Trump Admin Retreats on ICE Agenda

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0:35So why waste time sending important documents the old-fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want with Stamps.com. Print postage on demand 24-7 and schedule pickups from your office or home. Save up to 90 % with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust Stamps.com. Go to Stamps.com and use code PODCAST to try Stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber, covering President Trump, pulling ICE and federal agents from Minneapolis. This is a clearly measurable step by the Trump administration amid what have been ongoing protests and backlash that has overwhelmed them and their message.

1:14The announcement actually made by the very official that Trump sent to Minnesota after agents killed a protester and they wanted to change the so-called face of operations there. Tom Homan stating that 700 agents are leaving now, immediately. That is a measurable drawdown. We also want you to have the full picture. It still leaves about 2 ,000 agents there, which is unusual. This whole way that Trump has been putting ICE and DHS agents in these places has been unusual. and they are part of a larger force that we know has been drawing the protests over everything from the masked policing to the menacing of American citizens, some agents caught on camera threatening people, threatening to punish First Amendment rights, the unprofessional and untrained tactics, and what you see on your screen, the two Americans slain, which has shocked the nation's conscience.

2:03So before I go any further, let me just tell you what the facts are here tonight. President Trump is reducing the forces there, that's a fact. and the Trump administration is publicizing it. For a very PR conscious president, that shows the impact of these protests and the pressure and this backlash because there has been at the political level a failure by the administration to do what it so often does, to try to change the subject, replacing one outrage with another, with one topic with another. Trump has done that. That's one of his well-known media political tactics, something that even his critics say with lament that he is effective at, because he has been a reality show star, a self-promoter, an early Twitter adopter.

2:47Everybody knows how he does that, and it's failed here. So now, after all of this and those deaths and these other problems, the Trump administration is trying to shift both message and policy, and that means there can still be the usual exaggerations. As journalists, we try to fact-check and cover what's happening, but there is a shift. Activists warning the administration has a much more to do if it is going to actually respect the Constitution and public safety in Minnesota and elsewhere, which is why protesters are continuing on many efforts. There's now about 30 ,000 people and counting trained as constitutional observers.

3:21That's in that state alone. Across the country, this issue has become a focal point for the protests against Trump and the king-like efforts to search or patrol or police and even kill, all without the legal oversight that this country has long demanded, especially of federal government intrusions into what is usually local police tactics. The administration initially tried to ignore and criticize and even mock the many millions of Americans who turned out across this year the second term. And we've covered how some have folded like CEOs and read, while other groups, protesters, citizens on juries, many journalists, have not been cowed.

4:00But the approach is failing because the administration is now, both as I mentioned in the drawdown and in its messaging, trying to at least say they're offering something back to those many millions of protesters. The Trump administration has reached a point where it does not want to risk looking like it cannot see any aspect of a problem that is before all of us that Americans have seen across the political spectrum with their own eyes. because when you see masked ICE agents menacing people as they've been caught on video, killing Americans, and then a government lying about those videos, and then the government initially saying they wouldn't even investigate or have any rule of law for this, no.

4:43That's a problem people see. Drawing down several hundred agents who are a part of that is a way of saying, hey, we get it, even if people can debate whether they get it at all yet. Rachel Maddow has been reporting on the results from those protests, including halting the construction of new ice centers. We are seeing continued rolling huge anti-ice protests everywhere now. These wonderful patriots have defeated the concentration camp.

5:16My director of inspections, licenses and permits revoked the building permit for this detention center. We're not leaving! Are they going to be able to build a huge, permanent archipelago of camps, of lawless prison camps? There's pushback everywhere, including in red states, red counties, and red cities, that says no. Pushback everywhere saying no. Pushback of huge, measurable levels. citizens also showing courage in places where we just watch agents kill their neighbors even as CEOs and elites fold local officials using powers we can take it off the let's take off that video for a sec I'm getting so many flashes local officials using powers that they have to thwart the ICE tactics in any way they can as Rachel described there this is still a country we have here that means there's local officials that means there's different power centers there is federalism and there's capitalism, which sometimes is seen as going along with anything.

6:25But capitalism can also mean the public demanding rules, human rights, values, rule of law on the companies that they have any leverage for. Then we've reported on Democrats in D.C. who are in the minority but are now trying new ways to protect the public from using that shutdown clash to taking testimony from witnesses in public, which we heard this week about these killings. That alone is powerful because the Trump DOJ has signaled that in some of these cases, it may not even bother fully investigating killings of Americans. So Democrats in that sad, obviously regrettable situation are not just writing letters criticizing it, but taking the testimony in public themselves.

7:05This is what people saw. This is how this killing went down. Here's the question about whether this person should still be walking around with a gun, making a salary from your tax dollars, let alone the more long-term legal question, which has to be investigated, whether anyone committed a crime pursuant to those Americans shot to death. I will tell you, an aggressive government can leave people feeling abused and hopeless. Politics sometimes, even as people are dying, can feel like it's viewed by many as a game, with political hacks deliberately trying to leave people feeling powerless, like their voice doesn't matter, like protests will be met with more of the very things that people are protesting, including government violence and abuse, something we've covered dates all the way back to earlier, uglier periods in our history.

7:54And yet some of these activists are now seizing lawful, peaceful, and effective power that's happening before our eyes with, as I mentioned, at least some measurable results without any indication that Trump has retracted the ICE agenda. I say that by way of introduction to a special guest tonight to start the program because we have a familiar beat guest, Jay Comanduri, an Obama campaign veteran, and Aru Shania Jay, who directs the Sunrise Movement in Minneapolis, which has organized protests like this one we mentioned that pressures hotels to stop housing ICE agents, that pressures local businesses, that tries to have lawful direct action.

8:35And as we see on our cameras there, people at night trying to make sure their voices are also heard, even at a time where some of their neighbors were killed. Welcome to both of you. Aru, your thoughts on what works and what you say to people who do feel potentially dispirited, which I mentioned can be part of the agenda. Yeah, I mean, I think everything that we've seen in the last three weeks since Renee Goode was first murdered is an incredible example of what organized people can do. We're at a point now where in Minneapolis, 5 % of every single neighborhood is in a signal chat organizing to be able to respond to ISIS overreach.

9:17It's an incredible density. And what we've seen is that that network of ordinary citizens was basically able to force the U.S. government to take a step back. To force the government back is an incredibly powerful thing. And it happened because of the density of organizing happening right now. It happened because, and you can hear this from Greg Bovino himself, It happened because his agents can't go anywhere without getting yelled at, getting blocked from the roads, getting noise outside the hotels they sleep at, getting refused service at restaurants. We're making it impossible for them to operate.

9:52And that is having success. Yeah. And you're doing that against the pushback and sometimes possibly illegal crackdowns. Just a couple of headlines here. Homeland Security forcing tech companies to hand over data about Trump critics. There can be times that's legal. There can definitely times where it violates the First Amendment, depending on the details. The DHS having these secretive subpoenas, again, around Americans. When we talk about sometimes now security letters or that being used against possibly foreign terror attacks, legally that's been allowed. Whether that can work against Americans in the long run once exposed is a big question.

10:28And you see local coverage in Maine. ICE demanding a Maine sheriff's employment records after he criticized it, which shows you, as is often the case when there's autocratic creep, Aru, someone who's devoted their life to being in law enforcement in Maine, learning very quickly that if you exercise First Amendment rights, sheriffs can obviously speak on these matters. There may be a DHS Trump crackdown. Your view of how your teams are fighting this, you can't minimize it and say it's not a risk, but how are you fighting it and sort of keeping spirits up? I mean, I think that something very beautiful was unleashed in the Twin Cities the last three weeks.

11:09This sense of solidarity, of being on the same team. I think about the moment after Alex Priddy was killed. I drove out to a few blocks or the block where he was shot. And the minute that I got there, I saw this man getting tackled to the ground and having tear gas sprayed at him. and a couple of us like pulled him up and I remember grabbing Snow and like pushing it to his face to like wipe off the tear gas. And there was just this like this fear, but also this sense of like we're in it together. I think that's what it is at the end of the day. Like people are seeing crisis happen and it is actually calling us closer together and into more bravery and more courage.

11:51So yeah, there might be tracking and there might be surveillance, but I think courage models courage and hundreds of thousands of people are finding that out right now. Che, what does political history teach us about what Aru is sharing there? Well, I think that courage is contagious. And I think you definitely saw that with what Aru and the Sunrise Movement and the people of Minnesota did in pushing back against Trump and MAGA. And what it really did show us is that, you know, normal people taking to the streets are far more powerful than any of these elites who have coddled to Trump, who have surrendered to Trump could ever imagine.

12:32You know, as another famous Minnesotan said, the times they are are changing. And the reality is, is that the MAGA vibe shift that people talked about a year ago, a year and a half ago, that caused all this elite surrender to Trump. It is now shifted back and it is shifted back because of the people of Minnesota. We have a clip from some of the Sunrise Movement material. We played some of this in the lead, but here it is with full sound, the chanting. And this was at one of the Hilton hotels.

13:14As this continues, we see some agents then, though, threatening people in ways that probably violate the Constitution, and they're not hiding it. Here's one agent. This is an ICE officer. We believe this was in Maine on January 23rd. It's not illegal to record. Exactly. Yeah. That's what we're doing. Yeah. Why are you taking my information down? Because we have a nice little database. Oh, good. And now you're considered a domestic terrorist. We're videotaping you? Are you crazy? Aru, what do you tell activists in terms of these type of engagements, especially a time where some have escalated? And I should mention that, you know, most law enforcement training, federal and local, discourages getting into escalation or arguments with individuals.

14:06If there's an operation going on, then you might have legal reasons to detain someone and you're engaging. But they generally discourage exactly what we saw there, what sounds like a threat, possibly illegal if acted upon, but also a kind of a churlish menacing of a random person, in this case, seeming to be an American. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, these ICE agents are completely untrained people who have been sent out onto the streets and are currently terrorizing ordinary people. I think it's terrifying. And also the fact that that is what is happening is exactly why we need hundreds of thousands of us out on the streets, documenting them, showing what they're doing and making sure that they are not welcome in any of our cities.

14:48And I believe that if we can beat them back in Minneapolis, we can beat them back across the country. And I hope that this becomes a turning of the tides to make sure that ordinary people can, yes, get out and protest, but also that we make sure that the institutions that enable this in the day-to-day, the hotels that house them, the rental car companies that rent out cars, that we stop letting institutions enable ICE to operate. And if we do that, I actually think that we could be able to push back ICE from any city that they try to enter. Jay, what do you think about how that works in our politics where there are policy issues that people debate furiously, sometimes endlessly.

15:27And then there are issues that go in the category of values, where if you're completely out of step with them, you're likely to lose every election until you get back in step. And I wonder if you think in this second term, where some of the worst things people warned about Trump that were minimized by all sorts of figures, including elites, that they're actually happening. And the masked agents and the obvious discriminatory approach of this, I've mentioned of the top three states, Haru, you probably know this, where the most undocumented immigrants are, two of them are Texas and Florida. So Che, we can debate how to patrol the border and I think it's a legitimate debate.

16:11But everyone can see that Donald Trump is sending these tactics into places that he considers his opponents, not the places where the most undocumented are. Well, you know, politics, you know, you have left and right. But in life and morality and ethics, you have a right and a wrong. What Donald Trump did in Minnesota was just plain wrong. Sending masked men into the streets without warrants, racially profiling people, bringing out grandfathers in their underwear in the snow, harassing, humiliating, and frightening people, that is just plain wrong. And sometimes in life, you just have to stand up for what is right and not worry about the political consequences of it.

16:57You know, now is not the time, you know, to be Mr. Spock. Now's the time to be Captain Kirk, to be someone who goes into emotion, who speaks to our emotions and speaks with a certain moral clarity. That was something that has really been missing in America over the last year or so. But I think we saw some of that in the streets of Minnesota, Minnesota. Che and Aru, as we look at these protests and some of the measurable government reaction, really appreciate both of your time. Thank you very much. A related story coming up. Jeff Bezos spent millions through Amazon on this Melania film. But today the headlines are about him gutting The Washington Post, firing journalists as he cozies up to the administration.

17:37We have that story and another state punching back against these efforts to seize ballots with MAGA threats about the next election. We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November. Let's put you on notice again. ICE is going to be around the polls in the 2026 midterm elections. Meanwhile, many artists are speaking out. We have the best-selling novelist Don Winslow, who's also been very clear in his activism and public remarks against Donald Trump. He joins me later tonight. But next, with so much going on, we have not forgot about the ongoing reports, new material on these Epstein files, including a Wall Street Journal expose.

18:20We have the details when we return in 90 seconds.

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20:00Journalists and experts still pouring over the millions of new Epstein files released under the law that Congress forced through over Donald Trump's many objections across the first year of his second term. We're learning new details about how Epstein courted power from elite institutions to top moguls, even doctors, lawyers, tech leaders. It was an array of individuals that gives greater insight into the web he weaved and maybe how he helped himself stay on the lam for so long. Wall Street Journal reports on, quote, flirty emails and chummy photos that show an intricately spun web of influence.

20:34And then Epstein, who was a big name dropper and kind of a con man one upper, would invoke his connections to then amass the wealthy and powerful friends which may have helped protect him. Now, these interactions come after Epstein served time for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Peter Atia, who's really known as a longevity influencer, one of these sort of medical gurus, self-proclaimed. He's in the files hundreds of times through 2019, including meetings with Epstein. There's a major businessman, someone who's more behind the scenes, but known to all kinds of folks in media and the Olympics.

21:10Casey Wasserman, chair of the 2028 Games, exchanging what sounded like suggestive emails with Jelaine Maxwell. He has spoken out about that and regretted it. Or take the newly tapped Melania director, Brett Ratner, who already was in trouble and sort of put out of Hollywood for sexual misconduct allegations. He's seen in images with unidentified women. He said one was his former fiance, but he is in the files. Epstein also kept ties with Silicon Valley's elite. Again, this was in a decade, the Guardian notes, after his publicly known prison stay, the first one. In 2018, he was still going to dinners where you would see Musk, Bezos, the Google founders, Page and Bryn.

21:57His conviction as a sex offender had, according to The Guardian, quote, little effect on his ability to move among those billionaire elites. The Democrat who led the successful effort to get these files out discussing the results. I mean, you have some of the most wealthy individuals, tech leaders, finance leaders, politicians, all implicated in some way, having emails about wanting to go to Epstein's island, knowing that Epstein was a pedophile. It's frankly one of the largest scandals, in my view, in our country's history. And there is a demand for elite accountability. We're O 'Connor discussing the problem and the call for elite accountability.

22:46There are many layers to this. Some people have defended popping up in the files by saying that they or their institutions didn't know everything. And best we can tell, that's true. Although, as we mentioned, after a certain point in time, it was clear Epstein had that prior criminal offense. But even those institutions are still a part of the problem, even if there's no evidence that they were, for example, themselves actively going to the island. That's important if we legally and otherwise want to get to the bottom of all this, because Epstein was cultivating these relationships on purpose.

23:19We talk about the billionaire class and how money works. This is one of the problems that if you care about these victims and what happened and you want to prevent it next time, we need to root out from the bottom. So there's a lot of charity and money that flies around in America. Politico reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to, yes, a worthy cause, Mount Sinai, but how that was misused by Epstein to peddle influence, which corresponds with a surgeon there who then did visit Epstein's island. The doctor saying at one point for Epstein, anything is possible. Now, Mount Sinai might be able to use the money, but they have to understand they were also probably being used.

23:57Other files show Epstein benefiting from a direct line to their ER list, last-minute medical appointments, discussions on procuring ambulances for his private island. This is a broad and expansive web. And the misuse of money to gain access is part of the problem because you have people who take the money because they say, well, this university or hospital needs it. But then you had Mr. Epstein walking around invoking those associations to continue to build his web, a web that best we can tell has still prevented a complete accountability and investigation of all of the individuals involved. We turn to that question and what we're learning from these accounts with Molly Jong Fast next.

24:43Next.

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