Ali Velshi: History has shown us what can happen when the people show up

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The last word with Ellie Vilshi in Florence starts right now.

Hey, Ellie.

I have to say, I thought you were kidding when you were going through those agenda items at CPAC.

I was looking at the agenda of the names of the things.

Yesterday or today, whenever it's like you can't make up the names of these things.

I guess give them some points for creativity, but also insanity.

I agree.

Look at the same time.

Don't shriek on my text.

It's got my attention.

That was...

Yeah.

You're like, what's that about?

I ever mect in and...

Maha?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you, my friend.

You have yourself a great weekend.

We'll see you next week.

Thanks, Ellie.

Sounds good.

All right.

I want to start this hour by taking you back in time across the past 115 years.

On March the 25th, 1911, 146 garment workers, 123 of them were women and girls.

Most of the girls were teenagers.

Nearly all of them, recent immigrants, died in the Triangle Shirt Waste Factory here in Manhattan.

The doors to the factory had been locked from the outside, but the owners had not let these girls out.

The fire escapes collapsed.

Some of the girls burned.

Some jumped.

Eleven days later on April the 5th, at least 80,000 people marched in a procession through New York in the rain.

And within two years of that tragedy and that march, New York State had passed 36 new laws governing factory safety and working hours and child labor.

It was the birth of the modern American regulatory state, not because politicians decided to act,

but because 80,000 people walked through the rain and the country could not look away.

I've been thinking a lot about that lately.

There's a pattern in American history that's easy to miss when you're living inside a moment like we are,

but impossible to miss when you look back at it.

And the pattern is this.

The country does not move until its people move first.

It happened again on August 28, 1963, when a quarter of a million people converged upon Washington, D.C.

from every corner of America by bus, by car, by foot.

They stood together at the Lincoln Memorial.

They were not invited there by the government.

They were not organized by the government.

A. Philip Randolph, who had been calling for a march on Washington since 1941, conceived of it.

Bayard Rustin built it in eight weeks from the ground up.

The moral weight of a quarter million people standing together in the heat of a Washington summer

changed the political calculus of a Congress that had been stalling on civil rights for a decade.

It happened again on April 22, 1970, when 20 million Americans, one in ten people in this country,

participated in the first Earth Day.

They were students, they were scientists, they were factory workers, they picked up trash, they marched,

they sat in, they demanded that the air and the water that belonged to everyone be protected for everyone.

Within a year of that, the Environmental Protection Agency existed.

The Clean Air Act was signed into law.

The Clean Water Act followed 20 million people in one day.

It transformed the relationship between the American government and the natural world.

It happened again on March 12, 1990, when disability rights activists, many of them wheelchair users,

abandoned their chairs at the base of the United States Capitol and crawled on their hands and knees,

up all 104 marble steps to the top.

They called it the Capitol Crawl.

Jennifer Keelan was eight years old, she crawled the whole way.

Four months later, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law.

And here's what strikes me about all of these moments.

The people in them knew exactly what they were fighting for.

The 250,000 people who went to Washington in 1963 went there on purpose.

They knew the country needed to change, and they came to demand that change.

Eight-year-old Jennifer Keelan didn't crawl up those Capitol steps by accident.

She was making an argument.

In fact, of the examples I've cited, only the Triangle Shirt Waste Factory survivors who were raw with grief, marching in the rain,

couldn't have known that their mourning would become the architecture of modern worker protection.

But what none of them could have known was whether their efforts just showing up would work.

They didn't wait for permission. They were not waiting for the right moment.

In every case, they looked at the moment in which they existed with all its difficulty and its uncertainty,

and they decided that that was, in fact, exactly the right moment.

We're in one of those moments now.

I don't know exactly how this ends, but neither did they.

Tomorrow in this country, we are expecting another day of protest.

One of several at this point held in response to the presidency of Donald John Trump.

Tomorrow will mark exactly one month of Donald Trump's war with Iran,

and therefore, exactly one month of Donald Trump failing to get congressional approval for his illegal war in Iran,

and exactly one month of Donald Trump failing to explain with any kind of consistency,

or better yet any kind of logic, why the United States is at war with Iran.

Secretary of State Marco Ruyo told a meeting of G7 nations today that the war will end in a matter of weeks, not months,

which is hardly relief for the people of Iran who are caught in the middle of all of this.

MSNOW is reporting over 4,600 people have died in this war thus far,

including 3,300 people inside Iran, according to human rights activist news agency.

13 U.S. service members have been killed, and today the Wall Street Journal reports

that 303 service members have been wounded according to U.S. Central Command.

Keep in mind, this is a war that the president says he's already won, his words.

Stock markets were all down today, posting the fifth straight week of losses.

The S&P 500 plummeted 1.7%, close to its worst week since the end of last month.

The Dow Jones fell at 1.7%, it's in correction territory now, the Nasdaq dropped 2.1%.

At the same time, the war is pushing the price of oil back up, closing today at the highest price in nearly four years.

CNBC reports, quote, U.S. crude oil prices rose 4.46% to settle at $99.64 per barrel,

it's above that right now as I talked to you.

International benchmark Brent crude oil prices gained 4.22% to settle at $112.57.

These are the highest levels oil has settled at since July of 2022 when Russia's invasion of Ukraine shook energy markets around the world.

And today, finally, finally succumbing to the immense pressure of the record breaking long lines at airports across the country,

Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin paying TSA agents.

In a statement, the new head of the Trump's Department of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne Mullin,

said TSA workers should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday.

Congress, meanwhile, is heading into recess, having done nothing to end the partial shutdown.

The Republican-led House today rejected a plan that cleared the Senate to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security through September.

Political reports that, instead, Mike, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of all DHS funding through May 22nd.

The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate with even a Republicans warning that it'll only prolong the partial government shutdown.

The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats.

Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly, each described the House as having a meltdown.

So yeah, with hours to go before tomorrow's No Kings protests, everything remains a mess, and a lot of the country has had it.

That daremood is showing up in Donald Trump's poll numbers too. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows 54% of the nation opposed this war with Iran.

That apparently includes some people working inside the Trump White House.

MSNOW's Jake Trailer reports, quote, Donald Trump, descending thousands of troops to the Middle East to fight, potentially fight, a war he said he's already won.

That contradiction has frustrated some senior White House aides and outside allies, three of whom spoke to MSNOW about the president's public messaging.

They described it as confusing, internally inconsistent, and increasingly detached from battlefield reality.

One former White House official added, quote,

so many people are afraid of being on the outs that they're just drinking the Kool-Aid and going along with it.

They're just drinking the Kool-Aid and going along with it.

As people continue to die on the economy, the president's numbers are even worse than they are on the war, by the way, 65% of the country, 65%, basically two out of every three people, say the economy is not working for them.

Donald Trump's overall approval rating is a dismal 38% with well over half the nation, 56% of disapproving of the job that he's doing as president.

And the president of the United States doesn't seem to be concerned about any of this.

Today, with the nation one month into the still yet to be explained war against Iran, today just hours before millions of Americans will take to the streets in what could be the largest day of protests that this nation has ever seen today.

After Donald Trump trailed off while giving a speech about the state of America's farmers to admire a tractor that was wrapped in gold sitting on the White House lawn for some reason,

our wartime president took the time to dance to YMCA while standing on the Truman balcony.

That's what our deeply unpopular wartime president did with his day.

But tomorrow is going to be a different day.

Tomorrow Americans are showing up to protest to make their voices heard.

They are showing up as so many Americans before them did to say this is our democracy and our leaders answer to the people.

And history has shown us what can happen when people show up leading off our discussion tonight is Robert Reich who served as the secretary of labor under Bill Clinton.

He's a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and a co-founder of inequality media. Bob, good to see you again. Thank you for being with us tonight.

I think we're on the eve of something very, very important in this country. History has proved that it's important, but more importantly in the last year, the American people continue to answer the call.

They continue to answer the call, Ali, because I think many people in this country, if not most people in this country, understand that one of the responsibilities of being a citizen

of somebody who is a resident of the United States, somebody who is participating in the United States, is to heed the call of the nation when the nation needs you to stand up and be heard.

I think silence is one of the most dangerous things we can do. A democracy requires people to voice their concerns. That's what tomorrow is really all about.

And I've given examples of things that happened and then a year later or 36 months later, something happened. I think we're seeing it in real time here.

When we saw the No Kings rallies last year, they led directly to these elections in November that have led directly to the participation of the primaries that have been record breaking for Democrats, which will lead again to whatever numbers we see tomorrow that will move into the midterm elections.

We're seeing very fast results from Americans deciding to reclaim their agency.

Absolutely. That's what is really behind and should be behind every one of these protest movements. Historically, as you pointed out, and hopefully tomorrow as well, they lay the foundation for political change.

They really are fundamentally about power and about people saying, no, we don't want the structure of power that is now making decisions ostensibly on our behalf, but decisions we don't believe in.

And I think that most Americans today, if polls are to be followed and believed in, by the way, this is not just one poll. We see these polls right.

It's entirely consistent with what we've been seeing for many, many weeks and some months now.

Absolutely. And people do just simply, it's not just Donald Trump. People want power back for the people. People don't want a king. Don't want a dictator. Don't want somebody who kind of allocates to himself the power that should be the power of the people.

Just to war without even consulting Congress, without even explaining to the people why it's going to war.

Which is kind of amazing. And I want to take into this whole idea of Donald Trump imposing himself. There's something very interesting about the way he's putting himself out there.

Gal Beckerman in the Atlantic writes that Trump's giant face is everywhere. Strolling through the capital these days, you can't go far without encountering an image of the president's face.

It breaks down over the front of the Department of Labor Building, your old office, and peeks out from behind the trees a cluster at the entrance of the Department of Justice.

The festooning of his face and name all over DC might be Trump's personal way of compensating for the disappearance of his name from New York City projects, including a golf course, skating rinks, and a number of buildings.

But it's consistent with a predilection common amongst authoritarian leaders. You don't need to equate Trump with Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong to recognize a shared desire to loom over their citizens from a variety of public spaces.

Now he's going to be signing the dollar bills. It's the sense that he is making himself one with the state, and he's trying to convince people that Trump is inseparable from the state.

I don't think Americans go for that sort of thing.

I don't think so either. I think there was a revolution 250 years ago about the exactly that principle.

I mean, Louis XIV, whether he said the state is me, well that's not what we have in the United States.

And we don't have George I, George III, we don't have a king. We have a society in which we want the person who is the president to be like George Washington, humility, humility.

That's the word that Washington used repeatedly, and has been used by historians about Washington. He didn't want his name everywhere.

He didn't want his face everywhere. He didn't want his name emblazoned anywhere. In fact, when people talked about making a monument to him, he said no, no, please.

He wanted to get out of the presidency after what was in eight years. He said because this should not be a kingship.

This is not what we're about. Donald Trump needs to remember, needs to read history, needs to understand what this nation is fundamentally about.

Let me ask you for people who aren't sure, who are just worried about where we are right now. What is just showing up tomorrow, do?

It does several things. One of the things it does, Ali, is it gives people a sense of solidarity and courage.

If they see thousands of people in their community coming out with them, they know they're not alone. They know that they represent not just the voice of a minority in the wilderness, but actually they represent a significant, if not a majority of the United States.

And that courage, that sense of solidarity, gives them political courage to take the next step. And that is, with regard to the midterms, actually organizing, mobilizing, and energizing their communities to vote, to get out the vote.

And, let's be very clear about it, throw the bombs out in terms of the people who are now running Congress and not having and showing any backbone when it comes to the President.

Yeah, it's going to be important because when you see those kinds of numbers of people going out and you think about what impact that can actually have in both primaries and elections, all of a sudden, it takes you from feeling powerless to being feeling very, very powerful.

Professor Reich, as always, thank you for joining us tonight.

Thanks, Ali.

All right, coming up, we are going to discuss exactly what we can expect to see it tomorrow as no Kings rallies with one of the co-founders of the Indivisible Project. That's next.

The United States of America does not and has never had kings or dictators as we've just spoken about it, even as some actions coming out of the Trump administration challenge longstanding norms and test the boundaries of checks and balances that fundamental truth still holds.

Tomorrow, Saturday, March 28th, marks the third installment of the No Kings protests with demonstrations planned across the country.

Organizers say this could become the single largest day of protest in American history. And today, ahead of those events, artists and activists gathered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. for a preview rally.

Here's what the actress Jane Fonda had to say.

Today, books are being banned, plaques and monuments depicting historical events, this administration wants to forget are being removed, museums, the national endowment of the arts, state arts councils, public broadcasting, they're all being defunded.

Our parents, our forefathers fought and died for these rights, for these freedoms. We must not sit by quietly and watch them taken away.

If we wait to act, if we hesitate out of fear or the feeling that it doesn't affect us, it may be too late.

The tools we have now to resist, including the right to vote, may not be here, may no longer be available if we don't act now.

Even in the face of powerful assaults, we still have our voice, we still have our community, and we will use our voices and our community to fight for our freedoms, to express ourselves and celebrate the joy of uncensored art.

More than 3,000 protests are planned nationwide, even some locations outside the United States, but organizers are calling the demonstration at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, the flagship event where Bruce Springsteen is expected to perform.

The Minnesota Governor Tim Walsh will also be there standing with protesters in the Twin Cities. Governor Walsh spoke about his plans tomorrow on all in with Chris Hayes last night.

I think it's just to be with my neighbors. I'm grateful to the folks you saw it, organic leadership on the streets that showed that peaceful protest and resistance standing up for human rights, constitutional rights is proved to be a very popular thing.

And I think Donald Trump, just like so many things, breaks it and moves on. Some of its buffoonage, Trump's takes, Trump's university, but he sent the federal government armed agents in here, killed our citizens, did massive damage that will take years to recover from.

We will never forget what happened here, and we're taking action against it. And I think you'll see it very visibly in the No Kings rallies, and grateful to folks across the country.

But an ununderstanding that I think Minneapolis and Minnesota provided the template here for pushing back on this guy. And there's work to be done. There's working done because we still need justice.

Joining us now, Leah Greenberg, co-founder and co-executive director of the Indivisible Project. Leo, how are you feeling tonight? You have put so much into these nationwide demonstrations and helping to underpin them. How are you feeling?

I am just so incredibly excited. I have heard from so many people around the country who are planning protests, people who are part of big powerful coalitions and cities across the country, and people who are planning these for the first time. Sometimes in a place that's never had a protest quite like this before.

But they're giving it a go, and they are finding that their neighbors are coming out to be with them too. And so I'm really, I'm excited for tomorrow, and I am excited for all the organizing. The people who are going to find each other, who are going to get connected, and who are going to keep the work going that is going to come out of tomorrow.

This is number three. I mean, there have been many, many protests. Some of them are weekly, and some of them are a dozen people. But this is number three of the really big ones. But at something you pointed out to me last week, whether it was in Portland, Oregon, or other places.

There is a celebratory nature to this. I think what Governor Wall said is true. This isn't about buffoonery. This is about a deadly dangerous government. But on the side of people who are going to go out and demonstrate their agency tomorrow, there's a great deal of pride in that.

That's right. And one of the important things that we have learned about how you fight back against authoritarianism is you lean into joy and you lean into humor.

The tactics of showing up in a giant inflatable animal costume that folks saw at No Kings 2, that came out of a strategic innovation.

Protesters at the Patortland Ice Detention Facility were being labeled by the government as a violent and as threatening in order to justify a repressive crackdown on them.

They started showing up in these inflatable costumes because it's very hard to make the case that you are afraid for your life if you're facing somebody who's an inflatable unicorn costume that got scaled out around the country.

We try to roll that humor in. We try to roll that joy in. We want to create that sense of community because fundamentally fascism is about making you feel like you are alone and you are powerless. And what these events do is they show you that that is 100% not the case.

Yeah, you remember last time you and I were talking right before the last set of rallies and my Johnson was calling them to know what the hate America rallies and these kinds of things. I think this is important for people who are watching this tonight who are thinking about participating in a protest but who have never participated to protest in their life that that there's no hate in these things at all.

These are they're joyful. They are powerful. I think Governor Wells landed on something incredibly important that we've seen come out of the story of Minnesota that is these are about neighbors coming together about people who are collectively saying we're going to protect each other. We're going to stand up for each other.

We are the ultimate source of authority in this country and we are ultimately here for each other. And so I think that it is it is really important for anybody who's never been to a protest before to understand that.

Yes, we've got funny signs, but at the core of this is leaning into our own collective power.

I was talking to Bill McKibben last week who's got so many decades of protesting and one of the things to remember whether it was climate or whether it's civil rights movement or whether it's this moment is you just don't know.

You don't know where the end is. You don't know how it ends and you don't know how quickly it'll end. Obviously we have some elections which give us some milestones.

But fundamentally you don't know how going out tomorrow will end up making America a safer and more democratic place.

And that's that's part of the joy of democracy. That's that's part of the the appreciation of this experiment that you have an obligation to do something.

We're not sure how it's going to end.

That's right. And and we are but what we know is that every action that we take every bond that we build every every connection that we make in these moments

are these are the things that we will draw on as we continue to build going forward right coming out of this.

We're going to lean in to organizing locally. We're going to be bringing people together in amongst organizations that are organizing these for follow-up meetings to say what's next?

How are we going to build in our community? How are we going to keep building power? How are we going to focus in on what we can do to protect our neighbors?

How are we going to focus on protecting our elections? Because fundamentally what we are going to all need to do is continue to build that local power all over the country that is going to make this authoritarian onslaught impossible.

So June had different reasons for people to go out than October did. And the reasons in October seem so distant than the reasons in March. What's different and what's the same?

Well, since since October we have seen both Trump's political capital collapse. We've seen him dramatically lose his strength in the polls and a lot of his own coalition start to fracture under the weight of the Epstein revelations.

And we've also seen him escalate. We have seen him launch an occupation of an American city and a reign of terror and racial profiling. We have seen him launch an illegal and catastrophic war that is killing innocent civilians abroad and driving up costs at home.

A billion dollars a day going for bombs that are driving conflict instead of going to healthcare and schools here at home.

What we are seeing is that there is a continued need to stand against violence and authoritarianism at home and abroad. And that is really driving a lot of the energy right now.

I don't know if you're going to get any sleep tonight because tomorrow is going to be a big day. But thanks as always for being with us Leah.

Great to be here.

The Greenbird. All right, coming up. What will America self-styled most winningest president now do?

Because it's so clear that he's losing strategically in Iran and that it might only get worse. We'll talk about that on the other side.

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By now anyone can write a Donald Trump speech pick any topic literally any topic the border budget bill the ballroom and add this.

Now we're winning too much and I say no no no you're going to win again you're going to win big you're going to win bigger than ever.

That is basically a Trump speech except it doesn't work and it really doesn't work in war because here's Donald Trump claiming that we've won the war in Iran.

We've won this with this war has been won.

That was Tuesday at least he's predictable Trump claims we've won and also that he's negotiating with Iran and also that he's pausing any actions to facilitate negotiations and also that Iran has been denying that there are even

negotiations and mocking Trump with memes of fake text threads in which Donald Trump is texting only with himself.

Trump is saying that we've won because that's what he always says about everything if we've won why is Trump sending more troops to the region.

Why is he raising the army's enlistment age limit why are the casualty numbers going up.

Trump says we could open the Strait of Hormuzin restore the global oil flow at any time except it's not open.

And everyone can see that at their local gas station because the prices keep going up $4 a gallon now that's a national average price $5.70 in California.

The Guardian reports quote the former head of Iran desk at Israel's military intelligence Danny Citrenowitz predicted that by the expiry of Trump's latest 10 day deadline Iran would not surrender would not accept the 15 point framework would not relinquish control of the Strait of Hormuz and would continue attacks on Israel and the Gulf states.

After that Trump will face a decisive choice of further escalation of tensions of retreat or a push for a negotiated settlement similar to the one that Iran offered in March.

The U.N. is not going to sanction the use of force to reopen the Strait Europe will not participate and the G7 will not endorse it.

So what will America's self styled big winning president do then.

Trump lies like he breathes we all know that but war is different and lies about war are different as the editorial board of the New York Times recently wrote lies about war also make it harder to achieve victory.

The more one spreads falsehoods the less one feels obliged to face reality in retrospect Americans understand that their leaders refusal to confront the truth in Iraq and Vietnam led to strategic errors.

The pattern is repeating before Mr. Trump began this war he brushed aside warnings from his top military advisors that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz to traffic it that to traffic that it does not approve.

The global economy is now dealing with the consequences of his overconfidence and yet he may yet learn a more personal lesson about lying in war.

Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush will forever be remembered as having misled Americans about US military action they learned that falsehoods can boomerang on them and the leaders who tell them.

And we've got breaking news this hour out of the Middle East MS now can report that a US airbase has been hit in an attack by Iranian ballistic missiles and drones that's according to a US official.

According to an initial assessment roughly a dozen US troops have been injured aircraft were also damaged in the attack including at least two US tankers.

Joining me now is Aaron David Miller senior fellow at the Carnegie Institute for International Peace and a former Arab Israeli negotiator.

Aaron good to see you again you know a few months ago you and I were saying someone hopefully that Donald Trump was able to stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu and create a deal that may ultimately not likely but may lead to some kind of settlement.

What is the handling of tensions in the Middle East what happened what what what how is this the same guy.

He's been the same guy I mean he's a president whose priorities are money power and glory and while Donald Donald Trump didn't succumb to the temptations of Benjamin Netanyahu Prime Minister I think on this one was pushing on an open door Donald Trump wanted this.

He wanted to demonstrate American power in the way in the wake of the grab and go of Maduro.

He went to war based on false and on proven claims Iran was not within weeks of producing a nuclear weapon as the president said Iran did not have an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States as the president said Iran was not about to preemptively strike.

America as the president said and now he has a month into this war the assumptions on which it was based are also proven to be false number one American had America has escalation and dominance and yet the Iranians have extraordinary capacity they're weaponizing geography Ali.

They're they've identified the weak points and tonight was another tragedy to service men seriously wounded.

And a number of others of very seriously when recording reports and a number of others seriously wounded Iranians have capacity number one and number two so far and the headlines seem to be the trend line here.

The Iranian regime has essentially held together and far from fighting in Iran and Delci Rodriguez as my colleague Karim said you were says he's encounter Trump's encounter an Iranian Kim Jong Un and not just one Kim Jong Un it would be actually quite extraordinary and to America's benefit if there was a single legitimate authorized Iranian decision maker that could essentially commit Iran.

To negotiations or whatever the president wants to do but there's not so the president a month in finds himself in a box and I see no chance of a negotiated settlement which leaves the deployment of American combat forces somewhere around 10,000 by the time I don't and you don't deploy them Ali to bluff.

Yeah so you make an interesting point you said whether this leads to negotiations or whatever it is the president wants what a weird situation to be in you you dealt with the Middle East for decades.

We have an often not gotten it right probably gotten it wrong more than we've gotten it right but there was always some sense of a collective goal this is what's unclear in this war we're just not sure whose war it is who wants it who benefits from it and what success actually looks like in this thing and we weren't done with negotiate.

We may not have been making massive strides but we weren't done yet choosing to go to war over negotiations is a is a is a big and important decision agreed.

And in fact the administration's wandered all over the parking lot on this one I mean a war of choice this is the tragedy a war of choice which was essentially a trilateral affair among Israel Iran and the US has now become I'm afraid tragically a war of necessity

because it is now a global international crisis and the key goal now is to open the straits and the only two ways to do that negotiate with the Iranians and I don't think Trump is prepared to pay their price or somehow change Iran's calculation.

Maybe they're maybe the Iranians are delusional Trump wants to change the calculation and basically convince them they're not winning that he's winning and that requires a demonstration of escalation and American power and it's going to require and this is where it all breaks down for me I don't know what the purpose and the mission of just under 10,000 American forces are to do what yeah we could see sees Carg Island you could blow it up you could.

Seize any number of the smaller islands that guard the entrance of the straits but then what I mean they're 15 20 miles off the coast of Iran a launch time with from a drone from launched impact.

With that distance is 20 to 30 seconds so he's about to put Americans as general Macrystal said you can't change your regime from 30,000 feet.

But he's doing now he's going to put American six feet away from hostile forces and I'm afraid it's not going to end well.

Aaron once again I always say one day we'll talk about good things but I don't think it's going to be in this life one day we will it's good to see my friend as always Aaron David Miller.

Coming up you probably heard about the big loss the Donald Trump suffered in Tuesday special elections in his home district of Florida.

Donald Trump is now going to be represented by a Democrat in the Florida House but there was another Democratic victory in Florida this week that shocked the political world.

A former Navy vet who flipped the district previously held by Florida's current Republican lieutenant governor.

We're going to meet Tuesday's other big winner Brian Nathan and ask him how he did it after this.

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In a week that could see the largest protests in the US history and with polls showing Donald Trump hitting a record low approval rating Donald Trump and his party lost not once but twice this week in Florida.

Donald Trump's adopted home state last Friday on this program you'll recall I spoke with Emily Gregory who is running to represent the Florida House district in which Donald Trump lives.

The Democrat Emily Gregory one even though Donald Trump voted by mail by the way for the other guy Emily Gregory beat Donald Trump's endorsed candidate in Tuesday special election and she did it in a district that Trump carried by 11 points in 2024.

But there was another loss for Donald Trump's party on Tuesday Brian Nathan a Navy veteran defeated the Trump endorsed Republican in a state Senate seat in Hillsborough County.

A seat that was vacated by the Republican now lieutenant governor that's also a district that Trump won handily in 2024.

Together this makes an astonishing 30 seats that have flipped from Republicans to Democrats since Donald Trump returned to office 13 months ago.

Democrats have flipped 30 seats Republicans have flipped check notes zero.

But as the saying goes all politics is local and in Hillsborough County Florida local politics right now is about home insurance.

Every hurricane season our community braces what might happen and when the storm passes we do what Floridians always do.

We rebuild we repair we help our neighbors pick up the pieces but for too many families the hardest fight comes after the storm

because when we file the insurance claims for benefits we paid for insurance companies often delay deny and fight us every step of the way.

While our insurance premiums keep skyrocketing their investors are pocketing billions.

That's because career politicians like Josie Tomkow sided with the insurance companies again and again and again.

I'm Brian Nathan and I'm running because Florida families deserve someone who will fight for them not betray their trust.

All right joining now Brian Nathan former Navy veteran state senator elect for Florida's 14th district Brian congratulations welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

I want to talk to you about insurance. It's an important topic. I want to discuss it with you.

I do want to ask you though because you're a military veteran. We've just had this news now that 12 more US troops are injured too seriously in an attack that got through air defenses in Saudi Arabia on to a US base.

It's a hard war to explain. I know this is not your remit as a as a state senator but it comes up a lot of Americans are sitting here thinking I got a lot of things going on at home that I need to worry about and we're spending a lot of money on a war that we don't understand that in which Americans are getting killed and wounded.

Yeah it's a tough not to crack like you said state Senate really doesn't deal with a foreign service like that but as a veteran my heart goes out those families.

I lost friends after the military just like everybody else did from the global war on terror I lost friends in Iraq and Afghanistan and I know what it means to carry that burden when you come home.

Right let's talk about insurance when when Donald Trump talks about affordability as an abstraction and a hoax and all this kind of stuff for many Americans it is actually insurance it's either the cost of insurance that keeps increasing or the cost of repairing your house as you point out after something has happened or the fact that in Florida and in California there's somebody who simply cannot get insurance for their homes and if you can't ensure your property you can't buy your property can't get a mortgage a bank will not give you a mortgage on an uninsurable property.

Absolutely I was running into that when I was out knocking doors people were telling me that I'm just going to go without insurance which is a sad state of affairs in a state like Florida especially as close to the coast as we are it just takes one good hurricane and your home is gone.

I suffered hurricane damage that my insurance company elected not to repair so I had over $10,000 worth of damage nothing happened I ended up doing the work myself thankfully I have the skills to do it.

But a lot of people don't when I was door knocking I was walking around my neighborhoods seeing my neighbors and there's still tarps on roofs over a year later and this is because insurance companies aren't fulfilling their end of the bargain we pay these premiums year after year and when you need them they're not there.

What this is in your remit this is actually something you can do as a state senator these are the kind of things people need to think that their elected representatives are doing for them at every level.

Absolutely so we have a liquidity issue here in Florida the liquidity requirements for insurance companies is a bismely low so they don't have to keep much cash on hand so you have a billion dollar storm come through these companies can't afford to pay out so we need to start looking at those liquidity requirements and the.

I don't know if you would call it offshoreing but companies raking in these large profits and then sending them out of state moving that money out of Florida when the families here need support.

Brian you said you did a lot of the work yourself you are a member of the international brotherhood of electrical workers your proud union guy how that go over in the election.

That got a lot of a lot of attention and a lot of questions I spend my day as an organizer so I talk to people about the union.

People are surprised we have unions in Florida and yes we are here so this is a right to work state that is a fight but when you talk to people about benefits health insurance things like that what the union can bring it really grabs their attention and those are the issues that I heard again and again on the campaign trail is I need to feed my family I need to make sure they're healthy I want to be able to afford a home so those conversations I have a my day job translated very well to the campaign trail.

Brian's nice to meet you thank you very much for being with us again congratulations Florida state senator elect Brian Nathan we appreciate your time tonight thank you tonight's last word is next.

Now programming note before we go for tomorrow's meeting of the Valshi band book club I'll be joined by the celebrated Irish author column Tobin his brand new collection of short stories called the news from Dublin includes one story that Tobin deliberately sat down and wrote on the day of Donald Trump's second inauguration it's the story of an undocumented Irish immigrant that will see seem eerily prescient when you read it today.

That's tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Eastern on Valshi and stay with MS now all day tomorrow for live coverage of the no Kings rallies across the country there will be more than 3,000 of them including some outside of the United States are reporters will be on the ground at protests around the country will have live guests through the day who are at those protests this will be history as it happens live and I hope you'll join us for real talent is defined by what people can do not where they learn to do it so by stopping at the end of

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