
New reporting on Musk's minions makes his government takeover team look even worse
The Rachel Maddow Show- 475 views
- 7 Feb 2025
Despite Donald Trump being accommodating to staffers whose views on race would be disqualifying in most administrations, a member of Elon Musk's team has reportedly resigned after the discovery of his past racist online statements. Rachel Maddow looks at new details that are coming to light about some of the other members of Musk's crew that will make people already uncomfortable with Musk's overreach feel even worse.
So much to get to. So naturally, we are going to start with this. Car sales in France are way down. Year over year, car sales, for whatever reason, are way down in France, down by 6%. I don't know exactly why that's happening or what it means, if anything, big picture. I presume it probably sucks for people who sell cars for a living in in France. But you know who it really, really sucks for? It really sucks for Tesla. Because while car sales in France are down by 6%, sales of Teslas in France are down by 63%. Not 6%, but 63%. I wonder why that is. France is the second largest market for electric cars in all of Europe. That's really bad for Tesla, down 63%. The only country in Europe that is a larger market than France is Germany. In Germany, Tesla sales are down 59%. In Sweden, Tesla sales are down 44%, In Norway, Tesla sales are down 38%. In the Netherlands, Tesla sales are down 42%. Weird, right? I wonder why that is. Here on this side of the Atlantic, polling from The Econom from The Economist and Ugov looks at how Americans feel about the CEO of Tesla, and specifically, his involvement in the US government now after he spent so much money to get Donald Trump elected to the presidency.
The Economist and YouGov took two polls, one right after the election and another one this week, now that Trump's been in office for a couple of weeks. Look at this. Among Republican voters, specifically, the proportion of people who wanted Elon Musk to have a lot of influence in the US government since the election, it has plummeted by 21 points. We're now down to only about one in four Republicans wants Elon Musk to have a lot of involvement in the US government. That has just dropped like a stone in a very quick period of time. Among all other Americans who aren't Republicans, the proportion of Americans who like the idea of Elon Musk having a lot of influence in the government. That proportion among Americans who are Democrats is 6%. The proportion among Americans who are independents is 6%. I mean, He's polling at tooth decay levels. That's like funny bone banged into something sharp levels. Yesterday, around noontime, it was It was 15 degrees in Waterville, Maine, and it was breezy. It was 2 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind chill. But you know what? Temperatures like that, that's nothing for the good hardy people of the state of Maine, a number of whom felt inspired, even in that weather, to go down to one of the busiest intersections in Waterville, Maine, to go hold a bunch of signs and demonstrate at the Tesla charging station in their town.
The Waterville Morning Sentinel reported on the protest, including at least one local resident who saw the protest when she was driving by, she pulled over, parked, jumped out of her car, and decided to join them. Around the same time that was happening up in Maine, down in DC, at the Department of Labor, this was happening. A short notice protest, and a big one, at the US Department of Labor, at their headquarters building. Now, you might remember, yesterday, there was a lot of competition for your attention if you were interested in protesting. There were protests in all 50 states, all around the country, including really big ones at places like the Texas State Capitol and Sacramento, California. Yesterday, even just in DC, there was also a big protest in Washington, just outside the capital for foreign aid and to stand up for USAID. But in addition to all of that, there was also this one at the Labor Department. Again, this one was scrambled together on really short notice, and it was They rambled together on short notice, specifically because Elon Musk was coming. People who work at the Labor Department, and people who support them and who wanted to stand up for them, flooded down to the Labor Department to head off Elon Musk.
When they got word that Mr. Musk and his little band of teenage flying monkeys that he's been bringing around from government agency to government agency, ripping out the guts of the computer systems, when people found out that they were on their way next to the Francis Perkins building, to the Labor Department headquarters yesterday in Washington, people just ran down there, turned out in force, in person, on no notice, to go try to stop them. Now, this is interesting. We don't know for sure if it was that Musk and his gang pulled up at the Francis Perkins building and saw the crowd outside. We don't know if it was some other reason, but that reported next stop on Elon Musk's itinerary yesterday afternoon did not happen. It appears that that protest turned Musk and his little group of guys, turned him around. They did not get into the labor department systems yesterday, even though they were scheduled to be there. At the same time that was happening, Democracy Forward went to court and filed a lawsuit to block Elon Musk and his freshman, 15, from accessing data and systems at the Department of Labor. We had a one, two punch yesterday.
You had the physical direct action of people turning up for that protest at the Labor Department, which appears to have physically turned Elon Musk back along with his folks. But you also had a court order produced by that lawsuit later that afternoon, which kept them legally blocked from getting into the Labor Department as well. The Labor Department appears thus far to have escaped what they've been able to do to lots of other agencies. They appear to have escaped that fate thus far by defending themselves. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, this is what's called making yourself a hard target. Making yourself as annoying as possible to go after. In the great proverbial circle of life here, don't be a mouse or a vole. Be a porcupine. Be a poison frog. Be something that sticks in somebody's kra if they try to get you in their mouth. You know what else got blocked today? The resign or else threat from the Trump administration to millions of people who work for the federal government. The administration and this weird and wildly unpopular effort led by his top campaign donor, they've been crowing about how using this gambit, they were going to intimidate 200,000 people who work for the government into quitting by tonight.
It's going to be by midnight tonight. They were going to get 200,000 people to voluntarily leave the government by being intimidated by this resignation demand. This gamut from the Trump administration and Elon Musk, among other things, appears to be quite illegal, in addition to just clearly being a scam. I say it appears to be a scam because of what we've had reported for example, from how people in various government agencies have been briefed about how it will work. One example comes from the Department of Education earlier this week. They had a briefing on this resign or else' threat. At that briefing, employees were advised that if they took this offer and they resigned, as Trump and Musk are demanding they must, if they took this offer and resigned as of midnight tonight, and then thereafter, the Trump administration administration reneged on their part of the deal and just stopped paying people what they told them they'd get, employees at the Department of Education were told at that point they would have no recourse. They would, quote, waive all legal claims. One person who was part of that briefing at the Education Department told NBC News, quote, It sounded like a commercial for a used car dealership.
Like, Act now, one day only. Yeah. Hope you don't want to resell that used car if if it's a Tesla because that market is tanked. It doesn't look like it's coming back either. But the resign or else deadline for people who work for the government. That deadline was supposed to be tonight at midnight. It's now not because that, too, has been blocked by a federal judge. A key component of that threat from Trump and Musk was this apparently unenforceable promise that if people quit because of this on demand, they'd be paid their salary anyway for several months. That promise itself appears to be illegal pretty plainly under federal law because the government can't promise to spend money that it does not have allocated for that purpose. Well, it does, as I say, appear pretty plainly to be illegal, but now a federal judge will test it while the whole stunt is legally blocked. No one else got blocked today? Another one. Again, this was Trump's day one declaration that he is canceling the constitutional provision that says, If you're born here, you're an American. Today, again, we got yet another judge blocking that gambit by Trump.
This was a judge appointed by Ronald Reagan who was just blistering in his ruling and about what Trump is trying to do here. The rule of law is, according to him, meaning according to Trump, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain. The judge said in his ruling, There are moments in the world's history where people look back and ask, Where were the lawyers? Where were the judges? In these moments, the rule of law becomes especially vulnerable. I refuse to let that beacon go dark today. Again, a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan. He's been on the bench for decades. With those stirring words today, he ordered Trump's birthright citizenship gambit, Blocked. You know what else got blocked today? The Trump and Musk gambit that turned out these thousands of people at the Treasury Building this week to protest. The news that Trump had let his top campaign donor, inexplicably, access the payment system at the US Treasury that sends out everything from your Social Security check to your tax refund to everything else the government pays for. That news in particular had caused pretty understandable and pretty widespread freak out in this country.
First among Treasury employees, including the acting Treasury Secretary, somebody who's been employed at the Treasury Department for decades, who's a career, non-partisan civil servant. He tried to stop them from getting their hands on this payment system, and then he resigned when he couldn't stop them. But it caused a big freak out inside Treasury. It also caused a significant freak among members of Congress. It also caused a significant freak out among members of the public. We know that in part because members of Congress have been telling the press this week that as the numbers of phone calls to House and Senate offices have skyrocketed over this past two weeks with people complaining about Trump's actions and demanding that their members of Congress and their senators stand up and do whatever they can to stop Trump. A significant proportion of the calls they've been getting, according to members of Congress, are panicked calls calls from regular Americans, specifically about this thing at Treasury, about the payment system at Treasury being handed over to Elon Musk's little unsupervised playgroup. This was made worse, frankly, when Trump's newly confirmed Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, assured everybody repeatedly that the access that he had allowed Elon Musk and his team to this particularly sensitive payment system the Treasury, he assured everybody that their access to the system was read-only, meaning that they weren't even trying to use their access to the system to cut off any payments of any kind.
They'd never even had that in mind. Well, despite those assurances from Scott Bessent, reporting in the Washington Post, and in the New York Times, and in the Associated Press, and elsewhere would now seem to indicate that Scott Bessent was either lying or wrong. When he gave everybody those inferences that their access was, quote, read only. In fact, according to this recent reporting, from the very outset, from their very first demands to get access to that incredibly sensitive system that partisan actors have never before had access to. Elon Musk's people made clear that the reason they wanted access to that system was specifically because they intended to use it to stop funds from going out. On their own, say so. Funds they shot they thought shouldn't go. We're starting to get a sense, two and a half weeks into this new Trump term, about the fact that pushback definitely works, but the different forms that pushback can take. In this case, with the Treasury Payment System, we get direct action. We get a big, impressive, basically impromptu protest organized on very short notice We get the Treasury. We get Treasury officials doing what they can to stop what they're trying to do and then sounding the alarm about why they resigned when they weren't able to stop it.
We get regular Americans calling their members of Congress and blowing their stacks about this. We then get Democratic members of Congress blowing their stacks and going to the protest and calling press conferences and demanding answers from the administration. We get the press blowing up. The the press doing reporting and blowing up this calm down, calm down, nothing to see here, apparent set of lies from the administration about what, in fact, they have been up to with this scheme at Treasury. All these different forms of pushback. Now, hello, as of today, we get a federal judge throwing down a court order and blocking them from doing anything inside the treasury payment system. Pushback works, but pushback also has a lot of different ways that it can work. Here's one that I think has pretty unpredictable implications in the days ahead. Because in the midst of that drama, today over this treasury payment system, we also got this delightful advance in this story from the Wall Street Journal, which exclusively reported that the actual kid, the actual person who Donald Trump and Elon Musk had let into the Treasury Payment System. The actual person is this person, A key DOGE staff member who gained access to the Treasury Department's Central Payment System resigned today after he was linked to a deleted social media account that advocated racism and eugenics.
A 25-year-old who was part of a cadre of Elon Musk lieutenants deployed by DOGE to scrutinize federal spending resigned after the Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to the account. The account posted in July, Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool. The account wrote on Twitter in September, You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity. In reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley, the account wrote, Again, in September, Normalize Indian hate. After the Wall Street Journal inquired about the account, White House spokesperson, Caroline Levet, said that the young man had resigned from his role. Again, this is one of the Elon Musk lieutenants, one of his bad news bears, who specifically was allowed access to the most sensitive payment system in the entire US government, the one that sends out more than 90% of all payments for all things from the United States Treasury. This was that specific kid. Here's my favorite part of this reporting from the Wall Street Journal. After the Wall Street Journal uncovers what this kid has said, I was racist before it was cool.
You could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity. Normalize Indian hate. After the Wall Street Journal turns up that stuff from this kid, the journal then does There's then an interview with Bloomberg in which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, quote, defended the work of DOGE employees appended to the Treasury Department, describing them as, quote, highly trained professionals. That's why he gave them access to the most sensitive payment system in the entire US government that partisan political actors have never had access to before in the history of this country. It's because he checked. There highly trained professionals. Normalize Indian hate. At Wired, tonight, we learn about another of Elon Musk's JV team, these highly trained professionals that are very trusted by the US Treasury Secretary. It's from Wired. Com, tonight, A young technologist known online as Big Balls, who works for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, has access to sensitive US government systems. Highly trained professionals. However, his professional and online history call into question whether he would pass the background check typically required to obtain security clearances, according to security experts who spoke with Wired. One of the companies he founded, which is called Tesla.
Sexy, LLC, controls dozens of web domains, including at least two that are registered in Russia. One of those domains, which is still active, offers a service called Healthy, which is an AI bot for Discord servers targeting the Russian market. Someone using a Telegram handle linked to the young man also solicited a cyber attack for hire service in 2022. At Path Network, the young man worked as a systems engineer. Path has at times listed as employees Eric Taylor, also known as Cosmo the God, a well-known former cybercriminal and member of the hacker group, U. G. Nazis, as well as Matthew Flannery, an Australian convicted hacker whom police allege was a member of the hacker group, LULSSEC. These are the highly trained professionals. That was the exact phrase from Trump Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. This is the team that he's decided it's totally fine to give them complete access to the highest security systems in the whole US government, including the ones that have your social security number, your personal identifying information, your bank account information, potentially your health information. They're highly trained professionals. Why wouldn't they be given everything? Cnn reports tonight, A 23-year-old representative from Elon Musk's Doge was granted access to the Energy Department's IT system yesterday by Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
This despite objections from people in the Department of Energy, which controls access to information about US nuclear weapons. I don't know if you worry about nuclear weapons. I don't know. I don't know if you worry about the safety of your social security number and your bank account. Everybody has their own things that keep them up at night, right? Do you ever worry about air traffic control? Our nation's new Transportation Secretary, who until a few weeks ago was a weekend host on the Fox Business channel, he announced today that this crew, operated by Elon Musk, this is the group to whom he's handing over the national system that we have in the United States for air traffic control. He's letting them, quote, plug in to the system to fix it. Because who among us doesn't feel better about having a 19-year-old with links to Russia and famous criminal hackers who goes by the online handle Big Balls in charge of American air traffic control. Anybody want to buy a used Tesla? Today in Washington, people protested against USAID cuts, and specifically, against cuts for the PEPFAR program that has literally kept tens of millions of people alive with HIV treatment.
These folks blocked traffic in Washington, DC. They told Secretary of State Marco Rubio to reverse the halt to PEPFAR, reverse the halt to this program. Now, Marco Rubio has tried to say that this particular program isn't being halted, but it absolutely is. Activists and journalists have proven that out, even as Marco Rubio and the Trump administration have tried to say that this is one of the programs they're going to let live. This program is halted. Whether it is intentional by them or whether it is because they cannot tell which direction they are walking on an escalator and they can't figure out how to restart something they accidentally stopped. It is now down to activists in the street who are using everything they've got to get that program restarted, including risking arrest today and stopping traffic in the streets. It also includes a somewhat random overture from a billionaire. Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates was at the White House yesterday afternoon lobbying President Trump personally and White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, personally, to restart that program and to save USAID. All different forms of pressure to try to push them back. And so is the new federal law suit that we can report is being filed tonight to stop the Trump administration from illegally closing USAID.
The Congressional Research Service reported earlier this week that there is not a legal means available to Donald Trump to shut that agency down with or without Elon Musk and his band of juvenile delinquents trying to do it. But they are nevertheless trying. Now we see with USAID and foreign aid and everything else, we see everybody Nobody else who understands the stakes here, pushing back in every way on every front every day. This fight is joined, and we're going to get some expert advice on the prospects for success. Next. One of the things we've been talking about in the show here for several days, and particularly tonight, is all the different things that are coming together to block what Trump is trying to do through the courts, through direct action, people protesting, through exposés in the press. But even as, for example, Elon Musk's teenage demolition crew has been blocked tonight from the Treasury Department, blocked by one set of tactics and been blocked from the Labor Department by another set of tactics, they have been able to get through other places. They have, for example, gotten into the Department of Education, where they have reportedly obtained access to personal and I believe financial information on every person who's got a freaking federal student loan in this country, which is millions of people.
They've also gotten into the Office of Personnel Management. Here's the Washington Post on the seriousness of that today. Agents of billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, have gained access to highly restricted government records on millions of federal employees, including Treasury and State Department officials in sensitive security positions. The records maintained by the Office of Personnel Management amount to a repository of sensitive information about employees of most federal agencies, including addresses, demographic profiles, salary details, disciplinary histories. Two OPM officials said the level of access granted to DOGE agents means they could copy the social security numbers, phone numbers, and whole personnel files for millions of federal employees. They could put a new file in someone's record. They could modify an existing record. They could delete that record out of the They could export all that data about people who are currently or formerly employed by the government. They could export it to some non-government server or to their own PC or to a Google Drive, or they could send it to a foreign country. Once, cybersecurity The Expert tells The Post, It's highly likely they are improperly accessing, transferring, and storing highly sensitive data outside the environments in which it was intended to be contained.
If I were a nation like China, Russia or Iran, I'd be having a field day with a bunch of college kids running around with sensitive federal government data on unencrypted hard drives. The president's top campaign donor and his little gang of interns have been blocked from some places, but they are still getting into lots of others. I should also point out, even where court orders have been issued stopping some of the things that the Trump administration is trying to do, we're not totally It's really clear those orders are being followed. Sorry, not quote. Two federal judges have now issued several orders, for example, directing the White House to rescind the spending freeze that Trump implemented as soon as he took office. Even though that spending freeze legally is off, they can't do it. Nevertheless, there are multiple reports around the country of federally-funded preschools and federally-funded medical centers and federally-funded infrastructure projects that still aren't being funded and that are starting to shut down, even though they have been ordered by a court to restart those funds. Big picture here. The thing I am worried about is that it is starting to feel like an afterthought or like a footnote that all this stuff appears not to just be bad and dangerous and damaging and unpopular, but patently illegal.
If it is illegal, isn't it supposed to be stoppable? David Super is an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School. He told the Washington Post this week, So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they're playing a quantity game, a quantity game, and assuming the system cannot react to all this illegality all at once. If that is what's happening here, what do we do about it? Joining us now is David Super, Administrative Law Professor at Georgetown. Professor Super, thank you so much for being with us. I appreciate your time.
Thanks for having me.
Your diagnosis The diagnosis of the problem is unsettling. Does it come with a prescription?
That people need to keep bringing these things to the courts, that the agencies that are being defunded need to pass that along, that federal employees that are aware of data breaches need to pass that along and that this does need to be raised with the courts.
Do you think the courts are capable of handling these things at speed to stop damage as it's being done? For example, the Office of Personnel management personnel files for the federal government, that's a very, very, very damaging data breach. When you think about potential foreign adversaries, you think about the potential for all sorts of criminal or otherwise improper use of that material. Obviously, the courts have not been able to get in there quickly enough to stop that from happening. They may have acted quickly enough to, for example, save files at the Department of Labor. What should we understand about the system and its ability to move with alacrity when necessary for the safety of the country?
Courts generally assume that the other branches of government are acting responsibly and show them deference. In this case, Mr. Musk has shown that he doesn't deserve any deference, and I hope the courts will start acting much more quickly and be more willing to presume that where there is smoke, there's fire. Data breaches are a problem because once they happen quickly, they can't be done. Funding freezes and getting rid of valuable federal employees is a little bit easier to correct, but they're certainly hoping that the courts will get fatigued. I hope that's not true.
Let me ask you about one particular example. President Trump today says he is going to fire, he's going to lay off basically all of the 10,000 workers at USAID. There's also reporting today that tomorrow he may announce that he's laying off thousands of people at the Department Health and Human Services. We have tonight just filed a new lawsuit by federal workers and foreign service unions asking the judge to halt the dismantling of USAID, let alone all of those firings. What do you make of the prospects for these things in terms of stopping the short term actions of the President, but also in the long term, whether or not he'll be in joint from doing these things that we all thought would be illegal?
Oh, they're openly illegal. The very first Congress of the United States decided what departments we would have. They debated that. George Washington didn't set up the State Department. Congress did. Their statutes creating all of these agencies that Mr. Trump says he's going to get rid of, he simply doesn't have the power to repeal those statuts. I think the courts will recognize that most of these things they're doing aren't even plausibly legal. The question is going to ultimately come down to the Supreme Court and whether they're willing to give up their legacy and by these completely preposterous legal theories. I don't think they are.
Given that, Professor Super, is there anything legally, just as a matter of tactics, that should be done right now that hasn't yet been done?
No, I think people are doing a very good job. I've been impressed with it. The AID lawsuit says exactly the right things that President Trump is trying to repeal a law which he has no power to repeal. These are decisions made by Congress. And that he is being utterly arbitrary in taking these actions and has no grounds to do that. I think this litigation is going well, but a lot of damage is going to get done until Well, ultimately, the Supreme Court sends a signal that the rule of law still works around here.
Georgetown law professor David Super, thank you for your clarity on this. I appreciate you speaking in non-lawyrily terms so that all the rest of us can really understand some the process here. Thank you.
Thanks so much.
All right. More news ahead here tonight. Stay with us. We've got Firebrand Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett standing by tonight to join us in just a moment. I'm really interested in talking with her, but there's just one thing I want to show you before we speak with the Congresswoman. This is something we're going to be talking with her about. You may have seen that the Trump administration has been inviting of handpicked members of the media and occasionally random TV celebrities to ride along with immigration agents for exclusive up-close looks at their supposed immigration crackdown and how tough they're being. Today, Fox News released footage from one of these exclusive ride-alongs with immigration agents in Aurora, Colorado. It was definitely meant to depict a big, intimidating show of force. I think it's safe to say it did not to learn out as planned. Watch.
At a second Trendy, AragmaLink complex, ICE was met by activists who taunted them.
You, strong angel. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Get out of our community. And others who used megaphones to coach those living inside.
Por favor, permanecer en silencio.
No abre la puerta. Dea agents used flashbings inside while serving a warrant. That led to a handful of arrests, but no TDA gang members.
A stop at another apartment complex netded no arrests. Now, where to start? This was a thing where they brought Fox News along. They literally had several hundred agents from six different agencies. They told Fox News they were planning to net triple-digit arrests of gang members as a result of all these very impressive They ended up arresting exactly one person who they claimed was a gang member. Also, that first woman in the parking lot holding her coffee cup and cussing them out, they described her as an activist. I don't know, maybe she is. Looked to me like a super annoyed neighbor who was angry to see a bunch of ICE agents dressed up like the 82nd Airborne in her apartment building's parking lot. I would quote to you what she screamed at them, but I can't. Hey, you dumb What the is wrong with you? Get out of our community. Their coffee cup. Not all heroes wear capes. Today, after that footage was released, Trump's border Tsar Tom Homan announced that these media write-alongs songs might be coming to an end because of operational security. We're seeing communities mobilize across the country right now to protect immigrants in their neighborhoods from exactly what you just saw.
Big, flashy, made for TV propaganda ICE operations. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett is going to join us to talk about that here next. Stay with us. On his first full day in office, Donald Trump scrapped a long-standing US policy that says immigration agents can't enter public schools or health care facilities or houses of worship to go after immigrants. Today, people protesting that change rallied at a historic Episcopal Church in New York. Yesterday, the City Council in Ithaca, New York, voted unanimously to bar local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE raids. That's despite the Trump administration threatening to prosecute Ithaca public officials who don't cooperate with their crack down. Yesterday, one school superintendent in Alice, Texas, posted a letter alerting parents that ICE agents might board school busses to check citizenship of school kids. According to information the school board had received, That letter went up yesterday. It has since been removed from the school district website. From churches to schools to city councils to parking lots, people are pushing back against this administration's attempts to harass and arrest immigrants in their communities. Today, Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett was part of a group of lawmakers that introduced legislation to protect immigrants in sensitive locations.
Congresswoman Crockett says in her district, Kids are already missing school because parents are afraid of being arrested as they drop their kids off at school. She says, Family Families are also skipping doctors appointments and even emergency care that they need because they're afraid of being arrested at the hospital. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett joins us live now. Congresswoman, it's really nice to have you here on the show. Thank you for making time.
Absolutely.
What should people understand about the rationale for protecting places like schools, churches, synagogues, hospitals from immigration enforcement actions in the past?
Yeah, I mean, here This is very simple. First of all, I don't know my country anymore. When we are looking at situations that are so disruptive to our communities, and again, as you talked about the hero who wasn't necessarily wearing a cape, but instead had her coffee cup, when we think about the disruption to everyone because of something that really is a civil penalty, I want to get this across to your viewers, because I don't think that people understand that as Republicans, oftentimes say things like, Oh, they're illegal. They're illegal. According to federal law, you literally can get a traffic ticket that is more serious than what this is. It's a civil penalty. To have these guys disrupting you as you are trying to pray, whether you're an immigrant or not, you're disrupting a place of worship. Or tell me about what type of liability, even if you don't care about the people themselves, but tell me about the type of liability that we may face if somebody literally literally is trying to seek care and then you take them away from that care and into our custody. It doesn't make sense not to mention the disruption that it causes for everybody else that's seeking care.
Now we're talking about the kids. We're talking about parents not taking their kids to get the education that they need. The kids may be enjoying something that we call birthright citizenship. Yet they're missing out on school because their parents are too afraid to drop them off. The final point that I'll say is I want people to understand that undocumented folk in this country contribute approximately $100 billion in taxes, and they pay into Social Security that they can't pull down on. You tell me how any of this makes sense because the estimation is that it would cost us approximately $200 billion in the first year to try to effectuate this. We know the Republicans are proposing that ICE be given approximately $150 billion. Right now, that's causing a lot of consternation within the Republican caucus. That is why we are headed to a shutdown on March 14th, because instead of cutting money, it looks like they are absolutely going to need more money.
Let me ask you also about the impact as a representative from Texas who's been right in the middle of the culture war over this, but also who represents a very diverse district. It strikes me also that with some of these changes, not just saying we're going to go after people wholesale and not just making it into a big propaganda spectacle and inviting celebrities and handpicked media to go along to make it look like an episode of cops. But in addition to that, by going after, saying we want to go after people in schools and in places of worship and in healthcare facilities, the cruelty there and the impact there is to really isolate immigrant families or families that have mixed status so that they can't participate in the fabric of culture the way they do right now and in the basic fabric of services that we all avail ourselves of so that they are more isolated, so they are more afraid, so they don't feel supported by their fellow Americans and the other people who live among them. I wonder if you think that is the aim If so, if there are other things that Americans who are not in immigrant families, people who do not face these same threats, what they can do to bridge that distance.
Yeah, you know what? I think it's that, but I think it's even deeper than What we've seen out of this administration is nothing but chaos and confusion. That is how they, quote, unquote, lead, right? Here's the deal. Whether it's legal or whether it's not legal, it has the same effect, right? He decides, You know what? I'm going to make a big spectacle out of getting rid of this executive order. Then next thing you know, we're having to file legislation to try to protect. But who's keeping up with all of this drama that's happening? At the end of the day, it's whatever news headline they saw last first or first or whichever one they feel most comfortable with. Right now, what we have is that they have been able to inflict fear. This is why you brought up Texas, and this is going to impact Texas a ton as well as the rest of the country. But even when we start to think about the farms that we have in Texas, or we think about the fact that he even tried to do his little tariff war with Mexico. Mexico and Texas, we share a very special relationship for a lot of different for reasons.
But one is because they are our biggest trade partner as well. Now we've got all of these farmers that are saying, Hey, my farm workers are not showing up. It's not just the schools, the hospitals, and the religious institutions. It's actually everywhere. They are afraid to go to work, and that's only ending up causing more issues for us as Americans. That's what I need people to understand. This isn't a matter of, Oh, well, that's over there. This impacts all of us because, again, we are a country of immigrants. The fact that we have so many people that either don't know our history or want to ignore our history, or as we know this administration, especially in Black History Month, they want to delete our history. The reality is that immigrants have always been what made this country great, not this white supremacy agenda, which is what we are dealing with, and this is what they are doing. They are instilling fear, whether you are Black, whether you are Brown, whether you are someone who just wasn't born here, It's like the birthright citizenship. That is something that we find in our Constitution. He decided, he probably knew that with the stroke of a pen, he couldn't do anything about it.
But guess what? He caused confusion and he caused angst. That is what we're going to see more of.
Texas Congresswoman, Jasmine Crockett, anytime you want to come on this show, you just send up a little bat signal, and we will make space for you. I'd love to have you back here anytime you want to talk about what's going on in Washington, anytime you want to talk about what's going on in your district. I really appreciate your time tonight.
Thanks so much.
All right, we'll be right back. Wow, this hour felt like it was about 30 seconds long. I feel like I'm just getting going. But that's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again tomorrow and every weeknight at 9: 00 PM Eastern. I'll be here five nights a week for the first 100 days of the Trump administration. In the meantime, when I'm not on TV, you can find me on Blue Sky. I should tell you, the social media platform Blue Sky launched one year ago today. Happy first birthday, Blue Sky. It also just seems like you've only been here a blink. My Blue Sky account is @matto. Msnbc. Com.