'Our superpower': Trump confronted by diverse, robust pushback on 'a million' different fronts

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Speaker 13 So, this is one of of those stories that starts far away,

Speaker 13 but then it comes right here, right home at the end. So stick with me.
All right, you might remember a few weeks ago, we showed you images, kind of overwhelming protest shots from Europe, from Serbia.

Speaker 13 Do you remember this? Serbia has a president that is kind of their version of Donald Trump. And protests against him like this have been sweeping that country.

Speaker 13 They started small small and week after week, they just grew and grew to the point where,

Speaker 13 frankly, it has become hard to imagine that that Serbian president is going to be able to stay in office given the size and the

Speaker 13 sort of the breadth of the opposition to him in his country and their persistence at saying that he must go.

Speaker 13 These massive, very impressive, repeated protests in Serbia are also,

Speaker 13 I think, a good reminder for us and for everybody around the world that part of the reason it's not good to have a strongman leader, part of the reason you really don't want your country turned into some version of an authoritarian dictatorship is because authoritarians and dictators are always, always

Speaker 11 corrupt.

Speaker 13 Why do you think they want to get rid of the rule of law anyway, right? So they don't have to abide by the law because they're crooks.

Speaker 13 Always and everywhere, dictators and authoritarians are stealing from the people. They are crooks.
They are corrupt. It is an axiom.

Speaker 13 And in the case of these huge, impressive protests in Serbia, these started over something that at first

Speaker 13 was billed as an accident. Started over something that happened in November.
of last year. A roof, kind of a canopy at a train station collapsed and 16 people were killed.
And that

Speaker 13 event, that tragedy, sparked protests against the authoritarian government in that country.

Speaker 13 Because even though that might have seemed like an accident, everybody knows that authoritarians are, say with me now, always corrupt.

Speaker 13 And so the protesters in this country realized instantly that had they had a good government, a not corrupt government, that concrete canopy at the rail station would have been built by a qualified contractor, not just the one who was connected or the one that paid the biggest bribes.

Speaker 13 In a country with the rule of law in effect, in a well-run country, the contractor who built that thing would have had to comply with building codes for safety's sake, rather than, say, being able to pay somebody off to avoid those building codes.

Speaker 13 And so in this country, after that collapse at that rail station, the people of that country made that connection, right?

Speaker 13 You may or may not care about politics. You may or may not have a pre-existing opinion about our strongman leader.

Speaker 13 But if for no other reason, can't we all agree that we need to get rid of our authoritarian president so that we can have a government within the law, so we can have the law, so we can have real building codes, so our freaking newly built train stations stop collapsing on our heads and killing us by the dozen.

Speaker 13 And that simple connection started this very broad-based protest movement. It was like students for a day, and then it was everyone.
And it has just built and built and built every week from there.

Speaker 13 And in the face of those protests in that country, the eldest son of the president of the United States, Donald Trump Jr., has made multiple trips to Serbia to try to shore up their very Trumpy president against these calls from the millions of people in the streets demanding that that guy resign.

Speaker 13 Why would Donald Trump Jr. like that guy so much?

Speaker 13 Why would Donald Trump Jr. be willing to travel all the way to Serbia more than once to try to shore this guy up

Speaker 11 while

Speaker 13 all his own people are in the streets week after week demanding that he goes what does Donald Trump Jr. care about this guy?

Speaker 13 Guess.

Speaker 15 Guess.

Speaker 13 So in the middle of the capital city of Serbia, there is a ruined building.

Speaker 13 Used to be the headquarters of what was then the Yugoslav Army, is now the Serbian Army.

Speaker 13 And in 1999, that army headquarters building was bombed by NATO. All but destroyed it, that bombing.
That was 26 years ago.

Speaker 13 And that country has never repaired that building right in the center of their capital city.

Speaker 13 They have preserved that wrecked building as a memorial to what happened in the war in the Balkans, to what happened in the NATO bombing campaign against their country.

Speaker 13 That ruined building is preserved officially as a national heritage site, a protected monument in that country.

Speaker 13 And Donald Trump would like to tear that monument down and build a luxury hotel and apartment tower there,

Speaker 13 literally on that site.

Speaker 13 You know,

Speaker 13 there is a Trump Tower in Istanbul. Istanbul, famously, is right on the Bosporus Strait.
It's right on the border between Europe and Asia.

Speaker 13 But that is as close as the Trump family has ever gotten to having a Trump Tower in Europe.

Speaker 13 Their Serbia plan to have the first ever Trump Tower in Europe.

Speaker 13 Their Serbia plan is to tear down the most recognizable National Heritage Site monument in that entire country and turn it into Trump Tower Belgrade, you know, Trump Tower Serbia or something.

Speaker 13 It will be a joint operation between the Kushner family and the Trump family. Now, how can they do this, given that it's a national heritage site and protected under law?

Speaker 13 Ah, well, that's one of those times where it comes in handy that there's no rule of law.

Speaker 13 Somehow, the very Trumpy authoritarian president of that country, somehow, he was able to come up with some kind of waiver, some kind of permission slip that said, actually,

Speaker 13 that site is no longer a protected National Heritage site.

Speaker 13 The president said he got an opinion from a National Heritage Site expert, which said basically, meh, who cares about that site anyway? Go ahead, tear it down.

Speaker 13 And they said that expert opinion gave them the legal basis they needed to approve this big project for Donald Trump.

Speaker 13 And with that expert opinion in hand, with that being the legal basis for getting rid of the National Heritage Site designation, I mean, jackpot, right?

Speaker 13 Jackpot for some.

Speaker 13 The Trump and Kushner families thereby get permission to bulldoze the Serbian equivalent of Mount Rushmore in order to build themselves on that site a $500 million luxury development.

Speaker 13 while the regular people of that country get to be killed by collapsing train stations.

Speaker 13 A few weeks ago, on the anniversary of the bombing campaign that destroyed that army headquarters in the first place, there was a whole new round of protests in Serbia, specifically against this deal,

Speaker 13 against that country's president trading away a site of national, cultural, and historical significance for a development deal that personally benefits Donald Trump and his family.

Speaker 13 But now,

Speaker 13 guess what has happened?

Speaker 13 Amid the relentless, just unrelenting, ever-increasing, ever-broadening, totally persistent, creative, totally unafraid pressure campaign from that country's citizens who have turned out into the streets again and again and again,

Speaker 13 this whole mess is all now falling apart.

Speaker 13 Headline, Trump-Kushner Hotel Project in Serbia hits SNAG. Alleged forgery.
Forgery? What?

Speaker 13 Quote, the Trump family's $500 million luxury hotel project in Serbia, slated to be built on the site of a bombed-out defense ministry building, has run into an embarrassing complication.

Speaker 13 A key document the Serbian government has relied on to deliver this deal was forged, said officials this week.

Speaker 13 The leader of the Serbian agency charged with protecting cultural monuments admitted to authorities authorities that he had forged a document allowing the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense headquarters in Belgrade to be demolished and replaced with the Trump Hotel.

Speaker 13 Officials said the agency's leader fabricated an expert opinion to justify the government's decision to strip the site of its cultural heritage status.

Speaker 13 The forged document served as the legal basis for lifting protection from the complex. The official has served as acting director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments since June.

Speaker 13 He now faces charges, criminal charges, of abuse of office and forgery of official documents.

Speaker 13 Darn that rule of law!

Speaker 13 If it wasn't for the remaining rule of law and for those meddling kids.

Speaker 13 Now maybe there never will be a Trump Tower in Europe, quote, Mr. Kushner's company said in a statement, quote, we will review this matter and determine next steps.

Speaker 16 Womp, womp.

Speaker 13 Sad trombone. Yeah, it's amazing

Speaker 13 how corruption makes things go so well and so easy and so fast for a second

Speaker 13 before it all goes to heck, right?

Speaker 13 Before the people

Speaker 13 absolutely caught into what you're doing and they figure out a way to stop it.

Speaker 13 And as the people of that country keep marching, keep peacefully protesting, it's hard not to believe ultimately that they're going to win. I mean, look at the geniuses they're up against.

Speaker 13 The great American city of Chicago is so big and so dominant in its influence in its part of the country that the whole area around Chicago for miles and miles is called Chicagoland.

Speaker 13 I've always loved that. You know, nobody talks about New York land or San Francisco land, right?

Speaker 13 For all of the swagger of those American cities, only Chicago has enough swagger that its whole region is Chicagoland. It's a very Chicago designation.

Speaker 13 The city of Aurora, Illinois is,

Speaker 13 I think fair to say, sort of on the edge of Chicagoland. It's about 30 miles from downtown Chicago.
And this weekend, there were 15,000 people.

Speaker 13 who signed up to join hands, to literally line up next to each other, to cover that whole 30-mile distance between Chicago and Aurora, Illinois, all to protest President Donald Trump and the actions of the Trump administration.

Speaker 13 15,000 people in a single line

Speaker 13 over 30 miles. They called it hands across Chicagoland.

Speaker 13 This weekend, there were big protests in California against Trump shutting down the Department of Education and against his cuts to education, big protests simultaneously in San Diego and also in San Francisco and also in Sacramento.

Speaker 13 Also this weekend, also in California, there was a big joyous and sort of gleefully foul-mouthed anti-Trump demonstration at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. I say foul-mouthed.

Speaker 13 It was mildly foul-mouthed. They held signs like,

Speaker 13 like, way worse than the last

Speaker 13 nickname for Richard in the White House.

Speaker 13 Also this one, which pictures Richard Nixon himself saying, I can't believe they let Trump get away with all this

Speaker 13 stuff.

Speaker 13 This weekend, there were anti-Trump protests in Buffalo, New York, and in Austin, Texas, at the Texas state capitol.

Speaker 13 There were anti-Trump protests this weekend in Ogden, Utah, where people were standing up for immigrants. Also, along the same lines, people standing up against Trump and for immigrants.

Speaker 13 In Watertown, Massachusetts, people standing up against Trump this weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, particularly protesting against ICE raids and arrests in that community.

Speaker 13 There are protests against Trump this weekend in Los Osos, California and in Williamsburg, Virginia. In Omaha, Nebraska, save the U.S.
Post Office, no to privatization.

Speaker 13 In Wyandotte, Michigan, hands off the VA and defend the rule of law. There's actually a second protest in Omaha, I should mention, against the Medicaid cuts in the Trump Republican budget.

Speaker 13 There was also a big protest in Hawthorne, California this weekend at the headquarters of SpaceX, which is owned by the president's top campaign donor, Elon Musk.

Speaker 13 People protested at a gazillion Tesla dealerships this weekend, again,

Speaker 13 including these in Tucson, Arizona, and Lynnhurst, Ohio, and Charlotte, North Carolina. That was a big one in Charlotte, Irvine, California, Albemarle County, Virginia, Tysons, Virginia.

Speaker 13 People are also branching out and coming up with new ideas.

Speaker 13 As schools get out and people start heading out on summer vacations, the lefty political group More Perfect Union has put up 300 billboards all across the country pushing back on Trump for his cuts to our beloved national parks.

Speaker 13 Greetings from Gateway Arch National Park, now with reduced staff,

Speaker 13 made possible by Doge,

Speaker 13 attacking Trump for the cuts to the national parks, which have resulted in closed sites, long waits, reduced services, miserable staff.

Speaker 13 After weeks of protests and boycott campaigns against Avello Airlines for taking a big, lucrative contract with the Trump administration to do their deportation flights for them, one Democratic state lawmaker in New Hampshire crowdfunded a few thousand dollars online to put up billboards criticizing Avello.

Speaker 13 Avello then threatened him and the billboard company with legal action if the billboards didn't come down.

Speaker 13 Now that state lawmaker, his name is Seth Miller, is suing Avello in the state of Nevada, where the company is headquartered. He's suing them simply so he can put the billboards back up.

Speaker 13 So when people write about the history of this moment in the United States, when they write the history of what was happening in the 2020s,

Speaker 13 when democracies in some cases were falling into authoritarianism and dictatorship, when lots of democracies around the world started sliding in that direction and then fought their way back.

Speaker 13 What will the story be about us in our country in 2025?

Speaker 13 I mean, what will they say about what motivates our protest movement here against Trump?

Speaker 13 It's not

Speaker 13 like it is in Serbia, right? You can't trace it to, you're not going to be able to trace it to

Speaker 13 the one railway station collapse like they had, right? Serving as the catalyst for that movement that just caught fire and took over the country.

Speaker 13 For us, it's a million things.

Speaker 13 I mean, your mileage may vary. Maybe for you, it is that Avello Airlines decision to keep marketing themselves to U.S.

Speaker 13 customers for pleasure trips while they're also using their planes and their pilots to fly deportation flights for Trump for profit.

Speaker 13 Maybe it's the cuts to Medicaid. in the Trump Republican budget.
You know, there's a reason they keep scheduling the votes on this thing at 11 o'clock last night on Sunday. And the next vote is 1 a.m.

Speaker 13 on Tuesday night slash Wednesday morning. That's their next vote on it.
I wonder why they keep scheduling the votes at times like that.

Speaker 13 Well, polling from Data for Progress says there isn't a single congressional district in the entire country where cutting people off their Medicaid health insurance is popular.

Speaker 13 But Trump and the Republicans are trying to pass this thing to take health insurance away from at least, at least 5 million Americans and likely millions more than that.

Speaker 13 Maybe that's it.

Speaker 13 Maybe for you, it's the National Weather Service's offices

Speaker 13 being so cut down by Trump that in many places they can now no longer

Speaker 13 staff our National Weather Service offices overnight.

Speaker 13 They don't have staff there at night because, oh, you know, who cares? Obviously, dangerous weather always confines itself to business hours, right?

Speaker 13 Maybe it's the ongoing disaster at Trump's FAA,

Speaker 13 where our nation's air traffic controllers are losing communication with planes over and over and over again now at multiple major airports.

Speaker 13 Maybe it's the Trump Republican plan in this budget to sell off thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of acres of U.S. public lands.

Speaker 13 lands that belong to the American people, that we will never get back after they sell them off.

Speaker 13 Maybe it's the fact that Trump has now got inexplicable AI chat bots answering the phones at the Social Security Administration.

Speaker 13 Chat bots that appear designed simply to make you hang up in frustration without ever getting the help you need to, say, locate your missing check.

Speaker 13 Maybe it's that... that Trump is cutting the program that helps babies born with health defects.

Speaker 13 Maybe it's that Trump is stopping support for Narcan, Narcan, which does nothing except save the lives of people who are overdosing.

Speaker 13 Maybe it's the fact that Trump is sending hundreds of tons of perfectly good food, enough to feed a million people for three months. He has sent that food to instead rot.

Speaker 13 in four government warehouses in Dubai and Djibouti and Houston and South Africa because the sign-off to allow that food to be given to starving people is sitting on the desk of a 28-year-old with zero government service experience who has nevertheless been put in charge of the fate of a million people at least because of his connection to the president's top campaign donor.

Speaker 13 Yet maybe it is any of those things. Maybe it's the fact that Trump just effectively legalized machine guns.

Speaker 13 You heard me right. Trump just effectively legalized machine guns.
He is allowing the sale of something called a forced reset trigger.

Speaker 13 You'll now be allowed to buy those and possess those in this country. What's a forced reset trigger? It turns basically any AR-15 style rifle into a machine gun.

Speaker 13 Just hold the trigger down and fire all your ammo.

Speaker 13 Trump's attorney general says they are now allowing those devices to be sold.

Speaker 13 Again, effectively legalizing machine guns in the United States because she says, in her words, it will, quote, enhance public safety.

Speaker 13 Machine guns.

Speaker 13 So when the history books are written about our generation in this moment, what will they say is our cause in standing up against the Trump administration? Turns out we don't have just one.

Speaker 13 And I think that might be part of our superpower here.

Speaker 13 because it allows for protests of various kinds and various stripes, nonviolent protests of every imaginable variety in every state in the country just about every single day.

Speaker 13 And sometimes they are massive. I think what we're going to see on June 14th is going to be massive.
Sometimes they are a few people. Sometimes they are 15,000 people across 30 miles of Illinois.

Speaker 13 But whatever we're doing, The various forms of pushback against Trump are also working in various ways every day.

Speaker 13 Today, for example, a federal judge ruled that Trump acted in a manner that was blatantly unlawful

Speaker 13 when he shut down the U.S. Institute of Peace and effectively tried to steal their building, even though the Institute itself owns the building and not the U.S.
government. The U.S.

Speaker 13 Institute of Peace put out a statement tonight saying they look forward to restarting their work now that a judge has shut down Trump for unlawfully trying to shut them down.

Speaker 13 This weekend, a judge ruled over and over and over again, hundreds of times, that the so-called military zone that Trump has set up across three states on the southern border is effectively

Speaker 13 legally meaningless. And just because Trump has declared that a military zone, it doesn't give him the right to have people arrested there for trespassing on military property.

Speaker 13 Today at Columbia University in New York City, Mohsen Madawi walked at his graduation to accept his diploma.

Speaker 13 After a huge movement of his friends and his community in Vermont and in New York, culminated in a federal judge in Vermont ordering him freed from prison. He is a legal permanent resident.

Speaker 13 He is a green card holder.

Speaker 13 He has never been accused of a crime. Trump had his immigration agents arrest him

Speaker 13 exclusively for his constitutionally protected political speech. But that did not stand.
He was freed by court order, and today he graduated from Columbia and got a huge standing ovation.

Speaker 13 Tonight, the bizarre criminal charges against the mayor of the largest city of New Jersey, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ross Baraka, for the crime of showing up outside the controversial immigration prison in his city, those charges tonight were dropped.

Speaker 13 Although they say they are now charging a member of Congress who was on the same scene that day.

Speaker 13 This is no time to check out. And do not sleep on the power of protest and the power of pushback.

Speaker 13 And every country has its own history and every country has its own navel-gazing ways, right? I don't think Serbia much cares about what's happening here.

Speaker 13 I don't think that, you know, we care most, we care more about other countries than we do about ourselves.

Speaker 13 But it's the same kind of guy doing the same kind of politics for the same kind of reasons in all of these places. And when the people see through it, we see through it the same way in every country.

Speaker 13 We recognize like and like.

Speaker 13 And so these authoritarians have effects on one another and the protest movements against them have effects as well.

Speaker 13 After Trump was elected, Canada, for example, changed their mind and decided they would not elect their own Trumpy candidate. They would elect someone else who would stand up to Trump instead.

Speaker 13 They did a U-turn in that election. Same thing happened in Australia right after it happened in Canada.
This weekend, same thing happened in Romania. A huge upset.

Speaker 13 The Trumpy candidate had long been expected to win and win by a lot. The people of that country turned around and said nope and elected the centrist mayor of Bucharest instead.

Speaker 13 Authoritarians fight hard to make change seem difficult, to make ousting them seem impossible, to make opposing them seem hard or pointless or dangerous.

Speaker 13 But everybody else knows better all over the world,

Speaker 13 including here.

Speaker 13 Much more to come tonight. Stay with us.

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Speaker 1 This episode is presented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. This year, lawmakers have attacked our rights, stretched the truth, and taken away access to health care.

Speaker 1 Through it all, Planned Parenthood has been on the front lines, providing care, defending patients, fighting back.

Speaker 1 But the Trump administration and Congress passed a law to defund Planned Parenthood, putting care for 1.1 million patients at risk. Planned Parenthood isn't backing down.

Speaker 1 They're still here, protecting access to birth control, cancer screenings, abortion, and more. Visit plannedparenthood.org/slash defend and donate today.

Speaker 4 Now's the time to start your next adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 5 With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you.

Speaker 9 Every new Toyota hybrid comes with Toyota Care, two-year complementary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 11 Visit your local Toyota dealer today, Toyota.

Speaker 12 Let's go places. See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 18 Gail Davis was in her bedroom watching the news when the storms came through Friday afternoon.

Speaker 19 And I looked and I seen all this debris mixing. And I said, Oh, we're really, we really, we really, we really in it.

Speaker 18 She saw the tornado come down her street and ran to the basement.

Speaker 19 Everything was like,

Speaker 19 just popping glass. And I was so scared.

Speaker 18 The tornado opened up the roof over the very bedroom she was just sitting in.

Speaker 13 One very scary story from that huge, deadly tornado that struck the beautiful city of St. Louis on Friday.
Seven people died in Missouri during Friday severe weather. The mayor of St.

Speaker 13 Louis says the damage is estimated at more than $1.6 billion in her city. I'm sorry to say the city of St.
Louis is bracing for more storms tonight.

Speaker 13 These new storms are expected to be less severe, but a lot of rain and high wind is going to be dangerous in a city that is littered with loose debris like you see here. St.

Speaker 13 Louis's mayor told MSNBC today that her city is definitely going to need federal help, including from FEMA, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA has told St.

Speaker 13 Louis that they'll have people from the agency, they'll have assessors on the ground in a couple of days by Wednesday.

Speaker 13 Hopefully that means St. Louis will start getting some of the federal help it so obviously needs.

Speaker 13 But what's looming over this is, of course, that FEMA may not be at their best right now.

Speaker 13 Earlier this month, the acting head of FEMA was fired and then immediately escorted out of the agency's headquarters for daring to say that the agency he was tasked with running should exist.

Speaker 13 He was asked at a congressional hearing about Trump's desire to abolish FEMA.

Speaker 14 He said he didn't think that was a good idea, and so they fired him immediately and frog-marched him out.

Speaker 13 The replacement head of FEMA has no background in emergency management at all. He greeted his new staff by telling them he will, quote, run right over anyone who resists him at the agency.

Speaker 13 He also told them to expect firings, expect layoffs.

Speaker 13 FEMA employees tell the Wall Street Journal the agency is months behind schedule in preparing for hurricane season, which starts less than two weeks from now.

Speaker 13 And it's not just the agency that responds to severe weather that's under strain right now.

Speaker 13 It's also the agency that tells us what the weather is, that predicts and tracks and warns us about severe weather.

Speaker 13 As tornadoes struck Missouri on Friday, very, very, very severe storms also battered Kentucky. One tornado in southeastern Kentucky killed 19 people.

Speaker 13 The government agency that provides weather data for every weather station and every weather app and monitors storms and sends out emergency alerts for all kinds of severe weather is the National Weather Service.

Speaker 13 And the National Weather Service in Kentucky has three offices.

Speaker 13 None of them is fully staffed because of Trump's cuts to the National Weather Service.

Speaker 13 The office that handles forecasts for eastern Kentucky, where Friday's tornado struck, it's short seven staff members, which means that, among other things, the office no longer has an overnight staff at all.

Speaker 13 Because again, obviously, we would hope that severe weather has the decency to only strike during business hours.

Speaker 13 At any of the three offices in Kentucky, there is no meteorologist in charge now.

Speaker 13 Now, to be clear, we don't know if those staffing shortages in Kentucky had any effect on the ability of the weather service to manage and predict and send out appropriate alerts about Friday's storms.

Speaker 13 There's no reason to think that the weather service was anyway at fault for what happened in terms of the devastating impact of those storms.

Speaker 13 The agency says the Jackson office was staffed overnight for that one night on Friday because of the expected severe weather.

Speaker 13 Officials, including Kentucky's Democratic governor, say they've seen no evidence that the weather service performance was impaired in this instance.

Speaker 13 But even if it wasn't in this instance, these kinds of cuts just systematically reduce our ability to cope with something as inescapable and inevitable as severe weather.

Speaker 13 And did I mention that hurricane season starts in two weeks?

Speaker 13 Joining us now is one of the meteorologists the National Weather Service has just lost in recent months.

Speaker 13 Until less than three weeks ago, Brian Lamar served as the meteorologist in charge of the Tampa Bay Area Weather Forecast Office in Florida.

Speaker 13 But as the Trump administration slashed staff at the Weather Service, Mr. Lamar accepted an early retirement at the end of last month.
Mr. Lamar, thank you very much for being here.

Speaker 13 I really appreciate you making the time.

Speaker 16 Hey, thank you, Rachel. I really appreciate all the highlight and spotlight you placed on the stories before the lead-in.

Speaker 16 And the National Weather Service, as you know, and all the viewing audience knows we're a public safety agency.

Speaker 16 And especially as we go into severe weather season, which we're in now, hurricane season coming up in two two weeks, as you mentioned, it's so important to really understand more about the National Weather Service and make sure it has the support that it really needs moving into the future.

Speaker 13 I feel like, I mean, I can't speak for everybody, but I don't know anybody in this country who doesn't have respect and admiration for the National Weather Service.

Speaker 13 and their staff and the service that they provide and the sort of creativity and

Speaker 13 diligence with which they have worked to always be at the cutting edge of what they do, to constantly be improving, constantly be improving not only their science, but also the way they communicate to the public about what's going on.

Speaker 13 I just don't know anybody who has a beef with the weather service at all. That is making it very hard for me as a sort of political observer to understand what percentage there is for anybody in

Speaker 13 the attacks on the Weather Service and the gutting of the National Weather Service staff that we have seen from this administration.

Speaker 13 When this administration took over, did you foresee that it would mean large-scale cuts to the agency?

Speaker 16 No, I don't think it was a surprise to us. I think there's a plan out there, a 2025 plan that kind of outlined certain cuts that were going to be proposed and enacted.

Speaker 16 And I think we're still working through that. But I think it's also important to really put things into perspective.

Speaker 16 You know, when I first started with the National Weather Service over 31 years years ago, we were an agency that had about anywhere between 5,000 and 6,000 people.

Speaker 16 And we had over 250 offices across the country. But over the years, we actually saw a downward trend in the staffing of the National Weather Service over the past, I'd say, 20 years.

Speaker 16 And we had over 250 offices, field offices across the country when I first started in the early 90s.

Speaker 16 And We had a modernization of restructuring going on right when I joined the National Weather Service. It was a very exciting time.

Speaker 16 And we actually had tremendous support from Congress in terms of additional funding, a significant investment from the American people into the National Weather Service.

Speaker 16 We saw Doppler radars that were fielded across the country. We saw new science and technology.

Speaker 16 And we hired a lot of people in the National Weather Service, but we actually consolidated from over 250 offices to about our current 122 offices that we have in place right now.

Speaker 16 And the men and women that serve in the National Weather Service, i can't think of a more dedicated group you know i really liken the group of people their dedication to say like law enforcement firefighters the medical community it is a 24-7 365 day job and and it's a passion because as public servants the national weather service employees and throughout my career like i said over 30 30 years you know it's really been about how can we help other people make decisions when severe weather strikes.

Speaker 13 What are you most worried about, Brian, in terms of the cuts? They've got offices that don't have staffing overnight. We've got multiple offices that have no meteorologist in charge.

Speaker 13 We've got mass firings of probationary workers, young hires in their first, in many cases, first year or two on the job.

Speaker 13 What do you think the public should be aware of in terms of what's most dangerous in those changes?

Speaker 16 I think you mentioned a couple of them right there, Rachel, in terms of the terminations of the probationary employees, because that's your lifeblood. That's the future of the agency.

Speaker 16 That's the new generation. Those are the wonderful young, innovative minds that are coming out of college.

Speaker 16 They're also wanting to come into the National Weather Service from broadcast media, from the military, from private sector. And that's really the future of the agency.

Speaker 16 So I think that's one significant impact right there because there was so much innovation and talent that was actually helping this agency modernize and go through what we call a transformation.

Speaker 16 in the National Weather Service. But I think what worries me most is really the hiring freeze and the lack of significant investment that we're looking at in the National Weather Service.

Speaker 16 So I would think it for everyone listening tonight, it's really about focusing more on additional resources needed for the National Weather Service.

Speaker 16 Like I said, over 30 years ago, we were going through a modernization restructuring. We actually downsized the number of offices, but we increased our technology.

Speaker 16 We added more meteorologists and hydrologists, electronics technicians, admin support. It takes everyone.
It's not just about the meteorology. It's about the entire scientific spectrum.

Speaker 16 And you may have heard of the phrase, an integrated warning team. That's what the National Weather Service has a foundation with.

Speaker 16 And that's really going to be the National Weather Service, our core partners in emergency management, and also the media. You know, the three groups work together to help people protect themselves.

Speaker 16 And as we saw over the past three days,

Speaker 16 killer tornado outbreaks across significant portions of the country.

Speaker 20 You mentioned earlier, there's severe weather going on as we speak.

Speaker 16 And as we approach the hurricane hurricane season, we really have to make sure that everyone is prepared.

Speaker 16 And if we start seeing additional cuts, then that's really going to be starting to chip away at that preparedness across the country.

Speaker 13 Brian Lamar, former meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Tampa Bay, Florida. Thank you for your years of government service.

Speaker 13 Thanks for helping us understand this tonight, Brian. I appreciate it.

Speaker 16 Thank you, Rachel. Thank you.

Speaker 13 All right. More news ahead here tonight.
Stay with us.

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Speaker 13 Today, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the Trump administration a green light to strip nearly 350,000 people who are currently in this country of their legal right to live here.

Speaker 13 These are people who came here legally

Speaker 13 from the nation of Venezuela. The U.S.
government gave them protected status to come here because of desperate conditions in their home country, a country that just last week, the U.S.

Speaker 13 State Department reissued a level four do not travel advisory about.

Speaker 13 quote, do not travel to or remain in Venezuela due to the high risk of wrongful detention, torture and detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, and civil unrest.

Speaker 13 Arbitrary enforcement, you say?

Speaker 13 With this Supreme Court ruling, roughly 350,000 people who came to this country legally, and as of this morning, were in this country legally, they are going to bed tonight knowing that the Trump administration is now declaring them to be here illegally, which of course, in the Trump administration's eyes, presumably means that all of those people are liable to forcible arrest and immediate deportation.

Speaker 13 One immigration expert today calling this the single largest mass illegalization event in U.S. history.

Speaker 13 In Florida, which is the U.S. state that has the most Venezuelan immigrants, the Miami Herald has been running a live blog today and tonight giving readers updates piecemeal as they get them.

Speaker 13 As the Herald describes the situation, quote, the Supreme Court's stunning and unprecedented move has sparked nationwide fear, confusion, and outrage.

Speaker 13 No official timeline or guidance has been provided, leaving these immigrants and their families and their employers in legal limbo. Joining us now is Dara Lynn.

Speaker 13 She's a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. Dara, thank you very much for being with us tonight.
I appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 13 So I'm still sort of absorbing what this means. This is an unprecedented ruling.
Did I I misstate any of that or getting any of that the wrong way around?

Speaker 15 So, I mean, the only thing is that the way temporary protected status works is that people who are in the United States, who may not have legal status, who may be on temporary status, but, you know, may not have options after that expires, are allowed to stay for 12 or 18 months at a time.

Speaker 15 And so the Biden administration, on its way out the door, said, hey,

Speaker 15 if you got TPS from Venezuela in 2023, you can extend it now. You can apply again and have it until next fall.

Speaker 15 The Trump administration clawed that back, said, actually, we'd prefer not to do that, and we think there was a paperwork error. So we're going to say that actually your TPS expires in April.

Speaker 15 That's what this whole litigation has been about.

Speaker 15 So these people have gone from thinking they were, they had protections for another year and a half, to thinking they didn't, to thinking they did when a federal judge ruled that that couldn't go forward, to now with the Supreme Court thinking again that they don't have legal status here.

Speaker 13 So somebody who's

Speaker 13 on temporary protected status from Venezuela in this country right now, what's their likely timeline in terms of their status and in terms of their ability to be in this country legally from here on out?

Speaker 15 I mean, to be honest, what we've seen under this administration is that there is a certain extent of arrest them and then sort them out.

Speaker 15 We definitely have heard, I've heard cases going back to February of people with valid TPS being detained.

Speaker 15 And some of that is because of the interaction of the Alien Enemies Act, which says it doesn't matter if you have legal status, if we think you're a gang member, we can deport you anyway.

Speaker 15 Although that is, of course, on its own Supreme Court hold. But I think that

Speaker 15 there's so much uncertainty. And Venezuelans, frankly, even before today, felt that the temporary court order wasn't really enough to give them a firm grounding.

Speaker 15 And now they've been unfortunately proven right.

Speaker 13 Can you help us understand what precedent this sets? I mean, Venezuela, as I understand it, is one of 17 countries that the U.S. has designated for this TPS for temporary protected status.

Speaker 13 What does this mean for people who are here from any of those 16 other countries?

Speaker 15 Under the first Trump administration, they were very aggressive in saying, if you have TPS, we're not going to keep extending it. You need to go home.
It's over.

Speaker 15 Most of those decisions got held up in court because they were found to have violated the laws governing how you can make decisions like that. They weren't considering conditions in those countries.

Speaker 15 They were just saying, no, we don't want them, send them home. This is even more aggressive than that.
It's saying a grant you had already been given is getting clawed back.

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 15 they've already done things to reduce the extent to which Haitians can be here under TPS.

Speaker 15 And yeah, deadlines that are coming up, I think it's reasonable to expect that very few of those are going to be extended.

Speaker 15 And people who don't have other options for legal status are going to have to be figuring out whether they want to leave or stay as unauthorized immigrants.

Speaker 13 Dara Lynn, Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council, thanks for helping us understand this tonight. Really big deal.
Thank you.

Speaker 13 All right, we'll be right back with new details on a breaking news story. We brought you earlier in this show.
Stay with us. That's next.

Speaker 13 Okay, on Friday night, you might have seen the Washington Post publish this headline. Trump Justice Department considers removing key check on lawmaker prosecutions.

Speaker 13 The Post reporting on a proposal inside the Justice Department to make it so federal prosecutors across the country could indict sitting members of Congress without getting approval from lawyers in Maine Justice's public integrity section.

Speaker 13 So any random U.S. attorney anywhere in the country could indict a sitting member of Congress on their own say-so without even needing to run it by anyone in Washington.

Speaker 13 That story broke on Friday, and it's obviously a big deal, right? One of the reasons the public integrity section exists at DOJ is to prevent prosecutors from bringing politically motivated charges.

Speaker 13 With this change, prosecutors could indict members of Congress on their own with no oversight and no check against politically motivated prosecutions.

Speaker 13 But like I said, as of Friday, the Washington Post was just reporting this as a proposal.

Speaker 13 Well, now tonight we got this news. I mentioned it at the very top of the show.

Speaker 13 Two weeks ago, Democratic Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ross Baraka, was arrested by

Speaker 13 shambolic, unprofessional, very obviously out of their depth, masked homeland security officers while the mayor was protesting outside of an ICE detention center in his city.

Speaker 13 At the time, Trump's newly appointed U.S. attorney for New Jersey charged the mayor with one count of trespassing.
Tonight, that U.S. attorney, her name is Alina Haba.

Speaker 13 She's one of Trump's old defense lawyers. Before that, she represented like parking garage companies.

Speaker 13 Tonight, she dropped the case against Mayor Ross Baraka, but then she brought a new charge against a Democratic member of Congress.

Speaker 13 Congresswoman LaMonica McIver was with Mayor Baraka at the ICE detention center when he was arrested. Alina Haba has now charged Congresswoman McIver with assault,

Speaker 13 claiming that she assaulted, impeded, and interfered with law enforcement at the ICE facility.

Speaker 13 Congresswoman McIver has responded with this statement, quote, Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district.

Speaker 13 We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities as members of Congress have done many times before. The charges against me are purely political.
They mischaracterize and distort my actions.

Speaker 13 They are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight.

Speaker 13 And indeed, federal law explicitly protects the rights of members of Congress to inspect federal detention centers for immigrants, even with zero notice that they are doing so.

Speaker 13 Now, this story only just broke. We reached out to Alina Hava's office, the U.S.

Speaker 13 Attorney's Office for the state of New Jersey, to ask if they got approval from the Public Integrity Section at Maine Justice for these charges they have now brought against a sitting congresswoman.

Speaker 13 We have yet to hear back. We'll let you know when we do.

Speaker 13 All right, that is going to do it for me tonight.

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