"Something for which we should prepare"

Summary

Deadline: White House – "Something for which we should prepare"

Host: Nicolle Wallace, MS NOW
Date: February 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode, hosted by Nicolle Wallace, delivers an urgent and clear-eyed analysis of the current state of election integrity, voter suppression tactics, and the Trump administration's controversial use of federal agencies in both election management and immigration enforcement. Drawing on expert guests—Voting Rights Attorney Mark Elias, political analyst Alex Wagner, and Reverend Al Sharpton—the discussion centers on alarming moves by Trump’s allies to undermine free and fair elections, notably via the SAVE Act and aggressive ICE operations, and probes the spiraling humanitarian crisis within immigration detention facilities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Election Interference: Not a Future Threat—But an Active Reality

• Main Argument:
  Election interference is not theoretical—it's happening now.

  • Nicolle Wallace sets the tone:

    "Election interference on the part of Donald Trump and his allies is not merely something we should be bracing for... Election interference is underway." [02:15]

  • She highlights how the Trump administration and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem are using voter ID laws (SAVE Act) as a front for broader voter suppression.

• Disinformation and the Saved Narrative:

  • Mark Elias details the ramping up of rhetoric and how claims of voter fraud—despite zero substantiated evidence—serve to build public suspicion and undermine trust:

    "There is zero evidence of widespread voter fraud in our country. Republican after Republican has affirmed that." [03:21]

  • The repeated debunking of fraud claims is framed as an exhausting whack-a-mole, with fact-seekers burdened to disprove ever-newer allegations. [01:31]

• The Role of Trump’s Cabinet:

  • Discussion zeroes in on Kristi Noem (Homeland Security) and Tulsi Gabbard as key enablers, willing to amplify baseless claims and act on them:

    “It was a cabinet secretary telling lies about elections.” [05:44] – Mark Elias

  • Mark Elias asserts this new cabinet lacks the internal guardrails (e.g., DOJ, White House Counsel) that thwarted some of Trump’s worst impulses in 2020:

    "Now [Trump] is looking at a situation which there is no one who's saying no." [08:03]

Notable Quote

"The president United States...posted on social media earlier today that there'll be voter ID regardless of whether or not Congress wants it or not, and that there's no way to read that other than as an authoritarian act." — Mark Elias [05:44]

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Save Act and the Problematic “Crackdown”

• Kristi Noem’s Motivations & Behavior:

  • Alex Wagner discusses how Noem's insecure position—due to prior scandals and mismanagement—makes her eager to curry favor with Trump by forcefully advocating for the SAVE Act.

    "She is on thin ice with him. And what is the best way to get back in the good graces of Donald Trump—promote...fraudulent theories about the 2020 election and assist him ..." [11:21]

  • Cites reporting on Noem’s erratic, “crazy diva-like behavior,” including firing staff over personal issues (e.g., a missing blanket), lavish use of agency resources, and promoting paramilitary ICE force for political ends. [13:41]

• Broader Impact of Voter Suppression:

  • The SAVE Act, while framed as voter security, would disproportionately disenfranchise not only people of color but also married women, military personnel, and seniors—groups including MAGA voters.

    “This is a stupid, stupid idea...pernicious and slightly evil, not just for Democrats, but also for Republican voters.” — Alex Wagner [11:21]

Notable Quote

"I can't, I can't say enough how awful she is and how awful this strategy is." — Alex Wagner [11:21]

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The Dangers of “Competitive Authoritarianism”

• “The Ridiculousness Is the Feature, Not the Bug”

  • Wallace and Elias flesh out the notion of 'competitive authoritarianism'—where elections occur, but are manipulated to ensure incumbents’ hold on power.

    “The goal is to keep elections going, but without unseating those in power...democratic institutions and elections persist but are hollowed out by authoritarian incumbents." — Wallace quoting the Brennan Center [21:41]

  • Elias dispels alarmist claims Trump will cancel elections, instead warning of deliberately “hollowed out” processes:

    "We're going to have elections... dictators love elections. I mean, Vladimir Putin loves them. What's not to love? An election that you always win by like 90-10." [22:54]

• Muddying the Water:

  • The real risk is confusion, competing realities, and the erosion of a shared sense of electoral truth:

    "He is conditioning a large segment of the population to believe...and another segment...to just not believe anything is true. And that is what he is setting up for 2026." — Mark Elias [24:48]

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Federal Intervention & Erosion of Checks and Balances

• Paramilitarizing Election Enforcement:

  • The administration is relying less on the military and more on civilian federal forces (ICE, Customs and Border Protection, etc.), hand-picked for loyalty, to enforce their will in election and immigration contexts.

    “Donald Trump actually has come to realize that probably the military is not the place to go to interfere with elections. It's his paramilitary, it's ICE, it's CBP...” — Mark Elias [08:03]

• Spread of Election Deniers in Government:

  • Alex Wagner points to the chilling effect of having election deniers embedded in federal power—and the techniques (raids, legislative delays) available to gum up results and challenge seating of representatives.

    "The speaker of the House has already provided a template for not seating a Democratic majority." — Alex Wagner [25:20]

Notable Segment

[25:20–27:41] – Detailed discussion on how elements like the SAVE Act, legislative gamesmanship, and manipulation of election infrastructure can create enough confusion and chaos to justify holding or overturning election results.

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Immigration Policy: Cruelties and Quotas

• Child Detention Surge:

  • The show pivots to the mass detention of children and families under ICE, with an alarming $38.3 billion being spent on new detention centers.

    "Hundreds of children have been detained, usually with a parent...many of the children sent there had been living in the United States and attending American schools, sometimes for years." — Wallace [31:47]

  • Legal experts highlight that far from targeting only “the worst of the worst,” Trump’s policies now sweep in families with no criminal history, military members, and school children—often using racial profiling. [35:23]

• Interior Enforcement Escalates:

  • Crackdown targets even those living deep in U.S. communities and removes previous protections for “sensitive locations” (churches, schools, hospitals). [36:23]
  • The trauma is compounded as families “give up” on legal claims to spare children from months in detention.

Notable Quote

"You put a family in detention, a little child, ultimately they're going to give up because it's too traumatizing...that's what the Trump administration is trying to do." — Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate [33:02]

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Rule of Law and Judicial Pushback

• Legal System Under Stress:

  • Unlike Trump’s first term, DOJ is now more willing to outright mislead courts. However, some judges—including Trump appointees—are pushing back.

    "The Justice Department, the executive branch, disobeying court orders goes to the heart of who we are as a country." — Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate [40:18]

• Human Cost:

  • Alex Wagner articulates the emotional and ethical toll, emphasizing the inhumanity of long-term child detention, lack of basic necessities, and the return of the “moral stain” of family separations.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

1. “It’s not something we should prepare for. Election interference is underway.” — Nicolle Wallace [02:15]

2. “Dictators love elections... What's not to love? An election that you always win by like 90-10.” — Mark Elias [22:54]

3. “This is a stupid, stupid idea... not just for Democrats, but also for Republican voters.” — Alex Wagner [11:21]

4. “Only the children this time are being snatched from schools and churches and hospitals inside the country where they've attended maybe for years.” — Alex Wagner [41:43]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:31 — The exhaustion and burden of repeatedly debunking “wild eyed allegations” of fraud
• 02:15 — Wallace introduces the Save Act as active interference
• 05:44 — Mark Elias details the risk of authoritarian overreach and enablers in Trump's cabinet
• 08:03 — Distinction between current and past Trump terms; the lack of “guardrails”
• 11:21 — Alex Wagner’s takedown of Kristi Noem’s motivations and consequences of the SAVE Act
• 24:48 — Conditioning the electorate against shared reality; risk to free and fair elections
• 31:47 — Immigration roundup; child and family detentions on the rise
• 40:18 — Rule of law under threat; DOJ’s shift toward disrespect for judicial authority
• 43:34 — The possibility of slow change and bipartisan revulsion against cruel immigration practices

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Conclusion: Tone and Future Outlook

Tone: Urgent, candid, irreverent at times, yet somber about the threats to democracy and human rights. The panel blends expertise with outrage, deploying vivid language (“bat bleep crazy,” “moral stain,” “the grind”) and specific reporting.

Call to Action:

• The need for relentless legal and public resistance—on court and civic fronts—to both election subversion and mass detention policies.
• Recognition that change is incremental (“a slow grind”) but essential to safeguard democracy and humanity.

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For listeners seeking to understand the precarious integrity of American democracy and immigration policy in 2026, this episode provides both a clarifying diagnosis and an impassioned warning.

Transcript

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Foreign.

[Political Commentator / Analyst]

It's like whack of mole and weirdly, the burden of proof always seems to be on those of us who won all the court cases, those of us who won all of the audits. And yet it's on us to disprove every single wild eyed allegation. What I do is, you know, somebody throws out a claim, I investigate it and then I disprove it and then they move on to another one. And, and it's, it's frustrating, it's exhausting. And, and it just goes to the fact that a lot of these people aren't looking for facts. A lot of these people are just looking for affirmation of their beliefs. But my mentality is that if there's still people out there who are looking for facts, then I want to give it to them.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Hi again Everybody. It's now 5 o' clock in New York. We should be clear eyed here from the jump that election interference on the part of Donald Trump and his allies is not merely something we should be bracing for. It isn't something we should prepare for. Election interference so election interference is underway. It's happening right now. It is what we are covering in real time this very afternoon. There was a big development on this front to give you an idea of just how far the Trump administration is positioning the issue. Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security Secretary, found time in her busy day on the eve of a shutdown to stomp in front of an assembled press for what she's calling for, what is called the SAVE Act. It's a voter ID law recently approved by the House. We're going to play for you what Noem had to say about this legislation a short time ago. Not on its merits, but to illustrate exactly how Donald Trump is feeding the beast, if you will, and framing the issue again. What you're about to hear is hogwash. Baloney. Watch. There's only one reason that anyone would oppose this bill, and that's because they.

[Political Analyst / Commentator]

Would want to cheat.

[Show Host / Moderator]

They want illegal people and aliens in this country to be able to vote for them and to rob the United States citizens of their vote. None of that is true. This is not only wrong, it's upside down and backwards, important to repeat again and again. To this day, there is zero evidence of widespread voter fraud in our country. Republican after Republican has affirmed that. An analysis of state voter rolls detailed in the New York Times a few weeks ago found that DHS had flagged 0.02% of names processed, a number likely inflated. Not to mention DHS never specified how many of those people had actually voted. And yet the Trump administration is going about what they're calling a crackdown on state elections officials. In Fulton County, Georgia, for instance, we started the hour showing you remarks from Stephen Richer. He's a Republican. He's the former county recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona. So now we'll let him continue.

[Political Commentator / Analyst]

And I'll say that over the last few months, I've ordinarily been pretty reluctant to embrace any sort of theory that Donald Trump could manipulate the 2026 elections. You know, people normally talk about stationing ice at a few voting locations, or they talk about him pulling federal funding from cybersecurity programs. And to those allegations or to those concerns, I usually say, well, at the end of the day, the counties run elections. They're run by bipartisan teams. They have a lot of checks and balances built into the process, and they're going to be administered. But this is the first instance in which I could begin to believe that something truly spectacular is going to happen in which our 2026 midterm elections are not administered like past elections have been.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Stunning. A stunning statement from someone with all the information and all the experience and all the credibility in the world to reach that conclusion. It's where we start the hour with some of our favorite experts and Friends, voting rights attorney, founder of Democracy Docket. Mark Elias is here, of course. Also joining us, senior political analyst, contributing host on Pod Save America, the host of the podcast Runaway Country, Alex Wagner is here. And with me at the table, host of Politics Nation, the president of the National Action Network, the Reverend Al Sharpton's here. Mark Elias, you first.

[Voting Rights Attorney Mark Elias]

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm glad that, that more people are coming to the realization that Donald Trump wants to undermine the free and fair elections that we've had in the past and not have them in the future. And it's just that simple. I mean, the level of rhetoric that we are seeing from the Trump administration, I mean, that was a, that was a cabinet secretary. I mean, that wasn't like some low level White House functionary, that was a cabinet secretary telling lies about elections. And the president. United States, you know, posted on social media earlier today that there'll be voter ID regardless of whether or not Congress wants it or not, and that there's no way to read that other than as an authoritarian act. And so collectively, when you take the search of Fulton county, when you take his statement that he wished there wouldn't be midterm elections, when you take his statements that the states he believes acts as, as agents of his, for purposes of tabulating and counting ballots, when he directly says Congress, whether they want it or not, he's going to change election laws, you know, it's a pretty, it's a pretty sobering situation that we face. But we, you know, we can't give up. We have to fight hard. And, you know, we're doing that in court and we're having some victories. But more people, more people need to be willing to speak about what is directly in front of us. And rather than, you know, acting as if, you know, we're running the 2014 elections, they need to understand we're running the 2026 elections.

[Show Host / Moderator]

What seems to be new is the deployment of Tulsi Gabbard and Kristi Noem as part of an election subversion strategy in advance. And Bill Barr did a little bit of this in 2020. I remember him going on CNN and talking about fraud that hadn't happened yet. And he seemed very willing, publicly at least to and privately, as was reported out, to investigate Donald Trump's claims. But at the end, he was one of the witnesses before the January 6 select committee to call all of it bullshit. It doesn't seem like Tulsi Gabbard and Kristi Noem have that posture publicly at all. And what we have learned of them. I can't imagine privately that they will either. Will you just speak to how much farther this will go with enablers like them in the Cabinet?

[Voting Rights Attorney Mark Elias]

Yeah. So people need to realize that In December of 2020, Donald Trump was actually presented with an executive order that would have seized ballots, appointed a special counsel to investigate fraud, and ordered the Department of Justice to do a variety of other things. And it didn't happen. We know that from the January 6th committee. But I think that people have sort of, in some sense, cleaned up in their head why it didn't happen. It didn't happen not because Donald Trump didn't want it to happen. It didn't happen because two groups of people said they wouldn't go along. One were, as you point out, people at the Department of Justice. So he ran headlong into opposition from the Department of Justice that would have had to have backed up that executive order and said it was lawful and done other things. But the second, and I think that, you know, it pains me sometimes to give them credit, but it's actually the White House counsel's office, right? Like, it was Donald Trump's first White House counsel's office that was reportedly just saying to the president, like, you cannot do this, and we will resign if you do this. The problem right now is, you know, Pam Bondi is not going to stand in his way, and no one in the White House is going to stand in his way. So now he is looking at a situation which there is no one who's saying no. And not only do you have, you know, Pam Bondi saying, yes, absolutely, and, but, but she's finding Functionari. The Department of Justice do the dirty work. So the search in Georgia was not conducted by the U.S. attorney's office in Georgia, was conducted by the U.S. attorney'S office from Missouri. And that is them finding who would be willing to take, you know, be willing to do these things. The other, the other big difference is that, you know, I think that Donald Trump actually has come to realize that probably the military is not the place to go to interfere with elections. It's his paramilitary, it's ice, it's cpb, it's the other federal law enforcement agencies. And he's, through the actions in the states and in Minnesota, he's been able to gauge which ones are willing to go how far in what ways. And so it's a much bigger threat than it was in 2020. And if I could just add one final point, it's no surprise that the two people Donald Trump has tapped to play the roles that you identified are Krissi Noem and Tulsi Gabbard. Why do I say that? Well, number one, Kristi Noem controls the paramilitary forces. So getting her on board is critically important. And Tulsi Gabbard, what she can do is at the appropriate moment to say there is this thing that is a threat that involves foreign intelligence that I can't tell you about because it involves foreign intelligence. And if there's one thing we know about the courts is that they're at their most deferential to the executive branch when it comes to things involving foreign affairs and foreign intelligence. So getting her involved now, I think is greasing the skids for an eventual claim that there is something highly classified that she knows that justifies Kristi Noem's paramilitary forces and tries to tie the hands of federal judges to look behind.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Is the bleakest portrait of something that doesn't have a 0% chance of coming to pass. Alex Wagner.

[Political Analyst / Commentator]

I mean, let's also just think of Kristi Noem's motivations here, right? She was basically shown the exit sign in Minneapolis after the murder of two American citizens on videotape prompted national outcry. And Tom Homans basically spent the last several weeks trying to clean up her mess. And now Operation Metro Surge is being judged the calamity we always knew it was and being ended. Right. She is in the doghouse, which given her history, is not a good place for Kristi Noem to be because she's under scrutiny for having. She and her boyfriend, Corey Lewandowski have been jetting around the country in a private jet. She grossly mismanaged the paramilitary while taking out ads that were not approved by Donald Trump promoting her gross mismanagement of this paramilitary ICE force. She's firing people for not bringing her blankets aboard her private airplanes. Crazy diva like behavior, while at the same time subjecting DHS employees who were working in immigration enforcement to polygraph tests. I mean, it is an insane litany of bad behavior, corrupt behavior, and highlights just how stupid and unsavory this person is. Right? Donald Trump has been asked multiple times, especially in the wake of Alex Preddy's murder, why Kristi Noemi was still ahead of dhs. She is on thin ice with him. And what is the best way to get back in the good graces of Donald Trump, promote 2020 election, promote paranoid fraudulent theories about the 2020 election and assist him in his business of trying to steal potentially the 2026 election and manipulate the 2028 election and that's, I think, in large part why you see her in Arizona today making the case for the SAVE act, which in addition to disenfranchising, disproportionately low income and voters of color, also targets married women, white voters, military voters, and seniors 65 and older women. One in three white people voted by mail in the 2024 election. I'm going to guess that some of those white people voted maga. This is a stupid, stupid idea. In addition to being pernicious and slightly evil, not just for Democrats, but also for Republican voters. I can't, I can't say enough how awful she is and how awful this strategy is. Nicole.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Well, Alex, I want to just share with our audience where you get some of your anecdotal evidence to support those claims. It's from the Wall Street Journal, a story whose headline is, quote, a pilot fired over Kristi Noem's missing blanket and the constant chaos inside dhs, quote, within dhs. Noem and Lewandowski have cut employees or put them on administrative leave. The pair, the pair have fired or demoted roughly 80% of the career ice field leadership that was in place when they in the blanket incident, Noem had to switch planes after a maintenance issue was discovered, but her blanket wasn't moved to the second plane. According to the people familiar with the incident, the Coast Guard pilot was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home. When they reached their destination, they eventually reinstated the pilot because no one else was available to fly them. The DHS spokeswoman didn't address the episode, but said the secretary has made personal decisions to deliver excellence. The I mean, someone send this woman a Snuggie. You know, those infomercials of like, the wearable blankets? Like, I want to send Kristi Noem, like, a year's supply of Snuggies to stash on all of her jets. This is like bat bleep crazy, crazy grifting. Like, I feel like the rules until now, Alex, have been that only daddy gets to grift. Like, only Trump gets jets and jewels and stuff. Maybe, maybe, maybe his kids. But, like, does Kristi Noem get to, like, fire people because they didn't move.

[Political Analyst / Commentator]

Her snuggie and also have DHS buy a $70 million 737 private jet for her and Lewandowski. Both of them are married. Nicole Just a little side note for this family values party, this Republican Party and the piece which is essential reading, you know, in that libelous left wing rag, the Wall Street Journal, the piece ends Detailing the ways in which Corey Lewandowski has been trying to procure a badge and a gun. A federally authorized official DHS badge and gun. This man has no. First of all, he has overstayed his welcome as a special employee, a special government employee, to the degree that the White House Counsel's office was looking into Corey Lewandowski and whether he should still even be assisting Kristi Noem in her dirty work. And now the guy's trying to get a gun and a badge. I guess the shiny toys. Daddy gets them, but so do some of his favorite friends. I don't even know what to call them. But, yeah, that's what's happening.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Cory with a gun. I mean, dog owners everywhere should be very scared. Rev, you know, Trump, I mean, Trump likes special rules for himself, right? That's where I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and my voters wouldn't mind. Trump traditionally hasn't liked heinous press coverage, horrific examples of grifting, public tantrums from the people who work for him. Why do you think she's still there?

[Reverend Al Sharpton]

I think that she's still there because she knows, in my judgment, how to play on Trump's insecurities and because somebody has brought back to him the illusion that he really won 2020. And they are doing all of these things. So in 26, they can cripple you. If the Democrats take the House and you'll be a lame duck for two years, and they'll be subpoenaing everybody in front of Judiciary, Even though your president can't go, they'll have everybody there, and Epstein will be. I mean, somebody can play on his paranoia. You have to remember they're talking about how they see all of these people coming from abroad being brought in here illegally to vote against them. But then why did they win last year if that happened?

[Show Host / Moderator]

He's talking like Trump's won two of the last three elections. Like, what are we talking about in the election?

[Reverend Al Sharpton]

So did they come in here to vote for you? I mean, what are you talking about?

[Show Host / Moderator]

Did they leave? And, I mean, what is he talking about?

[Reverend Al Sharpton]

And somebody should send the Oval Office and say, papa, you won. What are we talking about? You're not. This is not 20 where you're trying to prove they stole it. If there was any stealing. We did the stealing because we're home, we're in Oval Office. So I think they're playing on his insecurities, playing on his ego, playing on whatever it is that driving him crazy about the Epstein thing, and he's letting them just run amok with this. Don't forget, this is not a new concept because they started a few years ago with this vote ID thing in Louisiana, in Texas, and many of us in the civil rights community had to fight back and it was like 0.0003% fraud. Now they've recreated it as an immigration issue and he went up in the Latino vote last year if you're talking about Mexicans. So I think that they're playing on him and they know how to play him because of his insecurities and his ego.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Well, the other thing is obviously there are no smart political people around him anymore because if he cares about being popular, presidents are traditionally more popular and have more capital when the other party controls Congress. So in terms of just straight up politics, I'm not sure it's even clear that this wouldn't benefit him politically to have the other party control Congress.

[Reverend Al Sharpton]

But again, you are correct that they are not people that have the political mastery that he had before some of them. That's why they're there. He doesn't want people that has an understanding. He wants to be the smartest guy in the room. He doesn't want smart people there. If they had any kind of skill like some of the people of last time, he wouldn't have brought them there. He wants yes men and yes women and people that can fabricate things that he can sit up at night and jump on truth, social and play out his fantasies and his delusions that nobody say, don't do that. That's what he wants.

[Show Host / Moderator]

He's the smartest person in the room. We're all going to die. Everyone sticks around. Much more with Mark, Alex and Rev in a moment. Also ahead for us, the staggering number of children right now being held in ICE detention under Donald Trump's deeply unpopular immigration policies. As more and more and more judges by the day, even the ones appointed by Donald Trump, are stepping up to say enough deadline. White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

[Reverend Al Sharpton]

Foreign.

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[Show Host / Moderator]

We'Re back. Mark Elias, I want to actually have you drill down on this point that the ridiculousness is the feature, not the bug. Right? Putin running around without a shirt on, on a horse is preposterous, and it is authoritarian, and it is a power grab. And I think it's important to keep all these thoughts in our heads at once. They can be preposterous people, they can be unpopular people, and they can subvert our elections. Let me read you what the director of the Brennan center writes about what the plan is. Not to cancel them, but to. To. To destroy the integrity of the elections. It's election subversion, not cancellation, that is the real authoritarian move. The goal is to keep elections going, but without unseating those in power. Look around the world. Vladimir Putin hasn't canceled an election. Iran has regular elections. In the 21st century, the name of the game is competitive authoritarianism, in which democratic institutions and elections persist but are hollowed out by authoritarian incumbents. Elections, even if they're rigged, give rulers legitimacy. It's, it's chilling, but it's probably closer to the predictions that he'll cancel the elections outright.

[Voting Rights Attorney Mark Elias]

Absolutely. And look, you and I have talked about this before. I have said continue continuously. We are going to have elections. Anyone who is telling you we are not going to have elections going to cancel elections. They are selling you snake oil, okay? We're going to have elections. Donald Trump couldn't cancel the elections if he wanted, and he doesn't want to cancel the elections because dictators love elections. I mean, Vladimir Putin loves them. Election who? What's not to love? An election that you always win by like 90 10.

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

Yeah.

[Voting Rights Attorney Mark Elias]

The problem is that we have a scale or a sliding expectation of what free and fair elections are. And I'm not sure in 2026 they are going to meet the minimum threshold of what we expect from a free and fair election in this country. And on top of that, what Donald Trump is doing is conditioning us for there to be competing realities as to who won. What do I mean by that? You could imagine a world in which the state of California says that these seven candidates won, and then the FBI seizes the ballots and says no, in fact, those seven candidates lost and these seven candidates won. Now, in a perfect world, like in a rational world, what the state of California certifies everyone acknowledges was correct and that Donald Trump, you know, sending in ICE agents or the FBI to seize ballots is wrong. But he has conditioned the environment so that there is no absolute truth to large segments of the electorate. There is one segment of the electorate that will think what he is saying is absolutely true, and then there's a large number of the electorate that will say they don't know which it is, and maybe there's some truth in both or in neither. And that's the risk that we have. I mean, every time Donald Trump tells a preposterous lie, he is conditioning a large segment of the population to believe it is true and another segment of the population to just not believe anything is true. And that is what he is setting up for 2026.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Alex, how do you see this sort of playing out around the country where there are some states that have actually done a really good job, even the Republicans, vouching for the legitimacy of their elections? I'm thinking actually of Arizona and Georgia in 2020 that stood by their counts. The Republican secretaries of state, Republican governors, and they are ground zero for the assault on election integrity by the Trump administration. Kristi Noem's in Arizona today. Tulsi Gabbard was in Georgia last week.

[Political Analyst / Commentator]

Yeah, I mean, I'm worried. I would love to see Brad Raffensperger, Brian Kemp in Georgia say something about the Fulton county raid that happened a week ago. I mean, they haven't said anything. Brad Raffensperger's looking for higher office, and maybe it's a little bit more fraught for him to come out right now, but that's precisely the moment to do that. I'm deeply disturbed by the fact that there are election deniers that are now installed in the federal government. I'm deeply disturbed by the fact that the speaker of the House has already provided a template for not seating a Democratic majority. Look at the example of Adelita Grijalva, who he refused to seat for weeks and weeks and weeks because it was going to a result in the release of the Epstein files, which it did, but also shave down his majority. He could do that again if it's a close call in 2026 or if it's a narrow majority. There's any number of ways the be confused. You know, I think one of the things Trump has successfully done is spread the virus inside the machinery of elections, which is not something we saw in 2020 and 2024 necessarily. And I do worry about things like, you know, the SAVE act is out there, it was approved by the House. Who knows what happens in the Senate. But I think the idea is there's some of these, quote, unquote reforms have some popularity with the American public because they're not aware of just how the political machinations behind them. You know, like, I think we're at a really perilous time. And I agree with, I agree with the notion that we are, we're not going to not have elections. And I don't think that the, the, the peril is going to be as clearly pronounced as jackbooted thugs stopping people from voting. But, you know, part of the SAVE act makes it a crime for elections officials to register someone to vote without the proper paperwork. Now, it hasn't been passed, but as of the, I think as of a month ago, elections officials in the American West, 50% of them had left their jobs. You know, you can atrophy the infrastructure enough that it doesn't function well. And then when it doesn't function well, you can say it's fraudulent. And when it's fraudulent and there's enough doubt, you can have actors like Mike Johnson say, eh, we gotta hold off on handing the gavel over. So, I mean, I just think there are a number of ways that I sit on the edge of my seat and truly worry about what the outcome is gonna be and just how much this can muddy the waters to Trump's advantage.

[Reverend Al Sharpton]

Rev, you know, when you take what both of them said, the fact is that there's going to be elections, but he's going to try and persuade the public that these elections are fraudulent. There are people coming across the border to vote against me. That's why we have to have these.

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

Strong.

[Reverend Al Sharpton]

Traps that you've got to go through to vote certain id, certain proof of this or that which we went through before and defeated. There needs to be a stronger narrative first. Of all who's coming across the border. When you told us you closed the border so the people that were here already didn't beat you in 24. So what are we talking about? Mr. Magoo's coming across the border because the other people can't get here. So you've got to start countering his stuff. When they start rolling out Kristi Noem and others, the other side needs to roll out people talking about how ridiculous it is based on their logic.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Is that happening? Are you saying that I don't, I.

[Reverend Al Sharpton]

Don'T think it's happening enough. And sometimes you've got to let people understand how ridiculous. Don't just call it ridiculous. Go into it and say, this is why this does not make sense. And they're playing on your intelligence. And I do agree that they are polluting, they're beginning to pollute the people that are in the electoral process itself. And that in itself can destabilize the election.

[Show Host / Moderator]

I mean, the thing about voter fraud is it's not a crime that happens. And when it does happen, there are laws. I mean, it's already a crime.

[Reverend Al Sharpton]

So it's already a crime. But if you have people inside terrified that there's voter fraud going on and I'm gonna be blamed, they start playing games or they start leaving. And he needs just enough confusion and smoke to, to hold on and get through the midterms. Otherwise they got have to hand over the gavel. They know better than anybody how close they are to losing that gavel and what that means if they get the gavel.

[Show Host / Moderator]

All right, we'll stay on top of this. I won't sleep tonight, but thank you, Marc Elias, for starting us off. Alex and Rev, stick around a little bit longer. When we come back, the country was rightly horrified at the plight of five year old Liam Ramos. He was snatched by federal agents and detained with his father in Texas. Turns out Liam was one of many, many children that's been targeted. There's a shocking number of small children being held in ICE detention by Donald Trump and his administration. Today we are learning what ICE is planning to do next with them. We'll have that story on the other side of a short break. So despite the fact that the Trump administration now claims an ICE drawdown in Minnesota, which is a good thing, there are no signs that they're backing down from meeting Donald Trump's mass deportation, arrest quotas, which is everyone says the reason we are in this situation and the real difficult piece of that is that it seems to include detaining children, really young children. New York Times reports this. Quote, the number of children in federal custody has climbed sharply since President Trump revived the practice of detaining families last year. Under the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, hundreds of children have been detained, usually with a parent. Nearly all passed through one place, a sprawling detention center in Dilley, Texas. In the past, Dilley was used mainly to hold women and children who had just crossed the border. But now many of the children sent there had been living in the United States and attending American schools, sometimes for years. Quote, there are many liams, said Elora Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School who runs the school's immigration clinic. And it appears that the Trump administration is working to make it that there are even more. Washington Post reports this. Quote, U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion. $38.3 billion on a plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants. The additional detention space is necessary due to ISIS hiring of more agents and an expected surge in arrests. Joining our coverage is deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants Rights Project, Legal Earned. Alex and Rev are still here. I mean, it makes you physically sick to read that we are building warehouses. To do what? To detain who?

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

No, absolutely. I mean, what we now see is the lie of the campaign that there was going to be an attempt to go after the worst of the worst. We now know it's not true. I mean, you and I have talked about it for a while, that it was never going to be like that. They were never going to hit quotas just by going after the worst of the worst. So they're still trying to say that. And. But we now know that it's children, it's families, people without criminal convictions. I mean, it's bad enough if you're detaining little children who are just coming across the border, but now, as you said, it's going on in the interior. Children are in school, being pulled out of school. It's absolutely horrendous. And, you know, going back to Trump one, Right. We had family separation and we thought, well, that's as bad as it can get. And, you know, I don't know what this is basically an attempt to say, well, you don't want to be in detention, Let your child go, we'll separate you. Or. And it's people who have claims, asylum claims.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Explain that.

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

Yeah, so it's people who have an ability to try and stay in the country if they're allowed a fair hearing. But what they do is, you put a family in detention, a little child, ultimately they're going to give up because it's too traumatizing on the child. And that's what the Trump administration is trying to do.

[Show Host / Moderator]

So they leave on their own.

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

Exactly. So Congress has passed laws saying, look, not everyone has to be removed. There are considerations to take into account. Are you going to be persecuted when you're sent back? Other types of humanitarian protections? But people are giving up because they can't sit in detention with their little child. They're seeing their little child melt away. And so I think that's what the Trump administration's trying to do.

[Show Host / Moderator]

What is the recourse?

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

Yeah, that's a good question. And so I think two things. One is we're going to continue with, you know, everyone out there advocates to bring lawsuits, but there's ultimately, as you know, there's going to be a limit to what we can accomplish strictly through the courts. I think what really needs to happen is what you've talked about all the time, is public resistance. You know, that's what happened in family separation. We won in court, but not without the surrounding public outcry. Not just in this country, but worldwide. The same thing has to happen. You know, when I was here after the election, you and I talked about, well, people seem to be okay now with mass deportation. We talked about, well, that's because people didn't really understand what it would mean in practice. Now they see it in practice and they're coming out against it. People need to continue doing that because whether some of the people in the administration are so feeling like we can do anything to immigrants, it's not clear that everyone in the administration won't take account of the public resistance. It's just going to be a grind, a slow grind for us to keep pushing and pushing back till we eventually accomplish stuff.

[Show Host / Moderator]

One of the things that people seem to recoil against is this interior enforcement. And even Joe Rogan has said, you know, man, they're going after the landscape, or they seem to be targeting only people at work. I mean, the worst of the worst are in prison. I think that where people thought they would focus their efforts for adjudicated criminals in prison. Why isn't the policy focused there?

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

Well, I think you hit on it in the introduction is part of it is this quota, this obsession with numbers. So there are not enough worst of the worst to hit the kind of numbers they're talking about. So they're going out and arresting everyone, Families Children, people with no criminal convictions, people who have served in the military, and they're doing a lot of racial profiling. Let's just be honest about it, where they're going. And they can say no. We're looking at the totality of circumstances. I mean, we think it should never be ethnicity and race that's taken into account. But at this point, it's almost solely written. A lot of places, Minnesota, the Somalis, Latinos. And so that's what they're doing. They're going to places where they see a lot of Latinos in a neighborhood and they're just picking them up and saying. And so, you know, there's no way they can hit these quotas. So as long as they're obsessed with quotas, it's never just going to be what you said of let's go after the worst, to the worst. If it was just to the worst of the worst, I don't think we would see people taking to the streets. But they know now it's not.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Yeah. One of the stories I remember covering with you at the beginning was that they took away protections for places like churches, hospitals and schools. I have to say, get a break. But I want to ask you what that is like. We're seeing that operationalize in Minneapolis. They are targeting schools in a way they think alarms most people. Stay with us. We're going to sneak in a short break. We'll all be right back. On the other side.

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[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

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[Show Host / Moderator]

Two ICE agents have been suspended after video evidence rebutted testimony that the officers made in the case against an immigrant who had been shot by ICE. New York Times reports this quote, the shooting on January 14th of Julio C. Sosasalis by an ICE agent touched off hours of tense protests in Minneapolis. Initially, Federal officials described Mr. Sosa Salis and his co defendant as violent agitators who had attacked an agent with a shovel and broom. Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, accused them of trying to kill the agent. But inconsistencies soon emerged in the government's description of the episode. Still, prosecutors pushed ahead with felony cases against the men and sought to keep them detained ahead of trial. A judge dismissed the charges against Mr. Sosa, Sellis and his co defendant. As the Times notes, this is just the latest instance of DHS providing an account of a shooting that turned out to be questionable or outright wrong. We're back with Legal Hert, Alex Wagner and the Reverend Al Sharpton. I mean, quickly, Lee, how do you, how do you go in and fight these cases against federal prosecutors who are lying?

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

Well, I know, you know, that is the big change from Trump 1 to Trump 2. There were draconian policies during Trump 1, but I never felt like the Justice Department was walking into court and being outright disrespectful or ready to disobey an order or even lie. That's what we're seeing in Trump, too. And in the beginning, I think judges weren't ready to admit that. But now I think judges are pushing back from all sides and saying, wait, we're not going to give the kind of deference we usually do. I mean, we have a contempt proceeding now going on potentially all the way up the chain because they sent those Venezuelan men to that Salvadoran prison in direct defiance of a court order. The government's fighting that. But I think it's just that was the first case. And now I think you see lots of courts saying, wait, we're not going to stand for this. And that's the problem, is there can't be that kind of deference anymore if we think the administration's going to outright lie.

[Show Host / Moderator]

How many people suffer, though, while those cases wind their way through the courts?

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. That's the problem is we're not going to stop at all, and we're not going to stop it immediately. But we have to push back. Because as big as any of these individual cases are, that issue of the rule of law and the Justice Department, the executive branch, disobeying court orders goes to the heart of who we are as a country. So we have to push those cases and we have to see them through.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Alex, let me show you what Congressman Jamie Raskin had to say after he visited an ICE facility in Baltimore.

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

The minute that we got in and started being able to look around, all of the men began to gesture to us that they needed a shower. There's no shower. So theoretically, they're not supposed to be in there for more than three days. But there were people telling us through the window that they'd been there for five days, six days or seven days. And to be packed in with 55 people, one toilet and no showers is just not a healthy sanitary situation for anybody within this.

[Show Host / Moderator]

This again, regardless of who anyone voted for last November, this is being done in all of our name. We are as Americans treating humans this way. I wonder what your thoughts are as all this evidence starts to pile up.

[Political Analyst / Commentator]

Yeah, I mean, it just goes right back to the heart of the family separations, the moral stain that we could feel it on our hearts. Right. It's happening over and over and over again every day behind closed doors. Only the children this time are being snatched from schools and churches and hospitals inside the country where they've attended maybe for years. Their parents are not being given an opportunity to hand the children over to family members who are US Citizens. And so the children end up in detention in places with no school. If there is any kind of education, it's maybe an hour, but it's way below grade level or the classes are at capacity and they can't attend. Children are sick, they're sad. In some cases they're measles outbreaks. I mean, then you talk about what the parents and the adults are being forced to go through. This is, this is the. I mean, it is a good thing for the country that that picture of Liam Ramos and his blue bunny hat and the Spider man backpack went viral and saved Lee and Ramos. But we need more oversight. We need members of Congress in there and we need recordings. The thing that changed the tide was the recordings of the children crying out in detention that is still happening in America. I think. The Times reports that as of mid January, there were 500 children in ICE detention who are suffering through this. One of them had been there for 58 days. This isn't only un American, it is inhumane. It is unfathomable to me that we have made the choice to treat our youngest and most vulnerable like this.

[Show Host / Moderator]

I feel like I always ask you how we fix it, and that's what I want to ask you. But I guess what I want to ask you is, does there seem to be any political will, any bipartisan will to sort of reverse course?

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

I think we're seeing it. You know, it's not going to come all at once, but we are starting to see people on the other side moderate what they're saying and not being willing to defend everything. I think people just need to keep grinding because I don't think it's going to be boom all of a sudden, but it's slowly where. And that's what happened with family separation. All of a sudden, Republicans, conservatives, religious leaders, they didn't want to be asked about pulling little children away. And soon, I think the same people are not going to be wanting to ask while a child's two months, five years old, sitting in detention or this mother's children are in the military, but we're going after them. So I think it's just going to be a slow push. It always is like this. I mean, the reverend can talk to us. It's like these kind of movements take, they're just, they're a grind. You know, it's not like there's a magic bullet. And it just everyone looks back on the 60s like, oh, but it was a long, hard struggle. And I think the same thing is here. We're slowly starting to see people say, no, no, no, this is not what we meant by mass deportations.

[Show Host / Moderator]

Well, you are one of the heroes doing that grinding, doing that grinding work. So thank you. Thank you for taking time to be here. Thank you for spending the hour with me. Alex, thank you for spending the hour with me. Don't miss Politics Nation with RAB this weekend, 5pm Eastern. His guests tomorrow include Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Congressman Eric Swalwell of the great state of California. One more break. We'll be right back. But good news to share with you at the end of this week. In a massive display of defiance against Donald Trump and his administration's policies, hundreds of people gathered in New York City this week to watch their elected officials return the pride flag to the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, the site of the 1969 Stonewall riots and the start, really of the LGBTQ rights movement. The flag had been removed from the national monument following federal guidance from Donald Trump and his administration. New York Times reports this. As the officials turned to leave, the crowd began to shout higher. Then several people stepped in to raise it again next to the American flag. We want to remind you that this week on the Best People, my conversation with Scott Galloway, the entrepreneur, podcast host, NYU professor who has a strategy to hold Donald Trump and the companies that are enabling him accountable. It's called Resist and Unsubscribe. You can listen to our entire conversation about that starting tonight. You have to sign up to be a premium subscriber. You can do that by scanning the QR code on your screen. One more break. We'll be right back. Our dear friend, Fred Guttenberg, someone dear to many of you, reminds us that Saturday will mark eight years since the tragic Parkland shooting when 14 students and three staff members of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were murdered, including Fred's beautiful, brilliant 14 year old daughter, Jamie. This weekend and every day, we remember and honor Jamie and everyone who lost their lives that day and all the families in the country who've been impacted by gun violence. We want to thank you for letting us into your homes. We are always grateful.

[Legal Expert / Immigration Rights Advocate]

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