← The Rachel Maddow Show
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
00:42:18
From small towns to the largest cities, Rachel Maddow reports on the wide diversity of issues being protested in demonstrations across the United States on Saturday, as hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets to make their objections to Donald Trump's agenda heard.
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- [00:01]
Rachel Maddow
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- [00:30]
Chris Hayes
Thanks you at home for joining us this hour. Really, really happy to have you here. So this was not one of the hands off protests that we saw all over the country this weekend. This was a different thing. And you will see the wind was playing tricks with people.
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Local Reporter
You mentioned four or 500 people. It's probably closer to 750 people, maybe a thousand. It's grown. You can see, really like you said, as it's laid out as how many people are here marching. You brought your family here today. Why was it important to you for you all to be here?
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Chris Hayes
Just like I said, like I said before, you know, we're all here. This is, this is my nephew and he's about the same age as that third grader. You know, I wouldn't want to see my nephew.
- [01:17]
Local Reporter
And you can see just how windy it is out here.
- [01:22]
Chris Hayes
This is Sackets Harbor, New York. Sackets harbor is way up on the shore of Lake Ontario in sort of northwestern New York. It's not that far from the Canadian border. And about a week and a half ago, immigration agents went to Sackets Harbor, New York, and they took three kids and their mom, third grader, a 10th grader and 11th grader, three kids and their mom. They took them from Sackets harbor and they flew them to Texas. And this mom and her three kids have been in some kind of immigration prison ever since. Yes, including the third grader, the population of Sackets Harbor, New York is about 1,300 people. But as you saw that local reporters say there There were about 1000 people of the 1300 people in the town who showed up this Saturday to march in Sackets harbor and to demand the return of that mom and her kids. This is from WWWNY Local Channel 7, which covered the march, noting the children were students in the Sackets Harbor School District. At this rally on Saturday calling for the return of the family, demonstrators carried American flags and signs saying things like hands off our kids and return the children. It was the local Democratic Party in Jefferson County, New York, that organized this rally. We've also seen Democratic governor of New York, the Democratic governor of New York, Kathy Hochul also getting involved in this case. She put out a statement saying she, quote, cannot think of any public safety justification for ICE agents to rip an innocent family, including a child in the third grade, from their Sackets harbor home. She says, quote, that is not the immigration enforcement promise to the American people. It is just plain cruel. I want this family returned to New York State and believe ICE needs to immediately answer for these actions. The principal at Sackets Harbor Central School marched in Saturday's rally. She said she was there just representing herself, not representing the school, not representing any union, but she said, quote, we graduate only about 40 students per year at our school, so we know every face, we know every personality, and we are missing them. And I think what Sackett's harbor shows, she says, is that when you rely on your community and you remember that your neighbors love you and your classmates love you, and the teachers are going to be there for you. They're always going to stand up and say, I will show up for you. I will rally for you. I think that's how we get through this. She said that again at that march. Again, that was 1000 people out of a town of 1300. That was on Saturday. And now today, Monday, the school district made this announcement. Quote, we are relieved and grateful to share that after 11 days of uncertainty, our students and their mother are returning home. We remain committed to providing the care, understanding, and sensitivity necessary for all students and staff as we begin the healing process from this traumatic experience. In the midst of this difficult time, the strength, compassion, and resilience of our community have shown through. We are very thankful to everyone who has reached out with kindness and offered support.
- [04:41]
Simon Sandoval Moschenburg
Wow.
- [04:41]
Chris Hayes
If only we all lived in places like this, right, where people were willing to come out and show up and make themselves heard for us when we needed help. Oh, wait, we do. We do all over the country. It turns out we do live in just those places. These are some of the more than 1400 protests that took place this weekend protesting the actions of the Trump administration. I mean, this is me showing you 20 of them all at once. I could show you 20 at once for this entire hour, and we still wouldn't get through all of them. If you follow me on Blue Sky, I posted footage from hundreds of different protests that all took place this weekend on Saturday. But just looking at this 20, let me tell you what you're looking at here. Starting at the top, going left to right, and then top to bottom, upper left hand corner, that's Atlanta. Georgia police estimated at least 20,000 people turned out in Atlanta, Georgia, Los Angeles, where the LA Times said the number was easily in the tens of thousands. The crowd may have reached 100,000 in Los Angeles alone. Another huge one in Seattle. Minimum estimates there maybe 14,000 people, but just keep going. Huntsville, Alabama, Portland, Oregon, Davenport, Iowa, Charlotte, North Carolina. Green Bay, Wisconsin, Lansing, Michig, Palm Beach, Florida. Phoenix, Arizona had a huge one. Providence, Rhode Island. Salt Lake City, Utah was huge. Austin, Texas Buffalo, New York. Columbia, South Carolina. Indianapolis, Indiana was massive. Sacramento, California, another huge one. Detroit, Michigan. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I mean, that's 20 of again, more than 1,400. Here's 20 more. Again, left to right, top to bottom, upper left hand corner, that's Baltimore, Maryland. Then go left to right across the top and then we'll go down. Baltimore, Maryland is the upper left. Then Pittsburgh, Penn, Tampa Bay, Florida. Helena, Montana Rapid City, South Dakota, Washington, D.C. the crowd was estimated at 100,000 people. Plus Chicago, Illinois is next to D.C. there. The crowd estimate there was even larger than it was in Washington. Denver, Colorado Tulsa, Oklahoma, New York City, where it was said to be easily 100,000 people. Honolulu, Hawai, Boston, Massachusetts. Local press reports also cited nearly 100,000 people on Boston Common. And I'll tell you, the letters to the editor page today at the Boston Globe is full of people outraged that the Globe didn't give the event better coverage given how huge it was in Boston. Then we've got Dallas, Texas, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Hartford, Connecticut, St. Paul, Minnesota. That was a massive turnout at St. Paul, Minnesota, at the state capitol, and then the last two there, Savannah, Georgia and Cincinnati, Ohio. It was cold and rainy enough in Joplin, Missouri that people put their signs in plastic bags and if they didn't bring their mittens, they put their socks on their hands to try to keep warm while they held their signs. It rained like the dickens as well in northeast Louisiana, but that wasn't enough to keep people at home. They just held their umbrellas and their signs. In Terre Haute, Indiana, people just made space for all the umbrellas and smiled through it. They hung tough through the rain in deep red. Naples, Florida, organizers there say they had 7,000 people turnout in Naples, Florida. And yeah, that's good weather. So I know. But that's also a county that went for Trump by 33 points in November. And they had 7,000 people turn out on Saturday. Detroit, Michigan, when people came out, they waved across the river to Windsor, Ontario, where protesting Canadians waved right back. People protested in Dillingham, Alaska. On Bristol Bay, people protested at the end of the Iditarod sled dog race in Nome, Alaska. People woke up there Saturday morning to a balmy 0 degrees Fahrenheit. But still people got out in Nome, Alaska to go say their peace. Look at the people turning out in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Look at the people turning out in El Paso, Texas. In Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2,000 people turned out in the drenching rain. Green Bay, Wisconsin, had a really big crowd. Look at that. Look at Statesboro, Georgia. So many people turning out in so many, so many red states. Look at this is Gulfport, Mississippi. Gulfport, Mississippi. They marched with a big Trump Sucks banner. Helena, Montana, had a really big crowd. So did Knoxville, Tennessee. So did Northwoods, Wisconsin. I don't know if you watched the show on Friday night, but you might remember we had this group of older ladies in New Jersey. It's just a friend group in New Jersey who sent us pictures on Friday of them getting ready to protest this weekend. Again, this is a friend group for which the Average age is 90. I've got two updates for you on that. First of all, they absolutely did get out and protest this weekend. Again, average age 90. In this group. You see some of them with their wheelchairs and their, and their, or at least, excuse me, their walkers there. But also, I had guessed on Friday's show that the lady who was making the Dump Trump sign, see on the back of the table there on the back on the right. Though I had guessed when we showed this picture on Friday night that the lady making the Dump Trump sign with the leg sticking out of the trash can, I had guessed she must have been an artist or an art teacher. Turns out I was right. She is a retired art teacher and she, in fact, got out there this weekend with gusto. I am here to protest Trump's programs. They are hurting us, they are hurting our children, and before long, they will hurt the country. So we have to dump Trump. You know, the thing I most want to be when I grow up is an old person. And boy, am I getting there fast. But there were a lot of people out there this weekend who are beating me to it. And it was one of the most inspiring things about everything you saw this weekend. On the left side of your screen here, that's Montrose, Colorado. Hands off. One depression was enough. On the right side of your screen, that's Madison, Wisconsin. We 100 year olds see no future with Trump. On the left side of your screen, that's Harrisonburg, Virginia. Hands off Medicaid. On the right side of your screen, that's Houston, Texas. This old lady is pissed and fighting for our Constitution. In Newtown, Connecticut, two canes and a quote from Senator Cory Booker's marathon filibuster this past week. This is a moral moment. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, they had a special protest just for seniors that you see on the left side of your screen there. That was separate. And apart from the thousands of people who flooded into downtown Grand Rapids for the big protest there. Grand Rapids not big enough to hold just one protest, one for seniors and one for a huge number of people in the downtown. In Flagstaff, Arizona, we had good dog, good trouble. And in Huntsville, Alabama, and lots of other places, we had dogs against doge. In Los Angeles, we had some signs that made me really strongly want to know the backstory on the left you see here. You know times are bad if you part with your ex husband to protest. And you know, times are bad if you partner with your ex wife to protest. These two apparently were married for 30 years. They are obviously amicably split up now, but back together this weekend to protest the Trump administration. Also in Los Angeles this weekend. I don't want to know the backstory to I bite fascists. Let's just assume that's apocryphal. We saw this. Penguins against Fascism. This was also Los Angeles. No tariffs, no tyrants, just krill. This is a protest sign. We saw several different places this weekend. This is Riverside, California. Honk if you've never drunk texted war plans. We also saw variants of this calling back to one of the ugliest moments in the presidential campaign. They're eating the checks. They're eating the balances. They're devouring our democracy. This was San Jose, California. This was a good one from Newark, Delaware. Do not panic. Organize a special one there for college campuses and law firms. We saw a lot of signs along this very scary general theme. This was from Washington, D.C. this weekend. Resist like it's 1938 Germany. Also from Washington, don't like surprises. Protect Noah with the tornado imagery there. This was West Palm Beach, Florida, one of many, many signs and flags that we saw in support of Ukraine weekend. These were signs from Atlanta, Georgia, which of course is home to the CDC markets. Down, measles up. Fight for America. Hands off my earned Social Security. Hands off disability rights. Also this one's nice. Mild mannered church lady against oligarchy in Honolulu. Fascism is bad, says history. I can't sing, but here's one you can sing from. Des Moines, Iowa. Super callous, fragile, racist, narcissistic, potus. We believe your fascist dream is something quite atrocious we'll resist the oligarchs and always work for justice. Super callous, fragile, racist, narcissistic Bodhis. I cannot tell you how many times I had to practice that. Let's end the show right now. From a hot daytime protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Saturday. You see on the right there, Bad Doge with a squirt bottle with the water in it off. Bad Doge. And then you see resist the criminal and his little doge too. In Boston, courage is contagious with rage colored in on courage. Stand up now or bow down later. Also, Boston rejects tyranny. Fair Fair point there in Lansing, Michigan. This is the government our founders warned us about. In Novi, Michigan, they had great signs in Novi, Michigan. It's a hard no on being Russia 2.0. And my dad taught me to stand up to bullies. And this is a good one. I'm a really mad scientist. In Tupelo, Mississippi, President Musk must go and no kings in America. In Omaha, Nebraska, look, they lined both the bridge here, the overpass bridge here, and both sides of the street. You see all the people here in Omaha and the big sign there. Better together in New York City, let them eat Teslas. Also some of the many penguins against tariffs. These ones in cute sweaters. In Columbia, South Carolina, we tariffed penguins, but not Russia. This one made me laugh out loud. In Avon, Ohio, Thou shalt keep hands off women's health care. Chapter 4, verse 5, Book of Fallopians in Seattle, only you can prevent fascist liars. We saw this one a bunch on Saturday. I've seen better cabinets at Ikea and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Oh, I love you. Hands off Medicare, Social Security and Stormy Daniels. Reason I wanted to show all of those signs from these various protests is because some of them are very funny, but also because it shows you just a. Just a slice of how many different reasons people participated in these protests, how many different reasons people have to be mad at this administration and to be willing to stand up and protest against this administration. And if you're just thinking about how things are going to go in our country and what this means strategically, what it means, baseline whether or not you protested this weekend, whether or not you're even in sympathy with the people who protested this weekend, the huge variety of reasons people protested this weekend tells you that the proverbial tent of people allied against Donald Trump right now is really, really, really big. He's done enough in these 70, 80, whatever days to make a very large number of people mad at him and want to resist him for a million different reasons. And strategically, for the resistance against Trump. That's good. That's how you get more than 1400 protests in all 50 states, including not one, but a bunch that hit people or more. And in all of these protests, in all 50 states, there was no violence, there was no vandalism, there were no reported arrests of any protesters anywhere. In one town in Indiana, there was one report of one guy arrested who was a bystander, but then they let him go, and that was it. This was just a massive show of American people standing up peacefully saying, no way. Nope, we are not having it. And no, we don't know what the direct impact of what these protests will be, what these protests will ultimately do. You almost never see that. Right. As a direct consequence of a rally.
- [18:27]
Simon Sandoval Moschenburg
Right.
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Chris Hayes
You never know exactly what it's going to do. That said, there is a family that is coming home today to Sacketts harbor in New York, after almost that entire town showed up on Saturday to demand that they be returned. But everyone from Palm Beach Gardens near Trump's golf course in Florida, to Anchorage, Alaska, to the huge crowd that turned out in Salem, Oregon, to the big crowd that turned out in Frankfort, Kentucky, I mean, look at this. To the huge crowd that we saw, massive crowd that we saw in Minnesota and St. Paul at the State Capitol there. I can tell you one of the consequences of these people turning out in so many places this weekend and in such great numbers. One of the direct consequences we absolutely can measure is that everybody in all of these places knows that if they themselves are upset or worried or mad or scared about what this administration is doing, they know they are not alone. We, the whole country, know that the people are not just taking things lying down. The people are now proving that they will show up and they will do it everywhere and likely frequently. This is a point that I haven't heard made all that widely in the wake of these protests. But I think one of the important things strategically, about the fact that this wasn't just one big Protest in Washington, D.C. this weekend. I mean, it was a very big Protest in Washington, D.C. it was over 100,000 people in Washington, which is a big deal. But the fact that it wasn't just Washington, that Washington was just one protest among many, is actually, I think, tactically one of the smart things that the organizers of this weekend's protest did. Because holding disparate protests all over the country, not just one big protest in one place, means that people can do this again and again and again. I mean, you look at really effective protest movements against rising authoritarianism in countries like Poland, where the population essentially rose up and took their democracy back through frequent mass protest. One of the things you realize about mass peaceful protest movements fighting against authoritarian takeover is that they have to stay peaceful and they have to be relentless. They have to frequently, frequently, frequently protest again and again and again. And it is hard and it is expensive to get yourself to travel to some faraway capital to protest if the protest is always in the capital. But it's not hard or expensive to get yourself to your town square or to the downtown in the city nearest you, or maybe even to your state capitol, even if you have to do it time after time after time. And when we have seen it work against rising authoritarians in European countries and all over the world, frankly, it has been then the protests have been recurrent and I believe that is what we are about to start seeing in the United States of America, because this was April 5th, but it looks like it's going to happen again in two weeks on April 19th. Saw you there on Saturday. See you there two Saturdays from now. Sustainable, repetitive, peaceful, nonviolent, big tent, everyone. Welcome demonstrations with yes kids there, also dogs, also old people, also righteous indignation and fear and sadness and also music and funny signs and a determination to outclass, to outlast and to ultimately put down a would be authoritarian revolution. Persistence. In Reuters Ipsos polling last week, the proportion of the American public who said they strongly identify with the Maga movement is 11% of the population. The proportion of the American public who says they do not identify with the MAGA movement At all is 52% of the population. In the Marquette University poll that came out last week, Elon Musk's approval rating is underwater by 17 points. Americans say Trump's tariffs will hurt them rather than help them. By a margin of 30 points. Americans say they are against Donald Trump closing the Department of Education by a margin of 30 points. Americans say they are against Trump's threats to annex Canada and make it the 51st state by a margin of 50 points. What Trump is doing and what he most wants to be known for is not popular. Is deeply, deeply unpopular. But protesting against him sure looks like it's popular. Expect more of it. We got a lot to get to tonight. We've got the Supreme Court taking action on the bizarre Alien Enemies act case. There's new fresh hell when it comes to what Trump is doing to Social Security and new fight back against it to talk about. We got a lot to get to tonight. Stay.
- [23:48]
Rachel Maddow
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- [24:18]
Chris Hayes
I do think it's worth being very clear eyed, very realistic about what's going on here.
- [24:24]
Rachel Maddow
Previews of our podcasts and documentaries, plus written perspectives from the newsmakers themselves, all sent directly to your inbox each morning. Get the best of MSNBC all in one place. Sign up for msnbc daily@msnbc.com MSNBC presents a new original podcast hosted by Jen Psaki. Each week she and her guests how the Democratic Party is facing this political moment and where it's headed next.
- [24:50]
Chris Hayes
There's probably both messaging and policy issues, but as you look to kind of where the Democratic Party is, do you think it's more a messaging issue, more a policy issue?
- [25:00]
Rachel Maddow
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- [25:12]
Chris Hayes
You might remember on Friday we showed you people protesting outside a federal courthouse in Maryland. That was during a court hearing on the case of a Maryland father, man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He was driving to his mother's house with his nonverbal autistic 5 year old son in the car with him when he was stopped and arrested. The Trump administration then flew him to a notorious high security prison in El Salvador despite a previous court order specifically forbidding them from sending him to that country. He's not known to be a member of this Venezuelan gang that Trump said he wanted to send all the gang members to that prison. He does not have a criminal record. The Trump administration has even admitted that they made a mistake by deporting him to that prison. But even so, they argued that they were under no obligation to get him out and bring him back, nor did they intend to. Well, on Friday, as people protested outside, the judge in that Maryland courthouse ruled against the administration, saying that in fact they had to go get Kilmar Abrego Garcia and get him out of that prison and bring him Back to the US by 11:59pm Eastern time tonight. Monday night. Then today, as we got closer and closer to that judge's deadline, the Trump administration went to the 4th Circuit Federal appeals Court to try to get the order to return Mr. Abrego Garcia put on hold. The appeals court did not give them what they wanted. Then they tried again. They appealed all the way to the U.S. supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts today did agree to put the looming midnight deadline tonight on hold pending further action from the Supreme Court. So what that means specifically for right now is that the US government doesn't have to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador tonight by midnight. Who knows whether they were even trying to do so. Within the last couple of hours, we also got another decision from the Supreme Court on a different case involving the Trump administration flying people to that same prison in El Salvador. This was a case challenging the Trump administration's citation of a wartime power, the Alien Enemies act, as their justification for flying people to that El Salvador prison. The Trump administration says they are gang members, whether or not there's any evidence to support those claims. They said that the Alien Enemies act allows them to send gang members to a foreign prison even though it's not a wartime. We're not in wartime, and we're not at war with that gang. But. But they've tried to piece it together as their justification for what they did there. Well, Tonight, in a 54 decision, the Supreme Court decided that the Trump administration can fly people to that El Salvador prison using the Alien Enemies act, but only if it notifies the people who are slated for deportation with enough time for them to challenge their removal in court. I said it was a 5, 4 decision. The three liberal justices were in the minority here. Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the three liberal justices in this decision. We're still working out exactly what this will mean for people being deported under that Trump order. In her dissent, though, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made reference to Kilmar Abrego Garcia writing, quote, what if the government later determines that it sent one of these detainees to the Salvadoran prison in error? The government takes the position that even when it makes a mistake, it can't retrieve individuals from the Salvadoran prisons to which it has sent them. The implication of the government's position is that not only non citizens, but also US Citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. Sotomayor says, quote, history is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this nation's system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise. Supreme Court also has ruled that any challenge to deportations under the Alien Enemies act has to happen in the US State where the person who's making the challenge is being confined is being imprisoned. That may mean that the federal court case in Washington, D.C. in this matter is going to have to move to a new federal court in Texas. We shall see. ACLU attorney Lee Gelert, who has been handling this case on behalf of the aclu, told us this tonight. Quote, we are disappointed that we will need to start the court process over again in a different venue, meaning Texas. But the critical point is that the court rejected the government's remarkable position that it doesn't even have to give individuals meaningful advance notice to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. Gulernt says, quote, that is a big victory. Joining us now is Simon Sandoval Moschenburg. He's the attorney for the man mistakenly deported from Maryland, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Mr. Sandoval Moschenburger, thank you so much for joining us tonight. It's a pleasure to have you here.
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Simon Sandoval Moschenburg
Good to be here, Rachel.
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Chris Hayes
Let me start by getting your reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in this other case and ask if you have any sense of what it might mean for your client.
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Simon Sandoval Moschenburg
So the Alien Enemies act does not apply to Mr. Abrego Garcia right now. It only applies to Venezuelan nationals. Mr. Abrego Garcia, of course, is a Salvadoran national. I'm very worried for many of my Venezuelan clients. I have several clients who've been falsely accused of being members of Trend Aragua, One because he has a tattoo of baseball and is from the state of Aragua, for example, and they've formally accused him of being a member of that, of that criminal gang. And the only reason they hadn't moved against him was the temporary restraining order entered by Judge Boasberg. So we're very, very concerned with what they're going to do in his case and several other cases as well. But Mr. Abrego Garcia's case is not.
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Chris Hayes
Directly impacted in terms of Mr. Abrego Garcia. This has captured the imagination of a lot of people around the country. I watched footage of protest in every state of the country, and I feel like I saw your client's name a lot of times and people referencing his case. It feels profoundly Kafkaesque and almost inexplicable for the administration to be announcing that they mistakenly sent him to this prison and also that they have no plans to get him home. How do you think ultimately that this is going to resolve? What do you think the most likely course is in terms of his case and ultimately his future Debate.
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Simon Sandoval Moschenburg
I mean, I think the case resonates with people's basic sense of fairness. If you mess something up, you have to fix it. The government has at no time claimed that they were correct to deport him to El Salvador. They're just claiming that what's done is done, and they're now under no obligation to fix it, to bring him back, or to even so much as pick up the phone and make a phone call to try. And that just doesn't make sense to people in general. And I think ultimately the Supreme Court is going to agree that that's not the way the laws are structured.
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Chris Hayes
The Trump administration, including the president himself, has mused openly about wanting to send US Citizens to this prison in El Salvador. We've had reporting from the Wall Street Journal within the past week that not only does the Trump administration want to continue its relationship with El Salvador in its operation of this prison, which has created this unimaginable situation for all the people who've been sent there, but especially for your client. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the administration is to create similar arrangements with six or seven other countries around the world, including places like Rwanda, where they want to send people who they don't want to incarcerate here, they want to incarcerate them abroad under the authority of some other country. Do you expect that they're sort of testing the waters with this El Salvador arrangement, but that ultimately they have in mind a larger regime along these lines applying to a larger number of people?
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Simon Sandoval Moschenburg
Yeah, I mean, they're the ones who turned this into a national case. Right. I mean, this was, this is one guy, father from Maryland, you know, sheet metal worker, they deported by accident. I don't necessarily ascribe, you know, that they did it intentionally, but then they're the ones who decided once we sort of brought it to their attention, instead of doing what they've done in every other wrongful deportation case I've ever handled, which is just admit error and bring them back. They, you know, they decided that they were just going to dig in their heels and raise their legal defense to this case is that it would be impossible for them to bring him back. I don't think there's anyone in the United States who actually believes that. As a matter of fact, it's so clear, and Trump's comments make even clearer that we have a contractual agreement with the government of El Salvador vis a vis this prison. It's not, you know, we didn't just sort of drop him off in the country, and then El Salvador of their own decision, decided to arrest him and put him in their jail. We deported him directly into the prison.
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Chris Hayes
Simon Sandoval Moshenburg, attorney for Kilmara Brago Garcia ongoing case. We're following it closely, as are so many people in the country. Thank you for helping us understand tonight.
- [34:15]
Simon Sandoval Moschenburg
Thank you, Rachel.
- [34:16]
Chris Hayes
All right, more news ahead here tonight. Stay with us.
- [34:21]
Rachel Maddow
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- [34:49]
Chris Hayes
Now is the time. So we're gonna do it, providing her.
- [34:52]
Rachel Maddow
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- [34:55]
Chris Hayes
How do we, how do we strategically align ourselves to this moment of information, this moment of transition in our country?
- [35:01]
Rachel Maddow
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- [35:09]
Chris Hayes
This was in Chicago on Saturday. Got measles. Me neither. Thanks, Science. This was one in Seattle. You wanted cheap eggs but got measles instead. This was in Atlanta markets down, measles up. Fight for America. These are just among the many, many amazing signs at the hands off protests across this country on Saturday. There was a whole subcategory of signs devoted to measles. Welcome back, measles. Because as the United States contends with the worst measles outbreak in this country in decades, President Donald Trump has slashed billions of dollars in federal funding from not just federal but also local and state health departments. Stick a pin in that. That in a second. Trump has also installed as the nation's top health official a man who has made a career out of demonizing vaccines, saying, among other things, that vaccines were causing a, quote, holocaust in America. Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr still an unbelievable phrase. He has in the past praised measles, saying, getting measles can be good for you. This weekend, he traveled to the epicenter of our current measles outbreak, traveled to Texas for the funeral of the second unvaccinated child to die of measles there in just the last few weeks. This time it was an eight year old girl named Daisy. After her funeral, social media post from RFK included the line quote, the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine. You see that way down there in the post buried in the middle of the third long paragraph. That is a true statement. That is a scientifically accurate statement. So for a moment there, we were all on the same page. But he couldn't help himself. Just a few hours later, just a few hours after he left the funeral of this eight year old girl, RFK Jr. Was up with a new post, this time praising two Texas doctors for treating measles patients there with quack remedies that are unsupported by any scientific evidence. One of the doctors released a podcast earlier in the outbreak describing mass infection as, quote, God's version of measles immunization. Would God invent a version of measles immunization that killed children? The other one was once disciplined by Texas medical regulators for inappropriate use of certain treatments. Those are the people he's praising right after coming out of the funeral of the unvaccinated eight year old girl. But even if you wanted to listen to version one of rfk, the guy who earlier in the day did, under his breath, vaguely recommend the measles vaccine. Well, even if that was compelling to you, getting the measles vaccine just got a lot harder in Texas because dozens of free measles vaccine clinics have been canceled right in the epicenter of this outbreak because of the Trump administration's huge funding cuts to local health departments. We may be about to find out just how quickly decades of public health success can be undone and at what cost. The epidemiologist and immunologist, Dr. Michael Mina wrote this in the New York Times under the headline, quote, I study measles. I'm terrified we're headed for an epidemic. He said, quote, measles is among the most contagious viruses known. A single case can cause dozens more in places where people are unvaccinated, infants too young for vaccination, immune compromised people and the elderly are all at risk. Measles isn't just a fever and a rash. It can cause pneumonia, brain inflammation, permanent disability, and death. The virus can go dormant in the body, only to re emerge a decade or so after infection and cause rapid and fatal brain tissue deterioration. Mina says, quote, this outbreak in Texas may still seem small, but that's exactly how it starts. Each case is a spark, and the fuel is all around us. Dr. Michael Mina joins us here live next. Stay with us. Keeping track of what Donald Trump is doing to health care in the United States has become sort of a collection of horror movie headlines that can actually be hard to keep track of day to day because they're not releasing this information in any sort of systematic way. We just have to figure out that, for example, as we learned last week, Donald Trump appears to have fired the doctor who provided him with monoclonal antibody treatments when he had Covid, which may have saved his life. The doctor who may have saved his life, Trump has just fired. The New York Times reported Friday night that Trump has closed the federal lab that tracked drug resistant gonorrhea in our country. Oh, yeah, why would we want to treat that? Why would we want to track that? Trump has closed the Head Start regional office that serves Idaho, Washington, Alaska and Oregon. The World Trade center health program for nine, 11 first responders. Trump just fired the administrator of the World Trade Center Health program and nearly all the staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, which oversees that program. But for all of that, the thing that I feel like wakes up more Americans in the middle of the night right now. Now, in terms of what Trump's doing on health is the ongoing, what appears to be mismanagement of this explosive measles outbreak which we've got centered in Texas. Epidemiologist and immunologist Dr. Michael Mina writes in the New York Times. We used to think of measles outbreaks in the US as isolated events, short lived and confined to close knit communities with low vaccination rates. A flare here, a bubble there. But as those bubbles grow and converge, the US could be at risk for tens of thousands of cases. Dr. Michael Mina joins us now. Sir, thank you very much for making time for us tonight. I appreciate it.
- [41:07]
Dr. Michael Mina
Happy to be here.
- [41:09]
Chris Hayes
What is most worrying to you about the way that we are handling this measles epidemic or this measles outbreak? Forgive me.
- [41:16]
Dr. Michael Mina
Yeah, measles, it's very easy to get to lose control of. Normally when there's an outbreak in an under vaccinated community, experts go in, usually from the CDC very quickly and try to get it under control so that it doesn't spread. But, but what we're seeing now is that we're starting to let it unravel. We're allowing the spread of the virus to begin to become out of control. It's now across multiple contiguous states, which suggests that it's spreading from community to community. And what's happening is that the communities of under vaccinated have become greater in number, greater in size, which means that as we start to see a case in one community start to spark, it's risking igniting, frankly, a nationwide outbreak amongst under vaccinated individuals across all communities across the United States. And so that is very concerning given the massive consequences of measles on health as we're currently seeing in Texas.
- [42:15]
Chris Hayes
When you say that's what we would typically do, that people from the cdc public health authorities would come in very quickly and basically pull out all the stops to stop an outbreak like this before it gets larger. What would that look like? What would the right kind of response, public health wise to an outbreak of this character have looked like?
- [42:38]
Dr. Michael Mina
Yeah, so firstly we would focus on the public health approaches. So we would put catch up campaigns for vaccines in place. We would try to get as many people in the community where the outbreak is happening to get vaccinated as quickly as possible. We would try to get testing, we'd get isolation of individuals who might be exposed or infected and help prevent the spread. We wouldn't necessarily focus our public health efforts on treating critical conditioned patients. We would try to prevent those patients from becoming patients in the first place and allow the hospitals and the doctors to really focus on treating the patients. But what we've seen is instead we now see a public health administration that is really focused on allowing the spread and then just trying to tackle each case one by one in the hospital. And of course that leads to consequent pneumonia, ICU visits and deaths, as we've seen, rather than focusing upstream on the relevant public health measures.
- [43:41]
Chris Hayes
And presumably the federal government has resources to bring to bear here that that sort of can't be replicated by any individual state.
- [43:49]
Dr. Michael Mina
Absolutely. The federal government has for years been sort of the beacon of how states respond. States individually rely very heavily on the federal government to help come in and combat outbreaks like this. Because generally speaking, it wouldn't be the most efficient for every state to have its own public health crisis management program for something that may be happening once in 10 years in a state for something like measles, which should be eliminated. And so the reliance that the states have had on the federal government has been absolutely critical to the public health infrastructure of this country. And that includes both the personnel as well as the funding to go along with that.
- [44:31]
Chris Hayes
Epidemiologist and immunologist, Dr. Michael Mina. Thank you so much for your time tonight. It's a scary subject and your clarity on it is really appreciated.
- [44:40]
Dr. Michael Mina
Thank you.
- [44:41]
Chris Hayes
All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9pm Eastern. In the meantime, you can find me posting prolifically on Blue Sky. I'm there@mattow.msnbc.com subscribe to MSNBC Premium on.
- [44:57]
Rachel Maddow
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