The Rachel Maddow Show
'Ignorance is Strength': Judge shuts down Trump's history re-write in devastating ruling
17 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What ruling did the judge make regarding Trump's actions in Philadelphia?
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The American people are basically telling the president that they are not okay with any of this.
Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at ms.now slash project47. Thanks to at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here this President's Day. Happy President's Day. The first U.S. president to live in the White House was the second U.S. president.
Chapter 2: How does the judge's ruling compare to Orwell's '1984'?
It was John Adams. John Adams moved into the White House in November of the year 1800. Before that, while he was president, but before he moved into the White House, before the White House was complete, John Adams lived in Philly.
Both John Adams, the nation's second president, and George Washington, the nation's first president, they both lived in Philadelphia in the 1790s while the US Capitol and the White House were being built in DC. And that house in Philadelphia, where both George Washington and John Adams lived while they each served as president, That house has a really interesting story.
Accidentally, the last remaining walls of that house were by accident torn down in the 1950s. That was the last standing portion of the house. It was accidentally demolished in the 1950s. Decades later, once archaeologists and historians figured out for sure where that president's house had been, The city got involved. They bought the land. They preserved everything they could.
And ultimately, that site was reopened as a National Historic Site. Today, it is sort of an open-air pavilion where you can see the shape of the president's house.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of Trump's poll numbers on his political strength?
You can see the foundations of the original building. They've got artifacts there from the time that George Washington and John Adams lived in that house. And while John Adams, who was from Massachusetts, while Adams was not a slaveholder, George Washington was. George Washington had eight people who were enslaved to him.
who he brought from Virginia to that house in Philadelphia to serve him while he was president. He later brought an additional enslaved person from Virginia to Philadelphia to that house, making it a total of nine. And that is all part of the history there at this historic site in Philadelphia.
Now, you've probably heard about the fact that over this past year, President Donald Trump ordered the physical removal of all references to slaves and slavery at that National Historic Site. Well, today, a big change in that case.
Today, happy President's Day, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ordered that the Trump administration must put those references to slaves and slavery back up. The judge in the case is a Republican appointee from the George W. Bush administration, and she starts her remarkable ruling today with a quote from 1984 from George Orwell.
She then says, quote, as if the ministry of truth in George Orwell's 1984 now existed with its motto, ignorance is strength, this court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims to dissemble and disassemble historic truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not.
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Chapter 4: What is the community response to the proposed ICE prison in New Hampshire?
Honestly, this is your President's Day present this year, this ruling. Let me give you a little bit more from it. The President's House, meaning that site in Philadelphia, represents the city of Philadelphia fulfilling an obligation to tell the truth, the whole complicated truth, removal of the crucial interpretive materials there,
strips that site of that truth and deprives the public of educational opportunities designed to be free and accessible. The abrupt elimination of historically significant educational material at the site is like pulling pages out of a history book with a razor.
Each person who visits the president's house in Philadelphia and does not learn of the realities of founding-era slavery receives a false account of this country's history. Worse yet, the judge says, worse yet, the potential of having the exhibits replaced by an alternative script, a plausible assumption at this time, would be an even more permanent rejection of the site's historical integrity.
It would be, quote, irreparable. The city has met its burden to establish irreparable harm. The defendants, the Trump administration, for their part, raise only one argument for why an injunction in this case would be inequitable. They argue that there's a public interest in upholding the federal government's right to convey its preferred speech.
Restoration of the president's house in Philadelphia does not infringe upon the government's free speech. nor is the government prevented from conveying whatever message it wants to send by wiping away the history of the greatest founding father's management of persons he held in bondage.
President Washington's House would not merit designation as a historic site if Washington had not commanded the army that won the Revolutionary War. His presence presiding over the Constitutional Convention graced it with the gravitas and spirit necessary to the creation of our government's foundational document.
Washington's restraint and modesty radiated strength and wisdom that defines the ideal chief executive to this day. The government can convey a different message without restraint elsewhere if it so pleases, but it cannot do so to the president's house. Not until it follows the law and consults with the city. The motion for preliminary injunction will be granted.
Happy Presidents Day, Philadelphia.
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Chapter 5: How does Georgia Fort describe the harassment of journalists by ICE?
You are getting your history put back up by court order at the President's House. A lot of stuff is happening all at once this week. I think it's kind of just an accident of the calendar, but it's all happening all in a very quick series of days this week. Tomorrow, excuse me, today is President's Day. Tomorrow is Lunar New Year. The year of the fire horse begins with this Lunar New Year.
Ramadan starts tomorrow as well. Also, this week is Ash Wednesday, which is the start of Lent in the Christian calendar, which is the period leading up to Christianity's holiest day, which is Easter.
I will also note, and this isn't a religious observance, it's a civil observance in the United States, but this week also happens to be when we have Remembrance Day for the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Over 125,000 people locked up in prison camps in this country during World War II.
American citizens and non-citizens alike locked up purely on the basis of their race. It was an executive order from President Roosevelt that enabled that to happen. That executive order was signed by FDR on February 19th, 1942.
And so February 19th every year is Remembrance Day for that wildly unconstitutional and unwise decision to lock up whole families, to lock up men, women, children, elderly people, babies, lock them all up, all without trial for years in mass prison camps purely because of their race. That Remembrance Day and all those other holidays and observances are all this week.
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Chapter 6: What challenges is New Hampshire's Governor Kelly Ayotte facing?
And the last two things I mentioned there, the Remembrance Day for Japanese-American incarceration in World War II and Ash Wednesday on the Christian calendar, those two things are sort of coming together this week in a way that I think is going to be a pretty big deal in the Chicago area. It's gonna happen this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, this week.
The Cardinal who leads the Archdiocese of Chicago, Cardinal Blaise Cupich, is this week, on Wednesday, going to lead an outdoor mass in Melrose Park, Illinois. They are expecting literally thousands of people to attend. And this service is specifically to basically stand up with both feet and to have the Catholic Church in America say, our church is a church of immigrants.
It is a stand with immigrants observation. It's going to be Wednesday, Wednesday evening, interestingly. It's going to culminate in a procession through the streets. Again, thousands of people are expected. But a couple things to know about this. I mean, first of all, this is just a couple of miles from the immigrant prison, the ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois.
And second, a federal judge has just ordered, has just ruled that Catholic clergy must be allowed into that ICE facility to offer Holy Communion, to offer ashes for Ash Wednesday to people who are locked up there by the Trump administration. ICE has just been ordered.
They need to let in the Catholic clergy to provide religious services to the people locked up there by court order, and they need to do it by Wednesday. Is the Trump administration going to allow that to happen?
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Chapter 7: What recent protests have occurred against ICE facilities across the country?
At that very same facility, at Broadview, for years nuns and priests have been allowed in there to hold mass, to minister to the people who are locked up there. They've been allowed to do that for more than a decade before this past fall, in September, the Trump administration put a stop to it.
You might remember our footage that we aired here on this show, the dramatic footage of the Catholics' Eucharistic procession to Broadview in October this year. This was right after the Trump administration started turning away the Catholic clergy and blocking them from providing religious services, even though they'd previously been allowed in there to do that for more than a decade.
I love how the Trump administration Republicans like to crow about how they're all for religious freedom. They're the ones who turned away the nuns and the priests in Broadview after letting them in there for a decade. It was the Trump administration that turned them back. Well, now this week, a judge has ruled that those nuns and priests must be allowed back in.
And so on that day, on the day they must be let in, on Wednesday this week, day after tomorrow, there's gonna be a cardinal and several thousand Catholics and immigrant families and supporters of immigrants from all over Chicagoland, all in the streets, celebrating a huge outdoor mass, marking one of the holiest days of the year in the Christian calendar, and making what is effectively a big physical show of moral force on the side of immigrants,
a peaceful, moral confrontation with this government, with what they're doing with these attacks on immigrants and with their prison sites. So again, I think that's gonna be a big deal. That is Wednesday this week.
And while that is gonna happen in a couple of days, there's also just a ton of news to report about other confrontations sort of of this type, other confrontations, other opposition that's being stood up against Trump right now and how those things are starting to pay off all over the country. So let's start tonight in Hutchins, Texas, which is just outside Dallas.
Hutchins, Texas is one of the places where they've been trying to put a huge new Trump prison camp. Well, tonight, Hutchins has its regularly scheduled city council meeting.
Local news stations in the Dallas area were planning to send camera crews and reporters to this city council meeting in Hutchins because they were expecting another fiery night of protest and anger and emotional opposition to this prison camp that Trump was trying to put up in this Texas town.
You might remember our previous coverage of how up in arms everybody was in this town in Texas, saying they did not want one of these prison camps there.
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Chapter 8: What are the key concerns raised by State Rep. Wendy Thomas regarding the ICE prison camp?
The Hutchins mayor telling the Dallas Morning News, quote, "...God answered our prayers." The mayor, in a statement, thanked the company for deciding they wouldn't sell their property to ICE. He said, quote, we look forward to working with this company to find a tenant that is a good fit for the city of Hutchins.
The mayor also, in a statement to WFAA, the local ABC station, he thanked everybody in his town. He thanked everybody in Hutchins who protested and spoke out and said they wouldn't stand for this prison camp. He said, quote, Your concerns did not go unnoticed, and your professional decorum shown during our city council meetings, as well as the protest here at City Hall, is much appreciated.
Thank you for protesting me here at City Hall. I agree with you. It helps to have you protest here. Thank you. The mayor of Hutchins, Texas, kind of showing how it's done in terms of respecting the First Amendment. Local opposition, though, in Hutchins has stopped a Trump prison camp from being built in that Texas town. People who were against it, the whole town was against it. They stopped it.
Same thing just happened in Kansas City, Missouri. For the past few weeks, we've been covering local opposition in Kansas City, people there protesting, turning out to local meetings, pressuring people every way they can, people saying, we will not stand for a Trump prison camp being built in Kansas City. The local press, including the Kansas City Star,
documenting in detail the incredible pressure being brought to bear, not just against the Trump administration, but against the local company that stood to profit from selling this Kansas City facility to the Trump administration so they could turn it into a prison camp.
We had Kansas City's mayor, Quinton Lucas, here on the show talking about how he and Kansas City would do everything in their power to stop a prison camp from being built in their city. Well, now they have won that fight as well. Hutchins, Texas won. Kansas City, Missouri has just won.
The local company that was gonna do the sale of that facility in Kansas City decided, after all, they are not gonna do it. The mayor says that is good news, and they're not letting down their guard. He credits all the local opposition for having stopped that sale. He says now it's Kansas City's job to make sure that Trump can't find anywhere else in their town to try it anywhere else.
We're seeing stories like this pay off all over the country. In New Jersey, this is a low-profile story, but it's the same dynamic. New Jersey local opposition concerted local pressure, led to a New Jersey company saying it would turn down a contract to build out vans for ICE, vans for transporting their prisoners.
In Delaware, we've also just learned that a company that contracts with ICE, a company called Daedalus Aviation, they will not be taking airplane hangar space at the Wilmington Airport in Delaware. This is a company that makes their money from ICE. Local residents and Democratic lawmakers had pushed hard, saying a company like that shouldn't be allowed to do business at our airport.
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