CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: And that`s HARDBALL for now. Thanks for being with us. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes starts right now.
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CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): What is the President afraid of? Is he afraid of the truth?
HAYES: The exuberantly lawless president defying Congress at every turn.
TRUMP: I respect the courts, I respect Congress.
HAYES: Tonight, as the tanks, line up in Washington for Trump`s Fourth of July Jamboree. Where is the oversight from Democrats?
REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D-MD): It`s almost saying I dare you to make me obey the law. I dare you.
HAYES: Then, disturbing new accounts from inside the migrant camps.
REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D-TX): They have no right to try to keep legislators who are entrusted with oversight of their agency from documenting what they see.
HAYES: Congressman Joaquin Castro on what Border Patrol tried to stop him from sharing. Plus, the ongoing mystery of why Mike Pence was suddenly recalled to the White House. The new questions over what the heck is going on with a census. State of the race to replace Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have a predator living in the White House.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from Chicago, I`m Chris Hayes. Some truly wild breaking news tonight in the highly controversial legal question of the Trump administration`s plan to add a citizenship question to the census.
After the administration said yesterday they would abide the Supreme Court`s order not to include the question about citizenship, today a presidential tweet set off a bizarre and confusing flurry of legal activity that makes it look a whole lot like the President is now trying to find a way to ignore a lawful Supreme Court order.
The President`s obvious contempt for the law, in this case, is of course just the latest example of his broader approach to the Constitution, the courts, and American democracy. He views it all as an inconvenience to be rolled over and subsumed to his will.
As the nation prepares to celebrate its independence tomorrow, some may linger over this passage of the Declaration of Independence "We have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
A day before our national holiday in 2019, this is where things stand. Tanks are deployed in the capital to serve as props for a president who has hijacked a national celebration to turn it into a campaign rally complete with VIP treatment for his top donors. A spectacle fit for a leader who clearly envies strongmen and dictators and well often speaks if not acts like one.
Trump is flagrantly exuberantly lawless, defying Congress at every turn. His administration refusing to turn over documents about things like migrant detention or the Mueller investigation, blocking people from testifying an ongoing investigation, swatting away lawful requests for things like his tax returns and thumbing its nose at court rulings that don`t go its way.
And now this, after the Supreme Court ruled against the administration and its push to add a citizenship question in the census, the Department of Justice and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced that the Census Bureau has started to print questionnaires without the question.
But then Trump today called those on-the-record statements from his own administration fake news. Insisted "we are absolutely moving forward with the effort to add the question." Now, to be clear, no one and I mean no one maybe even including the President really knew what that meant. Was he saying he was going to ignore an order from the Supreme Court?
Then things got even more surreal. In Federal Court this afternoon, a DOJ lawyer said the Justice Department would attempt to follow Trump`s dictate by tweet though he had no idea how. The tweet this morning was the first I had heard of the President`s position on this issue just like the plaintiffs and your honor, I do not have a deeper understanding of what that means at this juncture other than what the President has tweeted. But obviously, as you can imagine, I am doing my absolute best to figure out what`s going on.
After the DOJ attorney asked for some more time, Judge George J. Hazel expressed exasperation. If you were Facebook and an attorney for Facebook told me one thing and then I read a press release from Mark Zuckerberg telling me something else, I would be demanding that Mark Zuckerberg appear in court with you the next time because I would be saying I don`t think you speak for your client anymore.
I want to turn now to Dale Ho who`s one of the attorneys who argued the Supreme Court case on the citizenship question. He Directs the ALCLU`s Voting Rights Project. Dale, you`re an attorney in the New York case. That transcript of a phone call with the judge was from Maryland. What the heck is going on? What is the position of the Department of Justice now?
DALE HO, DIRECTOR, ACLU VOTING RIGHTS PROJECT: Well, it appears that the Department of Justice has a hard time understanding its own position right now, Chris. Just yesterday, the same lawyer was asked point-blank by Judge Hazel whether or not the decision to print the 2020 census forms without a citizenship question was a "final decision," whether it was "once and for all," and whether it was not just a matter of well, we`re printing it now but we might revisit it later. And that same DOJ lawyer said correct in response to all of those questions.
So as of yesterday, you know, that was it. No citizenship question on the 2020 census. Today the Department of Justice appears to be trying to provide some wiggle room for the Trump administration to come back with a different determination later on down the road.
HAYES: OK. You`ve worked on this case for a while. We`ve had you on the show to discuss it. There`s a lot -- bunch of people who have litigated this for both Maryland and Southern District of New York. What was your reaction that tweet this morning?
HO: Well, a couple of things, Chris. First, it`s outrageous. The Department of Justice and the administration have represented multiple times that there can be no changes to the census form after June 30th of this year.
And here we are after June 30th and the administration after having made that representation to multiple federal courts including the United States Supreme Court appears to be backtracking and saying well, actually maybe we do have the ability to change the census forms now. We`re looking into it. That`s the first thing.
And the second reason why it`s outrageous is that the President is looking to make an end-run around a decision by the United States Supreme Court. Now, I understand that the President likes his mulligan`s golf but you don`t get a mulligan in the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court struck this down. It ruled that it was illegal to try to put this question on the 2020 census and no matter what reason they try to contrive now, I don`t think it`ll make any difference.
HAYES: Well, that`s -- so that`s where we are, right, because part of the strike down the Supreme Court, the whole case was basically you were arguing that the administration lied about why it was trying to put the question on, that it was misrepresenting, it misrepresented it before court in Congress, and basically they did it so egregiously that two different courts and then the Supreme Court agreed.
They basically said you`re lying to us about why you want this question and you can`t do that. That`s against the law. But Justice Robert said you know, maybe go back and come up with another reason. And in this letter from the Department of Justice today, they basically nod to furnishing another rationale like it seems to give away the game that there`s some group of people who are going to invent some other reason.
HO: That`s what they seem to suggest that they may try to do here. But I want to make clear what Chief Justice Roberts opinion for the court said. It said that the administration`s reason for adding a citizenship question of a census was contrived.
He didn`t say that you could come back with another reason that wasn`t contrived and now it would pass muster. He said look, federal law requires you to honestly disclose the reasons for doing things that you do. And here you contrived a reason and now with the administration saying we may try to contrive a new reason, I don`t think that that`s going to satisfy Chief Justice Roberts opinion.
HAYES: I want to take a step back from the details here and just -- you know, you have been a litigator for a while. You`ve worked on a bunch of different cases. You are at the Legal Defense Fund for the ACLU. Have you ever -- I mean, you`ve been on the other side of the government. Have you ever seen something quite like what we`re seeing play out today?
HO: No. I mean, it`s remarkable. The trial lawyer for the Department of Justice didn`t even know what the government`s position was at a -- at a hearing today. I`ve never seen anything like it. And we should note that his boss then got on the phone to say we`re looking -- we`re looking into this.
It does seem now -- I mean, what is your understanding of what this means. My reading is that you know how sometimes your boss tells you to do something you`re like totally we`re on it boss and then you just hope that he forgets about it after a long enough period. Like that`s basically my reading of the DOJ`s position right now. Yours?
HO: It`s hard to say. Obviously, the Department of Justice evaluated the Supreme Court`s opinion when it came out last week. They came into court yesterday on Tuesday and said look, the jig is up. Game is over. We concede. And then we get this tweet from the President this morning and suddenly they`re back in court and the DOJ lawyer assigned to the case doesn`t even know what the position of the government is.
Well, by Friday at 2:00 p.m. they better know because Judge Hazel whom you referenced earlier asked the administration to come back and by then either have a stipulation that they`re not going to try to put the citizenship question back on the census or we`re going to set -- they`re going to set a schedule for further proceedings.
And you can bet that if they don`t come back on Friday and say unequivocally 100 percent this question will not be on the 2020 census, that they`re going to be facing further proceedings in multiple courts including in New York.
HAYES: All right, Dale Ho, thank you on this last-minute making some times for us. I appreciate it.
HO: Thanks so much.
HAYES: Joining me now former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and former Republican Congressman David Jolly now an MSNBC Political Analyst. I mean, David, we`ve got -- we`ve got tanks positioned outside the Lincoln Memorial for a $100 million essentially Trump campaign rally for his top donors while he`s contradicting his own DOJ and wants to run roughshod over Supreme Court.
Like as we are celebrating the Declaration of Independence, there is a little bit of a mad king feel to where we are right now.
DAVID JOLLY, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Oh certainly. Oh certainly. And look, he`s contradicting his staff attorneys. The reality is I think Bill Barr told the President you do have a lane here to win this. And look, Chris, I agree with everything you and Dale just discussed but I also would say and I hate to be the skunk at a party. I think the government, the Trump administration does have a narrow lane here to have this reconsidered.
The case that was decided was decided in multiple parts the majority kind of moved around. But if you thread it all together, what the majority of the justices ruled was it is not unconstitutional ask the citizenship question. It is not unreasonable. However, that reasonableness has certain constraints and in this case the Department of Commerce hasn`t provided a congruent or rational case for making the citizenship question basis.
So if I`m the Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice, I`d say hey, look, allow us the opportunity to rebreathe this and allow it to be a case of first impression. Because what the court also said is under administrative law we have to provide deference to reasonable justification.
Now that`s the New York case. The Maryland one is different. The Maryland one is saying this is discriminatory and this was based on discriminatory actions. That`s the case today. But Chris, I think if you`re Donald Trump and Bill Barr which is very different than the DOJ staff career attorneys, hey, they`re going to say forget what the Supreme Court said. Let`s keep arguing this and see how far we can get.
HAYES: But there is also something here, Robert, about the way in which this entire thing has been undertaken and there`s some parallels I think to the July 4th celebration and the census in which the President contradicts his own government at every turn in which he sort of issues these edicts internally that people tell him well you can`t do that.
We know that he wanted a big parade earlier, that he wanted tanks rolling down the streets, you can`t do that. You can`t just make something up and tell the represented to the court. And there`s a real question about like the degree to which he is being properly constrained and the degree to which he`s actually pushing that, the guardrails about what a democratic representative of the people looks like.
ROBERT REICH, FORMER SECRETARY OF LABOR: Well, there`s no constraint at all, Chris. In fact, there`s not even a Trump administration. There is Donald Trump. And as you pointed out, I mean, we are -- the big irony here is this is the night before Independence Day where we fought a tyrant. We declared our independence from what essentially was then a Mad King.
We created a constitution, a constitution with checks and balances and separation of powers. And now we have a Mad King back again that basically is defying all of the constitutional provisions, basically thumbing his nose at the Supreme Court, pushing the envelope as far as he possibly can and then some in terms of getting his way, not allowing any congressional oversight.
I mean, he`s basically saying to the House, I`m not going to give you anything. I`m instructing everybody to say no to appearing before you, to providing any documents. I mean, what are we supposed to do? I think that he is laying a predicate for impeachment, actually.
HAYES: Yes. And David, you know, what I keep returning to is two ideas. One the sort of the strength of actual American democracy and the -- and the set of sort of constitutional provisions, norms, traditions that undergird that, right, deference to the courts, you know, viewing yourselves as representative of the people, and then also democratic culture.
Like I think the reason that people were upset about the tanks in the streets and the President throwing himself some big military parade is that it does feel anathema to our American democratic culture. It is not the way that we celebrate American constitutional democracy.
JOLLY: No, that`s right. But I also understand the President`s ignorance on all things Western Democratic liberalism. When he took that question last week, he thought that the questioner was asking about San Francisco, California. He did -- he didn`t understand exactly the parameters that the Secretary Rice is speaking of.
You speak of the courts though, Chris, and I`ve got -- I`ve got to put a little bit of faith courts because frankly there`s nowhere else to put our faith right now. Understand in this very case Judge Robert said listen, we`ll be deferential but that doesn`t require us to be naive.
HAYES: Yes.
JOLLY: The judge of Maryland tonight said hey, I read Twitter as well. And in the Ninth Circuit just today we saw that the appeals court say hey you can`t use military money to build your wall. Sorry, Mr. President. We`re not going to let you do that.
So the President continues to push this as far as he can but our courts are holding up to his pushing on the Democratic norms.
HAYES: David, I`m so glad you said that because I think that`s a crucial point and even when I said in that script thumbing his nose which I meant as sort of performatively. Like Robert, you know, the thing that I keep thinking of is the shoe that has not dropped and the moment that the sort of Rubicon we have not crossed is the president just flagrantly facially defying a court order right.
There was a question about there was always a sort of worry that that`s the kind of thing he would be tempted to do when the Muslim ban was struck down, when you know, now he`s got his emergency funding for the wall, enjoying. He`s hit up against the courts time and time again.
And right now it seems to me that is a red line that I think even Nancy Pelosi on this, the matter of the IRS tax litigation is worried about him crossing.
REICH: Well, we`re coming very close to that, Chris. I mean, by defying the Supreme Court in the way he did today -- now, again, technically it`s not a strict defiance but when you have the Justice Department and the Commerce Department say one thing yesterday, and then today on the basis of a presidential tweet reversed themselves and also reversed themselves on what they said about a time constraint, then you actually are becoming very close to saying to the Supreme Court I don`t care.
If you are Donald Trump you`re saying I simply don`t care. I`m going to do what I want to do. And that is the Rubicon. Once you cross that, then basically you are in a dictatorship. You`re no longer in a democracy.
HAYES: You know, and David, I imagine today, there was a meeting in that Oval Office. There were -- there was a knock-down-drag-out fight in that Oval Office. I don`t know it for sure. I don`t have the reporting that supports that. But everything we`ve seen in the public outside suggested inside that Oval Office, there was a knock-down-drag-out fight about whether they were going to defy a Supreme Court order.
JOLLY: No, I agree with you. And I on the way over here I was thinking, was it the White House Counsel or was it Bill Barr personally. Somebody informed the President I do think we can win this. But to the Secretary`s earlier comment, when we cross that Rubicon, the House has to move to impeachment on this. That`s the other part of the constitutional protection yes is for the Congress to say this is an impeachable moment.
REICH: And in one way, I think the president -- I think President Trump is basically daring the Congress, daring the House of Representatives to start impeachment. And this is a part of a much larger drama.
HAYES: Yes. Robert Reich and David Jolly, thank you both for making some time this evening. Next, the White House refuses to give an explanation of the Vice President`s mysterious last-minute trip cancellation. A reporter trying to get to the bottom of this fairly simple matter it would seem joins me in two minutes.
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HAYES: One day after the Vice President was suddenly pulled off a plane and rushed to the White House, the mystery of Mike Pence`s weird aborted trip to New Hampshire remains unsolved. In the grand scheme of things, it may not be a big deal or cause for alarm. At least that`s what everyone working for the White House has said repeatedly but nothing fires up a reporter`s curiosity engine like officials not telling you the whole story.
Joining me now a reporter who`s been trying to get to the bottom of this Colby Itkowitz who covers national policy and politics for the Washington Post. All right Colby, take me through what happened yesterday first.
COLBY ITKOWITZ, POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Right, Chris. So it was a little strange. So Mike Pence was scheduled to be in New Hampshire to speak to opioid recovery at a recovery center for people recovering from opioid addiction.
And so they were all there, they were waiting for him and suddenly one of his advanced people gets on stage and says there`s been an emergency, he was on his way, he`s been called back to the White House.
And so suddenly everyone is -- what happened? You know, the speculation abounds over what could possibly be national security event, a personnel change, and the White House has refused to say. Vice President Pence`s office has refused to say.
They pushed back on the idea that it was an emergency. They said it had nothing to do with national security, had nothing to do with his health or the president`s health, and instead just said that there was something that the president -- that the Vice President was needed for back in the White House.
And several sources also told us that it might have been a security problem actually in New Hampshire. So we`re getting mixed messages on that front as well.
HAYES: So they said it wasn`t someone being fired, it wasn`t an emergency issue, it wasn`t a national security issue, it wasn`t a health problem. Mark Short who works in that office said when people -- when would people know what happened? Weeks from now is what he said.
ITKOWITZ: Right.
HAYES: So they`re just making you play 20 questions but not telling you what happened?
ITKOWITZ: Right. And so what the White House is doing here is they`re leaving this vacuum open for reporters and people on Twitter to fill. And so people had a lot of fun with it yesterday trying to guess at what could possibly be the reason why the Vice President would have to cancel an event at the very last minute while people were already sit in their seats waiting for him but they won`t say. And again this few weeks, we`ll know in a few weeks thing is all very strange.
HAYES: Do you -- have this happened before? Like do you often find yourself when you`re covering the White House that sort of gaps in information like this or is this anomalous?
ITKOWITZ: Well, canceling an event in the last minute with zero explanation is an anomaly that doesn`t happen very often. With this White House there is -- tends to be some secrecy around things until President Trump tweets about it. I think we were all expecting something to be on Twitter today from the president explaining why the Vice President needed to come back to Washington or needed to stay in Washington but that didn`t happen either.
HAYES: Do you -- are you confident that we will get an answer in this or are they just going to like let this go and hope everyone forgets?
ITKOWITZ: Right. So when you say a couple weeks, there`s a short attention span in Washington and there`s as you know very well, Chris, the news cycle moves at a fast clip. And so there is a very good chance that we move on and forget about this in a few weeks.
But I`m going to keep following up and see if we can finally get an answer to why the Vice President couldn`t travel to New Hampshire yesterday.
HAYES: I mean, I just want to say like again, my report -- my -- yesterday, I watched this all play out on Twitter and I thought to myself, oh I guess we`ll figure it out or they`ll tell us. And now it`s like, well, you`re -- there`s a story there clearly. Like obviously there`s a story you`re not telling us, right? We can agree on that.
ITKOWITZ: Well, that`s what it felt like yesterday when the answer we were getting from everyone was "something came up." That`s what the Vice President`s office kept saying, something came up.
And so that is about as as you can get when it comes to an explanation. And so again, like I said, when you only give a vague explanation, you leave a massive vacuum for people to just guess that, or assume, or imagine, fantasize what could possibly have happened yesterday.
HAYES: All right, well, we still don`t know it I would like to know so maybe we`ll get you back up here when you solve the mystery. Colby Itkowitz, thanks for joining us.
ITKOWITZ: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Next, a stunning new dispatch dealing -- detailing what it`s like for those trapped inside Trump`s and migrant detention centers. Congressman Joaquin Castro who released secretly recorded video from inside one such facility, joins me ahead.
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HAYES: Allow me to briefly interrupt your 4th of July barbecue planning to give you a readout on the health of the climate of our one and only Earth at this year`s midpoint. If you had to guess just off the top of your head what is the hottest June in recorded history, what would you say?
If you guessed this past June in year 2019, you would be right, the hottest June we`ve ever had in recorded history. A heatwave across Europe is right now setting record temperatures. France recorded its hottest day in history on Friday 113 degrees, 113 degrees Fahrenheit in one town in particular.
There been wildfires in Spain and Germany with heat records in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland as well. Reservoirs and lakes in India captured by satellite imagery are literally shrinking including this reservoir shown here in images from February and June of this year alone. That`s like five months. And that is the main supply of drinking water for India`s sixth largest city Chennai home to more than 4 million people.
In Guadalajara, Mexico a freak storm dumped up to three feet of hail while in Greenland, ice sheets are melting so fast and bringing with them so much sand as melting glaciers do. There is now serious consideration being given to mining the sand from the glaciers as a business opportunity because the world is low on sand which is used in concrete. Increasingly the world is law and ice but I guess that`s another matter. Oh and there`s a giant heat dome covering Alaska risking record-breaking temperatures this week.
So that`s the bad news. The good news I guess is that all of this that we`re seeing is actually penetrating the consciousness of Americans despite the juvenile and destructive lies the president in the fossil fuel industry. The latest data from Yale`s Climate Polling Project which is the gold standard on these things shows it more than half of Americans think global warming is harming their local community.
57 percent think fossil fuel companies bear either a moderate amount or a great deal of responsibility for it. Climate is right now climbing up the priority list of Democratic primary voters and tellingly the President himself is somewhat preposterously going to give a speech on Monday about "America`s Environmental Leadership."
That is obviously a ridiculous undertaking fresh from the G-20 in which the U.S. once again refused to sign on to the climate portion of the joint communique. But what`s fascinating about it is that he even feels the need to make the effort at a speech at all.
Public opinion on this question is on the right side and is moving inexorably in an even better direction. And the more pressure politicians feel to act with a historic urgency required, the better. So if you care about this and don`t let up.
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HAYES: Thing One tonight, have you heard about the fake news? Long before it became the thing that Donald Trump dishonestly calls the real news, it`s been a real issue on social media.
Do you know who is a real fake news offender on Facebook? Donald Trump`s reelection campaign.
Reporter Jed Legum (ph) of Popular Information recently identified hundreds of Trump 2020 campaign ads that were false, running afoul of Facebook`s rules against misleading or false content. The ads range from your standard grift, seeking to manipulate people to get email addresses and donations, to outright lies misleading the public on hot button issues like the second amendment.
Facebook took down many of the official Trump campaign ads, the same way they take down other false or obscene content. But the harm is mostly done by that point.
Now Trump has got some new ads featuring real people.
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TRUMP: In America, we don`t worship government, we worship god.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump and his family and the administration are in our prayers for strength and wisdom from god almighty. God bless.
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HAYES: Now, if you watch that and thought does Thomas from Washington look like a guy praying that hard for Donald Trump? You`re not alone. People are asking the same question about Tracey from Florida who enjoys Donald Trump and long walks on the beach. And that`s because the people in the Trump ads are stock video models, of course, available for purchase on iStock.com for about 180 bucks a pop as the teeny-tinest disclaimer at the bottom of the ads notes, they`re actor portrayals of actual testimonies. You can decide for yourself if even that is true.
So that`s what the fake news arm of the Trump campaign has been up to tomorrow, we get to check in with the misappropriation of military resources and taxpayer dollars arm of the Trump campaign.
The Trump of July is Thing Two in 60 seconds.
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HAYES: Washington, D.C. is getting ready for the Trump of July celebration tomorrow. The president getting his big wish for tanks on display in the capital. They were brought in by truck and train overnight, some having to be moved by crane after it appears they could not quite clear an overpass.
There will be hundreds of service members in the capital, not with their families for holiday, to man the tanks and participate in the festivities. Mother Jones obtained a card the soldiers are getting from the Pentagon with instructions on what to say if they are approached by the media. Here is one suggested quote, "I am proud of my job and my vehicle/tank. I am glad to share my experience with the American people."
We know there will be flyovers showing off our military might in the sky as well, including the F-22 fighter, B-2 stealth bomber and Navy Blue Angels. Plus, Trump wants one the Air Force One -- one of the Air Force One planes to zoom overhead just as he takes the stage at the Lincoln Memorial.
And don`t forget the projected image from the 1969 Apollo 11 moon mission that he wants on the Washington Monument because space force.
All this so the guy can give a campaign style speech on the public dime on the Fourth of July.
But there is one thing about tomorrow that Donald Trump cannot hijack.
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UNIDENITIFIED FEMALE: We`ve already declared tomorrow a Storm Team 4 weather alert day. We want you to be prepared and ready. Check out your fireworks forecast over a few hours as you`re maybe setting up down there. 89 degrees at 7:00 p.m. There is an 80 percent chance for storms at about 7:00 p.m. tomorrow and that`s going to be area wide.
When we say storms, we mean some very heavy rainfall and some strong gusty winds.
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HAYES: We have yet more details tonight of what life is like inside the Trump detention centers, this comes on the heels of a report release yesterday by the Department of Homeland Security`s own inspector-general, so basically from inside the Trump administration, highlighting extreme overcrowding and a lack of food and hygiene and facilities along the Rio Grande Valley.
Today, The Atlantic spoke with a doctor who got the chance to evaluate dozens of detained children at the McAllen border patrol facility. The recollections are very hard to read and heartbreaking. I`ll quote here: "a 15-month-old baby with a fever had been in detention for three weeks. His uncle had fed him from the same dirty formula bottle for days on end until a guard replaced it with a new one." The doctor later noted that "denying the ability to wash their infant`s bottles is unconscionable, and could be considered intentional mental and emotional abuse."
Before the doctor`s visit, the uncle had asked for medical attention because the baby was wheezing. In response, a guard touched the baby`s head with his hand and concluded he is not hot."
The doctor later noted that access to a medical professional was denied. The American Academy of Pediatrics released these pictures today. Those are drawings by 10 and 11-year-old children in McAllen recently released from Customs and Border Protection custody and depicting themselves behind bars and in cages.
We have almost no video of what it`s like in these detention camps except for this, which was shot by Texas Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro, who smuggled some sort of a recording device into a facility on Monday as part of a congressional delegation, even though border patrol confiscated members` phones.
Congressman Castro joins me now.
Why did you think it was important to defy their orders to confiscate your phones to get footage from inside?
REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO, (D) TEXAS: Because the country has to see what`s being done in their name, and also because I don`t believe that the executive branch has the authority tell the legislative branch with oversight power over these federal agencies that we can`t document what`s going on inside.
And we asked the border patrol chief and an attorney that was there very specifically to site the law they were relying on to keep us from documenting what was going on, and they couldn`t cite a single law. So at that point, Chris, I considered their request a courtesy. And there is too much at stake for me to abide by courtesy at this point.
HAYES: The footage you show there shows women who appear -- they`re obviously not young children, they`re adult women, on the floor there in that cell. It looks like a jail cell. What`s striking to me is that what you guys saw -- they knew you were coming. This was not a spot visit, is that correct?
CASTRO: That`s right. But they didn`t think that we would get into that cell.
The reason that we got into that cell is because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted that she be able to talk to those women, and basically, you know, pushed her way in there. And so when we got in there, the women started telling us their stories, some of them 50 days there in detention, some separated from their kids, some said they`d not been given their medications. The sink was not working. There was no running water. So when these women use the restroom, there was no way for them to wash their hands.
So what we saw in that cell is consistent with what the pediatricians have said about other facilities.
I also went next door and visited people in another facility. There was a woman who was in the early stages of pregnancy, and in that facility, there was a sink that was working, but there were paper cups that were being reused by the people in that cell. So, these conditions are deplorable and human rights are being neglected.
The president had this to say: "if illegal immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detention centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved." What do you think of that?
CASTRO: Well, first, these are mostly asylum seekers. They have the legal right to petition for asylum in the United States, just as anybody across the world has the right to do that in any nation. And also, it shows you that what we already know, that the president sees migrants as subhuman. He dehumanizes them for political purposes and political gain.
HAYES: There is reporting -- there is reporting -- ProPublica -- we covered it earlier in the week about a Facebook group with thousands of members in CPB that posted offensive, racist, sexist, derogatory memes, really some disturbing stuff. We`re reporting tonight from Politico that actually DHS officials were alerted to this, some admitted apparently anonymously that they had been monitoring it for, quote, intelligence, and that this -- it was notified to CBP as far back as 2016, which is under the Obama administration. What does that say to you about the culture of CBP?
CASTRO: CBP is broken, and they have a culture problem. And at this point, the bad has overtaken the good. And there are good agents who are trying to do their best to take care of the people in their custody, but they`re overwhelmed by the system. And they`re also undercut by the kinds of agents who were making those vile and vulgar comments.
Right now there is no system in place in CBP that can really hold agents accountable when they do wrong. And that`s what we`re seeing, is that these people continue to exist and thrive in an organization that doesn`t hold people properly accountable.
HAYES: My final thing here about accountability. I mean, we`re watching all this. We`re getting this information from the IG report. There are minors being held in direct violation of a court order under Flores for more than 72 hours. There are folks in subhuman conditions for 40, 50 days.
What`s being done? Like is this still going to go on? What are the remedies or recourses available to you, to us as citizens, to make sure this stops?
CASTRO: Really, Chris, this is -- this is going to take all Americans of good conscience to speak up and take action to change this, because you have a president and a senate majority leader in Mitch McConnell that quite honestly are unsympathetic to these people. And what -- we`ve got to do a few things, we have to not just pump more money into a broken system. We have to do things to raise the standards of care. We have to do everything that we can to move people through the process quicker so that you place people faster with sponsors, for example.
And then finally, in terms of the long-term, we`ve got to invest more in the northern triangle countries of Central America so that people have opportunity and safety in their own countries, and then don`t feel like they need to come here to seek asylum.
HAYES: Just final question, though, in the very short-term, when you look at these emergency disaster situations, situations that I think would be considered human rights abuses, is there anything in the law right now that requires any reporting of metrics or conditions to congress by CBP right now so that you will know in two weeks or three weeks that this situation has gotten better?
CASTRO: There is some language that`s required. There is language in the appropriations bill that requires different kind of reporting, but it`s hard to match the reporting that comes back to the congress with what`s actually going on in the facilities.
It`s clear at this point that we also can`t always trust what is being told us to us by the agency. And then when you try to go and independently verify that, we not only got an instruction that we couldn`t take photographs, we also initially got an instruction that we were not allowed to speak to anybody that was being detained.
So these folks want to police themselves, and the system is totally broken.
HAYES: All right, Congressman Joaquin Castro, thank you for sharing that.
CASTRO: Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, will Trump`s Democratic opponent be able to out fundraise the president? The state of the race, next.
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HAYES: Starting to get a better picture of the so-called money primary in the Democratic race. The fund-raising quarter ended this week. Some of the candidate`s numbers are starting to trickle in. Today, former Vice President Joe Biden announced he raised $21.5 million in the second quarter with an average donation of $49. Senator Bernie Sanders raised $18 million with an average donation of $18. Leading the field so far, Mayor Pete Buttigieg who, unlike Senator Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren, has not forsworn big high dollar fund-raisers and bundlers and has been rewarded mightily for it from donors. Mayor Buttigieg raised nearly $25 million in the second quarter with an average donation of $47.
But of course all that pales in comparison to the president and RNC`s enormous $105 million haul in the quarter. His reelection campaign now boasting they are going to raise $1 billion, which seems plausible. And there is right now an open and pressing question about whether the Democratic nominee is going to be out-gunned.
I`m joined now by Maria Urbina, the national political director for Indivisible, an organization of progressive groups, and Dan Pfeiffer, former communications director for President Obama, host of the podcast Pod Save America.
Dan, let me start with you as someone who has worked on a number of presidential races, the Obama administration had a sort of -- the Obama campaign had two ways, it had a lot of small dollar and it also did high dollar fund-raisers. We know Biden and Buttigieg are doing both. Sanders and Warren have sort of forsworn the high dollar fund-raisers. What do you make of this picture?
DAN PFEIFFER, HOST, FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR PRESIDENT OB AMA: Well, I think first if you just look at Mayor Pete`s number it`s astounding, right. Here`s a candidate who has been steadily in fifth place in the polls for this entire time and he has outraced a former vice president and the runner up in the 2016 election, so he has found a way to put this together in a very impressive way.
Overall, I think the field has done pretty well. It`s a very good number for Sanders, a very good number for Biden, particularly considering the fact that he got into the race a couple of weeks into this quarter.
HAYES: Well, but there is a question, Maria, I think that people will have that whether small dollar -- I mean, there is a powerful small dollar movement among Democrats. We saw it in 2018. We`ve seen it with various candidates. And I guess the question to you is do you think there`s enough desire, consciousness, mobilization, organization, to use small dollars to produce the kind of money that is going to be necessary to take on a president plus a super PAC?
MARIA URBINA, NATIONAL POLITICAL DIRECTOR, INDIVISIBLE : Absolutely. I think small dollar fund-raising is a really powerful tool, not just for base building and movement building, but also for being a huge catalysts and a force for these candidates. And we are going to see that increasingly it is a good indicator of who is picking up steam and who is picking up support across the coalition of voters.
And so I think absolutely it`s a good indicator. And when you look at some of the movements, including our own, Indivisible, that has really emerged in the Trump era, the amount of fund-raising we have seen out of these activists is tremendous. So, I think that`s going to be one way that they support, but I think there will be several ways that they support candidates beyond money.
HAYES: You know, Dan, back to Buttigieg, right, because he is a fascinating figure here. It`s a crazy number to raise and he`s polling at 4 or 5 percent. Like there seems -- I have never encountered a candidate I don`t think ever in the time I have been covering modern politics where there is that gap between being number one in fund-raising and five in the polls.
PFEIFFER: Yeah, it is astounding. And I think it speaks to the fact that he has worked his tail off to do this.
He is -- I`m out here in San Francisco, he is out here in Silicon Valley it feels like every couple of days raising money. He`s tapped into some parts of the party where other candidates are not being as aggressive around -- with tech executives and others. But he has been able to have both a robust online fund-raising base, like Obama in 2008, and real appeal among the high donor crowd, including some of the the Obama bundlers from 2008/2012.
So, what he is done is successful. Now, what he`s going to have to be able to match the success, show some movement in the polls, and withstand scrutiny on the money -- on who he raised that money from, you have already seen signals from Sanders` campaign that they are going to raise that issue.
HAYES: Well, Maria, there is one question I keep seeing lurking over this, which is whether we should be thinking about fund-raising as sort of a zero sum situation where people there is like a fixed pie and people are taking slices, or whether there`s something additive or generative. And I think that really relates to -- as we move towards the general down state races, state rep races, state senate races, congressional races, senate races. As someone who is very close to the grass roots of the party, what`s your feeling about that?
URBINA: I think there is plenty of money to go around. And actually if you look at our web survey, I would say over half of our respondents picked four to five candidates that they are looking at. still. And so the field is still wide open. People are still really eager to get to know everyone both at the top of the ticket and down ballot.
And so I would say like folks are going to give generously this cycle. They`re going to do anything they can to beat Donald Trump. And so I don`t think we should play into this zero sum game and I think we should be really excited by this historic field and their potential to continue to raise a ton of money.
HAYES: Dan, the first campaign to look like it has sort of gone wobbly a bit, which is former Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, that he basically senior staffer asked the governor to dropout. He has had a bunch of people leave after very weak fund-raising numbers, it`s a reminder that like at a certain point, you have got to keep putting fuel in the car and you can`t sustain a 25-person field indefinitely.
PFEIFFER: Right. The field is going to winnow eventually, because there is not enough money for some of these campaigns to run credible races. And if they are people who want to actually be president of the United States and they can`t reach the financial or political threshold you need to do that, then they will dropout.
Some of these folks just want to be on the debate stage and make a point. And you can do that with a bare minimum of staff and a little bit of fund- raising, but I think we will see the field winnow soon, because the market is starting to send a signal to some of these candidates that this is not their time.
HAYES: Do you think we are going to see more investment from folks that you are in contact at Indivisible -- are people just sort of just starting to pay attention? Where are they in the curve of their attention? The folks that you are in contact with, Maria?
URBINA: Sure. I say they have continued to pay attention even -- you know, we wrapped up the mid-term, went right into our first 100 days of the new congress, and folks have been paying attention ever since. They are very active. They were part of some of the initial forums that we had on democracy reform. We were in Houston for She the People. And so when we came up to this debate, folks were already signaling to us that they were excited to hear from new folks like Julian Castro, for example. He came in in our SMS, in our text survey that we did of members over 6,000, they picked Julian Castro as their number two that night.
And so what that indicates to me is that folks are paying attention. They are eager to learn more and they`re rewarding people being bold and specific about how they want to govern and how they want to take on Trump.
And so I would say it`s -- for some of our activists, they are really engaged, they`re paying attention. They`re going to continue to pay attention. We have got over 24,000 people to respond to our web survey about who impressed them. And no matter how you cut it, Senators Warren and Harris continue to lead that pack.
But I think there is still a ton of room for folks to grow in support from our movement. And I would look out for folks like Secretary Castro and Mayor Buttigieg as well.
HAYES: All right, Maria Urbina and Dan Pfeiffer, enjoy the Fourth. Hope you have a good time.
URBINA: Likewise. Thank you.
PFEIFFER: Thank you.
URBINA: That is All In for this evening on the eve of our commemoration of this country`s independence. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
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