Maddow: Why the Constitution and the American spirit are against Trump's war on the free press

Before we jump into the news, three quick things. The first thing is, as Chris just mentioned, there are still some tickets available for our MSNOW event in Texas this weekend. Chris and I will obviously be there along with lots of other folks you know from MSNOW. We're all really, really looking forward to it and we would love to see you there. It's this Saturday in Arlington, Texas, which is right in the heart of the Dallas Fort Worth area. Again, a few tickets still left. We would love to see you there. You can scan that QR code if you wanna get tickets. Second thing, and this is one of these things that you're not gonna believe but is real. Tomorrow night, I am a guest judge on a new show called Cocktail Wars on E. Seriously. 10 o'clock Easter and tomorrow night on E Cocktail Wars. It is actually a thing. I was a judge, anyway, that's a thing. That's gonna be on your TV tomorrow night. And then here's the last thing. I said there were three points of business. Here's the last one. Right after the midterm elections happen in November, my new book is coming out. It is called Department of Fate. And as of today, as of tonight, we are just for the first time announcing the book tour. So if you wanna come out and meet me in person, get a copy of the book, ask me questions about the midterms or about the book or about cocktails or fishing or whatever. Here are some of the book tour dates. First one is Sunday, November 8th. In DC and Washington, DC with the great Chris Hayes, that is gonna be a ton of fun. Tuesday, November 10th in New York, Wednesday, November 11th in Boston, Thursday, November 12th in Milwaukee, Friday, November 13th in St. Paul, Minnesota, Saturday, November 14th in Boise, Idaho. And then on to San Francisco. That one's with my friend Cara Swisher. That should be great. Then Los Angeles, then Salt Lake City, then Kansas City, Missouri, Long Island, New York. It's like a dozen dates. We've got the full schedule online at mattoblog.com. Tickets go on sale, basically as of right now. If you wanna get tickets, you can use that QR code that we just had out there on the screen. Maybe we can put that back up. I'd love to see you this fall. Again, that's right after the elections. I hope you can come to one of those events. Again, all the schedule is posted at mattoblog.com. You can click through there to get tickets to any of those book tour events. All right, so that is it for the business. That's done now. Let's get to it. Okay, public law 88-260 section 11. This is a law of the United States of America. It is not a resolution. It is not a symbolic pronouncement of some kind. It is a law creating a thing, designating a thing by name, officially by law. Quote, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Designated in this act, shall be the sole national memorial to the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the city of Washington and its environs signed by the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate. That is the federal law that named the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, DC. It is the text of that law and the signatures of the people who signed it. And here it is printed on a piece of paper taped to the inside of a cardboard box. Here's the other side of that box. It says JFK, not DJT. These signs were brought to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in June to protest what President Trump had been trying to do to this beloved cultural institution. That was June. Here's another one from July. It says betrayal with the original signage from outside the building. The site of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the center will belong to every American. Betrayal. This was a month later in August. JFK, not DJT. There's that same sign again and also a new one. It says shame on the Trump board. You have destroyed something precious. Just one day later and there was this one. It says six theaters are dark. Just a week later, there's this one. This plaza is JFK's, not a donor wall. 12 days after that, it says save me from my board and then there's an illustration of sort of an anthropomorphized little Kennedy Center with a sad face or a distressed face. Save me from my board. Then the day after that, there is still an injunction. Remember, and then in small tight below that, it says rule of law, rule of law. And you may be noticing a theme here in the sense that yes, these signs are all of a piece. But you may also notice that that is the same woman in all of these pictures with these signs. Her name is Laura. She's a retiree. She worked at the Kennedy Center for about 10 years, worked there for a decade. Specifically, she worked there for the National Symphony Orchestra. This picture was taken all the way back in April. She came to Washington to go to a performance. She got to the side of the performance a little bit early. She happened to have this sign in her car. And so she figured, hey, you know what the heck? I'm here alone, but I've got time. And I've got the sign. So she stood outside the Kennedy Center, just one woman alone standing there with her sign. One woman alone, one American standing up against the American president, trying to take over and apparently destroy a place that had been so special to her. Hands off our Kennedy Center. After that first time, since then, since April. Laura has done this over and over and over again. Almost every single day, just on her own. You know how in the book on tyranny, it says pick an institution and defend it? Well, this is Laura's beloved institution in Washington. She decided she would just defend it herself. However, she could every day. There she says, time to fix the facade. It has always been the Kennedy Center, JFK only. And again, look at this one. Where is the art? This was a prescient sign from Laura months ago because in an investigative piece in the New York Times this very weekend, we now know they've been trying to sell it off. Here's Laura again. Protect our NSO, protect our national symphony orchestra. And here again, protect our national symphony orchestra. This time she's out there in the rain. Again, alone on her own. She told us she has been at this almost every day since April. She says when Trump decided to mount this attack on the Kennedy Center where she had worked, she just personally felt obligated to do something. She felt obligated to show up for this place that she loves, for this institution that she loves. It has been quiet out there in recent days. Now that Trump has closed the center. But sometimes she says tourists stop to take a picture of the tarp that Trump has covering up President Kennedy's name. She says she always reminds them that the tarp is not the story. She says the real story is the shutdown. The six feeders that used to showcase music and dance and art feeders that belong to us, the taxpayer, that are now dark for no good reason other than Trump's tantrum and his grudge against this place 'cause it doesn't have his name on it. When she's out there protesting alone on her own and people ask to take her picture, she says she always says yes. But then she asks if she can take their picture too holding one of her homemade signs. So for months she's just done this. She's been out there day after day all by herself alone. But this one was from just a few days ago on Friday. Save the Kennedy Center. Except this day on Friday, later on that day she found that she was very much not alone. On Friday she was joined by thousands of people, look at that. Because with Trump apparently trying to destroy the Kennedy Center now because he wants it for himself. On Friday thousands of people showed up alongside Laura who was always there to protest what the president is trying to do. This protest on Friday was organized by an organization called Hands Off the Arts, which is formed by a lot of people who are sort of alumni of the Kennedy Center. They say when they first started planning this protest for Friday, this vigil for Friday, they thought if they were lucky maybe a few hundred people show up, a few hundred people did not show up. Instead they got more like 3,000 people. People formed a human chain around the Kennedy Center. They said it was a message to President Trump that if he wants to tear down the Kennedy Center, he'll have to go through them first. There were also people protesting by water in the Potomac people protesting by kayak hands off the Kennedy Center. It's hard to kayak while holding a sign. You have to use both hands, right? But of course there in the middle of all of them, there was Laura, Laura Bly. Suddenly not alone. I mean this protest wasn't about her. We actually just, we only have this little dark photo that she sent us showing her there as so many thousands of people converge on the site that she's been defending. But if you look close and some of the photos from that night, you can spot her in her distinctive multi-color tie dye t-shirt. But this was Friday, outside the Kennedy Center in DC, a big show of strength and a loud message to the President to keep his hands off the place. Laura Bly told us, tonight that as she's been showing up every day for what is usually a solo protest in defense of the Kennedy Center. She says she's gotten to know the people who live nearby. She says people there have told her that many folks actually moved to that neighborhood because of the Kennedy Center because they wanted to be close to the culture and the arts that are showcased there. So the locals like her are pretty fiercely protective of the Kennedy Center. They've been taking turns keeping an eye on the place, keeping a sort of rota for walking their dogs in front of the center, for example. They say if the president tries to take so much as a chisel to the building of the Kennedy Center, those locals will be the first to know and they promise to raise the alarm. Hands off the arts, this sort of ad hoc organization that planned what it turned into a huge protest on Friday. As of tonight, they say they've set up a live webcam focused on the center to monitor it in case Trump tries to bulldoze it. As for Laura Bly, after Friday night's big protest, she said she went right back out there the next day on Saturday, just like every other day with her cardboard sign. She says she keeps going and she will and she will keep going because she knows the media will stop by to take photos of the empty building with that ugly tarp hanging off the wall. And when they take that ugly tarp photo, she says she wants them to know that people are protesting what the president is doing, that people care. She told us that a lot of the other people who are invested in this cause, they have jobs, they're raising kids, they can't show up every day, but she said she's retired and so she has the time. And so she does this. She does this for all of us, while this big, long fight is playing out. It's of course still going on in court, led in large part by Congresswoman Joyce Beatty to try to restore the Kennedy Center back to normal. The court has ordered the Trump administration to file a detailed status report on the Kennedy Center by the day after tomorrow by Wednesday. We'll see how that goes. Of course, watching now for Trump to invent some sort of military necessity, some ridiculous pretextual national security argument for why he needs to have his name on that building or he needs to knock it down. Americans aren't only saying no individually and on mass to this, what Chris says is called this grave robbing debacle that Trump is attempting in D.C. as he tries to seize the memorial to another president and make it something for himself instead. People are not only protesting that. This hour we're going to be going live to Austin, Texas because yesterday Trump's federal agents once again shot someone this time in Austin, Texas, which led to big spontaneous street protests in Austin yesterday and last night. The guy who got shot was a door dash driver. He was making a door dash delivery when the ICE agents shot him. According to his lawyer, they shot him in the back after ramming his car. This guy is 28 years old. He's not known to have any criminal history whatsoever. Literally a door dash driver doing a delivery. We've got something to show you here about what happened just after federal agent shot him. I'm just going to give you fair warning before we show it. There is some blood here. If that sort of thing makes you oogie or if you have kids in the room, he don't want to see it. Now is your chance to look away. You're ready? Here it is. After federal agent shot this man before he got any sort of medical attention, while he was sitting there bleeding from the bullet hole they just put in his back, they handcuffed him while he was still bleeding from that bullet hole. You can see the local police, local police did not shoot him. ICE apparently shot him. But you can see the local police who responded to the shooting, cutting open his shirt to inspect the bullet wound, which is quite obviously very serious. This lawyer say that ICE then took him into ICE custody with the bullet still lodged in him and without giving him anything for the pain. This lawyer says the bullet is still in him now, while ICE has had him sleeping on the floor in some kind of holding facility, not letting him go. The mayor of Austin, Texas has expressed outraged. The local press in Austin is expressing outrage, including an outraged editorial in the Austin American statesman. The people of Austin have been out in force already, and basically instantly in response after this happened yesterday, they are expected to be back on the streets and protest again tonight. And so we are going to be going there live tonight in just a few minutes. We've also got eyes tonight on Evanston, Illinois, where Trump's federal agents, Trump's ICE agents beat the bejesus out of a U.S. citizen and then just drove away from him, left him lying in the street, bloody and injured and writhing in pain. Somebody then called the Evanston police, who showed up to clean up after these federal agents. They called an ambulance for the man. He was taken to the hospital with injuries to his head and neck and teeth. Again, this is a U.S. citizen apparently beaten down in the street in Evanston, Illinois, just on the north side of Chicago. This was the scene this weekend at Broadview, Illinois, it's on the west side of Chicago, as Trump's massed agents once again freaked out at protesters and started spraying everybody indiscriminately with pepper spray. Broadview this weekend. This was the scene this weekend in Concord, California. As neighbors there, I'm rallied to get a local mom released from ICE incarceration. She's not known to have any criminal record at all. She's a mother, she's a nurse, she's been in the Bay Area for decades. Her kids and her neighbors in Concord, California fought this weekend to try to get her released to come home. She's been shipped off to an ICE facility in Louisiana after turning up for a regular check-in with immigration authorities. This was the scene this weekend in Boston, outside the Museum of Science in Boston. Where tons of people turned out this weekend to protest, basically to embarrass the heck out of the robot company, Boston Dynamics. Now, among other things, Boston Dynamics, you might remember, makes those creepy robotic dogs. If you're like me, these robotic dogs have been giving you nightmares since you first saw video clips of them years ago. They are still as creepy as ever, but now Boston Dynamics has planned to up the creep factor substantially because they are planning to sell these robot dogs in quantity to ICE. Oh, good, because given hell-well ICE is comporting themselves when it comes to people in the streets right now, surely what will improve their behavior toward humans is to give them robotic dogs that they can sick on us as well. Sure. Boston Dynamics, for their part, they say any weaponization of their robots is, quote, strictly prohibited. Okay, but given that it's also probably technically strictly prohibited to shoot door dash drivers in the back, and ICE is happy doing that, I imagine that Boston Dynamics is going to find itself on the but end of ongoing protests, like these ones this weekend. Don't sell your robot dogs to ICE. This was the scene this weekend in Richmond, Virginia, where local residents this weekend protested at the airport in Richmond against the hundreds of ICE flights that are routing through that airport in Virginia. Locals want the Capital Region Airport Commission, which owns and operates the Richmond Airport, to find a way to stop ICE from using that facility for these flights. The Commission, for as part, says that it can't block the flights. It doesn't know how it could. Local residents in Richmond, Virginia are demanding they figure out a way, that they do something about it, that they find a way to stop ICE from using that facility in their name. And I think it's fair to say that you can expect more of this kind of expression from the American people, because we're learning more every day about what they're doing in our name. Look at this, which we've just learned about today out of Florida. Three Democratic members of Congress, Maxwell, Frost, Benny Thompson, and Robert Garcia have just released these photos that they say they received from a whistleblower, showing the conditions people are being held in by ICE in Miramar, Florida, Miramar's in the northern suburbs of Miami. And according to these whistleblower photos, look at how they're holding people. And this isn't like a waiting room. They're not just like holding people here for an hour. This is where they're holding people in an ongoing way, basically as a prison. And look at the upper right-hand corner of this image. What looks like crumpled foil and trash there? According to the whistleblower, that's the sleeping quarters. That's what our government is providing for people to sleep as they hold them indefinitely altogether in this space. So yeah, expect more protests. Because this is what our government is doing right now. This is one of these prison camps as pictured from the inside. And again, the only reason we have this is because of a whistleblower providing these images from Miramar, Florida, to Democratic members of Congress, including Congressman Maxwell Frost. He and Benny Thompson and Robert Garcia are demanding answers from ICE and Homeland Security, saying these conditions are illegal. These are abusive and life-threatening and illegal. And they're trying to keep these things secret from the public for obvious reasons. And so that is why those three democratic members of Congress or publicizing these disturbing images. And this all comes on the heels of the Inspector General Report on the so-called Alligator Alcatraz immigrant prison in Florida, which has now been shut down after a huge outcry against it. Shut down now, but not before they apparently used these tiny cages to hold people inside that prison. This comes as a bunch of clergy were just arrested in Williston, Vermont after protesting an ice facility in that town in Vermont, Williston. This comes as every week now. We see local residents in the El Paso area protesting weekly outside of Camp East Montana. Camp East Montana is the largest of all the Trump prison camps. It's been set up as a tent facility at the Fort Bliss Military Facility there. Incidentally, Fort Bliss is also where the U.S. government during World War II set up an internment camp for Japanese Americans. In case you're wondering if history is a little on the nose in this subject. Americans right now do not like what Donald Trump is doing with the U.S. government in our name. They don't like any of it. And they're showing all over the country that they're willing to stand up and show that they disapprove of what Trump is doing. They're willing to stand up and show that all over the country. I mean, we're less than a month away from the next No Kings protests, which are going to happen on October 17th. And we imagine that that will be a big day of protest. But people are protesting against Trump all over the country all the time from Washington, D.C., to Texas, to New England, to the South, to the Pacific Coast, everywhere. And I got to say, as somebody who's been covering this pretty closely, covering this maybe more closely than anybody else in the national media, I have really felt that from the very beginning of all this nonsense, the very beginning of Trump being back in office, the people all over the country, red states, blue states, urban areas, rural areas, everywhere, the people have had better instincts and more spine than the institutions that are supposed to uphold our values as a country. And that supposedly have so much more power than any individual group of people anywhere in the country. The institutions have been whooses compared to the regular people in this country thus far. But maybe that is starting to change. Because when the president standing in this country is plummeting like this, this is from Reuters today. Look at that. This shows Trump's approval in the country over the course of the second term. Purple, the top line is disapproval of Trump. The bottom line, the orange line, fittingly, is approval. Look at where he's at. When his approval has sunk over the course of this presidency, like a stone falling through water, just plummeting now to 32%. The lowest not just of this term, but the lowest of his entire political career. When this president's approval in the country is this far down the toilet. When he keeps trying to send his ferociously unpopular vice president around the country to try to campaign for other Republicans, but everywhere he goes, the candidates he's supposedly trying to help refuse to appear with him. I mean, JD Vance went to Maine to campaign for Republican Senator Susan Collins, Susan Collins wouldn't be seen with him. He went to Iowa to campaign for Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson. But Ashley Hinson wouldn't be seen with him either. When you can't even get the people you're trying to help to be seen with you. When part of what's driving the immense dissatisfaction with this administration, even from their own people in their own party, is that Trump and Vance inherited an economy that was literally internationally headlined as the envy of the world. That headline was from just before Donald Trump took off as his president. But since he's been president, he has now so screwed things up that we've got an average price of diesel in this country that's over 650 a gallon. And the biggest thing his Republican party has done for regular people in this country since they got full control of Washington, is that they have cut millions and millions and millions of Americans off their health insurance. I mean, these protesters were just a few days ago, outside the offices of Republican Congressman David Valideo in Kern County, California, kicked off of Medi-Cal. When the president and his party are this widely reviled by the American people and they can point to nothing that they have done practically to help the American people. And the American people increasingly are showing a cheerful and relentless and patriotic willingness to show up in person, even if they have to do it alone. But they're willing to show up in person all over the country, over and over again. Well, apparently that is putting some steel in the spine of the institutions that started off this presidential term, frankly, as voices. Institutions are starting to discover their patriotic selves a little bit. After President Trump barred our journalists at MSNOW and journalists from CNN and Politico as well from the White House, as of this weekend, our fellow news organizations, our brother and sister organizations in the news. Sometimes our rivals and competitors, most of the time, that's more like what they are. News organizations all over the country have come together this time to say actually this time we're going to stick together. You may have heard today about the press pool, the White House press pool. CNN was one of five major news networks who were part of what's called the pool coverage at the White House. The pool coverage means there's always a TV camera crew covering the president and all of his public appearances and movements. But with CNN, one of the organizations now banned from the White House, all the other news networks in the White House pool said that they too would stand down. If CNN's going to be blocked from covering the White House, then they won't shoot footage at the White House either. So the president's White House events today had no pool coverage. In addition, in solidarity, a whole bunch of media organizations, not just TV networks, but media organizations of all kind, have said that they would limit publication of photos taken from the president's events. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, AFP, Getty, the Associated Press, and PR plans to stop using audio from White House events. News organizations sticking together on this. And MS now and Politico and CNN have now jointly filed a lawsuit against Trump today. And that itself, do not skip over that. That is a remarkable thing. We are competitors. And it is heartfelt our competition. It is not for show. We really, really, really compete with and see as rivals our fellow news organizations like this. But we are standing together both in court and in practical terms when it comes to the president trying to decide who covers him and who doesn't. Solidarity and a unified front has formed even in our wussy little part of the business world. Even in our wussy little corner of American institutions. We have not, as an industry, covered ourselves in glory during the second Trump term. But maybe we're starting to. And I'm telling you, this would not happen without the leadership of you, of regular people showing the way. And I can prove that because earlier in this presidential term, you did not see bravery. You did not see heroism. You did not see solidarity among news organizations. You saw news organizations one after the other, capitulating to him. But on this, no. Not anymore. Not with the president. This unpopular. This reviled by the American people. Not with the president of the American people are willing to stand up against over and over again. The people lead. The institutions are now following. We're going to talk about the strength of that unified media pushback tonight. We're also going to get a live report from Austin, Texas, where people are out in the streets in protest right now. We got a lot to get to tonight. Stay with us. It's 43 days 'til the midterms. The last midterm with Trump in the White House went very poorly for his Republican party. That was 2018, when Democrats took back control of the House. You might remember they picked up 40 seats in Congress. And what was widely considered a wave election, a blue wave. Well, the day after that shlacking, president Trump decided to hold a press conference at the White House, where he lashed out at reporters in the room even more than he usually does. By the end of that day, he had revoked the press pass of one reporter in particular, Jim Acosta, who was then a correspondent for CNN. CNN and Jim Acosta then sued the Trump administration. They alleged that Trump was restricting freedom of the press, so we violated the First Amendment. They also said the Trump administration had violated the Fifth Amendment. And we typically think about the Fifth Amendment in terms of testimony taking the Fifth. Fifth Amendment is where you get to reserve your Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate yourself. But more broadly, the Fifth Amendment guarantees due process. And due process isn't something that only applies when you're in court. Due process is required basically when the government acts. And so when Trump acted to take away Jim Acosta's press pass, Press Pass. The due process claim ended up really being important in court. Jim Acosta's case ended up in front of a Trump-appointed federal judge. However, compelling the underlying claim was about the First Amendment, the judge decided to reinstate Jim Acosta's press credentials on Fifth Amendment grounds, saying the White House hadn't given Jim Acosta due process before revoking his press pass. As God loves a good rhyme, that story from 2018 is echoing through the news again right now as we head toward another midterm in which Donald Trump and his party look like they are going to get their butts kicked. Donald Trump has once again decided to revoke the press credit credentials for reporters whose coverage Trump doesn't like, including this network MSNOW and CNN and Politico. Those three outlets have now filed a joint challenge to Trump's decision as of this morning in federal court. The suit today alleges once again that Trump has violated the First Amendment rights of the press, but also the Fifth Amendment right to do process. Today we learn that the case is going to end up in front of the same Trump-appointed judge who ordered the Trump administration to reinstate Jim Acosta's press pass back in 2018. We also got some really interesting news about the kind of support these news networks are going to get in their court fight against the Trump administration. One of the country's top First Amendment lawyers joins us on that, next, stay with us. Jimmy L. Jaffer is a former deputy legal director for the ACLU. In 2016 he became executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. So, he was there in Trump's first term when they successfully sued the administration over its practice of blocking critics on social media. Trump's second term is organization has been supporting the New York Times and its lawsuit against the Pentagon over the Trump administration decision to restrict reporters access to the Pentagon. Knight has also supported the AP in their challenge over exclusions from the White House. And in response to Trump's latest decision to kick three news organizations, including us, out of the press pool, Jimmy L. Jaffer announced today that his organization will support these news organizations in court. I don't speak for MSNOW on this. I'm just reporting on this like I'd report on any other fight. But I've asked Jimmy L. Jaffer to be here tonight and person to help us understand the strength of the legal case that MSNOW and CNN and Politico have just brought jointly against Trump and his administration. Jimmy L. Jaffer, thanks very much for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you. Great to be here. First of all, is it significant to you that all three news organizations MSNOW, Politico and CNN, are jointly bringing this suit? Absolutely. I mean, I think that one of the things that's been missing over the last couple of years has been solidarity across institutions. And you see that not just with the media, but universities sort of responded individually to the Trump administration's attacks. Law firms responded individually to the Trump administration's attacks. Very hard to defend yourself if you're on your own. And in all those instances, I think many of us were hoping to see some solidarity, see some coordination, and it's nice to see this now. In terms of the specific case at hand here, I'm interested. I think everybody's, I mean, the words first amendment have been said more times in the last couple of days than I've heard in recent months and everybody's really focused on that. I'm also interested in the due process part of this, particularly because of the precedent before this particular Trump appointed judge, the Jim Acosta case, from the first term, essentially decided on due process terms, not necessarily directly on first amendment terms. That's right. Is that still a live concern this summer? Yeah. Yeah. So this complaint that was filed today includes a due process claim. It also includes a first amendment claim, actually two first amendment claims. The due process claim is very simple. It's just that when a news organization or a journalist has credential from the White House to enter White House grounds and report from the White House, the journalist has a property or a liberty interest in the press pass. And that just means that the government can't take it away without providing notice and an opportunity to be heard. There has to be some sort of clear standard for taking the pass away. So even before you get to the question of whether there's a first amendment right here or whether the White House press pass is a public forum or the press pool is a public forum and those are all sort of first amendment questions. You have this fifth amendment, more procedural claim, which is the one, as you said, that was victorious in 2018 and maybe it's the one that will be victorious this time. But I think the first amendment claims are very strong. Then authoritarian leaders of this type take actions of this type, either in other countries or in other instances in our history. The news organizations tend to get back what the authoritarian is trying to take away from them. Is this the sort of thing where the fight might be worth it for them, even though they're ultimately going to lose because they're essentially stretching the bounds of what we expect as normal in this realm? I don't know how much we can take from the experience of news organizations in other countries, because one thing that we have here that they don't have or didn't have is the first amendment. It's not something that we should take for granted, the first amendment is, the modern first amendment is 100 years old now, basically arose after the First World War and provides very strong protection to the press, especially against viewpoint-based discrimination. That's what's going on here. The president is kicking news organizations out of the press pool, out of the White House, on the basis of his dislike of their coverage, on the basis of their viewpoint. That's the most basic first amendment principle. The government can't discriminate on the basis of viewpoint. They can't do that in all sorts of contexts, but it certainly can do it in a public forum, which is what the White House press credential really is. It's a space that has been opened up to journalists at large for reporting. Journalists can go into that White House without reference to their viewpoint. When the government discriminates on the basis of viewpoint or kicks a journalist out on the basis of viewpoint, the government is violating the First Amendment. It's a very basic first amendment principle. I don't think the news organizations are going to have a hard time persuading the courts here that that first amendment principle has been violated. Yeah, it's like how you would explain the First Amendment to a second grade classroom. This is kind of it. Let me just ask you one last thing about this. Today, the White House tried to roll out its own, I don't want to say news organization, its own media feed of itself. They're basically advertising Trump TV that in response to the führer over what they've just done to these news organizations, that everybody should download the Trump app. And thereby give the government that much more contact with you and your phone. Can you just explain in very basic terms again, thinking about sort of the proverbial second grade classroom, why having the president himself provide news coverage of his actions is no substitute for that. Yeah, well, I think, you know, two things, the main point to the First Amendment was to ensure an informed public that was capable of governing itself, capable of democracy. And the press is supposed to be our guarantor of that informed public. Yes, you know, reports for us, it's a proxy for the public. And what the government is trying to do here with the Trump administration is trying to do is get the press out of the equation and speak directly to the public. And I think that the release of this app today is just sort of further confirmation that the end goal here is to ensure that the American public is fed a kind of steady diet of propaganda either through the president's own app or by ensuring that the press pool is stripped of its independence. That's right. And I don't think the American people are wired to accept that. Good. But we shall see. Jamil Jaffa is Executive Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Jamil, thanks for coming in. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us. The protests started yesterday afternoon. As soon as people got word, that ICE agents had shot and then arrested a 28-year-old man who was out delivering for DoorDash in Austin, Texas. Hundreds of people gathered and stayed well into the night. A lawyer for the man posted an update today saying her client had spent the night in an ICE facility, remember, after being shot, quote, "He still has the bullet lodged in his body. He has received no pain medication and had to sleep on the floor." Man himself called into a press conference today and described an unmarked SUV side-swiping him twice before he even realized it was ICE. The man told reporters he asked the agents if he could stop somewhere safer. From the Texas Tribune, quote, "He said an agent told him no, then he felt one shot to his back." man said he was taken to a nearby hospital. He said the staff there told him the bullet was too close to his spine for them to remove it, but then ICE just took him into custody anyway. Late tonight, Texas Democratic Congressman Greg Kassar says the man has finally left ICE detention in order to get medical care. Congressman Kassar called it, quote, "important news and a positive first step." Since this shooting yesterday in Austin, MSNOW reporter Alex Tabit has been on the ground in Austin. He talked to the man's lawyer about what she would say to President Trump or to Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullin. Right now, when you ask me what I would say to the leadership that's in charge of all these actions, it's hard for me to find kindness and implore them to change what I would say to them is that justice is coming for you. And I look forward to that day and I know many of the rest of us do too. People in Austin are really mad about what's happened. You can see it in the streets. You can also see it in the editorial written by the paper of record in Austin, the Austin American statesman. They have their own blunt message today, quote, "E ICE agents are empowered to remove people who are not in the country legally. That is not a license to shoot them. Federal agents who enforce the law are not above it. They cannot shoot a person and then refuse to provide basic information about what happened. ICE must provide full transparency about this incident starting with preserving and promptly releasing any video and radio communications to the fullest extent allowed under law. They're also demanding a legitimately independent investigation into this shooting. Joining us now live from Austin is MSNOW Reporter Alex Tabbitt. Alex, thanks very much for being there with us in Austin. Tell us about the scene where you are right now. Rachel, we're here outside in the Texas State Capitol in Austin. Where we have about 100 students protesting not just what happened to Wilbur Perez on Sunday afternoon, but what their community has been experiencing over all in the last couple of weeks as ICE has really ramped up their presence here. As you might be able to see, there are some signs one over there that reads, "Fight ignorance and immigrants, another one right there that reads justice for Wilbur Perez." And so much of the anger is not just what happened to Wilbur Perez, the 28-year-old Venezuelan immigrant who is shot in the back on Sunday afternoon during a traffic stop, but also how he was treated after his lawyer tells us that he was brought to a hospital and discharged only four hours after being shot, that he was brought two hours away, 138 miles south to a Texas detention facility where he didn't have a bed to sleep in, where she says he was interrogated, where he stayed overnight with a bullet still lodged in his back, and his lawyer did confirm with us just a few minutes ago, but Representative Casar has put out on social media that he has been released from that detention center to go to a nearby hospital because he is losing feeling on the left side of his back. Rachel? MSNL reporter Alex Tabith live for us at that protest taking place right now in Austin. Alex, thank you very much for being our eyes and ears and us, and tonight I appreciate it. All right. We will be right back. Alright, that's going to do it for me for now.