administration, he is now a leading candidate to be the next chair of the democratic party. tom perez is going to be here live in person tonight, very much looking forward to that. this will be his first appearance on the rachel maddow show ever so we're soupy -- super -- soupy happey happy to h here tonight. also we're sort of soupy, but that's a totally different thing. we're going to start tonight in july of last year, this past july, summer, 2016. on a day when we as a nation were very distracted. we had our own mess to think about, we had our own politics to focus on, we were really not noticing anything else going on in the world. july 21 last year, that was the day that the man who is now our new president gave his big speech at the republican convention. that's the night he accepted the nomination of the republican party to be their presidential candidate.

that day, leading up to the speech the big news, the big distracting news all day long is what had happened the night before at the republican convention. we were very distracted. this was a very distracting thing because senator ted cruz of texas just the night before had given his speech at the republican convention and he had been all but run out of the room, screamed at, booed at for refusing to explicitly endorse donald trump in his speech at that convention. so that's what was going on july 21, this past summer. we had a lot on our minds that day. but that day our neighbors to the north had a big freaking oil spill. it made zero news in the united states but it was a big deal. this was a pipeline. it was not a particularly old or controversial pipeline. but it busted open and it sent and it sent 50,000 gallons of oil into the north saskatchewan river which, among other things,

is the drinking water source for a lot of people downstream. and the river was running really high at the time of the spill, there'd been a lot of rain in the area at that time. they did put boom into the river to try to contain some of the oil but it was basically completely -- you can see how effective the boom is being there, right? basically completely ineffective. the oil spilled all the way downstream. more than 200 miles down the north saskatchewan river. a whole bunch of canadian towns were not only polluted, a whole bunch of wildlife not only died but a lot of people, tens of thousands of canadians, lost their water source. the nearest town of any significant size to the spill luckily had some rainwater stored that it was able to use for emergency water on an emergency short-term basis until they could mcguyver together a hose to bring in water from another town that had been lucky enough to not have its string ing water intake fouled by this crude oil in the river.

it was a big deal. they started a cleanup operation. a lot of this was on native land in canada, in addition to the official cleanup led by the government a lot of local people came out to see the sight for themselves and to try to help with with the cleanup. this one guy -- i came across this in the contemporaneous news coverage. he's a member of the key nation. -- cree nation. he was out there at the site of the spill collecting dead animal life alongside the polluted river and you can see him making his feelings known there on his tee shirt which says "when i die, i'm haunting you first." so, yeah, that spill was a bad one. it happened on july 21. the company whose pipeline it was, they apologized. all the towns that lost their drinking water source they were, of course, very angry. the company told them they thought for sure all the fresh drinking water would be restored by september?

that was not the case. by the time we were holding our election in november many of those towns still did not have a source of clean drinking water because of that spill. 70,000 people affected directly in terms of their water but this major river in some ways irretrievably fouled by this big spill that happened july 21, the day donald trump became the republican nominee for president. today it happened again. another unexplained pipeline rupture in a not particularly old not particularly controversial pipeline and this one was just as big a spill, another 50,000 gallons or as they like to say in saskatchewan, 200,000 liters. >> there's been another major oil spill in our province. officials say around 200,000 liters of crude oil leaked on agricultural land in southern saskatchewan. >> the pipeline is owned by energy marketing incorporated and it was shut down when the leak was discovered.

there's no word on what the cause of the spill was. in fact, they're still trying to determine the source of the rupture under the frozen surface. this southern saskatchewan spill is significant at 200,000 liters, almost as much as crude oil that spilled as the husky energy spill into the north saskatchewan, that being about 225,000 liters. that affected the water supply for nearly 70,000 people down river. >> because i believe the news gods are numerologists, we get these interesting bookends now, right? on the day he was nominated for president we got a 50,000 gallon canadian oil pipeline rupture. now today, now that he is president, on the day he signed presidential memoranda resurrecting the dakota access pipeline and the keystone pipeline, today we got another twin oil pipeline rupture. another 50,000 gallons spilled. that's 100,000 gallons of ruptured pipeline crude to

bookend this decision today and the politics that made it possible. because of that decision today about the dakota access pipeline and keystone, today we saw protests, basically spontaneous protests at the white house in washington, d.c. also in new york city. people protesting up at columbus circle and near trump tower. given the size of these protests in the past, the anti-keystone protests that happened in the country but mainly in d.c., the huge protests about keystone, given the enormous dakota access pipeline protests that stunned north dakota this past year after native americans took the lead in protesting that pipeline even into the bitter winter months on the north dakota plains, given the size of the protests that these two projects have attracted in the past, expect this action by the new president to resurrect them today, expect those -- that action to create an unequal and very opposite reaction that will

likely be a sustained protest campaign to add to the other sustained protest campaigns that seem to be gearing up against this new and very unpopular president. the opposition to the keystone pipeline alone in nebraska alone i think the new president will find that's about to splash back in his face in a way he may not be expecting. but we don't yet really know how opposition like that and controversy like that is going to function in the trump era. we don't know how the new president is going to react. we just know with this decision on these two pipelines he has started something that will probably get a very, very big response. and now, speaking of a big response, let's pop over to oklahoma for a second because i want to show you a weather map. i want to show you a weather map from oklahoma from the first saturday morning in september. this is september, 2016, and this is a loop of the weather

radar map that day and we're going to run it on this loop here so you can see what's weird about it. see that blue green like burst? this is not something you typically see on weather radar. it's like a bloom or like a burst or flashbulb going off what that is is not clouds, not a storm, not a tornado or something, what that is, that big burst of blue and green on the weather snap that's birds that's all the birds in oklahoma taking off and flying away all at once. that happened at 6:47 a.m. on the morning of saturday, september 3. all the birds in the state flew away to the point where it was captured on weather radar. the birds took off apparently because they knew something was coming. because 15 minutes after they did that, 15 minutes after 6:47 at 7:02 a.m. something did happen. 7:02 a.m. saturday morning september 3 there was an earthquake in oklahoma.

and the birds knew it was coming. isn't that weird? it was a big earthquake, though. it was the biggest earthquake to ever hit oklahoma. in fact it was the biggest earthquake to hit the continental united states in the last two years. >> nearly a full minute of shaking in oklahoma, a state now rivaling california as earthquake country. >> it was the biggest one i've ever felt. >> today a 5.6 quake in the small town of pawnee. >> i've got to have you inspect the damage. >> emergency crews dousing fires while other areas saw 100-year-old stone facades come crashing down and in grocery stores aisle after aisle in shambles. >> right away you could tell this was something different. >> the quake fanning out across the country felt in nebraska, missouri, iowa, arkansas, texas, and as far as illinois and colorado. >> crazy. >> but more alarming than the shaking, an upward trend documented by the u.s. geological survey showing a spike in oklahoma earthquakes, a region with heavy oil and natural gas production.

this year for the first time geologists putting out a map highlighting areas prone to human-caused earthquakes. they're linked to the promise of fracking and injecting waste water at high pressure deep into the earth. >> that earthquake that hit oklahoma in september, the one that made all the birds in the state fly away 15 minutes before it arrived, the u.s. geological survey says that was a 5.8 magnitude quake which is big. oklahoma not only makes its own earthquakes now, it makes its own big earthquakes. that one, again, was the biggest quake to hit the continental united states in years. the attorney general of the state of oklahoma is a man named scott pruitt. he took office, he was sworn in in 2011. that year the year he took office in 2011, the number of earthquakes in oklahoma that were a magnitude 3.0 or above was 63. last year, oklahoma had more than 600 earthquakes of that size. the u.s. geological survey did do a study of man-made

earthquakes in the united states. induced earthquakes and they make it very clear, this is not, like, a big national problem in the united states. this is not everywhere. the u.s. geological survey did a study of man-made earthquakes, induced earthquakes and these are the maps from that study. here's one of them. i think we have a couple of these other maps. that's the one you saw in that "nbc nightly news" piece and we've got one more. so these are the maps from the study. notice anything they all have in common? all of them are very, very focused on one area of the country, right? like flashing red lights, danger will robinson, danger will robinson. this is all there on oklahoma. this is an oklahoma problem, oil and gas companies inject polluted waste water from the fracking process deep into the ground in oklahoma and oklahoma can't take it. the ground in oklahoma can't

take it and now oklahoma had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of earthquakes every year, multiple earthquakes per day, everyday of the year in oklahoma, including the biggest earthquakes in the continental united states. and it's not random. it's not like god is mad at oklahoma and he keeps picking it up and rattling it like a snow globe. this is happening specifically in that state as basically an environmental crime, right? it's happening in that state because of what oil and gas companies are doing to the environment there. what they are doing to the earth in that state. and we have seen it bloom over the past five years in oklahoma. and for the last five years the attorney general of that state chose to do absolutely nothing about that problem. actually, let me revise that. he did do one thing about that problem. in 2014 as attorney general he wrote to the federal government, he wrote to the epa to complain that they were being too intrusive in trying to do anything about this problem.

they were being too intrusive in trying to regulate fracking and these waste water injection sites in the state of oklahoma. so that's the one thing he did. he did nothing about it himself. his only action was to try and stop anybody else from doing anything else about it, either. this complaint to the epa, stay out of our fracking industry, that was it. when scott pruitt became attorney general in oklahoma, there was an existing environmental protection unit in his office, in the attorney general's office. it had about a half million dollar budget. it was budgeted in the state budget as environmental law. scott pruitt eliminated that office entirely when he became attorney general. there actually still is an environmental law line item in the oklahoma state budget but it's now zero. and it has been for a few years because scott pruitt shut it down. and now scott pruitt is the nominee to be the head of the epa. the head of the nation's environmental protection agency. and today we learned a little more about how if you like what

he's done for oklahoma, you're going to love what he'll do for our country. on the same day that our new president signed the presidential memoranda resurrect the keystone and dakota access pipelines, on the same day, an epa employee surreptitiously got out to the world, that agency has basically been frozen in its tracks, it's been brought to a halt. now there has been no announcement about this from the white house. they did not put out a press release about it. the white house spokesman sean spicer got asked about it today at the white house press briefing. he appeared to have no idea what he was being asked about. the only reason we know about this is that an epa employee took it upon himself or herself to secretly tip somebody off inside a congressional office on capitol hill and somebody in a congressional office on capitol hill then told reporters. that's the only reason we know.

that all epa grants and contracts have been suspended effective immediately. that's the bulk of how epa does its work. epa oversees over $6 billion in grants and contracts, everything from monitoring air quality to cleaning up polluted industrial sites, all of that according to these documents smuggled out to capitol hill today all grants and contracts are suspended "effective immediately. the agency has been effectively stopped. again, there's been no official announcement about this. we only know it because an employee has blown the whistle. the only reason the employee had to blow the whistle is because epa employees have been ordered to stop talking to make no public pronouncements on anything. in addition to this information about the contracts and grants being halted, this document was this document was smuggled to a staffer on the hill.

"restrictions that are effective immediately and will remain in place until further direction is received." this is what epa employees have been told and they've been told not to talk about it. no press releases will be going out to external audiences. no social media will be going out. no blog messages, the beach team, meaning the incoming administration, they will "review the list of upcoming webinars to decide which ones will go forward." "please send me a list of any external speaking engagements that are scheduled for any of your staff from today through february. incoming media requests will be carefully screened. no new content can be placed on any web site." even e-mail lists are now under a gag order at the epa. "list serves will be reviewed. only send out critical messages as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press." so the work of the agency is frozen. all existing contracts and grants are suspended immediately. and no epa employees are allowed

to make any public statements, including any online postings, social media, anything. they can't even make public appearances that were previously scheduled. even their webinars are now getting --. people have been worried the trump administration was going to try to abolish the epa. it doesn't seem like they have figured out how to formally do that yet, but they've put it on ice. they have bound and gagged the epa and put a hood on it. even before the new head of the agency is confirmed and they tried to do it without anybody knowing. this gag order for people who work at the epa is also not a solitary case. this appears to be part of a broader gag order initiative that the new administration is pursuing with multiple federal agencies. employees and agencies from the department of transportation to the department of the interior to the national institutes of health, the health and human services, even the usda, employees at all of these

agencies have now to a certain degree been told they're no longer allowed to make public pronouncements. in some cases they've been told explicitly they are no longer allowed to even provide information to congressional offices. the 2000 scientists at the agricultural research service, which is part of the usda, they've been ordered to suspend immediately the distribution of any "public facing documents." gag order. you are not allowed to talk. not in a way that the public can see. that apparently includes even letting people know about any scientific findings for publicly supported research that the scientists are involved in. gag order. today there was a little flurry of defiance from the twitter account from one of the national parks. the badlands in south dakota, their national park service twitter account today started posting random but real facts about climate change. apparently in defiance of the new gag orders that the trump administration is instituting across the government.

for a brief moment today. for example, this was one of their climate change tweets visible online. "today the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years." that is true. but that is now gone. interesting. about 4:30 this afternoon the democratic party put out a press release rounding up all this reporting today on all these gag orders applying to these different federal agencies, public employees being told they're not allowed to speak. the dnc asked -- again, this was at 4:30 this afternoon. they put this in writing "how long will it take for the twitter account of badlands national park service to be suspended for its defiance?" they put that out at 4:30. the answer was less than an hour. by 5:30 all those tweets about climate change from badlands national park, all of them were disappeared. all of them were deleted. and then after that the dnc put out a statement this evening that read, very bluntly "vladimir putin would be proud."

again, as i mentioned at the top of this hour, one of the leading candidates to be the new head of the democratic party is going to be here for the interview. we will hear what he has to say about this. but, you know, all that scurrying and worrying you heard after the election from scientists and researchers and data geeks who were freaking out about government data sets being disappeared by the new administration, people scrambling to archive all the public-facing data about climate and the environment and all those other issues, you heard a lot about that right after the election, people scrambling to try to download and save that data so it wouldn't be disappeared seemed a little paranoid but interesting. now we know not paranoid. now we know. day four of the new administration, those people were not wrong to be freaked out and they probably, in the interest of science, were not wrong to be downloading and trying to save data privately because the data is disappearing. the scientists are being told they are not allowed to speak or publish. it is already happening.

it's day four, it's already happening. focus, everybody. focus. we'll be right back.

so far the president has signed a bunch of executive orders. nbc news reports tomorrow the president will sign executive orders on immigration and border security. you may have heard conflicting reports or different kinds of reports about this tonight. earlier this evening there was a reuters report that president trump would issue orders tomorrow that would restrict travel to the united states from a number of specific middle eastern countries. again, that's a reuters report. nbc news has not confirmed that. in fact, we've had some caution that that may not actually be on deck for tomorrow. but, again, that's the reuters report, nbc not confirming. even if that's not tomorrow, though, we did, of course, get extreme promises on immigration

and religious discrimination from the new president during the campaign. when he was a candidate he promised he would ban muslims from entering the united states for any reason. we may see some version of him trying to enact something like that in the coming days. but tonight in terms of what we're expecting is short term, nbc news is reporting it will be a new executive order on the border, maybe immigration, we just don't know what to watch for exactly yet but we do know to watch for it. watch this space.

in south carolina today they stood outside senator lindsey graham's office. mt. pleasant, south carolina. protesters encouraging their senator lindsey graham to stand up to the new president. senator graham sometimes hint he is might do that. he always gets a big flurry of press coverage whenever he so hints but so far he hasn't actually stood up to the new president on anything substantive. in kansas there was 15 of senator pat robert's local constituents; 15 kansans who crammed happily into this office elevator to protest at senator

roberts' office in overland park, kansas. in florida, a pretty big crowd showed up at the office of senator marco rubio. both in doral and orlando. in denver, colorado, this was another big one. hundreds of people from colorado, senator corey gardners constituents flooded his office despite the weather and snow. some folks did get a meeting with his chief of staff. this was today in texas to john cornyn's office in austin, texas. hundreds of people chanting and calling on senator cornyn to vote no on the president's cabinets nominees. that is texas today. in philadelphia, pennsylvania, over 300 people showed up for what has now become a weekly event they're calling "tuesdays with toomey." today they told senator toomey to vote no on the trump nominee to be education secretary, betsy devos.

you can hear them chanting here, they were saying "no devos, no devos." these are all local manifestations of this national movement that has sprung up around something called the indivisible guide. it's basically an effort to build a tea party-style movement against trump and we've been following the progress of that movement on this show and it's interesting the key insight that these former congressional staffers who wrote the guide share is that you have to target your own member of congress. you have to target the members of congress, the senators and representatives for which you are their constituent or they will not listen to you. true to form, we are now finding that these indivisible groups are not only targeting republican politicians. in san francisco today a staffer, an aide to california democratic senator dianne feinstein, she gotten a earful from protesters who objected to senator feinstein's vote to confirm the trump nominee to be head of the cia. the lobby of democratic senator mark warner's office in vienna,

virginia. that lobby, that office got so overwhelmed today protesters were told to leave the premises which security reminded them are on private property. they were ordered to hold their protest across the street. now, mark warner's office reportedly did end up meeting with the protesters in smaller groups. in rochester, michigan, today, the regional director of democratic senator gary peters' office encouraged protesters who were swarming outside that office, he actually called out to them "keep it up, we can hear you." in new york city it was a very rainy windy stormy cold day today and in new york city a lot of people, hundreds of people stood in the cold wind and pouring rain outside two new york democrats, senator kristen gillibrand and chuck schumer. senator gillibrand voted no on three of the early confirmation votes but senator schumer has

been voting yes and today these constituents, these thork constituents, the indivisibles, were out there in the rain and then ultimately in the office saying "drain the swamp." we have watched this movement evolve. we have watched it grow over the course of just a few weeks, the number of groups identifying as part of the indivisible movement has climbed to over 4,000 different groups around the country. and mostly the way you are seeing them is at these individual events at individual senators and representatives offices. we're getting reports tonight of indivisible showing up at lawmaker offices today in new jersey, north carolina, kentucky, louisiana, utah, arizona, illinois and on and on and on. all today. again, there are thousands of these groups now putting pressure on their own representatives. their own senators. this doesn't look like a national movement if you take a bird's eye view. but up close it really duds. keep an eye on this. it's one to watch.

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if you add together all of the "no" votes if for new administration's confirmed nominees, coming into today you'd get to just 44. 44 no votes for all three of them, that averages out to 15 or so no votes for each nominee and that average is falling. tonight, former south carolina governor nikki haley became the fourth nominee to be confirmed. she'll serve as u.n. ambassador but the vote for her was overwhelming, 96-4. so among the nominees who've

gotten a floor vote thus far, they really haven't had any trouble. when they get to the senate floor they do fine. but we have seen a bunch of these nominations look really bumpy on the way. as they run into stuff that got missed and was a shoddy vetting process. probably stuff that tends to show up in the headlines the. "wall street journal" reported on the president's pick for u.s. trade representative. he may have a legal conflict thanks to his prior legal work on behalf of a foreign government. that may legally disqualify him from holding the trade job. under a 1995 law that was right there on the books for anybody to see if anybody had checked, if anybody had vetted him. today the "journal" dropped the latest in a seemingly endless parade of stories concerning questionable stock trades by the president's pick to run health and human services, congressman time price a lot of discussion on the confirmation hearing. we'll have more on that later in the show. meanwhile, the president's pick

to head up the office of management and budget, he explained why he didn't pay $15,000 in taxes for a household nanny. and if it was anybody other than senate republicans in control of this process, these cabinet nominees would be having a hard time getting confirmed. tax issues for household help? that has scuttled a lot of nominations in the past. but instead because these particular republicans are in control and because democrats are not in lockstep opposition to these nominees, it's starting to look like the entire cabinet will get confirmed. and if they do, it won't only be the richest cabinet in history, it will be a throwback in terms of diversity. this will be the first cabinet in the 1980s that has nobody that is latino serving in any capacity. president obama appointed the most diverse cabinet the country has ever seen. one of its members, labor secretary tom perez, is now in the running for a different job.

he's running to be chair of the democratic party and he's running, i think it's fair to say, with the implicit if not explicit backing of much of the obama administration. so far that said the clear and early favorite for democratic chairman is probably minnesota congressman keith elliston. today congressman ellison got the endorsement of the reverend jesse jackson but tom perez gotten a important endorsement of his own. he got the support of the political arm of the congressional hispanic caucus so this fight for leading the democratic party in the trump era, rebuilding it and opposing the trump agenda and winning big elections, this fight is very interesting now and it's on. and joining us now for the interview is tom perez, former secretary of labor in the obama administration. now a candidate for dnc chair. nice to meet you. >> great to be with you rachel. >> never been here before. >> never invited me. >> it's my fault. i hereby am sorry. so there are several people running for dnc chair. why did you decide to run and

when? >> i decided because this moment, all you have to do is watch the first four days of carnage that president trump has inflicted on the american people. we're at this moral and ethical and economic fork in the road in our nation's history and my entire life has been about making sure that we fight for progressive values so i decided to run because we need, frankly, the dnc is a turnaround job. there's a crisis of confidence right now in the democratic national committee and we need a leader who can inspire people, who can take the fight to donald trump, who can appeal to every stake holder in our big tent and who understands how to take this complex organization that isn't firing on all cylinders and move it forward. that's what i did at the department of labor and what i did at the department of justice before that. fighting, making sure we were going after joe arpaio.

making sure we were enforcing voting rights at the department of labor, making sure people had access to jobs and opportunity and in both those jobs it was about making sure opportunity existed for everyone. opportunity to vote, opportunity to realize that american dream and right now the democratic party, you know, we have to get back to basics. we've got to organize, organize, organize. you look at the anatomy of the losses in ohio and florida and michigan and they were the failure to do the basics, rachel. it's not a strategy to go to an african-american church every fourth october. mitt romney got more votes than donald trump in wisconsin. but we lost wisconsin because because we took wisconsin for granted and we got our butts kicked where barack obama held his own. we have to go back to basics as a party. we have to make sure every state

has a vibrant party where we are recruiting candidates, where we are organizing as a four-year, 12 month a year enterprise. where we are working side by side and we've got to change this culture of the dnc from this top down sort of culture to a culture where we're working together with states because the democratic party can't be the party of the west coast and the east coast and a couple states in between. we can compete everywhere if we are mining the basics and we lost site of the basics. data analytics are fine and they're important but they can't supplant good old-fashioned house calls. >> in terms of where the country is at right now, obviously the kind of diagnosis you gave there about what went wrong, why the last election went the way it did. we're post-election but we here in the trump era now. i feel like one of the things i don't know is what democratic

success looks like in the trump era. should democratic senators be voting no and the trump nominees? are you surprised the way things are going in washington thus far? do you think that -- do you have an opinion on this idea of -- on this difference of -- on this split in the democratic party between wanting to work with trump where some things can get done versus opposing him on everything and throwing sand in the gears. where do you come down on that? >> i think we should give donald trump the same respect mitch mcconnell afforded barack obama. that's my feeling. >> which is not much. >> which is not much of anything and you know why. if donald trump wants to give people a fair minimum wage, heck, i'd be fordonald trump. if donald trump is going to keep his promise and make sure that everybody who's working hard and playing by the rules can have access to the american dream, i'd be all for that. but you look at the actions of his first four days and it's been a series of broken promises.

i'm going to lift your wages and help your standard of living and day one he makes it harder for first time homeowners to buy a home by rescinding an obama-era rule. he's nominated as my replacement a person who's a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging our efforts to lift overtime wages for people who work extra. who believes that $7.25 minimum wage is fine. he said he was going to lift wages and help communities out and we've seen betrayal from day one and that's why i think we need someone at the head of the dnc who's going to take the fight to him and take the fight to him on voting rights. look what he did day one again in texas. i brought that case and all donald trump talks about is there's three million folks who voted. >> illegally voted. >> and by the way, i know a little bit about that, rachel, because we brought the voter i.d. case in texas. in the course of the trial we learned that over a ten-year

period in texas there were 46 million votes roughly that were cast. this is governor abbot. he was railing on voter fraud. he established a tax -- a fraud unit. and 46 million votes cast. there were no reported cases of non-citizen voting prosecutions and there were two cases, too, count them, two, of in-person voter fraud. two out of 46.6 million votes cast. we cannot normalize alternative facts. that's why i come to this with a healthy dose of optimism because you see what happened over the week wednesday the millions of people coming out to march and i think the challenge for the dnc is to turn that moment into a

movement by making sure we're organizing everywhere. that we're telling the optimistic story that is the democratic party. the story of opportunity instead of the story of carnage. i was confused at his inauguration because when i heard him talk about carnage i was thinking about when president obama took office and the economy was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month and he hands off donald trump 4.7% unemployment we have to take the fight to donald trump. when he talks about a muslim ban, we have to stand up to that. when he talks about silencing people of the epa, we've got to talk about that so that's why i'm running. this is a turnaround job. that's what i've had the privilege of doing at the labor department and the justice department beforehand and i'm looking forward if i have the

privilege of getting elected to doing that here. >> tom perez is the outgoing secretary of labor from the obama administration justice department official before that now a candidate for dnc chair in a crowded but exciting field. good luck, sir. >> thank you so much. >> stay in touch, let us know how it goes. much more ahead tonight, do stay with us.

terrible at this. that's why i have to practice. i'm practicing for our next block. it's a good news/bad news situation but i can't figure out the theme song. i'll be right back. come on.

our producer nick and the theme song -- i'm getting better at it. when we know more now, when a story left as a cliff hanger is finally resolved and we have one of those tonight, serious one, concerning mark dayton. last night he was delivering his state of the state address. we reported it moments after it happened. he collapsed during the middle of his speech. he hit his head and people rushed to hold him up. family members say he quickly recovered. he did not go to the hospital last night. though in our initial reporting we thought he had been hospitalized.

instead he was seen by emts and he was able to go home. today he was even feeling well enough to joke with reporters "if i had known it was going to result in the republicans not criticizing my speech, i'd have tried it years ago." that's the good news that governor dayton did not have to be hospitalized and that he was well enough today to joke around and to keep up the normal schedule of events. this was him today. there is also not good news from the governor. today he announced he was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. he said the diagnosis was confirmed a few days ago last week. he planned to make a public announcement about it next week but moved it up to today because of concerns with what happened at that speech last night where he fainted. governor mark dayton of minnesota said he does not expect the diagnosis will affect his ability to do his job and plans to finish out his term.

but now we know what happened and of course everybody in minnesota and around the country wishes the governor the best, for a full recovery and now technically, you know more now. thanks, nick.

i want to update a story from tonight that we mentioned earlier this hour. unofficial reports, well sourced rumors that the new president is

expected to sign executive actions tomorrow on immigration and the southern border. now, it's not clear what the president will do tomorrow, but moments ago he did confirm the basic premise that we were discussing earlier. he used this quote, big day planned on national security for tomorrow. among many other things we will build the wall and i think because he misspelled the word "among" he did complete delete that and reposted a few minutes later. this time with more capital letter and a better try at that difficult word among. big day planned on national security among many other things. we will build the wall. whatever he might sign, do or say tomorrow he is confirming the premise he's going to do something on the southern border. something having to do with building the wall. maybe in a minute he will tweet how mexico will pay for it someday.

stay tuned.

two things to tell you about as we wrap up tonight's show. first of all, in the next hour, on lawrence o'donnell's show, he will have the head of three major progressive rights organizations, all at once, talking about this moment in progressive activism, cat rising moment in terms of anti-trump movement taking shape in this country. he has the head of planned parenthood, head of the human rights campaign, and talking about this moment.

it is the big deal to have the heads of those organizations all together. that's this next hour live here on msnbc on "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." i want to tell you about something we are going to do tomorrow night on this show. something i'm happy to pring you but i'm happy to tell you i'm worried about it, too. last night we spent half of the show talking about the new president and his public proclamation that we should take the oil from middle eastern countries and we may have another chance to take the oil from countries like iraq. we talked about how that is dangerous for troops who are deployed right now by the thousands in countries that are oil producing countries, including iraq. tomorrow night on this show we will premier something that indicates that that danger and the spread of that news about the new administration and its new policy toward that thing may already be posing a clear and present danger to americans

serving abroad. not happy to show it to you but at this point it is necessary. we'll see you again tomorrow for that. "first look" is up next. and the person i'm starting to feel bad for is trump's press secretary sean spicer. whatever trump says, sean spicer has to go out and defend. yesterday he said the administration reserves the right to, quote, disagree with the facts. that sounds good, i like that, but i'm going to start doing that. when my doctor says my cholesterol is 238, i'm going to say, no it isn't. 182. now go get me some mozzarella sticks. >> another rough day for sean spicer. the press secretary gets grilled after endorsing a claim that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election without offering any specific election. plus, the executive