'Troubled' candidates burden GOP already saddled with Trump's baggage

"For me being a part of this place has always been about the people not about the politics."

“"Why you holding this sign? You ever been to a protest before?"”

"He's safe!" "People that we cover who allow us to enter their lives." "How's everybody doing? Everybody doing okay?" "How long has been in line? I love human beings to spend time connecting with them."

"Is the biggest blessing that I could ask for?"

From the few to the studio, Jacob is finding the heart of the story. Connect with Jacob Silveroff, we can send 10 AM Eastern on MSNow.

“Really happy to have you here. We are watching a number of developing stories tonight.”

Massey vacuations are underway in Eastern Washington State. We're more than 700 buildings have burned already in Spokane.

More than 65,000 people have been forced to evacuate already as three totally uncontained wildfires.

Close in on that city, zero containment of those fires. Thus far, Washington's Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson is asking for help. From the federal government, under the administration, it's not only unclear how much federal help will go to Washington State, but it's also sadly unclear whether or not help to Washington State might be called off from Washington.

“Or might be impeded by the president specifically because Washington is a state that did not vote for Donald Trump to be president.”

This administration has admitted that it has denied federal support to states purely on that political basis in the past. But this is Washington State's real-time of need right now. Spare thought for those tens of thousands of your fellow Americans who are evacuating ahead of those terrifying out-of-control fires. Or watching those fires and those evacuations tonight after what has been just a terrible day in Eastern Washington State. In seven different states today, local water systems now know they have been hacked into in a mass cyber attack that is being attributed to Iran.

Now, you may recall that the Trump administration dismantled or radically scaled back cyber security capabilities within the federal government, including inexplicably firing the head of cyber command in the US military. Well, now local water supplies, again, in seven states have been hacked into by what appears to have been a foreign adversary. This is not a drill, this is something that is happening right now in real life. President Trump initially tried to blame the state of Minnesota and its democratic governor for this attack.

Now that it is at least seven states and so definitely by definition, it is not Minnesota's fault. We are left both with the president's sort of strange inability to process this kind of information to even seemingly understand this kind of attack. And we're left with no real sense of whether the United States right now is even capable of mounting a defense and a response to this kind of attack because of the way Trump deliberately degraded our cyber capabilities. Tomorrow morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote on the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general of the United States to Republican senators John Corne and of Texas and Tom Tillis of North Carolina.

They both dropped their opposition to Todd Blanche after Blanche gave them a legally meaningless and easily reversible written assurance that President Trump wouldn't get a $1.8 billion taxpayer/fund to dispense to whomever he wants. I feel it compelled to point out though that at the same time Blanche is still overtly insisting that he as attorney general as acting attorney general has somehow conveyed upon President Trump and his family and his family business total immunity for all tax crimes. Feel like it's getting lost in the sauce a little bit, but Blanche is at least saying the slush fund won't be given to Trump, but he's also saying at the same time that Trump and his adult sons and his business which has already been convicted of tax fraud are all magically immune from audit or investigation by the IRS.

You'll recall that the CFO of Trump's family business until recently resided at Rikers Island after pleading guilty to a 15 count tax fraud scheme at Trump's company. But Todd Blanche is giving Trump and his sons and that same family business tax crime immunity. pledging once again today in writing that he's going to do that and somehow his assurances along those lines are part of him proceeding to a Senate floor vote to confirm him as attorney general just remarkable. We'll have more few later on tonight on new reports this evening that Janine Piro may be getting fired tonight. She is the former Fox news host who Trump installed this U.S. attorney in Washington DC will have more for you tonight on people in Ohio and elsewhere standing up for their friends and neighbors who are Haitian.

We're going to have more for you on the protests in support of Haitians and protests against Trump's attacks on immigrants more broadly coming up later on in the show. Tonight the House Ethics Committee has released a report on Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards North Carolina after a somewhat lengthy investigation of Congressman Edwards this bipartisan ethics committee is now recommending that he should be censured by Congress.

“He should be censured for sexually harassing young women who worked in his office and the operative word here is young.”

Chuck Edwards is a married 65 year old man. One of the women he's accused of pursuing relentlessly in his office was 19 when she first started working with him.

In case you're curious, yes, Chuck Edwards is running for reelection this fall. The North Carolina Democrat running against him is a fifth generation North Carolina farmer named Jamie Ager. In Ohio, the Republican Party has until next week to replace incumbent Republican Congressman Max Miller on the ballot. If indeed they are going to replace him, Max Miller's insisting that he's running for reelection in Ohio, but after mounting accusations of physical abuse toward his ex-wife and their young daughter accusations with which Mr. Miller denies his political future is very much in doubt.

Max Miller's ex-wife is the daughter of Ohio Republican U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno. Bernie Moreno is now demanding Max Miller should quit his reelection race and quit Congress, but nobody knows if he will. Again, Republicans only have until next week to replace him on the ballot if he's getting out. So far, Max Miller says he's not getting out, but we shall see. In case you're wondering, the Democrat running to unseat Max Miller is named Brian Poindexter. He was already in a statistical dead heat with Max Miller in Ohio before Senator Moreno demanded that Miller get out. We shall see.

“Those stories are out of North Carolina and in Ohio troubled Republican candidates in those states.”

But you know, if there is a state that's kind of leading the pack when it comes to Republican candidates, you can't quite believe or really still on the ballot this year, it's got to be Texas.

In Texas this year, Republicans have nominated the guy who bought Jeffrey Epstein's ranch to be their statewide candidate for Comptroller, his name is Don Huffines. In Texas this year, Republicans have picked his their statewide nominee to oversee the oil and gas industry, someone who is perhaps most famous for polling people online with this question. Who is a bigger threat to America? And then he gave you just two options to choose from. Muslims or Jews. He is now the Republican Party's nominee for statewide office in Texas. His name is Beau French.

The guy who has the Republican nomination for US Senate in Texas has a big anniversary today. Today August 3rd is the anniversary of his mugshot being taken. On the day, he turned himself in to face charges in a multi-count securities fraud indictment. Those are charges he later settled. Texas Republican Ken Paxton was turned into the FBI by his own staff. In the Texas Attorney General's office, they turned him into the FBI for bribery and abusing his office. Ken Paxton was then impeached by the Texas House of Representatives, including 60 votes for his impeachment from his fellow Republicans.

But it didn't remove him from office. He was only not removed from office after that impeachment because of the Senate trial in that impeachment.

“You remember this from Trump's impeachment, right? You get impeached in the House and then you go on trial in the Senate. It was the same thing for Ken Paxton in Texas.”

And the trial in that impeachment in the Texas Senate was overseen by Texas's Republican Lieutenant Governor.

Texas is Republican Lieutenant Governor. Literally, I'm not kidding. Literally took three million dollars from two billionaire Ken Paxton supporters.

Right before he started overseeing that trial and then wouldn't you know everything in that trial really seemed to go Ken Paxton's way. And so they kept him in office. On a $150,000 government salary Ken Paxton has not been able to explain how he has amassed a multi-million dollar real estate portfolio that includes at least 15 homes and parcels of land, including three houses. He simultaneously claimed as his primary residence. And one home where he has been registered to vote, even though he definitely doesn't live there.

Even as he stokes fears of voter fraud for everybody else.

“To get a sense of Ken Paxton's reputation in Texas.”

The kind of thing that Texas voters have been hearing about Ken Paxton recently consider that while Ken Paxton was primary Republican U.S. Senator John Corden, Corden's ads against Ken Paxton looked like this. It's voting time. So let's cut through the bullsh*t down. Cook it Ken Paxton cheated on his wife.

She's divorcing him on biblical grounds. So now Paxton's wrecking another home, sleeping around with a married mother of seven. Okay, so that's who Texas Republicans have nominated to take John Corden's Senate seat in Texas this year. But if he asks Texas Democrats, they will tell you that actually that's LBJ's Senate seat. And this is the man Texas Democrats have nominated to beat Ken Paxton and flip that state.

Flip that seat, blue.

“The president of the United States just said that I insulted Jesus.”

You want to know what insults Jesus kicking the sick off their health care while cutting taxes for billionaires. You know what insults Jesus deporting the stranger and separating babies from their mothers. You know what insults Jesus bombing innocent school children in Iran and sending our brave men and women off to die in another forever war. You know what insults Jesus covering up the Epstein files and then refusing to prosecute a single person in them. That is James Toloreco. He's the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in Texas.

That clip is from his TikTok channel.

That clip has 24.3 million views.

And that tells you a little bit something about James Toloreco's strength as a candidate and his strength as a political communicator. You may have heard about James Toloreco's appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast or Joe Rogan told him, "Point blank that he should run for president." You may have seen the viral clip of James Toloreco opposing the Texas Republicans requirement to post the ten commandments in public school classrooms. That clip went viral because it included James Toloreco giving a full biblical exposition of not just how unconstitutional and un-American it was,

but how un-Christian it was as well. It was able to speak to that both as a Texas Democrat and as a seminarian. You may have seen his appearance on the view, which led the FCC to start a quote equal time investigation of ABC for the crime of putting on James Toloreco. You may have seen his appearance with Stephen Colbert, which CBS lawyers told Colbert to cancel.

And Colbert then did the interview purely for his YouTube channel where it promptly got about 10 million views

and sparked millions of dollars in fundraising for James Toloreco's campaign. Texas has 32 million people in two time zones with 20 media markets. It is profoundly expensive to run there. And Democrats have felt for a long time, like the DACA's really stacked against them there. Democrats tell themselves every couple of years that maybe this is the year they can finally start winning there.

But no Democrat has one statewide in Texas since 1994. Is this your different? There is something about James Toloreco. And frankly, something about Ken Paxton too. That makes this U.S. Senate race seem legitimately winnable for Texas for Democrats.

“And there is something specifically about James Toloreco that I think has really driven Republicans to distraction.”

They are quite poppably unnerved by him. They are desperate for people to not hear him speak. It is that same something that has Democrats nationwide talking about James Toloreco is more than just a promising candidate in this one race. Democrats nationwide have been talking about him as somebody who's really important, perhaps, to the whole future of the Democratic Party. Joining us now for the interview is James Toloreco.

Democratic nominee for Texas Senate. Mr. Toloreco, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the chance to meet you in person.

We've never talked before.

I've been really looking forward to this. Well, same here. So, talk me into the idea that you can win a statewide race in Texas right now. In 2026, when Betta or Rort couldn't with that remarkable campaign. With either of his two remarkable campaigns, when Colin Allred couldn't, when Wendy Davis couldn't.

Got a lot of sort of democratic hopes up.

Why are you different?

“George Carlin has this great line that inside every Senate because they wounded idealist.”

And so I just want to speak to all the wounded idealists who are watching this show right now. And trying to figure out if they can believe that winning Texas is possible. 2018 is when Betta or Rort got within two and a half points of beating Ted Cruz. The backlash that we're seeing to the extremism and the corruption in our government is bigger than it was in 2018. And then I didn't think it was possible to find a candidate worse than Ted Cruz.

But I think we found him in Ken Paxton.

I mean, this is the most corrupt politician in our state, one of the most corrupt in the entire country.

You mentioned that since taking office, he's become a multi-millionaire. All while the pay of most Texans has remained stagnant for years for decades. He now owns 15 homes while most Texans can't afford one. He's taken bribes from wealthy donors all while he blocks over time pay for Texas workers and guts are healthcare. He was one of the attorneys general who led the fight against the Affordable Care Act,

which has led to premium skyrocketing for Texans all over the state. And you just saw this month that he's taken these lavish vacations to Iceland to England on the Fourth of July, quite a decision to spend our 250th anniversary from the British.

He was with the British on that anniversary.

And most Texans can't afford to take a vacation given this cost of living crisis. So Ken Paxton's corruption is costing us in the state of Texas. And it's why the people closest to Ken Paxton know he's unfit for office. You mentioned that his own party impeached him in the Texas house. His own staff reported him to the FBI.

His own defense attorney just endorsed me in this race. I'm kind of expecting his family dog to run away and head over to my house any day now.

“I mean, I think in a time when we're also divided there is one thing that Texans, Democrats,”

Independence and Republicans can agree on. And that's, that's that we can't afford Ken Paxton's corruption. Listening to you talk about Ken Paxton that way. I'm struck by the contrast in the way you just sort of made the case against him there. And that clip that I just played from that John Cornan brutal primary ad.

Hitting him on personal ethical issues, the very messy divorce, the allegations of adultery, those vacations that you just referenced. Part of the reason those got a lot of tabloid attention is because he was taking those vacations with a woman who's not as wife. She's also associated with some of the properties that he's been found to have sort of without explanation. I'm wondering if that's a conscious decision from you to avoid.

But maybe salacious charges, but potentially really politically resonant charges about his personal character.

“I mean, I think the only thing worse than Ken Paxton's personal cheating is his public cheating.”

I mean, yes, he's betrayed the people closest to him. You mentioned this being the anniversary of his famous mugshot. And that was because he was indicted for securities fraud for investment fraud. What's fascinating about that story, I'm not a lawyer, but when you read about what happened, he was scamming his own friends. He convinced his own friends to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into a tech company.

And then he didn't tell him that he was getting a commission off those investments. And so I've said on the campaign trail, if Ken Paxton is willing to scam his own friends for a quick buck, what makes you think he's not going to scam you in the United States Senate. And the last thing I'll say is, I served with Ken Paxton's wife. She's a state senator in Texas, Senator Angela Paxton. I have great respect for the senator.

We don't agree on on every issue, but I respect her public service. And the last thing I want to do is kind of bring up all this personal stuff. When there's so much public stuff to really prosecute the case on. And so I'm just going to stick to Ken Paxton's public record because there's plenty of material there to run a campaign and make the choice in this election clear for the people of Texas. Your relationship with Republicans in the legislature is interesting politically because as a Democrat in the Texas legislature, obviously you're in the minority Republicans have had that had a lock on control in both chambers for a long time.

But still as a Democrat in the House, you have been able to pass a remarkable amount of legislation where you were lead sponsor as a Democrat and you still got stuff made into law. What should the country understand?

Understand about how as a Democratic Texas U.S. Senator, you'd be able to sort of put those lessons to work at the federal level. I don't think that Democrats nationwide have much faith that there is anything to be achieved by working with Republicans at the federal level, but you've done it at the state level. Yeah, and so I've passed 60 bipartisan bills through the Texas legislature and these are not, you know, nibble around the edges incremental bills. I mean, I passed the largest early childhood education bill in our state history.

I passed the first ever cap on insulin copays in our state passed a major reform to our justice system, allowing incarcerated minors to earn a high school diploma.

So these are these are major bills that are making real impact on on Texans.

“And I think the key, you know, my faith is essential in my life, it's central in my public service.”

And there's a teaching from my tradition to love your enemies. And it's a, it's become kind of cliche, but it really is a radical teaching. One of the acknowledges that you're going to have opponents, right? I mean, if you're trying to do right by your neighbors, if you're trying to speak to the power, you're going to run into some resistance, some people who disagree with you. But you're called to love those opponents, those enemies just as much as you love the people you're fighting for. And when the state legislature, like I've been able to form real friendships, real relationships with my Republican colleagues, and we're fighting, you know, one day, tooth and nail, you know, if you see me on the on the back mic and in the well of the state house, have no problem going toe to toe when I need to.

But then the next day, we may find a piece of common ground that we can actually get something done on and I'm always going to seize that common ground whenever I can.

We're told that it's a choice between people who fight and people who get things done.

“I think the people with Texas deserve a senator who can do both, and I've shown in the state house that I can do both.”

One of the things that I find it personally, most challenging to be empathetic about or like you're talking about, love your enemy. One of the things that I just, I have a real hard time getting over and just thinking about in a way that doesn't get me personally exercised. Is when people use political power to make sure that other people can't vote. Yes. When you are using the prerogatives of your control of the state, or your control of the federal government, whatever it is, to make sure that you can't be ousted.

That's right.

And one of the things that I always kind of lecture people about when I'm hearing them get, when I'm hearing Democrats get too optimistic about Texas,

is that Texas has the second lowest voter turnout in the country, and it's not because Texans are apathetic. It's because it's really hard to vote in Texas. Texas Republicans have systematically attacked the franchise, so that, you know, you can't, there's not only is there no same day voter registration. There's no online voter registration, there's no automatic voter registration like when you get driver's license or something. And it's, and plus, there's all of this, not just fear-mongering, but threatening people around these sort of phantoms of voter fraud.

I don't know how you both compete for people's votes, and constructively and empathetically compete with the people who are taking those votes away from your constituents and their own. Yeah, it's why attacks on voting rights is a red line for me, and it should be a red line for all of us. We can disagree on all kinds of issues, issues of moral importance, issues of life and death.

“But the key is that we always have a shot in the next election to make our case to the people and get a shot at winning political power.”

And attacks on voting rights, this redistricting power grab, those are attempts to, to rig the rules of the game, so that we don't have a shot at, at making our case to the people in the next election. And so it's why a year ago, a year ago today, my colleagues and I in the State House broke Quorum to shine a national spotlight on this redistricting power grab. I mean, that's an extraordinary step, right? I mean, we have to love democracy even when we lose. And the people of Texas, at least at a statewide level, have voted for Republicans historically, at least over the last 30 years.

And when you break Quorum, you are disrupting representative democracy, but it is a tool in our constitution and our state, because it's an important check on the abuses of the majority. And when you manufacture the lines of a district to guarantee a certain outcome, you are robbing our neighbors of their, their God-given rights at the ballot box. That given intentional, and that doesn't matter if your religious are not, but I think we can all agree that these rights don't come from politicians.

And when you are robbing someone of those God-given rights, you're robbing them of their ability to shape their own destiny for us as a community, as a state to shape our own destiny.

“I think there's a way to turn it back, though. I mean, I agree with your critique of what's wrong about it, but I don't see any returns ahead either in Texas or federally, it's even worse.”

Here's where we disagree, because you mentioned that this is LBJ's Senate seat. And if we win this seat in Texas of all places, I think we can build the political will to restore the voting rights act, which was signed in the law by Lyndon Johnson. And so it's only appropriate that winning his seat could be the key in restoring federal voting rights protections for all Americans, banning jury-mandering in every state, blue states, and red states alike, so that we can truly have free and fair elections in every community.

Stay right there. We're going to take quick break. We'll be back with James Tolerico right after this, stay right there. Now you can watch Ali Valchie five nights a week in prime time on MSNow, as he takes command of the 11th hour. The Justice Department is facing its own legal obstacles over this case, putting today's stories in perspective.

This one is perhaps one of the more interesting surprises and tomorrow's headlines in focus.

Economists are warning that American consumers are soon going to feel the hurt, the 11th hour with Ali Valchie, week nights at 11 p.m. Eastern on MSNow. Back with us live on set is Texas State Representative James Tolerico. He's the Democratic Party's nominee for the open Senate seat in Texas this year. Representative Tolerico, thank you again for being here. Thanks for having me.

Critics have argued that one of the things that makes you unelectable in Texas is reason that you can't win in Texas is because you have been empathetic toward and voiced support for trans people. That you have not been willing to join in in the demonization of trans people that motivates so many candidates right now.

And that that the Republican Party has relied on so heavily in general election campaigns.

What should we respond to that? I mean, I don't think we win by selling people out. And we're refusing to do that in this campaign. This is a campaign of buy and for all Texans.

“And I think people are really tired of these culture warfights that are designed to tear us apart, designed to get us angry.”

I mean, there are there are difficult issues trying to figure out trans athletes in sports. That's an issue where we could actually come to a policy solution. But instead politicians like Ken Paxton, they use those difficult issues to dial people up to divide us. To distract us in order to win power for themselves. I mean, it's divide and conquer.

It's the oldest strategy in the world. And so what we're trying to do in this campaign is, is bring people together. I've said that the most radical thing you can do in an era of division is unite people. And we're not going to win with the politics of division. We can't win that game.

We have to change the game. And I think what's exciting about this campaign is, it's so many people are hungry for that kind of politics of union and a friendship of love. And people have been so starved of it for so long now. I mean, we've seen what a politics of fear looks like.

We've seen what a politics of anger and rage looks like. But it's been a while since politics has made us feel hopeful or excited about the future.

“Or brings us together in creates community and I think that's what we're building in Texas in this election.”

Well, you had a, you know, very difficult, very hard fought primary to get this nomination against Congressman Jasmine Crocket. And that was a very racially striated result. She had a lot of support from Black Texans. And you did not. I mean, Texas has more African-American residents than any other state in the country.

Black Democrats are absolutely the backbone of Texas State Democratic Party. What are you doing to repair any remaining bitterness from that campaign to reach Black Texans to convince them that you're there candidate to? Yeah, I want to pick up on something you just said when I win the seat as the next U.S. Senator from Texas, I'll represent the most African-Americans of any senator in the state in the country. And that work of representing Black Texans starts now. It doesn't start the day after the election.

And so I've been traveling the whole state. I've been convening private conversations with Black business leaders and elected officials and community leaders and faith leaders. I've been visiting Black churches and Black owned businesses appearing on Black media throughout the state.

And I've been rolling out policy proposals based on all these conversations that can meet the needs of Black Texans.

“Obviously there are issues that we all face, right?”

The rising cost of groceries and gas and housing and childcare and prescription drugs. And then there are issues that Black Texans face uniquely and you think about the maternal mortality crisis in our state that is three times deadlier for Black women. Harris County, home to Houston, is the deadliest place for a Black woman to get birth in the entire country. And so we've rolled out a comprehensive plan to combat that crisis. We've been visiting our HBCUs. We did a town hall at Prairie View and then gave the commencement address at Paul Quinn College and Dallas, the oldest HBCU.

We've been talking about how to bring HBCU funding up to parity because there's a gap in funding between our historically Black colleges and universities and similar institutions with similar percentage of low income students. And imagine if we actually close that gap, what are HBCUs and Texas could do. And then we already talked about voting rights. I mean, we have seen the most aggressive attack on Black political power since Jim Crow. We've got to know the voting rights act, these racist redistricting maps. And I think the first thing that we have to do to your point earlier, when we win a Senate majority, our first priority before we get to housing and health care and education has to be passing the John Lewis voting rights act.

And guaranteeing that all of our neighbors, particularly our Black and Brown neighbors, can access their God-given rights at the ballot box. One last question I want to ask you about, even though I've just been told by out of time. No, no, forget I'm breaking the rules. It's your show. One of the sort of things that I came across in Prairie View for today's show was interesting images out of San Antonio from just a few days ago Friday in San Antonio, where I know you are middle school teacher at the very beginning of your career.

People protesting there against ICE detention facilities and immigrant prisons. A group of democratic Texas members of Congress recently toward Dilly, the Family Detention Center in South Texas. And what they found there was shocking in terms of the conditions in which people were held, but they also found things that were just shocking categorically. They said that the youngest person they found incarcerated there was two months old. Should Dilly be shut down? You know, my friend and colleague Congressman Joaquin Castro has done a lot of work on this, and he's telling me about the human rights abuses that are happening at Dilly, it has to end and that can't be on our watch.

And this is not the last time of the first time that we've seen a baby and infant being treated this way in Dilly.

I am sick to my stomach seeing the abuses that have been committed against our undocumented neighbors in Texas and all over this country. You mentioned that I was a teacher on the west side of San Antonio, I taught a lot of undocumented students. In Houston, we saw ICE murder Lorenzo Salgado, our fellow Texan who had lived in Houston for 35 years. And as a construction worker, he sent his three boys to college. His oldest is a public school teacher, his middle son's an engineer, his youngest is still in school.

I mean Lorenzo Salgado embodied the American dream. And the fact that we are spending our limited law enforcement resources on Lorenzo Salgado on a two month old, those are law enforcement resources that aren't going to actual immigration and customs enforcement. Those resources aren't going to keeping us safe and removing people who actually mean to do us harm, which we should do. Instead, those resources are going to to.

“I think we need a senator from Texas who is going to hold ICE accountable, who is going to end these human rights abuses in in these facilities and who's going to fight for comprehensive immigration reform finally.”

So we can stop grandstanding on this issue and actually fix it. Texas state representative James Talleriko is the Democratic Party's nominee for the open U.S. Senate seat in Texas this year. It's really nice to meet you. I'm glad to have chance to talk to you this way. Thank you. I love you. Thank you. We'll be right back there with us. You better eat your wheaties today because there's a lot of news to cover money.

Time for the business. All eyes on the new fed chair. The economic fallout from the war is a temporary power. The president is now a major crypto industry operator is this White House for sale politics.

“Is there an energy to respond to this aggressive journey?”

It has never been more important to be informed and engaged.

Money power politics with Stephanie Ruhl. We days at 9 a.m. Eastern on MS now.

Because they were fleeing violence in natural disasters in their home countries.

That was temporary protected status TPS in the court said that Donald Trump could revoke that. In the state of Ohio, that means that tens of thousands of legal immigrants, people who are here legally from the nation of Haiti, they have just been effectively illegalized. And they are now living in fear of being deported, specifically being deported to a country so violent that the U.S. State Department advises Americans not to travel there at all for any reason. Over the past week, Haitian residents in Ohio have started receiving letters from Homeland Security demanding that they turn up that they report in person to their local ice offices in Ohio.

And at those ice offices, they're being given a choice. They can have an ankle monitor put on them as if they're criminals or the other option is to be deported immediately. This is a video showing two individuals who chose the ankle monitor after reporting to an ice facility in Blue Ash, Ohio near Cincinnati.

Outside that ice office, the executive director of the Springfield Ohio Haitian Support Center said this.

As Haitians, we know that you human rights is a thing in the 21st century, but it seems that it's not the case for the U.S. anymore. I really feel ashamed when I look at those mothers, those fathers, those young people. And I just have a picture on my phone of 20 years or nearly just like graduated from high school, and they put that ankle monitor on them.

“I think that this type of treatment of putting an ankle monitor is just like trying to bring the memory of slavery.”

It's really ashamed to do to see this administration is doing this to people. Again, that was Blue Ash, Ohio this weekend near Cincinnati.

This was also Blue Ash, Ohio this weekend.

Hundreds of people showed up outside that ice office right in early yesterday morning to show support for their neighbors. To support their Haitian neighbors and to protest the federal government treating their neighbors this way. This is shackling, this is modern day shackling. And when I saw the ankle bracelet, I said this is how slaves felt. And we're making human beings feel like animals. We're making them feel like modern day slavery in America, which is supposed to be the land of the free and the brave.

This is despicable. God does not like it. Our God is not smiling kindly on what is this what we're doing to these people today. That is Deborah Thompson. She's retired minister lives in Ohio. I see her here talking with MS now reporter Alex Tabit.

“What does it say about this community that before 8 a.m. there was what looks like 500 people on the streets here in solidarity with the Haitian people?”

It shows that our community cares and we see people as neighbors and not as enemies. I don't know what's happened to our country. We used to be a country that cared about people. But now I see that people are showing up and saying to the world and saying to Donald Trump, we're not the America you're trying to create.

We are America that loves our neighbors and loves people and cares about people, no matter where it comes from, no matter your color, no matter your exit, we are people that care. We're not the America you're trying to create. We are America that loves our neighbors. That is the other side of this story from Ohio as Haitian residents there are in real fear about what the Trump administration is about to do to them and has started to do to them. We'll stay on this story. We'll be right back.

“How do you know things are going great in Donald Trump's war with Iran?”

Well, the Pentagon is now reportedly sending out emails asking, "Hey, does anybody have any ideas on how to win this war?" CNN's headline, quote, "U.S. military asks troops for creative and unconventional ideas to punish Iran." quote, "Military officials said the crowdsourcing style query was unusual over email." I must now have not confirmed that reporting, but I don't know what we expected to happen. When Trump nominated a weekend Fox News host with a documented drinking problem to be the U.S. Secretary of Defense, but we got him.

Hexath also fired among many other people the head of U.S. cyber command while now Iran appears to be hacking into the U.S. water supply in multiple states.

“We really do appear to be losing this war with Iran and hexath's big idea appears to be testing all our troops for testosterone.”

Because sure we definitely need more of that, you know, more than we need cyber coming up. That said, if you're keeping track of who's doing the worst job as a high profile former Fox News host in the Trump administration, it's got to be a race between Hexath at the Pentagon and Janine Puro at the D.C. U.S. attorney's office. The first sign that things weren't going great in Puro's office was when Grandjuries and D.C. started refusing to indict the people Puro wanted to charge with crimes. That was the guy she wanted to charge with felony assault for throwing a subway sandwich at a federal officer.

Grandjuries said no to that. And a different attempt to felony assault case Puro failed to get an indictment three times with three different grandjuries.

“And yet another case where Grandjuries refused to indict.”

A judge asked why Puro's office wasn't dismissing the case quote out of sheer embarrassment and shame.

Grandjuries almost never failed to return indictments when prosecutors asked for them, but Janine Puro's office has had to dismiss nearly a dozen cases when she was only three weeks into the job.

Then Puro tried to charge six sitting Democratic lawmakers. But a grandjury unanimously rejected that attempted indictment as well, and she soon gave up on that effort entirely. When a US veteran burned an American flag across from the White House in protest, Puro tried to have that guy prosecuted too, but that case also fell apart. As of April of this year, judges had tossed out nearly a dozen gun cases brought by Puro's office. That's something federal judges in D.C. had rarely ever done before.

“Of course, there was the criminal investigation Puro opened into the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, which collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity within months.”

Now, of course, Janine Puro has struck again, and an even more embarrassing fashion. She announced with great fanfare about a month ago that her office was charging a man with damaging the reflecting pool that had just been renovated by President Trump. She said that her office had evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the man willfully destroyed property at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. The arrest appeared to vindicate Trump's insistence that the problems with the reflecting pool were the result of vandalism and not just shot he worked by his no bid contractor.

But then on Friday, Puro's office dropped the case against the man they had charged. The report filings that, in fact, yes, the damage to the reflecting pool was the result of the botched renovation and behavior by the contractor. That has made President Trump reportedly very angry. He slammed her decision on his social media site and in the oval office today, he said she quote, "choked and folded like an umbrella." I was kind of excited to hear that because I don't know how long it's been since I've heard the president with a three-syllable word.

It was pretty exciting, but despite that, within hours of those comments from Trump amid some reports that Trump was thinking of firing her Jeanine Puro arrived at the White House tonight. The New York Times reporting that Puro met with Trump in the oval office, but she was not fired in that meeting. That said, and even if it could happen, watch the space.

Two quick things before we go, the first is that I will be back here tomorrow night.

I'll be part of our special coverage of the primary tomorrow. Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, Washington State, and of course Michigan, where there's a bunch of big contests, including that big Democratic Senate primary, our special coverage of those primary starts at 8 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow. So I will see you here tomorrow 8 p.m. Eastern. And then also, there are still tickets available for our big live event in Texas. In September, more than a dozen of us from MSNow are going to be coming to Texas.

We would love to see you there. We're going to be an Arlington, which is right between Dallas and Fort Worth on Saturday, September 26. The tickets for this start at just over 30 bucks a piece. You can buy a tickets right now. If you just scan that QR code on your screen, or you can just go to MS.now/together. We'd love to see you in Texas. I for one, I'm looking forward to some barbecue. All right, that does it for me tonight. Ever since I was young, I've watched people working hard chasing opportunity, making sacrifices, doing everything they can to build a better life.

And now, we're shining a light on what matters most. Our economy, our national identity, our democracy, our future. The stakes have never been higher.

On the line with Alicia Menendez, weekdays at 12 p.m. Eastern on MSNow.