he became a regular presence in Trump's orbit last year. Musk's security detail rivaled only that of the president himself, the sources observed.
But now, with this decision by the U.S. Marshals Service, now Trump and Musk, when they're in the same place, like in the White House or on other federal property, they're both going to be surrounded by equally huge phalanxes of armed guards.
One set of them, the Secret Service, presumably loyal to Trump, and the other set, also armed but private and loyal to Musk. But everybody's going to have their weapons? Sure, that's not weird at all.
That's definitely not like Monty Python crossed with Shakespeare at all. What could possibly go wrong? Donald Trump has thus far spent 10 of his 31 full days in office at one of his golf clubs.
10 of the 31 days. Donald Trump has not taken a foreign trip since he's been back in the White House.
He has signed a grand total of one bill. He has taken an almost cartoonishly outsized interest in posing with big maps that say Gulf of America on them.
And although the White House then picked a fight with the Associated Press, trying to force the AP to use that terminology rather than use Gulf of Mexico, which is what it is, today in an interview when Trump was asked about that, he appeared sort of confused. He didn't seem to even understand that his White House had banned the Associated Press.
In fact, saying in an interview today that they could come back whenever they want, even though he's the one who supposedly banned them. I mean, when President Trump isn't playing golf, he has taken multiple meetings about his golf investments.
He has gone to the Super Bowl. He had somebody drive him around the track at the Daytona 500.
Whee! They literally had him drive around the track. I mean, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say he is not the busiest man in the world.
He appears to be sort of decorative at this point, while the person who's really working double time to make the government actually do things appears to be his top campaign donor, who is getting all the attention and all the credit. And while Trump is, you know, playing race cars and golf and enjoying the worst approval ratings of any new president in the history of polling, and they are getting worse with every passing day.
Meanwhile, here's just a partial list of the things that Elon Musk and his own companies have somehow reaped from the U.S. government while Trump was, you know, putting.
Headline, Justice Department to Drop Discrimination Case Against Elon Musk's SpaceX. The Justice Department had filed the case against SpaceX in August 2023, accusing the company of violating federal law and its hiring practices.
Yesterday, quote, the Justice Department said it intended to file a notice of dismissal with prejudice, which means prosecutors would not be able to file these charges again. The motion did not say why the case was being dropped.
So check that one off his list. Headline, Doge employee cuts fall heavily on agency that regulates Musk's Tesla.

A small government team regulating the sort of autonomous cars that Elon Musk says represent the future of Tesla, his car company, is getting cut nearly in half by the Musk-led U.S. Doge service.
Check that one off his list. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration investigation in 2023 led to a recall of 2 million Tesla vehicles.
The same agency disclosed in April that it had documented numerous deadly crashes involving Tesla autopilot. Now, thanks to Elon Musk's Doge, that same agency, the NHTSA, is losing about 10% of its workforce.
Check that one off the list. Tesla, I should note, this year plans to put fully autonomous vehicles on the road this year.
Yeah, and if you keep gutting the agency that regulates that sort of thing, who'll be there to stop them? Who'll be able to stop them before the crosswalk? Here's another headline. Fate of Rivian's $6.6 billion federal loan now hangs in the balance.
Fortune magazine helpfully nuts up the key point at the top of this one. Quote, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp says he does not know whether the Trump administration will honor the contracts of the Biden administration.
Quote, if the loan is canceled, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stands to benefit the most. Check Rivian off the list.
Who needs that competitor? This comes after the Trump administration already cut off federal funds for the National Electric Vehicle Charging Network, which leaves Elon Musk's Tesla unchallenged as the largest charging network in the country. Never mind that he took huge U.S.
government subsidies to build Tesla and to build that charging network. Now, now that he's done that and he's the biggest game in town, the Trump administration is pulling up the ladder so nobody else can compete with him.
Nice work if you can get it. Check that one off the list.
The FAA chairman who grounded Musk's Starship rocket program after it catastrophically disintegrated on a botched launch and sprayed debris all over the Caribbean and caused the diversion of dozens of flights. Musk had repeatedly demanded that that FAA chair should resign.
He resigned on Inauguration Day. And aviation security has been awesome ever since, right? At the FDA, they have fired the people who were overseeing Elon Musk's Neuralink brain implant company.
At the USDA, they fired the inspector general who was investigating Neuralink for its animal experimentation. At the Defense Department, they fired the inspector general investigating Elon Musk over his alleged refusal to detail his contacts and ties with foreign governments, including our foreign adversaries.
The Labor Department has multiple open investigations of Tesla. Trump's nominee for Labor Secretary would not commit either way at her confirmation hearing on whether she would allow Elon Musk and his Doge team to have access to those investigations of him at the Labor Department or to any other investigations involving his business rivals.
Also, at least one U.S. government agency, the National Transportation Safety Board, has announced that it will only henceforth communicate with the public through Elon Musk's privately held social media company.
The Wall Street Journal reports this week that executives at his social media company have been calling up advertising firms and at least implicitly threatening them that if they don't give money to Elon Musk by advertising on that social media platform, those companies might find themselves in regulatory trouble with the U.S. government.
Since, you know, wink, wink, apparently Musk controls that now, right? It's nice work if you can get it. Remember when President Biden gave his farewell speech and he warned about oligarchy? Remember that? He said, today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.
People lost their minds, right, when President Biden said that. Oh, that's so over the top.
Well, now here we are. But people are pushing back.
The latest round of opinion polling shows that even though Trump is underwater in his approval, which is astonishingly bad for a president this early in his presidency, right? In the history of modern polling, no president has been more disapproved of than approved of this early on in a presidential term. But those same polls that show Trump in that historically bad approval position also show that Elon Musk is about three times as unpopular as Trump is.
So people know what's going on. People are pushing back.
And today was another one of those days when on all sorts of different fronts,

we saw pushback working.

We saw them, you know, trying to do something,

but they found it difficult or awkward or indefensible

or somebody pointed out that it was illegal

or it got a bunch of bad press.

They surveyed public opinion,

surveyed the pushback they were getting

and pulled back on what they were initially trying to do.

Today, we saw that on a whole bunch of fronts,

just in the past 48 hours.

I mean, today, CNN reported

Thank you. surveyed the pushback they were getting, and pulled back on what they were initially trying to do.
Today, we saw that on a whole bunch of fronts, just in the past 48 hours. I mean, today, CNN reported that the Defense Department was planning on marching as many as 50,000 employees out the door.
CNN reported on that plan and on the fact that, um, you guys, that would be illegal. There are specific laws governing how and under what circumstances you can lay people law from the Defense Department.
After that story came out, the Trump administration apparently had second thoughts. They hit pause on that idea.
Quote, the pause comes after CNN reported that the mass terminations, which could affect over 50,000 employees, could run afoul of Title 10, Section 129A of the U.S. Code.
Following that report, Pentagon lawyers began reviewing the legality of the planned terminations more closely.

So they hit pause on the plan to walk as many as 50,000 people out the door.

Now they're saying they may fire 5,000 people next week, not 50,000, but we'll see.

The White House has also just caved on the 9-11 Survivors Fund and researched on the long-term health problems that have afflicted the American heroes who ran into the freaking burning wreckage to try to save people after the 9-11 attack. After widespread press coverage and a hue and cry against those cuts, oops, today they started telling Republican members of Congress that they are not going to be cutting that after all.
After a hue and cry over them cutting funding for school buses, they've started telling senators that that school bus funding is at least being partially restored as well. After a hue and cry over millions of dollars in payments to farmers being stopped, they just announced that at least the first tranche of money that President Biden had secured for U.S.
farmers, at least that first tranche of money will be allowed to go forward. We will see if the farmers ever actually get it.
Last night, the Washington Post reported on an imminent White House announcement that they were going to eliminate the U.S. Post Office, which it should be noted is in the Constitution.
Washington Post put this story on the front page, Jacob Borasage's sole byline on that exclusive report. And then once the story published, the White House climbed down, saying, oh, actually, it's just something that they are looking at.
No executive order was planned after all. Trump himself was then asked about it today, and he said confusing things about maybe it will be a merger and maybe it will stay the post office.
And nobody really knows what he means. But the Washington Post reporting last night is that they were planning on just doing this by fiat, by executive order, and now they're not.
So we shall see. Trump has always had it out for the post office.
He went after it multiple times in his first term in office, you will recall. But you know what? The American people love the post office.
Serves all of us. If we want anything for the post office, we just want it to have more staff and better funding.
We just want them to be better resourced because we love them and we depend on them and they're integral to who we are as a country. The post office is in the Constitution.
Just that alone, we tend to be jealously protective of things that are in black and white in the Constitution as a foundational part of our constitutional republic. But even so, more than 70% of the public has a positive view of the U.S.
Post Office. And that number is the same among Democrats and Republicans.
So yeah, of course, Trump wants to abolish it. But the public does not want it.
And when they talk about abolishing it, they get pushback and they are already getting shy on what they were otherwise planning. The only government agency that is more beloved among the American public is the National Park Service, which Trump and Musk have already taken a chainsaw to as well.
Although there, again, the pushback is pushing them back. Today, they announced that, okay, yes, after all, they will allow the hiring of people for the thousands of seasonal jobs without which the national parks cannot open in the summer for people to go there on vacation.
Duh. it's so stupid that people have to scramble and fight and organize and yell to get these basic things restored.
Yeah, why do you think there's lots of seasonal employees at the Park Service? When do people go on vacation to the national parks? How are people going to use the national parks if there are no seasonal employees to unlock the gates and clean the toilets? Oh, seasonal employees. Oh, okay, you can have those back.
It's so stupid that the public has to organize and yell to get these basic things restored. But when the public organizes and yells, these things get restored.

When these guys get pushed back, they cave.

Because honestly, it is true.

I mean, the price of eggs really isn't falling.

But this junk sure is.

We've got a lot to get to tonight.usnews.com. Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second grade challenger school class.
They're studying Charlotte's Web. What words did this author use to describe this barn? Descriptive words.
Wonderful. Can you find some adjectives in there? New is an adjective describing rope.
Webber is an adjective and it modifies boots. Those students are seven.
Starting early and starting right makes a real difference. Learn more at challengerschool.com.
Tax Act knows you probably don't need help filing taxes, but if you get stuck, we have live experts you can talk to. And who knows, you could hit it off and become long-term tax friends.
Staying up late at night, talking about deductions, refunds, personal exemptions. Heck, you could even fall in

love and create a little dependent of your own one day. Or they could just answer your filing

questions. Tax Act.
Let's get them over with. Today in Washington, D.C., a group of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two pro-Trump paramilitary groups, gathered outside the Capitol to celebrate the January 6th pardons and to announce a new lawsuit-slash-cryptocurrency fundraising scheme.
Oh, but look, someone showed up to spoil it. Specifically, two people showed up to spoil it.
Two women showed up on their own, one with a whistle and one with a bullhorn, and they just decided that the two of them, they were not going to let the Proud Boys get through it. This fight is not over.
It's only begun. We will hold responsible to account and we will never stop fighting for the truth, for liberty and for justice.
And so also there's somebody screaming, Proud Boys. That is former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio at the end of this event today.
He was actually arrested and taken away by Capitol Police for allegedly assaulting one of those women as she tried to record him with her phone. Protest comes in all shapes and sizes.
It can sometimes be a huge crowd of people in front of, you know, SpaceX headquarters or the CFPB. Sometimes it can be two women with a whistle and a bullhorn who will not give up.
Today in Asheville, North Carolina, people showed up to protest the Trump administration's firing of federal workers. They got a big crowd in Asheville at the federal courthouse there.
We're also seeing more people show up at town halls to question their members of Congress. Last night, we showed you part of a town hall that was held in Roswell, Georgia, by Republican Congressman Rich McCormick.
I want you to see a little bit more from that. Watch this.
Workers from the nuclear work group, the NNSA, our nuclear stockpile, and CDC workers working on the bird flu being fired by Doge and then having to be rehired when someone realizes, oh we need those people why are you now it is a supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this you have to do more or less in order to survive i understand trying to do more with less that's reasonable what's not reasonable is taking this chainsaw approach, which they obviously admit when they fired these people and then decided, oh, we fired the wrong people. We got to bring them back in.
Why is this being jammed down the pipe so brushed and slobbily? Crowd goes wild. So that was Roswell, Georgia last night.
This was a teletown hall, telephone town hall. Also last night, this was Republican Congresswoman Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma.
I'm a registered Republican voter, retired active army officer. How can you tell me that Doge, with some college whiz kids from a computer terminal in Washington,

D.C., without even getting out into the field after about a week or maybe two, has determined that it's okay to cut veterans' benefits? I think a couple things. Let me give you an example.
Did you know that the VA was in charge of payments for illegals for housing? Basically, the VA said... No, I'd like for you to send me...
Could you send me that reference so I could research that? Because no, I'm not aware of that. And I would tell you that that's a red herring, a false flag.
If you're throwing that kind of political stuff up, trying to cut veterans benefits, that's very alarming to me. Registered Republican voter, retired active Army officer.
That is the kind of reaction these members are facing, even from Republican voters in Republican districts. This was the scene in West Bend, Wisconsin, with Republican Congressman Scott Fitzgerald.
Watch. When will you stand up to them and say that is enough?

The end result of the fraud and abuse that has been discovered already. That is a congressman coming to terms with his constituents, West Bend, Wisconsin.
About an hour away in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, another Republican congressman, Glenn Grofman, also getting an earful.

President Trump has issued a lot of executive orders.

I think by and large, this is moving very quickly compared to other administrations.

And I think across the board, he's done some very good things. I think.

He's gotten rid of birthright citizenship illegal as hell that's illegal as hell we are seeing this kind of thing all across the country and it is interesting it. It is Republicans having to face this from their constituents.
But you're also seeing Democrats who are largely of one mind with their constituents, but they are getting pushed to fight harder. Congressman Paul Tonko is a Democrat from New York.
He represents the area around Albany, New York. This week, Congressman Tonko held a town hall.
You might have seen this clip going around, but if you haven't seen it, you will want to. Watch this.
I saw you on TV at NOAA. I saw you on TV at the Department of Education.
What I'm saying is this. Somebody asked you what your red line was, and you said that the time is always right to God.
Does that mean the red line has already been crossed?

Because I think it has. If you ask us to show up,

Congressman Tango, we will

show up.

In that.

In that.

The Pacific

let's go. We can't

make the protocol. They're not playing

in the right of the rules.

That is right. We have to conclude this.
When I say anybody's prices, I'm going to come next to Maxine Waters. And I'm so proud that my representative was on the front line right there.
But I thought about Jimmy Carter and I thought about John Lewis

and I know if John Lewis would have done

he would have gotten arrested that day

make them

make them outlaw you

people be there with you

I ain't getting arrested

and the crowd goes wild. I will get arrested with you.
Message that Democratic congressman is basically, fight harder. We're seeing this all over the country for Democrats and Republicans.
All right, much more to get to tonight. We'll be right back.usnews.com.
Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second-grade Challenger School class. They're studying Charlotte's Web.
What words did this author use to describe this barn? Descriptive words. Wonderful.
Can you find some adjectives in there? New is an adjective describing rope. Webber is an adjective and it modifies boots.
Those students are seven. Starting early and starting right makes a real difference.
Learn more at challengerschool.com.

TaxAct can think of a million things more fun than filing taxes.

TaxAct is going to name some now.

Sitting in traffic.

Folding a fitted bedsheet.

Listening to your co-worker talk about his fantasy team.

Digging a hole.

Digging an even larger hole next to that original hole. Unfortunately, Tax Act's filing software can't make taxes fun.
But Tax Act can help you get them done. Tax Act.
Let's get them over with. Trump administration has taken steps to fire thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of people who work for the government.
There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason as to how they are proceeding with these layoffs. There's been a lot of cases in which they fired people and then said, oops, we didn't mean to, and they tried to bring them back.
You can generalize in any way about what they've done thus far. You can say that a lot of the people that they have fired are what are called probationary employees.
And that's a classification that can be misleading. For a lot of people,

it just means they have changed jobs within the government. Either they've moved laterally or

they've been promoted. But for some people, it does mean they're in their first couple of years

at their agency. It means they've chosen fairly recently to dedicate themselves to this kind of

work. And in most cases, it's because they really care about it.
For example, take Casey Bourne. In middle school, she decided she wanted to work in wildlife conservation.
She decided to go to a special STEM-focused high school, even though it meant a longer drive to and from school every day. She graduated from college with honors and a degree in biology.
She spent a year working at the Nevada Department of Wildlife. She wrote a kid's book about the ecosystem of the Mojave Desert.
Last year, she got a job as a biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Nevada.
But because she had not been in it, in this job, for two full years, Casey Bourne was considered to be a probationary employee, and probationary employees are the easiest to fire. And so last week, along with more than 400 other U.S.
Fish and Wildlife employees in the same classification, they fired her. Not because anything she'd done wrong, but just because they could.
Joining us now is Casey Bourne, former biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Ms. Bourne, thank you so much for being with us tonight.
I really appreciate it. I know it's a difficult time.
Yeah, thank you for having me. It's definitely been a whirlwind of a week.
I imagine that once things started to go haywire in Washington with the firings and the announcements about probationary employees and all of this stuff that you might have expected this was coming. Was it one of those situations where it was not a surprise, but still a shock? It definitely was still a shock.
There had been a lot of different things happening within our work over the last few weeks. A lot of programs being cut down, meetings and trainings being canceled, budgets being

diminished in some of our projects. So there was definitely a lot of talk about how things were

changing. And some of us were very afraid of because some of us were very afraid for our jobs,

especially all of us probationary employees, because at the beginning of February or at the end of January, our departments had to give a list of probationary employees to the incoming administration. And at the time, they said that they weren't going to do anything with them.
So we were all thinking that we were good.

But yeah, so the fear of being laid off definitely was in the air. Genuinely, I did not think that they were actually going to do it.
So when I got that phone call from my supervisor, just giving me a heads up about everything, I was absolutely devastated. Let me give you a chance to respond to what was actually in the email that you got that fired you.
The Trump administration, in this letter, they said they were firing you because, quote, the department has determined your knowledge, skills, and abilities do not meet the department's current needs. I just wanted to ask you to respond to that.
It's obviously a form letter they sent to everyone, but you're a human being. It's dramatically changing your life.
And I want to give you a chance to say your own piece to that. Yeah, it was honestly very bizarre to me that they sent out this map.
Well, they sent out the email individually to each person, but it was the same cookie cutter email. It didn't even address my name.
It didn't address anyone's names. It just had this generic saying and it just let us all know that we were let go.
It was, yeah, reading it, I didn't even have any words to describe how I felt. And honestly, when I first got the email, I didn't even fully read through it.
I just skimmed it because everyone had been talking about what was going on. And I did not have the bandwidth to read the entire thing at the time.
I didn't fully read the letter until I think Tuesday. And when I got to that part that

mentioned that we don't have the skills or the abilities to be inside the department, I was not very happy because it was just not a true statement. Casey Bourne, biologist, formerly with the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service.

And if things get righted in this country in the future, maybe you will be again with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service if any of this stuff gets undone.
We really can't wait to see what you do next. Stay in touch with us.
And I'm sorry this has happened to you. Yeah.
Thank you so much. All right.
We got more to come here this Friday night. Stay with us.
This one landed like a bomb last night, courtesy of The Washington Post's Jacob Bogage. Headline, Trump expected to take control of USPS, fire postal board, officials say.
Quote, Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as this week to fire the members of the Postal Service's governing board and place the agency under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Letnick. The board is planning to fight Trump's order, three sources told The Washington Post.
In an emergency meeting Thursday, the board retained outside counsel and gave instructions to sue the White House if the president were to remove members of the board or attempted to alter the agency's independent status. After the Post broke that exclusive story last night, the White House then denied that Trump was planning to issue any such executive order.
Then today, when the Commerce Secretary, Letnick, was being sworn in, Trump was asked about his plans for the 250-year-old agency, whose existence is spelled out in the Constitution. He said that he and Secretary Letnick are, quote, looking at it.
Joining us now is the reporter who broke this story, The Washington Post, Jacob Bogage. Mr.
Bogage, thank you for coming back. I had a feeling we'd be back talking to you soon as you've continued to break story after story in Washington.
What's your understanding of the state of play around this Postal Service controversy? Well, thank you for having me, Rachel. It's good to be back.
And that was one heck of an intro. The state of play is in flux.
Like you mentioned, we reported this story with anonymous but pretty ironclad sourcing. The White House, after it published, denied it.
And then President Trump today didn't just say that he and Secretary Lutnik were looking at it. He acknowledged that they were planning what he called some sort of merger between the Postal Service and the Commerce Department.
So this is very much an active question in the White House. And at the Postal Service, people are really uncertain.
That goes from rank-and-file letter carriers and postmasters who I've talked to today and have been texting with all through the night, really, from last night when I broke that story to today to folks in senior leadership who are wondering what it means to have a political mail service. Yeah.
You know, I remember during the first Trump term when Trump was taking aim at the Postal Service and there was like a grassroots, legit bottom-up uprising around the country, even in the worst of COVID, with people standing up for postal workers and people standing up for the Postal Service and saying, hands off. And it did appear to back them off.
my sense, given the approval ratings, the public approval ratings for the Postal Service, that recent experience of having to stand up for it against Trump trying to take it down,

that the response to your reporting might have been a little bit of

that dynamic still at play, that they might not understand the political dragon that they are

sort of letting out of the gate here if they try to do this. Is it your sense that there was momentum

to do a thing, and then the public revelation of that momentum seems to have changed them to a different course? That's a difficult question to answer. I mean, yes and no, right? I mean, the story published last night, and one of my sources immediately texted me, are we doing this again? This is somebody who had defended the Postal Service during the first Trump administration and was like, okay, let's take the playbook out again.
And I've been talking with sources who are reviving that playbook again today. The legal questions around if the Trump administration can do this, and if so, how they can do this, are very thorny.
I mean, like, I'm a postal policy geek, and I don't know. And that's because it's an independent agency.
It has to have a board. If you don't have a board, you can't raise prices.
You can't sell stuff off. You can't make investments.

Those are powers that are not vested in the Postmaster General.

And it's designed that way specifically to wall people's mail and communications off from anyone political who could tinker with it.

Yeah, the Postal Service belongs to the American people. It doesn't to any political faction, doesn't belong to the White House, certainly doesn't belong to any private company or private investor.
Jacob Bogate, this is going to be a big one moving ahead. I'm sure we'll be talking to you about it again.
Congratulations on your reporting thus far. Thanks.
Good to see you. All right, We'll be right back.
I told you this was going to be a packed show tonight. All right.
I will see you again on Monday and all next week at 9 p.m. Eastern here on MSNBC.
In the meantime, you can find me on blueskyatmatto.msnbc.com. If you're on Blue Sky, I love to hear from you there.
You can, you know, do the social media communication thing in a way that I will see you and you can let me know about things and I will let you know about things. It's fun.
It's convivial. I recommend it.
Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second grade challenger school class. They're studying Charlotte's Web.
What words did this author use to describe this barn? Descriptive words. Wonderful.
Can you find some

adjectives in there? New is an adjective describing rope. Rubber is an adjective and it modifies boots.

Those students are seven. Starting early and starting right makes a real difference.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.