Trump suffers frequent failures as Americans push back at every turn

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Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Really happy to have you here. We are closing in on the longest nights of the year, the shortest days of the year. And as we get closer to that turnaround point to the solstice, when the when the days will finally start getting longer once again and the nights will finally start getting shorter. As we also as we get close to that and we also right around that same time, get close to Christmas. One thing that a lot of churches do around this time of year is something that is called Blue Christmas. It is not a modern Christian tradition that we built around an Elvis Presley song, I swear. but I thought that for years. Blue Christmas is, in addition to being an excellent Elvis Presley song, and really, I think the anchor of the 1968 comeback Elvis special, we can all admit. Anyway, in addition to that, Blue Christmas is a, it's a kind of a modern tradition. It's a service that a lot of churches do around this time of year to acknowledge that the holidays, while they are joyful for a lot of people and in a lot of ways they are also sad for a lot of people, especially if you've lost people in your life, right? The holidays are a time when you think about people that you've lost and there can be a lot of grief and a lot of sadness. So Blue Christmas religious services around this time of year, it's kind of a sweet way to acknowledge that sort of make some space for that sadness and grief with or without Elvis. A few days ago, a group of Presbyterian pastors organized a blue Christmas service outside, outside the ICE prison where they have been locking up immigrants in Portland, Oregon. Local news organizations, including the Oregonian newspaper, covered it. They reported that a lot of the people who came out for the prayers and carols and scripture readings at the gates of that facility for that blue Christmas service, Those are people who had had never taken part in any kind of protest at that facility before. They'd maybe never protested anything before. They'd certainly never been to that ice prison. One church member who had never been to that site before, never protested before, said, quote, it feels like this is one small way to have to kind of have some hope and light in the midst of darkness, to remind people that they aren't alone. There are a lot of us in the faith community that stand with them. This weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem turned up in Chicago at the Navy Pier at a charity event that's held every year in Chicago around this time, where Christmas trees come in on a Coast Guard cutter and then they get distributed to needy families in Chicago through local Chicago nonprofits. Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem was greeted this year by protesters. The Grinch stole Christmas, but Christy Noem stole my neighbors. Also, ICE, our Herod's henchmen. If you know, you know. This one could maybe stick with her. I'm just imagining just big, bold letters. Santa's watching, Christy. Santa's watching. That was Chicago. This was Kenner, Louisiana this weekend, where they have adopted the whistles everybody used in Chicago to warn their neighbors about the presence of Trump's immigration agents. with Trump's agents now operating in places like Kenner, Louisiana. We've seen a whole bunch of Louisiana protests over the last few days, including this loud one in Kenner. Also protests at the federal building in New Orleans. We also saw anti-ICE, anti-Trump protesters dragged out of the New Orleans City Council meeting a few days ago. Those protesters were demanding no collaboration with ICE from their local leaders in the city of New Orleans. Trump's immigration agents also are making a big show of force in Minnesota right now. These are workers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport protesting in the bitter Minnesota cold against deportation flights that are being flown out of the airport where they work. This weekend, New Yorkers rallied for this six-year-old boy who Trump's immigration agents took away from his father. They arrested and locked up the father, who's an immigrant from China, and then they took his six-year-old son away from him and locked the boy up separately from where they locked up the father, two different facilities. This little six-year-old boy is enrolled in school in Queens, New York. In Queens, New York, this weekend, people rallied in support of him to demand that he and his dad be reunited and to demand that they be set free. This weekend, more than 1,200 New Yorkers underwent very practical training on how to safely observe and safely protest and safely try to protect their neighbors from Trump's immigration agents in anticipation that Trump's going to try some big New York operation sometime soon. There's huge training events in multiple parts of New York City this weekend just to train regular people how to respond, how to try to protect their immigrant neighbors if and when Trump's attack on New York comes. The mayor-elect of New York City is, of course, Zoran Mamdani. He gets sworn in on New Year's Day. But even in advance of mayor-elect Mamdani's first day on the job as mayor, look at this that he just put out. It's about 90 seconds long. Watch this. He put this out to help people in New York get ready to stand up against an anticipated attack by the federal government. Last weekend, ICE attempted to raid Canal Street and detain our immigrant neighbors. As mayor, I'll protect the rights of every single New Yorker, and that includes the more than three million immigrants who call the city their home. But we can all stand up to ICE if you know your rights. If you encounter ICE, these are the things that every New Yorker should know. First, ICE cannot enter into private spaces like your home, school, or a private area of your workplace without a judicial warrant signed by a judge. That looks like this. If ICE does not have a judicial warrant signed by a judge, you have the right to say, I do not consent to enter, and the right to keep your door closed. Sometimes ICE will show you paperwork that looks like this and tell you that they have the right to arrest you. That is false. ICE is legally allowed to lie to you, but you have the right to remain silent. If you're being detained, you may always ask, am I free to go, repeatedly, until they answer you. You are legally allowed to film ICE, as long as you do not interfere with an arrest. It is important to remain calm during any interaction with ICE or law enforcement. Do not impede their investigation, resist arrest, or run. One last thing. New Yorkers have a constitutional right to protest. And when I'm mayor, we will protect that right. New York will always welcome immigrants. And I will fight each and every day to protect, support and celebrate our immigrant brothers and sisters. OK, that is a why he is a bigger deal in democratic politics and in national politics than just being the mayor of the country's largest city. Right. How well done that is, how compelling that is. But B, that is also quality and very specific advice. I mean, when he it's that's a practical thing when he shows you on screen, this is what a judicial warrant looks like. When he gestures as that on screen, like this is where you check for the judge's name and signature. And then he shows you next. By the way, this is not a judicial warrant. This is what they will try to tell you is a judicial warrant, but it's not one. That's just really helpful, really practical advice in terms of potentially interacting with Trump's immigration agents. That's New York City. In Arizona, Democratic Congresswoman Adelita Grielva was pepper sprayed by Trump's immigration agents and had pepper balls shot at her feet after she had identified herself as a member of Congress. That was in response to Trump immigration raid of some kind in her district in Tucson, Arizona. In Nebraska, they've tried to do a kind of Florida alligator Alcatraz style thing where the state of Nebraska is running an immigration prison for the federal government. But they're running it as a state facility. One Democratic state senator named Michaela Kavanaugh from Omaha, Nebraska, she has now repeatedly turned up at the gates of that state run facility demanding to be let in to do oversight. She's in a good position to make that demand. There's a state law in Nebraska that says Nebraska state legislators are legally entitled to visit any correctional facility run by the state, quote, at any time. So she keeps turning up, demanding to be let in. And so far, they will not let her in. But she's making repeated demands and going public about it. And that is quite obviously grounds for a potent lawsuit. Right. It's also a potent reminder to members of Congress all across the country and to state legislators in these places where the states have agreed to run these immigration prisons for Trump. It's a reminder that elected officials in most cases, members of Congress, state legislators, in most cases, the law says they must be allowed in to inspect these facilities in most cases without notice so that they can see what's going on in there. It's a privilege afforded to elected officials that regular Americans can't employ, which means a lot more elected officials should be taking advantage of that, should be should be doing that in a lot more places, should be doing what state Senator Michaela Kavanaugh is doing in Nebraska. I mean, has your member of Congress been doing that? Demanding to be let in to whatever federal immigration facility they're taking people to from your state? Do you know your state rep, your state senator? I mean, when when elected officials do that, when they show up at the gates, when they show up to say, I'm here to see what's happening. They can get in in a way that regular people can't and even journalists can't. In most cases, they can get in to see what's happening there. They can tell the people they can tell the press. It makes the administration feel the pressure of knowing they being watched knowing they not in a black box or a legal black hole They will have to answer for what they doing one way or another someday Here another way that point is being made very potently A political action committee, a PAC called Women's March Win, has started running these ads in places where Trump's immigration agents are doing these big showy operations. They've run them in places like Chicago, also in Charlotte, North Carolina. But it's interesting, this ad, I'm going to show it to you in a second. These ads are not targeting the public or even elected officials in these places. They're running these in places where Trump's immigration agents are being surged because they want the immigration agents themselves to see them. Watch. You will be caught. You will be removed. And you will never return. Daddy, how was your day? A mask can't hide you from your neighbors. Your children and God will know you can walk away before the shame follows you. Daddy, how is your day? I mentioned those ads are running in places where Trump's immigration agents are being deployed in large numbers, places like Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina. They've also run those ads on TV in West Palm Beach, Florida. I guess on the unlikely chance that somebody with an itchy conscience might be watching there as well. Recently here on the show, we reported on a scrappy, beautiful little community on the coast of Oregon, a town called Newport, Oregon, which is a Dungeness crab fishing town. The Trump administration apparently wants to put some kind of immigration prison in that town. The Trump administration also took away from that town the Coast Guard rescue helicopter there. There'd been a Coast Guard rescue helicopter stationed in Newport, Oregon, because of the Dungeness Crab Fleet, because of the extremely risky, extremely dangerous work of that fishing fleet there. The Newport, Oregon Coast Guard rescue helicopter has rescued more than 500 people in the past 10 years. And then the Trump administration, with no notice, with no local consultation at all, they took it away. So we reported here recently on locals in that town protesting against the removal of that rescue helicopter and protesting against the Trump administration's apparent effort to put some kind of ice prison in that town. One Texas contractor that had been seeking land in the town near the airport, presumably for the immigration prison, that contractor pulled out and dropped their request to the town as soon as the locals started to protest. Well, now the town of Newport has got their helicopter back as well. Local protests, huge local turnout at town halls and local government meetings, both Oregon U.S. senators getting involved, a lawsuit brought by the locals that was then joined by the state. they, as of now, have their rescue helicopter back just in time for the start of the crab season. The local state rep in that town told us today that he and a local fisherman's wives group were told by the Trump administration that they'd taken the rescue helicopter away in the first place because of personnel issues, staffing shortages. The Trump administration then reportedly told a different story to the state's U.S. senators, telling them, no, no, it's not staffing shortages or personnel issues. They told the senators it was a maintenance issue for the helicopter for some reason. But then wouldn't you know it, once the Trump administration got dragged into court by these locals who sued them, the Trump administration had to admit under oath in court, yes, actually, they moved the rescue helicopter, the Coast Guard rescue helicopter out of Newport, Oregon, because the Coast Guard was told to send a helicopter down to San Diego to fly around the Mexican border and look for immigrants. That was the story. The comprehensive freaking uproar in that town has got them their Coast Guard rescue helicopter back, and so far it means no immigration prison has gone up in that town either. Sometimes when you fight, you win. Tonight, we're going to be talking to the app developer who made the app the IceBlock app. Remember this one? We talked about this on the show as well. The IceBlock app is an app for your phone. It helped people report to their neighbors when they saw Trump's immigration agents operating in their neighborhood. The Trump administration went to Apple. Apple, the literally multi-trillion dollar company, Apple. The Trump administration went to Apple and told Apple that they needed to take the IceBlock app out of the App Store. And Apple caved immediately, did it. They took the app down. They responded like they were some little pushover, scared operation that only wants to please the big bad bully because they have no choice. Apple did not stand up for itself. But the IceBlock guy, the guy who made the app, he is standing up. He told us when this happened, he told us here on this show that he had a plan to fight this, even if Apple wouldn't fight it. Well, now today he has put that plan into into place. He has put that plan into effect. He's going to join us live here tonight. You are going to want to see that tonight. We're also going to talk with a former director of the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He's sounding the alarm that with the Trump administration having now pretty well decimated the CDC and really broken what is supposed to be our public health safety net as a country. He is sending the alarm that we're going to need to approach those challenges some other way, that we're going to need to do something else as a country to make up for what is now a broken, decimated, ruined CDC. because sometimes you fight to protect someone or protect something. Sometimes you have to fight to build something new, to take the place of part of our government, part of our country that these guys have destroyed. The Trump administration right now seems to be at a weak ebb. They at least seem to be flailing in all sorts of interesting ways. Today, you might have seen Alina Habba had to resign. Trump has appointed a bunch of more or less wildly unqualified U.S. attorneys, top federal prosecutors in multiple states. These are people who are such insanely inappropriate choices for these jobs. They apparently can't be confirmed even by the same Senate that confirmed Pete Hegseth. Like that's so low a bar, you can't limbo under it if you had three sets of knees. I mean, Trump has nevertheless tried to keep these wildly, wildly unqualified U.S. attorney picks in these jobs beyond the limits of the law because they can't stay there indefinitely if they can't be confirmed by the Senate. Multiple courts have now told Trump that he can't do that, that these people are not serving legally. Today, after stomping and huffing about it for a while today, Alina Habba in New Jersey had to resign as U.S. attorney. The others who were appointed in circumstances similar to hers will likely have to resign as well. It's just a matter of when. One of the things Trump has used these bogus U.S. attorneys to do, particularly in the Eastern District of Virginia, is he's used these folks to bring federal charges against people he sees as his political enemies. Like, for example, New York State Attorney General Tish James, who Trump demanded should be charged with mortgage fraud for the way she filled out her mortgage paperwork. Remember that? Well, not only was that indictment against Tish James thrown out because Trump didn't properly appoint the U.S. attorney who brought that case, then a few days ago, Trump's Justice Department tried to bring the indictment against Tish James all over again under a new prosecutor. A grand jury told them to take a hike, refused to indict Tish James when they went back to a grand jury and asked them to do it again. And now today, ProPublica reports that if Trump really wants Tish James to be charged with mortgage fraud for this particular paperwork issue he sees in her mortgage paperwork, well, he should probably check his own files because Trump's own mortgage paperwork from his own mortgages in Florida turns out to be filled out exactly the same way that Tish James's paperwork was filled out. Oops. Oops, maybe he will turn himself in to be prosecuted. So we'll get into that tonight. The Trump administration and the president himself appear to have no idea how to handle the growing uproar over their repeated, obviously illegal bombings of civilian boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. Trump said last week that he would, of course, release the video of the second strike in September, where they apparently deliberately bombed civilian survivors of a first strike on one of those boats. Well, now, today, Trump said actually he won't do that. And he's denying that he ever said that he would. It was only last week. Do you really not remember? At the end of this month, Americans' health insurance premiums are due to skyrocket because of the policy changes Republicans forced through in Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill. Trump keeps saying that he's going to unveil a fix for that, that he's got some idea, he's got some plan. He pretty clearly doesn't seem to have any plan at all for how to fix that, which is going to be a big disaster for tens of millions of American families in less than a month at the end of this month when all of those premiums are going to go through the roof. And it is very clearly Trump and the Republicans fault. You think he's unpopular now. Wait till that kicks in. Trump also appears to be dealing with his guttering out approval ratings on the economy and on inflation in particular by just stopping producing government data on inflation from here on out. Because surely if you don't publish data about it, then it won't really be happening, right? No one will notice what they're actually paying. Americans are fighting against this administration in all sorts of interesting ways. And this president appears as weak and unpopular as he has ever been in all of his time in public life. You're seeing that. You're seeing that combination of his weakness and Americans appetite to fight him. You're seeing it in, frankly, every court except the United States Supreme Court. You're seeing it increasingly now, even in the Congress. You're seeing it at the black site prison gates amid the Presbyterian church ladies who have never protested anything before. but where they now holding a blue Christmas service now at the gates of the prison for the people locked up inside Today we just released two new episodes of Burn Order which is my new podcast about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and the remarkable fight against that. Non-Japanese Americans didn't come out in the streets and protest that when it happened. When their neighbors were rounded up and forced out of their homes and put on trains by the military and taken away to prison camps, to what FDR called concentration camps. Non-Japanese Americans did not protest in the streets. It's one of the hardest things to come to terms with from that very dark time in our nation's history. That said, there were some non-Japanese Americans who nevertheless found ways at least to help, at least to try to mitigate some of the harm, at least to go to the gates of the prisons. And that is its own kind of defiance against the mistreatment of others. There was no organized protest. There were no petitions. There was no effort to challenge the mass removal. People watched on the streets as the buses took them away. What hurt them the most, what was very painful for many of them, was that America had turned their back on them. That was true for most Americans. There was no mass movement of protests or loud objections or shows of solidarity. There was nothing at scale, at least. But that meant that the people who did stand up, the people who did take individual action alone, that took a very special kind of person. Including precisely one elected official, one unbending politician. who stood quite alone when he put his career on the line to say no, to refuse to do it. And in so doing, he changed the lives of thousands of Americans who were otherwise being betrayed by their own country. So that's from Burn Order. My new podcast episodes one through four are out right now. They're free to listen on any podcast app. The final two episodes will come out next week. times like this i firmly believe that history is here to help we've got a lot to get to tonight stay with us what do you know about the family detention center in dilly texas it's where our government imprisons immigrant parents children and even newborns a place with putrid drinking water food with bugs and worms and even a confirmed measles outbreak these conditions are unsafe and inhumane. The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, is the only legal aid provider inside Dilley, day in and day out. We're there right now, defending immigrants' rights to due process and filing emergency petitions to free families illegally detained. You can fuel our fight to protect the rights of our children, our neighbors, and all of us. Donate at freeallfamilies.org. That's freeallfamilies.org. This message comes from the International Rescue Committee in Gaza, Sudan, and crisis zones around the world. The IRC is working to deliver emergency aid to those who need it most. Donate today by visiting rescue.org slash rebuild. That winning feeling you love? Take it everywhere you go with the Hollywood casino app real money wins on all your favorite games including exclusive titles and app-wide cash jackpots that hit all day every day the casino floor is now at your fingertips new players bet five dollars and get 300 bonus spins plus up to five hundred dollars back in casino credits if you lose ten dollars plus in your first 24 hours hollywood casino download and play today must be 21 plus gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER i got to do something really fun recently i went to one of the greatest cities in the world, city of Chicago. I did a live event in Chicago at the Harris Theater right on the edge of Millennium Park. I got to speak with some of the really impressive, creative, resourceful leaders in Chicago, people who led the defense of that city when the Trump administration's masked, indisciplined pseudo-military immigration agents mounted their weeks-long attack on that city. In Chicago, I also got to sit down with the legendary historian Tim Snyder. His book On Tyranny is a pocket-sized and now ubiquitous guidebook to what individual people can do to stand up against and try to undermine authoritarianism. Chicago has been providing a sort of master class on that this first year of Trump 2.0. So if you were there in Chicago, it was great to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Chicago, you don't disappoint. It was such an amazing, amazing night. That said, if you were not there, and statistically speaking, if you're within the sound of my voice right now, you probably weren't. I am pleased to tell you that you'll be able to watch that event here on MS Now this Friday, 9 p.m. Eastern. It was kind of an amazing night in Chicago. We filmed it, so we're going to show it here, 9 o'clock Friday this week. And I will tell you, one of the things that really stuck with me from that night was that Professor Snyder said at one point in our discussion that he is less worried about there ultimately being a coast to coast, totally autocratic Trump dictatorship that controls everything in the entire United States of America. He's less worried about that prospect than he is that what Trump is doing to the country might pressure us and damage us in such a way that the United States of America breaks up. Because Trump is not just consolidating his power over the U.S. government. He's also simultaneously really breaking the government and breaking the country in as many ways as he can. If the federal government is broken, if Trump effectively destroys most important parts of the U.S. government, if that means in the very short term that Americans are losing data and infrastructure and services that the federal government alone provides. Well, one of the things that's going to happen in the relatively short term is that Americans are going to start organizing alternative structures to provide those things some way other than through the federal government. Take, for example, the CDC. For decades, the CDC has been the gold standard of science and health data, not just for this country, but for the world. Not now. You've heard by now that a CDC advisory panel appointed by RFK Jr. voted a few days ago to roll back longstanding recommendations about vaccinating babies for hepatitis B. RFK Jr.'s Star Wars bar scene handpicked advisory panel voted to get rid of that recommendation, even though that kind of vaccination is credited with virtually eliminating Hep B among newborns in the United States. And saving all the lives attendant in that. Later that same day, that same panel welcomed a lengthy presentation, 76 slides long, about vaccines, a presentation not from a doctor or a public health expert, but from RFK Jr.'s personal attorney. A man who has demanded, among other things, that the U.S. government should revoke approval of the polio vaccine. Because, yeah, who among us is not interested in bringing polio back at scale in the United States? 76 slides. Really? Things are weird at the CDC now. That is one of the things that Trump has thoroughly broken. And the closer you look, the worse it is. The Trump administration, for example, very quietly appointed as the second in command at the CDC, a former state health official from Louisiana who is credited with halting the vaccination campaigns in that state and promoting quack cures for COVID-19. They installed him as the number two official at CDC and then didn't tell anyone they had done so. This is what has become of what used to be the global gold standard health organization, which our country spent generations building. That was the envy of the world. So what do we as Americans do about that? When the authoritative source, our doctors turn to, the world's doctors turn to, for the best scientific guidance on how to keep us healthy, when that entity can no longer be trusted, what do we do instead? Turns out there's a plan for that, and it's already partially in effect, and that's here next. Stay with us. If you're a parent and want to help set up your child for success, then IXL is a right for your family. As an effective and affordable online and learning program. IXL covers math, language arts, science, and social studies using interactive practice problems for kids from pre-K to 12th grade. Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at IXL.com slash 20. Visit IXL.com slash 20 to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Don't you wish everything was more rewarding? With Rakuten, almost everything is. You can earn cash back on those new shoes you've been wanting. you can save on the next trip you book. You can cash in on groceries. Just join, shop thousands of your favorite brands, and save. And when it's time to redeem those rewards, choose PayPal, check, bill points, or cash out with gift cards. So go ahead. Take a trip. Fill a cart. Order dessert. Rakuten is a world of rewards. Join today for free. Go to Rakuten.com or get the app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Performance comes down to controlling what you can. For Jessica Pagula, it starts with the air around her. A Blue Air user for over five years, she trusts Blue Signature air purifiers, engineered to perform and designed to impress. Shop BlueAir.com and use code Signature30. A few months ago, groups of states in the West and in the Northeast formed health alliances. They said they wanted to provide their states, citizens, with guidance about vaccines based on the best scientific evidence. And they started to do that as states because the CDC, the federal agency that had provided that gold standard scientific data for decades, is now under the control of Trump's brain worms and whale carcasses and psychedelics weirdo anti-vaccine health secretary RFK Jr. After his handpicked advisory panel voted last week to roll back a decades old crucial recommendation on the hepatitis B vaccine, vaccine. Those new health alliances, the state-based health alliances, they rejected the CDC's new advice. Those states are telling their doctors and patients to continue vaccinating for hepatitis B. Just last week in Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a bill ordering his state's health department to establish state vaccine requirements for the people of Illinois that will make vaccines more available to Illinois kids that will require insurance companies to cover them. If the federal government breaks under the presidency of Donald Trump, who else can do this stuff? Who can step in? Former CDC chief Dr Richard Besser says that if the agency he once ran continues in its current direction quote the health consequences will be devastating More babies and young children will suffer from severe preventable illness and some will die He says those of us who care about children's health cannot allow this to happen. Policymakers, physicians and families, and this is the really important part, must turn to reputable medical and public health groups for guidance. And health insurers should do the same for informing what vaccines they will cover. turn to reputable groups. What's implicit there is that reputable at this point means not affiliated with the increasingly bizarre and broken U.S. federal government. If states and health institutions and even insurance companies start turning away from the U.S. federal government to create their own health infrastructure across this country by necessity, that's really interesting. It's also a really different kind of country than we have than the one that we have been living in. Joining us now live here on set is Dr. Richard Besser. He's former acting head of the CDC. He's now president of the very, very important Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Besser, thank you so much for being here. It's great to be here, Rachel. Let me ask you about the way that I have framed this. I certainly don't need you to accept that framing, but I want you to give you a chance to push back if you think it's wrong. I'm seeing an emerging need and an emerging development of non-federal health infrastructure in this country. in a way that seems to be coming sort of increasingly official because it needs to be. I think that's right. You know, I worked at the CDC for 13 years. There's no part of my career I'm prouder of than serving our country as a civil servant. And to have to say that I would not recommend people turn to the CDC for information about vaccines or any other health issue, to be honest, it's absolutely heartbreaking. But what we've seen with Secretary Kennedy is one of the nation's leading anti-vaccine crusaders now in a position to move forward an agenda that is so incredibly dangerous to the health of people. I'm a pediatrician and practiced pediatrics for more than 30 years. And I always told people to turn to the CDC if they wanted to really know the truth, they wanted to know the evidence. And you can't do that now. It's just impossible for someone who isn't a scientist, and even there it's challenging, to sort out that from fiction. They don't seem to be basing their decisions, at least around this hepatitis B thing, which I followed pretty closely, they don't seem to be basing it on published data, on peer-reviewed, published data that other people can review to assess the soundness of their decision. That alone, just as a process, seems like, you know, alchemy compared to chemistry. It just is there any precedent for that at CDC? Is any mistake have mistakes of this type been made at CDC before? No, I mean, there's an intentionality around it. So the presentations that were made at the meetings last week to reach that conclusion were done by people who are anti-vaccine advocates. You know, the traditional way this is done is that CDC scientists who are experts in their field will present the evidence, the benefits from vaccines, the potential harms from vaccines, the information about the disease you're looking to prevent. And then there would be a really robust debate and discussion around what to do, what's the best policy. But here you have a public health strategy around hepatitis B that was working. You know, it had been changed in 1991 because while we'd reduced hepatitis B, we hadn't knocked it out of the park. And so they said, let's vaccinate newborns so that all those kids who are getting infected when they're really young wouldn't get infected. And so by the time they were adults, they wouldn't develop liver failure. They wouldn't develop cancer. And it worked perfectly. A vaccine that was safe, that was effective, it worked. And here you have an administrations that say, well, I don't think kids should should get this vaccine. And it's like, why? Well, can you tell me that no one has ever been harmed by this? Well, science does science can't answer the question of never. You can't prove a never. You know, Paul Offit, who's a vaccine expert, says it's like saying, can you tell me a chicken McNugget has never caused caused harm? It's like, no, it's not the way it works. And so here you have an administration that is looking to take out the whole child vaccine schedule. And they're on the path to do that. Hepatitis B is just the start. And they came in with that agenda and they very effectively put forward this nonsense that we can no longer support and endorse. And so you cannot look to the CDC for the information. You have to look to these other sources. And those other sources are going to include states and they're going to include medical associations. Yeah. I mean, the Academy of Pediatrics is a great place to turn. But the first place people should turn is to their own doctor, their nurse practitioner, their pharmacist, someone they trust who can help sort through this information. Dr. Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, former CDC director. Sir, thank you for being here. It's really good to have you here. Thanks so much. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us. It's called IceBlock. It's an app for your phone. You know how there's apps you use when you're driving and on the app it tells you if there's a speed trap coming up? They get that speed trap information from other people using that app and reporting that the speed trap is there. Once you find out that it's there, you can make of that what you will. You can use that information however you see fit as you drive down the road. IceBlock does something very similar to that, but instead of speed cameras, it's for ice activity, for immigration agents. Maybe you want to avoid areas where they are operating for whatever reason. Maybe you just don't like tear gas or whistles. IceBlock was created by a software developer in Texas named Joshua Aaron. Naturally, the Trump administration has gone on the warpath against this thing. First, they tried to scare people out of using it. Attorney General Pam Bondi said they were looking at the app and said they were looking at Joshua Aaron and that he better, quote, watch out. White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt actually attacked reporters for covering the app as news that backfired. Quote, IceBlock climbs to top of the app store charts after officials slam it. Rather than burying this thing, the Trump administration inadvertently spurred hundreds of thousands of Americans to download the app. After that own goal, the administration tried something else. They had tried pressuring the app's creator, Mr. Aaron. They had tried pressuring reporters. The new strategy was to pressure Apple to take the IceBlock app out of the App Store for Apple iPhones. In October, Apple did that, removed IceBlock and other apps like it. Apple said the decision was based on information we've received from law enforcement. But you know what? It's not clear this new strategy is working out all that well either. This was outside an Apple store in Portland, Oregon on Black Friday. People dressed up in Santa hats and frog costumes, protesting Apple specifically over the company's decision to block IceBlock from the App Store. And then today, this software developer Joshua Aaron is now suing the Trump administration, suing Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and a slew of other Trump officials for violating his First Amendment rights to free speech. Lawsuit says the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, was crafted precisely to safeguard the people's ability to question authority, expose governmental abuse, and hold public officials accountable, a reflection of the founders' belief that an informed and vocal citizenry is the ultimate guardian of liberty. Mr. Aaron's creation, distribution, and promotion of ice block is plainly lawful and protected by the First Amendment. Attorneys for Mr. Aaron filing that suit today on his behalf in federal court in D.C. Attorneys, I should tell you, who are very well-regarded attorneys who are considered to be very serious litigators. This lawsuit is a big deal. We reached out to Apple today for any comment the company might have. We haven't heard back, but we do have with us tonight the creator of IceBlock himself, Joshua Aaron. Mr. Aaron, thank you very much for coming back. It's nice to see you. Thank you so much for having me back, Rachel. Why did you decide to file this lawsuit? Well, I think you summed it up beautifully in your intro. I decided to file this lawsuit because this administration violated our First Amendment rights. You know, in 1963, there's a Supreme Court case, Bantam Books v. Sullivan, and they define jawboning as unconstitutional governmental censorship to suppress speech. I think I got that right. But basically what it did was it established jawboning as a direct violation of the First Amendment. So, you know, this is basically exactly what A.G. Bondi and the Trump administration did to us. And it's really interesting because I know that you love history. I love history. And it reminds me of one of my favorite Ben Franklin quotes, because when he was asked what kind of government the delegates had created, his answer was a republic. If you can keep it basically saying that our democratic republic is not guaranteed and instead requires an active and informed citizenry. And a lesson we should all take from that is that when we see the government doing something wrong, it is our duty as citizens to hold them accountable. And that's exactly what we're doing here. I saw that quote from the statement from your lead counsel, Deirdre von Dornem, who said, if we allow community sharing of information to be silenced, our democracy will fail. And it was exactly that point that you're just making that made me think of that. Let me ask you, what's the current status of the app? Are there platforms on which people can still get it, can still use it? Is there a web-based version available, for example? Yes, it's a great question. There isn't a web-based version available. However, anybody who has it installed can still use it just as they always have before, and we encourage them to do so. The big difference when it was removed is that nobody can download it again. And funny enough, Even myself, I, the creator, got a new phone and I don't have it on my phone because it is just not available anymore. So for anybody who does have it, I encourage you to keep using it and protect yourselves and your communities. Joshua Aaron, developer of the IceBlock app, who today has brought a powerhouse lawsuit against the Trump administration for their efforts to shut it down. Keep a surprise, Mr. Aaron. Thank you very much for your time tonight. I appreciate you being here. My pleasure. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. Stay with us. one last thing before we go if you had wanted to come to to la this weekend to come to see me in la this weekend for the live event that i'm doing at the orpheum theater on sunday about burn order the new podcast that show you might have noticed has been sold out for a while just tonight we added a few dozen more tickets i don't really understand how they did it but they did so if you had been wanting to come to the Orpheum Theater this Sunday for that live event, you can still do so. We just opened up new tickets, so you can scan the QR code on the screen right now to see what's available, or just go to our website, ms.now slash burn order. All right, that does it for me tonight. If you dread dealing with your insurance more than getting stuck in an elevator with an overshare, bean burrito for lunch, you have Insuranoia. You should have NJM. They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders. 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