Maddow: 'Trump weirdness and destruction' produces ceaseless string of bizarre headlines

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Speaker 3 Last week at this time, you may remember, I tried to give you a little bit of a heads up that we were heading into a week in which a lot of legal stuff

Speaker 3 was

Speaker 3 going to come crashing down on the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 And so we talked about that last week to sort of kind of get you ready for what was going to happen over this week that just passed. And I got to say, I think we were right.

Speaker 3 I would love to take credit for seeing all of it coming. I didn't see all of it coming.
I did not see, for example, this coming. This is what the headquarters of the U.S.

Speaker 3 Department of Justice looks like tonight.

Speaker 3 This is this evening.

Speaker 3 You see projected onto the outside of DOJ's headquarters there in Washington. It says, release the files now.

Speaker 3 ReleasethefilesNow.org. That's, of course, about the Jeffrey Epstein files at the Justice Department.

Speaker 3 Those are the files to which they reportedly assigned more than 1,000 FBI agents to make sure Trump's name was scrubbed out of them.

Speaker 3 These are the Justice Department files, which have so flummoxed Trump and Republicans. They are now running in circles on this issue.

Speaker 3 We do expect a vote to release the Epstein files in the House of Representatives tomorrow. We're going to have more on that in a moment and what we can expect in the wake of that vote.

Speaker 3 I got to say, I also didn't see coming the fact that the FBI, for the first time in its history, has assigned a full-time protective security detail, a SWAT team, no less, to guard the girlfriend of an FBI official.

Speaker 3 The FBI has never before had a taxpayer-funded security detail for an FBI official's girlfriend. But that's what we're paying for now.

Speaker 3 The girlfriend of FBI Director Cash Patel has members of the FBI's SWAT team protecting her as if they are private bodyguards, but they are paid for for by you.

Speaker 3 Ken Delaneyan and Carol Lennig from MS Now, first to report that story today.

Speaker 3 At the FBI, Cash Patel's office reportedly also sought to increase the monetary value of gifts that he is allowed to receive as FBI director.

Speaker 3 Because simply, he wants to keep more of the free and valuable stuff people offer him as director of the FBI.

Speaker 3 So his office reportedly sought an increase in the ceiling on the monetary value of gifts he can keep.

Speaker 3 There's also frankly repulsive new reporting in the New York Times that the Trump administration has now stopped the FBI and other Justice Department personnel not only from working on counter-terrorism cases, but also the Trump administration has stopped federal law enforcement officers in multiple agencies from working on child sex trafficking and child exploitation cases.

Speaker 3 Quote, earlier this year, special agents at Homeland Security Investigations, HSI, found online videos showing violent sexual abuse of an unidentified young child.

Speaker 3 The HSI agents who are trained to hunt down pedophiles who use the internet to distribute illegal imagery spent weeks analyzing the footage to try to identify the child and to infiltrate the online networks that had shared and may have directed the abuse.

Speaker 3 But the agents working that case have since been asked to go out in the field and help arrest undocumented immigrants.

Speaker 3 Those agents' reassignment has hindered progress toward identifying and rescuing the child in that case.

Speaker 3 The agents, no longer able to spend as much time undercover online, have now lost contact with a key source they had cultivated over years in the online world of abusers.

Speaker 3 That is reportedly part of a larger pattern in the Trump administration, according to a new investigation from the New York Times.

Speaker 3 Quote, HSI teams that investigate sex crimes against children in cities including Newark, New Jersey, and Los Angeles, have had significant numbers of their special agents dragooned into immigration work instead.

Speaker 3 At one point, an entire unit of roughly five people investigating child exploitation in L.A.

Speaker 3 was working immigration duty instead, with agents trying to advance their child exploitation cases on nights and weekends. meaning effectively in their free time.

Speaker 3 There's also new reports, new reporting that in addition to seeking more than $200 million for President Trump himself from the U.S.

Speaker 3 Justice Department, Trump's DOJ is also reportedly considering giving a huge check to Trump's disgraced former national security advisor, the conspiracy theorist Mike Flynn, the one who pled guilty to lying to investigators about his secret communications with the Russian government.

Speaker 3 Bloomberg reporting that the Trump Justice Department is in talks to give $50 million to Mike Flynn.

Speaker 3 That would be $50 million of your dollars, taxpayer dollars.

Speaker 3 Because sure, why not? Law and order.

Speaker 3 Then there's the new top lawyer Trump has just moved to install at the General Services Administration, the GSA. GSA is in charge of federal real estate.

Speaker 3 This usually is not a very high-profile agency. But in this administration, we've got the president literally bulldozing the White House and like dumping the debris randomly on public golf courses.

Speaker 3 So all of a sudden, this previously

Speaker 3 low-profile agency is right at the heart of Trump weirdness and destruction. Trump has reportedly now found a perfect candidate to be a new top lawyer at the GSA.

Speaker 3 He is reportedly installing there a guy whose nomination for a different job had to be polled a couple of weeks ago when it emerged that he had said about himself, quote, I do have a Nazi streak in me.

Speaker 3 Well, now Mr. Nazi streak will be a senior official.
in charge of federal buildings and federal real estate.

Speaker 3 Just a little streak of Nazi, self-proclaimed Nazi.

Speaker 3 Just a little bit.

Speaker 3 Then there's the news that President Trump was caught apparently using an auto-pen, or at least somehow producing an exact replica signature to sign multiple new pardons for people convicted of other crimes besides just the January 6th crimes for which he had already given them pardons.

Speaker 3 The White House removed images of the apparently auto-penned pardons and replaced them with new signatures when they were caught out.

Speaker 3 There's also new reporting in the Washington Post that in the bizarre conspiracy theory case they are trying to bring to re-litigate the Russia investigation from the 2016 campaign, the federal prosecutor's office they have given that case to is reportedly having to seek outside lawyers to prosecute that case because

Speaker 3 I guess no actual prosecutors in that U.S. attorney's office are willing to do it.

Speaker 3 So yeah, that is all broken over the last few days.

Speaker 3 When I said last week at this time that some legal stuff was going to be coming due this week and it was likely to be bad news for the Trump administration, I was not wrong about that, but I wasn't expecting any of that stuff I just described.

Speaker 3 That's all gravy. What I just described is all in addition to what I was actually warning about.
What I was actually warning about this time last week

Speaker 3 was

Speaker 3 the collapse that has now apparently started of Trump's marquee headline revenge prosecutions of his supposed political enemies.

Speaker 3 Headline, New York Times, judge says Trump Justice Department may have committed misconduct in James Comey case.

Speaker 3 Quote, a federal magistrate judge, federal magistrate judge said today that the criminal case against James Comey, the former FBI director, could be in trouble because of a series of apparent errors committed in front of the grand jury by Lindsey Halligan, the inexperienced prosecutor picked by President Trump to to oversee the matter.

Speaker 3 The judge's statement is what the Times describes as a, quote, remarkable rebuke of Lindsey Halligan.

Speaker 3 A headline at what remains of the Washington Post tonight

Speaker 3 on the same subject, quote, federal judge blasts potential government misconduct in Comey case.

Speaker 3 And indeed, the judge's ruling really is blistering.

Speaker 3 It accuses the Justice Department of illegally, quote, rummaging through evidence, of quote, inexplicably failing to obtain proper search warrants, of putting an FBI agent before the grand jury in a way that was quote, highly irregular.

Speaker 3 Worst of all, the judge's ruling accuses Lindsay Halligan herself of making, quote, fundamental and highly prejudicial misstatements of the law to the grand jury.

Speaker 3 The judge describing a, quote, disturbing pattern of profound missteps.

Speaker 3 Quote, the court finds that the government's actions in this case, whether purposeful, reckless, or negligent, raise genuine issues of misconduct.

Speaker 3 That's not going very well.

Speaker 3 And, oops, that finding from that judge in the Comey case came today immediately before New York Democratic Attorney General Tish James was due,

Speaker 3 also in the same court, to file her own motion to dismiss the prosecution that's been brought against her.

Speaker 3 Quote: This indictment is the product of months of illegal and unethical behavior by government officials, only made possible by the misuse of a federal agency, the disregard of exculpatory evidence, the systematic removal of ethics officials and career prosecutors who stood in the way, and the improper attempt to install an unqualified U.S.

Speaker 3 attorney with nothing to offer except undying loyalty. If this brazen, continuous disregard for the law and the Constitution is not outrageous government conduct, nothing is

Speaker 3 from the motion to dismiss. And that, of course, follows new reporting in the Wall Street Journal that the Trump appointee who crusaded to bring this case against Tish James

Speaker 3 His name is Bill Pultey at the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Speaker 3 There's new reporting in the Wall Street Journal that he reportedly had to fire his way through basically all the oversight and ethics officials at his own agency because they were looking into whether he was breaking the law, whether he was acting improperly in accessing information about Tish James to try to gin up this case.

Speaker 3 If this is not outrageous government conduct, nothing is.

Speaker 3 So that's all of that

Speaker 3 blown up all at once. And you could see it coming, right? You could see it coming from like the way the two sides were arrayed each other there.
against each other there, right?

Speaker 3 With James Comey and Tish James and the real lawyers who they brought in to defend them against the clown car that the Trump administration has made of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Speaker 3 And I will tell you, this is a consequential thing. It's not just like point and laugh, although it is point and laugh.
It's consequential. Their shambolic and terrible

Speaker 3 irretrievably delist lawyering. Their failure to get even the basic stuff right when it comes to the legality of what they're trying to do turns out to be a compounding problem for them.

Speaker 3 Because when they take actions against their perceived enemies, or they take actions to try to advance the president's radical agenda, or they take actions to fire people they're not allowed to fire, or to close agencies they're not allowed to close, or to do things they're just not allowed to do, they inevitably get challenged.

Speaker 3 And when they get challenged, almost all the time they lose. And when they lose, the courts brush them back and not only stop them what they're doing from that,

Speaker 3 from doing what they're doing in that instance, but the courts frequently enjoin the Trump administration from trying to do anything like it again.

Speaker 3 And so this is not just stupid. It's really consequential for them and getting more so over time.
It means their bad lawyering.

Speaker 3 on their bad ideas is narrowing and narrowing and narrowing their room to act and their room to maneuver against the American people.

Speaker 3 Take, for example, the city of Chicago, from which Trump's federal immigration agents have just retreated in defeat.

Speaker 3 On their way out the door, Trump's immigration agents left behind them a federal judge ordering the release. of more than 600 people who Trump's agents just arrested in Chicago.

Speaker 3 Why did those people all get released? Because Trump's agents allegedly arrested those people illegally in a way they should have known the courts would not allow.

Speaker 3 So all those people have now been sprung. Remember the big showy made-for-TV apartment building raid they did in Chicago early on, where they smashed in all the doors of this apartment building?

Speaker 3 They had people literally rappelling out of Blackhawk helicopters like they were playing a war game.

Speaker 3 They made lots of TikTok videos and YouTube videos about themselves doing that operation because they thought it made themselves look so cool.

Speaker 3 That whole thing, turns out, we now know, resulted in precisely zero criminal charges being brought against anyone.

Speaker 3 And I don't know, maybe that's because who in the government is going to want to explain to a judge that, yes, Your Honor, this arrest was part of that thing we filmed for YouTube where we pulled little kids and old people and dozens and dozens and dozens of U.S.

Speaker 3 citizens out onto the street in the middle of the night in their pajamas and zip-tied their hands together and reportedly segregated those people by race while we left them sitting outside for hours with their hands tied while their apartments were ransacked and the building was all but destroyed and then we left.

Speaker 3 You want to explain that to a judge?

Speaker 3 You want to try to make those charges stick in that case?

Speaker 3 Literally zero criminal charges brought against anyone from that operation.

Speaker 3 And yes, they did succeed in terrorizing and brutalizing the people of Chicago.

Speaker 3 But that also had the effect of galvanizing the people of Chicago against the Trump administration and his immigration agents.

Speaker 3 Big protests, small protests, instantaneous instinctive neighborhood protests everywhere they showed up.

Speaker 3 Thousands and thousands of people in Chicago starting to carry whistles with them everywhere they went so they could sound the alarm whenever Trump's immigration agents showed up anywhere.

Speaker 3 Rapid response groups forming in every neighborhood to surround churches and schools and businesses to try to make sure that those masked agents not only felt like they were being watched, but they knew that they were being both watched and recorded every single second they were on the street being berated by the good people of Chicago.

Speaker 3 At the Broadview ICE facility, the protests never let up.

Speaker 3 And the brutal tactics used there against protesters of all kinds, including multiple ministers who were beaten and hurt while protesting peacefully there,

Speaker 3 many of them in their clerical clothing while they were beaten

Speaker 3 in Broadview.

Speaker 3 Images like these seem to have only had the effect of drawing out yet more clergy of all kinds, more faith communities, to stand up even more, including at Broadview, to say we are against this.

Speaker 3 We stand with the people who are being terrorized here. What the government is doing is wrong and we feel called to respond.

Speaker 3 The whole Chicago misfire by the Trump administration

Speaker 3 I will say, it seems, among other things, to have galvanized and maybe even radicalized the American Catholic Church in particular on this issue. The U.S.

Speaker 3 Conference of Catholic Bishops lining up to stand with immigrants, to stand with immigrant communities against what Trump is doing. The U.S.

Speaker 3 Conference of Catholic Bishops just issued their first special message since 2013.

Speaker 3 Their first message like this in more than a decade, opposing what the bishops called the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.

Speaker 3 Listen, I mean, whether or not you're Catholic or you care about the political suasion of the Catholic Church, the brand new pope, the first ever American Pope, is from Chicago.

Speaker 3 You decide to commemorate that occasion, Trump, by shooting less than lethal munitions at priests on multiple occasions in Chicago,

Speaker 3 arresting them for trying to give people communion?

Speaker 3 In Chicago? Great move. What did you think was going to happen?

Speaker 3 Trump's immigration agents are not only constrained in terms of their available tactics for use of force, thanks to a federal judge reviewing the use of force by Trump's agents in and around Chicago, the Broadview facility specifically just got an in-person visit from a federal judge.

Speaker 3 A judge who was weighing whether or not the conditions at that facility are so abominable that that facility should potentially be shut down.

Speaker 3 How is the Trump administration doing and handling the legal responsibilities of that big deal challenge? Well, I don't know. Headline, quote, irretrievably destroyed.

Speaker 3 Trump administration says video footage inside ICE facility at Center of Class Action lawsuit, quote, cannot be produced. In line with court's discovery order, the U.S.

Speaker 3 Justice Department admitted to the apparent snafu in a 10-page joint written status report on Discovery.

Speaker 3 Chief among the missing files is 13 days worth of video footage recorded at the ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview.

Speaker 3 Defendants have indicated that some video between October 19th and October 31st, 2025 has been irretrievably destroyed and therefore cannot be produced on an expedited basis or at all.

Speaker 3 Oh yeah, the court's going to love that.

Speaker 3 Judge is going to love that. That's going to go great.

Speaker 3 They're really bad at this. And in particular, they're terrible lawyers.
And because of that, increasingly, the people they arrest will be set free.

Speaker 3 The places they want to lock people up will be shut down. Their tactics will be constrained by court orders.
And at the same time, the American communities

Speaker 3 they are terrorizing will, over time, get better and better and better at standing up to them as they learn from one another. You probably saw the AP headline this weekend.

Speaker 3 Immigration crackdown inspires uniquely Chicago pushback. That's now a model for other cities.
A model for other cities.

Speaker 3 Coverage like this is focused in the last couple of weeks on the rapid response groups in Chicago, the whistles that everybody in Chicago is carrying now, the protests, large and small, the know-your-rights trainings in Chicago.

Speaker 3 I will also note a new... a new development in the protest tactics there.
These protests this weekend in Chicago and actually all over Illinois. This tactically, I got to say, is very smart.

Speaker 3 These folks are protesting, not generically against the Trump administration. They are protesting at AT ⁇ T stores.

Speaker 3 because they are trying to pressure AT ⁇ T to give up their gazillion dollar contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. They want to keep enjoying,

Speaker 3 they're telling AT ⁇ T, if you want to keep enjoying retail customers in communities where ICE and CBP are terrorizing people, you should give up your contracts with ICE and CBP, or it's going to be very uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 There's effectively effectively going to be protests and pickets outside AT ⁇ T stores that are going to cut into your bottom line.

Speaker 3 Protesting against public-facing entities and businesses that are helping the Trump administration with the worst of what they are doing.

Speaker 3 This is an emerging tactic. We saw it was so effective at getting Elon Musk out of the Trump administration when protesters targeted Tesla.

Speaker 3 We saw it was so effective when protesters targeted not Brendan Carr and the FCC and the Trump administration, but ABC and Disney and Nexstar and Sinclair and the other public-facing entities that were doing Trump's dirty work.

Speaker 3 We saw it with the targeting of Avello Airlines,

Speaker 3 wants to be a private contractor to Trump for ICE and also provide commercial flights to the American people?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 Not without a lot of hullabaloo, not without a lot of protest. We're going to see more and more of tactics like these.

Speaker 3 This weekend, we saw protests starting, big ones in Charlotte, North Carolina, as Trump's immigration agents moved to Charlotte for some reason.

Speaker 3 Protests in Charlotte this weekend, also in Asheville, North Carolina, and in Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital. Big protests in both of those places.
People coming out all over the state.

Speaker 3 Advocates for immigrants in North Carolina have created already this online map showing where federal immigration agents are known to be operating in North Carolina.

Speaker 3 We're going to be checking in live in just a moment with one of the groups that's been organizing furiously in Charlotte in preparation for the attack that Trump is now launching on that city.

Speaker 3 We've got a reporter at one of their trainings tonight in Charlotte. It was a full house, not an empty seat in the place.

Speaker 3 But Trump's agents, you know, they attacked L.A. first and L.A.
stood up against them. Their pushback in LA helped Chicago fine-tune its own response when Trump next attacked Chicago.

Speaker 3 The pushback in Chicago is now helping Charlotte scale up its own response now that Trump is attacking there.

Speaker 3 But again, never underestimate just how dumb they can be, especially when it comes to their lawyering, when it comes to the basic legal reasoning and defense of their radical actions, right?

Speaker 3 Trump's new attack on Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, they say it's not being led by ICE, it's being led by CBP, by Customs and Border Patrol.

Speaker 3 Now, by CBP's own admission, they're only supposed to be operating within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

Speaker 3 Charlotte, North Carolina is way more than 100 miles from any border. Charlotte, North Carolina is more than 170 miles even from the coast.

Speaker 3 So what's CBP doing there?

Speaker 3 I mean, with the kind of legal eagles these guys have working for them, maybe they're thinking nobody will check that. Maybe they didn't know that 170 is a bigger number than 100.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 How do you check that?

Speaker 3 Protests against Trump. are going to take on a slightly different cast this week, and this is worth watching.
Today, you might have seen footage of people people protesting in Washington, D.C.,

Speaker 3 right around the White House. In fact, they wrapped the White House in yellow crime scene tape today.

Speaker 3 This protest today in D.C. was under the banner of Trump Must Go.
And I got to tell you, it was, I think, intended to be a bit of a warm-up for what they are expecting later on this week.

Speaker 3 They're expecting to be large numbers of people protesting in Washington later on this week.

Speaker 3 And that's technically interesting because unlike the no kings events and the hands-off protests and the 50-51 events of various stripes, which have really deliberately been decentralized.

Speaker 3 They've happened all over the place, all over the place, all 50 states, everywhere all at once. This week, organizers are asking people to come to Washington, to come on Thursday to lobby Congress.

Speaker 3 They say they want Congress to impeach, convict, and remove Trump from office. They are expecting it to be a really large lobby day on Thursday in Washington.

Speaker 3 And then on Saturday, one big central protest in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial with that same demand to impeach him, convict him, and remove him from office.

Speaker 3 Did you know the band, the Dropkick Murphys, legendary Boston band? The Dropkick Murphys are not shipping up to Boston. They are going to be shipping down to D.C.

Speaker 3 to basically headline that protest at the Lincoln Memorial this Saturday at noon, which means it should at least

Speaker 3 be loud and in the best possible way.

Speaker 3 Tonight we've got live reports from Charlotte coming up and we've got a live report from Oregon where a little town in Oregon appears to have succeeded in standing up and maybe stopping Trump from putting an ICE facility in their town.

Speaker 3 There's a lot to learn from in that story and what that town has done.

Speaker 3 That's coming up here tonight. Lots to get to.

Speaker 4 Stay with us.

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Speaker 3 As the Trump administration launches attacks on one American city after another, Americans are learning strategies from one another

Speaker 3 about how to defend themselves, how to fight back, how how to keep our neighbors safe, how to stand up to what Trump is doing. As he attacks city after city serially over time,

Speaker 3 people are learning best practices from the cities that have already been attacked.

Speaker 3 Serially, that knowledge is accumulating over time and the American people in each new city he attacks are getting smarter and better resourced at how to stand up to him.

Speaker 3 In the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, organizers and community members were already doing on-the-ground work in preparation even before Trump's latest attack started on that city over this weekend.

Speaker 3 A local immigrant rights group called

Speaker 3 Siembra NC, Siembra, North Carolina, started a project they call Defend and Recruit in Charlotte.

Speaker 3 They've published guides, they've published videos for what to do if federal immigration agents show up on your block or in your community. They've made posters for people to put on their doors.

Speaker 3 I got to say, this is

Speaker 3 my personal favorite. It's in the style of those live, laugh, love signs.
You'd see it like HomeGoods or whatever.

Speaker 3 Look what it says. In this house, we live like there's room for everyone.
We laugh at least once a day, and we love a judicial warrant.

Speaker 3 If you are a federal agent, you must present a signed warrant to enter. That is very well done.

Speaker 3 Tonight, the group behind those resources held a community training at a local church in Charlotte. MS Now's Jacob Soberoff was there.

Speaker 3 And got to look at the turnout. Look at this, not a single empty seat in this church tonight.

Speaker 3 On a Monday night, over 300 people showing up to learn what they can do to try to protect their community from Trump's agents, who again started their attack on Charlotte this weekend.

Speaker 3 People tonight did role-playing exercises talking about how to conduct safety patrols in your own neighborhood, how to react if you see Trump's masked agents beating people up or snatching people off the streets.

Speaker 3 Jacob spoke to one of the organizers tonight, a pastor from a nearby town, about what it's like to see his community show up like this.

Speaker 4 How does it make you feel to know that all these people showed up on a Monday night and you got many more of these to do?

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 it makes me grateful and it reminds me of how much our community loves each other and our community wants to support. But people don't come out on Monday nights, right? To anything.

Speaker 3 And so that people are showing up right now and spending their valuable time to learn how to care for each other and protect each other. I don't even have words for it.

Speaker 3 Joining us now from Charlotte, North Carolina is Jacob Soboroff, senior national correspondent for MS Now. Jacob, I'm so glad you were able to get to this tonight.

Speaker 3 What can you tell us about the event that you were at and what you saw?

Speaker 4 Rachel, it was It was exciting and it was inspiring here at the church tonight in Charlotte in a very, very dark time.

Speaker 4 There were, as you saw in the video, hundreds of people here on a Monday night when they could be doing just about anything else.

Speaker 4 And I think it's fair to say, based on some unofficial counts that I've heard from sources here in Charlotte, that might be as many people in this church tonight.

Speaker 4 And there were four other trainings, others have been scheduled here in North Carolina as federal agents on the ground conducting these operations.

Speaker 4 And Siembra has been in existence for a long time, since 2017. They have been preparing for this moment since the first Trump administration.

Speaker 4 But it was only now with these community meetings already planned and then the Border Patrol and ICE showed up that they're really able to sort of effectuate all of this.

Speaker 4 And it isn't just kumbaya and holding hands.

Speaker 4 Some of the people that have been inside have already been to some of the trainings. And one woman, Jenny, I want to show you this.

Speaker 4 She told me that these trainings are not only for people to stand up and resist, but they actually work. They're protecting their fellow residents here.
Watch this.

Speaker 3 What's the most important thing that you've taken away from being at these trainings and actually being out in the field in the face of the Border Patrol being here um i think the obviously watching someone literally being detained but i felt like our presence and the way that the rest of the folks in the parking lot at the grocery store where we were located the community coming together prevented that from being executed they let them go they let them go they let him go

Speaker 4 rachel it's all it's all very practical i mean in that case, Jenny, this teacher said they let someone go when the Siembra volunteers showed up to one of these raids.

Speaker 4 They hand out flyers like this to say what to do if you're detained.

Speaker 4 And I think, you know, perhaps most importantly,

Speaker 4 like you said, they are learning from the other cities. And it's not just all doom and gloom.

Speaker 4 They even were teaching the people that were inside this church tonight songs to sing, this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine, when they show up to protect the people of this community so it doesn't get violent, so it doesn't get adversarial, so it stays positive and uplifting in a moment that's really hard for so many people here.

Speaker 3 I see people with whistles who are seeing the singing that you're describing.

Speaker 3 It does seem like there's kind of an iterative process where each new city that gets attacked by Trump's agents learns something from the tactics that happened and that were employed by people standing up in the earlier cities to have been attacked.

Speaker 3 Charlotte didn't have much notice that this was all going to be being brought down upon them as of this weekend.

Speaker 3 Do you think the organizers are surprised by the turnout that they're getting in terms of these packed houses for the trainings and the large protests that we're already seeing, the way people are responding?

Speaker 4 I think in the wake of the No Kings Day protests, and there were some leaders of Indivisible locally here this evening,

Speaker 4 they know that people want to stand up and they know that people want to push back and they actually know that these tactics work.

Speaker 4 They worked for family separation in 2018 when hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people came to the streets in not a bipartisan but a universal condemnation that resulted in the reversal of that policy and I think that they believe that the same thing can happen now.

Speaker 4 There is nothing that Stephen Miller wants less, folks inside that church believe, than to hear people and see people smiling and celebrating fellow members of their community in the wake of these tactics where they want nothing more than for Stephen Miller wants nothing more for them to be throwing rocks and to be agitators and to play into the narrative that they are creating about a place like this.

Speaker 4 But I can tell you, I got to Charlotte this afternoon. It is as beautiful as ever.

Speaker 4 The people are as inspired as ever and the organizers feel very emboldened that there will be many more people showing up at these trainings in the days and weeks to come.

Speaker 4 And the timing couldn't have been better, obviously, for the operation that's happening on the ground.

Speaker 3 Jacob Soboroff, MS Now, senior national correspondent. It's great to have you there tonight, Jacob.
Thanks for covering this for us. I really appreciate you being here, my friend.
Thank you.

Speaker 4 Thanks, Rachel.

Speaker 3 All right, we got much more news ahead here tonight. Stay with us.

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Speaker 3 Two weeks from now is the start of dungeness crab season off the coast of Oregon. Dungeness crab is one of the world's great seafood delicacies.
There's nothing like it.

Speaker 3 But the path to get delicious dungeness crab onto your plate is a tough and dangerous path. Fishing for dungeness crab is one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States, statistically speaking.

Speaker 3 It's difficult work. It's really risky work.
And the busiest port for dungeness crab fishing on the whole West Coast is a cool, beautiful little town called Newport, Oregon.

Speaker 3 Population just over 10,000. Last week, the people of Newport, Oregon discovered something that is worrying to them, given the town's main industry and how dangerous that industry is.

Speaker 3 At the small municipal airport in Newport, Oregon, there is a Coast Guard rescue helicopter there.

Speaker 3 And that is really important in case the Coast Guard needs to spring into action to help one of the fishing fleet vessels that's doing the very dangerous work of fishing for dungeonous crab off of Newport, Oregon.

Speaker 3 For some reason, last week, the town learned that the Trump administration was taking the Coast Guard rescue helicopter away. That crucial resource, the local Coast Guard rescue chopper, had been...

Speaker 3 was being moved from their airport in Newport to a new place that is a half an hour away by air,

Speaker 3 which is life or death, right? There's a group in Newport called the Newport Fishermen's Wives. Their treasurer said in response to this news, quote, we aren't saying people might die.

Speaker 3 We're saying people will die.

Speaker 3 The same day Newport, Oregon learned their rescue helicopter had inexplicably been taken away, officials in the town made an announcement to local residents about what they thought was going on here.

Speaker 3 They told everybody in town that they thought the Trump administration, the Department of of Homeland Security, was laying the groundwork to convert the Coast Guard facility at their little airport where the rescue helicopter had been, they were laying the groundwork to convert that into an ice prison instead.

Speaker 3 So town officials let everybody in town know. Also, that a federal defense contractor had contacted the city about leasing land at the airport facility.

Speaker 3 Immediately, people in Newport, Oregon started raising hell.

Speaker 3 They clearly did not want an ice prison, and they certainly didn't want to give up their Coast Guard rescue helicopter in order to get an ice prison instead.

Speaker 3 So the town called a meeting last week, Wednesday. Judging from the turnout at the meeting, that was a smart decision.

Speaker 3 A reporter from the local station KATU-2 described just a remarkable crowd trying to get in.

Speaker 9 It is extremely packed. In fact, let me show you.
This is the back of the room right now. I'm going to walk you through this right now.
I flip the camera. Here is a makeshift overflow area.

Speaker 9 A lot of people watching a monitor, watching what is happening inside of that chamber. This is the entrance.
This is

Speaker 9 how difficult it is to get in. They're stopping people.
They're only letting members of the media in. But this is the line to get in.

Speaker 9 It is so long and so packed that they actually have an overflow room nearby at a rec center.

Speaker 9 Earlier, we saw a bus that believed to have dropped a lot of people off here so that they could voice their concerns.

Speaker 9 But you could see protesters out here right in front of the city hall sign and on the sidewalk protesting the possibility

Speaker 9 of this ICE facility.

Speaker 3 That's how many people turned up. Again, this is Newport, Oregon, which has a population of 10,000 people.

Speaker 3 And that's how many people turned out, just rip-roaring mad about what the Trump administration is apparently doing to their town.

Speaker 3 Well, after that meeting, we have learned that the defense defense contractor that had contacted the town about leasing land at their airport, that defense contractor has now backed off, backed out, and said, okay, we're not doing it.

Speaker 3 This is all still a very live issue. The rescue helicopter is still not returned, but the fight is very clearly joined here in this small town in Oregon.
As one Newport City Councilor put it,

Speaker 3 maybe somebody thought, oh, it's a small place. It's rural.
They're probably quiet. We can overpower them.
Quote, we've been underestimated.

Speaker 3 I can say that again. More heads, stay with us.

Speaker 3 When Newport, Oregon, population 10,000, heard last week that its Coast Guard rescue helicopter had been taken away and that Homeland Security might be trying to build an ICE facility at the airport where that helicopter had been, it was hard for local officials to know with any certainty what was really going on.

Speaker 3 Oregon State Representative David Gomberg said there was, quote, credible evidence that our federal government is pushing to site an immigration detainment facility in our community.

Speaker 3 Disturbingly, he said, we are receiving no communications or confirmation from the government as to what they are planning.

Speaker 3 They are operating in the shadows and trying to fast-track this project with zero transparency or public engagement. Joining us now is Representative David Gomberg.

Speaker 3 He's an Oregon state legislator who represents Newport, Oregon. Mr.
Gomberg, thank you very much for being with us tonight. I appreciate your time.

Speaker 10 Well, and thank you so very much for your interest tonight.

Speaker 3 Have you learned anything else about the possibility that ICE is looking to put a facility in your town?

Speaker 10 Well, you just shared the information that the proposal to lease property at the airport has been withdrawn from city property.

Speaker 10 But don't be misled, we have now learned that somebody on behalf of an unnamed federal agency is looking to lease other properties in the area.

Speaker 10 And at the same time, At the same time, we've got people reaching out to local small businesses to talk about delivering water to the airport, somebody to remove up to 10,000 gallons of sewage each and every day.

Speaker 10 We have now discovered online recruiting ads for detention officers, for bus drivers, for medical personnel.

Speaker 10 And with the removal of this critically important helicopter and with all of this new evidence, I mean, it's becoming increasingly clear that somebody somewhere believes that detaining people here is more important than saving people here.

Speaker 10 And that's very disturbing disturbing to our small community

Speaker 3 how do you think that the people of newport and surrounding communities are going to react um once it becomes as clear as you're describing um that an ice facility may be on its way

Speaker 10 well you know you described a situation a little while ago a town of 10 000 people in a public hearing on wednesday night 800 people in a town of 10 000 showed up to to

Speaker 10 protest the possibility of a detention facility here and to demand the return of this life-saving helicopter. 800 people lining up for hour after hour after hour, expressing their concerns.

Speaker 10 Not one single person in that lineup, by the way, said that we would welcome a detention facility here.

Speaker 3 Is there a menu of options that you and your fellow state legislators or indeed town officials may have to choose from in terms of what to do next, how to try to stop this?

Speaker 3 If you, like your constituents, are as strongly opposed as it sounds like you are to what the federal government may be

Speaker 3 trying to do here,

Speaker 3 what can you do to try to stop it if you're if you're willing to share what you think your plans might be

Speaker 10 We are amassing evidence, but we really don't know what's going on. Our U.S.
senators have asked, our governor has asked, the city has asked, I've asked. Nobody will tell us exactly what the plan is.

Speaker 10 If we knew what the plan is, then we can start to look at how does this affect zoning? What are the consequences to our local economy?

Speaker 10 What about the fact that this airport is just a few feet above the tsunami inundation zone? If,

Speaker 10 God forbid, we should have a major earthquake while people are locked up there.

Speaker 10 There are a lot of different things that we can do once we know what the plan is, but nobody is telling us what the plan. might be.
That's not how government is supposed to work.

Speaker 10 We expect transparency, we expect honesty, we expect clarity so that we can respond in the same way.

Speaker 3 Yeah, when you have to do something secretly to try to avoid what you know will be the local backlash and resistance, that's a sign that maybe small D democracy isn't proceeding along the lines we learned about in school.

Speaker 3 Oregon state legislator Dave Gomber, who represents Newport, Oregon, which is now in this fight, sir, thank you for helping us understand. Keep us apprised.

Speaker 10 We'll be happy to do so. Thank you again very much for your interest tonight.

Speaker 3 Appreciate it, sir. Thank you.
We'll be right back.

Speaker 3 All right, that is going to do it for me tonight.

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