Start your day with the MS Now daily newsletter. Sharp insights from voices you trust. Stand out moments from your favorite shows. And fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news. Sign up at MS.now. Happy to have you here on MS Now. So who is in charge of the U.S. Navy? Constitutionally speaking, as you know, we have civilian control of the Navy and of all the other branches of the armed services. So, you know, it's a civilian who's in charge of the U.S. Navy. Do you know who the civilian is who Trump put in charge of the Navy? One hint is that he's a man who never served in the Navy, never served in the military at all. He has no known previous relationship of any kind with the Navy or with the U.S. military at all. Indeed, he was not known to have ever even shown any interest in the Navy or the U.S. military whatsoever. before Donald Trump made him secretary of the Navy. Why did Donald Trump put this guy in charge of it? I don't know. What the guy does know a lot about, what at least he is known for in the world, is his art collection. His name is John Phelan, P-H-E-L-A-N, Phelan. That's him on the left with his wife. Mr. Phelan is an art collector and finance guy who Donald Trump put in charge of the United States Navy for some reason. Now, is his art collecting itself perhaps Navy-related? Like, is he into paintings of ships or famous naval battles of the 19th century? No, nothing like that. In fact, it's kind of a funny story. Around the time that Trump named John Phelan to be Secretary of the Navy, the art world press kind of awkwardly tried to sum up John Phelan's tastes in art. They tried to describe for the non-art world public, who's just hearing about this guy for the first time, they tried to describe what John Phelan was known for in the art world, in case anybody was curious as to why Donald Trump might have landed on him, in particular for the job of Navy secretary. A number of art world publications eventually sort of settled on what I guess is a representative quote, an existing quote from a former executive at Sotheby's describing the art tastes of Trump's new Navy secretary. She described his tastes as, quote, a celebration of the sexual side of life. the publication Artnet published photos of some of his collection in situ at one of his homes photos that I cannot show you on tv other other art world publications described for example a video art installation at one of his homes which is just all playboy centerfolds there's also famously, the floor at his like $38 million mansion in Aspen, Colorado. In an interview with the artnewspaper.com, Trump's Navy Secretary, John Phelan, his wife was asked by that publication, quote, what is the most surprising place you have displayed a work? And she answered, quote, in the living room of our Aspen home, we have a mirrored floor. It covers the entire space. It is amazing to see people's reactions at parties when they realize what you can see in the floor. Naughty and nice. End quote. That Aspen home with the mirrored floor, that is where John Phelan hosted a gazillion dollar fundraiser for candidate Donald Trump in August 2024. That fundraiser made news because it was one of the times Trump stated his made-up claim that prisons in the Congo were releasing all their murderers in order to ship them to the United States. He told that tall tale at the House with the, quote, naughty surprise mirrored floor, whose owner Trump soon named to run the United States Navy, despite him having no connection to the Navy at all. Um, incidentally, that Aspen fundraiser was one that Trump flew to on an airplane that had previously belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, which itself made some headlines at the time. The campaign said at the time that that was just a coincidence. But, you know, in the course of time, Trump got reelected to the presidency in November of 2024. He really did name this guy, John Phelan, the rando sexual side of life art collector with a mirrored floor to run the United States Navy. And Congress really did force Trump's Justice Department to release at least some of the government's files on Trump's friend, the late convicted pedophile and child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. And, perhaps inevitably, among the revelations in the Epstein files was this headline. John Phelan, Trump's Navy Secretary, listed in Epstein Flight Logs. John Phelan, the billionaire art collector whom President Donald Trump appointed to oversee the U.S. Navy, appears to have traveled on at least two transatlantic flights with Jeffrey Epstein. The flight manifests list Epstein, Phelan, and a handful of other men, including Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model scout who was accused of rape during the 1990s and later of providing girls to Jeffrey Epstein. Bernal was found dead in his jail cell in France in 2022 after being charged in a related case. Authorities ruled it death by suicide. Epstein's aircraft was nicknamed the, quote, Lolita Express because, as some of Epstein's accusers have said, he frequently had young women and girls aboard the plane to entertain his guests. CNN was first to report on Navy Secretary John Phelan's flights with Jeffrey Epstein. They also published this flight log from the Epstein Files where you can see the Navy Secretary's name listed there. He's number nine on the flight manifest. Nobody has claimed there were definitely any young women on board this plane or girls on board this plane, but we don't know who the other six people are whose names are redacted from this flight manifest for whatever reason. Why were those people having their names redacted? MS now contacted the U.S. Navy about John Phelan's connections to Jeffrey Epstein and Phelan's time on board Epstein's plane. The Navy is offering no comment. But today was the first day that members of Congress were allowed, under very strict conditions, to physically go to the Justice Department where they were allowed to see unredacted versions of some Epstein documents. Judging by the reaction from members of Congress like Jamie Raskin, who took advantage of this opportunity today, members of Congress today seem just as frustrated as ever about what the Trump administration is doing and continues to do with all this Epstein-related material. There were to be no redactions in order to spare people embarrassment or political disgrace. We didn't want there to be a cover-up. And yet what I saw today was that there were lots of examples of people's names being redacted when they were not victims. And so we still haven't gotten from the DOJ their privilege log explaining why certain redactions were made. But I can tell you that I saw a whole bunch of them that seemed very suspicious and baffling to me. Donald Trump's name was redacted in a number of different places. And I saw one conversation between Epstein lawyers and Trump lawyers relating to the 2009 investigation, which had been redacted. And I don't see any particular reason that it should have been. Donald Trump's name is all over these files, all over it. I mean, thousands and thousands of times. One thing that came out in the release last month was a bunch of tips from through the tip line, including about President Trump and potentially with a 13-year-old girl. Did you get to see any of how those tips were investigated? Did you feel comfortable about them being dismissed? I saw nothing about that. But if you spend any real time with these files, you will see references to 17-year-old girls, 16-year-old girls, 14-year-old girls, 11-year-old girls, 10-year-old girls. And I saw a reference today to a 9-year-old girl. So it's a really gruesome and grim story. And I think in order to see our way through this and to try to make progress on criminal investigation and prosecution and some kind of social redemption from this whole nightmare, we need to listen to the survivors. A nine-year-old girl. President Trump is mentioned thousands of times in the files, as Congressman Raskin said there. Trump's Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, is also all over the files, including in the files apparently trying to negotiate a trip to Epstein's island. The top Republican Party donor in the country by far, Elon Musk, he's all over the files, including trying to get Epstein to invite him to what Musk called his, quote, wildest parties. And yes, the Navy Secretary John Phelan is there as well, flying on Epstein's plane with who knows who. But one of the people on board the plane was the French modeling scout guy who killed himself in jail when he was charged with Epstein-related trafficking crimes. There's no criminal allegations against any of these men from the Trump administration that I just mentioned, but they're all still in place in the administration and in Republican politics, at least at this hour. One guy who did lose his job in this country is the chairman of Paul Weiss, which is a very fancy, very powerful, very rich New York law firm. That law firm and its previous chairman, Brad Karp, became very, very famous in the past year as, quote, the face of capitulation to Donald Trump in his return to the White House. Soon after Trump was sworn in for his second term Trump you recall started threatening elite law firms with executive orders of dubious legal weight Brad Karp law firm Paul Weiss was one of the firms that was threatened and Brad Karp was the guy who immediately rushed to the White House to try to appease Trump, to have a conversation with Trump about getting his firm off the hook. The conversation was described as beginning, quote, with a prolonged discussion of golf. And that may be where it started, but where it ended was with Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss, promising that his elite law firm, Paul Weiss, would donate $40 million worth of free legal services to Donald Trump's pet projects as a way of trying to appease Trump so he wouldn't be mean to the firm anymore. And that bootlicking act by the chairman of Paul Weiss cratered the reputation of the Paul Weiss law firm, probably for all time. It also set in motion a race to the bottom where more than a half dozen other large, powerful, rich law firms did exactly the same thing. Before some of them came to their senses and said, no, actually, what are we doing? We're going to go to court and challenge these executive orders. These executive orders with which Trump was threatening these law firms. All four firms that stood up and challenged Trump in court won those cases and got the executive orders struck down. But like I said, following Paul Weiss's lead, there were a bunch of them that didn't go that route. Paul Weiss and its chairman, Brad Karp, didn't bother to challenge Trump at all. They just raced to the White House, signed themselves over to him. Thank you, sir. May I have another? Well, Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp, who did that, is now no longer the chairman of Paul Weiss. There is no criminal allegation against him, but Brad Karp has now been ousted at Paul Weiss because of his appearances in the Epstein files, including his apparent strategizing with Epstein about efforts to discredit Epstein's victims. I should tell you that he puts the word victims in scare quotes. Like, they're not really victims of Epstein who had come forward to say what Epstein had done to them. Incredibly, Paul Weiss still has not fired Brad Karp. They've removed him as chairman, and I think they want a lot of credit for doing so, but they're keeping him on at the firm. Maybe it's because the radioactive glow coming from Brad Karp's office is so warm it allows Paul Weiss to cut down on their heating bills in this cold, cold New York winter. But you know what? While we're on the subject of moral catastrophe and what to do about it, let's talk about the Trump prison camps. Because if you're Paul Weiss, or if you're Skadden, or you're Kirkland, or you're Latham and Watkins, or any of these other big law firms that followed Brad Karp down this road to perdition, right, that that signed an appeasement deal with Trump where you promised him that you'd make your law firm work for him for free if, please, please, he wouldn't be mean to you. If you're one of these firms who did that this time last year, and you've since realized that maybe that was the road to hell, if you're since realizing that you're going to have to find some way out of that, you're looking to find your soul in the dark now, to salvage something of your reputation so you don't just have to shut down and change your name and wipe all your resumes when this dark time is over and the reckoning comes, right? If you're Paul Weiss or one of these other firms who is trying to find your redemption arc, that is trying to find a way to redeem yourself and rinse your reputation a little bit, may I direct your attention to the Trump prison camps? Because that is the story of 2026. Because very quietly, Donald Trump in 2026 is trying to build himself a brand new archipelago of huge new prison camps in the United States. And what do you think he's going to do with them? The largest capacity federal prison in the United States right now holds about 4,000 people. Just for context, Trump is trying to build a new network of huge new prison camps that will each hold 8, 9, 10,000 people to two and a half times the largest size federal prison in the United States right now. But I mean, but at least in the case of existing federal prisons, they're at least for people who are convicted of federal crimes, right? These new huge prison camps that Trump wants to build, they're not for people convicted of crimes. They're for people picked up by his immigration agents, like by ICE. He is trying to build huge new capacity to hold more than 100,000 people in these prison camps, even if they haven't been convicted of or even charged with a crime. And with what they're doing with ICE already, the existing immigration prisons they've already got, even before they start building new ones, they're already the stuff of nightmares right now, Right. I mean, the immigrant prison camp, they call it Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas. They've had three people die there in the last few weeks. One of them was a man who they said was a suicide. But the county medical examiner, which got a hold of his body for an autopsy, said, no, no, no, it was not suicide. It was homicide. He was asphyxiated to death. And another one of those deaths, another so-called suicide. They are now not letting that county medical examiner see that body. They say they're instead going to send his body to the U.S. military to do the autopsy instead. They're shunting the autopsy on that one to the William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss, which conveniently does not release its autopsy reports to the public. At Camp East Montana, we also have new reports that they have at least two cases of tuberculosis at that facility as well. Elsewhere in Texas, in Dilley, Texas, where they're holding men, women and children, They have nearly tripled the number of people at that facility just since October. And at that facility in Dilley, Texas, there are now reported measles cases as well. NBC News has just reported on an 18-month-old girl named Amalia who was healthy when her family was arrested by Trump's immigration agents in December. And they were sent to this Dilley prison camp in Texas. At Dili, this little girl, this previously healthy little girl, contracted COVID and RSV and pneumonia. She was eventually rushed to a children's hospital in life-threatening respiratory distress. She was hospitalized at Methodist Children's Hospital in San Antonio for 10 days, much of that time on oxygen. But then ICE demanded that she be sent back to Dili from the hospital. They sent her back to the prison camp and then would not let her have the medication she was discharged with from the hospital. Homeland Security is denying that she ever received anything but the best medical care. But this all comes from a court case brought on her behalf by the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, a law school immigrant rights clinic, which filed the petition seeking her release and indeed succeeded in getting her released on Friday. that's exactly the kind of work that is exactly the kind of legal work that firms like Paul Weiss and other big law firms used to help with all over the country right for which there is a lot more need right now than there was even one year ago when Paul Weiss and all those other law firms instead started promising to not do anything to upset or oppose Trump and to instead donate their legal services to things Trump likes. The fact that the Dilley prison camp has nearly tripled in size since October is something that we know thanks to DetentionReports.com, which is an online database of all the known Trump immigrant prisons in the United States. In addition to DetentionReports.com, there's also another online tracker developed by a group called Project Saltbox. They show all the sites all over the country where Trump is trying to buy warehouse sites to build his new immigrant prison camps. We're going to be talking with one of the people behind this new online tracker for the new Trump prison camps in just a moment. It's a really useful thing. But again, if you're looking for ways to punch your moral dance card at the moment, if you're, say, Paul Weiss with your radioactive Epstein Files chairman stuffed into the back office where you hope no one notices him, where your firm is literally described now as the face of capitulation, right? When you're trying to avoid a picture of your firm appearing in the history books and the chapters on the shameful cowardice of the once vaunted and powerful American legal profession in the face of the tiniest nudge from a tin pot dictator. If you are Paul Weiss or you're another firm that's in that boat, you have the opportunity to have a very big and very important 2026. because the very contingent, as yet undecided fight over whether or not America is going to let Donald Trump build a huge new constellation of black site prison camps in this country, that is a fight that needs legal firepower, that needs pro bono lawyers donating their time. There's representing people who are already in the existing camps, a record number of people being held right now in what we know are atrocious conditions. There's also representing people with habeas corpus petitions, right? Non-lawyers hearing that phrase don't know what I'm talking about, but lawyers instantly know what that is, right? The administration defying court orders was supposed to be such a bright red line for the vaunted American legal profession. Well, where is the administration defying court orders every day? Courts all over the country, from Minneapolis to Massachusetts say that federal court orders are being violated every day, over and over and over again, specifically when it comes to the Trump administration arresting people and locking them up indefinitely without any chance to go to court to be heard. Which, of course, is the basis of the writ of habeas corpus. They're not supposed to be able to lock you up in prison without putting your case before a court. In Massachusetts, one federal judge last week went so far as to order the Trump administration to advise every single person they arrested and locked up, to advise them in writing and in multiple languages, that every single person the Trump administration is locking up has the right to petition a federal court to review their case and potentially set them free. The judge ordered that the Trump administration needs to give every single person they lock up written notice of their right to a habeas corpus petition in a federal court. And then she ordered that within three hours of anybody being given that notice, they need to be given access to a telephone quote to call an attorney Whereupon perhaps they could call Paul Weiss Perhaps big law which has a lot to make up for now perhaps big law could dig down deep and try to find its soul somewhere amid the tidal wave of habeas corpus petitions that ought to be filed by all these thousands of men, women, and children Trump is arresting all over the country and locking up literally without due process without any access to the courts. And why is he doing that? Well, he's doing it in part to create an artificial need for tons more space in Trump prison camps, which they are trying to build in huge numbers right now. Where else could big law help? Big law could also help in the fight to stop Trump building new prison camps. Put that Project Saltbox Tracker back up there. You see, at the very top there. You see the map there, and we'll get into that in a minute. But you see at the top, essentially the bottom line, seven warehouses that ICE has bought so far to become Trump prison camps. Seven bought so far. Five warehouses where the sale has been blocked by local opposition. Eleven warehouses, or it's up in the air, they are trying to buy warehouses to turn into big Trump prison camps. But the fight is still underway, still contingent, still yet to be determined. Hey, American big law, you looking for your lost reputation? Because right now, the future size of Donald Trump's archipelago of massive black site prison camps is being determined by fights in tiny little towns, by individual local officials, by angry local residents, and tiny no-resource local activist groups that are trying one by one to stop the next Trump prison camp from being built in their town. And they could use some help. And they're doing a good job fighting it in all sorts of ways. And it's the least partisan thing you can possibly imagine. I mean, one proposed Trump prison camp in Bahalia, Mississippi, appears to be canceled now after local protests and after Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker expressed his objections to it. One proposed Trump prison camp in Oklahoma City appears to be canceled now after local protests and after local officials leaned on the private company that was going to sell that warehouse there to ICE, that they ought not do that. In Surprise, Arizona, after a Rockefeller Group warehouse was bought by ICE, there's been a ton of local protests there. Even MAGA Republican Congressman Paul Gosar has been among those, expressing concerns about that warehouse becoming a prison camp in his home state. In Chester, New York, the fight is on over a warehouse owned by an entity associated with Carl Icahn. Locals are protesting there, including tonight. Local officials say the local sewer system, among other things, cannot handle anything like the size of that prison camp that Trump wants to put there in New York. In San Antonio, Texas, after Oakmont Industrial Group reportedly sold its warehouse to ICE, among the local Texas officials expressing their outrage and their determined opposition is the top elected official in Bexar County, Texas, Judge Peter Sakai, whose family was incarcerated in prison camps during World War II for the crime of being Japanese American. He says that is what led him to public service. He says he is absolutely opposed to there being a new ICE prison camp in Bexar County in San Antonio. In El Paso, Texas, the nonpartisan city council there unanimously approved an action plan to try to find a legal way to block another one of Trump's planned prison camps in Clint, Texas. Plenty of local opposition, plenty of protests, plenty of bipartisan outrage. And you know what they could use? They could use some big time legal firepower on their side. In Orlando, Florida, it's a firm called HLI Partners that's being pressured for potentially brokering a sale to ICE for a prison camp in Orlando. In New Hampshire, a member of Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte's cabinet resigned today in scandal after Governor Ayotte, again, a Republican, said she didn't know that ICE was planning on building one of these prison camps in Merrimack, New Hampshire. And this cabinet official's agency apparently did know, but nobody told the governor. And so now that cabinet official is out. In Social Circle, Georgia, even a Republican congressman like Mike Collins is saying no to a prison camp in Social Circle that would potentially triple the local population there. That's a town of 5,000 people. They want a Trump prison camp there that would hold up to 10,000 people. We're going to talk with Democratic U.S. Senator John Ossoff about that and more in just a few minutes. Whether it is the Epstein moral disaster or the capitulating to a would-be dictator moral disaster or any of the other moral disasters of 2025, of the first year of Donald Trump being back in office. This year, 2026, the second year of Trump being back in office, shows that his approval has never been lower. His party's electoral prospects have never been more dismal. The clarity with which the country views him and his administration and his intentions has never been more clear. Trump has never been less powerful. The agenda he's pursuing has never been more evident and more unpopular. What this means, if you're a wuss, what this means if you were wrong in 2025 in the first year of Donald Trump being back in office, well, it means that 2026 is good news for you. 2026 is the easiest chance you'll ever have to rectify what you did wrong, to get on the right side of this thing. Now or never. Start your day with the MSNOW daily newsletter. Each morning, read sharp insights from the voices you trust. Catch standout moments from your favorite shows. The second Trump administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to radically transform America. Stay up to speed on our latest podcasts and MS Now events and get fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news. It's everything you love about MS Now delivered to your inbox. Sign up at MS.now. They're called Project Saltbox. They're based in Baltimore, Maryland, and their name comes from the bright yellow wooden boxes on street corners around Baltimore, as seen here on the charming Instagram account, Baltimore Salt Box. They're boxes of road salt for people in Baltimore to use during the winter to melt the ice from their streets and sidewalks. Salt boxes used to clear ice. Project Salt Box is also focused on ice, as in Trump's immigration agents. Project Salt Box has been tracking the government's buying spree for its new archipelago of huge legal black site immigration prisons all over America. As I mentioned in the previous segment, you can see in plain language right there at the top, in red, warehouses bought by ICE, seven. In green, warehouses canceled by local opposition. In orange, the fight, warehouses for sale, 11. Project Saltbox has all those sites and their status labeled on an interactive map. You can zoom in on any state, any part of the country, hover over any site to see the details. So, for instance, you can zoom in on the great state of Georgia. If you hover over this one red dot, it tells you a warehouse in Social Circle, Georgia, has been bought by ICE with plans to imprison 8,500 people there. That's more than twice the size of the largest federal prison in the United States today. If you move your cursor over to the yellow dot, that's a warehouse in Flowery Branch, Georgia. The Trump administration wants to lock up an additional 1,500 people there, but they haven't yet managed to buy that warehouse there. That one is still for lease. You can also zoom in on Virginia and hover over that green dot there, which will tell you that a warehouse sale in Ashland, Virginia, that sale was canceled when the owner decided not to sell to ICE after getting enormous pressure from locals and others to cancel that deal. So much of the best work being done on this is being done by independent researchers and citizen journalists. There's that man in Minneapolis who's single-handedly tracking daily deportation flights from the Minneapolis airport. There's the folks at DetentionReports.com, which has a really useful interactive map of hundreds of existing immigration prisons where ICE is holding people. And there's Project Saltboxes, ICE warehouse purchase tracker, keeping tabs specifically on new sites the Trump administration is buying or trying to buy. It's a map, in effect, of the moral future of this country and the question of whether or not Donald Trump will have a network of prison camps, some of the calling them concentration camps, to do what he wants to for the rest of his term. Joining us now is Mike Riston. He is co-founder of Project Saltbox. Mr. Riston, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Rachel. Appreciate it. Did I get anything wrong in the way that I described that? No, that's all pretty much as we understand it, for sure. I got to say, we've been doing a lot of work, just the staff of the show and me, putting stuff together, trying to get our arms around this Trump prison camp idea, how big an operation it is. They're being very quiet about it. It's just sort of popping up all over the country. We felt a lot of gratitude when we discovered that you had done a lot of the work already that we were trying. How hard has it been to get this information? So up till now, it's been pretty easy. A lot of this information has just been existing in the public domain on websites like USA Spending or SAM.gov, which are sort of the federal government's clearing houses for contracts and bid solicitations. And so very easy to find that information there. Recently, it's become a little more difficult as Homeland Security has begun using Department of Defense contracts under a program called Wexmactitis, the worldwide expeditionary multi-award contract, Territorial Integrity of the United States. It's a mouthful. And essentially, it's just a way for ICE to use DOD contracts to make purchases specifically for things like detention warehouses and soft-sided camps like Camp East Montana. Would they be, I don't know if you can tell, if they're moving to Defense Department contracting protocols and resources, are they doing that in order to shield those contracts from the public? Or are they doing that because that affords them access to sites they wouldn't otherwise have? I actually think it has a lot to do with the latter. It allows them to access contracts, contract vehicles and vendors that are pre-vetted by the Department of Defense by a command in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, the Navy Supply Command. which is responsible for providing vendors for worldwide contingencies. Now the United States is considered a worldwide contingency area of responsibility. So by having these contractors available to the Department of Homeland Security, they can access pre contractors and they don have to publicly bid for the lowest bidder as would normally happen in a procurement cycle they can just tap into what the DOD already has and use that pool of resources to build out their sites The war comes home I know you served 20 years in the U Air Force I did, yes. You came out of that, it's clear, with some particular skills that have turned out to serve you very well in this contract. Can you talk a little bit about just how you got into this work tracking these warehouse purchases? Absolutely, yeah. So I was sitting home one day and I was on social media in our local Baltimore subreddit, and someone had posted a thread asking for help, kind of discerning some contracts that they had found. Turned out to be another Army veteran that had recently gotten out of the military and was trying to find something constructive to do to understand what was happening here in the United States with the ICE expansion. This would have been September of last year. And just coming from that military background, knowing contracting is the way that all of these things happen, that underneath every operation or underneath every contingency, there are hundreds of contracts and many millions of dollars worth of contract support that makes them happen. So we thought, or they thought, by looking at these contracts, we might get a better understanding of whether or not a Metro surge, Midway blitz style operation might be coming to Baltimore. And I was skeptical. I did not believe that the contracts would tell us that much. She sent me a list of about 20 contracts to look through. And Saturday night became Monday morning. And what we found were some pretty alarming trends. Since the passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the authorization of $69, $75 billion worth of money for DHS, ICE was buying things in our own backyard, such as meals ready to eat for six month's worth of detention in Baltimore, Maryland. Our field office is on the sixth floor of a building downtown that can maybe hold 50 people. We didn't understand the math behind why they would need that much resourcing. Trucks and mobile cell site simulators, which is a truck that they could drive around and turn on and intercept cell signals to locate persons of interest. That's military technology. I mean, law enforcement uses it too, but its roots are in military technology. And so we started pouring through these contracts and, you know, a group of two became a much larger group. And we have a diverse background. We have contract federal procurement specialists that are on our team. We have lawyers. We have dog walkers. We have, you know, everybody from every walk of life that can bring their own unique set of skills into the mix and contribute in some way to either make the data meaningful or help other people that don't understand the data understand it better, to bring it down to a level that everyone can understand. Well, at MSNOW, we're going to post a link to what you guys have posted at Project Saltbox, your database. I know it's a lot of material there, but people all over the country are wondering whether or not one of these prison camps is coming to their state, to their community, and what they can do to try to oppose it. And the best resource that I have found anywhere, in addition to local reporting on these things, in some cases, which has been very, very good, is this database that you've created at Project Saltbox. It's a real contribution. It's really constructive. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. All right, Mike Riston and the group is called Project Saltbox. At our website at MSNOW, we will post a link to that database. You can find out about these potential locations and the contracts involved in setting up these camps, which may be near you. All right, more news ahead. Stay with us. The U.S. military deployed on the streets of America. Whole communities targeted for removal. There was tremendous anxiety as they saw neighbors and friends being taken. And when accountability finally came knocking, the burn order to cover it all up. I never believed that America would be doing this. A stain on this country, one that we said we would never repeat. Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order. All episodes available now. When the Trump administration sent Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to raid Georgia's election offices and take ballots from Fulton County, I don't exactly know what the Trump administration thought was going to happen, but I doubt they were expecting this. And like a scene out of some banana republic, Tulsi Gabbard, The country's spy chief comes to Fulton County, Georgia to oversee the seizure of ballots. Your ballots, but they made a big mistake. They came to Fulton County, Georgia. They came to the political and spiritual heart of the civil rights movement. They came to the doorstep of John Lewis' congressional district. And as a result, we are going to mobilize the biggest and most unstoppable turnout in state history. Are you ready to vote, Atlanta? Georgia U.S. Senator John Ossoff speaking before a crowd of voters in Atlanta this weekend. Those voters clearly fired up about the Trump administration raiding their election offices, seizing like 700 boxes of ballots, boxes and boxes of real original ballots that were removed with no documented chain of custody, meaning who knows what they're going to do to them or how we'll ever know. Yesterday, a federal judge ordered that the Trump administration has to release the documents it used in court to justify its raid on that Georgia election facility. Those documents are ordered to be released tomorrow, which should make for a fascinating news day. Ahead of that deadline, ProPublica has revealed that lawyers for the Trump administration ahead of this raid apparently were interviewing, among others, a crank conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly tried and failed to prove that the 2020 election in Fulton County was fraudulent. He also reportedly has his own criminal record after he, quote, pled guilty to a misdemeanor voyeurism charge and was subsequently ordered by a jury to pay $3.25 million in damages after secretly filming guests in his own home bathroom. For his part, the man told ProPublica that that matter had no bearing on his election-related research. Quote, that has nothing to do with this, he said. That was 20 years ago. All right, then. So the Trump administration has until tomorrow to release the basis for their search warrant of that Georgia election center amid reporting that they relied on cuckoo for Cocoa Puff sources in terms of their theories justifying the search. ProPublica reports that at least part of the basis for that search may have come from an election denier who once pled guilty to secretly filming people in his own home bathroom. As if Georgia voters didn't have enough to be outraged about right now. Georgia Senator John Ossoff joins us live here next. Stay with us. Tulsi said the president asked her to go, which means the president is personally managing federal raids on election sites in battleground states, all in service of his obsession with overturning the 2020 election and laying the groundwork for whatever they're plotting this year. Joining us now is Democratic U.S. Senator John Ossoff. He's on the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. He's also running for reelection this year in the great state of Georgia. Senator, it's nice to see you. Thank you for being here. Hey, Rachel, thank you. How does Georgia feel about that raid on the Fulton County Election Office? As I mentioned in the speech, you know, this apparent abuse of federal law enforcement power to indulge the president's obsession with overturning the 2020 election and to lay the groundwork for whatever mischief they're planning in a few months, I think is obviously deeply disturbing, deeply chilling, deeply menacing, and also a huge political mistake for this administration. Because in Georgia, where now for the second time in six years, Georgia voters have the weight of the republic's future on our shoulders, we are just that much more determined to do our part to right the ship. This election is pivotal. If we do not restore checks and balances in these midterm elections, we will not recognize our republic at the end of this presidential term. We may lose our republic. And that is why I'm asking people to help me in this, the most pivotal United States Senate election in the country to log on to electjohn.com, electjon.com. This is something you can do right now to help us fight back and to help us defend voting rights in Georgia that are under attack. Fulton County officials are suing, trying to block what the Trump administration is doing here. We are expecting a court to order the Trump administration tomorrow to release the background information that they gave the court effectively to allow this search to be done in the first place. What are you expecting from those documents? Remains to be seen. There's been reporting indicating they may have been relying upon debunked conspiracy theories. We'll find out tomorrow. I think the bottom line is this. We would be naive not to expect dirty tricks. This man tried to steal the presidency when he lost it the first time. And that's why we are going to mount an unprecedented effort to get out the vote and to defend the voting rights. But in Georgia and in every major battleground state and key congressional district, the best insurance against dirty tricks is landslide margins of victory. So I hope everybody out there across the nation is feeling the passion that we have to feel right now to do our part at this pivotal moment in American history and power a landslide victory in these midterm elections and rebuke these unprecedented abuses of power. Senator John Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, sir, I know this is a very, very busy time for you. Thank you for your time tonight. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Rachel. All right, we'll be right back. Stay with us. All right, that's going to do it for me for now. A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story. But right now, you probably need more. On Up First from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes. Because no one story can capture all that's happening in this big, crazy world of ours on any given morning. Listen now to the Up First podcast from NPR.
