The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Wed, 12 Feb 2025
Rachel Maddow looks at the many ways Americans are obstructing Donald Trump's goal of dismantling the Department of Education, from street protests to lawsuits to acts of defiance by congressional Democrats, and notes that the response to the threat to the Department of Education is emblematic of the broader national opposition to Trump's agenda.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of the protests in Washington D.C.?
But ahead of that storm, this was Washington today. Tons of people in the streets. People turned out just outside the U.S. Capitol, Upper Senate Park. to protest, to support the civil service, support the people who work for the government, to protest our government being dismantled by President Trump and, of course, by his top campaign donor.
This administration maintains that they're going to boost efficiency, but they are doing the most inefficient things imaginable. And I'm not just saying that quite literally. The most inefficient thing you could possibly do is take American taxpayer dollars and pay people not to work.
Chapter 2: Who is Reverend William Barber and what is his message?
They are afraid of you. Trump and Musk and the oligarchs they work for, they are scared of your power. But they are betting that you will be afraid of them. So afraid that you will accept a buyout or comply in advance with their assertion of absolute power. But we know a president is not a king unless we bow. A dictator is not a dictator unless we bow.
Our knees, your knees are not made for bowing to power drunk neofascists. We bow only to God. Yeah! To everybody else, we stand and speak truth to power. We stand tall. When they attack workers, we stand tall because whenever wannabe dictators have tried to take over throughout history, they always start with workers. Yeah!
Hear me now, they always start with government workers who are committed to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And they know as long as workers stay together and fight, haters can't win.
Reverend William Barber, civil rights leader, also speaking there, Kenny Robertson, the national vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees. But this is a big protest today in Washington, D.C., in support of federal civil servants, the people who work in the U.S.
government, a support for them and also a protest in defiance of what we're seeing from the Trump administration to try to effectively destroy as much as they can of the federal government.
This follows an equally large and energetic protest yesterday, also in D.C., this one outside the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the agencies that Trump is trying to just unilaterally shut down, even though that legally does not appear to be within his power.
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Chapter 3: How are protests targeting Elon Musk and the Trump administration?
This protest yesterday at the CFPB noted, among other things, people at that protest noted that this agency, for example, is handling hundreds of consumer complaints about Tesla, the car company owned by Elon Musk. This is an agency that would be overseeing the new thing Elon Musk just announced about his social media company, which used to be called Twitter.
He wants you now to be able to use that social media platform, not just for all your needs for posting about weird Nazi race science and threats against reporters or whatever. He now also wants you to be able to use that social media platform as the place where you do all your banking and keep all your money. Because, yeah, trust him, what could possibly go wrong?
He announced that just weeks ago before he went to war against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is the government agency that would be overseeing and regulating that genius use Twitter as a payment service idea, which Musk just announced.
Now he's announced that he's killed that agency himself, effectively unilaterally, thanks to the power vested in him as the president's top campaign donor. That's not how the law works. He doesn't get a unilateral say in what government agencies we have in America.
And these people doorstopping the CFPB's headquarters yesterday in Washington, including lots of elected officials and lots of people who weren't elected officials. That was all part of telling him that he does not necessarily get his way here. You see some of the signs here. Hands off our CFPB. Elon is stealing your data. Thanks, federal workers. Stay strong. CFPB protects Americans.
This is a good one. Dogs against Doge. Look at the eyes on that one. Who's a good dog against Doge? That was Washington yesterday and today. Outside of Washington, check this out. This was West Virginia today. Parkersburg, West Virginia. This is in the northwest part of the states right near the Ohio state line.
And a few days ago on Friday, ProPublica reported that this little city in West Virginia was about to be the next target of Elon Musk's flying wedge of government saboteurs. Elon Musk's little group has been so eager to get their hands on the super sensitive Treasury, U.S. Treasury payment system, which sends out, you know, your Social Security check, your
secret payments from our intelligence agencies to their secret assets and sources abroad. They were so eager to get their hands on that sensitive U.S. Treasury payment system. But once they did that, they realized there was another really sensitive payment system inside the Treasury Department. And it's called CARS, C-A-R-S, the Central Accounting Reporting System.
It's based at the Bureau of Fiscal Service inside the U.S. Treasury. And they have their offices in Parkersburg, West Virginia. And ProPublica just reported a few days ago, Friday, that Trump was sending Musk's team physically out to Parkersburg, West Virginia, to go mess with that system, too. And so over the weekend, West Virginia organized.
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Chapter 4: What legal challenges is the Trump administration facing?
Elon hands off private data, health info and tax money. It's another one. Not for nothing, but I will tell you, Forbes tonight reports that Elon Musk's personal wealth has dropped to 42 billion dollars this month. Really? As shares of Tesla have started to fall off a cliff.
This follows earlier reporting that you might have heard here on the show about how Tesla sales all over the world, especially in Europe, are really dropping down by a lot, down like 40, 50, close to 60%. Tesla sales down by that much in the most important European markets.
Tesla's stock price in February alone is down 19%, with one prominent analyst warning yesterday, quote, the negative downturn in consumers' perception of Elon Musk... could result in a headwind to sales for Tesla, whereupon Tesla stock dropped 3% in one day alone yesterday. And, you know, this is interesting in terms of thinking about the the sort of practical and political import of that.
Reporters at the Bulwark got their hands on a bunch of letters sent by Republican members of Congress to their constituents about Elon Musk. Now, why are Republican members of Congress writing to their constituents about Elon Musk? It's because their constituents have been complaining to their Republican members of Congress about Elon Musk telling them this. This Musk business is sick and wrong.
And what are you going to do about it? We can tell that is the tone of the communication about Elon Musk to the offices of Republican senators and members of Congress. We can tell that because of what we now see. in these letters published by the Bulwark, of Republican members of Congress, what they are saying back to their constituent in their own letters, right?
Letters that they probably do not want read out loud on national news. So let's do it, right? Okay. Senator John Curtis, Republican from Utah, dear redacted, Thank you for reaching out to share your thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk's role in the new administration.
It is important that Doge operates with appropriate oversight to maintain transparency, prevent conflicts of interest, and ensure its work remains focused on serving the American people. That's what Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, is telling his constituents. Well, is he actually working to ensure that?
In the Senate, is he working to ensure they're maintaining transparency and preventing conflicts of interest? What are you doing about that, Senator? You're telling your constituents that's what you're working on. What are you actually doing? Are you willing to do it out loud to Elon Musk's face or just privately to a constituent and then you're not actually going to do it?
Congressman Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska. Here's another. Thank you for reaching out to my office regarding Mr. Elon Musk's efforts in the Department of Government Efficiency. Please know you're not the only one who has expressed concern. And I want you to know I hear you.
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Chapter 5: How are congressional members responding to concerns about Musk?
Quote, on the morning of February 6th, so Thursday, it was discovered that Mr. Ellis's database access to the Treasury payment system had been configured with read write permissions. That's not read-only, it's read-right. It's the exact thing you've been telling your constituents they're not doing. Turns out they're doing it.
All these members of Congress are assuring their apparently quite angry, quite insistent constituents that none of that happened, definitely didn't happen. We got assurances. It happened. Here's Republican Senator Deb Fischer writing to her constituents in Nebraska. Thank you for sharing your concerns with me.
I understand that the Treasury Department's payment system contains extremely sensitive and confidential data. It is critical for the Treasury Department to maintain its strict procedures to ensure that this data is protected. And what does Senator Fischer think? Are those strict procedures?
Well, as she assures her constituent, quote, they have access to read only data from the department's payment system. But that's not true. at the government's own admission. And Senator Deb Fischer is not only telling her constituents, hey, calm down here, calm down here, it's read only. She's assuring her constituents that she is on this. She is all over it.
Quote, please be assured, I will continue to closely monitor this situation in the days and weeks ahead. Will you? I don't know how closely Senator Deb Fischer is monitoring it, but what she's telling her constituents is happening. to reassure them, to talk them down, tell them stop freaking out, is not actually what's happening. Are you going to send follow-up letters?
Are you going to be closely monitoring this situation, ensuring that the Treasury Department maintains its strict procedures because of this extremely sensitive and confidential data that you understand the importance of protecting, even if you don't understand that maybe you shouldn't believe them when they give you false assurances about what they're doing with it?
Honestly, the most important thing here in this news might be that all these Republican senators and all these Republican members of Congress right now feel compelled to write these letters, to come up with some kind of explanation to their constituents for what Trump is doing. And they feel compelled to do that because their constituents are inundating them with complaints and concerns about it.
Because that's what's happening right now in the United States of America. The people are not having it. This weekend, 1,500 people turned out for a single protest Trump and Musk meeting at a church in downtown Santa Barbara. The organizers figured they had plenty of space. They knew they could fit 450 people inside. They thought that would be plenty.
Well, they filled up the 450 seats in the church and then another thousand plus people showed up and filled the church courtyard and then they filled the surrounding sidewalks. In Columbus, Ohio, where I just showed you those images from the big protest at the Tesla dealer in Columbus, Ohio, they too had what they thought was going to be a normal, indivisible meeting this weekend.
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Chapter 6: What actions are being taken against the dismantling of government agencies?
Well, today, that firing has been blocked in court thanks to a federal judge. Also, the rip it down to the studs cuts to NIH medical and scientific research funding, which I should note is set by law. It's not just a president's idea that he can change when he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. Those cuts have now been blocked twice by federal courts. How about USAID?
The attempt to illegally shut down USAID as if, again, Trump can just do that with a whim, right? Let alone his top campaign contributor can do that with a whim. The effort to shut down USAID has now been blocked by the federal courts. And now today, a second lawsuit has been filed in federal court to force them to pay the USAID contractors who they have been refusing to pay.
How about that overall federal funding halt that's been blocked by the courts as well? We've been reporting that the courts then had to rule against the Trump administration again after the Trump administration chose to defy the first order in that case.
Well, now a federal appeals court has upheld those lower courts and told the Trump administration in no uncertain terms they must restore that funding. They are not allowed to freeze that funding and they are not allowed to defy the courts when the courts tell them they can't do it. And you know, again, thinking practically.
Because symbolic victories matter, symbols matter, but practical victories are better. And in terms of thinking about how all these things work together, just let's take a little bit of a case study, the Department of Education.
You might remember, in terms of protests in Washington, you might remember last week, very dramatic day, at the headquarters of the Department of Education, Democratic members of Congress and senators raced down to the Department of Education to stop the Trump administration's plans to try to potentially close it down on the fly, to get into all its sensitive computer systems.
Weird, supposedly self-proclaimed security guards not wearing uniforms physically blocked members of Congress from getting in there. That was last week.
Democratic members of Congress are now threatening that if Republicans go ahead with plans to try to unilaterally and illegally shut down the Education Department, Democrats in Congress will refuse to help Republicans do absolutely anything in Congress. And that might sound like a sort of one threat. That might sound like no big deal.
But Republicans have such a tiny majority in the House, they need Democratic help to do pretty much anything. And yes, that includes needing Democratic votes, undoubtedly, to keep the government open and running at all past this time next month.
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