terror raids in new york city. it's wednesday, february 25th and this is "now." three hours ago -- hours ago, three men ages 19, 24, and 30 were arrested in terror raids in new york city and jacksonville, florida. two of the men were planning to go overseas to join the isis terror group. according to authorities, the youngest man identified in a criminal complaint was attempting to board a flight to turkey out of john f. kennedy airport early this morning when he was apprehended by law enforcement. >> two of the individuals were seeking to fly to syria. one was arrested at the international airport jfk. a second individual had a later

flight scheduled. he was arrested at his home. a third individual who organized and financed the trip of the other two individuals was arrested in jacksonville, florida. in a recorded conversation, he said he would go buy a machine gun and go out and shoot all police if he could not travel to syria. in august another suspect posted that he would kill president obama if isis asked him to and he requested help in obtaining weapons. law enforcement officials say any potential homegrown threat was aspirational and not operational. joining me now is pete williams. what more are we learning about the suspects and just how much intelligence gathering the fbi has been doing on them?

>> let's reduce it to the language of the street. what the fbi alleges here is these guys, two of them tried to travel to syria. one was arrested as he tried to board the plane at jfk. one had a plane ticket for later in march. as for talking about strategyaging the attacks here it never got past talk. they didn't have any bomb making materials. they didn't have any guns. it is disturbing language. it is of great concern to law enforcement that they were talking about it but it never got past the talking stage, that part of it. if they couldn't get to syria, they might consider attacks here. they did succeed in buying tickets to go to turkey, but never actually got to syria. >> these guys could face up to 15 years in prison.

the fbi has monitoring them for what sounds like quite an extended period of time. is that right? >> the weight of the evidence of their charges is their willingness to go to syria to fight with isis. they're charged with material support to a terror organization although their rhetoric indicated they fought if they staged attacks in the u.s. it would frighten the infidels meaning americans. >> thank you. joining me now matthew levette. let me begin with the feelings that most americans have. how is this happening here? there have been repeated assurances from the white house on down. the president said earlier last month this kind of recruitment

doesn't really happen in the united states because of the way muslims have been integrated to american society. is this an exception to that? how valid do you think is that assessment? >> the fbi stopped it. the fbi has its eyes and ears to the ground in ways like it never did before. the president and others have said this type of activity, the radicalization that we have seen in numbers isn't happening here because there tends to be better integration here. but the ideology knows no boundaries. we have had 150 people so far who have tried to go to syria. they explicitly talked about if they weren't able to go to syria, they would do something here. isis after the sydney bombing at the cafe said this is great. he didn't have to come here. he did this at home. in canada we had an incident

where someone wasn't able to get a passport and carries out an attack at home. we need to make sure we stop people from going to fight with isis, but also making sure we're aware of people who want to do something here. it is easy to get a gun in this country. and the low-scale simple attacks we have seen from paris to canada have been very deadly. >> fbi director said today, i have homegrown violent extremist investigations in every single state. there's a comparison to europe but i think that's cold comfort to folks in the united states that hear stuff like that. >> yes, while there are cases across the united states the u.s. government is on top of it and these are incidents. these are not trends. we don't have here a situation like we have elsewhere in the world. they have small numbers. if any one of these gets

through, it would be devastating. these guys were arrested. this is a good story. >> another dimension of the story that is good and heartening is the mother of one of these men took his passport away for fear he would go to syria. to what degree do you think that that is a sign the messaging around being vigilant is working? >> i think it is a very important sign and it is one we have heard a lot. i was at the summit last week. within the muslim community, mothers and fathers don't want their sons and daughters to go and fight or join isis or other groups in syria or iraq. they are part of the solution. we're seeing people not only doing things like confiscating their children's passports, but by going to law enforcement and saying, hey, i think my kid is going down the wrong path. >> there is a lot of talk about social media, social networking.

i wonder if you think we're doing an adequate job in terms of combatting the message that isis is furthering on social networks. there's been renewed efforts by the state department to refocus our efforts there. are you optimistic about that? >> this happens mostly in the private sector space. there's only so much government can do. there is a big private sector to summit last week. there's a reason why people in muslim communities, parents who don't want their children engaged in this activity are talking about their fear of google. >> matthew levette, thanks for your time. >> always a pleasure. against the backdrop of terror raids in new york city and jacksonville a pitched battle over homeland security is underway in the halls of congress. moments ago, senate majority

leader mitch mcconnell allowed a vote on the bill to fully fund the agency through september. >> for weeks, we have asked that there be a vote on clean funding of the homeland security department. coast guard, secret service, customs. and senator mcconnell has agreed to give us a vote on that. we're glad to see that that's happened. >> whether or not dhs shuts down on friday night depends on house republicans, specifically speaker john boehner. boehner and mcconnell had finally spoken to each other today. something they apparently had not done in over two weeks. with me now is luke russert and eugene robinson. luke, you have the scoop.

are boehner and mcconnell finally on the same page? >> i don't think it's fair to say they're on the same page. i think they're going through the options they have before them but essentially what mitch mcconnell has done here is if this does go through the united states senate through a final vote -- which the indications are it will -- then john boehner has a serious decision he has to make. there's three decisions he could make. he could take this plan run with it put the clean bill on the vote. it would get 60 to 65 republicans, pass it with democratic help. that would anger the right flank. he could listen to the right flank and do nothing. to have this fight over immigration right here right now. or he could come up with his own solution, which is idea of

perhaps you do a temporary funding of the department of homeland security two weeks, two months and maybe use the court process, the legal process, to try to go against the president's executive actions. speaker boehner said i can throw the red meat to you guys and let you beat your stomachs and your chests, oh and by the way we have to do something in a week. >> what makes this time different is the optics are remarkably poor for republicans because mitch mcconnell is in control of the senate now. it is happening against the backdrop of terror raids in florida and new york. we're talking about the department of homeland security. the optics of it for the gop are

awful. >> right. the atmospherics do count, alex. in fact with this news cycle now being dominated by the isis-related terror arrests, it kind of makes funding the department of homeland security a no-brainer i think for most people. but the optics were never very good for republicans on this and they saw this coming that they were kind of painting themselves into yet another corner. the question is do they fold now, do they do a temporary measure and fold a week or two or three from now? but they don't really as i can see, have any other way out of this. >> luke a short-term funding of the department of homeland security, which would put them in the same position in 60 days how likely is that? >> if john boehner is fearful of

violating the hastert rule, then i think really the only option he has. going into a shutdown this weekend when you have al shabaab, this latest threat i had one member say to me today luke, the republican party for the last 14 years has said two things. we lower your taxes and keep you safe by getting rid of terrorists. you have this fraction of the conference, which is shall we say sort of led on by conservative media and outside forces that they should stand up and fight about immigration now -- the president is going to have a town hall on msnbc tonight. by the way, the secret service protecting the president is not getting paid because republicans

are trying to make a point about immigration. the optics don't work well. i interviewed jay johnson today. what are these members saying to you when you say, hey, i would be fighting terrorism with one hand behind my back if this occurs? we support you, but talk to the next guy. it's passing the ball. >> we should not lose sight of the fact that if the department of homeland security shuts down at least 50,000 of the more than 55,000 tsa forces are going to be required to work without pay. 30,000 people would be furloughed. tens of thousands of people who are tasked with keeping the skies and transportation routes safe in this country are not incentivized to work because they're not going to be getting paid. >> for what? >> right. >> to make a political point it is in the end, about

arithmetic. they don't have enough votes to pass the immigration restrictions they would like to pass. if they did, there's one big vote in the white house, president obama, who would get to veto it. they wouldn't have the votes in either house to override a veto. the numbers just don't add up. what the republicans do have is an opportunity here. they have a federal judge in texas who has ruled against the president on these measures. they can declare victory and say now, aha, we have it. see the courts agree with us and we have made our point and now let's go on about the business of keeping america safe. that seems to be politics 101, but we're not seeing that happen. >> they're not taking the win they have in front of them as far as the courts eugene. >> it's there. we have won.

we have made our point and we're certain that the courts are going to in the end, you know counteract this overreach of presidential authority. i think the courts are going to overrule this one, but they all have to say that now. >> dhs does nothing as far as the president's executive orders on immigration. >> exactly. it is not related, and i don't think most people are going to see it related. >> always good to see you guys. thank you. and a programming reminder tonight msnbc is hosting a town hall with president obama in miami. you can send your questions to the president using the hash tag #townhall. be sure to tune in tonight at 8:00 p.m. how real is the rift between hillary clinton and elizabeth warren? for some democrats, perhaps too real. plus the dude on "now." my conversation with jeff

bridges about something very close to his heart. and later, danny strong is here to talk about his new show the hit, "empire." all of that is ahead on "now." huh, fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. everybody knows that. well, did you know words really can hurt you? what...? jesse don't go! jesse...no! i'm sorry daisy, but i'm a loner.

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up and down the ladder many women are paid less for the same work which is why i think we all cheered at patricia arquette's speech at the oscars because she's right. it's time to have wage equality once and for all. >> health care's first speech of 2015 at a women's conference in

california. gender is likely to play a much larger role this time around. as clinton road tested issues like equal pay, family leave, and child care besides being an obvious appeal to women, it seemed an attempt to blunt criticism from the left side of her base. elizabeth warren was asked by our own reverend al sharpton whether clinton could be considered a progressive warrior. >> i think that's what we got to see. i want to hear what she wants to run on and what she says she wants to do. that's what campaigns are supposed to be about. >> yesterday in california hillary's choice seemed pretty clear. being a progressive warrior is secondary to the broader goal of appealing to the middle. >> there are a lot of things that i would love to see our country do. i'd like to bring people from right, left red, blue get them into a nice warm purple space

where everybody is talking and where we're actually trying to solve problems. that would be my objective, if i decide to do this. >> joining me now is "new york magazine's" jonathan shate. i'm sure this poll tests well but is that not sort of a retread of obama's there is no red america, blue america, there's just america? >> when president obama was making these kinds of lofty promises, she was ridiculing him as naive. >> correct. >> but now he's recapitulating the same promise. this is what people want to hear. >> this is what people want to hear and it makes sort of choosing what part of the left flank you're going to be on that much easier if you outsource the discussion to the middle and say that's where i want to live. >> that's exactly right. the advantage the democrats have is that the democratic base is much more receptive to the idea

of compromise just in the abstract. if you poll people should the parties compromise or should they stand up for what they want, democrats and liberals say we should compromise and conservatives don't. it is easier for a democratic candidate to run on this kind of a message than a republican. >> there is a schism with some progressives who i think are skeptical with what clinton's fundamental policies are going to be. when you heard elizabeth warren on reverend al sharpton's show yesterday some people read that as a diss. we know that clinton and warren met at clinton's house in december. i would imagine that there's more coordination going on behind the scenes than is readily apparent. what do you think? >> it's really interesting figuring out what warren is

doing. it's hard. she's a very smart, very very effective senator. she might be the most effective member of the senate. she's able to identify issues that she can bring into the public sphere just by virtue of the celebrity she has cultivated around herself and the trust that akctivists give her and elevate them to levels of high importance and she can force figures like clinton to give her deference. she's just doing this in a really effective way. >> i feel like by having a detente with hillary, it helps republicans. generally for the democratic party, hillary clinton gets to

say she is the centrist willing to go to middle. jonathan, i thought it was really interesting that hillary clinton talked about patricia arquette. she's wearing her gender in a much more prominent way. she's talking about being a woman and the issues that face women in america as a headline issue. do you agree with what bloomberg says, that the landscape has changed, that feminism has become chic? >> i think that's right. you have to go back to 1992 and remember when hillary clinton's feminism was seen as this scary thing that she was denounced for as this alien figure that was

out of touch with middle-class america because she was some kind of feminist, so i think the culture has changed and i also think the democratic party has changed to become much more friendly to feminist ideas. the obama administration's effect economic strategy has been to increase women's participation and increase the productivity of the work force. these all poll in the same direction. >> given the backlash that patricia arquette face that a white woman of privilege talking about wage inequality seems somehow hollow and given the clinton's fortune, does it hurt her -- this polls well with quote/unquote upwardly female voters. does it maybe hurt a little bit

as much as it helps? >> so i think what that plays into is a question of corruption or insiderness or a lack of purity or trustfulness. those are issues that harmed bill clinton. i don't think it's going to be a policy issue for her because she's going to be the left of the republican candidates. she'll have a more populist platform. to the extent it seems to be corrupt or if stories come out that show some kind of unseemliness, that's where i think it could hurt. >> we'll be talking about this a lot over the coming months. good to see you. coming up marshawn lynch might be the one giving out the fines. i will explain. plus my interview with jeff bridges is ahead on "now."

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but what is the real-life jeff bridges up to? bridges was in l.a. yesterday promoting no kid hungry campaign. he wants to ensure that every child gets a nutritious breakfast. for 11 million school kids that happens at school. bridges sat down with me to discuss the project. >> joining me now is actor jeff bridges, founder and chief executive officer of share our strength, billy shore, and tom kolikio. jeff, i want to start with you. i know you have been engaged on the issue of hunger for a long time now. what first drew you to it? >> i've been involved in the issue of hunger for about 30

years now. it started out being really concerned about world hunger because we had hunger pretty much handled here in america. we formed an organization called the end hunger network, but about 20 years ago we shifted our focus from world hunger to hunger here in america because a lot of the programs that kept hunger at bay weren't being funded properly and sure enough hunger started to show up here in our country. so we started to focus here figuring we can't be telling other countries how to end hunger when we have the problem going on here. then about five years ago, i hooked up with billy's organization share our strength and their no kid hungry campaign and we have had great success going from state to state working with governors making childhood hunger in their state a priority. >> billy is a persuasive guy. i know that with my limited

experience with him on television. billy, in terms of the issue of school breakfast, this seems like a no-brainer. there are federal funds there. there are solutions readily at hand and there are millions of kids not getting the meals they need in the morning. what's the biggest on stackbstacle at this point? >> the obstacles are at lunch. you have to get kids to school early. there is a stigma for kids who go early. we move breakfast from the cafeteria before school to the first few minutes of first period or sometime after the bell. the results are dramatic. in los angeles, for example, when they did that breakfast participation increased from 30% to 80%. one of the things that you see

as a result of that attendance improves visits to the nurses office goes down test scores ultimately improve and so does our entire school system. >> tom, i think it shocks people to know how critical a role school plays in getting kids the meals that they need. a lot of people think it is a nice edition to the portfolio of education. i went to one of the poorest counties in the country. these kids sometimes don't eat over the weekend because they're not in school. they have no meals provided for them, so it is critical to get them food in school. >> there are 30 million children who are participating in the school lunch program every single day in our country. half of them come from homes that are experiencing poverty. this is the only meal that these kids are getting. my mom ran a school lunch program. she didn't want to retire yet because she knew a lot of kids that were coming into her

program, that's all they were eating. right now we're going to have that debate. there are people in congress who want to cut back some of the nutrition standards we set in the school program. they are pushing back pretty dramatically on that. >> it seems like almost an indefensible position to say we should be cutting the funding for basic school -- this is how we get the country ahead is by feeding and educating kids. the money is there. no breakfast or lunch for these kids i feel like it is like an indefensible position to take and yet this is something that's being debated. >> i think so. probably the most patriotic thing we can do is take care of our kids the future of our country. i've been going around talking with governors. i have found that it's very heartening to find out that governors from both sides of the

aisle, democratic and republican governors, are both very concerned about this problem and they're doing something about it and getting on board with this breakfast after the bell. governor sandoval in nevada who is a republican is very supportive of this. so is -- i'm very fond of montana and the governor up there just announced in his state of the state speech that 41,000 more kids now are getting breakfasts in montana because of moving breakfast from the cafeteria into the casslassroom and that's quite remarkable considering there are only 141,000 students in montana. these great success stories really keep us going here. >> billy, short of starring in a cohen brothers film as well as other critically-acclaimed

movies for the layman what do you advise people to do given the sort of state of affairs? >> i love the title of billy's organization, share our strength. we all have strengths that we can share. i happen to be an entertainer. i don't know maybe some of you guys saw the super bowl. >> yes, we did, jeff. >> all of those sales that goes from those sleeping tapes, those records that we make, all of that goes to share our strengths no kid hungry campaign. people can look into their own lives and find what strengths they may have to share. you can be teachers taxi drivers. >> one of the things we're doing is launching this campaign in california in a big way over the next few weeks to get people focused on the opportunity here in california. we're asking people to e-mail jeff at californiabreakfast.org.

>> we have 2 million kids. >> are you really checking it? >> yes, i will check it. yeah, sure. i'm interested in those numbers. >> you're going to have a lot of e-mails in your inbox after this segment. >> good. i hope so. >> tom, you know about feeding people, right, as a restauranteur, but there's something to jeff's point about sharing our strength. there's something incredibly communal and life affirming to be able to provide a meal for someone. it is important for all of us to remember the importance of that and how that weaves us together to be one big community. >> it is easy to demonize someone to say they're lazy and that's why they're not making it. when you're living and trying to make ends meet and you are going day-to-day, you're struggling. this basic need of feeding

someone -- going back 30 40 years ago, you wouldn't let your neighbor go hungry. we have to expand that concept of who our neighbor is now and make sure these kids are taken care of. as billy and jeff pointed out, it is our future. >> it is. you are incredible advocates and doing really important work. thank you guys all for your time. coming up where timberland meets shakespeare. i'll speak with the co-creator of the show "empire" just ahead. in the country. we operate just like a city and that takes a lot of energy. we use natural gas throughout the airport - for heating the entire terminal generating electricity on-site and fueling hundreds of vehicles. we're very focused on reducing our environmental impact. and natural gas is a big part of that commitment.

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i'm here so i won't get fined. i'm here so i won't get fined. i'm here so i won't get fined. >> i'm here so i won't get fined. if you steal that line one day you could get fined. marshawn lynch filed a formal application to trademark a catch phrase he used multiple times in

a pre-super bowl press conference. lynch is no stranger to trademarks. he owns beastmode and he has an application pending for i'm just here so i won't get fined. >> i'm just about that action boss. >> if the whole football thing doesn't work out, perhaps marshawn lynch has a bright future in marketing. hi hampton. >> hi, alex. i'm just here so i won't get fined and to pass on a little info about stocks. it was a mixed bag heading into tomorrow. the dow gaining 15 points, the s&p falling one point, the nasdaq down just under a point. that's it from cnbc first in business worldwide. 3 million lines of code, 40,000 sets of eyes, or a million sleepless nights. whether it's building

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part of us going public means ensuring a legacy for this company and right now it seems none of you are prepared to take over after i'm gone. it won't happen today, nor tomorrow but i will start grooming someone soon and it can only be one of you. >> what is this? we king lear now? >> the new show "empire" is not only hip hop's king lear is the god father and his dynasty all with timbaland. it's premiere is one of fox's highest in years. it stars one of the strongest female characters on network

television. joining me now is the co-creator and executive producer of "empire" danny strong. danny, i said this to you before you came on the set. it is like a hurricane of awesome. how did you guys come up with the concept for this show? >> i love that phrase the hurricane of awesome. i want to tweet that right now. how did i come up with the show? i was driving around in my car in l.a. and there was a news story on the radio and i thought, hip hop is so cool. hip hop is awesome. i thought of king lear. >> and then i instantly thought about kinglear -- most people don't go from power 106 to shakespeare. was that your writer imagination? >> i do that.

i go to classical archetypes almost immediately. it is almost my writing process. with game change i went to pygmalion. i need to give lee daniels a call, because this could be pretty cool. i pitched it to lee. he loved it. he said i love your idea but it is not a movie. it's a tv show. >> so it was originally supposed to be a movie? >> yeah. the next thing we started talking about was "dynasty." we knew about the soap opera and dallas. everything you said about "god father," "dynasty," that's what we thought about. >> you have a strong female archetype coming out of jail. to that degree, you managed to bring in a lot of very i think,

ripe subjects for discussion and analysis which is sexuality. there's a gay male character on the show. gender parody. tell me about the character of cookie. how you developed her. >> when i pitched the show to lee, i said he's going to have a wife that gets out of jail and she's going to be momma rose on crack. he said, i love it i love it. she would be this dynamo in the music industry and she would be fearless and a hustler. she would be the real thorn in his spine. >> you also have one of the sons as gay. homosexuality in the black community has been a very tough

topic. president obama has a tough time coming out and talking about gay marriage and supporting it precisely because there was a sort of schism between the black church in many respects and the gay rights community. those two communities seem to have come together. how difficult is it to write to that character? >> it's not difficult at all. i mean it was inherent in the concept of the show that the main character, our music mogul, was going to have a gay son and he would hate his son because he was gay so we could take on homophobia in this very brutal very honest way. lee and i are both subversive in the stuff we like to work on. for me the idea of we were going to do this mainstream network soap opera and attack homophobia i just thought was super hip and cool. we were very open about it when we pitched it to networks and no

one balked. everyone got it. >> you talk about sitcoms, dramas, and comedies that theoretically have a black audience. there's a huge part of america that is not spoken to in terms of entertainment. 1999 6.5% of the leading and supporting roles on fox were black characters. now it's up to 21%. this is a good trend. it seems like a no-brainer that this show would do well. >> it is going to shift more now because of "empire." pilot season there's this thing called the "empire" effect. they're trying to cast lots of african-american characters on their shows. i knew from the numbers on "the butler" and what a hit that was that this is a large community in the united states of america that is wildly underrepresented in entertainment. if we could do a show that you

know had a strong african-american presence but also are the hip hop could cross over -- >> timbaland -- it crosses all color lines. congratulations on it. >> thank you so much. >> you are the hurricane of awesome, my friend. >> you are so cool. i appreciate it. >> you can catch a new episode of "empire" tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern and 8:00 p.m. central on fox. thanks for your time. we'll have more after the break. i have the flu with a runny nose. [coughs] better take something. theraflu severe cold won't treat your

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taken by the mars recover which show a blue sunset. although i don't have any interest in buying a one-way ticket there, it is pretty awesome. that's it for "now." good evening americans, and welcome to "the ed show" live from new york. let's get to work. tonight, immigration takes center stage in the sunshine state. >> msnbc exclusive town hall event with president obama. >> it is in the best interest of america that we fix a broken immigration system. >> i think the law is on our side and history is on our side. later, san francisco makes a