Democrat projected to flip Mar-a-Lago district

Instagram teen accounts default teens into automatic protections for who can contact them and the content they can see. Explore teen accounts and all of our ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing. You're managing all the things. So why waste time sending important documents the old-fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want, with Stamps.com. Print postage on-demand 24-7 and schedule pickups from your office or home. Save up to 90% with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust Stamps.com. Go to Stamps.com and use code podcast to try Stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. Tonight on All-Land. I don't like to say this. We've won this. This war has been won. The president keeps declaring victory and keeps sending more troops. We got two marine expeditionary units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima. We can do this. Tonight, climbing the escalation ladder in Iran with Senator Richard Blumenthal. Then. Get ice out of my airports and fund TSA. Senator Cory Booker on Trump's DHS shutdown and whether the president is about to blink. And from stocks to oil to prediction markets, the new push to curb corruption and insider trading on Trump's war. Hundreds of millions of dollars were potentially made in those moments in this curious trade that seemed to come out of nowhere. But all in starts right now. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. We have some big breaking news out of Florida tonight, specifically the state house district that contains Marlago in Palm Beach, Florida. where a special election was held in the district that Donald Trump lives in. It's a district that Donald Trump votes in. In fact, he voted via mail in this, despite how much he says he hates voting by mail. It's a district that Donald Trump carried in 2024 by 11 points. And it is a district, as we just got word from the AP moments ago, that will now be represented by the woman you see on your screen. Emily Gregory, the Democrat, who has upset John Maples, the Republican running in that open seat. He received the president's, quote, complete and total endorsement. Trump also encouraged all, quote, great patriots in the district to vote for Maples. Well. That didn't work so well. It seems like perhaps not as many turned out as Trump would have hoped in a district. Again, he carried by double digits last November. Right now we're looking at what looks like somewhere a 12, 13, 14 point swing towards Democrats since 2024. Again, in the district that contains Marlago, where Donald Trump sent his mail-in ballot that he's been railing against for years and will now be represented by a Democrat in his backyard.

A stunning rebuke for a presidency that really has been kind of a tailspin, as Donald Trump's war on Iran has now entered its 25th day. Gas prices are up by a dollar a gallon in much of the country. Stocks continue to fall on fears of global supply shortages. 13 American service members have lost their lives. 3,200 Iranians, over 1,000 in Lebanon with a million displaced. More than 150 people have died in the surrounding Gulf states, 18 Israelis as well. That's not accounting for the millions who are displaced, the thousands injured, including hundreds of our own U.S. service members. But according to the president, who launched the war, who just saw his hand-picked, endorsed Republican candidate in his own backyard lose. According to him, it's all over except for the bombing, which is going great. And the peace talks, which are also going great, don't believe anything else you may have heard. We've won this war has been won. The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news. We're in negotiations right now. They're doing it along with Marco, J.D. We have a number of people doing it. We have really regime change. We are at, as they would say, a war. They call it a war. I call it a military operation. A very successful one. Successful like nobody's ever seen before. I don't want to say in advance, but they've agreed they will never have a nuclear weapon. They gave us a present. And the president arrived today. It was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. And I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize. Oh, they gave you a prize today? Did you get a prize today? It's all over? I have expected him to start riffing about how the way to bring the war to conclusion was to put some UV light inside the body. Because that was Trump today, just all over the place, talking about the epic victories and the peace negotiations and the personal gifts and about how they've already agreed to all sorts of stuff already. When have they agreed to it? All completely countered to his posture over the weekend, of course, when he threatened to obliterate Iranian civilian power plants, essentially teasing a war crime, if Iran did not stop blocking oil tankers in the straits of Hormuz, something Iran was not doing before Trump attacked them. But now he has supposedly pressed pause on that bombing plan for five days because he said, The negotiations are going so well. In fact, they've already agreed to things. Did you hear that? Now, when he first said that, just before the close of business yesterday, it sent oil prices down by 10% and it boosted stocks. But those markets reversed themselves today after the Iranians said they have not engaged in any serious high-level negotiations with the Americans. They claimed Trump was making things up to help oil prices. Israelis said the same thing.

That's not to say you should take the Iranians' word for it or the Israelis, but neither should you take the White House's word, particularly when it's coming out of the mouth of the President of the United States. It is becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump expected a fast and easy win, another Venezuela, and he had no plan B, and now he is flailing to find some kind of fallback position. Just yesterday, the administration was leaking to Politico that they had their eyes on a future U.S. back leader of Iran, the Speaker of the Parliament in Tehran. In fact, one unnamed U.S. source who seems to really want a deal said, quote, he's a hot option. He's one of the highest, but we've got to test them and we can't rush into it. Let you guess who the unnamed sources who said it was a hot option. Today, that hot option, the Iranian parliament speaker, trolled Trump for what he called a jawboating campaign to stabilize oil prices, adding, quote, let's see if they could turn that into actual fuel at the pump or maybe even print gas molecules. Call it the fog of Trumpian war. A million contradictory messages flying around, constantly wildly pinging bits of news that don't make any sense together. You got reports now that Trump's negotiators, including potentially billionaire envoy Steve Witkoff, Vice President JD Vance, are going to travel to Pakistan for informal talks with Iranian official. At the same time, unnamed U.S. officials tell the New York Times that Saudi Crown's Prince is pushing Trump to continue the war until Iran's government collapses something the Saudis. publicly and strenuously deny. In fact, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Saudi officials are actually holding talks in Riyadh with their Arab counterparts to find a diplomatic off-ramp from the war. And this evening, U.S. officials say the Pentagon's poised to deploy 3,000 troops of the 82nd Airborne Division in the Middle East. That is in addition to those two marine expeditionary units on their way to the region, previously reported, and 50,000 U.S. troops already stationed there. And Iranian-backed militias in Iraq tonight are claiming the U.S. strikes. They're killed 30 of their members in Iraq. But the peace talks are going great, right? They've already agreed to stuff. Now, of course, all eyes everywhere are continue to be on the Strait of Hormuz, when Iran responded to the U.S. attack by striking oil tankers and shutting down 20% of the world's supply of oil and liquefied natural gas, not to mention fertilizer and petrochemicals needed for everything, including helium that are used in MRIs. So now, this is what's happened. The Iranians are essentially running a toll operation in the street, which means countries like China and Japan and India are negotiating bilateral one-off deals with Iran to get their oil out, which is to say Iran is shipping more oil and making more money than they were under the U.S. sanctions in place before Trump attacked them. Trump sees this happening, so now he is trying to... share control of the street with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thank you. What about the street of war moves? Who's going to be in control of that? That'll be opened very soon if this works. How soon? And who's in control of it? Will Iran still be able to control the flow of oil? Be jointly controlled. By whom? Maybe me. Maybe me. Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the next Ayatollah. Look.

and there'll also be a form of a very serious form of a regime change. Me and the Ayatollah. Maybe we'll do it. We might do it by tax or signal. I might call them up. You know, should we let this, should this boat go through Ayatola? He tells me, and we go back and forth, and we decide, me and the Ayatollah. Peace is at hand. As soon as my negotiations are done, and also regime change, and well, they really thought this would be quick and easy, right? And why not? It worked before in Latin America, right? Everything we're doing, we're making great. The border is great. The military is great. We're having, by the way, a tremendous success, as you know, in Iran. We had one in Venezuela, and now we're having one in Iran. There it is. There it is. That's the tell, right? That's why we got here. Let's be clear about what happened. That's why we are here. That Operation Venezuela, which, again, was a remarkable operation on tactical grounds by the U.S. military. They thought it was going to be another Venezuela. They told themselves that. And I think they were egged on to believe it by the staunchest advocates of the war like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Yanjahou and Senator Lindsey Graham. But in Iran, a decapitation strike did not lead to mass uprisings. It did not lead to regime change. It led to the situation in which Iran's regime is intact, even if militarily degraded, although also viewing an existential threat and now have actual explicit functional and physical control of the Strait of Hormuz, something that was always a possibility in war planning, but never the reality it is now. Also, an enormous point of leverage. The U.S. can't quite figure out. It looks like Trump in the U.S. is backed into a kind of corner, even though there's no question of the military superiority. And so it can kind of sue for peace because of the oil tanker situation. But again, from a position of lower leverage, right? Try to find a deal knowing that you've kind of given away some of the leverage. Or, what's the other option? Escalate the war. So that's the way, I think, to reconcile all the contradictory developments here. Here's where we are. Donald Trump is issuing an ultimatium. He had to walk back from himself because he said there were deep peace negotiations, which then later proved to be completely fabricated. As more U.S. troops are set to be deployed for possible ground invasion in the Middle East. And Lindsey Graham invoking Iwo Jima. Despite reports tonight, the U.S. has supposedly sent a 15-point plan to Iran through Pakistan and the war. Who knows? But here's what it looks like to me when you take it all together. It looks as if Trump is trying to waive the peace card in order to keep a lid on oil futures and financial markets, two things he cares a lot about and is worried about, and two things that will exert tremendous pressure on him domestically. He wants to keep those at bay long enough to have ground troops get into position. from elements like the 82nd Airborne who could deploy anywhere in the world in 18 hours to the Marines who take longer. All in time for, say, the markets to close for the weekend on Friday when Trump's pause on bombing Iranian power plants is set to expire. That could be the plan that Trump now settles on four weeks into a deadly war where there was obviously, very clearly, never any real plan at all.

Senator Richard Blumenthal is a Democratic Connecticut. He serves on the Armed Services Committee, and he joins me now. I want to ask you about the ground troops element of this. I remember you, I think it was a few weeks ago coming out of a classified briefing, if I'm not mistaken, your role on the Armed Services Committee, saying you were worried about that. Well, here's the headlines we have. We have 3,000 soldiers may mobilize, plus 5,000 Marines who are already underway on ships. Is that the way you see this going right now? Unfortunately, Chris, my deep fear is becoming a reality, and we seem to be on a path toward putting American sons and daughters in deeply harm's way. And remember about Iwo Jima, it was one of the costliest battles in United States history to invoke that specter. should make every American frightened, deeply fearful about the path we're on, which is not a war of choice, it's a war of whimsy and whim, impulse, and delusion. In fact, self-delusion, because it lacks any clear plan or purpose, objectives, or strategy, and therefore there's no exit. endgame strategy now, other than perhaps putting troops on the ground to secure supposedly the Strait of Hormuz, which would be not just risky, it would be costly. And the Strait of Hormuz controlled by Iran was not a possibility. It was a predictable reality. And Donald Trump seems to have operated without that reality in mind. Yeah, on that, I think that people have talked so much about the Strait of Ramos, how important it is, how geopolitically crucial it is, for all the reasons we've discussed. But it was not the case that before the beginning of this... war that Iran was mining ships, stopping traffic, or essentially effectively controlling the flow via this new tolling system. We've got this reporting now. They're paying as much as $2 million per voyage that are being sought on an ad hoc basis, effectively creating an informal toll on the waterway, according to people familiar with the matter. We also know that Iranian oil shipments have been flowing just fine, and in fact, exports have increased. There are some who say that this now state of affairs actually makes the U.S. negotiating position in a deal less favorable than it was before the start of hostilities. Do you think that's true? I think it is likely that we're in a less strong position now with Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz able to stop traffic with small, fast attack boats or mines. Not even the Iranians probably know where all the mines are right now, but the contradictions here are so abounding. We are bolstering the Iranian regime by lifting sanctions on their oil sales, putting billions of dollars into their coffers and at the same time benefiting the world market very little. The same with Russian sanctions, we're lifting those sanctions. And so...

Donald Trump can't bomb his way into opening the strait of Hormuz, nor can he bomb his way into... securing the enriched uranium or changing the regime or stopping the terrorist proxy. Bombing won't engage peace. And that's why I am so deeply fearful. We're on a path to engaging American sons and daughters with vast costs and consequences long term. And indeed the... simple Iranian control over the straits of poor moves and the destruction to the infrastructure there could be long lasting as well on the global markets as well as their own oil prices. I've been asking everyone who appears on this program since the war started if they would support a war supplemental bill that is being prepared. The Pentagon's going to ask for $200 million. Are you a yes or no on that? I'm a no. And I think approving a supplemental of $200 billion is in effect approving the war. And so I'd definitely be a no. And think of it for a moment, Chris, how we could be using those billions of dollars that we are spending on this war. The needs of education and health care in this country. Think of the costs in lives, thousands of Iranian lives, but also 13 of our own... men and women in uniform and others potentially if we continue this kind of misguided engagement without a plan or a purpose. So the costs are enormous, I would say no to a supplemental. 200 billion, of course, I misspoke by a factor of 1,000. The other place that we've seen tens of billions of dollars directed in a kind of frenzy of spending has been at the Department of Homeland Security, particularly to ICE and Customs of Border Patrol. You held a hearing today in a series of them about the fate of American kids who have basically ended up as collateral damage here. You know, there's all this talk about how this is an America First agenda and this is all about protecting citizens. And there's tons of American kids who have been essentially terrorized by what ICE is doing. What have been learning during these hearings? I'm learning intellectually, but also emotionally, the tremendous costs of ICE's brutal, violent, lawless terrorizing of people of all ages, but most especially the children, separated from their parents, some of them injured as a result of assaults. and traumatized by the brutality of ICE and CBP. Today's hearing, which we held with our House colleagues in the Oversight Committee, had six very brave young witnesses or people who had...

experience with the brutality of ice against children, but we've also held hearings with a whistleblower came forward and talked about the purposeful lawlessness of ice and others who I hope will remind my colleagues, we need to take a strong stand and unyielding for reforms in this lawless agency. We're going to talk about that because that is playing out right now. I should just say your staff compiled 128 cases of children, citizens and not a citizen, injured, left unattended or otherwise put a risk by the enforcement operations conducted by DHS. Senator Richard Blumenthal, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you. Recapping the big story of the night, the thing that happened right before we went to air, Marlago has been flipped blue tonight. That is the Florida Assembly District in Palm Beach that contains Mara Lago, where Donald Trump actually voted. And he voted by mail, despite the fact that he talks about how terrible voting by mail is. And he voted by mail, we assume, for the man that he endorsed John Maples, the man you see on there, right there, in this election. This was, by the way, a special election that was basically. held open for a long period of time because Ron DeSantis, we suspect, was worried that having a special election might end up in this result, which is a Democrat winning and now representing the district that Mara Lago is in. We'll be right back. Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections for teens. Instagram teen accounts have built-in content settings and limits for who can contact teens. Plus, teens under 16 can't change these default safety settings without parental approval. So parents can help teens connect safely. Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections for who can contact teens and the content they can see. Learn more at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com. Over four million businesses have skipped the line with Stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to Stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply. This is a Monday.com ad. The same Monday.com designed for every team. The same Monday.com with built-in AI, scaling your work from day one. The same Monday.com with an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. So a little after 7 a.m. on Monday, Donald Trump posted on social media that the U.S. would postpone any strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days because the two sides had, quote, very good and productive conversations. A deal was in the work, and the markets reacted. It wasn't until hours later, Iranian officials came out and said no direct or indirect contact was made. What is really interesting is what happened right before that 7 a.m. truth social post.

So Wall Street Journal reports, quote, during the two-minute period between 7.49 a.m. and 751 a.m. on Monday, about 7200 contracts in oil futures with a notional value of more than $760 million changed hands. There was no apparent news that prompted the surge in trading activity. About 15 minutes later, Trump's post triggered a huge drop in oil prices and a jump in the S&P 500. A similar burst of activity took place at the same time in S&P 500 futures. So, basically, right before Trump made this announcement, 15 minutes, with no public indication there was going to be this big shift in policy that would affect oil prices and other parts of the financial markets, there was suddenly a huge volume of oil futures trades for some reason. We don't know if it was one person or a group of people. But it sure seems like someone got a tip that Trump's post was coming and decided to make an ungodly amount of money based on that insider information. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut called it mind-blowing corruption. Although, again, to be fair, it is possible. It's just a coincidence. We don't have any hard evidence that something improper happened. Now, one of the main ways you might gather that evidence, you see, is through an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But the senior SEC official in charge of those investigations abruptly resigned last week. After six months on the job, apparently because agency leaders did not like the fact that she wanted to aggressively pursue fraud investigations, including into folks close to Donald Trump. And speaking of folks close to Donald Trump, his son, Donald Trump Jr., is an advisor to both major prediction markets, polymarket and Kalshi, which have been at the center of a lot of scrutiny regarding insider information. If you're unfamiliar with these platforms, they let you bet on almost anything. You could wager on marked madness in sports, or when Congress will vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security, or which Trump administration official will be the next to leave, or who will be voted off the island on the reality show Survivor. To put it lightly, these markets are absolutely ripe with the potential for what is, in essence, insider trading. To use the survivor example, as the New York Times points out, the show is pre-taped. There are a non-trivial number of people who hold private information who knows who's going to be voted off with the potential to make a lot of money on these markets. And while both companies have made some nominal attempts to prevent insider trading, we're seeing a lot of, let's say, curious use of these prediction markets when it comes to private intelligence, again, from the Trump administration. Back in January, an anonymous trader on Pauly Market made nearly half a million dollars by betting on when Venezuelan President Nicola Maduro would be ousted. right before Donald Trump announced the successful mission to abduct him from sovereign soil. We don't know who this anonymous individual is or what they knew. We do know that a bunch of people in and around the White House had advanced knowledge of that raid. Similarly, one polymarket trader has made more than a million dollars betting on very specific outcomes of U.S. military actions against Iran.

including successful predictions just hours before we struck Iran's nuclear facilities last summer, and just hours before we started this war with a sneak attack last month. As CNN reports, this person has won 93% of five-figure wagers relating to then unannounced military operations against Iran. That's a real lucky gambler, isn't it? Maybe. Or maybe they have insider information. Again, we have no way of knowing for certain, although you can determine for yourself which option seems likelier. And people have been caught abusing the system last month. Two Israelis were charged with using classified intelligence about the war to bet on polymarket. In a much lower stakes example here at home, an employee of the YouTube superstar Mr. Beast was reported to federal regulators by Kalshi for placing $4,000 in wagers using inside information. Just today, both Kalshi and Polly Market announced a slate of new rules to tamp down on this kind of thing, right as the Senate unveiled a bipartisan bill to rein in some of the betting on prediction markets. Somehow, I doubt the Trump White House is very interested in regulating or investigating these markets being advised by his son. But these betting markets and the larger world of legalized gambling are getting quite a bit of attention as of late, including from Atlantic reporter McKay Coppins who spent a year in his words as a degenerate gambler. And he joins me next. To get a first-hand look at the explosive growth of gambling in America and what is doing the country. In September, the Atlantic magazine gave staff writer McKay Coppins $10,000 to wager in online sports betting on the NFL season. results in a remarkable story titled Sucker. My ear is a degenerate gambler. Or Coppins explains, however, the last few years, quote, in remarkably short order, gambling has permeated every nook and cranny of American life. The author of that piece, McKay Coppins, joins me now. McKay, I love the piece. And the first thing that struck me as I started it and you write about is that you are practicing Mormon. And in your faith, there's a variety of activities that are prohibited, including gambling, drinking caffeine, and other things. And so this is not something you had a lot of exposure to. What was your sort of? contact with it like? Yeah, I mean, the idea was that the Atlantic would kind of help me simulate the experience of gambling without my technically breaking the rules of my religion. I actually consulted my bishop about it. He, uh, gave me his tacit blessing, although he was clearly concerned. But the thing that really struck me was that, you know, the last thing that my bishop said to me in my first meeting with him in September was be careful. And I kind of smugly shrugged him off, assuming, you know, this is a gimmick for a magazine story. It's not actually going to affect me in any meaningful way, certainly not spiritually. And his warning to me was actually prophetic. I was shocked.

by how much it came to consume my life and really did kind of bleed into every facet of my relationships, my mental well-being, and my spiritual life as well. It is shocking to me. I think everyone's sort of feeling this right now of like, wait a second, wait a second. When did we, how did this go to zero to a hundred? I mean, I think if you'd asked me, you know, before, should we make gambling legal? I probably would have been like, yeah, probably makes sense. We should, you know, regulate and tax it. But it's not just like, oh, now gambling's legal. It's gambling is legal and gambling on anything is legal, including like. war, and also everywhere you look and on every phone and constantly being advertised everywhere. This sense of going from like zero to a hundred is so overwhelming, I think, for a lot of people. How have you understood how we went so quickly so far? Yeah, I would guess that when the Supreme Court overturned the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, none of the justices who sided with that decision possibly could have anticipated how quickly gambling would come to permeate. every single part of American life, right? I mean, the prediction markets were not even on their radar at that time, but it's almost impossible to remember that this whole new era that we're in is only a few years old. We have all kind of come to accept or at least like understand that gambling now just defines the entire body of American sports, not to mention politics, geopolitics, war, culture, and just say, well, I guess that's the way we live now. Only a few years ago, we were in a very different place as a country. We had reached this consensus that every civilization before us, by the way, had basically reached, which is that gambling was a vice that maybe needed to be tolerated in a free society, but should be regulated and stigmatized. And I think that social stigma and the friction that came with it was really an important part of this status quo pre-2018 and that we have completely lost. And maybe as a country now, we need to kind of reckon with what's happened. Well, when you write about your own experience, you call being a degenerate gambler and how it sort of touched all these parts of your life. Like, what do you mean by that? What was the, what did the immersion in it do to you? Well, I mean, you know, it's kind of embarrassing to reflect on now, but I was very quickly within a few weeks hiding in the bathroom and the pantry to put my bets in so my kids didn't see it. My wife caught me looking at draft kings at church. You know, I was constantly distracted and kind of not present with my kids in a way that I think is a little uncharacteristic for me.

I routinely stayed up past midnight to both watch the games that I was gambling on, and then I would look up and find myself, you know, having been staring down at my phone for an hour in kind of a hypnotic stupor, not even realizing that I had just been kind of mindlessly scrolling through bets and gambling. And, you know, think about walking through a casino floor, and you see the kind of sad senior citizens who are at the slot machine, you know. smoking and pumping their social security checks into the slot machines. That's kind of what I became in a way that really alarmed me and I did not anticipate. It's not just gambling on sports. You write a bit about Polymark and Kalshi, again, who didn't even exist and weren't even a kind of glint in the eye of Wall Street or anyone when this 2018 decision happens that allows betting in the state in New Jersey, and then that opens the floodgates. You say that basically that the insider trading is sort of a feature, not a bug. And I got to say, just like looking at these Iran bets, you know, the million dollar bet on Iran, these other bets, it's so morally gruesome to me and also so corrupt. But it also does seem like it's a little bit of their value proposition, right? Is that like the way that these are going to work is people with insider information will bet, and that's going to be the thing that makes the information public. Right. The whole idea of the prediction markets is that their social utility is that they help you predict the future. You can see where events are moving, whether that's, you know, in elections, in war, in geopolitics. And that means that insiders trading on the information that they have is an essential part of the formula. Now, I should say, Kalshi... technically prohibits insider trading and has made a big deal about trying to rein it in. Polymarket doesn't even pretend to prohibit it. But to me, the biggest concern here, they're truly dystopian development, is not even that insiders are in a corrupt way enriching themselves based on their insider information, but that they will start to manipulate public events, including events with life and death stakes. to enrich themselves, right? Who's to say that a military insider won't decide to strike a certain site in Iran or on a certain date to cash in on a polymarket bet? I think we're not that far from that happening. And when that's happened, we've lost the whole game. I mean, that's the end. All right, McKay Coppins' piece in the Atlantic. It's a great piece. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Chris. Coming up as Donald Trump sends his ice agents to American airports to... Stand around. Senator Cory Booker on what it will take for Republicans to reach a deal to stop the chaos of the airports. That's next. Do you remember in school when your teacher had a favorite of everything? A favorite marker, a favorite element, and yes, even a favorite student, who wasn't me, so let's move on. I want to talk about their real favorite thing. Kleenex tissues. According to teacher lists, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue trusted by teachers. Their silky soft help prevent skin irritation.

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And I'm still trying to figure out where the end of the line for security is. I walked through baggage claim and am now almost essentially back where I started and I still have not found the end of the line. This is actually insane. Oh, my God. Seeing a lot of those the last few days, I'm sure, the hours of chaos Americans now face when they try to fly just got worse on multiple levels thanks to President Donald Trump. So yesterday, he sent ICE agents to major airports. The White House and DHS says they're meant to help patrol airports, since so many TSA officers have either quit or called out of work since mid-February when funding ran out and they stopped getting paid. The ICE officers, though, are getting paid, apparently just to stand around at these airports while chatting over coffee or enjoying some Kava. Generally just watching the people who are not getting paid continue to do their jobs, all while the entire system remains under unbelievable strain. Last night, the Senate managed to ram through a vote to confirm Oklahoma Center Markwayne Mullin as the new Secretary of Homeland Security. But despite the bipartisan will to get a deal done on DHS funding, basically to fund everything but ICE, everyone involved will tell you there is one obstacle to that kind of deal that would fix what's happening in the airports. And that obstacle is Donald Trump. The Democrats have offered to open up everything but ICE. Ted and I said, okay, let's accept their offer. And then at the same time, we would offer a bill for reconciliation where we don't need any Democratic votes to do whatever we wanted to do with ICE. And that way we're out of the shutdown and DHS is back open. Senator Carthune submitted that to President Trump, as is his right. He said no. No deals with the Democrats. Yes, you heard that right. Even Republicans acknowledging that it's Trump. Trump is the obstacle. He's boycotting everything because he wants to get his save act, his voter suppression law passed. The one that he thinks will give him the power to basically rig the midterm elections in his face. Favor. Yesterday, Democratic Senator Cory Booker held a press conference at Newark Airport calling out Trump's refusal to make a funding deal. We in the United States of America are dealing with Donald Trump's inability to simply fund the TSA. The message today is fund the TSA and get ICE out. Joining me now is Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who is out today with a new book titled Stand. We're going to talk about that in just a minute. First, I want to welcome me the program center and get just a read on where things are in this. It's so rare. Usually there's all this kind of rhetorical jiu-jitsu around these deals where no one sort of tells the truth. And it was so wild to see John Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and then everyone else basically be like, no, no, it's Trump. Trump's blocking the deal. Trump doesn't want the deal. He wants no deals. He wants it all to burn unless he gets a save act. Is that where we are still?

It is exactly where we are. This is about ICE. It is about a fight over their reckless, out of control, damage they're doing to our communities. It's wildly unpopular. That's where the debates should be. But what Trump is doing is saying, I'm going to try to cause as much chaos, cruelty, long lines, indignities to passengers in hopes that that creates more pressure on Democrats, so they'll just give me what I want on... ice, and that is absurd. So right now he is shutting down virtually normal travel on airlines. And when I was out at Newark, I know something about Newark Airport. I used to be the mayor of the town. I had Port Authority police coming up. Airlines calling me up. Everybody can say, just like, please get ice the hell out of this airport. They're causing so much trouble. Their presence here is triggering stressful to already stressed out passengers. And they want the... TSA simply to be funded when you have 100 senators that want it funded and the President of the United States telling, excuse me, I'm obviously being choked up angry, telling people to definitely not fund TSA, he is the problem. He is the problem right now. You have a book out on sale today. It's called Stand. And it's about sort of the importance of essentially standing up to the forces that seek to sort of end our constitutional order. You know, a year ago it felt to me that there was a real cowering happening through all parts of civil society, the business world, and even I think Democratic Party and elected Democratic officials. That feels a bit different now. Does it feel different to you? And if it does, what changed? Yeah, look, I think that what we have right now is this advanced form of yoga where my colleagues in the Republican Party are just bending over backwards for Donald Trump submitting to whatever he tells them to do. And I know he's doing a lot of things that they don't agree with because I have the private conversations with my Republican colleagues. And so this is a time where we need more courage, where we need people who will stand up for their virtues, who will. actually stand up for the roles and responsibilities of the United States Senate, which is to provide a check and a balance, oversight and accountability to an executive. But that's just not happening right now. And it's created, as we're seeing with Iran, a constitutional crisis, an energy crisis, a price shock crisis as prices are skyrocketing, a global crisis that one economist has now said is worse than the 1970s oil shocks that were going on around the world. This is a time where people say virtue is not important. No, virtue is vital. We need people who are willing to stand up and do their job and speak the truth and be loyal to the ideals of our Constitution and our country. Is it a character question or an incentives question, though?

First of all, we have a corrupt government, like, and it's getting worse and worse. The money pouring into Washington, it's why I've announced 10 years ago, I was one of the first people to say no corporate pack money. Now I'm saying no issue, ideology pack money. We have to start figuring out a way to stop. the corruption, because this is what happens in Washington out in the open now. Some billionaire comes along and says, if you don't do what Donald Trump says, I'm going to put $20 million in a primary against you. And what you see is people capitulating to those threats. We have a nation right now after Citizens United that is just seeing this growing power of wealthy corporations and the wealthiest of individuals, and they're rigging the system against common sense, against pragmatism, against working Americans. And so that makes everything so much harder when you are allowing so few people to have more and more influence over our politics here in Washington. I know you were just talking about the prediction markets. I'm seeing it with crypto companies coming. together and creating a $170, $180 billion pack. We're seeing this flood of hundreds of millions and billions of dollars trying to affect our politics. And that is a moral issue. When are we going to say enough is enough and begin to start standing on the principles that are not just important our democracy? They're vital to its survival. There's going to be a big protest on this Saturday, and no King's protest. It'll be, depending on how you count third or fourth. It lines up at the point that we're going to be hitting the fourth week of a war in Iran. And, you know, there hasn't been, I think, partly because of the strangeness with which this was undertaken, because of its suddenness, because of the way Donald Trump talks about it, and this sort of like... It's not that big a deal. It's kind of over there. I'm going to go to Graceland. And, you know, there haven't been big anti-war protests. But do you think it's important for people to protest this war and to stand up and say, this is a bad idea, this is wrong? You know, this is what I talk about in my book where people, really the most common way people give up their powers, not realizing they have it in the first place. From those people who came to Washington and unfurled an AIDS quilt, from the incredible people like Jennifer Keelan Chafin's, who was a little girl in protest of the inaccessibility of our nation and even our capital crawled up the Capitol steps on her chin and using her elbows to drag her body up. We are where we are today because of creative protests. We're here, in fact, as a nation that started protesting the Crown, Britain. We have to continue those traditions. And this is not one of those situations where you are powerless. It's actually one of those situations where more than ever, you have to recognize your agency, recognize your ability to raise your voice and be a part of a chorus of condemnation what's going on and show once and for all that the power of the people is indeed greater than the people in power.

All right, Senator Cory Booker. His new book, Stand, is available now where we get your books. Thanks so much. That does it for All In. You can catch us every weeknight at 8 o'clock on MS Now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's Facebook.com slash all on with Chris. Have you ever wanted to share your opinions with MSNow about our TV programs, podcasts, live events, and more? Now's your chance to have your voice heard. Join the MSNow Insights community at MS.com.