MSNBC’s Chris Hayes outlined Thursday how a growing number of American universities, judges, jurors, airport administrators and regular citizens are finding new ways every day to push back against the Trump administration, remarking, “The no’s are piling up.”
“The Trump administration seems intent on pushing as much as they can get away with in as many places as possible, as much as they can, unless and until they meet resistance,” the “All In with Chris Hayes” host explained. “In just the past few days, what we’ve seen — and we’ve been trying to keep up with — [is] a growing number of people and groups and institutions who are standing up to Donald Trump and simply saying, ‘No.’ It seems like the harder that MAGA leans into the authoritarianism, the more people are finding the voice to push back.”
The MSNBC anchor spotlighted the Trump administration’s recent offer to multiple colleges throughout America, which promised the universities that they could keep their federal funding in exchange for making their campuses friendlier to MAGA ideals. Brown, M.I.T. and Penn have all rejected the offer.
“Trump governs like a mafioso running a protection racket,” Hayes remarked. “You’re intimidated into making a corrupt bargain with him, and you find that the deal keeps getting worse all the time, right? There’s no backing out once you say yes. People seem to be realizing the only way to resist is to say, ‘No,’ en mass. And again, that is happening more and more every day, everywhere you look.”
You can watch the full “All In” segment yourself in the video below.
Elsewhere, Hayes turned his attention to the Trump administration’s recent, failed attempt to get airports throughout the country to broadcast an ad featuring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in which she places the blame for the current, ongoing government shutdown on House and Senate Democrats.
“Chances are that if you’re flying anywhere this week, you’re not seeing that ad,” Hayes revealed. “Administrators at the airport in Portland, Oregon, where Noem’s agents are tussling with protesters in frog costumes, pointed out that her ad is just an open violation of the Hatch Act, which is supposed to prevent open politicking by sitting administration officials. It’s still the law of the land.”
The MSNBC host noted that at least 40 airports have refused to broadcast the ad, including airports in South Dakota, the state where Noem served as governor until January. Hayes went on to highlight the walkouts this week by journalists from both right-wing and left-leaning news outlets over the Pentagon’s new press policy, as well as the Trump administration’s unsuccessful efforts to get everyday juries to indict protesters in court.
“These jurors and reporters and airport administrators and university presidents join a Democratic Congress that seems to have found its backbone,” Hayes said.
“All of this is different than those first few months of [the] administration, right? I mean, then it was like this snowball rolling down a mountain. It was so fast, and you saw law firms saying yes and universities saying yes and everyone kind of not sure what to do,” Hayes observed. “But everywhere you look now, the no’s are piling up. They are, and all of those no’s are coming as we approach a weekend where millions of people will take to the streets, in thousands of communities across the country, as part of the No Kings March.”
