Rachel Maddow makes the case that from the first day of his second term, Donald Trump has been engaged in "a concerted and intense targeting of Black Americans," from firings to executive orders and including his Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, which will likely largely eliminate Black congressional representation in the American South. Rachel Maddow looks at new polling that shows Donald Trump is abysmally unpopular with Americans, and shares an example of how the slashing of government employees, touted as "efficiency" at the time, is being reveals to be nothing more than breaking the government so it can't function correctly anymore when Americans are counting on it. Rachel Maddow describes the importance of the U.S. military bases in Germany, including in playing a role in supporting Trump's war on Iran. For reasons that are hard to discern, Donald Trump wants to yank 5,000 troops from those bases. This decision happens to come shortly after Trump spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin. This is not the first time that sequence of events has happened. Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, talks with Rachel about the legal battle to prevent the elimination of Black congressional representation in the American South in the wak of the Supreme Court's dismantling of the Voting Rights Act. Rev. John Edgerton joins Rachel to discuss the growing protest movement against Citizens Bank for its business with ICE. Want more of Rachel? Check out the "Rachel Maddow Presents" feed to listen to all of her chart-topping original podcasts.To listen to all of your favorite MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.