Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing

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You ready for this one? These geniuses.

You know, if you want... Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour.
Are you ready for this one?

These geniuses.

You know, if you are going to have somebody who consolidates the whole 250-year-old tripartite system of checks and balances that we got from the founding fathers in this country,

if you're going to have someone who says, you know, there are parts of the Constitution that must be terminated. If you're going to have somebody who calls himself a king and who says elections don't count unless he wins them.
If you're going to have an overthrow of the constitutional republic in favor of all power consolidated in one man who says term limits don't apply to him and Congress and the courts don't constrain him and all the rest of it, if you're going to do it, if you are going to abolish the American form of government in favor of an autocratic and unopposed rule by one man, he better be good at it. Am I right? You know, he better be compass mentis on the ball.
If you're going to overthrow 250 years of who we are as a country to instead just be like, let's say you. If we're just going to have it be that one dude, you just hope that dude is with it, right? Or instead, you could have what we have.
On Monday this week, President Donald Trump went to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where he has recently fired the entire board and appointed himself as the new chairman. While skulking around that national cultural treasure on Monday, where he now personally intends to choose awardees.
So get ready for a lot of, you know, kid rock and children's choirs who sing songs about the greatness of Donald Trump. While he was skulking around the halls of the Kennedy Center on Monday, President Trump on Monday announced, surprise, that the very next day he would be releasing all files related to the investigation of the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy in 1963. All files on this subject with no reductions would be released the next day, on Tuesday.
And so, because he said so, and what else is government other than just whatever Donald Trump says, because he said so, the National Archives on Tuesday, in fact, posted online over 60,000 pages of government documents on this subject. So he says it on Monday.
They posted this stuff on Tuesday. Now, it's Friday Eve now, right? It's Thursday night.
For all the conspiracy theories and drama that we as a country have built up around the JFK assassination in the past 60 plus years, ask yourself this. Over the last couple of days, have you heard anything in the news? Have you seen any big headlines about the amazing revelations in these documents? Have you seen news stories about how, wow, these new documents finally shed new light on the assassination? Or that, you know, some previously unknown fact about it has been revealed and this changes everything.
Have you seen any news stories like that? No, no, no, you have not. And that is because the documents that genius Donald Trump insisted on Monday had to be released on Tuesday, those documents were almost entirely documents that had been previously released to the public under President Joe Biden when he released a bunch of them, under other presidents who had released other stuff.
Almost all of this stuff had previously been released anyway. But this was a little different, right? Because Donald Trump, genius, insisted that the documents he was ordering to be released, these documents would have to be unredacted.
He made that explicit in his order. Totally unredacted, nothing crossed out.
And so, on his orders, they released all of these documents that had been previously released, except this time they had nothing crossed out. Nothing redacted.
And it turns out, you know what had been redacted the other times they had released these documents? You know what had been under those

black boxes and previous releases of these same documents? You know what was under the Sharpie scratch-outs on all these pages? Turns out what had been redacted was the social security numbers and birthdates of tons and tons of random people who worked for the government around the time that the Kennedy assassination was being investigated.

Ta-da!

So that is what he has ordered released. That's the big revelation from Donald Trump.
Headline, White House seeks to contain damage from personal data in Kennedy files. Headline, social security numbers and other private information unmasked in JFK files.
These geniuses, these big brains. Among the people who Donald Trump has just doxed by publishing his full and unredacted social security number for no reason at all is is his own lawyer, Joe DiGenova, who worked

for the Trump campaign and who represented Trump on some of the weirdest Russia and Ukraine stuff.

In the Washington Post, quote, former Trump campaign lawyer Joseph DiGenova, age 80,

whose private information was included in the release, said, quote, it's absolutely outrageous.

It's sloppy, unprofessional. DiGenova continued, quote, it's like a first grade

And I... said, quote, it's absolutely outrageous.
It's sloppy, unprofessional. DeGeneva continued, quote, it's like a first grade elementary level rule of security to redact things like that.
First time in my life I've ever knowingly agreed with Joseph DeGeneva. But that's just the start.
The Washington Post further discovered that Donald Trump, in his infinite wisdom, has just published the full, accurate, and complete, quote, social security numbers, birthplaces, and birth dates of not just random people, including his own lawyer, but, quote, more than 100 staff members of the Senate Church Committee and more than 100 social security numbers of staff members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which investigated the killing of John F. Kennedy.
Now, awkwardly for Trump in terms of what he has wrought here, and awkwardly for the rest of us because of the grammar involved, the Post also has to sort of gingerly note that many of these staff members of the Assassinations Committee are themselves still alive. Right? I mean, just because they were on the Assassinations Committee doesn't mean they're not still alive and kicking.
And now Donald Trump has ordered all of them to be very thoroughly doxed, which among other things appears to be quite illegal. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times spoke with experts who told them that this very well looks illegal.
What Trump just did here appears to pretty bluntly violate U.S. privacy law.
At least one person who had his or her social security number published by Trump has started discussing bringing a lawsuit against the government for having done this. Probably pretty good grounds to do that.
It's also helpful to keep in mind who exactly we're talking about here. Right.
If these people were Senate staff members and House Select Committee staff members in the 1960s and 70s on committees that were doing intelligence investigations and the investigation of the Kennedy assassination and the investigation of the investigation. I mean, people doing that kind of work in government in the 60s and 70s, well, a lot of those people stayed in government or in public service.
And that was one step in what turned into a very impressive career in public service, right? A lot of these people ended up later on in their life with very impressive, very important jobs. The people who Trump just doxxed include this list.
I mean, this is from the Washington Post again, quote, many whose social security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington. They include a former assistant secretary of state, former U Trump did.
The New York Times adds this tonight,

quote,

White House officials acknowledged today that it was only after the papers were made public

that they began combing through them for exposed details. Only after they were made public.
So Trump was bumbling around in the halls of the Kennedy Center, being a genius, when he announced, when he blurted out Monday, apparently with no planning anywhere else in the government, when he just blurted out that the Kennedy assassination records will be released tomorrow. Because he said it, and that's how the government works now, they then released the documents the next day, Tuesday, and then, quote, on Wednesday, the day after that, that's when the White House ordered that the pages be combed for exposed social security numbers, which of course had all already been published by the hundreds.
Now, after that ready, fire, aim routine, they're now trying to fix it. The White House has now, quote, directed the Social Security Administration to issue new social Security numbers to the affected people in an extraordinary response to mitigate the potential harm of the disclosures.
They will also be offered free credit monitoring. So yeah, good luck, ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state and high-end Washington lawyers, including some who worked for Trump.
Good luck in your 70s and 80s. Now, working with the hugely diminished and unbelievably chaotic Social Security Administration to restart in your 70s and 80s everything in your official and financial life with your brand new Social Security number that Donald Trump is having to issue you today as an old person, as if you were a brand new baby.
And he has to do that because Donald Trump just published your full name, your birthday, your place of birth, and your unredacted social security number on a government website because what? Who's going to tell him no? Who's going to tell him that's not a good idea? And that actually is the most amazing part of all of this, because it does not actually appear to have been a mistake. It's not like they didn't see it coming, and so they were surprised when it happened.
Look at this from the Times reporting tonight. Quote, administration officials knew before the documents went out that releasing them without redactions would expose some personal information.
They knew before the documents went out, but they did it anyway because he's the king. And what you're going to tell him the genius brain fart he had about Kennedy while he was walking around the Kennedy Center is somehow not the world's greatest and well thought out idea? Who around him is going to be like, um, sir.
It's not how the government works in an autocratic system. Right? Asked about the debacle, the White House press secretary gave reporters this statement.
Quote, President Trump delivered on his promise of maximum transparency. Yes, yes, he did.
And the maximum transparency here is like if jeans came in clear and nobody had underwear anymore. Yes, it's maximum transparency.
I'm not sure that's good. He definitely delivered.
Yeah. And who were you or anyone else to question the inherent genius of every impulsive blurt of the 70 whatever year old God King who rules without restraint and without any checks and balances and without anyone anywhere near him who ever suggests the word no, let alone pronounces it.
Geniuses. Anyway, that's how conscientious they are about the sensitive, personally identifiable information of a lot of really influential people, including one of Trump's own Fox News-ready lawyers.

And if they're that conscientious about those folks' personally identifying information, guess how conscientious they are about yours? Today, a U.S. federal judge in Maryland ordered Trump to get Elon Musk's so-called Doge effort out of the Social Security Administration.
Because, yeah, turns out, guess what they were doing in there? This is from the judge's ruling issued today at 2.12 p.m. Eastern Time.
Quote, The Doge team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at Social Security based on little more than suspicion.

It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack. Quote, to facilitate the expedition, members of the Social Security Doge team obtained unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including, but not limited to, social security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, driver's license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses.
And yet, the quote, so-called experts on the Doge team never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the Doge team needs unlimited access to Social Security's entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted

to their government. Indeed, the judge continues, the government has not even attempted to explain why a more tailored, measured, titrated approach is not suitable to the task.
Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system. Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.

So this is the judge's ruling today. The judge ordered that as of right now, Doge is hereby kicked out of all social security systems that contain any personally identifiable information.
Doge is not allowed to retain any such information. They, quote, obtained, derived, copied, or exposed from any social security system.
They're required to delete all personally identifiable information they obtained directly or indirectly from any social security system, going back to Inauguration Day on January 20th. They must remove any software they installed on any social security system, and they cannot change any social security systems or alter any software code in anything at that agency.
So ordered as of today. And this is another one of those circumstances which we're kind of getting used to, in which the court's remedy is heartening.
Oh, it seems good that they're stopped from doing all those things. But the reason it was needed is the opposite of heartening.
Right? I mean, what Trump gave Musk and the Doge kids at Social Security, look at that list again of what the judge has just told us they had access to. Quote, this is non-anonymized, specific, personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to our social security numbers, our medical records, our mental health records, our hospitalization records, our driver's license numbers, our bank information, our credit card information, our tax information, our income history, our work history, our birth certificates, our marriage certificates, and our home and work addresses.

That's what they were amassing on us at Social Security.

And none of us had anything to do with shooting JFK or even looking into it.

This was the steps of the Colorado State Capitol today. As Donald Trump signed an executive order to abolish the U.S.
Department of Education, all across Colorado demonstrations held today to stand up for education. Another big protest at UC Berkeley today, also to stand up for education against the assault on it by Donald Trump and his administration.
There were also protests at high schools and at middle schools today, really all across the country. The rally here at Wise High School was part of a larger nationwide call to action.
Are we going to allow our society to decline? No! This gathering took place at Tacoma Park Middle School in Montgomery County. Fight! Organizers say this is just the beginning and they're asking everyone to get involved.
Attend rallies, town halls, contact your lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Anything that can be done in the defense of public education.
Megan McGrath, News 4. That was Maryland, the shots from those last protests there.
Elsewhere in Maryland today, in Silver Spring, people protested to defend NOAA and the National Weather Service at their headquarters building as Trump continues to fire people by the hundreds and now the thousands at NOAA, decimating that agency. Outside an appearance by Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and Trump's so-called border czar Tom Homan today, people protested in the street against Trump's anti-immigrant policies and arrests.
This was in Sarasota, Florida. All over the country today, there were protests to stand up for the U.S.
Post Office, which Donald Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, say they plan to privatize these protests today in Washington, D.C., and Tampa, Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, in Los Angeles, where Congresswoman Maxine Waters showed up and joined the protesters, in Charlotte, North Carolina, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They had a big turnout for their protests there to defend the post office today.
Same with the one in St. Louis, Missouri.
They were chanting U.S. mail not for sale.
There was a big protest to defend the post office today in New York City. And there were a bunch of these protests in Texas as well, including this one in San Antonio and this from Dallas-Fort Worth.
Happening right now, North Texas U.S. postal workers are rallying against what they say is the most serious threat in their 250-year history.
It's in response to the Trump administration looking to privatize the postal service. The USPS was launched in 1776 and is enshrined in the Constitution.
Only Congress has the authority to change its structure. is why the postal workers are calling on lawmakers in Washington and the public to reject privatization efforts and protect what they're calling a vital public service.
This is just the start. More rallies are planned for the U.S.
Postal Service as the future of this agency remains uncertain this year. Reporting live in Dallas, Alana Quillen, NBC5.
Members of Congress are on recess this week, which means many of them are back home in their home districts. And that means their angry and worried and weirded out constituents are demanding to talk with them about what's going on in Washington and around the country.
We're going to be speaking tonight with Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz. He's here live.
He's been busy, among other things, holding town halls in the congressional districts of Republican members of Congress who won't do it themselves. That continues to be a theme.
In Boardman, Ohio, constituents of Republican Congressman Michael Rooley held a protest yesterday, demanding that he meet up with them and that he stand up to Trump. In western New York, constituents of Republican Congressman Nick Langworthy held a town hall with an empty chair representing their congressman, since they say he won't hold any in-person town halls with them himself.
Same thing when it comes to Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. Her constituents held an empty chair town hall for her as well in Rome, New York.
We saw the same thing in the great state of Maine, where there was quite big turnout yesterday at a town hall for, but not with, Republican Senator Susan Collins. She did not attend, but lots of her constituents did.

The organizers did put a big blow-up mounted flattering photo of her headshot at the front of the room, to which they addressed their questions and their anger. In Chandler, Arizona, Republican Congressman Andy Biggs held an event that apparently was held for Republicans only.
so Andy Biggs' constituents who aren't Republicans or who otherwise couldn't get into that event, they protested outside. Where Republicans have been having town halls, like this one by Congressman Pat Fallon in Bonham, Texas yesterday, we are seeing more and more that they are having police remove people from the town hall if those people shout at the member of Congress, basically.
In the case of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, nobody was taken out by police, but he did have to endure the indignity of his constituents in very close proximity to him, just laughing right in his face. On Iowa, U.S.
Senator Chuck Grassley's 99-county tour turned tumultuous this afternoon. It took place at the public library in Dysart, where nearly 100 people showed up to ask questions to the senator.
But KCRG TV9's Brian Tabik reports that number could have been much higher if people knew this town hall was happening. Brian? Questions range from how Elon Musk is wielding so much power to tariffs and everything in between.
Senator Grassley acknowledged the anger directed at the Trump administration, as well as members of the crowd who supported his sweeping changes. And your role as a long-term senator is to speak up and remember those of us with little power.
At times, questions to Senator Chuck Grassley boiled over at a boardroom in the public library in Dysart. Many of the questions focused on the work of the new Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk's impact on shrinking the size of the government.
I want to make it very clear that Musk has no power.

The senator says he's holding the town hall despite the Republican National Committee advising congressional Republicans to stop holding town halls because of how tumultuous the meetings have been across the country. But critics pointed to how even his own office didn't promote this event.

There was no mention of this town hall.

I didn't find out about it until late last night. We did have a large turnout and there were a lot of tough questions.
A lot of people are mad at what's going on in the Trump administration, but I hope I was able to answer their questions effectively. Chuck Grassley and some of his constituents in Iowa last night.
I have just one more of these to show you. This was Laramie, Wyoming last night, Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hageman.
So the question was about Social Security and what she's accusing me of is standing by while it is being dismantled by Doge. That is absolutely 100% untrue.
Absolutely 100% untrue. Doge is not dismantling Social Security.
And even with reconciliation, we are not allowed to touch Social Security. So I would request that you actually watch some accurate TV and read ballot news because that is untrue.
In terms of Social Security, President Trump has repeatedly stated that he is not cutting Social Security. That's in Wyoming.
It's amazing how Republicans think they can assuage the American people by saying, hey, I trust Donald Trump on this, don't you? Yeah, and do we all get fresh new Social Security numbers too? Or is that only if we're in the JFK assassination conspiracy theory stuff? Those are the only people who get fresh ones. The Associated Press has now published a list of the Social Security field offices that Trump is closing.
We're going to get to that and much more with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. We've got him here live.
We've got an update for you. You're also going to want to see on this other case where the Trump administration didn't just lose, they just got obliterated in court today.
A lawyer representing one of the people involved in that case is here with us live tonight as well. We've got a lot to get to tonight.
Stay with us. Lots to come.
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Listen now. The first 100 days.
Bills are passed. Executive orders are signed.
And presidencies are defined. And for Donald Trump's first 100 days, Rachel Maddow is on MSNBC five nights a week.
Now is the time, so we're going to do it. Providing her unique most dramatic stories, one of the most dramatic crises of this new presidency came into public view for the first time this weekend, Saturday.
There was an emergency court hearing that was called to ask a judge to turn around three airplanes, airplanes that were taken off right then while the hearing was underway. The Trump administration said people on those planes were Venezuelan gang members.
That's what they said. But there had been no process, no proceeding at all that determined if that was true.
Trump said they were. That was it.
And the Trump administration said they, therefore, would be treated as alien enemies of the United States. So with zero legal process at all, just on Trump's say so, these hundreds of people, who knows who they are, many of them picked up off the street, were put on planes and sent to a prison in another country where the nation of El Salvador promised to lock them up for at least a year doing hard labor.
Well, the judge said, until we can figure out whether you are legally allowed to do this, I order you to turn those planes around, bring those people back. Hours later, as you now know, those planes landed in El Salvador despite the judge's order,

and the people on those planes from the bring those people back. Hours later, as you now know, those planes landed in El Salvador despite the judge's order, and the people on those planes, whom the Trump administration still hasn't identified, they're now in a huge Salvadoran prison.
And that country's president is saying he's going to keep them there as long as the Trump administration pays him for it. Since last weekend, the federal judge in this case has been trying to determine if the Trump administration deliberately flouted his orders, and if so, what the consequences should be.
The judge gave them a list of very simple questions to answer, like what time did the planes take off? When did they land? How many people were on the planes? The Trump administration has basically been playing mad libs to avoid answering those questions. They've claimed that the judge's order didn't count because he spoke it from the bench and only later issued a written order.
That's not how the law works. They have claimed that once the plans reached international waters, Donald Trump acquired super special powers over the planes that the judge could not overrule.
What did you homeschool law school? What are you talking about? Yesterday, before a court ordered deadline, they suddenly said they might invoke something called the state secrets privilege, which is basically the government saying you're not allowed to know, just trust us. The judge grudgingly gave them another day, another 24 hours to try again.
Here's how the judge today reacted to what the Trump administration told him today. He said, quote, the government again evaded its obligations.

The judge says all the Trump administration gave him was a statement from an immigration officer in Texas who says they need much more time to respond to the judge's demands.

Because, quote, I understand that cabinet secretaries are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secret's privilege over the other facts requested by the court's order.

Thank you. are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secrets privilege over the other facts requested by the court's order.
Despite those magic words, the judge was not impressed. He wrote, quote, this is woefully insufficient.
The government cannot proffer a regional ICE official to attest to cabinet level discussions about the state secrets privilege. The judge orders that by 10 a.m.
Eastern tomorrow, the Trump administration, quote, shall submit a sworn declaration by a person with direct involvement in these cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state secrets privilege. You say you can't tell me anything because Trump's cabinet is discussing whether this is state secrets.
Well, you're going to you can't just assert that randomly from Texas, Junior. You have to actually prove to me that those discussions are happening with a sworn declaration from, I guess, members of Trump's cabinet by tomorrow morning.
And I know this feels a little bit like legal wrangling, but the stakes here are almost unimaginably high.

I mean, obviously, there's a lot of discussion about, you know, what happens if the White House starts ignoring court orders? Short answer, death of the republic. But also, the stakes are so high here because the Trump administration is claiming it has the right to grab anyone it wants and ship them anywhere it wants with no court hearing, no deportation order, without even a warrant.
Anybody. Just on Trump's say-so, you're gone out of the country, disappeared indefinitely.
And this is not me exaggerating for dramatic effect. This is exactly what the Trump administration is saying it has the power to do, even as it engages in this legal shell game with the information the court wants.
Their primary argument is the court has no right to ask any questions at all. Donald Trump, on his own say-so, with no legal process at all, can simply exile people out of this country and put them in foreign prisons indefinitely.
They say, quote, this case is not even justiciable. That's not a word that non-lawyers should know how to pronounce.
And so I don't. But it means they're saying this isn't even subject to the power of the courts.
Trump claims that he has unreviewable power. And the president gets to decide who counts as an alien enemy over whom he has unrevealable power.
Here's the New York Times today, quote, Trump administration lawyers have determined that an 18th century wartime law the president has invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant. They're claiming the right, right, what they're claiming the right to do is if somebody in the executive branch, somebody in ICE, some random border patrol officer looks at you and says, gang, then they don't need a warrant.
They can go into your house. They can arrest you, forcibly detain you, and they can disappear you out of the country.
This is from a declaration filed in court by a woman who fears her brother has been deported to that Salvadoran prison.

She says her brother has never been part of a gang and that he has no criminal record.

Quote, I last spoke to him on March 14th, 2025, and believe he was removed to El Salvador shortly after that because I have not heard from him since then and I can no longer find him on the ICE detainee locator.

If he were detained anywhere in the U.S., I know he would contact me because we spoke almost daily while he was previously detained. If he were back in Venezuela, I would hear from him as well.
I'm extremely concerned about the health and safety of my little brother. From a declaration filed by an attorney for a young man, she says fled Venezuela for his safety.
Quote, on Friday, March 14th, 2025, one of the attorneys assigned to his case called the detention facility where he was thought to be to try to schedule a legal call. He was told by the facility that his client was no longer there.
He asked where his client was and was told by the facility employee that he did not know. Here's immigration lawyer Lindsay Toslowski.
Quote, our client worked in the arts in Venezuela. He is LGBTQ.
His tattoos are benign, but ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he is a gang member. His attorney planned to present evidence he is not, but he never got the chance because our client has been disappeared.
Joining us now is Lindsay Toslowski. She's president of Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
Ms. Toslowski, thank you so much for being here.
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
So this is unusual, and correct me if I am wrong. I know that you have not previously identified your client when speaking to the press or when speaking publicly, but I understand that you want to share his first name and some photos with our viewers tonight.
Is that correct? That's correct. Names and identities of people have been shared today via a list, and so we know that it is inevitable that our client will be identified, and we feel it's important to let the world know who Andri, our client, is because he is a human being.
He is a young professional from Venezuela. He's a makeup artist.
He is a gay man. He is someone who came to the United States seeking protection.
He came seeking asylum. Upon entry into the United States, he was detained because of his tattoos, some of which you can see in those photos, but these are not the tattoos of somebody who is involved with gangs.
These are normal tattoos that you would see on anybody at a coffee shop anywhere in the United States or Venezuela. And today we have confirmation from the government, one of the few groups or attorneys that have confirmation that our client is indeed in El Salvador.
Our client last week was supposed to appear in court where we would have started the process of refuting the baseless allegations against him. But we never got to have that chance.
Our client has been forcibly removed and disappeared. And we don't know what his legal case, where it goes from here.
Do you know if he has any legal recourse at all? Do you have any means of contacting him? Or do you have any means of trying to track one down if you don't have one now? So the only reason we know that our client is in El Salvador is because he was supposed to be in court last Thursday. ICE never presented him.
Over the ensuing days, we realized that he was likely part of this group of planes that went to El Salvador. When we went to court on Monday, we were finally told by ICE that it was confirmed he was in El Salvador.
In that moment, they said that he was removed to El Salvador. The immigration judge said, how is it possible that he's been removed if there's no removal order? And the ICE attorney that was in the courtroom said, I don't know.
The case has been set over, so we do have a hearing coming up in a couple weeks. But ICE has now told us that they will not facilitate communication with our client because he has, in their words, been removed and that they will not make him available for that hearing in two weeks.
So at this point, we are, of course, watching the case closely that is ongoing related to the Alien Enemies Act. And we're pursuing all avenues because, you know, our client's life is at risk.
We're concerned for his safety. And the fact that he was, you know, forcibly taken from the United States with no due process.
You know, it's just it's something that really shocks the conscience in a way that we haven't seen since family separation happened in 2018. Yeah.
The blunt and unsupported assertion that all of these people must have been terrible gang members, and then the photos of your client there, I think speak many thousands of words. Lindsay Teslowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, representing this young man, thank you for your time.
I know that this is a developing story. I hope it is a legally developing story, and I hope you'll keep us surprised.
Thanks for being with us tonight. Thank you.
All right. Governor Tim Walz joins us live here next.
Stay with us. Explore the world's hidden wonders on the Atlas Obscura podcast, a village in India where everyone's name is a song, a boiling river in the Amazon, a spacecraft cemetery in the middle of the ocean.
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This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening, Beverly Gage, author of G-Man, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Making of the American Century.
Hoover created this playbook of how you could use an institution like the FBI to intimidate your enemies, to gather information. And then on the other hand, he's actually nothing like Kash Patel because Kash Patel is so open about being loyal to Donald Trump in particular, he calls him King Donald.

And Hoover was a very different creature.

That's this week on Why Is This Happening. Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.

One of the fanciest rooms in the White House is the East Room.

It's the largest reception room. It has these big swanky chandeliers.
At least four different president's daughters got married in the East Room. When a president dies in office, they lie in state in the East Room.
The East Room is supposed to be a venue for really big, really important events. Today, this is what the East Room of the White House looked like.
It was rows of children seated at tiny desks in front of a big audience, all gathered around the president as he signed an executive order to abolish the Department of Education, because they wanted to remind everybody exactly how cute and adorable school kids are when they're at their desks while they are eliminating government support for schools. Just about a week ago, Quinnipiac found

that the proportion of Americans who oppose closing the Department of Education is 60%.

The proportion of Americans who support the idea of closing the Education Department is just 33%.

That's roughly, I don't know, two to one against. But maybe Trump figures if he kills the Education

Department, nobody will be able to read polls like that anyway, let alone calculate the ratio. I should note here that Trump doesn't have the power to unilaterally close a federal department without Congress, but he's doing his best, hacking away at it piece by piece.
One of those pieces is the National Center for Education Statistics. That's the part of our government responsible for

measuring academic performance in American schools. They're getting rid of that as part of getting rid of the education department.
It's kind of genius if you think about it. If you kill the Department of Education, that will have a likely negative impact on school performance.
But if you kill the thing that measures school performance, it's like it didn't even happen, right?

Joining us now is Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz. He was the first former teacher in 50 years to be

part of a major party presidential ticket, and he's recently been barnstorming Republican

congressional districts to highlight the unpopularity of Trump's agenda. Governor Walz,

it's a pleasure to have you here tonight. Thank you.

Nice to be with you, Rachel. What's your reaction to closing the education department today? Well, we knew it was coming, but it's still a day that I dreaded.
I dreaded it as a teacher, as a parent, certainly as a governor now. And the sad part for me about this is, is Donald Trump doesn't know anything about education.
This has been a long-time dream of the far right to crush the public education system, to take that money and transfer it to private schools that don't exist in a lot of areas or rural areas, and to undermine some of the missions of the Department of Ed, making sure everybody gets an education, regardless of race, religion, or abilities. Students like my son who depend on IDEA and individual education plans to make sure that they're treated equally and get the best possible education they can, that's a hallmark of America.
I think America's great contribution to the world is our public education system. And of course, Donald Trump doesn't care.
And I appreciate you showing that photo because it's so obscene that he would put a mock classroom. We all know he's never been in one.
He wouldn't last for a minute. He's never done it.
He's surrounded by people who know nothing about education. And they want to make this about bureaucracy and cutting.
This is about children. This is about broadband access in their schools.
This is about the research you were talking about, pedagogy, things that we learn. And then it's about the Civil Rights Department at the Department of Education that makes sure that we don't have a situation where a Ruby Bridges is escorted to school with police.
And so we're back in an area where we can segregate. And he knows that curriculums and those decisions are made on a local basis, but they muddy the waters.
So look, just like your previous guest, thanks for having her on, but it's chilling. They don't care about law.
They don't care about where the American public's at. And that kind of segues to why I'm getting out there.
And there's a reason that these Republican Congress members aren't holding town halls, because this is so unpopular, they can't defend it. But I'm going to make sure that the voices of their constituents are heard.
When you're doing these town halls, and I know you've done a number of them already and you have plans to do more, mostly going to places where Republican members of Congress won't hold in-person town halls themselves. Are you hearing about the Department of Education? Are you hearing about Social Security? What are the kinds of concerns that people are voicing to you when they have the chance to talk to you about this stuff? Yeah, these folks just, and they want to be heard.
I think a town hall is healthy. People say it in front of their neighbors.
For example, I was in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and a retired couple, both teachers got up, and they talked about the times where in their classroom they provided a little extra money into accounts for kids so that they could eat. They're worried about that.
They're worried about who's going to go into teaching when they see folks demonizing it. There's folks standing up a woman with Parkinson's disease, another that worried about his brother who needed special services through Medicaid.
And they're terrified. They're terrified because of the chaos.
They don't know what's going to happen. And there's no plans for this.
They're not putting anything in place. We fire people, then we hire them back.
You know, we get rid of people working on bird flu, and then we hire them back. It's all about chaos.
And the thing that's most troubling to me is, especially with this Department of Education move, this was all written down in Project 2025. This is a very systematic effort to undermine us.
But look, these are regular people, people standing up. I had a young airman, specialized service, flying on intelligence missions.
She is not going to be able to serve because they have decided that they don't like who she is, simply who she is. And the spouses of service members who have all been fired, and you know how this works on military bases, the spouses usually work at the commissary, the hospital, the school, whatever it may be, and those have all been laid off.
And so it just goes on and on. And again, you're hearing from folks.
A lot of these folks are coming there did not support Donald Trump, but a lot of them, even if they didn't support, said that we didn't know it would be this bad. Just the absolute disregard for folks who want to serve our veterans and can't.
So it is a mess. I do believe, though, that I've been given a platform running and the privilege of running with Vice President Harris, given a platform to list folks up and they are coming out.
These are folks that are coming out. They're making their voices heard.
And these members of Congress are going to dodge it. Donald Trump doesn't have to stand in front of the voters again, but these folks do.
And we need to make it clear that this cannot stand. And we'll challenge them on all fronts.
We'll challenge them in the court of public opinion. We'll challenge them in the courts.
It's simply not what America's founded on. Again, I go back to that previous story with the attorney and the absolute disregard for all rule of law and human rights.
This is stuff that Americans need to pay attention. I'm an optimistic person, and I'm not trying to paint this too terribly, but I think we have to assume the very worst in everything that this administration does, and we need to prepare for it.
Governor, since we've been on the air tonight, a story has broken in the New York Times, and it has broken since I have been on the air, and so I'm not fully read in on this. But I know that you've at least seen the headline.
I want to ask you, just for your reaction to this, it's a pretty shocking story. The headline is, Musk, meaning Elon Musk, set to get access to top-secret U.S.
plan for potential war with China. The lead is this.
The Pentagon is scheduled tomorrow, Friday, to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military's plan for any war that might break out with China.
One official confirming to the Times that Musk is to be at the Pentagon on Friday but offering no details. Mr.
Musk, of course, has extensive financial interests in China. And so this, I think, is raising lots of alarm bells for a lot of different people.
The Pentagon's war plans, known in military jargon as O plans or operational plans, are among the military's most closely guarded secrets. If a foreign country was to learn how the U.S.
planned to fight a war against them, it could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed. The top secret briefing for the China war plan has 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the U.S.
would fight such a conflict.

It covers various options on what Chinese targets the U.S. could hit over what time period.
And these would be the options that would be presented to Mr. Trump for decisions.
For some reason, they've decided to show Elon Musk this level of detail about a potential war with China while he operates the largest

Tesla, largest car factory, I believe, in China and has immense financial interest in that country and contacts with that country's government that he has not disclosed to the U.S. as part of maintaining his security clearance.
I just got to get your reaction to that, sir.

Well, speechless would be the word. I don't know how to convey.
I don't possess the language ability to convey how far out of the norm this is. Like nothing that people listening, like, look, this is those of us who served the background checks from the FBI, just to receive clearance as an artillery enlisted soldier was extensive to get that background.
And then the level of information that you can get, or as a member of Congress, to be able to have access to this type of information. These are closely guarded secrets because our national and our global defense depends upon them.
And once again, we have this, I don't know, the character, the world's richest man with the world's most fragile ego. And I don't understand where the Republicans, where are Lindsey Graham's, where are these people who know how this works to not be terrified of where this is at.
And again, seeing the commerce secretary today tell people to go buy a specific stock and not jesting, not in that. And look, I have to be very careful because I'll be candid.
I think this guy is deeply damaged, a buffoon, but I also don't want to elevate him. He is unelected.
He does not know how this stuff works. And Donald Trump is being reckless with the most sensitive data.
So I want to try and provide some assurance to the American people. But I also think our leadership needs to be very clear about not sugarcoating this.
And Donald Trump obviously disrespects the American public. He thinks they're not smart enough to understand this and doesn't care.
I do believe the American public knows. And I do believe when they see stories like this, that this is why these town halls are growing so big.
This is why folks are starting to question. And what I truly worry that I get sucked into too is they throw so much at it.
It's this is the stuff that you should watch. This is the disappearing people sharing our most guarded secrets on global conflict with a truly unstable private citizen who has no authority and appears to not care.
So yeah, I would just say this is chilling. I'm hoping that the resistance,

and right now the resistance has to be in the Senate. Republican senators need to put a stop to this and pull this back.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walser, thank you for making time to be here

tonight. I appreciate it.
Thank you, Rachel. We'll be right back.
Stay with us. All right.
That's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again tomorrow.
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