A note before we begin
This week we are doing something a little different. We are going to take a piece of television journalism and read it — actually read it, on the page, the way we would read any other text — and look closely at how it makes its case. Then, once we have done that work, we are going to watch it.
Careful reading is essential for various parts of GED preparation and earning the equivalency diploma. It is also what real life asks of you. Most of us first meet the questions that shape our lives in the news, in conversations about the news, in arguments about what is happening and what to do about it. The skill of seeing what is being said, how it is being said, what is evidence and what is interpretation, what is supported and what is asserted — that skill is one of the most useful things you can take from this class. It is yours for life.
The piece is from The Rachel Maddow Show on MS NOW, broadcast May 4, 2026. Maddow is a journalist who has been on television for many years. In this hour she makes a serious argument about what she sees the current administration in Washington doing — she notes its array of failures; she notes how it bizarrely undermines itself; and she calls out vividly what she sees the Trump administration deliberately and relentlessly doing to Black Americans in this country. She deems that last thesis: the war on black America. You may agree with parts of her argument. You may disagree with parts of it. You may have questions about parts of it. All of those are real responses. The lesson is not for anyone — not me, not Maddow — to tell you what to think. The lesson is to give you sharper tools for reading, so you can think more clearly for yourself.
Some of this material is heavy. Some of it touches on conditions that affect you and people you know directly. Bring your full self to it. If something in the reading sits hard with you, that is a real response, and we can stay with it.
Four words to keep close
Before we read, four words to keep close.
A claim is a statement someone is making — what they want you to accept as true. The administration is failing at most of what it tries to do is a claim. Claims can be small (it rained yesterday) or large (the country is in crisis). What matters is that a claim is something asserted, something the writer wants you to accept.
Evidence is what someone offers to support a claim. A poll number. A court ruling. A specific event. A quotation from a document. Evidence can be strong or weak; relevant or off-point; complete or partial.
An inference is a conclusion drawn from evidence. Trump pulled troops out of Germany right after a phone call with Putin is evidence — something that happened. Trump pulled troops out of Germany because of the phone call with Putin is an inference — a conclusion drawn from what happened. The first is the record. The second is what the writer concludes from the record. Inferences can be reasonable or unreasonable; well-supported or stretched.
Framing is how a writer or speaker shapes the way you see what they are describing. Calling something a war frames it differently from calling it a policy. Calling someone a fighter frames them differently from calling them a troublemaker, even if the same actions are being described. Framing is not always wrong — sometimes it is the most accurate description available. But framing always carries weight, and recognizing it is part of careful reading.
We are going to use these four words throughout the lesson. You will get good with them.
Excerpt 1 — Germany, Iran, Putin
Our first excerpt is about a single decision the President made: to withdraw 5,000 American troops from Germany. The decision was announced while a war the United States is fighting in the Middle East is intensifying. Maddow is asking why this decision was made. As you read, watch how she builds her case.
As the war in Iran seems to have become a hot war again today, with U.S. and Iranian ships firing at each other in the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump has decided at the same time that he’s going to pull 5,000 U.S. troops out of Germany. Now, wait, why does that matter for the Iran war? Germany isn’t Iran. Well, when Trump started the war in Iran without hardening or protecting any of our gazillion military bases and installations all over the Middle East, which were now in the range of fire for Iranian missiles and drones — where do you think they sent the U.S. troops who had to be evacuated really quickly off of all of those undefended bases all over the Middle East? Where’d they send them? They sent them to Germany. Because we have a really big troop presence in Germany and lots of facilities for our troops in Germany.
There have been hundreds of US troops wounded in Trump’s Iran war so far. Where do US troops get evacuated to when they’re wounded in the Middle East? They get evacuated to Germany because we have such a big troop presence there and lots of military facilities there to handle those things. Trump is now sending 5,000 American troops home from that crucial position.
Trump is simultaneously re-upping the war in the Middle East and also shrinking our ability to support that war from the place where we support a war like that, which is Germany. Why did he decide to do this now? Where did he get this idea? Well, little clue in the fact that he’s done this exact same thing before. In his first term in 2020, you might remember, it went down kind of exactly the same way. In 2020, Trump announced that he was going to take thousands of US troops out of Germany.
And the Pentagon was totally blindsided. Nobody could figure out why he announced it. Turns out he had just talked to Vladimir Putin right before making that announcement about pulling U.S. troops out of Germany. Of course, Putin, more than anything, wants U.S. troops out of all of Europe. So he was delighted. That was in June 2020. Then the following month, July 2020, Trump talked to Putin again. And right after talking to Putin again, Trump reiterated more forcefully this time, I really mean it. I want those thousands of US troops taken out of Germany. The only reason it ultimately didn’t happen back then is because that was already late in the year in 2020. And then Trump lost the presidential election and President Joe Biden countermanded Trump’s order. But now Trump’s back in the White House. And so here we are again, and it’s gone down exactly the same way. President publicly announced that he wants thousands of US troops pulled out of Germany. The Pentagon, once again, totally blindsided. Nobody knows why he has done this. Then it turns out, it emerges that he made this announcement about pulling US troops out of Germany right after he got off the phone with Vladimir Putin.
Pulling U.S. troops out of Germany is something that Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin really, really want. Something that would be terrible for the United States, but really good for Vladimir Putin. And somehow magically, every time Trump talks to Vladimir Putin, he emerges from that phone call with this same idea over and over again to give the Kremlin what it wants, even though it is terrible for the United States and particularly terrible for the United States military right now while they’re fighting a war in the Middle East that Trump started.
Reading the first excerpt closely
1. What is Maddow’s main claim in this passage? Try to put it in one sentence in your own words.
2. Make a list of the evidence she offers. Try to keep each piece short — for example, Trump pulled 5,000 troops from Germany right after a phone call with Putin. How many distinct pieces of evidence can you find? Five? Six? More?
3. Now look at the inference she is making. Notice that Maddow does not directly say Trump is doing what Putin tells him to do. What she says is that every time Trump talks to Vladimir Putin, he emerges from that phone call with this same idea. What is the difference between those two statements? Why might a careful journalist phrase it the second way?
4. Do you find the inference convincing? Take a position. Yes, the pattern is too consistent to be coincidence. Or No, two phone calls and two announcements are not enough to draw the conclusion. Or something between. There is no right answer here. What matters is that you can defend your position with reasons.
5. What additional information would strengthen Maddow’s case? What would weaken it?
6. Put the journalism aside for a moment. What does this story make you think about — not what should you think, but what do you actually think, sitting with what she has described?
Excerpt 2 — The pivot, and what comes after it
Our second excerpt is the heart of the show. Maddow has spent the first part of the hour making one argument: that the administration is failing at most of what it sets out to do. Failing in the courts. Failing in public opinion. Failing in basic things like tornado warnings and crop estimates and supporting troops in the field. They’re not good at this, she says again and again.
And then, in this passage, she turns. As you read, watch for the moment of the turn — and watch what argument she is making after she turns.
This administration, I think it’s clear from just the repeated daily news cycle, is bad at everything they set their mind to. They’re terrible in the courts, to the point where their performance in court jeopardizes the law licenses of everybody who speaks for them. They’re terrible in the court of public opinion, which you can see in the polls. They’re terrible at all the technocratic, practical stuff the government is supposed to do, including basic stuff like the weather. They’re terrible at war, terrible at diplomacy. They’re even terrible at hiding the ball in terms of how much this president does whatever Vladimir Putin wants, even when it makes no sense for us. They’re just not great. They’re bad at basically everything they try to do. But on the issue of race, on the treatment of African Americans, specifically — even being terrible at what they’re doing has still proven to be disastrous for our country.
We are now about 16 months into what has been from day one a concerted and intense targeting of black Americans, specifically by this president and by this administration. On his first full day in office, he proclaims war on diversity efforts, not only in government, but in any institution in the country over which he can exert leverage — everything from schools and universities to law firms to private businesses of every stripe.
He then immediately started firing some of the highest profile black public officials in the whole U.S. government, seemingly regardless of any other thing about them. Right away, we get the firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles C.Q. Brown. We get the firing of the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden. And then it’s Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board. And then it’s Robert Primus, the chair of the Surface Transportation Board. And then it’s Alvin Brown from the NTSB. And then it’s Peggy Carr, the head of the National Center for Education Statistics. And then it’s Willie Phillips from FERC, from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. And then it’s Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. And on and on and on.
When Trump and his top political donor, Elon Musk, then started just lopping off huge swaths of the federal government, the largest and most egregious cuts targeted federal agencies that employed a disproportionate number of black employees. Reporter Erica Green wrote about this for The New York Times, noting that nothing had moved backwards in the federal government for black Americans this quickly or this far in over 100 years — since Woodrow Wilson came in in 1912 and re-segregated the federal workforce. Black employees were fired or demoted to lower-level jobs, relegated to separate and inferior lunchrooms and other facilities, and accused of making white women feel unsafe. Those who remained were humiliated. A black worker in the postal service was surrounded by screens, so white workers would not have to look at him. Another employee had a cage built around him to separate him from his white counterparts. A clerk in the Treasury Secretary’s office was assigned to rewrite all correspondence to address black employees by their first names. The way Trump addressed the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, by her first name when he crowed publicly about firing her for no reason.
In the year of our Lord, 2025, and now 2026, this president and this administration is not just inheriting that history from the Wilson administration. It is furthering it in its own ways.
Since 1965, there has been an executive order in effect. It was signed by Lyndon Johnson, 1965. Since 1965, all federal contractors have been banned by executive order from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin. Donald Trump rescinded that 1965 rule on his first full day in office.
Less than a month later, Trump announced another rule change. They rescinded Clause 52.222-21 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which doesn’t sound like much, but I’ll tell you what the title of that is. It’s Prohibition of Segregated Facilities. That’s what Trump rescinded less than one month into being back in the White House.
The section reads, the contractor agrees that it does not and will not maintain or provide for its employees any segregated facilities at any of its establishments and that it does not and will not permit its employees to perform their services at any location under its control where segregated facilities are maintained. That anti-segregation clause has been in government contracts for decades. Donald Trump overtly reached out to rescind it. Which means bluntly that the federal government no longer explicitly prohibits contractors from having segregated restaurants, waiting rooms, and drinking fountains.
In Trump’s first year back in office, black unemployment spiked in this country from 6.2% all the way up to 7.5%, making it the highest of all racial groups. Under Joe Biden, black unemployment had been at a record low of 4.8%, spiking now under Donald Trump.
The Trump administration, generally speaking, is bad at its work. It is bad at what it sets its mind to in all sorts of ways. But black Americans have been targeted by this administration in a concerted way that has nevertheless been devastating, even though the Trump administration isn’t good at anything they set their mind to.
And that was all before the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, including all of Trump’s appointees, voted to effectively end the Voting Rights Act a few days ago. As soon as the court said they would take up that case, people started mapping the worst case scenario for what Trump and the Republicans would do, particularly in the South, if the court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement.
In her dissent from the majority ruling, Justice Elena Kagan said it will likely cause the largest reduction to minority representation since the end of Reconstruction. She probably didn’t need to use the word likely there. The war on black Americans that is being waged by this president and this Republican Party is one of the only things they have put their mind to in this past year that they’ve actually done pretty well at.
Reading the second excerpt closely
1. Find the moment in the passage where Maddow turns. Up to that point, she has been making one argument; from that point forward, she makes a different one. What is the sentence that turns? Mark it.
2. Why is the turn placed there? What does the first argument set up that the second argument needs?
3. The second argument is built by accumulation — Maddow lists, one after another, examples meant to support a single claim. Make a list of the items in her list. How many distinct things does she name? Try to put each one in a sentence of your own.
4. The Wilson comparison. Maddow goes back to 1912 — to Woodrow Wilson re-segregating the federal workforce — and quotes specific details: the screens, the cage, the rewriting of correspondence to address black employees by their first names. She then connects that final detail to Trump addressing Carla Hayden by her first name. What kind of argument is Maddow making with this comparison? What does the historical parallel illuminate? Is the parallel exact? Where does it hold and where might it strain?
5. The harder reading. Some of what is in this passage is the record — things that happened, that can be looked up and verified. The firings happened. Executive Order 11246 was rescinded. Federal Acquisition Regulation 52.222-21 was rescinded. The unemployment figures are public. The Voting Rights Act ruling occurred. Other parts of the passage are the framing — Maddow’s choice of words, her interpretive lens, how she names what is happening. War on black Americans is a frame. Concerted and intense targeting is a frame. One of the only things they have put their mind to is a frame. Make two columns if it helps. What is record? What is framing? Which parts of the passage are which?
6. Now the question that matters. Given the record as it stands, do you find Maddow’s framing fair? You might find that the framing matches the record. You might find that the framing goes farther than the record supports. You might find the framing too gentle for what the record contains. There is no right answer in this room. What is required is that you can show your reasoning.
7. Take time with this if you need to. What does the passage make you think about? What does it make you feel? What does it bring up from your own life or from the lives of people close to you?
Excerpt 3 — A response from Boston
Our third excerpt is shorter, and we read it for a reason. The first two excerpts describe conditions. The third excerpt describes a response — what specific people are doing about those conditions. Maddow’s show on May 4 also covered this, in the second half of the hour. One example came from Boston.
Members of an interfaith group — ministers, pastors, rabbis — gathered at a Citizens Bank branch in Boston today to follow through on a pledge. They withdrew $1 million from the bank. The interfaith group has something like $14 million in the bank altogether. They say they’re going to keep pulling it out a million at a time as long as Citizens Bank doesn’t change its ways. They even brought a giant $1 million withdrawal slip with them for today’s announcement.
[The Reverend John Edgerton, senior minister of Old South Church in Boston, on the program:]
We pulled a million dollars out today. We transferred it to another bank because we want Citizens to stop doing this dirty business. Citizens is one of the only banks in the country that banks with and provides financing for CoreCivic and GeoGroup, two of the most notorious private prison companies in this country. This year, Emmanuel Damas, who is a neighbor, a Boston resident, a 56-year-old man, he died in CoreCivic. He had a toothache. He complained about it. They didn’t give him proper care. His toothache became an infection. His infection became sepsis and he died. And these are the practices that CoreCivic is notorious for and GeoGroup is notorious for. And they will not be abusing our neighbors, not with our money.
We feel deeply betrayed by what Citizens Bank is doing. Twenty years ago we helped them to build relationships in the immigrant community so that they could expand their business, and since then they have turned into an institution we don’t recognize anymore. Rather than partnering with and building up all of our neighbors in Boston, instead they are making money tearing families apart, and it is unconscionable.
[Edgerton, when asked whether other faith groups would join:]
Today a sister organization, Greater Cleveland Congregations, would pledge their deposits toward this as well. So we are now well over $14 and a half million of deposits that are ours. And we want for them to do what is right. Their core customer base is in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, across New England. They are fast becoming the ICE bank. And if they think being the ICE bank is going to play well with their core base here in New England, they need better advice.
Reading the third excerpt closely
1. What are the clergy doing? In one sentence.
2. Why this particular bank? What is its connection to what they are protesting?
3. Edgerton tells the story of Emmanuel Damas — his toothache, his infection, his death. Why does he include this story? What does naming a single person do that a number cannot do?
4. The clergy say they pulled out $1 million today and have $14 million more they may pull. They are using money to make a moral argument. Have you seen this kind of action before? Where? When? Did it work?
5. What is one thing — large or small — that people you know are doing in response to the conditions described in this lesson? What might be possible from where you sit?
Where this leaves us
This lesson, we read three excerpts from one hour of television. We learned to ask: What is being claimed? What is offered as evidence? What is inference, and is the inference convincing? What is record and what is framing? We practiced taking a position and defending it. We made room for our own responses to material that affects our lives.
You will read more arguments, and watch more arguments, and listen to more arguments — in newspapers, on social media, in court rulings, in the voices of people you trust and people you don’t. The skill is the same. The skill is yours.
Writing — for whenever you are ready
Pick one of the three excerpts. In one to two pages, do the following:
1. State the writer’s main claim in your own words.
2. Identify two pieces of evidence the writer offers. For each, say whether you find it strong, weak, or somewhere in between, and why.
3. Identify one inference the writer is making. Say whether you find it convincing, and why.
4. State your own position on the writer’s overall argument. Defend your position with at least one reason that is not also one of the writer’s reasons.
This is not a test, and there is no single right answer. What is asked is that you can show your thinking. Bring it to class when you are ready, or hold onto it for yourself. The point is the practice.
Now watch it
If you have worked through the excerpts and the questions, you have already done the harder part — the close reading, the sorting of claim from evidence from inference, the weighing of framing against record. That work is yours now, and it does not come undone.
So here is the part we saved for last. Watch the show — the whole hour, or the passages that drew you in on the page, whatever your time allows. You have read Maddow’s words; now you can hear how she says them. Notice what the framing sounds like in a human voice, what the accumulation feels like at the pace she sets, where the turn lands when you are not the one choosing when to read the next line. You may find that the reading sharpened the watching. You may find that the watching complicates the reading. Both are worth something.
You already have the tools. Now you are just using them in a different room.
The Rachel Maddow Show, MS NOW — broadcast May 4, 2026. If the player does not load, watch it here: youtu.be/uCE7WBlCSLE