Maddow: U.S. military fights war on two fronts: Iran and Trump incompetence

really happy to have you here. I don't know how much you've ever thought about rabies before, but I think everybody knows enough about rabies to know that you just really don't want to get it, right? rabies is a catastrophe for any animal that gets it, whether it's a raccoon or a fox or a bat or a dog or anything, but it's also a catastrophe for any human who gets it. If you get bit by a rabid animal, it is not just a bad metaphor. Rabies will almost always kill you. It will kill any human who contracts it. If that person does not get it treated quickly enough, I mean, it's safe to say it is never a good time to get rabies, but if you are going to get rabies at some time in your life, do please try not to get it while Donald Trump is president of the United States. Because in his infinite wisdom, among all of the other things he has done as president of the United States, Donald Trump has now, for some reason, broken the United States government to the extent that we're no longer doing rabies testing for the country anymore in the federal government. There are some state public health labs that can do some rabies testing of various kinds, but it's the federal government. It's the CDC. It has always been the CDC that is the gold standard lab for this kind of thing. It's the CDC that confirms rabies infections. It's the CDC that tracks them nationwide. Or remember, we had a big outbreak of rabies nationwide. Last year was the CDC's tracking data that showed that. It's the CDC that does all the high-end and complicated testing around terrible and rare diseases like rabies. And you can still see some of that legacy today of what the United States used to be capable of before Donald Trump took a wrecking ball to even this part of the U.S. government. If you go to the CDC website on rabies today, there's like, you know, CDC rabies page. It's a very, you know, straightforward thing and there's like public facing parts of it and animal just bit me. What should I do? But this isn't, you know, chat GPT or Google or WebMD. This is the CDC. And so the CDC not only has regular public facing information about rabies, it also has specific information, quote, for professionals, for laboratory professionals, specific information and instructions about specimen packing and shipping, how to properly and how to properly and safely collect and ship rabies specimens to the CDC. How you package your specimen and what exact thing you send to the CDC according to these packaging guidelines, it all depends on what exact kind of rabies testing the CDC is going to be doing on the specimen, you're sending them, right? I mean, they are the nation's lab for this stuff and for every other complicated and terrifying and rare virus or pathogen that you've never heard of. But now, thanks to Donald Trump. If you're a health professional who goes to the CDC's rabies page, because you need to and you click through to find out how you need to package and send in your specimens to get say your human rabies antibody tighter, if you click through to that, what you will find today is that you get an error message. Attention, this test order is unavailable until further notice. And then you can click through to see all of the other unavailable test orders. Things the CDC used to test for that they no longer have the capability to do. Under Donald Trump, thanks to the severe cuts to the CDC, the attacks on the agency, the pressure on its staff. Under Donald Trump, the United States federal government has now stopped diagnostic testing for rabies, for MPOX, remember that MPOX or monkeypox outbreak that was so scary, they've stopped their testing for that, they've stopped their testing for even more rare and more complicated stuff like the parasitic worms that cause snail fever and the virus that causes sloth fever, who even knew sloths got fevers. I mean, maybe you think you're never gonna get any of those things and I sincerely hope that you don't and I don't either. But if any of us either ever did contract one of those things or were exposed to one of those things, the CDC is supposed to be where your tests go. So the scientists at the CDC can figure it out. The world's gold standard laboratory used to be. But now Donald Trump and the Republicans have taken over from this government and so now we're losing those capabilities, reporting from a poor vomandiveeli at the New York Times, quote, "The CDC's rabies and pox virus teams have lost many of their members by July. The CDC's rabies team will be down to just one person with the clinical expertise to advise state and local officials. The pox virus team will have none." The former head of one major public health lab telling the New York Times, quote, "If we have an emergency all of a sudden, God help us." Why do we have to ask God to help us in this moment and not the CDC plus God? Why are we getting rid of this kind of capacity? Why are we dismantling our countries, our government's ability to do stuff that we need? Here's another example. The US government has just had to make a formal declaration to Congress about something it has had to designate a major cyber incident, a major cyber incident, a hacking incident basically, involving sensitive surveillance systems at the FBI. It's reportedly China that is behind it. Here's the reporting from Politico, quote, "The determination that this is a major incident under the Federal Data Security Statute known as FISMA suggests the hackers successfully compromised swaths of sensitive data stored directly on FBI systems, likely marking a major counterintelligence coup for China. FISMA requires agencies to tell lawmakers to tell Congress within seven days about any digital intrusion. It has determined is likely to result in demonstrable harm to US national security. When an agency declares a major incident under FISMA, it is also supposed to trigger an interagency cyber response mechanism. It is unclear whether that has happened or if the hack has since been contained. Yes, a major cyber security incident, successful compromise of swaths of sensitive data stored on FBI systems involving sensitive surveillance system. And it is unclear whether the interagency cyber response mechanism that is supposed to happen once the sort of designation is made under federal law, it's unclear whether that response has happened. It's unclear whether we have anyone to participate in an interagency response like that anymore. It's almost like the United States government might be well served right now if the Trump administration had not totally dismantled our government cybersecurity expertise, firing the head of the FBI cyber unit, gutting that department and reassigning its agents to go arrest immigrants instead. Democratic Senator Mark Warner, he's the head Democrat on the intelligence committee in the Senate, he gave a big sort of uncharacteristically hair on fire warning about this in November. You see the release from his office here on Senate floor, Warner sounds alarm on political purge of FBI, collapse of US cyber defenses under Trump. And that speech he warned that more than a third of the cyber security and infrastructure security agency had been fired or pushed out. The administration removed the leadership of the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and had left US cyber command without a permanent commander and had disbanded the foreign influence task force, completely collapsing our US cyber defenses. Why do that? And so now, yes, FBI director Cash Patel, fresh off his personal Gmail account being hacked by Iran. So we all got to see his weird personal photo album of him doing strange things with cigars. Yeah, yeah, Cash Patel's right, personally in the middle of this. Hey, maybe we shouldn't have dismantled all of our cyber expertise as a government and why did we do that anyway? Oh, and when it comes to foreign influence campaigns, also mentioned there by Senator Warner, foreign influence campaigns and foreign disinformation campaigns. Again, hey, you know, maybe it turns out we shouldn't have dismantled our country's capabilities for fighting that kind of stuff. Quot, the Trump administration is scrambling to respond to a global information war with adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran. Administration officials appear increasingly worried that a growing number of anti-American narratives are taking worldwide. The State Department has now ordered every American embassy and consulate to do more, to push back against foreign influence campaigns, warning that they are fueling hostility toward US security interests. The push amounts to a stark reversal for the Trump administration over false and deceptive content from foreign governments and others online. After taking office in January 2025, Trump administration officials dismantled government departments dedicated to fighting foreign influence operations. Those targeted included teams of disinformation experts the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department. who's Global Engagement Center had exposed numerous covert disinformation efforts, including ones by Russia and China. But when Trump got back to the White House, he shut that down. They shut down the Global Engagement Center at the State Department, and all of the other disinformation experts all over the federal government. Eliminating that capability from America's national security arsenal. And now, apparently they're realizing, oops, maybe we needed that. Maybe we actually needed that capability we used to have to compete with and defeat foreign disinformation campaigns. So they're advising US embassies around the globe to try to stand something like that up really soon. Turns out we're really hurting without it. Maybe you shouldn't have gotten rid of it. Maybe the United States actually needed also our cybersecurity expertise. Maybe those scientists who worked in the rapies lab at the CDC, maybe they actually did something we might need to be able to do as a country. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten rid of that either. And now we're into the wartime part of it, right? Because the president has been doing things like that to the whole of the US government. If he's doing a lot better when it comes to the military, the military while we're at war. After Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth still sounds crazy to say it. After Trump and Hegseth crowed for days and days that the United States had, quote, "complete control of Iranian skies," and, quote, "uncontested airspace over Iran." After Trump said, quote, "their air force is gone. Their anti-aircraft equipment is gone. We're flying wherever we want. We have nobody even shooting at us." Now, of course, we've had Iran shoot down an F-15 fighter. And the resulting rescue mission, an A-10 Warthog was also shot down. 2C-130s and some number, one, two, three, four US special operations MH-6 helicopters also destroyed in that rescue mission. That's on top of the $300 million A-Wax plane. The Iranians blew up while it sat out in the open, undefended on an airbase in Saudi Arabia in easy reach of Iran's missiles. Also, the three count 'em three USF-15s that were shot down right at the start of the war by our allies in Kuwait. Because, apparently, these guys forgot to do basic defliction with our allies to tell them not to shoot down our planes. And they shot down three of them. Dozens of American troops have been wounded and some killed thanks to Iranian missile and drone attacks on what appeared to have been, essentially, unprotected US bases in the region, again in easy reach of Iran's missiles and drones. The United States bizarrely started this war on its own terms and on its own timeline without first preparing its own bases for the inevitable Iranian retaliation with missiles and drones. So much so that US military commanders are scrambling to find hotels and office space for US troops to sleep in in the region. Because they can't sleep at their US military bases because the bases aren't safe. Even though, again, this is a war that we started on our own terms and on our own timeline. Nevertheless, someone forgot to harden the targets at all the places where tens of thousands of US military personnel are stationed, again, with an easy and obvious reach of Iran's weapons. While the president keeps saying, "Oh, don't worry. They can't fight back. They have no capability. They have no anti-aircraft equipment." Quote, "We literally have planes flying over Tehran and other parts of their country, and they can't do a thing about it." He keeps saying these things while US planes keep going down. It's not at all clear that he understands why that is or that there is a contradiction between those two fact patterns. The one he's asserting about Iran's capabilities and the one Iran is demonstrating in the sky. Trump gave Tehran a deadline to open the Strait of Hormuz on March 23rd, or he said he would obliterate them. Then that deadline came and went. Then the deadline became April 6th. That's today. Then over the weekend, the deadline became tomorrow, April 7th. There's no explanation from the president as to why these supposed deadlines keep changing, but honestly, there's no indication from the president that he necessarily understands that it is important that he keeps constantly changing these deadlines. Does he fully understand that that's what he's doing? When he says Iran can't shoot down our planes, what does he think has happened when they shoot down our planes? Does he get the connection between those? I mean, it's one thing to think about the commander-in-chief maybe not being all there, right? Rambling, swearing, jumble thoughts, changing deadlines, no explanation for what the war is for, no seeming understanding of what's happening in the war, but then beyond that, beyond his apparent incapacity to explain little on-manage what's happening. On top of that, there's what he's simultaneously doing to the U.S. military, which has a little whiff of what he's done to the rabies lab at the CDC. I mean, the Fox News weekend host, Trump put in charge at the Defense Department, just chose to fire the Army Chief of Staff, the top general in the Army, right in the middle of this war that we are not winning. He also fired the head of the Army Training Command and the Army's top Chaplain for some reason. This comes after we lost the three-star general who was the head of strategy for the Joint Chiefs, which came a couple of weeks after we lost the head of U.S. Southern Command, that came just days before we lost the Navy Chief of Staff and the head of U.S. Special Operations Command and the top U.S. Air Force Commander that came after we lost the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the head of the Navy Seals, the Naval Special Warford Command that came after we lost the Chief of Staff of the Air Force and the aforementioned head of U.S. Cyber Command and the Director of the National Security Agency that came after we lost the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Commandant of the Coast Guard and the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force and the Army's top military lawyer and the Air Force's top military lawyer and and and and. And of course, there's been a benefit to all this top leadership in the Pentagon being fired or being pushed out by Pete Hegsat and the benefit, of course, is that Trump Cabinet members can then take their houses. They've all decided to move into U.S. military housing. So you fire the generals and the Commandants and stuff, at least you can take their house. So there's that. That's good for America. The strategic and even cognitive incoherence of the President and the Defense Secretary, those top civilian officials in charge of the military, those are worrying things, right? Less worrying, thankfully, when we can count on a professional, excellent, non-political meritocratic military, right? If you can have lousy civilian leadership to an extent, if you can count on an excellent professional military to know what to do and to do it well despite bad leadership. But in this case, our country is simultaneously taking these wild swings directed by Donald Trump and Pete Hegsat with no apparent foresight about what kinds of consequences those swings will bring. While also Trump and Hegsat are fundamentally destabilizing the U.S. military itself. Leading to scenarios like we are in now, in which Trump had no idea Iran had the capability of shooting down any of our planes, and leading to what we're in now, where U.S. military commanders in the region are just hoping our troops will be safe in hotels, building them in hotels, in civilian hotels, since apparently we forgot that we might need to keep them safe on their bases. How are these guys doing taking care of the troops and the veterans who come home for more? This is the lead from NPR, quote, "more than 10,000 veterans lost their homes to foreclosure since May of last year when the Trump administration shut down a key safety net in the VA home loan program." Quote, "The Trump administration was warned this would happen at a hearing in March 2025 before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs a representative from the Mortgage Bankers Association warned about it explicitly," quote, "forclosure, period. That's really where it's going to come to. Nevertheless, less than two months later, the Trump administration shut down the rescue program anyway. Since then, more than 10,000 U.S. veterans have lost their homes through foreclosure sales." Yeah, it is not that they are doing any better with veterans or with the military than they are with the CDC rabies lab or with the FBI or with any of it. They are breaking all of it and now we are seeing what it's like for them to try to wage what is turning into a major war with a government and a military that they have broken. I mean, look at how they're treating deploying troops. There's a brigade at Fort Polk, Louisiana that is getting ready to deploy. They're just about to start their last pre-deployment training before shipping out. Staff Sergeant Matthew Blank is part of that brigade. He's 23 years old, but he's already a Staff Sergeant. He enlisted it at 18. He's been in the military for five years. He's already had deployments to the Middle East in Europe. Before this next deployment, happily, this past month, Staff Sergeant Blank got married. BigQuery. in Texas, very, very happy couple, looking forward to starting a family together. Last weekend, his wife had their appointment at Fort Polk to get their married housing, get her her military spouse ID, instead, when they showed up at Fort Polk to register to get her military ID, ICE agents handcuffed her and took her to an immigrant prison. She has no criminal record of any kind. She was born abroad. She has lived here since she was a toddler. She teaches Sunday school. She's a few months from finishing her bachelor's degree in biochemistry. She is happily newly married to not only a U.S. citizen, but an active duty U.S. Army staff sergeant who is about to deploy. And how did he spend this weekend? He spent this weekend at the barbed wire gates of the Trump immigrant prison where they have now locked up his wife, because, you know, they're going after the worst or the worst. This is the one thing the U.S. government is still even trying to do, right? And this comes after the U.S. Marines had to scramble to try to undo their announcement last week that the Marines would also have ICE agents stationed at the gates of Paris Island recruiting depot in South Carolina, where they apparently plan to arrest family members of newly minted U.S. Marines who were graduating from marine basic training. They were going to arrest family members of those new Marines when they showed up for graduation for their loved one, getting out of Marine Corps basic training. Welcome to the United States Marine Corps. Thank you for volunteering to give up your life for this country. We are locking up your family. We're going to pick them up at graduation. They announced that ICE agents would be at the gate at Marine basic training graduation. They then had to try to walk it back. They said it was an internal communication failure. So now we're going to talk with U.S. Senator Mark Warner from the Intelligence Committee. We're going to talk with him about how things are going in national security and the war right now and about why in the middle of everything else that's going on, Senator Warner is now trying to sound a public warning about Trump creating some kind of national emergency pretext for overriding the elections this November. But we're also going to go to Hagerstown Maryland tonight where one of the scrappiest campaigns in the country is underway. They are giving a clinic in Hagerstown Maryland on how to slow down, how to problematize, how to just make it as difficult as possible for Trump to try to open up one of his gigantic new prison camps to hold people without trial. You might have seen the headlines from this past week about the Trump administration pausing, the Trump administration slowing down its plans, maybe no longer rushing ahead with these plans to build these massive Trump prison camps all over the country, two in three times the size of the largest federal prison that we have, federal prisons that we have. For the people all over the country who've been trying to stop these huge warehouse prisons from being built in their communities, this news about the Trump administration reportedly backing off their plan. Backing off this plan to give Trump a huge new network of prison camps to fill, this news that they may be pausing or slowing down this plan is obviously welcome. I think it's also not totally unexpected, given how much effective scrappy resistance there has been in every community where Trump has tried to stick one of these things. Given the growing success of lawsuits against these prison camps, given the fact that a congressional investigation has now been opened into the private companies who appear to be profiting off this plan, given the widespread accusations in the media and an aggressive inspector general investigation into alleged corruption at the Department of Homeland Security. Given a growing protest movement around this stuff, there's going to be protests all over the country on April 25, specifically to oppose these prison camps going anywhere. In Hagerstown, Maryland, where there have been protests against the prison camp plan for there every single week for months, where local activists in Hagerstown have used public records requests and have obtained drone footage of the site where they're planning to put the prison, where these local activists have figured out all the permitting requirements that DHS has blown through in trying to get this thing open, where they've had doctors document how the facility is going to overwhelm the local health system, where they've built a signal group chat of hundreds of people willing to respond at a moment's notice to the latest deprivation to the latest news on this would be Trump prison camp in Hagerstown. In Hagerstown, this model of super scrappy resistance to the single worst idea the Trump administration has tried to implement. In that town, they have responded to this news that they're pausing these prison camps, they're slowing down their plans, and Hagerstown, they have responded by doubling down themselves. The founder of Hagerstown, Rapid Response, saying today, quote, "This is the moment to increase pressure, not reduce it. The danger right now is complacency." That is the mark of a scrappy movement that is likely to win its fight. The local activist is going to join us tonight from Hagerstown, Senator Mark Warner is going to join us tonight. We got lots to get to stay with us. The Senate Intelligence Committee is a different kind of thing than anything else there is in Congress. Senators on that committee have access to classified intelligence. They also have access to really restricted information about intelligence, sources, and methods. They have access to all the most sensitive stuff. The Intelligence Committee meets behind closed doors with top figures in the intelligence community so they can get briefed on everything from terrorism threats to intelligence on other countries' nuclear programs. They've got oversight over all the nation's intelligence agencies and activities. They conduct reviews of the government's secret operations abroad. They oversee funding for all intelligence stuff. Someone in the White House does something that it's not willing to brief Congress on broadly, stuff that it thinks is too sensitive for Congress broadly to know about. If you're one of the top people on the Intelligence Committee, you still get briefed on it anyway. It's just a qualitatively different kind of job. A really, really, really, really important job with a ton of responsibility. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia has served on the Intelligence Committee for 14 years. He's been the top Democrat on intelligence for nearly a decade. And that has put him at the forefront of a lot of really intense matters of national security and international intrigue. And that is why it is striking to see somebody like Senator Mark Warner now come out in the middle of this war and send a flag up a very different poll. This is the warning that Senator Warner has just hoisted. Quote, "Trump is trying to override our voting system." And foreign interference is no longer the most pressing danger to our elections. It's increasingly evident that the greatest threat now comes from inside our own government. From months, President Trump has made his intentions clear. He's called for the federal government to take over elections, impose national rules, and override state authority. Now we're beginning to see how he may plan to do this. Allies of Trump's working in coordination with people close to the White House have circulated a draft executive order that would declare a national emergency based on false claims of foreign interference in the 2020 election. That declaration would be used to unlock sweeping presidential powers over how Americans vote. The proposal would allow the federal government to bar widely used voting methods, including mail. It would force Americans to re-register to vote on short notice. It would require proof of citizenship. It would insert federal agencies into the voter verification process in novel ways. It would attempt to override the constitutional role of states in administering elections. Senator Warner says quote, "There is no legitimate basis for such an emergency." That is not the point. The point is that the Trump administration could manufacture an impression of an emergency, creating a pretext for intervention. Joining us now is Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator, I'm really pleased to have you with us tonight. Thank you very much for making the time. Thank you, Rachel. I'm struck by, as I said, you sort of hoisting this warning right now in the middle of so many overlapping crises that we are having, including the multiple crises surrounding this war in Iran. What is the sense of urgency that you have about raising this alarm right now? Well, first of all, Rachel, I wish I could rebut what you said about the cybersecurity threats, the war, or the detention centers, but you are right on all of those. A year ago, people would say to me, Senator, do you think there's going to be free elections in 26 and 20, and I kind of blew it off a year later? I am terrified that this administration is going to try to create some incident that can allow federal intervention. We've seen the president already say he wants the Fed's takeover, or Republicans takeover elections. We've heard his former Secretary of National Homeland Security say we want the right people to vote for the right people. We have seen this executive order that came out the day, put out this warning saying he wanted all the states to turn over their voter files to his DHS secret formula that would screen who could be an appropriate totally absurd. But I am terrified because these policies are so unpopular that this crowd may try to do anything including intervening in our election with federal forces troops at the ballot or disinformation that could actually be catastrophic. Because if we get off the notion of a free and fair election, I don't know how we ever return to that. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about this is because of your intimate knowledge about the oversight of intelligence matters. And it really does seem like there's a prospect here, particularly with what Tulsi Gabbard has been doing and the other ways they've been talking about intelligence matters in relation to the election. It does seem possible that they're going to cite some form of bogus intelligence about some sort of threat, about some sort of pretextual emergency that allows them to take over elections in some extraordinary way. If they misuse intelligence, if they make up some phony bogus intelligence threat or misconstrue some deliberately misconstrued some piece of intelligence to make that kind of a claim, does the structure of oversight in the intelligence community allow for anybody who knows that it's bogus to actually blow the whistle, to actually say, hey, we know this isn't right? I would hope so. And I believe that the outset, you know, Tulsi Gabbard who has no role in domestic activities was down in full County Georgia when they seized those ballots. Tulsi Gabbard who was supposed to be looking at foreign interference seized voting machines in Puerto Rico illegally, I believe. For the first time in 10 years, this administration has not acknowledged any foreign influence threat, even though they're out there. So the idea they would pick some threat real or conceived to use them as an excuse. I think we have to be very conscious of. So I've been trying to meet with former military leaders, intelligence leaders, law enforcement, just to say, you know, if you see something that comes out that's a crock, speak up and rebutt and the press frankly needs to do it as well. This is about the heart of our democracy whether it's going to be free and fair elections. If we don't stand up for that, and my fear is that somebody who has been criticized by you many times for being way too bipartisan, but I've lost a lot of faith that my Republican partners in the Senate will stand up for our basic fair voting and democracy. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, sir. I know cable news interviews aren't your favorite thing to do in the world. And I know that I've given you, I know that I've given you my share of criticism over the years, but I always, always appreciate you being willing to be here and the way you're so candid about stuff like this. Thank you so much for being here, sir. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you for speaking out. All right. More news ahead here tonight. Stay with us. Mark Wayne Mullin started his new job as the head of Homeland Security a week ago Tuesday. At Homeland Security, he was replacing, of course, Christy Nome, who was just fired within one week of Secretary Mullin taking the oath. This was the big news headline, quote, "DHS pauses plans to buy warehouses for immigrant detention." Oh, maybe that's off. Democrats in the House and Senate had opened a new investigation into this huge $38 billion plan to build giant ice prisons all around the country. They're demanding information from contractors and real estate companies involved in this expensive plan to give Trump a big new network of massive prison camps to hold people without trial. Homeland Security has reportedly now put the whole thing on hold. So that's the big picture, right? New boss at Homeland Security, Democratic lawmakers demanding answers. DHS puts the plan for ice prisons on hold. That's the big picture. If you look up in the actual places where Homeland Security has been buying warehouses that it could turn into prisons, the picture looks a lot more like just really old-fashioned, really scrappy local activism. Sustained, non-violent protest, remarkably creative resistance. In Hagerstown, Maryland, for example, they started pushing back in mid-January with a post on a relatively new blog called Project Salt Box. Quote, "Eyes targets Hagerstown site, as part of nationwide detention expansion shows leaked document." People in Maryland ferreted out public records showing county officials were worried about the project behind the scenes, even though publicly they were pledging their support for ice. Local activists with Hagerstown rapid response started posting drone footage of the warehouse site. They were tracking the arrival of vehicles at the site and things like portable toilets. Hagerstown rapid response on board for an open letter about how this proposed huge ice prison would overwhelm the already strained local health system. They started protesting at the county commissioners meetings. Then they started doing it every week. They joined with a statewide pressure group called the Maryland Coalition to stop the camps. For no Kings Day last month, that coalition got people from all over the state of Maryland to protest there in Hagerstown. On no Kings Day their banner in Hagerstown was no Kings, no camps, no ice prison in Hagerstown. They put pressure on companies that listed job openings about potential jobs at the facility. One Hagerstown rapid response member told a reporter quote, "This ice warehouse is not an abstract policy debate. It's a concrete threat to our neighborhoods, our infrastructure, and the people who live here in Washington County, Maryland." All of this hustle. The protests, the drone footage, the documents, the letter from the doctors, all of this hustle. And what really is a pretty Republican part of Blue State Maryland. The work of these local activists in Hagerstown has now been incorporated into a lawsuit by the state that's trying to stop the Hagerstown facility and another one they want to build elsewhere in Maryland. And now, after months of effort like that at the local level, there are these headlines about the program's potentially stopping nationwide and specific headlines saying, Homeland Security is reconsidering the scope of that Hagerstown ice prison. Re-considering the scale of it saying, "Oh, the conversion of it to a prison is not imminent after all." I'll tell you, nobody in Hagerstown is declaring victory over this, but boy have they thrown a lot of sand in the gears in a way that has had some signal success in Hagerstown, Maryland. And that may help. That may help at least show the way in stopping this whole project for the whole damn country. Joining us now is Patrick Detilio. He's founder of Hagerstown Rapid Response with 550 members on its signal chat, watching for alerts as we speak. Patrick, thank you very much for talking to us. Thank you for joining us here tonight. Thank you for having us here. So I know that you guys put out a post today saying, "Don't be fooled. The Hagerstown Ice Detention Center isn't cancelled. You're saying the danger now is complacency and now is the time to really put the pressure on." Tell me a little bit more about your thinking about that and how you're viewing these recent developments. Sure, absolutely. The warehouse is still being actively developed. The DHS in their response to the AG's lawsuit specifically said, that they are working on the fixes to the roof HVAC system and looking to add a perimeter fence around this site. So while they say that they're pausing, they're still actively working on the warehouse. What are you asking people in Maryland and in Hagerstown specifically to do at this point? Tell me about what your continuing efforts to try to oppose this, to try to stop this thing look like from here on out. Sure. From here on out, we have a 550 person signal chat that is growing every single day. We're continuing to protest every single week out against our county commissioners who have really rolled out the red carpet for DHS despite all of our protesting and fight. But we're really on the front lines and we're looking to have people take either the same sort of effort that we started here to take it to where their camps are being created or to take a step over to no kings, no camps.com where we're putting pressure on the job sites that are profiting off of the camps. Patrick, in terms of thinking about the people all over the country who are watching this right now as sort of, I think in a lot of people's eyes, one of the scariest things that Trump is proposing or Trump is trying to do with the federal government, building himself a huge network of massive prison camps to hold people without trial indefinitely. I mean, it really has very, very dark implications what he's doing. I think people looking at what you've done in Hagerstown, looking at what these headlines about a potential national pause, it seems like there's some lessons there in terms of ways to oppose this things, ways to be effective, ways to get people involved in something that might otherwise feel like it. a done deal. Do you feel like you have any of those lessons learned to share with people who are fighting things like this in their community or worried that they might have one of these facilities come there? Definitely. I think doing something is simple as what I did, creating a signal group. Everybody has a phone in their pocket. It takes a minute to download signal and create a new group and invite a friend or neighbor, family member, really anyone who shares your values. Finding those people is really how this grows. It's a challenging effort, but it's one that I can't imagine not doing. Patrick Datilio, founder of Hagerstown Rapid Response. I know your family goes back generations in Hagerstown. This is a very local commitment for you, but also a commitment for your family and your long standing ties to that part of the country. Stay in touch. Keep us posted on what you're doing. I really appreciate you being here. Absolutely. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. Stay with us. I kind of can't believe I'm advising this, but I am. Pay attention tomorrow to the state of Georgia, specifically to the most Republican congressional district in all of the state of Georgia. Pay attention to that tomorrow because tomorrow, in that congressional district, which gave us Marjorie Taylor Greene in all her glory, tomorrow there is a special election to fill her seat in Congress. Her seat in Congress is open because she had to come to Jesus moment about the MAGA movement and Donald Trump and decided to quit Congress and leave politics altogether. Her seat is open. Now, this is a seat. This is a congressional district that Trump won by 37 points in the last election. As I say, the reddest congressional district in Georgia, it is insane that there is even a reason to watch an election for a seat in territory that skews that far Republican. But where in weird times? Since the last presidential election, Democrats have been on a remarkable run, flipping seats in special elections, just like this one. Their record is 30-0 in terms of them flipping 30 seats while the Republicans have flipped zero seats in that same amount of time. Now, Democrats haven't flipped a seat as red as this in place Trump won by 37 points, but still, it's worth watching. Even if the Democrat, Sean Harris, I mean, gets within 10 or 15 points of the Republican candidate in a district Trump won by 37 points. You will hear a shrieking sound from coast to coast. The shrill cry of Republicans everywhere, absolutely losing their minds about how much the political ground has shifted beneath their feet. Also, keep an eye tomorrow on a special election in Wisconsin for the State Supreme Court. Right now, liberals have a narrow four to three majority on the court. Tomorrow's results will either maintain that majority or potentially expand it. In Georgia, the polls are closed at 7 p.m. Eastern and Wisconsin, they'll close at 9 p.m. Eastern. Watch this space. I kind of can't believe I have to say it, but watch this space. All right, that's going to do it for me tonight.