The Beat With Ari Melber 4/29/26 | 🅼🆂🅽🅱️🅲 Breaking News Today April 29, 2026

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:00]lying before the House Armed Services Committee amid a deeply unpopular war that is grinding toward a second month.

[00:00:08]And the mood was contentious even before the questioning started. Protesters confronted Hexath on his way into the hearing.

[00:00:20]>> Disgusting with yourself.

[00:00:23]>> You need to be arrested.

[00:00:28]Not to be outdone, Hegsth then used his opening statement to attack the war's critics, calling them the quote biggest challenge. Take a listen.

[00:00:39]>> The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.

[00:00:54]In return, those reckless, feckless Democrats accused Hegsth of breathtaking hypocrisy, namely accusing his critics of being reckless and feckless while leading a war that has proceeded in the absence of congressional approval and any clear end point. Take a listen.

[00:01:13]>> You have been lying to the American public about this war from day one, and so has the president. The strategy has been an outstanding example of incompetence.

[00:01:26]This war of choice is a political and economic disaster at every level.

[00:01:29]>> You were incompetent then, you're incompetent now.

[00:01:33]>> Do you believe that the president is mentally stable enough to be the commander-in-chief?

[00:01:37]>> Did you ask the same question of Joe Biden for 4 years?

[00:01:40]>> Joe Biden is not the president.

[00:01:42]>> You need to resign immediately.

[00:01:44]>> It's the incompetence.

[00:01:48]Hexath testified that the cost of the Iran war has hit $25 billion so far.

[00:01:54]That is an enormous figure, but according to Politico, it quote falls far behind many outside estimates.

[00:02:03]Hexath dodged other critical questions on the Hill today. He refused to give an estimate on the timeline for withdrawal from Iran. He refused to say whether he is quote beholden to the president or whether he is beholden to the Constitution.

[00:02:18]He also refused to say whether he had advised the president to go to war. And then there was this. He got tripped up on a key point. Take a listen.

[00:02:28]>> Their nuclear facilities have been obliterated underground. They're buried and watching them 24/7. So we know where any nuclear material second here.

[00:02:40]>> We had to start this war. you just said 60 days ago because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat. Now you're saying that it was completely obliterated.

[00:02:51]>> They had not given up their nuclear ambitions and they had a conventional shield of thousands of >> So Operation Midnight Hammer accomplished nothing of substance. It left us at exactly the same place we were before.

[00:03:06]Joining me now to kick things off tonight is Admirable Ad the Admirable Admiral John Kirby, the former White House National Security Communications Adviser. He is also an MS now national security analyst. Admiral, even some of the Republicans say that the Trump administration has failed to provide a compelling rationale for this war or to articulate what the endgame is here. Do you think that Secretary Hegsth provided any clarity today with this jaunt on the Hill?

[00:03:35]>> I think there were some missed opportunities for the Secretary today. I think this would have been a terrific uh chance for him uh to lay out what the strategic objectives are and how they're and how they're going after each and every one of them. Uh and I don't I didn't see anything in the hearing today and I watched a lot of it uh that convinced me that they were actually trying to answer that that question. Uh it was a missed opportunity for sure to lay out to the American people finally.

[00:04:00]I mean it's been 60 days before uh the secretary testified finally to lay out why we're doing this and why now?

[00:04:07]>> Well, I thought it was interesting that he did take the opportunity to do some political mudslinging. So what did you make of the secretary calling both Democratic and Republican critics of the war the quote biggest problem and the biggest adversary here?

[00:04:24]I was really sorry to see that. I I was uh I was not happy to see that uh very early on in the hearing, you know, it got so political and so partisan and uh and the the rhetoric coming from the secretary was so vitriolic uh about the critics of the war. It's not unpatriotic to question your government when your government takes you to war. Um, and given the fact that this administration did not go to Congress before they went to war, did not try to lay the predicate for why they were going to war with the American people, I think it's fair uh for critics and supporters to have an opportunity to express those views and ask those questions here at this hearing today. So again, I think it was a missed opportunity for the secretary and I'm really sorry to see that uh that it got so vitrialic so soon because again, it's not unpatriotic to question your government. It's actually one of the most patriotic things you can do, particularly in a time of war.

[00:05:19]>> Well, there have been a lot of questions about the strike on the Iranian girl school. This happened in the early days of the war. And today, Democratic Congressman Adam Smith brought it up.

[00:05:29]Let's take a listen to that exchange between the congressman and the secretary.

[00:05:36]>> The girl school that got hit in the first days of this war. There is absolutely no question at this point what happened. We made a mistake and that happens in war. We identified this target based on earlier charts and yet 2 months after it happened, we refuse to say anything about it, giving the world the impression that we just don't care.

[00:05:59]We do not care about the casualties and the chaos that is caused by our war and we should care.

[00:06:08]What do you make of the fact that military leadership has refused to take ownership of what many are regarding as a colossal mistake?

[00:06:17]>> I I I think it's important for the United States military uh to complete this investigation as quickly as possible. I'm frankly a little surprised that it's taken this long, although I know there's a lot of inter agency coordination that has to go into to to laying out the findings uh conclusively. But I think it's important to wrap this up quickly and to be completely transparent with the American people about what happened, why it happened, and more critically how we're going to prevent it from happening uh in the future. Um I I know that uh the US Central Command did a thorough job here.

[00:06:50]I've I've I've talked to some officials there. Uh I think there's a process problem here that has taken too long to work its way through. Uh but it's imperative and and uh Representative Smith is is not wrong. I mean, uh, we should come clean on this so that we can more importantly learn from it and prevent it from happening again.

[00:07:09]>> What does it mean though that we won't acknowledge that perhaps a mistake was made here? Even in the absence of a conclusive investigation, something obviously went wrong.

[00:07:18]I want to believe Melissa that what's slowing this down is the inter agency coordination process because the preliminary findings at least as reported in the press made it seem like it was the uh intelligence was perhaps old that was applied to the targeting solution and the intelligence that was provided to the military came from outside the military. So, uh, I want to believe that what's slowing this down is the coordination process with the intelligence community and that they'll wrap this up quickly. That's the generous view of this and that's the view that I I plan to take. I I think the cynic's view would be that uh this administration doesn't like to admit mistakes, doesn't like to apologize, doesn't like to show what they consider weakness, but it's not weakness. If you've made a mistake, if you've hit something in error, uh then admit it as soon as you possibly can and tell the public what you're going to do to to try to prevent it from happening again.

[00:08:11]That's not weakness. That's strength.

[00:08:12]That's confidence. That's security in your process uh and in your military capabilities. Um and that's not what's uh that's not what's being transmitted to the American people right now. Again, I want to believe this is a process problem and not a policy problem. Uh but the cynics uh I I know I understand are out there thinking that this is more of a policy issue.

[00:08:31]>> Well, the cynics are not just focused on that particular issue. They also have raised concerns over Hegett's personnel decisions. Take a listen to Congressman Don Bacon.

[00:08:43]>> I I share a bipartisan concern of the firings that we've seen at the Pentagon.

[00:08:48]four of the six service chiefs, for example, the Coast Guard, we we had a huge bipartisan majority here that had confidence in the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Navy. And I would just point out it may be constitutionally right. You have the constitution right to do these things, but it doesn't make it right or wise.

[00:09:10]So there have been a lot of discussion of these personnel firings within the military and some news outlets including the New York Times have noted that women and minorities appear to bear the brunt of these firings. What do you make of this shift in the personnel and what does it mean for the fighting force that is incredibly diverse as our armed forces are to have a leadership structure that may be less diverse in terms of race and gender than it has been in the past?

[00:09:37]It's hard to know to to to know exactly how to answer that question because they haven't been transparent about why these individuals are are being fired. Now, Representative Bacon is right. They they certainly have the constitutional authority to hire and fire as needed. If you lose the trust and confidence of the commander-in-chief, then you need to go.

[00:09:57]I I get that. But the but the congressman's also right that that doesn't necessarily make it the proper thing to do. And you have an obligation to explain to the American people why you're doing it, particularly when you're doing it at the scale uh that this administration is doing, the numbers of generals and admirals that are being let go with no explanation whatsoever. And the math bears the math, right? It is largely uh people who are minorities or or women. Um and I think that that requires explication. I think that they with an all volunteer force.

[00:10:30]to your second question. When you're not when you're not governing conscription, when you're not making people join the military, it's an allv volunteer force, you have a special obligation, maybe a higher obligation, uh to explain how you're uh recruiting and retaining individuals and just as importantly letting them go. Uh it sends a horrible message to the rest of the force that it to to to open a question to them as well whether their service is even needed because they're not white and they're not male. Again, I hope that's not the case here, but we don't know because they're not explaining it. Uh, and the numbers do certainly contend uh a very worrisome uh pattern here of getting rid of people who uh are uh in the minority of the American population. Look, when you're an all all volunteer force, you can't afford to ignore any segment of the American population. And uh when our service members raise their right hand and swear that oath to the Constitution, they're swearing an oath to defend all Americans, no matter who they are, no matter who they voted for, no matter what they what they believe or where they worship. And that's a really important traditional uh uh foundation of our democracy and the US military today.

[00:11:43]>> All right, Admiral John Kirby, thank you so much for kicking us off so admirably tonight. Thank you. We will be back in just 90 seconds with Congressman Seth Molton who is also on the Hill today directing some hard questions to Secretary Hexathless for questioning your war. Do you think Congress was smart or feckless when it failed to ask tough questions of the Bush administration and gave them a blank check for Iraq? How is this war going? Do you think we're winning? Do you call Iran closing the straight of Hormuz winning? They blockaded us and then we blockaded their blockade. That's like saying tag your it. Are you afraid to take ownership of this? Do you think it was a good idea or not?

[00:12:26]>> As promised, joining me now is Congressman Seth Molton, Democrat from Massachusetts and an Iraq war veteran who you just saw grilling Pete Huggsath.

[00:12:36]Congressman, those were some tough questions for the secretary, but what did you make of his answers?

[00:12:42]I mean, first of all, he confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that he still has absolutely no plan for how to bring this war to a conclusion, and he's becoming very squeamish about even admitting that he advocated for the war to the president uh and that he thinks it's a good idea. Now, of course, he insisted on saying that it was winning, but when I went through the various measures by which you might judge whether he's actually winning this war, it seems like they're losing on every count. And at the end of the day, he should not be losing a war that he should not have even started.

[00:13:14]>> Was that the biggest takeaway from today's hearing? That there's no plan here. There's no path forward and there's no reason for us to be in Iran right now.

[00:13:23]>> I mean, look, there is a reason to recognize that Iran is a national security threat. We don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And Democratic and Republican administrations over the last 50 years have agreed on that. In fact, the first Trump administration agreed on that. And guess what? Iran has never had a nuclear weapon on under any of these administrations, and they've all been able to achieve that without starting a war. So, the fundamental question is, what are you gaining from this war? because we know some of the costs. 14 Americans dead, a cost to taxpayers of about $600 a piece if we go with the hundred billion dollar estimate, which is revised down from their initial request to Congress of an additional $200 billion. At the same time, they're advocating for a $1.5 trillion defense budget. $1.5 trillion.

[00:14:13]What does that mean? We throw these numbers around Washington and I asked the secretary if he could just explain what that means to the average taxpayer.

[00:14:21]Look, that's $9,000. $9,000. If you have an extra $9,000 lying around to pay for Hegset's Pentagon, let me know. But I certainly don't.

[00:14:31]>> Congressman, you have served in the armed forces and you know that leadership matters. Did today's testimony make you more or less confident about whether the secretary is the right person to be leading this war effort right now?

[00:14:45]>> Less confident, although I can't say I was surprised. He's the most in incompetent secretary of defense in American history. Remember, he was only barely confirmed by the Senate. And what you heard from not just Democrats but Republicans on the committee as well is that we really do not have any confidence in his decision-m and when asked questions about decision-m he cannot justify what he's doing.

[00:15:16]All right, Congressman Seth Molton, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Still ahead, the Trump DOJ's Comey indictment, the second one, is already backfiring with many legal voices on the right objecting. Take a listen.

[00:15:32]>> There's no crime here. I think the case is frivolous.

[00:15:34]>> Just showing the picture is going to be a weak case in terms of a threat.

[00:15:41]>> But first, the Supreme Court guts the venerable voting rights act, triggering an extraordinary disscent from the liberal justices. We will get into it.

[00:15:50]That's up next.

[00:15:55]>> Stay up todate on the biggest issues.

[00:15:57]>> Turn to a landmark Supreme Court decision with stark implications for American elections. Today, the court's conservative supermajority struck down a Louisiana voting map as unconstitutional, finding that lawmakers quote illegally used race when drawing a new majority black district. The 6-3 decision split along predictable ideological lines. The majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alo asserted that the ruling preserves a central tenant of the Voting Rights Act. His opinion reads, quote, "Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost any other context."

[00:16:42]In a scathing descent, which she read from the bench, Justice Elena Kagan slammed the majority for laying the groundwork for what she called the largest reduction in minority representation since the era following reconstruction. Justice Kagan wrote that the majority's ruling licenses states to quote dilute minority citizens voting power.

[00:17:06]And while the majority claims that this is merely an update to the law, Justice Kagan, writing for the three Democratic appointees, disagreed sharply, maintaining that the decision, quote, eviscerates the law. She called the decision, quote, the latest chapter in the majority's now completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.

[00:17:29]During oral arguments back in October, Justice Kagan asked Jana Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who represented a group of black voters, what the stakes were in this case. Take a listen.

[00:17:43]>> What would the results on the ground be?

[00:17:46]>> I think the results would be pretty catastrophic. If we take Louisiana as one example, every congressional member who is black was elected from a VRA opportunity district. We only have the diversity that we see across the South, for example, because of litigation that forced the creation of opportunity districts under the Voting Rights Act.

[00:18:11]Today's ruling is a sad departure from decades of precedent. And it is also a very sad development for a law that was a signature key accomplishment of the civil rights era. Landmark legislation that sought to protect minorities from discriminatory voting practices.

[00:18:29]Critically, today's ruling is the latest in a series of decisions from the high court that over the last decade have incrementally hobbled the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana, a state with a sizable black population, will likely now lose one majority black Democratic district.

[00:18:47]And the ruling also opens the door for other states to redraw their congressional maps ahead of an already contentious midterm election year.

[00:18:56]Today, lawmakers spoke out about the ruling.

[00:19:01]>> This decision today by the Supreme Court is a slap in the face. This is one huge step backwards for racial justice and for the health of our democracy.

[00:19:16]>> It is an attack on a crown jewel of our democracy.

[00:19:21]>> It's not Donald Trump or his Supreme Court majority that should be the ones to decide who gets to represent you in Congress. It's the American people.

[00:19:34]Joining me now to break all of this down is the Reverend Al Sharpton, host of Politics Nation here on MS Now. He is also the president and founder of the National Action Network. Also with us tonight is Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan and my co-host on the Strict Scrutiny podcast.

[00:19:52]Rev, let's get right into it. Um, the Voting Rights Act was already hobbled after years of the Supreme Court incrementally chipping away at it. What does this ruling mean for voting rights in the United States for African-Americans and other minorities?

[00:20:05]>> Well, it it it was horrible. Now it's destroyed in effect. And it this shoots at it shoots in the heart of voting rights and and civil rights because what they're saying is that you can no longer deal with the fact that there was racial exclusion >> and therefore you must be able to hold people accountable for continuing a racially exclusive kind of policy. And if you mention Ray saying that it was being exclusionary then you can't do it.

[00:20:36]Well, then how do you remedy the fact that we were, you know, people act like we're asking for something? We only are saying to remake what you did to us.

[00:20:48]That's affirmative move was made against us.

[00:20:51]>> So, this is an important point. The map here was a remedial map drawn after Louisiana engaged in what the black voters termed a racial gerrymander and what a court found to be a racial gerrymander. And so the court ordered Louisiana to draw a new map that created an additional black opportunity voting district. And the court in this decision now says that the consideration of race in drawing that district is itself unconstitutional.

[00:21:16]>> And what you then have the effect so you have the huge population of blacks in Louisiana.

[00:21:22]>> We'll put y'all all in one district and the ones of you that don't live in that district, you won't matter anyway. Yeah.

[00:21:28]And so we can end up with several white congressmen from Louisiana and one black and that's fair and equal because you can't bring up race. And and that's what they will try to do all over the country is lump one district two at the most and have the rest of the state in smaller populated districts >> because you're not even talking about the same population. Smaller populated districts. So in effect, you will have uh the number of blacks in in Congress uh and in state legislatures and in city councils drastic minimum minimum. So we will have minimum input, but we going to have to pay the same taxes.

[00:22:10]>> All right, Leah, speaking of paying the same taxes, we called this right on strict scrutiny. We said this was going to happen. We listened to the oral arguments. Let's take a listen to some of the sounds from that oral argument last fall where Justice Kavanaaugh and some of the other justices basically signaled where they were going on this.

[00:22:28]Take a listen.

[00:22:31]This court's cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time. They should not be uh indefinite.

[00:22:44]If it happens to be that uh people of one race or another race overwhelmingly prefer one of the political parties, does that transform the situation into racial voting?

[00:22:59]>> Is it acceptable under section two for a court to intentionally discriminate in a remedial map on the basis of race?

[00:23:08]Selia, we called this. We said that this is a court that's extremely skeptical of any use of race, even if it is for remedial purposes. Did this opinion translate the way you expected after listening to the oral argument, or was it even worse?

[00:23:22]It did translate what we expected, but that doesn't make it any less appalling.

[00:23:26]The oral argument clips you played signaled some of the things that Justice Alo, Justice Jim Crowo wrote into this opinion. basically declaring that time's up on multi-racial democracy since things have changed so dramatically, racism is apparently over, that we no longer need the voting rights acts protections. You also heard Justice Alto's question which basically signaled that in his view, racial gerrymandering just doesn't exist in a world where there is racially polarized voting. that is, it's not permissible for minority voters to argue that they are entitled to a separate opportunity district if they don't align with the state's partisan objectives. And then you have Justice Gorsuch just saying it is equivalent for the Voting Rights Act to require states to consider infranchising racial minorities with Jim Crow segregation. He's treating the two as equivalent, calling them both intentional discrimination.

[00:24:23]And this really prompted outrage from inside the chamber. So, Justice Kagan chose to read her descent from the bench. It's a very unusual step.

[00:24:32]Insiders in the courtroom said that she struck a defiant tone and was clearly upset when she was reading this. And she was especially agrieved when she read the parts where she disagreed with the majority's claim that they were quote unquote preserving the central tenants of the VRA. Is this a preservation of the Voting Rights Act or has the court effectively overruled Voting Rights Act, decades of precedent, and basically hobbled the statute?

[00:25:00]>> I think they've effectively nullified it. Um, Justice Alto's majority opinion made it all but impossible to establish a violation of the Voting Rights Act, saying that in order for plaintiffs to succeed on a section 2 claim to establish illegal racial discrimination in redistricting, they have to show that you can create an additional majority minority district, including a majority black district. That would result in the same partisan breakdown as the state's chosen partisan breakdown, i.e. that the majority black district would have to vote Republican. Um this is of course describing a null set. So by making it impossible to establish a violation of the Voting Rights Act, he's all but nullified the law. You know, Justice Kagan obviously read her descent with passion in the oral argument later that morning. She said, "I'm losing my voice.

[00:25:48]I lost my voice." Indicating maybe how emphatic she was.

[00:25:52]>> All right, Rev. This ruling, um, many commentators have noted will likely create new GOP districts across the South. Um, the New York Times mapped this out, what this region might look like. Um, here's what the map currently looks like with Democrats holding around 24 seats. And here is the plausible redistricting scenario without the input of section two of the Voting Rights Act.

[00:26:18]It shows Republicans gaining 12 more seats. Can we expect other states to begin pushing to take advantage of this ruling ahead of the midterms? Florida has already passed a law through its legislature to redistrict their seats going forward. They've already >> I I think you absolutely can look for other states to try to take advantage of it. I think that this is something that was projected when many of us were saying that don't ignore project 2025.

[00:26:46]They're doing exactly what they said they were going to do. And those of us in the civil rights community that was warning of this, we were alarmists.

[00:26:55]Well, we're here now. Yeah. And we're now going to have to deal with the fact, and let's remember that blacks and whites went to the south and fought to get the voting rights act. Goodman Cheney and Swern, two Jews and a black were killed for fighting for the voting rights act. Uh so was Viola Louisa. So this was not just blacks saying this.

[00:27:15]These were blacks and whites saying, "Let's uphold democracy." And here we are getting ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country. And going in, we're reminding blacks, oh, you can't bring up race. You're not equal.

[00:27:29]In fact, you weren't even independent in 1776.

[00:27:33]>> All right. There's so much more to say.

[00:27:34]In fact, I'm going to make you all stick around. Leah and the Rev are going to be with us for another block. We have so much more to discuss after this quick break about this landmark ruling in the Voting Rights Act case. Leah, I want to come back to something that you said about Justice Alto's majority opinion. Um, as you mentioned, he seemed especially concerned about the question of polarized voting and partisanship in these redistricting cases. And he seemed to be saying that while partisanship is fine, it's fine to draw districts according to partisanship, it's not okay to rely on race. What's the relationship between race and partisan affiliation, though, in many of these areas in the South? race and party are very closely correlated. There's racially polarized voting. You know, by some estimates, you know, 70 to 80% of um minority voters might be registered Democrats. And so, the correlation between them makes it virtually impossible to disentangle them.

[00:28:33]>> And and he seemed to be saying that when these claims are presented as racial gerrymanders, in fact, they're just permissible partisan gerrymanders. Can they be both?

[00:28:42]Um, they can be both and it can still be a racial gerrymander even where a state says it is advancing partisan aims because they are still suppressing and diluting the voting power of racial minorities. But essentially, Justice Alo gave them a green light to engage in partisan gerrymandering and in so doing dilute and suppress black voting power.

[00:29:02]Um, another member of the conservative block, Justice Thomas, said that he would have gone further and would say that the Voting Rights Act doesn't even apply in circumstances right relating to districtricting at all. What do you make of that? Is that an invitation for new litigation to further hobble the Voting Rights Act?

[00:29:20]>> Well, he said he would have gone further. He also indicated he was basically fine with the majority opinion, which would do well enough since it would basically bring the redistricting litigation to a close. So, while Justice Alto's majority opinion protested that they weren't ending the Voting Rights Act, Justice Thomas has always kind of let the cat out of the bag and said, "No, no, no, no. We're basically ending any districtricting challenges under the Voting Rights Act."

[00:29:42]And that's a good thing, >> right, Reverend Sharpton? Um, let's get down to brass tax. The South has one of the largest shares of black eligible voter. DC actually has the largest share and they can't vote in they're not represented in Congress at all um other than by a non- voting delegate. But the South has a huge share of black voters and now it stands that their representation in that region is going to be severely impaired going further.

[00:30:12]What do you make of this? Um what are the prospects going forward? What can we do in this situation? Um has the Congressional Black Caucus indicated that they have plans? on is there legislation that they are thinking about challenges that they're bringing? What's the next step here?

[00:30:26]>> We've been on the phone all day back and forth, members of the caucus, members of the civil rights national organizations.

[00:30:33]And I think that one uh clearly we have to get people out in huge numbers to vote so that if you put in a different Congress with a different speaker, >> you can then talk about legislation which will then have to be challenged by them in the courts.

[00:30:51]>> Can I ask something about the So the numbers have to be huge because the distortion in the electoral landscape from gerrymandering and suppressive voter laws is already so vast and profound. You have to have a ton of new voters.

[00:31:04]>> You have to have a huge turnout. And they have to understand what's at stake here is our right to vote. It's not about which person you think has the most charisma or the whatever that this is about our right. And we must really get that huge turnout and then have that new Congress, that new senate, that new city council all the way down, >> push for new laws knowing they'll be challenged, but having it go back up the uh uh through the system to give us time to really not lose a lot of representation cuz we're really talking about losing representation for blacks in America systemically because the only way we did get the representation at the level we did was we changed the system.

[00:31:49]So as discouraging and as is as as this is, how did we get it in the first place is how we going to have to do it again.

[00:31:56]>> All right, the only way forward is through. Reverend Al Sharpton and Leah Litman, thanks so much for joining me.

[00:32:03]Still ahead, why even conservative