MAGA melts down after Supreme Court hands Trump mail-in ballot defeat

Instagram teen accounts default teens into automatic protections for who can contact them and the content they can see. Explore teen accounts and all of our ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you proved it to you, would that frighten you? While now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Good evening from Washington. I'm Jacob Soberoff in for Chris Hayes tonight. The upshot of four major decisions handed down by the Supreme Court today is that Donald Trump is still somewhat accountable for his conduct as president of the United States. It is the end of the Supreme Court term and justices are about to stop working for the summer. And today the court let a lower ruling stand that found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. A jury had ordered him to pay her $5 million. civil judgment, Trump appealed, and today the Supreme Court declined to hear it. Now, he must pay. The court also voted five before to block Trump from immediately firing Lisa Cook, the first black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board. And today, the financial markets watched that case closely, worrying that Trump, excuse me, would install a Fed board to manipulate interest rates for him. But instead, the Supreme Court said Cook can keep her job while she sues the Trump administration for wrongful termination. In a separate ruling, the court six conservatives voted to grant Trump new sweeping powers to fire the heads of other government agencies without cause, overturning nearly 100 years of precedent set by the Supreme Court in 1935. We're going to have much more for you on that decision in just a few minutes. But while Trump continues to treat the federal government as his personal plaything, It is still not entirely his. Not as long as he and his party can be voted out of office. So he is doing everything that he can to make that harder. Of course, if you remember 2020, that is not something new. Even after the votes were cast, Trump cried fraud, claiming there were thousands of illegitimate votes. This is something that I covered. I covered it in Nevada, where his former intelligence chief was making similar claims, and I chased him down. Hey, Rick Rennell, we're live on MSNBC right now. Can you talk about the evidence you're claiming thousands of illegitimate votes here in the battle? What's the evidence? You should go in and ask the question of the clerk. No, no, no, no. You guys just made the claim. No, in fact, you also said there's no election observers. There's Democratic and Republican election observers inside Mr. Grinnell. Former DNI, Gronel, acting DNI. Where is the evidence of the fraud? You haven't presented any evidence of fraud. Just like it was yesterday, I should tell you the guy who defeated those claims out of Nevada is Mark Elias. And Mark Elias will be joining me in just a moment right here. But Trump's campaign against mail-in voting has been a centerpiece of this campaign. In fact, he has been crusading against Malin balloting since the pandemic.

They're using COVID to try and get the mail-in ballots. You'll never know who won that state. It'll get messed up just like New York and just like Patterson, New Jersey, and just like many other places. We just don't want cheating in our elections. And you see it happening in California. Those numbers are coming down rapidly. They found a lot of mail-in ballots last night, shockingly. Not shockingly. Donald Trump finds mail-in ballots very suspicious, but of course, not when they come from him. Tell me about mail-in ballots. You may not use the mail-in ballot. You probably said, yeah, I did. You know what? Because I'm president of the United States, and because of the fact that I'm president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida. Here's the thing. A lot of Republicans and Democrats vote by mail. But Trump and Republicans know that male voters are disproportionately first-timers and young voters. and voters who move around. Minorities too, all groups that tend to vote for Democrats in greater numbers. And this is why the Republican leadership of Mississippi essentially allowed themselves to be sued by the Republican National Committee to stop counting the state's mail ballots on election day, leaving many valid ballots uncounted. Both sides hoped that the conservative Supreme Court would affirm that practice. But today, but today in a surprise ruling. the high court refused to play along. The justices ruled five to four against Republicans, allowing mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted as long as they are post-mart by Election Day. That had long been the law in 30 states plus here in the District of Columbia. It is exactly the way it works. When you pay your taxes, when you pay most bills, you send it on the due date or by the due date. It may arrive later, but the postmark is what counts. Despite all of Trump's arguments, the Supreme Court today said, nope, mail-in ballots are normal, and mail-in ballots are legal, and the federal government has no space to interfere here. And that came in a ruling written by conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett, and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court's three liberal justices. Needless to say, Donald Trump... He has not taken that news well. He called the decision a tremendous loss today. Republicans have been targeted and targeting mail-in votes since before the 2020 election. And today, for the moment at least, they have failed in that effort. Mark Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket and a voting rights attorney who's firm litigated today's Supreme Court ruling on mail-in ballots, and he joins me. Now, Mark, congratulations on the ruling today, and I want to start with your overall reaction to the decision. Five justices, if I have this right, who have never joined on an opinion together before. Yeah, look, it was a good day for democracy. I mean, you point out that Donald Trump has been trying to undermine free and fair elections for almost as long as he's

been in public life. I mean, remember, this is the guy who spread the birth or conspiracy about Barack Obama and whether he was eligible. And in 2020, I remember very well those cases in Nevada, which we were happy to win in route to winning more than 60 cases against Donald Trump, won a big election contest in Nevada that year, written actually by a Republican trial judge and affirmed unanimously by the state Supreme Court. And look, today's decision should have been a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, but it wasn't. But, you know, We take a win where we get it. And in addition to the good news out of the Supreme Court today, I'm also happy to report that we handed the Department of Justice its 11th defeat in its effort to get access to state voter files this time in New Hampshire. Because I was watching on with Nicole Wallace earlier today, and because she gave you the opportunity and you didn't, you said 60-something and nothing. But I think, I mean, what is your overall record against the Trump administration now when it comes to these voting cases? I was trying to put it together myself, but it's got to be over 70 and maybe just one? Oh, I mean, it's pretty good. I mean, I haven't actually totaled it up going all the way back to, you know, 2019, 2020. But I'll do that. And I'll come back on the show and I'll let you know. But look, we've won. I have to think more than 100 cases against Donald Trump and his, you know, Republican allies. But we'll come back with a direct score for you. It was a thumping, I think it's fair to say. Talk to me about the scale of the disenfranchisement that Republicans were seeking here. How many voters are we actually talking about who could have been impacted had this gone the other way? Yeah, I'm glad to ask that question because sometimes I think people hear these disputes and they think, well, you know, How many people's is really a factor? How many people don't have this idea? Or how many people don't, you know, have this or that. In this case, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of otherwise lawful votes that would have been thrown in the garbage. These are people who did everything right. They jump through all the hoops that have been put in there in front of them. They have completed their mail. They've obtained a mail-in ballot. They've completed it. They've returned it in many of these Republican states. They've dealt with the fact that there are no more drop-bock. or those have been limited, and they have gotten it to the post office and postmarked before election day. And of course, Donald Trump's U.S. Postal Service is, you know, doing everything it's can to make it harder also. But at the end of the day, if these people's ballots then didn't count, even though they did everything right, you know, we're talking about, you know, three quarters of a million voters who would be disenfranchised something on that order. Three quarters of a million voters. And that is the thing. Mail and balloting is how most people, at least in my state, certainly, are used to voting. It's the process by which they expect the ballots to come and cast them ultimately every given election. Now, Trump, by the way, is unsurprisingly not giving up at all. Today, he posted that his losses why Republicans, of course, need to pass his voter suppression bill, which he calls the Save Act. And John U, the conservative lawyer, said today that he thinks that the Supreme Court conservatives would obviously welcome that. Let's watch what John U said.

This is not about the constitutional power. If Congress wanted to pass, say, the SAVE Act, which I know President Trump is pushing for, and wanted to set deadlines about the election is on this day, and you know, I have this much time to count, Congress could do that. So, Bill, if I were to take that language out of the majority opinion and project forward, I would say the elements in the SAVE Act would be upheld by the Supreme Court. Your reaction, Mark? Yeah, so first of all. I barely can believe I'm about to say I agree with John you about, which is that Congress has authority to pass laws related to the time, place, and manner of elections. States are given it in the first instance. Congress can override them. But notice who doesn't. That is the president. And so a lot of the litigation that is going on right now is because Donald Trump is trying to do through executive order, something that he has literally no power to do. I mean, Donald Trump has no more power to set the time, place, and manner of elections than I do or you do or any one of the people watching this broadcast. So could Congress pass a law? Sure. Now, would we challenge parts of the SAVE Act as being unconstitutional? Of course, and we'd probably win in striking down part of it. a whole different thing than what we're seeing right now, which is that Donald Trump is trying to co-op the U.S. Postal Service and other and parts of the federal government to simply make it harder for people to vote and easier for him to cheat. And we are not going to back down. Right now, my law firm and I, we are in 83 cases in 41 states. And hey, Donald Trump, we're just getting started. Well, this whole thing about the Postal Service, he signed an executive order to have the Postal Service restrict voting back in March, and a lot of that order was struck down by everybody should understand. A federal court in Massachusetts last week, what does today's ruling hint at as far as what the Supreme Court might do if that case comes to that, Mark? Yeah, it's very good news on that front. I mean, it's very good news on that front because Amy Coney Barrett goes out of her way to make the point that Congress has this authority where states are given the primary authority. So she lays out that, in her words, the default authority to set the time, place, and manner of elections, rests with the states. But Congress can alter that in some circumstances. But the president. doesn't have that authority. So look, I think you'll be seeing us cite this opinion in courthouse after courthouse after courthouse. And so far, I have a feeling Donald Trump wants to act like it didn't happen. Mail and voting is just one of the Republican targets. We have had unprecedented gerrymandering threats to put ICE or FBI agents near the polls. And I have talked to Democratic governors from J.B. Pritzker to Gavin Newsom to Walls, so I'll take that very, very seriously, extraordinarily seriously given what they've seen on the ground in their states. Where are the biggest weaknesses today in our democratic system right now? How do we shore them up before November?

Yeah, so those are two different questions. So in terms of where the weaknesses are, I'm very worried that, you know, the infrastructure of elections has really been under a lot of stress and strain. So we saw Tina Peters who got pardoned. But for every Tina Peters who got caught and got, you know, got arrested or charged, there are more and more election deniers working in more and more election offices. We are watching Republicans nominate more and more election. in IRS to keep positions like Secretary of State, like Attorney General. But we're also seeing it at the county level and the sub-county level. So one of the things I'm really worried about is that. In terms of what do we do about it? Look, we all need to be vigilant. Voters need to make sure they are registered to vote and have a plan to vote. People like you and I need to speak out in public about what the challenges are, but also what the solutions are. And then the lawyers, you know, myself included, we've got to be ready to go to court everywhere as quickly as possible to fight to make... sure that the election deniers and the votes pressers don't get away with it. Mark Elias, another big day, another victory over Donald Trump. It's so great to talk to you today. I appreciate you being here. Great to see you. We have got a very, very busy show tonight. You're not going to want to miss it. Congressman Jamie Raskin will join me a little later on. Plus, I took a little safari today into Donald Trump's Low Energy America 250 celebration. We are going to bring you the footage of that. But first, today's other big Supreme Court decision and what it means for the imperial presidency that is coming up next. We'll be right back.

in its opinion today. So there's nothing to it. It should be very concerning in a democracy to have this kind of behavior from government officials, particularly Mr. Bill Pulte, who now not only oversees mortgages, but he's taken over the... The intelligence program, yes, of course. Director of National Intelligence. Maya, let me play it for you something that was said in our air today by Rebecca Slaughter, the former FTC commissioner whose firing was upheld by the court. Let's watch this. The image I cannot get out of my head is the one from the inauguration of the president surrounded not by heads of state, not by public servants, not even by his family, but by the CEOs of the richest and most powerful corporations across America, almost all of whom the FTC was in active litigation against at the time of the inauguration. I mean, that is one of the most enduring images, I think, of this second Trump term so far. Does that image to you, I mean, when she describes that image, does that get to the danger exactly of what this ruling is all about? Absolutely. And I, full disclosure, because the leadership conference on civil and human rights, we have had Rebecca Slaughter speak at our conferences because the important work that she and other commissioners have done in trying to protect consumers, including consumers that have been abused. by big corporations, like from Twitter. And it's lost, it's, again, Twitter for taking user data. And also meta. Remember, meta was actually using and driving ads to, like, your children who were pulling their selfies down and then using that to try to sell. body image products. I mean, this is about whether or not we have a government that is neutral, independent, and protecting us. And what Donald Trump has made clear, and what that imagery reminds us all of is he wants the companies to do his bidding. And so when he has loyalists in power, Like at the Federal Communications Commission, where we've actually seen this weaponization happen in real time, they uses and weaponizes government against the people who it wants to direct. And the people are at the center of all this. And I mean, Norm, I was thinking about people who the NLRB is protecting, people that the FTC normally would protect. What happens to ordinary Americans in the wake of all this? Well, we're going to have to redouble efforts to go back to the third branch, in a sense, the Supreme Court. arrogated more power to itself, more power to the courts at Democracy Defenders Fund and Democracy Defender's Action, Jacob, as you know, over 300 legal cases and matters fighting the administration, 80% winning record at the Supreme Court. And we're going to keep on fighting and redouble. Make no mistake about it. The removal of independent agencies is a challenge. But

Both Maya and I were active supporting the Watson decision, a series of wins. for our coalition on protecting the elections. And I think the American people are going to speak out and say the cost crisis, the corruption crisis, the competence crisis, we don't like that. Is that the consequence of all of this? Yeah, look, at the end of the day, we need the courts. And it's critical what we see happening from courts that are upholding their law. But this is the other thing. We also have the Supreme Court and it's been supremely unjust. It's been ignoring its own precedent. But this is a government that is not serving the people. and it's not behaving as if it's by the people and the people going to have their say. Is this not a longtime project of John Roberts and where we thought this was always headed? Yeah. Look, I mean, we already had the Supreme Court essentially say, go ahead and commit crimes, president. And if you can make it look like it's within your job description, you'll be just fine. We know that John Roberts has had a long thing against the Voting Rights Act. He's had a long vision for a very powerful. presidency, but not one that is consistent, I would argue with even what the founders of this country imagined, and certainly not one that is consistent with what most Americans believe is our democracy. I also want to talk about the E. Jean Carroll case because they rejected his effort to overturn the verdict that he sexually abused and defamed her. It means he's got to pay the $5 million judgment, but there's a separate $83.3 million judgment from the other Carroll defamation case. That's still on appeal. What happens there? The refusal to touch this E. Jean Carroll case is a sign that the other one is probably on solid footing. It's a reminder that no individual, even the president, is above the law in our country. And it... For me, he exemplifies the wonderful fighting spirit of E. Jean Carroll. That is what we all have to do, Jacob, as Americans. Dr. Cook is the same way. Stand up for the Constitution. Stand up for the rule of law. Maya and I work together on the post-Calais, the decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act. We thought maybe we'd lose up to 12 stolen seats in the South. Only three. That's because of people power across the South. Where is court reform? after rulings like today as in after the end of this term. Look, you're going to see a whole lot of Americans demanding structural reform. And, you know, we as a coalition are still working through what that means. I was going to ask you, what does it look like? Well, look, we move at the speed of coalition. We look like America. We're as diverse as America. And that's important. Because we're going to do what makes most sense for the future of this country and ensuring that we have a Supreme Court that is supremely just and rather than unjust. But certainly it's term limits, certainly if it's an accountable ethic system that is binding. And look, there are real conversations happening about additional things like court expanses. Yeah, absolutely. Norma Eisen, Maya Wiley, thank you both so much for being here. I appreciate it.

Coming up, I came here to Washington, D.C. to take a tour of Donald Trump's troubled pet projects. What I saw probably is not going to surprise you, but I do think you'll enjoy it. That's coming up after a short commercial break. Let's check in on the Serta counting sheep. Why aren't we counted anymore? Well, the all-new Serta Perfect Sleeper has the Q4 support system that helps relieve aches and back pain. We'll never get counted again. Uh, nope. Serta, we make the world's best mattress. Monday.com AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. In the U.S., there's a break in every 26 seconds. But when intruders step near, simply safe home security steps up. Stop. This is SimplySafe. Police are on the way. Using AI alerts, U.S.-based live agents help deter break-ins. Simplysafe, no long-term contracts. Save 50% on your new system with professional monitoring at Simplysafe.com slash XXM or with promo code SXM. Outdoor deterrence requires a Simplysafe Active Guard outdoor protection plan starting at $49.99 a month. Visit Simplysave.com slash licenses for alarm licensed information, Tennessee 2012.

Okay, so earlier today, I checked out the preparations for Donald Trump's 250th birthday party for America, which is having some attendance issues. Happy early birthday America. We're celebrating already at the great American state fair. Man, we've got thousands of people celebrating this birthday with us. Sometimes the pictures really don't tell the full story because if you look behind us, you see, okay, there are a couple hundred people back there, but the truth is when you make your way over here and you're in this lot, you're in a wash of people. There are thousands of people here, and I'll tell you what, that's with rain, with everything else going on, the fact that it is heightened security just because of the world right now. It's really an awesome crowd. That is so sad. This picture really captures the problem. One of the organizers posted this photo of a performance on the National Mall. If you zoom in... Let's do it on the guitarist sunglasses. Ah, boy. You can see a crowd of less than a dozen people in the reflection. The organizers appear to have recently deleted that image from the social media feed, replacing it instead with this image of the performance cropping out the guitarist and is really cool. Cool shades. Speaking of reflective surfaces, there's also the matter of the reflecting pool, which continues to dog this administration as the landmark Trump promised in April to fix and paint American flag blue. It now remains very, very, very algae green ahead of the country's 250th birthday. I couldn't get any closer than this sign. New reporting in the New York Times found that right after Donald Trump's renovation, machines called nanobblers were added to the side of the pool to kill all that algae. You can see them there circled on the left-hand side of the screen. But they were later removed as the city prepared for Trump's big old UFC birthday bash. The algae then, of course, promptly returned along with the nanobblers. This is what I saw when I visited the pool earlier today. There's definitely something in there. Yeah, it's pretty green. It looks really green. Just in case I'm crazy or I'm not seeing this correctly, it's still very, very green, right? Just like it's always been. They got kind of back to blue-ish last week, I think. Oh, that's what they say for a minute, but, you know, that's not natural. Nature, you know, nature of horrors interference. David Ferenthaled is an investigative reporter with The New York Times and has been covering the reflecting pool debacle, and he joins me now. I hate to ask a Pulitzer Prize winner what nanobblers are, but what are nanobblers? Basically, it's a water purification device. It kills algae by using ozone gas. Okay, and so they were removed, and this is the main reason. I mean, you're not environmental reporter, but I do feel like you have been there so closely and watching this so closely. That's why it turned back to green today.

No, that's why it turned back to green a couple of weeks ago. Now everything is in place. The nanobbles are supposed to be working. They ain't working, I can tell you, David. But the striking thing about this is Trump has posted all these memes of Biden and Obama sitting in kind of a green, fetid-looking pool to contrast to how he made the pool. And the pool in his ugly pictures of Biden-Obomba looks like the pool in your photos today. Is the idea that these nanobulbers now have to be a permanent part of what's going on on the National Mall? Well, they always were. The plan for the reflecting pool was always to get this nanobilder filtration technology and put it in a sort of hidden filtration building that's sort of hidden from public view. But it is the water gets piped there, cleaned and sent back. But what you're seeing today is a sign that, as people said, it may not be working that well. You've been writing about the president's claims that vandals with this knife and the 100 foot, 300 foot slit are to blame for the reflecting pool's issues. I talked to some people about that earlier today. I want to watch that. Have you seen any vandals? No, zero. I mean, there's a fence up, so I guess there can't be, but yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no vandals. What do you make of the signs that, say, danger explosives, authorized personnel only coming to you on July 4th on this fence? I think it's all show. They've made up a fiction about vandalism here, and they have to show that, they have to show people that they're doing something about it, even though there was never an issue. I mean, it's just unbelievable to stand out there and to see nobody and nothing going on and the thing looks so filthy, dirty. What has your reporting turned up about the Vandal conspiracy theory? Well, you have to step back and remember that this pool was repaired using no-bid contracts. They gave a huge no-bid contract to a company that didn't do swimming pools and also had never done a federal contract before. In other words, my words, not yours. Seems like they didn't know what they were doing. Well... What you can see by looking at internal government documents was that just a few days after they put this coding down on the pool, which Trump said would last for decades, hundreds of years, that the Park Service was already finding that it was coming up easily. It was peeling off and just a little bit of effort would lift it off the bottom. So this idea that it had to be ripped with a knife and pulled up by vandals, what the Park Service found was that it was just coming up on its own. To be clear, these no-bid contracts are not the lowest-cost contracts. Why is he using, or what are they saying about why he is using no-bid contracts? What they've said is that there was no time. They decided so late in the game to fix their reflecting pool that they didn't have time to basically figure out who could do it the best or who could do it for the least amount of money. So both the nanobblers and the people who painted the reflecting pool, both of those were no-bid contracts given out to people who had not experienced doing this sort of thing before. Is there anything that can be done to stop in cases like this or otherwise these no-bid contracts from continuing? Well, the one mechanism that usually happens is that people who didn't get the contract can protest and say, hey, you should have considered me and you didn't. But now doing that for one of Trump's signature projects means like taking him on directly. So if you ever want a federal contract again, you're putting that at risk by challenging this one. And the idea that these no bid contracts are something that the Trump administration relies on, what is your reporting showing you about the cost differential that it would have been had they gone with a lower cost bid? It's hard to know because they didn't sort of do anything to determine what other people might have bid, but we know it's a lot more than Trump said. Trump said originally this was all going to cost $1.8 million. We're now up over $14.7 million in possibly going up. This great American state fair, which is happening just down the mall, is being put on by an ostensibly nonpartisan group called, what is it called Freedom 250? Right. But Trump has sort of taken the thing over. How did that happen?

So there was a congressional bipartisan committee set up to celebrate America's 250, it's called America 250, and that's been sort of shunted away and supplanted by Freedom 2. Freedom, too. It's always freedom. Right, which is a creation of Trump. He appoints the leaders. The White House leads it. It's funded by taxpayer money in a lot of cases, but it's directed by the White House. It's a Trump political operation. I mean, and I was joking about your polluter when I'm talking about nanobblers, but your focus on nonprofits and how they were used is what won you that award in the first place. When you see this organization, What are you looking at? What it means? So the money that, this is taxpayer money that goes into a nonprofit, and that that nonprofit, then its spending becomes opaque. We don't know if it's giving out no-bid contracts. We don't know who it's hired. We don't know who it's paid. It all just vanishes into this black box, at least until we get a report months from now or years from now. So we don't really know who they've paid or how much they've paid. And it's a way of taking that spending and kind of hiding it. What did you see when you were at the, you went down to the Great American State Fair today. What was the experience like for you? To me, the biggest sin of it is not that it's political. There are certainly some political parts that, you know, appeal to the right wing. It's that's boring. You know, people hear state fair and they think carnival rides, fried dough, you know, you're going to be able to see a roller coaster. It's more like a fair about states. So there's like a little kiosk about Kentucky. And the next to that is a little kiosk about Connecticut. And you can see like three exhibits about each state. It's really hot. And once you're down there for a while, you know, are you going to see all 50 states if it means risking heat stroke? Connect the dots to me. with these other Trump pet projects. I mean, I went to the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center today, and I watched us that tarp was still up there. The ellipse looks like a mess. The arch in Virginia is, I guess, is still in process. What is the nexus between all of these? So we've reported a lot of no-bid contracts to renovate Lafayette Park, to do the reflecting pool. The common denominator in a lot of cases is the things that Trump wants done the most are often, ironically, the jobs that are done the least well because they're done by toadies and yes men, people who just want to get it done the way Trump said, and they go outside the government's process that's set up to find the best people to do the job for the least amount of money. So what you're seeing at the reflecting pool, the way that it's sort of... seems like it's falling apart so quickly is a sign of what happens when you take that kind of risk and just sort of throw money at the problem and don't ever say no to President Trump or don't even ask questions. Are we talking about, I mean, corruption is a word that has thrown around a lot. Where does this rank for you in all of the corruption and all of the scandals that you've seen in the Trump administration? It's not obviously the most expensive scandal or the biggest contract. But what's interesting to me is the way it sort of acts as a microcosm for the many, the ways that Trump's administration has been willing to go around established procedures, hand out government money willy-nilly. One of these contracts went to somebody who was a neighbor in Mar-a-Lago. Somebody's known Trump forever. So it epitomizes the way they give money to people that they know and contracts to people that they know. So, you know, you can see that in Iran. You can see it in so many other places where this hubris and rush leads them to make mistakes. The reflecting pool is just the sort of smallest, easiest to understand microcosm of it.

Everybody can tell what green pool is not right. David Ferenthal, the man went out in 90-degree heat to the great American state fair today to do it all for us. Thank you so much for being here. It was good to see you. Thank you. Still to come, Congressman Jamie Raskin on today's big Supreme Court decisions and much more on this very, very busy news day that's coming up next. In the U.S., there's a break-in every 26 seconds. But when intruders step near, Simply Safe home security steps up. Stop. This is SimplySafe. Police are on the way. Using AI alerts, U.S.-based live agents help deter break-ins. SimplySafe, no long-term contracts. Save 50% on your new system with professional monitoring at Simplysafe.com slash SXM or with promo code SXM. Outdoor deterrence requires a SimplySafe active guard outdoor protection plan starting at $49.99 a month. Visit Simplysafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information, Tennessee 2012. This is a Monday.com ad. The same Monday.com helping people worldwide getting work done faster and better. The same Monday.com designed for every team and every industry. The same Monday.com with built-in AI. Scaling your work from day one. The same Monday.com that your team will actually love using. The same Monday.com with an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. Yes, the same Monday.com. Walmart shoppers, meet the debit card design with you in mind. The Walmart Money Card offers up to $75 cash back on purchases at Walmart each year, early direct deposit, overdraft protection, and so much more. When Walmart is your everyday store, you need a card to match. That's the Walmart Money Card. Open your account today. The Walmart Money Card is issued by green dot bank, member FDIC. Fees, terms, and conditions apply. Visit WalmartMoneycard.com to learn more.

We got a whole lot of news out of the Supreme Court this morning, and it is only Monday, which means that there are a lot more opinions to come. One of the big decisions we did get today allows mail-in ballots to be accepted after Election Day, so long as they are post-smart by Election Day. Election fraud and mail-in ballots is a topic that is routinely seized on by the president to advance all kinds of conspiracy theories about stolen elections. So naturally, Donald Trump went on social media today to post about the... tremendous loss, in his words, of votes, allowed to be counted long after the election is over. Congressman Jamie Raskin is a Democrat of Maryland. He is a constitutional law scholar, and he serves on the Judiciary Committee, and he joins me now. Congressman, it's good to see you. I'm delighted to be with you. Thanks for having me. Thanks. So let's talk about this SAVE Act. He is using the Mississippi mail-in ballot ruling to push his voter suppression bill. When I am talking to people across the country, I do not see even Republican constituents have an interest in restricting their own personal right to vote. Do you see an appetite for congressional Republicans to finally take up this legislation? Well, I see an appetite for them to engage in Craven's submission to Donald Trump for whatever he wants. Certainly they're not hearing anything from their voters about it. And, you know, the 5-4 decision. was absolutely necessary and obvious. It's amazing that four justices voted the other way. Of course, it's up to the states. And the states have long accepted ballots that arrived a day or two after the election because they were put in the mail for all. We know Donald Trump's ballots arrived that way because he's voted by mail along with a lot of other members of the Trump. cabinet. So that decision was an obvious one. Donald Trump wants to use it to make an argument for his save act. The only thing they're saving is MAGA if they pass that act. So I don't see that this is a winning issue for them politically, and we've got to stand strong for the right to vote. He is so obsessed with this save act. And when he talks about it, it practically oozes out of him. I want to play for you something that he said today. Let's watch. Will you sign that housing bill? I have not, it hasn't been sent to me yet. It's coming, I understand. And then I'll make it. Then I'll make it. Here's what I would like to sign. Much more than a bill that big deal. It's a yawn. It's wonderful. To me, compared to the Save America Act, just about everything is a big yawn. I just want to be really clear. He said that the housing bill is coming to him. He skipped the signing ceremony. He could have showed up and signed the bill last week. And again, this obsession with the SAVE Act, what is his, he cannot let it go. What is that about?

Well, he doesn't care about inflation. Actually, he loves inflation. He doesn't care about people's living standards or their economic struggles. He's told us that forthrightly. Housing is a big yawn to him because he's got public housing, although he demolished half of it when he decided to tear down the east wing of the White House. And basically what he's saying is all he cares about now is efforts to disenfranchise people and to engage in voter suppression tactics and to try to throw the election to doubt. He has essentially given up trying to convince anybody to support him. He knows that a commanding majority of American people reject his failed illegal unconstitutional wars and tariffs and other policies. And so now he's just trying to orchestrate and gerrymander the election. One of the other cases, Carson, that we got today was the slaughter case about the president's ability to fireheads of independent agencies. And the president is framing it as a big win. He said, quote, it is greatly increasing presidential power at the time when it is most needed. He freely admits it. You're the constitutional scholar. How does it do that? Well, he's right. It's a huge win for him in convincing the right-wing justices to go along with him and his fatuous, ridiculous unitary executive theory of the Constitution, which is the president must directly control everything that takes place if it's executing a policy that's been adopted by Congress. And this is a total affront to the framers' design. There's a reason. Congress is in Article 1. We've got the power to impose taxes and tariffs, not Trump. He was slapped down even by his own gerrymandered Supreme Court in that we've got the power to declare war, not him. And for decades, we have required that there be bipartisan or nonpartisan composition of different federal commissions and agencies and to prevent the president for just sacking people because he doesn't like them or he doesn't like their politics or he wants them to vote a protection. particular way. And now the Supreme Court has discarded that and, you know, essentially submitted to his monarchical view of American government, which was completely rejected by the framers of the Constitution. The role of the president, if you read Article 2, is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not impounded, redirected, thwarted, or defeated. And yet the Supreme Court has given him the thumbs up. on him getting to control the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Election Commission, what have you, to the Supreme Court, those people are all basically like interns in the White House or his press secretaries. I want to ask you about... How today you filed for this discharge petition to block the president's anti-weaponization slush fund, $1.8 billion. You need six Republicans, if I'm not mistaken, to sign on. Do you think you will be able to get six Republicans, and do you think the Senate will take it up if you succeed in the House?

Well, if our Republican friends put their votes where their rhetoric is, we'll get a lot more than six trying to sign on to it and climbing aboard because many Republicans have denounced this outrageous power and cash grab from the American taxpayers. First of all, Congress appropriates $1.8 billion. We pass the laws and we appropriate money, not the president. The courts decide actual cases and controversies, not five people that the president and the attorney general install in the Department of Justice. The 14th Amendment says that no federal tax dollars can go for the reimbursement or the payment of insurrection. It's right in there in the 14th Amendment. So there are about a dozen things wrong with what they try to do. And now they don't want to talk about it. But two different federal judges have insisted that Todd Blanche committed. to writing his assertion that, quote, we're not moving forward on it, but he refuses to commit it to writing. And, you know, if you're in a car at a stop sign and you stop, you're not moving forward. But five seconds later, you are. And of course, Donald Trump says he loves the idea. And he's already given away millions of dollars like this. He gave $1.25 million away to his disgraced former national security advisor. Michael Flynn. After he lost his case in court, they said that we're going to settle the case that the Department of Justice had just won. If they've done in other cases and they've given $5 million away to the family of an insurrectionist. So we know that they want to move forward. We've got to stop it and cement it into law and end the slush fund and also end this attempt to give the president and his family businesses total immunity from criminal and civil investigation. Congressman Jamie Raskin, it's so good to see you. Thank you so much for your time tonight. I appreciate it. You bet. Coming up in just a few minutes, Rachel Maddo will speak to Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. You do not want to miss it. We'll be right back. A quick programming note before we go, I will be right back here on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern 7 a.m. Pacific for another edition of my new show. Connect with Jacob Soberoff, where we will have much. Much more from my tour around our nation's capital today. As you heard earlier, we had to make a stop at the infamous reflecting pool. I can confirm it is still super duper algae green. I also made a stop at the building formerly known as the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Memorial Center. I have got to report. They still got the scaffolding up where they took Trump's name off. And like I do... Whenever I talk to folks on the street, I heard from lots of people who wanted me to say a quick hello to Rachel Maddo. So we'll have the full story Saturday at 10 with all those people that want to say hi to Rachel. It was a total blast. You are not going to want to miss it. But for now, that is all in on this Monday night. Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness. I'm Shaquille O'Neill, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zep bound to hepatine. The first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

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