Maddow on Trump's unbridled chaos: 'We are having some drama at the moment'

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We are having a moment of sort of unbelievably dramatic news, news that's like if you were pitching a movie, the people you were pitching it to would say, no, that's too over the top. We can't do that. Denmark reportedly sent soldiers just a few weeks ago. They sent soldiers to Greenland armed with explosives and blood supplies. The explosives were to blow up the runways at airports in Greenland, and the blood supplies were in anticipation of combat casualties in a conflict with the United States. That is, if the U.S. could find a way to put U.S. troops on the ground in Greenland without landing on the blown-up airfields. Think about that for a second. I mean, Denmark, it's freaking Denmark. They are literally and officially our ally, but they had to send troops out with live ammunition and blood supplies and live explosives, not for an exercise, not for training, but on a real deployment on which they planned to disable the airfields in Greenland to protect their territory against us, against the United States. You may also recall that Denmark is in NATO. So if Trump actually does try to use military force to take Greenland, we will be at war with all of NATO. So, but now I guess we know how it would start. Too dramatic? Too far-fetched? Oh, wait, there's more. Consider Hungary right now. The authoritarian leader in Hungary, Viktor Orban, keeps getting visits from top U.S. officials. He just got one from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He's supposed to host Vice President J.D. Vance very soon. Trump did a creepy video endorsement for Viktor Orban this weekend. Our government is doing everything they can to try to sort of fluff Viktor Orban right now, to prop him up because Hungary is having elections next month. And if Viktor Orban allows those elections to go forward, it really looks like he's going to lose. So our authoritarian government is trying to prop up his authoritarian government with these big public shows of support. But because the news is the way it is right now, I also have to tell you that Russia is approaching this same task with a bit more style. New reporting from the Washington Post this weekend. headline, to tilt Hungarian election, Russians proposed staging assassination attempt. Quote, in the run up to Hungary's pivotal election in April, Russia's foreign intelligence service last month began sounding the alarm over plummeting public support for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose friendly ties to Moscow have long given the Kremlin a strategic foothold inside NATO and the European Union. Officers from the SVR, Russian military intelligence, suggested that drastic action might be necessary to help Orban, a strategy they called the game changer. SVR operatives said the game changer would, quote, fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign. And what was the game changer? The game changer was, quote, the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orban. Washington Post reporting that to try to help Orban in his election, the Russians have already mounted social media campaigns to boost Orban, much as they did for Donald Trump. They've used fake allegations against Orban's political enemies. They've used fake AI-generated videos to spread wild smears against opposition candidates. But they also apparently were plotting to fake an assassination attempt against Viktor Orban in order to get people to rally behind him. too dramatic, too over the top, not believable enough. Oh, but wait, we've also still got the Strait of Hormuz shutdown, choked off as a result of the U.S. president, Donald Trump, inexplicably starting a war with Iran for reasons he has yet to explain and with goals he has yet to credibly articulate. This weekend, President Trump announced a no ifs, ands, or buts ultimatum that if Iran doesn't open up the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz by today, by Monday, Trump promised he would commit a capital W, capital C war crime. He said he would bomb Iran's civilian power plants, starting, quote, with the biggest one first. That was the ultimatum as of Saturday. He would do that today, unless the Strait of Hormuz opened up, today rolled around. And even though it's not even yet Taco Tuesday, Trump nevertheless backed down. He announced that he has delayed his planned war crime because there are now new talks, he says, happening between us and the Iranians. The Iranians say, no, there aren't any new talks going on. Suspiciously, Trump won't say who these supposed talks are with, but he says they're definitely going great. And even though he says they're going great, now he's also sending 4,500 sailors and Marines over there. And the New York Times is reporting that he's considering calling up the 82nd Airborne as well. How well are the talks going? However well Trump says these phantom supposed talks are going, watch what he does, not what he says. And if you do that in this inexplicable war, it really seems like Donald Trump has started something he has absolutely no idea how to finish. And aside from everything else this war is doing, there is a very real prospect it is going to crater not only our own economy, but the world economy, with Trump having no plan for that whatsoever. To put it lightly, we are having some drama at the moment. I mean, because of the president and his Republican Party's policies in Washington, two million Americans have lost their health insurance. Just since the beginning of the year, for millions more, health care has become dramatically, dramatically more expensive, specifically because of Republican policies. The Federal Reserve just announced that there has been, quote, zero net job creation in the private sector over the past six months. Zero jobs created in six months in the private sector. One Trump-supporting Republican sheriff in California has just seized the ballots from the last statewide California election in his county. Not because the sheriff's office has anything to do with election administration in Riverside County or anywhere else, but because that sheriff and his deputies have guns and badges, And they say they heard something was wrong with the election. So in Riverside County, California, that MAGA sheriff just seized a thousand boxes of elections material, including more than 650,000 ballots. As American air travel absolutely melts down, not only because the price of jet fuel is skyrocketing thanks to Trump's war of choice in Iran. No, as American air travel today absorbs not only that, but also yet another Trump era fatal collision at yet another airport, this time a runway collision at LaGuardia in New York, which killed two pilots and sent 41 people to the hospital. as TSA security lines tonight exceed four hours just to get through security at Houston's airport as Atlanta advises travelers on domestic flights that they're going to need at least four hours lead time at that airport before just domestic flights. Today, in the midst of that meltdown, President Trump told Republicans at a campaign event in Tennessee that he did not want the TSA crisis to be solved. He said he did not want there to be any talks about resolving the TSA crisis and funding TSA agents until Democrats agreed to pass new restrictions on voting rights. He said Republicans had to get this done, quote, for Jesus. OK. MSNOW is reporting tonight that the ICE agents Trump has sent to the airport supposedly to help with the TSA disaster, the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers, the ERO officers that they've sent, they, quote, do not have the ability to check travelers' identification or screen passengers. So what are they there for? Other than to creep everyone out and crowd the food court and, you know, remind the poor beleaguered TSA agents who actually are trained to do this job that they're not being paid to be at work right now while these random bros from ICE who can't actually do anything are being paid their full salaries to stand around and creep everyone out and add to how crowded it is in the terminal without actually doing anything to help at all. So the news right now is dramatic. You might even call it melodramatic. Everything seems to be just happening on this grand scale. But here's also part of what's going on that is unfolding more quietly without melodrama. It's definitely got moral drama. And it's the kind of story we can only get from people who are watching very, very closely. This story starts with a guy in Minnesota, a man named Nick Benson, who would not mind if I described him to you as a plane spotter. He's a plane buff. He's an aviation geek. He studies planes. He looks at flight data. You know, at some airports, there are little places set aside for people to view the takeoffs and landings. Those are for people like Nick Benson. In the Minneapolis area where he lives, whenever he gets the chance, he goes to the Minneapolis airport and he takes photographs of interesting planes coming and going. This is his passion. And like most people who live in and near Minneapolis, Nick Benson has also been horrified by what Trump's federal agents, Trump's ICE agents and Border Patrol agents have done in Minneapolis and their attack on that city. And as part of Nick Benson's contributions to his community's fight against ICE, their fight back against this attack by the federal government, Mr. Benson has been documenting ICE flights out of Minneapolis's airport. He's been doing it ever since ice surged into Minnesota in December, along with other local plane spotters. Nick has watched and kept count. He's kept a record. He's documented it as people made their way from the tarmac up the steps into one of these deportation planes over and over and over again. He says many of the people he's seen put on these planes are put on in shackles, both men and women. The long hours that he's put in waiting at the airport, going through flight data, mean that Nick Benson has been in almost a unique position, not just to document those disappearances, those flights, but specifically to follow up on a story that absolutely tore people up all across this country. The story of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos. You'll remember the story of Liam Ramos, right? Nick Benson was able to follow that up and uncover something about that story that nobody else in the public has been able to see When I said the name Liam Ramos you instantly pictured him right This is Liam Conejo Ramos standing in his neighborhood, blue bunny hat, black and white check coat, Spider-Man backpack, and one of Trump's federal agents standing behind him with his hands on the backpack on a snowy street in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. This happened while Trump was crowing about how the people being taken by his masked agents are all terrible criminals and monsters, the worst of the worst. And there's little five-year-old Liam in his bunny hat and his backpack, the real picture of who they're picking up. The day after school officials took that photo, they announced that Liam and three other local kids from the same school had been grabbed by ICE agents along with their families. And then we learned that within one day of them snatching him off the street, ICE had already taken Liam and his father all the way from Minnesota to Texas. They'd taken them to a notorious prison, the Dilley Detention Center just outside San Antonio, a place where they lock up men and women and children where prisoners have testified to horrific conditions. And if you've followed this story of little five-year-old Liam, you might remember that we know how Liam and his dad got out of Dilley, right? You remember this? A week after they were taken, Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro visited Liam and his dad at Dilley. He sent out this heartbreaking picture of Liam not looking well in his father's arms. There was continuing national uproar over this case, over what had happened to this little kid and his family. And then just days after that visit from the congressman, on February 1st, the Trump administration decided that they were going to release Liam and his father from Dilley. And the government flew Liam back to Minnesota. And you might have seen the images from that, right? Liam getting to visit the cockpit of this Delta flight he was flying on, his flight home to Minnesota. A crew from ABC News was there as the very, very nice pilots who were very kind to him, gave him a lot of attention and let him sit in the pilot's seat and gave him his own little pilot's wings. In the case of little five-year-old Liam, the public pressure worked in a way. Instead of being stuck in Dilley for weeks or months or longer, things moved faster for him and his family. Liam was taken off the street in Minneapolis, flown across the country, imprisoned, then freed from the prison and flown back home all in less than two weeks. It went fast because of the national uproar. but back home in Minneapolis that plane spotter that activist Nick Benson he had this nagging question because in in all of his weeks and weeks of watching ice flights leave the Minneapolis airport watching the men and women in shackles go up those tarmac stairs Nick said he'd never once seen a kid boarding one of those flights he'd never seen a little kid like a five-year-old like Liam so then how did they do it how exactly did ice ship Liam and his dad from Minneapolis to Texas and so quickly within 24 hours after they grabbed him off the street. We know they sent this little boy to prison in Texas. How did he get there? How did he get from standing in his bunny hat and his black and white coat and his Spider-Man backpack in Minnesota to a Trump prison camp one day later? How did they do it? Well, now, thanks to Nick Benson, we can see that part of the story. We can have a view now into the machinery of Trump's system for locking up little kids, for locking up families. A view that we've not had before. And it's because Nick Benson knows the Minneapolis airport like the inside of his own car, right? Because he knows the flight schedules. He knows the layout of the gates. He knows roughly when Liam had had to have traveled. And because of all that, because of what he's been doing, Nick Benson was able to tear this thing open. Quote, filed his open records law request under Minnesota state law. He paid his $359.04 in processing costs. And what did he get? He got dozens of hours of footage from half a dozen different surveillance cameras, all showing the Delta Airlines passenger terminal or the operations going on just outside the terminal's windows in the hours leading up to that morning's nonstop flight from Minneapolis to San Antonio. He went through all of that footage and look, there he is. Recognize the jacket? Heading for gate F-13, the Delta flight to San Antonio in his black and white checked coat. That's Liam Conejo-Ramos and his dad. There's no sound with this footage, but you will see three people with Liam and his dad, three people who seem to be taking them through the airport. To be clear, we don't know whether they're federal agents or contractors or something else, But there they are with Liam and his father. They're checking in before the flight. They're waiting in the terminal with all the other travelers. At one point in the background, you can see Liam laying his blanket down on the floor. I think it's so he can lie down on the blanket. Sometimes he gets up to look out the window with his dad. Liam's like any other kid at the airport except for where he's going, except for the fact that U.S. President Donald Trump is sending him to prison at age five. Finally, Liam and his dad and these minders line up with the other passengers and they head off for their flight. A boy, his dad, his Spider-Man backpack, a nonstop Delta Airlines flight from Minneapolis to San Antonio on the way to family immigration prison. Nick Benson went through that footage. He shared it with an excellent aviation journalist named Gillian Burkell, who broke this story last week. Gillian Burkell has tracked apparent ice flights all around the world to places like Eswatini in Africa and Ireland and Egypt. She told us this was the first time she had seen this other part of what they call ice air. Not the flights on charter aircraft or contract aircraft that load up people in shackles, right? But this other part that is happening quietly around all the rest of us unsuspecting passengers. on passenger airlines, in regular airports, flying prisoners to Trump prison camps to be held without trial, including little kids. We contacted Delta Airlines for comment. They told us what they told Gillian Burkell, that government air travel is often booked via third parties like travel agencies. They said airlines may not have advance notice or detail as to who may be flying and for what reason. Delta also, and we should have seen this coming, they pointed us back to that happy ABC News report about Liam and his dad being flown home from Dili on a Delta flight. That's the one where the pilots were so nice and they gave Liam his little wings. Delta was very happy to promote its involvement in Liam's homecoming, but not so much their involvement with sending him to prison. we also reached out to the department of homeland security with a number of questions about the video from the minneapolis airport and how the government manages commercial airline travel with federal agents transporting prisoners against their will including minors we haven't heard back we'll let you know if we do what we do know is that what we can see in that video of liam and his dad at the minneapolis airport we know that that is not an isolated incident. We know that ICE is moving immigrant families and little kids on domestic commercial flights. And we know that because many of the families imprisoned at that hellhole facility in Dilley, Texas, have described in legal declarations that that's how they got there. And one long-running legal case about conditions for kids in these immigration prisons, there were declarations filed just this past Friday. Families imprisoned at Dilley. They don't say what airline they were brought there on, but they describe being brought to the regular commercial airport alongside other passengers, but they're being forced onto flights by mysterious escorts, two or three escorts. And who knows who those escorts are? They generally don't identify themselves, nor will they tell the families where they are going. They just force them onto the planes. In one declaration from December, a woman describes being locked up with her nine-year-old daughter for nearly two full days in a room in the Miami airport. And then three unidentified people escorted the woman and her daughter through two different airports and two different flights. These were regular commercial flights on regular commercial airlines with other passengers. And on one of those flights, the woman said she desperately handed a flight attendant a vomit bag on which she had written a plea to call her husband and tell him that she and her daughter had been taken and they were headed to San Antonio. She hadn't been allowed to make any phone calls for two days. This was her last desperate attempt. And the flight attendant mercifully did it, called the woman's husband. Even if the airlines don't want to talk about it, the families being shipped to Dilley on these flights are talking about it. And now this new footage of Liam in the Delta Terminal at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport makes it just impossible to ignore. You may remember we have covered a lot on this show, pressure campaigns that have been brought to bear on commercial airlines and airports that were facilitating these ICE flights, these deportation flights for Trump's federal agents. People were pretty upset to discover, for example, that Avello Airlines, you know, an Avello Airlines plane they might have been taking on vacation might be used on a different day to fly out a plane full of people in chains who Trump's agents had snatched off the streets or rammed off the road or pulled out of their car windows. People were also upset that an aviation company called Daedalus was going to lease airplane hangar space at their local airport in Delaware. They were upset about that because Daedalus was also flying these flights, these deportation flights for ICE. And in both of those cases, public outcry worked. Avello got out of the deportation business. They sold all their planes, many of them to ICE. Now they're back to trying to be a normal passenger airline again, trying to wash that moral stench off themselves. Daedalus, as far as we know, they still fly for ICE as well, but they don't also try to fly retail passengers. And after the pushback from the public, they backed off their plans at Wilmington Airport as well. And the Trump administration may no longer care what voters think of them. They may think that Donald Trump and his ilk are never, ever going to be subject again to elections that control whether or not they still hold power. But commercial public facing companies, they very much care what their customers think of them. They have to. Back in the first Trump term 2018, commercial airlines discovered that that first Trump administration was using their flights to transport immigrant kids who had been separated from their moms and dads. And a bunch of airlines, when they discovered that their flights were being used for that purpose they told the Trump administration that they wouldn do it anymore They asked the Trump administration to stop doing that Delta at the time said that family separation policy did quote not align with Delta core values Well, that was then. How about now? Delta, are your core values, are your customers OK with this second term Trump policy of family incarceration? Delta, with the help of your planes. How about the other big airlines? Are your customers okay knowing they could be flying on one of your planes? Headed to a beach or a wedding or to visit their family. And in the next row, there's the five-year-old and his dad that ICE just grabbed from outside their home and are transporting to a hellish Texas prison against their will. Everybody okay with this? In addition to Delta Airlines, we reached out to United and American Airlines as well to ask whether ICE is also moving migrant families on their planes as well, whether the companies have a position on it. We have not heard back. As for Liam Ramos and his family, last week lawyers for the family said they're appealing a deportation order. Their lawyer tells us the appeal of that deportation order could take months or even years. She says the government does appear to be moving with remarkable speed on this case in particular. She tells us that if the Trump administration follows the law, Liam and his family cannot be deported while their appeal is pending. But that's a big if, if they follow the law. One other thing Liam's family lawyer tells us today, she says that in addition to Liam and his father still coping with the trauma of this ordeal, contending with anxiety and trouble sleeping and all the rest of it. She says Liam no longer wants to wear his bunny hat when he's out in public because it's now recognizable. and he does not want the attention that it draws. This weekend, this Saturday, Liam's hometown of Minneapolis will be the flagship protest and what is expected potentially to be the largest single day of protest in American history. June of last year, that was the first No Kings protest. That drew an astonishing 5 million people across the country. You might remember that was June 14th, the first No Kings Day. That was the day Trump tried to throw himself a weird North Korea-style military parade for his own birthday. That sad, low-turnout event was wildly overshadowed by 5 million Americans turning out at protests against Trump all over the country. And then there was the second No Kings Day in October. That one did not draw 5 million people. That one drew 7 million people. The flagship protest in October was in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Constitution. Seven million people turned out on No King's Day in October. And that was before Trump bulldozed the East Wing of the White House and before he tried to arrest six Democratic members of Congress. And before we learned that in addition to bombing random boats in the Caribbean, he was also deliberately killing the survivors of those bombings, which is a war crime. It was before he invaded Venezuela and announced he was taking their oil. It was before he started an apocalyptic war with Iran. It was before he renamed the Kennedy Center for himself and then announced that he would close it. It's before he blew up health insurance for millions of American families. It's before he effectively made the Nobel Peace Prize winner give him her prize. It's before he sent the FBI to seize the ballots from Atlanta, Georgia. It's before he posted a video online depicting President Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as if they were apes. It's before they killed Renee Nicole Good. It's before they killed Alex Preddy. It's before they took Liam. This Saturday, it will be Minneapolis as the flagship. But there are more than 3,000 separate protests planned all over the country this Saturday. No kinks. More ahead. Stay with us. If you're a parent and want to help set up your child for success, then IXL is a right for your family. 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Our demonstration of moral strength is in opposition to the tyranny that threatens our very existence as a country. And this kind of gathering can unite us in a moral movement to save America. And we will not stand down. Not now. Not ever. I've got a question for you. Are we free? Does it scare us off? Are we going to go down now? That's right. What we are doing here today is as American as Apple Pie, we are standing up for our rights. We are standing up for our neighbors. That is a video put out by the Indivisible Movement promoting the No Kings Day protest this Saturday, this weekend. This is going to be the third one. And all across the country, people have been doing kind of guerrilla promotion about that protest this weekend. In Chippewa Valley, Wisconsin, local organizers there showed up with shovels and dye and made this very cool sign in the snow. No Kings 3, March 28th. We ain't afraid of no stinking blizzard. Wisconsin is ready for No Kings 3.0. Bundle up and get your bunnies out here. We'll be waiting for you. In Sunnyvale, California, they're advertising Saturday's protests with this sign over a local highway overpass. This is Waterville, Maine, this weekend. People promoting this everywhere. At the first No Kings Day protest last June, organizers say more than 5 million people showed up at marches and rallies all across the country. Then the second No Kings was in October. Just four months later, organizers said more than 7 million people showed up. How many people do you think are going to show up for the third one this Saturday? Each of the dots on this map marks where an individual No Kings protest is being held in the United States. There are so many protests that from a distance, the map is basically useless. The only thing you can see is areas where no one lives, a couple of them. There were 2,500 protests at the first No Kings. There were 2,700 protests at the second No Kings. Organizers say for this one, there are already more than 3,100 protests planned all over the country. The flagship one will be in Minneapolis, the place that has spent the last four months showing the rest of the country what it looks like to stand up and fight back. Tonight, Bruce Springsteen announced that he will be performing at that flagship protest. Joining us now is Ezra Levin. He's the co-founder of Indivisible, one of the grassroots groups that has helped lead the organizing for the No Kings protest. Ezra, it's nice to see you. Thanks for being here. Great to see you, Rachel. Indivisible does lots of different kinds of organizing. How do these large, very decentralized, no-kings protests, we'll now have the third one of them this Saturday, how do they fit into the overall movement to oppose Trump and to limit his freedom of movement as president? Oh, Rachel, that's a great question, because I think actually people tend to both underplay and overplay the role of massive one day protests like this. I would say no kings is a tactic, an extremely important tactic that can accomplish a couple of things. One, it can bust through that bubble, that that air of inevitability that that Trump, that this regime is invincible, is unstoppable, is all powerful. You don't look all powerful when you're facing the largest nonviolent protests in American history in every nook and cranny in the country. So sending that message is great, is key, is why I'm excited that there are more than 3,100 protests already planned for Saturday. But the second thing it does, the second thing it does that I think is just as important is it doesn't just gather millions of people in one place. I love that Springsteen is playing in the Twin Cities. I love we're going to have a big New York event and Chicago event and San Francisco event. That's great. I'm from rural Texas. I love that Kyle, Texas has an event. I love that the reddest and most rural parts of the country also have protests because the day after No Kings, democracy won't suddenly be saved. Trump will still be in the White House. This illegal and unconstitutional war will still be going on. His secret police force, Goon Squad, will still be terrorizing American communities. So we need to build. This is why it's important to be organizing where you are and why we recommend if there is not a no kings protest within 30 minutes or so of where you live, you should probably be organizing your own both to make the point on March 28th, but also to start organizing your own community for what comes next. in terms of the sort of atmosphere in the country i will say that it it's it's two different but related feelings that it creates in me to see a gigantic protest of a million people you know in new york or someplace where there's lots of people have come together um and also to see five people out on a street corner in a rural place where it doesn't have a lot of population it's kind of the same feeling in terms of uh the import of it um ezred i wanted to ask you you know one of the things that's happened between the last huge no kings day protest and this one this saturday is, of course, the killing of two protesters in Minneapolis and the brutalizing of protesters in some other places. Do you think that's affected the way people are thinking about showing up for this kind of event? Oh absolutely But I don think the way that Trump and his folks all across the country who are launching these campaigns of terror and communities thought it would Two days after Alex Freddie was murdered in the Twin Cities you could imagine people all over the country said, oh, my gosh, that that's sad. I'm mad about that, but I've got to protect myself. I'm not going to show up. I've got to hide. I've got to not be targeted by this regime. Instead, we saw the exact opposite, Rachel, the exact opposite. that two days after Alex Breddy was murdered, we saw more than 200,000 people join a No Kings Eyes on Eyes training to get trained up on exactly what Alex Breddy was doing, exactly what Renee Good was doing. If there is a shift, though, that I've seen is how the Republicans are responding to No Kings. It's really interesting because in the lead up to No Kings 2, they spent two, three weeks talking all about No Kings, how this is going to be a violent protest. We're going to demolish the country. They had to call out the National Guard. And of course, that's not what we saw. We saw powerful joy from millions of people around the country. But you'll see right now, I challenge you, find one national elected Republican who has said the phrase no kings in the last month. I don't think you'll find that person because the word has gone out. Do not talk about this, because if we don't talk about it, then there's no conflict. And if there's no conflict, press won't cover it. If press doesn't cover it, then people won't find out about it. And if people don't find out about it, they won't show up. That's a smart strategy on their part. I think we've got to adapt our tactics to recruit folks ourselves. So I do hope people will text NOKINGS to 59798, find out where your event is, and then text three people who never attended a protest before. They're not activists. They're not organizers. They might not even be political, but they don't like what's happening in this country. Text them and recruit them to NOKINGS on Saturday. Invite them to join you. Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible. Ezra, good luck this weekend. Keep us surprised. We'll have you back soon to talk about it. Thank you. Thanks, Rachel. All right. Much more news ahead. Stay with us. If you're a parent and want to help set up your child for success, then IXL is a right for your family. As an effective and affordable online learning program, IXL covers math, language arts, science, and social studies using interactive practice problems for kids from pre-K to 12th grade. Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at IXL.com slash 20. 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Tonight, the U.S. Senate has confirmed as the new Secretary of Homeland Security, former Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. He replaces Kristi Noem, whom President Trump fired earlier this month. Noem's top advisor, Corey Lewandowski, is at the center of new reporting, alleging what sure looks like a series of proposed kickbacks and other kinds of financial corruption within the Homeland Security Department. And NBC News reports that some Homeland Security contractors have told the White House that Corey Lewandowski told them he wanted to be paid in exchange for helping them get Homeland Security contracts. When the companies refused, they say Lewandowski then blocked them from being granted government contracts. Lewandowski has denied these claims roundly and adamantly. A statement on his behalf says in part, quote, Mr. Lewandowski adamantly denies ever demanding any payment or compensation from any potential former or current government contractor. The statement says the allegations are, quote, not supported by a single piece of evidence because there is none. I should tell you these reports have nonetheless spurred a congressional inquiry by Democrats on House oversight. But alongside those allegations, there's a second sort of mysterious financial update we have for you about the Homeland Security Department and specifically how the Trump administration has been buying up warehouses all over the country to use as Trump prison camps to hold people without trial. Well, now, in at least two of the places where they are trying to do that in Utah and Georgia, local press are reporting that the Trump administration agreed to purchase these warehouses to turn into Trump prison camps. But they appear to have purchased these facilities for way, way, way more than the facilities are worth. In Georgia, for example, the Trump administration has agreed to pay $129 million for a vacant warehouse. Just a little over a year ago, that same property was valued at just $26 million, a fraction of what the Trump administration just paid for it. Same thing over in Utah. The Trump administration agreed to pay more than $145 million for a warehouse there. According to local property records, that warehouse is only worth around $97 million, meaning the Trump administration potentially overpaid for that one by, oh, say, $48 million. Why the overpaying? These proposed Trump prison camps have been wildly unpopular in the communities where Trump has been buying up these warehouses. As you see here in Utah, there have been multiple protests against the planned conversion of this Salt Lake City warehouse, which the White House appears to have massively overpaid for at a time when the agency that paid for them is being accused of rank corruption and self-dealing at the highest levels. What's going on here? And do these two dots connect? More on this in just a moment. Stay with us. Nate Bluen is a state senator from the great state of Utah. His South Salt Lake City constituents are wildly against the Trump administration's efforts to put a massive Trump prison camp in a warehouse in Salt Lake City, a prison camp to hold thousands of people indefinitely and without trial. Senator Bluen is one of the local officials who's attended protests against that facility. And last week at one of those protests, he specifically called out the inexplicable $150 million price tag the Trump administration agreed to pay for an empty warehouse in Salt Lake City, which appears to be tens of millions of dollars more than the property is worth. He said, out there, someone is making a whole bunch of money profiteering off the suffering of human lives. Joining us now is Utah State Senator Nate Bluen, who is also a candidate for Congress this year. Senator Bluen, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, Rachel. Appreciate it. So what do your constituents think about this proposed facility? I know that Salt Lake City felt like it dodged a bullet. There had been an original plan to buy a warehouse that had then been scuttled after the owner was sort of talked out of it. But then ICE came in and bought a second facility. How do your constituents feel about it? People feel betrayed. This happened out of nowhere. We saw overnight this transaction for, as you called out earlier, $50 million over the appraised value of this site. And people are so frustrated. They want leaders who are going to step up and be accountable for the decisions that they're getting made. And we have not had any of that accountability here in Utah. Our governor recently invited this in and said that he supports having such a facility. But we have had strong local leaders in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County standing up and speaking out against this. and really making sure that our constituents feel heard and that we have the opportunity to get involved in this process and to actually make a difference. As you also mentioned, we did shut down a similar facility months ago. And for this to come out of nowhere and again, for somebody to be making tens of millions of dollars off of it is just so unconscionable in the current environment. Well, let me ask you about that price tag part of it. It does seem unusual that they seem to be wildly overpaying for a facility like this, but it is also a pattern that we're starting to see emerge with other facilities that they're buying around the country. Certainly, there's been reporting similar to what you found in Utah, in Georgia just over the past few days, and we've seen it in other places as well. Do you as a state senator or does anybody acting locally in Utah have any recourse to try to figure out how the price was arrived at? who, in your words, might be profiteering off of this type of planned facilities? Is there any way to follow the money here? Well, you know, I am running for Congress, and I think that's where we're going to make this difference, is we need to lean in with the power that Democrats are going to take back in November and to hold hearings and to hold everyone accountable to abolish ICE and to make sure that we are actually going after the people who have made these decisions in establishing where this money is coming from, because this is taxpayer dollars that are getting spent far over the budgets of what we should be spending. And frankly, we shouldn't be spending any money on these sorts of internment camps. Utah has a history with internment camps, and we don't need more of them in our backyard. So I think we need to be exercising every single option here. We need our local governments to step in and say no to permits and for infrastructure, for water, for the safety needs that these are going to bring along. At the protest I was at just last week, We saw people lining the streets and trucks were having a hard time getting by. This is frankly bad for business. That's the least of my concerns here. But that sort of disruption needs to become the norm. As long as we see the Trump administration and folks playing along, my opponent in this race has taken tens of thousands of dollars from private prison corporations. You know, we need to elect leaders who do not who are not going to be accountable to these corporations that are making money, the billionaire class and splitting us up and really driving us apart. So it's important that we do have these strong people to speak up for our communities, for South Salt Lake and others in particular that are going to be targeted here. This is happening in one of the more diverse neighborhoods in Salt Lake City. And I think everything I've heard from my constituents that I represent right now, from the folks that I'm speaking with as I'm running for Congress, are speaking out loudly against this. They see ICE's overreach. They see all of the things that are happening and believe that this is an agency that has lost its social license to operate. And so to move forward with something that would lock up 7,500 people, 800,000 square feet, I walked around this thing. I mean, it takes time to just get around one side of the building and to imagine what's happening in there is just so criminal to me. Utah State Senator and Congressional candidate Nate Bluen, thank you very much for being here. Keep us surprised. We'd love to have you back to talk about this again. Thank you. Check out NateForUtah.com if you want to learn more. We'll be right back. Stay with us. All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. 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