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MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow unloaded on the stunning number of legal challenges President Donald Trump is embroiled in as his MAGA administration continues to upend the federal government through massive cuts to federal programs and firings of government workers.

But there was one issue that has drawn legal scrutiny the primetime host zeroed in on that she told viewers on Friday “is just lighting up the country right now.”

President Donald Trump's major economic cabinet officials, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, were only able to persuade him to temporarily reduce the burden of his "Liberation Day" tariffs because they spoke to him while his most fanatical trade adviser was out of the room, reported the Wall Street Journal on Friday evening.

Peter Navarro allegedly was the individual with the idea in the first place to urge that Trump set tariffs based on the size of the U.S. trade deficit, or balance between imports and exports, with each country — an idea not endorsed by mainstream economists, who don't generally view trade deficits as a universally bad thing.

Allies and advisers of President Donald Trump melted down late Friday after a federal court ruled his administration must allow six transgender people to have their preferred gender reflected on their passports.

The Trump administration is not allowed to enforce its policy requiring six passport-holders' sex to align with what's listed on their birth certificate, Judge Julia E. Kobick said in a memorandum and order obtained by Bloomberg. The judge partially allowed the plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary block, finding they were likely to succeed in their lawsuit.

President Donald Trump is setting the country on a dangerous track in his repeated refusals to admit that the Maryland man his administration mistakenly sent to El Salvador is owed due process in the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board.

The board on Friday went after Trump, who they bluntly told readers could benefit from the “sage advice” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson delivered in a judicial opinion the Journal’s editors called “pointed and eloquent.”

An exodus of top staffers reporting directly to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is apparently roiling the Pentagon as part of a growing investigation into potential leaks.

Politico reported Friday that three senior Pentagon officials have now been fired as part of the leak investigation: Hegseth senior advisor Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll — who was Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg's chief of staff — have all been officially terminated. And Joe Kasper, who was Hegseth's own chief of staff, is now leaving the Pentagon for a separate job in the Pentagon.

Faith leaders are imploring President Donald Trump to reconsider as his administration moves to order the "self-deportation" of Afghan Christians who fled to the United States to escape the Taliban, Fox News reported on Friday evening — particularly because the order came down right around Easter, one of the most holy holidays of the Christian faith.

Already, the president has overseen mass deportations that caught up some asylum seekers from Afghanistan who would face imprisonment or death by the extremists running the theocratic Taliban regime. This new move places many thousands more in jeopardy.

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board bonked the Trump administration Friday evening over its latest move to "whack Americans."

The Trump administration on Thursday announced new fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-owned ships docking at U.S. ports. The fees are part of a broader effort to weaken China's dominance in shipbuilding and maritime transport, after U.S. trade officials concluded that China’s shipbuilding sector benefited from unfair competitive advantages.

A political reporter for HuffPost on Friday called out a Department of Housing and Urban Development spokesperson for the eyebrow-raising language they used in a statement provided to the publication.

HuffPost journalist Jennifer Bendery sought comment from the agency after she reported that HUD Secretary Scott Turner allowed employees to leave work early on Friday in honor of Easter and Passover in what the publication dubbed “a brazenly religious message.”

Tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency task force is now jumping into the fight to help with President Donald Trump's mass deportation project, Wired reported on Friday.

"DOGE is knitting together immigration databases from across DHS and uploading data from outside agencies including the Social Security Administration, as well as voting records, sources say. This, experts tell WIRED, could create a system that could later be searched to identify and surveil immigrants," reported Makena Kelly and Vittoria Elliott. "The scale at which DOGE is seeking to interconnect data, including sensitive biometric data, has never been done before, raising alarms with experts who fear it may lead to disastrous privacy violations for citizens, certified foreign workers, and undocumented immigrants."

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected a request from migrants in Texas to pause what they believe are imminent deportation flights, saying he doesn't have the authority to step in under a recent Supreme Court ruling.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg called an emergency hearing on Friday evening in response to reports that the Trump administration was plotting imminent deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, even as ongoing legal challenges and previous court orders prevent such removals.

Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg escalated the firestorm he created this week when he announced a new multimillion-dollar campaign targeting incumbents in his party – an effort he made clear that he isn’t backing down from.

Hogg on Friday jabbed critics inside his party who have slammed his new campaign, including longtime Democratic strategist James Carville, who called it “the most insane thing I ever heard.”

Doctors, policy analysts and members of the media reacted badly to President Donald Trump's administration replacing the pivotal Covid.gov government website with what critics described as an ill-conceived movie poster.

“The United States has, it seems, lost the plot,” wrote Loughborough University professor Duncan Robertson.

The Department of Justice is filing to intervene on behalf of President Donald Trump in his appeal of the $83 million civil defamation judgment against him won by writer E. Jean Carroll, The Daily Beast reported on Friday.

"In a joint motion filed last week with Trump’s legal team, the Justice Department said the federal Westfall Act, which provides immunity to government employees for actions taken within the scope of their duties, should apply to Trump," reported Erkki Forster. "The department argued that the U.S. government should therefore be substituted as the defendant in the case, CBS News reported."