Transcripts For MSNBCW The Rachel Maddow Show 20170414

Were going to start with british spy stuff. If you are into british spy stuff, even spy novels and bbc cereals and that kind of stuff, you will know there is a convenient mnemonic device for us americans about british spy stuff, a convenient device to help us remember what the different british spy agencies are. They have one Domestic Intelligence agency thats mi 5. Thats the rough equivalent of fbi. They have mi 6 which is the equivalent of our cia. And theres this handy mnemonic device which is mi5 is the fbi. And mi6 is the cia. Its very handy. That said, it all falls apart when you get to the third agency which is called gchq, because that does not sound like anything. Theres no neat, easy to remember device to remind us all that the british Intelligence Agency called gchq is the equivalent of our nsa. Our National Security adviser. Theres no easy way to remember. Thats their headquarters. Kind of amazing looking building. The shape reminds you its a global vacuum for information. Gchq stands for Government Communication headquarters. Thats a deliberately obscure name thats not supposed to attract attention. They started fairly small, as a cryptography outfit in britain. In world war ii it became very, very important. In world war ii, the nazis used a machine called enigma to encrypt their sensitive communications. It was widely thought to be unbreakable. In fact it was important that the germans believed enigma was unbreakable. Because they believed it was unbreakable, it was inpenetrable as a coding device. The nazis sent their communications using these enigma machines. One of the great British Intelligence secrets of world war ii is that secretly during the war the gchq had hacked, had cracked the enigma. Germans had no idea, but the brits were able to read the germanss most secret communications, and thats why part of world war ii ended the way it did. That part of British Intelligence apparatus responsible for cracked enigma, the geniuses who cracked the nazi code, that agency is now gchq. Now they are much more high profile and gigantic. They have thousands of employees, but big part of what as they do deal with encryption and cryptography at a high level. What they do overall as an agency is calledignals intelligence. They vacuum up Surveillance Data from all over the globe just as our nsa does. At the beginning of march, the New York Times reported the british and dutch governments turned over to the u. S. During our president ial Campaign Last year. They turned over evidence that People Associated with donald trump, with the donald trump for President Campaign had attended, quote, meetings in european cities with russian officials and others close with russian president vladimir putin. The New York Times reported that on march 1st. Provocative statement. They attributed this information to three former american officials who asked for anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. But that has always been an interesting dangling thread in this scandal and in this investigation. Not just the idea that Trump Campaign people physically met with Vladimir Putins associates in inperson meetings. The other part of this that was intriguing from the New York Times report back in early march was where they say that information went. They said that not only did these meetings happen in european cities but european intelligence agencies caught them, saw them doing it, surveilled the meetings basically and reported that Surveillance Data to the United States. Well, that piece of it as of today weve now got more on because this morning a new scop from the Guardian Newspaper in britain advances this story. Now, the guardian is not reporting on these alleged meetings but they are reporting a lot more about european intelligence agencies basically catching these alleged communications and contacts between Trump Campaign and russian individuals, documenting those contacts and giving that information over to the United States. The guardian reports that as far back at 2015 gchq picked up signals intelligence of, quote, members of Donald Trumps Campaign Team having contact with russian intelligence operatives. According to this guardian report today, britain was first on this. Britain Surveillance Agency was first, but then lots of other european spy agencies reports the same thing thereafter. They first became aware in 2015 of suspicious interactions between figures connected to trump and known or supported russian agents. This intelligence was passed to the u. S. As part of a routine exchange of information. Over the next six months until december of 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between trumps inner circle and russians. The European Countries that passed on electronic information was german, poland, australia. It is understood that gchq was at no point carrying out an operation against his team or proactively seeking information. The information was picked up by chance. As part of routine surveillance of russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people, presumably targeting the same russians, they began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the United States. This is a british paper with this scoop today. This is the Guardian Newspaper. They definitely have a british perspective on this, or at least this story comes from a british place. By that i mean if you read between the lines, it seems like part of the motivation of their intelligence sources who are telling on this new information is that they sort of want to brag about the fact that the british and these other Intelligence Services overseas, they were first to pick up on these dodgy contacts between the Trump Campaign and the russians. Theyre sort of bragging about the fact that they were on it. But they are also complaining about how slow america was to pick up on this stuff compared to everyone else in the world. After all, this is intelligence that would be of most importance to the United States. Why were american intelligence agencies not first to pick it up . And once it was picked up by these other friendly intelligence agencies, why did amica act on it with more alacrity . One source speaking with the garbd guardian today is quoted saying it looks like the u. S. Intelligence agencies were asleep. The europe agencies were saying there are contacts going on between people close to mr. Trump and people we believe are russian intelligence agents, you should be weary of this. The message was, watch out, theres something not right here. Who knows if its these other agencies pounding their chest about how great they are. Who knows if this is just hind sight is 20 20 . Maybe it was truly weird that american agencies werent more johnny on the spot about this information. Its hard for us lay observers of this stuff to tell from here. But this is new information in terms of other intelligence agencies having a handle on this stuff. And theres one more piece of this report that makes another piece of this story finally make sense. Last week, last thursday on the night the new administration decided to shoot those tomahawk missiles on the syrian air base, that evening the New York Times reported late that it was not just the fbi that was looking into the russian attack on our election last year and the question of whether or not the Trump Campaign was involved in that attack, the New York Times reported john brennan did individual oneonone briefings. He personally did them as director of the cia with the top leadership in congress with the heads of both parties in congress. John brennan briefed these members of Congress Late last summer, a, that russia was interfering in the election and they happened to be interfering to help trump win, and c, that the cia was, quote, seeing signs of possible connections between the russian attack in the trump camp. So that was reported last week. Hey, this wasnt just the fbi. The cia was sounding the alarm for some reason late last summer. The director of the cia was sounding the alarm. That was sort of floating out there untethered last week from the New York Times and almost nobody folded it up because it was swamped by all the other news. According to the guardian today, we now have at least their reporting which suggests what might have freaked out john brennan enough to do those oneonone, inperson briefings. Their head Robert Hannigan passed material in the summer of 2016 john wren in an. The matter was deemed so sensitive. It was handled at the director level, meaning this information was handed from their director of their nsa to the director of our cia. It wasnt like agency to agency or staff of assistance. It was head of the agency to head of the agency handing off this information. According to the New York Times, our top guy at the cia then personally went right to the oversight committees and right to the top leadership in congress with it, himself, alone. Did he take those actions . Did he mount those oneonone in person briefings because of what the British Intelligence services and these other Intelligence Services had collected . Is what alarmed him enough to do those briefings was it what the european agencies and western agencies collected in terms of surveilling trump people talking with russian intelligence operatives . Is that how he learned that was going on . Did the cia director believe as reported in the New York Times that what he had was evidence not just that the russians were tacking our election but that Trump Campaign was helpi with the russian attack somehow . This would be an excellent time to hear john brennan answer questions like that, especially because im not basing this on any classified information. All i have access to is open source information. And all of this stuff has now been reported in newspapers, and he can now be asked about it in a nonclassified context based on this open source reporting we can all read. He can answer these questions for us. If he were asked about it in a public hearing which has something to do with the fact that the House Intelligence Committee cancelled the public hearing. This afternoon cnn added their own corroboration to this story citing u. S. Congressional and Law Enforcement and u. S. And european intelligence sources. Thats how they phrased their sourcing. Their report as of this afternoon is that the cchq incepted communications between associates of donald trump and russian officials and other russian individuals during the campaign and passed on those communications to their u. S. Counterparts. So they are corroborating the guardians reporting that they collected documentation, collected information on those meetings passed them onto the u. S. In terms of the scope of what were talking about here, cnn describes, quote, multiple communications over several months between the Trump Associates and russian individuals. And of course that was during the campaign while russia was mounting its operation to hack documents and run their foreign intelligence operation to help trump win the election. In terms of how these investigations are proceeding, if it feels like new stuff is coming out every day now, its becae new stuff is coming out every day now. Obviously theres a lot of Investigative Journalism going on here and abroad on this subject. Clearly theres an active fbi inquiry or two or three, or five or seven. There is the stalled House Intelligence Committee investigation that hasnt rescheduled that public hearing with john brennan. Theres also what appears to be an active senate Intelligence Committee investigation theyre reportedly conducting witness interviews with analysts that produced that report that said u. S. Intelligence community concluded that russia attacked our election with the aim of helping trump win the election. Theyre reportedly interviewing those intelligence agents now. With we dont know whats happening in the closed door parts, but we are in open source material seeing evidence of some stuff going on. As we reported last night, the former campaign chairman, paul manafort, he says hes now retro actively registering as a agent of a foreign power after conversations with federal authorities about his previous work with proputin forces in ukraine. Whatever you think about his work with foreign governments and whether or not he shouldnt be registered as a Foreign Agent now or in the past, this statement from him that after conversations with foreign authorities he has decided to make this registration this statement is direct evidence that the Trump Campaign chair is now having serious conversations with federal authorities about his contacts with foreign governments and his work on their behalf and the legal requirements that devolve therefrom. From the outside looking in just being an observer, just being a citizen trying to figure this out, this important question, trying to figure out if this president is in place because of the normal domestic course of political events or rather because of a foreign intelligence operation he cooperated with. Just as a person trying to keep track of that important basic question, trying to track, notice and understand all the different shoes that keep dropping every day, its hard to know right now the status of any one of those investigations. Its hard to predict the time frame that well get to the bottom of this as to what happened here to our country. But it seems clear right now theres Something Different going on, at least in the part of this investigation thats going on in open source materials, the part of this investigation thats happening in the press. Whats different about whats happening in the press right now is youre starting get individual sources, usually Anonymous Sources, saying things like this to the guardian. Quote, one source suggested the official investigation was making progress. Quote, they now have specific concrete corroborative evidence of collusion between people in the Trump Campaign and agents of russian influence relating to the use of hacked material. Oh, really . Who is this source . What is this specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion . Who knows . And theres no way we can assess the validity of that claim without knowing what its based on or whether or not that source is in the position to know these things. But increasingly you are seeing in the serious press looking into this scandal, these Anonymous Sources starting to make blunt declarative statements like that and increasingly like this reporting from the british sources bragging about how early they were on this story, even before the dumb slow americans, you are starting to see people trying to claim credit for knowing this all along for being first to realize where this was all going even when nobody thought it was important. We still do not know if this possible crime was committed. We do not know if this alleged collusion between Trump Campaign and the russians will be proven. But we are at the part of this story, i think its fair to notice, where people are starting to expect that thats going to happen and theyre trying to claim credit for themselves for having written about it in the beginning. Youre seeing it with the cia in the United States trying to say, hey, it wasnt just the fbi. We were trying to sound the alarm on this too. We had good detail on this. We tried to tell people. Youre seeing it with the cia and foreign Intelligence Services. We had this one, we were first. You were also seeing it with Anonymous Sources who are cultivating reporters on the story even before theyre ready to give their names. I saw this coming. We knew this was going to happen. Im going to be proven right. The press, the open source investigation into this scandal has taken a turn. As to whether or not well find out whether thats justified, well stay on it. Watch this space. This is the new new york. We are building new airports all across the state. New roads and bridges. New mass transit. New business friendly environment. New lower taxes. And new University Partnerships to grow the businesses of tomorrow today. Learn more at esd. Ny. Gov breathe easier with your vicks vaporub. Soothing cough relief that starts working instantly. What do you call it when somebody plans to get up and pound their chest and Say Something super confrontational, super tough, but then when it comes time to do it, they chicken out . What do you call that . Other than chickening out . Im sure theres a nicer term for that. Im hoping there is at least a more official term for that it seems inappropriate to use a barnyard taunt like chickening out when it comes to the behavior of the top Law Enforcement official in the United States. But this phenomenon is now becoming a hall mark for him. First time was a couple weeks ago in st. Louis. Attorney general Jeff Sessions made the decision on paper that the Justice Department was basically going to pull out of its agreements with local Police Departments around the country to reform troubled local departments. His department put a memo addressing that change. And then they arranged for attorney general to go to st. Louis to talk about it. In his prepared remarks on the subject, were like, whoa. His preped remarks on the subject were like the attorney general equivalent of ripping off your shirt and crawling up and body slamming the ref in the middle of the ring. It was like i cant believe the attorney general is going to really . This was from his prepared remarks. Unfortunately many Law Enforcement leaders say this kind of policing has become more difficult in an age of viral videos and targeted killings of police. So they circulated this speech. This is what Jeff Sessions was going to say in his speech in missouri. A lot of people looking at that speech ahead of time were like, holy cow, were in an age of targeted killings of police and viral videos of those targeted killings. Then he actually gave the speech. Heres how it went. Unfortunately, many Law Enforcement leaders say this kind of policing is becoming more difficult today for a lot of reasons. When it came time to say the really provocative punch them in the teeth kind of remarks, hes become more difficult. He kind of decided to abbreviate it instead of saying an age of viral videos, he said for a lot of reasons, reasons i wont go into here. Didnt say the thing about targeted killings of police. That was a couple of weeks ago. Then it happened again this week. Day before yesterday he went to nogales, arizona. We reported years ago about the striking scenes, those amazing holy week visuals of the american cardinal conducting that cross border mass. They said this mass that people could hear oboth sides of the border. They offered communion to people literally through the border fence. Jeff sessions went to that same spot this year, this week. Instead of doing anything like that, obviously, what he planned to do was denounce the filth coming across the border from mexico into the United States. You might have seen headlines this week about Jeff Sessions planning on giving what some people were calling a full blown White Nationalist scary speech on the border. Part of the reason people thought it was a scary speech was because of the use of the word filth. Here was part of his prepared remarks. Quote, it is here on this sliver of land where we first take our stand against this filth. That was his prepared remarks. Heres what happened when he came to that part of the speech in real life. It is here on this sliver of land on this border where we first take our stand. Jeff sessions writes a speech and crafts policies around the idea that people crossing the border are seen by the United States as filth but then he chickens out when it comes time to say it front of people. We need a better term than chickening out to explain it. He keeps doing it. Although he is afraid to look anybody in the eye and say it in person, particularly in places where it might have a reallife effect, doesnt mean hes not acting on these ideas. This is daniella trujillo. Shes three years old. She has three older siblings. Shes the baby of the family. She has health problems, recurring seizures. Thats a serious thing for anybody at any age. When youre 3 that creates serious issues in terms of you care. Luckily her mom has been specially trained to recognize sign when she might be about to have a seizure, how to anticipate that and take care of her. More than even a usual mother daughter bond which means she and her mom are inseparable. Or they were. Last week the mom was snatched off the street near her familys home outside cincinnati, ohio. Grabbed off the street, put in the local jail, then moved to columbus, and theyve flown her to a detention facility in louisiana. At each step of the way where shes been held, there have been rallies in support of maribel. The archdiocese has rallied to support her in part because shes a devote member of her local church, she volunteers at the church. The mom in this case has no criminal record. Never been charged or convicted of anything. She has four kids. All of them are u. S. Citizens including her special needs daughter. Like many people who are in her situation who may have come here years ago without documentation but who have no significant criminal charges of any kind, maribeh has been regularly showing up with her meetings with ice. She checks in, goes to every appointment. She had her most recent checkin appointment with ice a week and a half after all went fine as normal. And then two days later they grabbed her off the street and they are now taking steps to deport her. They put her in jail, moved her to another jail, flown her to louisiana. Despite the rallies of support for her in cincinnati, they had rallies when they moved her to columbus and rallies outside the courthouse. Theyre planning to send her to mexico on wednesday. Shes lived in the United States for 15 years. Shes raised all her kids here. All her kids are u. S. Citizens. She has no criminal record. The reason she came from mexico was her brother and father were both kidnapped by drug cartels and wanted to avoid that fate herself. But now ice under the new Trump Administration is embarrassed to pronounce the fact that they view people who have crossed the border as filth, theyve decided that Maribel Trujillo is a priority. Its been reported that part of the delay between now and wednesday may be explained by efforts to try and figure out a way to send her 3yearold disabled u. S. Citizen daughter with her when she gets deported, even though her daughter is a citizen because theyre trying to figure out maybe its better to split up the family that way than to split up the family involving splitting the mother from the 3 year old. Republican Governor John Kasich and rob portman, democratic senator brown, they have all weighed in on this case. Theyve all weighed in on Maribel Trujillos behalf asking for mercy. You see these headlines about how the Trump Administration is going soft on all of their most controversial proposals and flipflopping now. They are not. Not at least when it comes to real people, real, regular families who they dont have to stand in front of and make speeches to. When youre willing to do this stuff as policy but youre unwilling to look people in the eye and admit out loud that it is what you are doing, i know chickening out is the wrong term, but im not sure what the right term is. Ds . Like finding new ways to be taken care of. 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When it was over, an american professor wanted to plan another, but this time peg it to the president s refusal to release his tax returns. It took off like a rocket. Technically this year your taxes are not due until the beginning of next week. But the day we think of as tax day, april 15th, is this weekend. Its saturday. And this year, tax day, saturday, will be marked by what are expected to be pretty big tax day protests targeted at the new president. About 10,000 people are expected to hit the streets in washington, d. C. Democratic members of Congress Like ron widen, maxine waters, jamie raskin have said they will be at that march. The womens march in d. C. Was one of the largest protests in that city ever. Nobodys expecting these protests to be anywhere near that size, but part of impact for the effect of that womens march was how many there were. These cropped up everywhere, all over the country and all over the world. Expect a taste of that this weekend, too. Tax day pr toasts are expected in more than 40 states, hundreds of cities from boise to birmingham to juneau, alaska. There are even going to be trump release your tax returns protests planned for other countries that do not have a tax day this weekend including germany, japan, and the uk. Trump era in u. S. Politics is turning out to be an era of invigorated u. S. Protests against this new president. The next round comes on saturday. Happy tax day. burke at farmers, weve seen almost everything, so we know how to cover almost anything. Even a coupe soup. [woman] so beautiful. [man] beautiful just like you. [woman] oh, why thank you. [burke] and we covered it, november sixth, twothousandnine. Talk to farmers. We know a thing or two because weve seen a thing or two. We are farmers. Bumpam, bumbumbumbum adult 7 promotes alertness and mental sharpness in dogs 7 and older. ray the difference has been incredible. She is much more aware. She wants to learn things. vo purina pro plan bright mind. Nutrition that performs. Various shouting heigh ho its off to work we go woman on the gulf coast, new exxonmobil projects are expected to create over 45,000 jobs. And each job created by the Energy Industry supports two others in the community. Altogether, the industry supports over 9 million jobs nationwide. These are jobs that natural gas is helping make happen, all while reducing americas emissions. Energy lives here. Oklahoma and arkansas share a long border just shy of 200 miles. Oklahoma to the west, arkansas to the east. As you move along the border, there are parts of oklahoma and arkansas that kind of blend together, whether you are in westville or summers or remy or dora or octavia, as you hop across one side of the border to the other, its hard to see where one state begins and one state ends. They share that border. They share the arkansas river. They even share a fair. Its the arkansasoklahoma state fair. Runs about a week. Rides, hog races, an alligator show, theres a milking competition. Oklahoma and arkansas big long border joined at the hip. A few years ago, oklahoma issued some official advise. Oklahoma just emerged from an especially grisly botched execution. After that ordeal which was a terrible ordeal and got them a lot of National Attention because it went to terribly wrong, the state did a review. They looked into what had gone wrong. And they came out with a couple recommended fixes, for example, the state said it would be better to have a system of communication established among the staff during the execution since the one they sort of macgyvered during the botched execution literally involved a code where staff would push different colored pencils through holes in a wall in order to signal different medical information to each other. This didnt work so great. We should have a real communication system. They also advised everybody involved should in advance agree to use the same terms through the period of the execution, word like stop or stay or halt. Everybody should know in advance exactly whats expected to happen when a command like that is given. Basic stuff, but thats how basically things went wrong. And then there was their big recommendation. Quote, executions should not be scheduled within seven calendar days of each other. That execution that went so badly in oklahoma that led to this review that led to all these recommendations, that botched execution was actually supposed to be the first in a double header execution that night, but they lost control of the first one, the first one went so terribly wrong that they were forced to call off the second one. It turned up evidence the stress and the pressure of planning to kill two people back to back on that same night, that may very well have contributed to the medical staff getting things so wrong in the first one and the whole thing falling apart. Even though oklahoma is largely fine with the Death Penalty, oklahoma is in fact so thirsty for executing its prisoners, that they added the Death Penalty to the state constitution, and they would consider bringing back the gas chamber of all things. Even in oklahoma which is not squeamish t these things, they agree what they never want to do is two of these things in a row. Never try that ever again. Quote, executions should not be scheduled within seven calendar days of each other. 330 highway miles between the death row in oklahoma and the death row in arkansas. And oklahoma and arkansas, they share a lot. But its possible nobody in arkansas read that report out of oklahoma about what happened in oklahoma with their execution problem. We dont know, but right now the state of arkansas has scheduled not just one night of backtoback executions, not two, not three, arkansas has scheduled four sets of backtoback double header executions over a period of ten days starting monday. Its a mass execution. No state has executed this many people this fast since the country reinstated the Death Penalty in the 1970s. One of the biggest questions has been whether the judicial system can even absorb this many hearings. The last minute appeals when you have all of these people you are going to kill in this close proximity. Over the last two weeks one of the courts blocked one of the the executions saying his clemency case deserves another chance. The rush in this case appears to be driven by the fact that one of the drugs that arkansas wants to use to kill all these guys is a drug thats set to expire at the end of this month. Rushing to get an unheard amount of executions off because drugs are about to expire by itself is a little chilling. Consider a couple other things here. Arkansas has never used this particular drug before to kill theyve never used this drug before. This will be their first time using it and theyre tryinto use it at four double headers in ten days. The director of corrections in the state its going to be overseeing this mass execution, hes never seen an execution at all. And they apparently have no contingency plan on file in case any of this goes wrong. The expiring drug they want to use theyve never used before, its the same drug that went so wrong in that oklahoma execution that caused that statewide freakout and a revision of all their protocols. But arkansas does not plan on heeding oklahomas warning. They are planning on Going Forward on this execution spree. There is still time. There are still challenges being argued in state and federal courts. As of right now the first two executions slated for monday, but tonight the Drug Companies who are implicated in this story against their will are trying to put their feet down to stop it too. Thats a super Interesting Development in this, and we have more on that ahead. Stay with us. Keep it growing by making every dollar count. Thats why i have the spark cash card from capital one. With it, i earn unlimited 2 cash back on all of my purchasing. And that unlimited 2 cash back from spark means thousands of dollars each year going back into my business. Which adds fuel to my bottom line. Whats in your wallet . Theres nothing more than my vacation. Me so when i need to book a hotel room, i want someone that makes it easy to find what i want. Booking. Com gets it. They offer free cancellation, in case i decide to go from kidfriendly to kidfree. Now i can start relaxing even before the vacation begins. Your vacation is very important. Thats why booking. Com makes finding the right hotel for the right price easy. Visit booking. Com now to find out why were booking. Yeah on monday, arkansass planning to try to kill two people, two prisoners with a drug they have never used to kill people before. Its the first of four scheduled doubleheader two a night executions that the state is trying to pull off, all with the drug they have never used before, even though they have never killed anybody in more than the past 12 years. The courts so far have blocked one of the planned killings. So now arkansas is down to three planned doubleheaders and one solo execution night, natural the course of ten days. But tonight, Interesting Development. Two Drug Companies that make drugs that are apparently going to be used in these executions, these two companies have asked a federal judge to step in and stop all of the executions. The companies both say they have put strict controls on their supplies to make sure that their drugs arent used in capital punishment. They say that their supply indications are that no sales of these drugs have been authorized through their distributors to the states prison system. A spokesman for one of the company says in a statement tonight, quote, so we can only conclude that arkansas may have acquired this product from an unauthorized seller. Pharmaceuticals obtained in this manner are at riskf adulteration or chemical change. Again, they arasking these Drug Companies are saying youre planning on our drugs . You did not get them legally. You did not get them in a way that can guarantee that these drugs are what you say they are. You should not be allowed to use them to kill anyone, let alone eight people in ten days. Joining us now is an attorney for the Death Penalty clinic at uc berkeleys law school, megan mccracken. She is one of the countrys leading experts in lethal injection in the Death Penalty. Thank you for joining us tonight. Appreciate your time. Hi, rachel. Thanks for having me. I want to ask you about this latest development. There has ban lot of legal wrangling around this remarkable plan in arkansas. What does it mean to you, how do you assess this intervention by the Drug Companies tonight . Well, it happened just a little while ago this evening. And so it was unexpected. And these are, you know, two pharmaceutical companies. I think theyre related. It might just be one acting in their own interests. They have financial interests. They have pr interests. And they dont want their products used in executions. And so, you know, its valuable to see yet another voice saying that midazolam is an inappropriate drug to use in this way. But for the sake of the prisoner, the bottom line is just that, that this drug is not appropriate for this purpose. One of the things that strikes me about this plan by arkansas, obviously trying to kill a lot of people all at once raises all sorts of practical and logistical questions, let alone the sort of ethical morass that its hard to think through on Something Like this. But the company that makes this drug says it shouldnt be used for this purpose. Other states, including oklahoma, which i highlighted earlier, have had a lot of problems with this drug, with midazolam. But the Supreme Court has weighed in specifically on the use of this drug and said its okay to use midazolam as part of a lethal injection protocol. Because of the Supreme Courts ruling there, that a settled matter . Is that part of this case essentially no longer litigatable . No. That Supreme Court case that youre referring to, that was a very limited case with a highly differential legal review. So what the court is doing there is looking at the determinations made by the trial court and reviewing them under this highly deaf renchal stand differential standard to determine whether or not the findings that the trial court made based on the evidence before it, whether those findings were reasonable. So another court with a different set of evidence, different facts could reach different conclusions. And thats exactly what we just saw happen in ohio. With a more complete record, the court there said midazolam does present a substantial risk of serious harm. And ohio is enjoyed from moving forward with those executions using the drug. Megan, last point on this. There has become a sort of increasing National Attention to this because theyre going try to kill so many people in such short order. They havent killed anybody in the prison system there in more than 12 years. Is there a practical legal difference in trying to kill two people on the same night or eight people in ten days as opposed to just trying to kill one prisoner . Is it just surprising for us as lay observer, or is there a legal difference here . There is a difference. And i think you alluded to it before. I mean, the last time that we saw this attempt an attempt to do this was in oklahoma. And there the Execution Team had extraordinary difficulties. They had trouble setting an iv in clayton locketts vein. Afterwards when they were being investigated, questioned by state officis, the team members spoke about the stress. And they said it was harder on them to get the job done because they knew they had to get it done quickly to move on to the next execution. And so that led to the official recommendation of not scheduling executions closer than seven days apart. It wasnt just for the sake of the team member, but rather for the sake of carrying out the executions properly. So i think that there is a real issue there. Its a practical issue. But its a real one. Megan mccracken from Uc Berkeley Law School Death Penalty clinic on the precipice of this remarkable decision in arkansas. Thank you so much for helping us understand it. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right. Well be right back. Stay with us. Youre going to be hanging out in here. So if you need anything, text me. Do you play . Use the chase mobile app to send money in just a tap, to friends at more banks then ever before. You got next . Chase. Helping you master whats now and whats next. Anyone ever have occasional y constipation,diarrhea, gas or bloating . She does. She does. Help defend against those digestive issues. Take Phillips Colon Health probiotic caps daily with three types of good bacteria. 400 likes . Wow try Phillips Colon Health. And youre about in to hit send all on some embarrassing gas. Hey, you bought gasx® unlike antacids, gasx ® relieves pressure and bloating fast. Huh, crisis averted. Tonight the president went back to his golf club thingie in florida. It will be his seventh trip there as president. Because of that, youve seen a bunch of reporting about how much more we the taxpayers are spending to send him golfing at his florida club every weekend, compared to all the vacation and travel expenses of his predecessors. But whether or not that bugs you, consider this. Maralago is surrounded by water on two sides. Today the coast guard established three big security zones around the property. It will protect the president and protect these zones 24 7 using patrol boats and helicopters until the president departs. And thats fine, except the coast guard is getting no extra funding to do this. The coast guard is already responsible for protecting 100,000 miles of u. S. Coastline and inland waterways. In addition to its mission of saving american lives, an average of ten a day, it does the coast guard is going to see its budget cut. Even as it is now spending every weekend taking on the extra job of securing the president s golf club. Whether or not you are upset about the president s travel costs, one thing you might be upset about is the lack of respect for the coast guard, even as theyre busy saving his bacon day in and day out. All of our bacon, frankly, including the president s while he golfs. That does it for us tonight. We will see you again tomorrow. Now its time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. Good evening, lawrence