Oops!: Trump's first 100 days marked by incompetent screw-ups and frantic walk backs

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We're very happy to have you here. The capital of Vermont is the beautiful city of Montpelier.
This was yesterday at the state capitol in Montpelier. Protesters outside rallying on the steps of the state capitol.
They also marched outside. They ended up protesting inside, including with some state legislators among them, all to show support for Mohsen Madawi, a Vermonter and one of the international students, also a legal permanent resident, who Donald Trump has arrested, even though he's not accused of any crime.
This was yesterday at the state capitol in Montpelier. This was early this morning in Burlington, Vermont.
People turning out about an hour away from Montpelier in Burlington because Burlington is where the federal courthouse is. And they turned out there early this morning after rallying at the statehouse yesterday.
They turned out there early this morning while a federal judge held a hearing on Mr. Madawi's case.
And at that hearing, the judge ruled that Mohsen Madawi cannot be moved out of Vermont. The Trump administration cannot move him to some immigration prison in Louisiana or somewhere else all the way across the country.
The judge says he needs to stay where he is. His lawyers say they are going to be back before this same judge next week, and they will be seeking Mr.
Madawi's immediate release. Today, two of the law firms that are fighting in court against Trump's efforts to target them had federal court hearings.

The judges in both of those hearings appeared to favor the arguments from the law firms against the Trump administration, as they have in every hearing thus far involving these cases. But I will tell you, there was a little bit of a logistical complication in trying to get that reporting from those two court hearings today, because in both of those court hearings today, the courtrooms were packed to the rafters, every seat full and then some, which made it hard for some reporters to get in.
Stakes are very high. People want to be there to witness it.
People are showing up. Last night, as the car company Tesla held its earnings call to discuss that company's catastrophic decline in fortune this year, folks in Seattle held a party at a local bar to listen to the sound of the call and to cheer their guts out when Elon Musk announced that he would be scaling back his time in Washington to instead try to salvage his flailing company.
People all over the country, including in Seattle, have made this strategic decision to protest Tesla, to protest Elon Musk's role in the destruction of the federal government by focusing on that company, which of course is the source of his wealth and therefore his power. The company's nosedive, which was announced and conceded formally by the company in that call last night, the company nosediving has been the whole point of those protests, which have succeeded in their aim.
And the damage to Tesla may very well be irrevocable, but so is much of the damage that Elon Musk and Donald Trump

have done together in Washington. The only thing successful here is the focus on Tesla strategy, which has apparently succeeded in pushing Elon Musk out of the bizarre, unprecedented, unelected government role he took in Washington after paying for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
It worked. Pushback doesn't always work, but not pushing back never works.
And sometimes when you do push back, you win. So this is my last week of doing this show five nights a week.
I said around inauguration time that I would be here for the first hundred days of Trump's term in office. That hundred days is up a week from tonight.
And so a week from tonight will be my last night of this five day a week thing. I will stop doing five nights a week next week.
I will go back to just doing Mondays. I'm not going away.
I'm going to be here every Monday. And the great Jen Psaki is going to be here at nine o'clock Eastern time, Tuesday to Friday.
You're going to love it. Don't worry.
It's all going to be fine. But as we get to this benchmark, which is going to be a transition for me, I've been thinking about what we've been through this past 90 plus days as we're heading toward the 100 day benchmark.
And I realized that at least the way that I have come to understand what we're going through, it's got kind of, I guess it's got like three sides to it. I mean, yes, this is a story of Trump's extremism, right? We really are, without a doubt, going through a kind of attempted authoritarian takeover of our country.
And that has included destroying as much of the government as possible and using the government in every way they can to try to hurt people in the country who the president wants targeted. They are having government attempted takeovers of huge swaths of civil society, including the legal profession and education and even museums.
They are banning books. They are policing what words people are allowed to use in bizarre and authoritarian ways.
They are using terror tactics and secret police tactics against people they are targeting, including secret detention and sending people to foreign gulags. They are reversing our alliances with the countries of the free world and aligning us with the dictatorships instead.
They have freaking redecorated the White House with cheesy looking gold gougas. So it looks like a cheap budget hotel version of the Kremlin.
I mean, like, we are, we are there. The authoritarian project is definitely here.
It is what we are up against. Everybody who warned against that before the election was correct.
No question. That's part of it.
Right. The second part of what we're going through is the country loudly and roundly saying no to that.
People protesting against him in every single state in the country, in blue states, in red states, in big cities, in small towns, in Washington, and everywhere else. I mean, every single freaking day.
This was yesterday in Detroit, and yesterday in San Diego. People protesting, saying, hands off the EPA.
This was Tyler, Texas yesterday. People absolutely reaming out their Republican Congressman Nathaniel Moran at a town hall in his district in Tyler, Texas.
This was North Carolina earlier this week. People in Republican Congressman Ted Budd's district holding an empty chair town hall there for him, to which he refused to show up.
They packed the house anyway without him. This is Pomona, California yesterday.
People turned out to protest at a Home Depot parking lot after Trump's immigration agents came there earlier that day and arrested people from that parking lot. Community turned out in response.
This was 40 minutes away in Anaheim, outside the offices of Republican Congressman Young Kim. People protesting against the Trump-cades to Medicaid, which will be absolutely devastating in Kim's district and in most places around the country.
And everywhere. This just, you know, like snapshot headlines today.
Everywhere, every state, people turning out and saying no every way they can. That has been part of the story, too, and one that we've tried to keep in focus here on this show.
But I said there's kind of, I think, three parts to this story. It's Trump's extremism, people saying no.
But there then is this third thing, which has been the undercurrent to all of it. And to me, I think it is the real lesson of the first hundred days.
I mean, the first hundred days is like an artificial benchmark, but it's a benchmark that we are using. And if there is something to learn about what Trump in power is going to be like, I think the first hundred days have given us one very clear lesson, right? We know he's trying for the whole dictator thing, you know, no elections, no courts, no resistance, rule by terror, right? We know that.
We know the people of this country aren't having it. But I think what we should also know, what we have just lived through in this first 90 plus days thus far, is him screwing up.
It's him absolutely blowing it. I mean, it is one thing to understand the gravity of his intentions, but I think it is equally important to recognize that he's really bad at everything he tries to do.
I don't know if he's bad at good stuff he tries to do because he's not trying to do much that seems good, but the bad stuff he's trying to do, he's been real bad at that. I mean, it hasn't been funny exactly.
It's too disgusting for that, but it has been the proverbial comedy of errors. Let me show you what I mean.
You remember the first big surprise destroy the government thing that he did right after the inauguration? He sent out a White House memo ordering the freezing of all federal funding, all federal grants. And then less than 48 hours.
Oops, had to take that back. Headline, Trump White House rescinds memo freezing federal grants after widespread confusion and legal challenges.
Quote, President Donald Trump's budget office on Wednesday rescinded a memo freezing spending on federal grants less than two days after it sparked widespread confusion and legal challenges across the country. The Monday evening memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget sparked uncertainty and left the White House scrambling to explain what would and wouldn't be subject to a pause in funding.
So it was kind of the first big thing he did. And then they immediately had to take that back.
Did we say freeze federal funding? We didn't. We're just going to, that's rescinded.
We'll try that again. Right out of the gate.
And then right on the heels of that. You remember this one? When they accidentally put somebody in charge of the FBI who they didn't mean to? Quote, White House officials goofed on the White House website.
You don't see the word goofed in the Wall Street Journal all that often. White House officials goofed on the White House website and listed the wrong man in charge of the FBI.
People familiar with the matter said. Instead of correcting the error, White House officials let it stand.
And the two men traded temporary titles at the FBI. So they oops, accidentally put the wrong person as the acting head of the FBI, mixed up the names.
We didn't mean to put you in there. Oh, oh, well, who cares? We'll just let the other guy we didn't mean to put in charge of the FBI be in charge of the FBI.
What could possibly go wrong? Immediately after that, oops, turns out they accidentally put the names of hundreds of CIA officers in an unclassified email and sent it to the White House, where things like that just kind of happened now.

That same day, we learned that Trump has accidentally made it impossible for the Postal Service to accept mail from China. Oops.
Trump made an announcement about shipping things from China. He had no idea, apparently, what the implications of that announcement would be.
Then the Post Office announced, uh, based on what you said, sir, this means America can no longer receive mail from China.

And, well, this means America can no longer receive mail from China.

And, well, I'm not exactly sure what he did mean, but that wasn't what he meant.

So, oops, that had to be reversed, too.

By then, the president's top campaign donor was working his bizarre magic in Washington.

So we got the accidental firing of the National Nuclear Security Agency,

which handles the safe transportation storage assembly and dismantling of our nation's nuclear weapons. Oops.
Oops. We didn't mean to do that.
Oops. Trump administration fires and then tries to rehire nuclear weapons workers in Doge reversal.
And this was the very next day. Headline, New York Times.

Doge claimed it saved $8 billion in one contract. It was actually $8 million.
So that's cool. They were off by roughly 100,000%.
But you know, don't forget, these are the smart guys, smart kids. Next day, headline.
Agriculture Department tries to rehire fired workers tied to bird flu response. Oops.
We accidentally fired all the bird flu people in the middle of the bird flu. Oops.
Can we get them back? No? No, we can't. That same day.
Headline. Trump administration reverses plan to end free COVID test program.
The taxpayers bought all these COVID tests, perfectly good COVID tests. They're still COVID.
People are still testing for COVID to see if they have COVID. But because the Trump administration doesn't like COVID, they're going to what? Incinerate millions of tests? Of perfectly good tests? So Americans instead have to buy more of them by paying for themselves instead of getting the free ones the government already bought to hand out? Seriously? No, not seriously.
Reverse that one too. This was also that same day.
This is a big day in Oopsville. Headline, Trump administration reverses its previous decision and reinstates legal aid for migrant children.
Yeah, it turns out babies don't make great lawyers. Doesn't work out great to have literally babies and toddlers appearing in court alone with a judge like asking them questions? I said all rise, baby.
Are you able to stand on your own? Oh, actually, sorry. Yeah, they reversed that too.
They have since tried again to take away the lawyers for babies and little kids in court after this initial reversal. So this one actually remains a live issue.
I don't know if that's better.

Two days later, oops, we accidentally cut the program that helps the 9-11 first responders.

Did we mean to do that? I think we did mean to do that, but we certainly can't defend it now that people are asking us to defend it.

So that one gets reversed, too.

Then Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, tries on the federal government the same thing he did to destroy the company Twitter. He sends out the what did you do last week email, insisting that anybody who doesn't immediately respond to that email will instantly be fired from the federal government, no exceptions.
Really? Seriously? No, not really, and definitely not seriously. Headline, federal agencies can't ignore.
What did you do last week? Email, Trump administration says. Then this is the following day.
We get news from the VA where Trump has cut things like, oh, I don't know, little liberal woke programs like cancer treatment and support for veterans with cancer and burial services for

veterans. Trump cut burial services for veterans? Really? Yeah, for a hot minute until people freaked out.
And so, yeah, he reversed that too. I mean, are you kidding me? He was not kidding.
next headline VA contract cancellations halted in major reversal. Maybe at this point, they're getting a little shy about screwing up so much, about having to take back and try to undo all these things that they're messing up.
No, they're just getting warmed up. The very next day, after taking back the veterans burials that Trump cut, we got this headline.

Elon Musk admits Doge accidentally eliminated prevention measures combating Ebola virus.

Oops.

The next day.

Headline.

Trump administration reverses course after putting veterans' crisis line hires on hold.

Quote, due to an administrative error,

job offers for some veterans crisis line positions that were scheduled to be filled later this month

were mistakenly rescinded.

This issue has been addressed

and VA is in the process of reissuing these offers.

Due to an administrative error.

What kind of administrative error

has you accidentally cutting the suicide hotline? That same week, headline. Struggling with errors, Doge deletes billions more from list of savings.
Quote, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has deleted hundreds more claims from its mistake-plagued wall of receipts. Late Sunday night, the group erased or altered more than a thousand contracts it had claimed to cancel, representing more than 40% of all the contracts listed on its site last week.
Then this was the next day. Headline, Trump abruptly walks back his directive to fire thousands of federal employees.
Quote, in revised guidance issued to the heads of federal agencies, the Office of Personnel Management tries to rewrite history by claiming it never actually ordered agencies to fire those employees. Let's pretend we didn't do that one.
And then this was the next day. Oh, this was a great one.
Quote, at 2 p.m. Tuesday, the Trump administration posted a list of 443 properties for sale, an inventory that ranged from an El Paso toll booth to the FDA's research campus in Silver Spring, Maryland.
In the next five hours, more than 100 properties were removed from the catalog, including the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the headquarters of the Department of Health and Human Services, the headquarters of the Department of Justice, the headquarters of the Department of Labor, and the headquarters of Veterans Affairs.
By Wednesday morning, the entire list had been removed. So yes, Trump did announce that he was selling hundreds of federal buildings, including, I don't know, the headquarters of the Justice Department.
But did he mean that? We're not even sure if we know. Oops.
They just put them all up for sale and then took them all down and didn't answer any questions about what had happened there. Pretend that didn't happen.
And this was the very next day. Headline.
In dizzying reversal, Trump pauses tariffs on some Mexican and Canadian products. A few days later, headline, Trump administration scraps far-reaching cuts to Social Security phone services after Washington Post report.
This was genius. Quote, the Social Security, this is amazing, the Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 400 former congressional staffers and others, including President Trump's own lawyer,

were made public Tuesday in the unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that President Trump ordered released.
After the Post reported the disclosure on Wednesday, the White House rushed to mitigate the impact. The National Archives then started screening the documents for social security numbers after they had already been publicly released.
National Archives started screening the documents for social security numbers after the fact so that the Social Security Administration could identify living individuals and issue them new social security numbers. Oops.
Oops. We accidentally very thoroughly doxed hundreds of people, including the president's own lawyer publishing like their names, their place of birth, their full birth dates, and their full unredacted social security numbers.
Hundreds of them. Oops.
Then the following week we get, oh, This is a real oops. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic Magazine.
Headline, the Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans. Then this one.
Headline, Trump administration admits Maryland man sent to El Salvador prison by mistake. Two days later.
Headline, Trump's Tar tariffs hit remote islands. One is home to mainly penguins.
The next day, headline, we'll make mistakes, says RFK Jr., as fired U.S. health staff asked to return.
Three days later, headline, economists reveal major math blunder in Donald Trump's tariff formula, which inflates the impact by 400% and could spark global trade

ca- Headline, economists reveal major math blunder in Donald Trump's tariff formula, which inflates the impact by 400% and could spark global trade chaos. The next day, headline, National Park Service restores Underground Railroad webpage.
Oops. Oops.
Had we messed that up? Will you guys please pretend that that was a mistake and not something we totally did on purpose,

but then we couldn't defend it once we did it, and so we just quietly undid it while hoping you wouldn't notice?

Can we leave it like that?

Same day. Headline.

Doge cuts at a Florida manatee refuge have been reversed.

Same day. Headline.

Trump administration says it cut funding to some life-saving UN food programs by mistake. Oops.
The next day, headline, Trump announces sudden reversal on tariffs. This past Friday night, New York Times headline, Trump officials blame mistake for setting off confrontation with Harvard.
Quote, the April 11th letter from the White House to Harvard should not have been sent and was, quote, unauthorized. And it hasn't even slowed down.
I mean, just this week, headline, Trump administration reverses course, restores funding for critical weather data centers. Headline, Elon Musk's handpicked IRS chief lasts just 72 hours.
The story of this first hundred days of Donald Trump's presidency is sometimes a very scary movie because of what he really does seem to be trying to do and what he has already done to some people and some parts of our government and some elements of our country. Sometimes it is a very scary movie.
It is sometimes also an action movie with people all over the country springing into action and standing up to stop him from doing those things as best they can. But the one thing it has consistently also been from the moment he got back to Washington

is an unfunny farce, a slapstick mess of reversals and mistakes and oops, let's pretend we didn't do that and let's try to undo it and let's hope no one notices just how dumb it was when we really did do it and we can't even really defend it. So oops.
I mean, the one word that most sums up Donald Trump's term in office thus far, heading to 100 days in, the one word that best sums it up is oops. Just because they're trying to do really, really bad things doesn't change the fact that they're also just really bad at everything they try to do.
Which for this country is definitely a curse, but also in some ways a blessing. We're heading towards 100 days.
There's going to be a lot of like look backs at what Trump has done. Whatever you hear, what anybody says, don't let anybody tell you this time around that they are competent.
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There were peace talks for Russia's war on Ukraine today, peace talks in London, but they were thrown into disarray by us, by our government. When the American Secretary of State pulled out of these talks at the last minute, just hours after Trump's State Department said that Marco Rubio would be there for the talks, Secretary Rubio canceled.
Then, Vice President J.D. Vance announced his own version of a supposed peace plan for Ukraine.
The J.D. Vance peace plan for Ukraine appears to consist entirely of Russia getting everything it wants, including all the Ukrainian territory it has invaded and occupied by force in this war.
When Ukraine's president said in response, you know, that might not work for us, Donald Trump went on a rant against Ukraine's president online. Today's London talks were supposed to be attended not just by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but also by the other actor who plays the role of Secretary of State for some reason in this administration.
That would, of course, be Trump's real estate friend, Steve Witkoff, seen here bumbling through a meeting in Paris last week, seriously, at this meeting, telling French officials how much their country's 18th century presidential palace looks just like Donald Trump's house in Florida. They literally laughed in his face.
Even some of the people on his own side of the table laughed in his face. Mr.
Whitcoff did not laugh. He did not appear to get the joke, nor did he appear to get the fact that he was it.
But nevertheless, Mr. Whitcoff was supposed to be there at those London talks today, along with Marco Rubio.

When Marco Rubio pulled out, Steve Witkoff also pulled out.

Where is Steve Witkoff today instead? He is getting ready once again to fly to Moscow for yet another personal man-to-man meeting with Vladimir Putin. This will be Steve Witkoff's fourth, fourth in-person visit with Vladimir Putin.
This will be Steve Witkoff's fourth, fourth in-person visit with Vladimir Putin in Russia.

Why would any individual real estate friend of the U.S. president need to have four hours-long,

lengthy, solo meetings in Russia with Vladimir Putin, that remains unexplained.

President Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, in one of his first interviews

since President Biden left office, says that from a national security perspective, in his estimation,

Trump's first hundred days in office have been a, quote, unadulterated disaster.

He says, quote, unadulterated disaster.

He says, quote, President Trump and his team have gone at the core American advantages in the world and systematically tried to dismantle them. Across all of the major dimensions of the things that have been America's major advantages in less than 100 days, President Trump has put them all at risk.

He says, quote, this is about the core foundations of American power and purpose in the world and President Trump's effort essentially to knock them out. Joining us now is Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor to President Biden.
Mr. Sullivan, I really appreciate you being here.
I know you haven't done many interviews, and I really appreciate you being here tonight for this one. Well, thanks a lot for having me, Rachel.
I'm struck by the stark nature of what you said when you say that President Trump is dismantling America's core advantages in the world, the things that have been our major advantages, the things that make us the power that we are. You describe him as systematically dismantling those things.
What are those advantages, and do you see his work against them as being irrevocable? Well, Rachel, I wouldn't say this. I'm not a person who usually speaks in hyperbole.
I say it because I genuinely believe it. You ask, what are those advantages? And there are a few.
It begins with America's unique system of alliances. No other power in the world has the strong, capable allies the United States has enjoyed for decades.
And Donald Trump is intent on busting up those alliances. It's our unique capacity to attract talent from around the world.
We can count on the talent of 7 billion people. China can only count on the talent of 1 billion people.
But Donald Trump is casting doubt on whether we will be a welcoming place for students and researchers and people who want to come here to start companies. It's about a unique system of scientific research and innovation where the government, the private sector, and yes, research universities all come together to invent some of the most groundbreaking things of the past century.
And yet he's going after basic research funding at NIH, and he's going after major universities. And finally, it's about our unique capital markets and our currency.
And you saw when he did his, quote unquote, liberation day, that the world started to question whether America could really be relied upon for its capital markets and for the dollar. And underpinning all of that, of course, is our unique constitutional system underpinned by the rule of law, which is you have quite articately said, he's put under threat in various ways.
These are the things that are distinctively American. And in less than 100 days, President Trump has gone after all of them.
I don't believe anything is ever irrevocable because I believe in the capacity of the American people to reinvent and regenerate. But the damage he has done so far is significant, and it appears that there's probably more to come.
If we lose those advantages, which you just, I think, very eloquently and succinctly described, if you take those things away from America, what kind of country are we? Is there another country in the world that has any of the other characteristics that we have as a country, but not those advantages? Is there a country in the world that you think Trump is modeling us on or trying to make us more like? Well, I mean, it certainly is taking us in the direction of a more authoritarian, more normal, more brutal, great power. And that starts to look more like a China or Russia.
I mean, if you're sitting in Beijing right now and you're looking at what's happening in the United States, you're saying, huh, we've spent a long time worried about these areas where the United States had a distinct advantage over us. We don't have the allies the U.S.
had. Now it appears the American president's handing them away.
We can't attract talent the way the United States does. Now France is going out and saying, hey, come to France because you're scared to go to the United States.
We don't have that uniquely American innovation ecosystem. And yet the president of the United States is going at the basic research foundations and the institutions of higher learning that have set America apart.
Amazing. So there is a kind of remarkable way in which our competitors and adversaries have got to be looking at this and saying, what the heck is going on? And we can't believe our luck.
When it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, Marco Rubio pulling out of these London talks, President Trump once again attacking Ukraine's president, J.D. Vance essentially presenting the Kremlin's dream of how this war would resolve as America's idea, or at least his idea about what should happen here.
I mean, part of what you described in terms of not just America's adversaries, but America's competitors stepping up and taking up some of the space that we used to take up. I wonder if you think that the Europeans and Ukraine's other allies essentially can band together in a strong enough way to supplant the role that we've had.
If we're effectively siding with Russia, we're not just getting out of this. We appear to be very much siding with Putin's take in this war.
Do you think that Ukraine and its allies will be strong enough to take up that space where we used to be? It's a great question. Let me start by saying that it's really difficult to bring about a just and durable peace in Ukraine.
And I will be the first to acknowledge that. But what is amazing to me, and you kind of pointed this out in your opening comments, is the way that the United States has approached this negotiation is to give Russia formal recognition of Crimea, which is sovereign Ukrainian territory, formal recognition of it as a Russian territory.
Something, by the way, Rachel, China hasn't even done. China doesn't recognize Crimea as part of Russia.
And now Donald Trump is saying he's prepared to do that. To give Russia all of the territory they've illegally invaded and conquered, and to give Russia a promise that Ukraine will never be a part of NATO, and to get what exactly in return? Apparently nothing.
Nothing. I mean, that is not a credible way to go about a negotiation.
This is effectively diplomacy by means of full pressure on Ukraine and a series of giveaways to Russia. And down that path does not lie a just and sustainable peace.
I do believe the Europeans have had a rude wake up call and they are going to express themselves. And Ukraine, of course, will express itself too.
But the United States of America has a unique role to play here. And I do hope that before it's too late, this administration changes course in the way that it's approaching these negotiations.
But there's no evidence to suggest that they're going to do so. Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor to President Biden.
I mentioned at the top that you haven't done very many interviews.

I know you spoke with the good folks at the Midas Touch and you're here tonight.

I would just suggest you've had such a long career in public service.

Right now is the time that I think we need to hear more from you.

I hope that you'll speak more with the media and do more interviews, make yourself publicly available.

I think the country can really benefit from hearing more from you at this time, particularly when things are so chaotic in the international front. It's a real pleasure to have you here, sir.
Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for all that you do. All right.
Thanks. Stay with us.
It's President Trump's first 100 days, and MSNBC's Alex Wagner will be covering it all from the front lines. What issue matters to you the most? Join her as she travels the country to talk to the people at the center of the president's policies and promises.
Do you think now that he's pardoned everybody, he can count on this group of people again? Search for Trumpland with Alex Wagner wherever you're listening and follow. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen ad-free.
Hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening, New York Attorney General Letitia James.
It's important that individuals understand that in our system of justice, that there are judges independently analyzing all that we put forth. They make a determination as to whether or not our cause of action, our claim, has any merit based on the law.
Politics stops at the door. That's this week on Why Is This Happening.
Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow. This is something that we showed you a couple of weeks ago on this show.
I have not forgot it since we showed it to you. It's just one of these things that really stuck with me.
And actually, we've heard from a lot of you at home that you have not been able to forget it either. People reference this little local news clip that we played all the time when people get in touch with the show.
I'll show it to you here again. It's a short piece of tape.
This is local news coverage from Tennessee, from WSMV in Nashville. In the back of the room, there was Lynn McFarlane sitting in wooden budge

and standing a few feet away. I heard her say to troopers that she didn't mind being arrested.
She

said, I'm okay with that. I can't go.
I fought for kids and what they're doing here is wrong.

So I'm at peace with it. Tennessee state troopers hauling away 80-year-old Lynn McFarland, 80 years old and made of sheer determination, after she refused to leave a state Senate hearing room earlier this month.
They picked her up. They carried her out.
They arrested her. It's very hard to forget once you've seen it.
We covered it on the show at the time. What Ms.
McFarland was protesting was a Republican bill in Tennessee that would target immigrant kids in Tennessee elementary schools. Now, in Tennessee, Republicans have a trifecta.
They've got a Republican governor. Republicans control the state Senate and the state House by big margins.

Despite that, or maybe because of it, people who were opposed to Tennessee Republicans on this thing, people who were opposed to Tennessee Republicans on this bill targeting little kids, they have shown up again and again and again and again. Lots of them.
People showing up over and over again to state House meetings and to state Senate meetings and for every vote and for every hearing, every element of the legislative process related to this bill to tell lawmakers no, to say that Tennessee should not do this. Kids themselves have shown up.
Hundreds of students have shown up to look lawmakers in the eyes they considered this bill. Emmy Wilkins is a 10-year-old from Chattanooga.
She was present for the committee hearing and knelt in front of Representative William Lamberth and other committee members in protest of the bill. When I started shouting, I was just thinking about how many kids deserve to go to school during that time.
And every kid deserves an education, no matter where they're from. People young and old who oppose this bill have been making the trip to the Tennessee State House, making their voices heard week after week after week.
We've covered tons of these protests. Yesterday afternoon, the Tennessee State Legislature adjourned for the year.
And while the Tennessee State Senate had managed to pass its version of this bill targeting immigrant kids in elementary schools, it turns out the Tennessee House didn't get it done. They didn't do it.
General Assembly ends without passing student immigration bill. Now, the whole thing could still get revived next year, but for now, it's gone.
They stopped it. The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition posting, quote, Tennessee protects education for all.
HB 793 will not be voted on this legislative session. As Lynn McFarland herself put it on Facebook after hearing the news, she said she is breathing easier now.
Delay is almost always the first step on the way to stopping something. If Tennessee Republicans want to try this again next year, they at least know what kind of push back they're in for if they want to try for it.
All across the country, we are witnessing a protest movement against Donald Trump and his Republican Party and what they're doing in Washington and increasingly what they're doing in the states. And it is a movement that is not just sustained, it is growing and spreading, including the protests that appear to be tanking the image and stock price and profitability of the Tesla car company,

now ushering Trump's biggest donor, Elon Musk, out of Washington altogether.

So what is the state of organizing against the Trump administration now? Because that also is

coming up on 100 days. What should we expect next? I know just who to ask.
We'll be right back. Amid the wave of protests that we have seen all around the country this past 90 plus days, one of the things that has just paid off is the work of a remarkable coalition in Tennessee that has been protesting a Republican Tennessee-specific plan to target immigrant kids in elementary schools.
We have seen seniors, people in their 80s. We have seen students, parents, teachers, a huge and very diverse group of people in Tennessee just relentlessly pushing back against this thing in Tennessee.
They have turned up again and again and again and again and again at Tennessee's state Capitol and at the state legislature as Republicans who overwhelmingly control state government in Tennessee have been debating this thing. We have showed it over and over again on this show in the past couple of weeks.
And excuse me, in the past couple of months.

But now after that sustained campaign, the payoff, Tennessee Republicans have just shelved that proposal for the year and gone home without doing it. When you go out to protest in Nashville or anywhere, you never know what exact effect you're going to have.
But we do know that if you don't turn out, you won't win. And we do know that pressure sometimes does work in unexpected places and in unexpected ways.
And we definitely know as we approach 100 days of this Trump administration that the protest movement sparked by Trump and the Republican Party in this era is not going anywhere. Joining us now is someone we like to check in with periodically about this momentum.
Ezra Levin is co-founder of the grassroots group Indivisible. Ezra, thanks very much for joining us tonight.
It's nice to have you back. And great to be here, Rachel.
I wanted to check in with you again, as we have done sort of periodically to get Your sort of gut check, your sense about where the resistance to Trump is heading towards that 100-day benchmark. I feel like the protests are bigger, more widespread, more sustained, more diverse, getting more media attention, and starting to get more political effect visible in terms of the response to what's been happening.
That's just my view from outside, though. How does it look to you from inside? Look, this has been my view from the inside since roughly the week after the election, when we joined you to launch the new Indivisible Guide to tell people Trump isn't all-powerful, that in fact there are thousands of elected officials all over the country who all have to worry about their constituents.
So what do we got to do? We got to organize. I've told you that we've been in a wave moment of organizing, that we've seen just an incredible number of new local volunteers starting indivisible groups every single month since the November election.
We've broken each previous month's record in the number of new Indivisible Groups. And as you've been showing, this is having a direct impact, not just on the vibes out there, but on actual legislation, on actual people's lives.
What we've seen from Trump and Musk and from the MAGA movement is they're using the authoritarian playbook. It is a shock and awe campaign.
Go as fast as possible. Do as much damage as possible.
And look, some institutions, some elites were shocked, were awed. You look at some law firms.
You look at Columbia University. You look at Washington Post.
There are folks who were shocked and awed. But who who wasn't shocked and odd? The 80-year-old in Tennessee or the 10-year-old in Tennessee who organized, who stood up, who said no.
And that had a real impact on its own on that bill, but it has another really important impact. Cowardice is contagious.
So is courage. When you see a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old stand up and say, no, I'm not going to go along with this, you know what happens? A lot of other folks see that and say, well, I guess I got to stand up too.
That's what we've been seeing month after month after month, starting with some people demonstrating courage and then other people looking around and saying, wait, I can do that too. It's in my power.
I'm not just a victim of world events. I can be a participant.
That's what we're seeing right now. Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible, we're heading into what's going to be a really intense period of reflection, people trying to sort of control the narrative about how the Trump administration is doing.
What you and other folks at Indivisible have done is going to be a very, very big part of

the story of this time in American history. Thanks for helping us understand it.

Oh, there's a lot more to come, Rachel.

I had a feeling you'd say that. We'll be right back.
Stay with us.

All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. I will see you again tomorrow.