Statura Intelligence
Rachel Maddow can barely contain herself as she ticks off Trump's string of losses
MS NOW host Rachel Maddow opened her show Monday night with high spirits, gleefully telling viewers she had roughly 10 good-news stories to deliver in a row, a rarity for the program, as legal and political setbacks piled onto President Donald Trump in a single day. Maddow noted that Sunday marked the longest day of the year —and that Trump was forced to mark the occasion with an exceptionally long day himself. Maddow began with the courts, where a Republican-appointed federal judge quashed all six grand-jury subpoenas that Trump's Justice Department had issued against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and other officials. Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz noted that evidence was "overwhelming" that the subpoenas were issued for unlawful reasons and that the department struggled to identify a plausible investigatory justification. The same day, another federal judge blocked the administration from using Social Security Administration data to purge voters from the rolls, ruling that the government had "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens." The pair of rulings left White House aide Stephen Miller fuming on social media. Maddow then turned to Trump's immigration crackdown, where the Florida detention facility known as "Alligator Alcatraz" — once hailed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump as a national model — was ordered into "full demobilization," bringing an ignominious close to the $1.2 billion experiment. "That performatively cruel, moral and practical disaster. They have now had to close it. And as of today, it's gone," she declared. Maddow also noted New York Times reporting that the administration is selling off or giving away at least seven warehouse sites it had bought for prison camps nationwide. She also noted an odd story out of Arizona, where residents of Surprise, frustrated with their city council, have advanced an effort to dissolve their entire city to clear an obstacle to fighting a planned Trump detention site. "All these things are happening at once," Maddow said.