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A complete transcript of a remarkable part of a Rachel Maddow broadcast with 42 photos protests + [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-20
I occasionally transcribe important short statements, two minutes or less. I rarely transcribe what are for me, longer communications. I must consider them extremely valuable. An example is when Gabriel Sterling debunked Trump's claims of outcome altering voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election.
MSNBC often puts up short clips of MSNBC programs on YouTube. Rachel Maddow is exceptional in her analysis of current events. I consider Rachel Maddow's program on Thursday which culminated in a brief discussion of Senator Chris Van Hollen meeting with a constituent, Kilmar Abrego-Garcia extremely valuable. So, I transcribed the entire 13:17 video clip. She included many images in her presentation. I took photographs of 43 of those images. This gives us the sense of momentum we carry into this fight against the fascist, authoritarian unconstitutional abductions of Donald Trump.
Rachel Maddow, "I just want to note that the courts are not riding alone here. This stuff does not happen in a vacuum. You ask scholars of authoritarianism and dictatorship and they will tell you that it's never just one thing that works in terms of resistance. It's everything together. And in our country, specifically on this issue on this sort of sharp end of the stick here on immigration we really are seeing all kinds of resistance and strategic refusal and sounding the alarm all happening all at once and it is mutually reinforcing .
When you start seeing it come from all directions it feeds on itself, it gains momentum , it gets bigger and right now it is everywhere. It is in the courts, it is also in communities, it is in civic life, it is in political life, it is in the press and it is in the streets. And I mean that all very specifically and literally.
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This is St Paul Minnesota yesterday (first picture to the right) , outside the consulate of El Salvador in St Paul. People in the streets lining both sides of the road demanding that the Trump administration follow the court's orders and bring back Kilmar Abrego-Garcia and bring back these men they shipped to that foreign prison.
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This was Santa Rosa California yesterday (second picture to the right).
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Local clergy leading a rally (third picture same as second to the right) in support of immigrants and against what Trump is doing.
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This is Denver Colorado yesterday (fourth picture to the right) again local clergy leading a protest, a rally in support of immigrants and against the Trump administration's treatment of immigrants.
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This was Grand Rapids Michigan yesterday (fifth picture to the right), people protesting against Trump administration plans to open an immigration prison, a so-called detention facility in their community.
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This was New Orleans yesterday (sixth picture to the right) people protesting at Ice headquarters in
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New Orleans Louisiana (seventh picture to the right).
These students yesterday (eighth picture below)
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and (ninth picture to the right) protesting how they're going against immigrants and international students at Kennesaw State
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(tenth picture left side- to the right) in Cobb County Georgia and in Newark Delaware at the University of Delaware (same picture, tenth picture - right side -above) .
When the Trump administration took a young man who is a legal permanent resident (eleventh picture-below)
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named Mohsen Mahdawi in Vermont this week, the community where he lives, where he is absolutely integrated into that community, they sprung into action. They were worried that Trump's agents were going to come for him. His friends and supporters created text group called "Mohsen just in case" (twelfth picture below)
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to prepare a support plan , a network, a communication in case it happened. They were with him when the arrest (thirteenth picture below)
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happened. They made sure to film it (fourteenth picture below)
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, to make sure that it was posted on social media, that they alerted the press, they had prepared for the worst with lawyers who had prepped in advance legal motions to stop him being removed from Vermont and flown to one of these immigration dungeons, for lack of a better word, a thousand miles away in Louisiana or somewhere. And because they had those prepped in time, those motions worked, a judge was able to order him kept in Vermont while he was still in Vermont before they had time to spirit him off elsewhere . Vermonters have since been protesting at the prison where he is being held in their state. Mr. Mahdawi is Palestinian. He was born and raised in the West Bank. They brought Palestinian flags (fifteenth picture below)
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to show their support for him. They banged drums and yelled as loud as they could in the hopes that he could hear them inside the prison. Now, in Vermont the Democratic leadership in the state legislature (sixteenth picture)
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says they want to terminate their state's contract with the federal government to keep immigration prisoners immigration so-called detainees in the state's prisons in their own facilities. That's Vermont. In Raleigh North Carolina the Trump for Gadministration has just sent notice to two dozen Christians who fled Afghanistan when the Taliban took that country back over. They are legally here in this country. They were given a legal permission to stay here for obvious reasons. For not obvious reasons Donald Trump has now taken that order away (seventeenth picture below)
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and telling the Afghan Christians that they have to return immediately to the tender mercies of the Taliban right now, this week. It is a Christian church in Raleigh North Carolina that is advocating for them (eighteenth picture below).
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Other media, 'In Raleigh North Carolina there is a community of Afghans many going through the same thing. Pastor Nick Comiskey (nineteenth picture below)
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says the church has organized resources to help asylum seekers to navigate the process. Pastor Comiskey, 'It's a very personal issue. These are individuals, men , women, children that we know and have come to know and love.' '
That's Raleigh North Carolina.
In Utah, these people who are legally here, legally here from Haiti and Venezuela who are part of the community that they live in in Utah and are beloved, there their neighbors in Utah are stepping up to help them and also to sound the alarm (20th picture below)
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' 'It's time for you to leave the United States.' That's the first line of a letter from the Department of Homeland Security to several refugee families here in Utah legally. News specialist Dan Rasco (sp?) is covering this story and joins us live. Dan this has left neighbors shocked and upset.' Dan, 'It really has Didi. That's exactly right, shocked, upset, angry, and also heart-broken that several of these families got this letter from the Department of Homeland Security telling them they have to be out of this country by the end of the week. ' [Utah citizen]'I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm embarrassed.' (21st picture).'
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[Dan] 'Emotions running high' [different Utah citizen] "It's not right. It's inhumane (22nd picture below).'
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[Dan] 'For this group of neighbors in Mill Creek. [different citizen] 'We love them. (23rd picture below)
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They love us (24th picture below).'
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[Dan] 'gathered together to fight for three refugee families.' [different citizen] 'I feel sad (25th picture below)
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, really sad.' [Dan] 'They arrived in the US in the area not long ago, all of them getting this letter (26th picture below)
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from the Department of Homeland Security saying, 'It's time for you to leave the United States. Your parole will terminate in seven days.' [different citizen] 'Unimaginable, the government that we (27th picture below)
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love would do this to people we love. ' [different citizen] 'Honestly feel like family to us (28th picture below). '
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[Dan] 'Two of the families are Venezuelan. The other from Haiti. All too scared to identify themselves. [Other person] 'The letter said that I was supposed to leave.' [Dan] 'This mother from Haiti has a 2 year old daughter.' [last person] 'I was in shock because I wasn't expecting something like that to happen because I came here legally. '
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[Dan] 'Attorney (29th picture to the right) Jim McCloskey with the (30th picture below)
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Refugee Justice League is helping the families get representation. ' [Jim McCloskey] 'We're meeting with a group of people that are here legally. (31st picture below)
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And the letters that were sent intentionally are designed to bully, and mislead these people into believing that they don't have rights.' '
[Rachel returns] 'That's Utah. That's Mill Creek Utah. Those neighbors standing up for their neighbors who have been taken.
It's protests. It's community life. It's also civic life. These students at Harvard today (32nd picture below)
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to support international students at Harvard who the Trump administration is threatening as a group, threatening en mass. As their own university, one of the (33rd picture below)
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highest profile and most prestigious universities in the world takes a firm stand against the administration and says they will not accede to Trump's demands. We're going to have more on that coming up in just a moment. But you know what, if you look (34th picture below)
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just outside Harvard Yard, if you look at the hometown press in Boston, you will see not only standing ovation level support for Harvard's willingness to wage that fight, you will also see in the biggest local paper, 'Boston Globe', you will see them today leading with a brand new investigative piece into these vigilantee groups that have been claiming credit for feeding individual student names to the Trump administration for the administration to then target those people for arrest and deportation. The Globe's investigation day reviewed a so-called 'students deport list' from one of these groups. 'It sometimes places students at the wrong universities or featured people who were not even in the United States. One woman on the list was pictured wearing a hijab and identified as a Harvard student from Nigeria who had already been detained in Massachusetts. The group claims she should be deported because her visa had been revoked in March for a pro-Hamas rally speech. Contacted by the Globe, the woman said she has never attended a pro-Hamas rally, she has never attended Harvard, and in fact, she has never visited the United States.
An hour South in New Bedford Massachusetts the local NBC station channel ten has dug in to this horrifying video in which (35th picture below)
35th picture
ICE agents smashed through the window of a car to drag a man and a woman out of the vehicle. They report that the ICE agents repeatedly while they were doing this referred to the man in the car as 'Antonio', they insisted that was not his name and that it was Antonio who they were looking for. Nobody in that car was named 'Antonio '. It really does appear to be a case of mistaken identity, local press has been covering it intensely while ICE is defending its conduct by saying whether or not he's Antonio, the man was not I the country legally and so, you know.
The New Republic was the first to report one of the police officers responsible for the disputed (36th picture below)
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gang designation for Kilmar Abrego-Garcia appears to have himself been soon, thereafter, suspended from the police force for serious misconduct in an unrelated matter which, of course, goes to a police officer's credibility on a matter like this. USA Today (37th picture below)
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was the first to report that in the case of the gay make-up artist who the Trump administration sent to El Salvador potentially for life in prison, his supposed gang affiliation was due to a single officer with a history of serious credibility and disciplinary problems including driving his car into a family's home while intoxicated after which he was summarily fired.
Now we've got increasing (38th picture below)
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coverage of the Trump administration sending 'get out of the country immediately ' letters to at least three US citizens, two of them were lawyers in Massachusetts and one of whom is a random doctor in Connecticut, all of them American citizens, all inexplicably told by the Trump administration that they must get out of the country within a week. And all of this press coverage while it's depressing because of the subject, it is also incisive investigative press coverage and it does have the effect of exposing the shambolic and slapdash and utterly incompetent behavior of the Trump administration as it embarks on this cruel and unconstitutional adventure for which it wants to be feared and respected and instead they look ridiculous and cruel in equal measure and that has the effect of shaping public opinion about what they are doing. And that fuels not just protests and lots of them, but also lawsuits. Reuters reporting (39th picture below)
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Tuesday alone this week federal judges in at least seven states issued orders blocking the Trump administration from acting against international students that it is trying to arrest. Lawsuits in Massachusetts, Montana, Wisconsin, Washington D.C., New Hampshire, Michigan, everywhere and more are filed every single day. Those legal road blocks tend to turn up in formation. The tide of incisive investigative press about what the administration is doing turns up yet more information about what Trump is doing and who he is hurting and all of that information builds the public case, further galvanized more public opinion against them and more protests against them and you know what, if you keep eventually going like this, this stuff snowballs and it builds on itself and eventually you are going to embolden an elected, embolden elected officials (40th picture below)
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to make them believe that it is time they better take action and eventually you are going to end up with a US Senator in El Salvador, himself, trying to get his constituents out of there. And on that front we have breaking news tonight, just as we are going on the air tonight we have learned that Senator Chris Van Hollen Democrat of Maryland has been able to meet with the imprisoned Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, the government of El Salvador posting three photos (41st picture below)
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on line of the Senator meeting with Mr. Abrego-Garcia a short time later, Senator Van Hollen confirming that he did have a chance to meet with his constituents. He said (42nd picture below)
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, 'I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.' It is unclear where that meeting took place. It is unclear what Mr. Abrego-Garcia's current status is (43rd picture). We are working on getting more information from Senator Van Hollen's office. We will bring it to you as we get. But, no, you know, none of these things on their own is enough, but all of them together is really something and all of them together just might be enough, right? One of by land, two if by sea fast horses, a relay of riders to alert everybody along the way, everybody ready to do their part. We have had 250 years training for this. You know what to do ' "
[END]
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