>> great to have you both on the show this morning as always. that does it for us for this hour of msnbc live. geoff bennett is picking it all up in new york. >> hallie jackson, great to see you. i'm geoff bennett, here at msnbc headquarters in new york. craig melvin is on assignment. the president this morning leans in on his attacks against four democratic congresswomen of color, despite outrage over his tweets denounced as racist he's now demanding they apologize. plus, hoping to get out as prosecutors gather more evidence against jeffrey epstein, back in court this morning asking a judge to let him out of jail so he can stay in his $77 million mansion until his trial begins. and health care showdown. it's what's shaping up to be one of the biggest issues on the trail. today joe biden is rolling out his new plan to protect and build on obamacare. and he's taking on his rivals medicare for all approach. but we start with that new

twitter tirade from the president. he attacked four progressive freshman members of congress all women of color in a string of tweets they're calling racist, all elected by people who live in their districts in massachusetts, michigan, new york and minnesota to "go back to where they came from" after referencing their corrupt foreign countries which that's what the president had to say. republicans have been largely quiet about the president's comments, withholding their criticism. "the wall street journal" said again -- nancy pelosi rushed to the defense of her colleagues after initially singling them out. pelosi tweeting "when donald trump tells four american congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to make america great again has always been about making america white again,"

break this down with ashley parker white house reporter with the "washington post" and a senior political analyst. we've got heather kagle, and former congresswoman loretta sanchez who represented voters in california for 20 years. ashley, start with you, what are you hearing from your sources? what was the president's goal here? why use that kind of language to attack these congresswomen that explosive phase "go back to where you came from"? >> i think it's twofold. we've been paying a lot of attention to his campaign and there's a lot of talk about trying to expand the map but the truth is when people are being honest if you look at what he's saying and you look at his actions the president always sort of runs on a base entrenchment, doubling down on the base strategy, these are the sort of offensive comments that do appeal to a portion of the president's supporters. he understands that these racist tweets, similar to sometimes the way he talks about immigration,

are something that can help him build up excitement and enthusiasm among his supporters. and that's a factor. if you look at his tweets today this is sort of the president's standard behavior. often if he does something offensive or controversial or a racist comment he then instead of apologizing he doubles down and his response is sort of i'm not the racist, you're the racist. we saw this in the debate against hillary clinton, if they -- puppet, puppet, you're the puppet. we're seeing this play out with his twitter feed and his feud with these four members. the down side, it has managed to accomplish uniting a fractious democratic congress right now. >> i want to read a portion of a column by peter baker in the "new york times." he says "president trump gazed out at the nation he leads, saw the dry kindling of race

relations and decided to throw a match on it, it was not the first time nor likely to be the last. when it comes to race mr. trump plays with fire like no other president in a century. while others who occupied the white house at times skirted close to or over the line none of them fan the flames as overtly, relently and eagerly as president trump." forget the dog whistle, the president is picking up the bull horn now. how does that make you feel? how does that resonate with you? >> first of all, he gave nancy pelosi a gift. i mean, she was having this discomfort with the other freshman congresswomen, and what he's done is enabled her to unite her caucus and to unite behind that immigration policy which was so contentious. it also shows that she's a real stateswoman, if you will, that she can bring people together. but here's the thing about president trump.

i mean, he should not -- he's attacked the other branches of government. he attacked the judges when he didn't like the travel ban that they denounced, or put down. now he's going after members of congress. that's quite frankly very disrespectful. and you need the congress. remember that this is a team effort in washington, d.c. we're coming to some very critical issues that the american people are really needing. they need to make sure their government stays open. we need to do something about that debt ceiling limit. so the congress says two weeks in washington, d.c. they go in august for their break. they come back and they've got a month, really, to try to get together and keep housing on the agenda, to keep health care affordable for people. and he's not making friends. he's making it more difficult for the team, being the senate

and the house, and the president to pass the bills through the american people. i think he's done a real negative effect on congress, being very disrespectful, to them and to these four women. >> and heather kagle, both the former congresswomen and ashley parker are picking up points you've pointed out. if the democrats goals are to pick up ranks it has backfired. in your piece you write this "now there's chatter from democrats about a resolution to condemn president trump's tweets". >> i think we could see something on the floor this week. democrats in the house are looking at this and are like how do we harness this and use it as something to continue to unite our caucus? one option that's being talked about among leadership is a resolution that would condemn trump's comments, and the goal behind that is to force house

republicans who generally have been silent since he started tweeting yesterday morning to go on the record saying whether they support the president's comments or they too think they're racist and inflammatory. >> congresswoman, speaker pelosi, who you mentioned, was critical of those four progressives, the same group last week in an interview with maureen dowd. does she bear any responsibility for kindling the president's tweets, not directly but indirectly, and should she think differently how she talks about these four women specifically? >> look, speaker pelosi was simply trying to unify her caucus. she understands, as i saw in the 20 years i worked with her, that it takes a whole spectrum of the democrats in the house to be united in order to pass things through the house of representatives and into the senate. so i never saw her disrespectful to latina, for example, myself. i saw her always moving women into positions of power.

when we had the iran nuclear deal she came to me because i was the head of the committee that dealt with nuclear nonproliferation and proliferation. she supported me. she said we need you on this loretta. we need you to educate our caucus. she lifted me to help the caucus understand the issue so that we could vote in a policy oriented way. aside from the politics. i have seen her more, always talk about the diversity, not just talk about it but put people in positions, both male and female. i saw her put my sister on the ways and means committee. judy chu of california on the ways and means committee. homeland security was created she came to me and said i need you at the top of that committee. i was the vice chair for the 12 years that that was -- that i

was there in the congress. >> right. >> she continually came to me on border issues and others, how do you feel, what can we do? i've never seen her being disrespectful to women of color or any of her members, quite frankly. she is a true leader, deserves to be speaker. and works very hard to get all the message of the caucus together and be inclusive to her and represent all americans. not just black america or latino america. >> right. >> she wants everybody to move forward. >> and congresswoman, we have some new reaction from congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez, her capitol hill team caught up with her. here's what she had to say. >> it's unfortunate that he feels the way he feels about people of color in this country. it's unfortunate the way he feels about immigrants, natural live citizens or not in this country. but i think what i would tell him is that it's time to move on

from him and it's time to move on from his conception of an america that we have tried to move past for a long time. >> race relations, a deep issue in this country. this is a deliberate move from the leader of this country. >> absolutely, it is, it is, and that is because he relies on racism, division and anti-immigrant sentiment to consolidate power because he does not have a positive vision for the future of america. this president does not believe in america where health care is a right. he does not believe in an america that offers a dignified education to all people regardless of income. he doesn't believe in a pr prosperous future for our country. from a leadership perspective, i don't think that's a good strategy. i think there's a strategy to divide the country because the

more this country is divided, the more he benefits from it. thank you. >> i want to bring in curt bardell, an nbc think contributor. you could hear the emotion in her voice there when she was getting questions about the president's comments but i want to talk to you about republicans, how republicans have reacted to this and their conspicuous silence. let's hear from lindsey graham. >> we all know that aoc and this crowd are a bunch of communists. they hate israel. they hate our own country. they're anti semitic, anti america. aim higher. we don't need to know anything about them personally. talk about their policies. >> all right, so over to you, sir, what's your take on all that? >> it's not that republicans like lindsey graham are being

silent. it's the opposite. they're depending donald trump's overt racism. they're owning it. they're saying it's not only okay to be racist, but as a matter of fact we're going to turn it around and make it about the targets of his racism and it's a tactic we've seen time and time again from republicans defending donald trump, whether it was charlottesville, the pardoning of a racial sheriff in arizona. time and again we see donald trump not just overtly troll in racism but use policies as well to inflict this agenda on the american people. and what do republicans do? they don't sit silently and cower, they go on national tv and say it's okay and actually the people who are targeted are the ones at fault for it. >> to your point in the last week we've seen from the white house these tweets about these congresswomen. you've got the threats of the immigrant round-ups that started yesterday. far right trolls in the white house summit on social media. you've got the continued effort to get the citizenship question added to the 2020 census. and then there's some breaking news today, a move to end some of the asylum protections for most central american migrants.

this seems to be -- and i'm not one who ascribes strategy to donald trump where no strategy exists but it seems to be a concentrated effort to keep talking about the immigration issue. >> it's a pattern of behavior and it's been that way ever since he came down that famed escalator and announced his entry into the presidential race. whether it's build the wall, round them up, referring to places as s-hole countries, we've seen time and again this president uses race in a way to admit really actually make progress where he's not really doing anything. early in his presidency things weren't going well, obamacare wasn't repealed, rex tillerson wasn't happy with him. two days ago all we saw were images of the border situation. children in cages. and what does he do the next day? he puts out this tweet and we're talking about images of his

twitter feed and not these border issues going on right now. that's deliberate, i think. >> ashley parker, we had the visit by the vice president mike pence who went to the detention facility in mcallen, texas, he tweeted about the excellent care being provided to families and children. as i say that, look at that picture, as you know reports by journalists have painted a very different picture at the centers. it's like a don't believe your lying eyes here at the moment. define for us this current moment. >> well, i was talking to someone this morning actually who's a close ally of the vice president and, you know, privately this person said that not just those images sort of from a point of view of humanity but the toughest image was

pretty -- the words they used were awkward. might be something stronger, was the vice president with several other white male politicians all in suits standing on the outside of what basically looks like a cage of undocumented immigrants who as my colleague josh dossey described, there was not enough room for them to lie on the ground to sleep, they had not brushed their teeth and showered in days and that is not a particularly good image for the white house. but i do think the white house does believe to a certain extent you put that list of kind of initiatives and comments and behaviors on the screen, the immigration at a certain point is an issue they can win on and sort of threatening harsh actions, even when they don't take them. keep in mind the president ran on building the wall when he's at a rally and starts losing the crowd's attention. he gins up that let's build the

wall chant. two years into the presidency, he has built stunningly little of the wall and mexico has paid for none of it. how far can the rhetoric get them and when do they need to take action? the flipside is when is the action too far? is it when people see images like we saw when the vice president went to the border, when they actually begin the i.c.e. raids in ernest? >> my thanks to each of you. coming up, fighting to get out of jail, accused sexual predator jeffrey epstein is in a manhattan courtroom right now, hoping to convince a federal judge to let him out on bail. his attorney is claiming despite his wealth he poses no flight risk. joe biden building on his plan for health care. stay with us.

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now to breaking news in federal court here in new york, right now billionaire jeffrey epstein is before a judge fighting to be released from jail while he awaits trial on sex trafficking charges. he has pleaded not guilty to those charges. stephanie gosk is live outside the federal courthouse in lower

manhattan and glen kirsh near is a former federal prosecutor and msnbc legal analyst. his bail hearing began about an hour ago. give us a sense of what's happened in the court so far. >> reporter: a lot has kind of unravelled. it started with the judge saying this is not going to be a short hearing at all and he's not actually going to provide a decision today but rather at 9:30 on thursday. we just wrapped up -- or heard from for the first time, i think he may still be talking, martin wineberg, one of the defense attorneys for epstein. he's argued that that non-prosecution agreement we've been talking so much signed over a decade ago should protect jeffrey epstein from these current charges. he goes on to say that jeffrey epstein has not been charged with anything that took place after that was signed, trying to point out that he is no threat to the community.

judge burrman asking him alas specifically, don't chances of recidivism go up as the sexual predator gets older? some back and forth. and talking about a search that the fbi did at jeffrey epstein's home, a safe where they found hundreds if not thousands of photos of what they describe as seemingly underage women. they went on to say that they also found in that safe cash, diamonds and very interestingly a passport, expired passport from the 1980s that had a picture of jeffrey epstein, but was under a different name. >> wow. >> and listed his residence as saudi arabia. that's a passport from the 1980s. the judge said tell us more about this passport, and actually the prosecutor did not actually answer those questions. that's all we know about it. >> i understand that some of the

alleged victims will also be speaking during this bail hearing or might have already spoken. how might that affect the judge's decision and how unusual is it for that to happen during a bail hearing? >> it's extremely unusual during a bail hearing to have victims or witnesses talk or testify beyond a lead detective or fbi agent who might want to relate incriminating facts to give the judge context about the ruling he or she will have to make. stephanie brings up a really important point that i think we should address, and that is that epstein's defense attorneys are arguing that the non-prosecution agreement executed by acosta back in 2007/2008 should somehow bar this prosecution. let me tell you, that is absolutely irrelevant at this stage of the proceedings. just as defense attorneys can't go into court during bond hearings or preliminary hearings and argue that there was a violation of a defendant's

fourth amendment rights because there was an illegal search and seizure that produced some of the incriminating evidence, or that an eyewitness identification was improper and therefore the evidence against the defendant is weak, those are not issues that are litigated at this stage of the proceedings. those are litigated in pre-trial motions generally right before the trial is to begin. so i would say this is a lot of misdirection based on stephanie's reporting if the defense attorneys are standing up and trying to argue this non-prosecution agreement is relevant at this stage of the proceedings because it simply is not. >> got it. and stephanie one thing about this case caught my eye. epstein has been held in a facility here in manhattan, three cells down from el chapo. setting that aside, what do we know about the details of epstein's bail request, specifically? >> reporter: well, you know, his

defense attorneys aren't just saying let him out on bail and let him walk out of the court haas. they're saying they would agree a home arrest in his $77 million mansion in manhattan. he would wear an ankle bracelet to be monitored, that he'd be willing to give up his passport and ground his plane and he'd also be willing to put up that house as collateral on whatever the bail would be. those are the arguments they say the stipulations where they say he would not be a flight risk if all that took place. clearly prosecutors disagree with that assessment. >> and glen kirshner given that what's the likelihood of bail being granted? if jeffrey epstein was not a billionaire, how would he be treated today? >> the system doesn't work equally for people who are privileged, people who are connected, people who are influential versus defendants who have none of those things going for them. but, you know, here's what i think really bothers me most

about the position staked out by epstein's lawyers. he says, look, your honor, epstein will ground his private jets. he'll turn over the keys to his luxury fleet of vehicles. and he'll hire his own security firm to make sure he doesn't believe his $77 million mansion: simply put, geoff, that is epstein arguing, your honor, i would like to buy my way out of pre-trial detention. given that he's already a convicted and registered sex offender, given that he is a flight risk and a danger to the community, certainly the community of 14 to 17-year-old girls who have the misfortune of crossing his path or being brought to his home by his co-conspirators and we recently learned he may have paid off two witnesses against him when negative reporting broke about him in november to the tune of $350,000. he is a risk of future witness tampering. i don't see the judge getting

this decision wrong. >> all right. stephanie gosk and glen kirschner, thanks to you both. a new fight between joe biden and bernie sanders about health care. as we head to break, check this out. in case you missed what was a match for the ages yesterday, the five-hour showdown between roger federer and novak djokovic. the win is good for djokovic's 16th career grand slam. let's get down to business.

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he's called it the crown jewel of the obama administration, and now joe biden is making obamacare his own. in the last few hours biden unveiled his health care plan giving americans the option to keep their private insurance or buy into a medicare-like government plan. it would give subsidies to middle class families, give medicare the power to directly

negotiate with drug companies for better prices. and allow people to buy medicine from other countries. in a new campaign video biden takes direct aim at his colleagues who back medicare for all. >> starting over makes no sense to me at all. i knew the republicans would do everything in their power to appeal obamacare and they still are. i'm surprised so many democrats are running on getting rid of it. >> let's bring in don callaway, and beth fuey. don, this strikes me as joe biden staking his claim at the center of the race, drawing a stark contrast with competitors that he seems to think have drifted too far to the left but will this work with democratic primary voters? >> absolutely. i think joe biden is hitting the right notes here. it's about him establishing this is a good idea for the majority of mainstream democrats.

i heard one of our colleague commentators in the previous hour saying it's essentially irrelevant because it can't get through a non-democratic 60 majority in the senate. that's not what this is about. we're in the thick of the democratic primary, about messages to mainstream democratic voters. he draws an important distinction in saying that medicare for all actually dismantles obamacare. what we liked about obamacare was preexisting conditions being covered, lowering prices and the big one was the public population, joe biden reinstating that public option. so i think this is an excellent move for joe biden and it creates a clear distinction between him and some of the far left on his -- of his primary competition. >> don, here's the deal with the public option in the biden plan. it would kick in for states that refused obamacare's medicaid expansion. >> yes. >> but the states that have complied with obamacare, they will keep the status quo.

in a round about way he's given the nonexpansion states a better deal. do i have that right? if i do, how is that going to go over? >> you do have that right. i think it goes over very well. as you probably remember i was a member of the state legislature. what we had was a whole lot of individual states, particularly red states, not choosing to expand medicare and medicaid. particularly because they have this continued perception that that's a welfare program and they're anti-welfare. what this does is give an end around to people who want different health care options but who happen to be in deeply red states. they can still participate in federal subsidies and different options for health care. so i think that joe biden is hitting a populist note here. and it's drawing a distinction between him and the left but more importantly it's showing he's ready to think about policy as opposed to just using the catch phrase medicare for all that he understands this stuff, that he was embedded in these

fights over the obama years. i think it's just a great political move as well as a pretty decent thoughtful policy move. >> and beth fuey bernie sanders is digging in on his medicare for all plan. do we expect him to go after biden? and does it appear to you that this health care issue is set up to be the dividing issue on the democratic field? >> bernie sanders is going all in. he gave a similar speech to this one about a month ago on democratic socialism. he's owning and occupying his positioning in this field, very much far to the left. he's trying to reclaim some of the momentum that elizabeth warren has picked up, kind of in that space and the progressive space. so yeah he's going to go all in. he's never been shy about going after biden on things where they disagree. here's a chance for him to grab back this issue and say this belongs to me and draw the contrast. to answer your second question it's the defining issue of this democratic field.

from 2018, we know health care is a powerful motivator for a lot of voters. it was certainly an issue that helped democrats in 2018. they were able to cast themselves as the party that wanted to protect obamacare provisions popular in particular, including the preexisting conditions protection. so if this becomes something that then divides within the party it's going to be interesting to see how republicans try to take advantage of that because it's clear that this is something where there are very strong differing views. >> yeah, it's so great to have you at the table because you're such a keen observer of these things and lucky for us we have a new nbc poll to bounce off of you and it shows the number of democratic primary voters who want to see large scale change in policies, they back elizabeth warren and those who prefer small scale change they back joe biden. is this health care debate sort of a bigger illustration of what's happening here in the electorate? if so, who is best poised to harness the energy among democrats? >> you remember from our nbc news, msnbc debate last month

that when the question was asked, who would replace private health care with the government-run program elizabeth warren threw up her hand, like bernie sanders. it's clear she's ready to stake herself out, her team feels like this is a way for her to win the nomination, that this is where the democratic voter field leans left. and go back to the middle if she gets the nomination. >> don calloway, what's your take? >> it's important to make sure democrats know you're not losing your private insurance. a public option is what was most popular about obamacare before the actual bill that became elected. the public option is what would make private insurance companies lower their prices because they would have to compete with quality government-issued health care programs. i think that beth is right. it's going to be the kitchen table stuff that's going to be most crucial among the electorate. >> my thanks to both of you.

and tomorrow, don't miss a special edition of "morning joe" with joe biden in iowa. up next, a harder line, the trump administration announces this morning a new rule upending asylum protections for most central american migrants, unfolding as planned raids in cities across the country begin. federal employees are sounding the alarm on what they say is an effort to silence critics of the administration by shipping them out of town. whoa. travis in it made it. it's amazing. oh is that travis's app? it's pretty cool, isn't it? there's two of them. they're multiplying. no, guys, its me. see, i'm real. i'm real! he thinks he's real. geico. over 75 years of savings and service. alice loves the smell of gain so much,

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can't imagine doing it any other way. this is caitlin dickerson from the new york times. this isn't the only case. very little documentation. lo que yo quiero estar con mi hijo. i know that's not true. and the shelters really don't know what to do with them. i just got another person at d.h.s. to confirm this. i have this number. we're going to publish the story.

we've heard for weeks about the -- the pace is slower than expected. in the last few hours we have some breaking news. the administration announced a new plan to handle people seeking asylum in the u.s. i've been reporting that story out with my colleague nbc correspondent julia ainsley who covers the department of justice and the department of homeland security and also joining us is christina sinsoon, the founder of jolt, a texas-based civil rights organization. julia, start with you, starting on this asylum process. one source told me it was the administration's -- what they want to do is a wholesale reimagining asylum system. >> you and i have been chasing this overnight and into this morning. it sounded too bold to be true. of course this administration,

we've learned our lesson about this. this would be a wholesale reimagining. any immigrant who comes to the united states and crosses through another country where they could have applied for asylum, if they did not apply there, they're not eligible in the united states. that's largely targeting central americans who come through mexico. the way we thought this would work is that the u.s. would have to come to an agreement with mexico, which is a safe third party country, deemed safe enough to take in asylum seekers to properly process anyone who comes through there. this would go beyond that and allow a country like guatemala to be a country where you would have to apply for asylum. in the past year i heard from a source that guatemala only processed 100 applications. it's hard to see how they could possibly deal with this influx. it would put a large stop to people coming to the u.s. southern border and claiming

asylum, even those for very legitimate reasons. so, of course, we can expect to see some lawsuits reacting to this. wh we expect to hear from the aclu. >> walk out through the real world implications of this, how will this affect people trying to seek asylum on the border? >> we have to understand these actions by the trump administration targeting immigrants are traumatizing a generation of children and entire communities. people are seeking asylum and refuge in the united states because their home countries are not free. coming through mexico for central american migrants is one of the most dangerous propositions. hundreds of people are killed orchid napped in mexico trying to come to this country for refuge. it's not a safe proposition. one of the things i want to make sure we're also talking about the long-term trauma and pain we're causing children and families. you know, the last time there were raids here in my city of

austin, 37,000 children didn't go to school because they were too afraid to leave their homes. so we're talking about these asylum changes at the same time we're talking about these massive raids and we're sweeping up innocent, hard working families. i think of the story of miguel -- that the last time there were raids here in austin had no criminal record, was detained while taking his 5-year-old daughter a box of chocolates for valentine's day so she could know how much her dad loved her. he was picked up and his three u.s. citizen children are being raised without their father. this party that says they're for family values is causing trauma and pain to thousands of families across this country and i want us to start talking about that as well along with the implications for asylum seekers. >> and christina, it's not just those undocumented immigrants. we're also hearing stories of black and brown people who are u.s. citizens who this past weekend were carrying around their passports with them for fear of being picked up by

i.c.e. give us a sense of the anxiety this is creating there along the border, and those border communities? >> you know, i live in a state where one in three texans are like me, children of immigrants. it has little to do with green cards or how people came to this country and everything to do with race. everything to do with the color of the skin of the majority of immigrants that come from latin america, asia and africa. and trump proved just this weekend that the assaults on immigrants have everything to do with race by telling our congressional representatives, four women of color, to go back to the countries where they came from. we could never imagine him saying this to white congressional representatives. i want to also add that what i really think the trump administration fears aren't just people like my 62-year-old immigrant mexican mother, but me, her u.s. citizen daughter that can vote and has a drastically different vision for this country.

whether the trump administration is talking about changing asylum laws, immigration raids, undercounting immigrants in the census or making it harder to become a u.s. citizen, we have to understand these are the same old tools of poll taxes and literacy tests, repackaged with the same purpose, to deny communities of color the right to vote and to determine a different direction for our country. >> all right, julia ainsley and christina, my thanks to you both. up next, federal employees are speaking out against a new directive for the trump administration that would mean picking up their lives and moving thousands of miles away. one employee concealed their identity to speak to us and says it's part of an effort to silence criticism of the administration. >> this administration doesn't want to hear non-partisan facts and analysis that cut counter to their plans and their narrative. { }÷ truck honking} (avo) life doesn't give you many second chances.

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he ought to be able to stay in his home until the trial begins. he was arrested on sex trafficking charges and pleaded not guilty. decision day for 550 federal employees who have to pick up and move 1,000 mile as way from washington, d.c. to kansas city or be fired. it's a controversial change by the trump administration that some say is meant to silence research the white house doesn't like. morgan radford joins us now with more. >> that's right, jeff. this is a small agency that many people haven't heard of. they say that they're the canary in the coal mine. the government says they want to get them closer to the farmers that they serve. the workers say the administration just wants to silence them. >> it's like a bomb went off. >> 500 of her co-workers were told to decide in 30 days

whether they will move 1,000 miles from home to kansas city or lose their job. >> how many of your colleagues have decided to move and how many decided they're going to quit? >> the union did an informal survey and we found that attrition rate could be as high as 100% in certain branch. >> 100% of employees in some of your departments could actually just quit? >> exactly. >> dotson is one of a handful of people who will be able to stay in d.c. she studies agriculture as an economist for the economic research service, one of two agencies that the trump administration has decided to relocate, claiming it will save taxpayers money. but some employees say there's a different motive. >> they know it's a fig leaf. their real motivation is to emiscemi emicerate the agency. >> he fears speak out would be

detrimental as he searches for another federal job. >> why do you think this is happening now? >> this administration doesn't want to hear nonpartisan facts and analysis that cut counter to their plans and narrative. >> like what? what could be inconvenient about your research? >> some colleagues of mine came out about a report of the impact of the trade war, stuff about impact of food assistance, which cut counter to the administration's priorities to attach work requirements. >> do you believe the trump administration when it says that, look, we're just trying to move you so you can be closer to the farmers that you're studying. >> i don't need to be a cornfield to study agriculture policy, number one. number two, if they were operating in good faith and thought that moving us was the best way to achieve our mission at a lower cost, they would do this over the course of years. >> in a press release,

agriculture secretary sonny perdue says we are doing it to enhance long-term sustainability and success of these agencies but these employees warn this could just be the beginning. >> is this a symptom of a larger issue? does this stop with your agency or do you think it will affect other agencies? >> what we're afraid of this might be a blueprint for dismantling a federal agency. >> sounding the alarm from washington to the heartland. >> so for those employees who do decide to move they haven until september 30th to relocate. we've reached out to the agriculture secretary if multiple times and have not heard back. multiple letters to the administration have been sent asking for more time. >> morgan, we'll see you at 2:00 when you fill in for katy tur. >> see you then. >> okay, sounds good. made in america product showcase, live pictures you're looking at right there.

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click, call or visit a store today. before we hand it over to andrea, i want to congratulate her on receiving a lifetime achievement emmy award. groundbreaking career has earned the respect of journalists around the world who aspire to

match her standard of excellence. she is an icon. she'll be honored with a lifetime achievement emy award in september. congratulations, andrea, from all of us who are lucky enough to call you a friend and mentor. >> geoff, thank you so much. what a lifetime it is and more to come. thank you very much. we are honored. and right now on "andrea mitchell reports," born in the usa. president trump suggesting four congresswomen of color should go back home, even though only one is foreign born. >> to consolidate power. >> taking on trump. what a new nbc news poll tells us about how democrats would match up against the president. >> democratic voters so