The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell 5/8/26 | 🅼🆂🅽🅱️🅲 Breaking News Today May 8, 2026

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]does sustain us during difficult times and and there's something you do and I don't know whether you do it for all of your audience or you do it for me because you know I enjoy it but often on Friday nights you will you will play that video of uh Christine Gnome in that remarkably well produced series of commercials that she did that got her probably fired. Um and I I love that you do that and I wonder whether there's someone on your staff who loves it as much as I do who just takes any opportunity to say you know what there's an opportunity for us to to play that video again because it's it's fun.

[00:00:30]First of all, as we've discussed many times, uh I feel so fortunate to work with the smartest producers. We have a producer named Sam on our team who I call like the corruption, >> uh you know, fierce fighter as everyone is who finds all these stories. Um and I grateful for that because, you know, we need humor and we also need to follow what they're doing and make sure people know about it.

[00:00:53]>> I think you're absolutely right. You did a fantastic job of it tonight as you always do. Thank you, my friend. Have a great weekend.

[00:00:57]>> Thanks, Ally. Have a great show.

[00:01:00]It is day 69 of Donald Trump's war in Iran. And there's one thing we can now say for certain. Donald Trump is nonsense and his words mean nothing.

[00:01:09]This is what his unnecessary and illegal war in Iran has further revealed to the American people and importantly to America's allies and adversaries around the world. Here's what we know. Whatever the ceasefire is supposed to be is not holding because Iran and the US exchanged fire in the straight of Hormuz for the second day in a row. The New York Times reports, quote, "The United States said it had fired on two Iranian flagged oil tankers on Friday as Iran's foreign minister accused Washington of a reckless military adventure and of undermining diplomatic efforts to end the war. The latest strikes came a day after the US military and Iran exchanged fire in the straight of Hormuz, fighting that the Iranian military said was triggered by an earlier US attack on another Iranian tanker. The US attacked Iranian military sites yesterday in response to Iranian strikes on US Navy ships. And here is Donald Trump today saying words, "They trifled with us today. We blew them away. They trifled. I call that a trifle. I'll let you know when there's no cease. You won't have to know. If there's no ceasefire, you're not going to have to know. You're just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran. And they better sign their agreement fast.

[00:02:25]If those words don't make sense to you, don't worry. It's not you, it's him.

[00:02:30]Because those words are nonsense. That answer is just a roulette wheel of words strung together devoid of meaning or connection to reality. The Trump administration is supposedly waiting for Iran to respond to their latest proposal to reopen the Straight of Hormuz and end the fighting as peace talks resume. Four people familiar with the document tell the Washington Post that a confidential CIA analysis delivered to the administration policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the US naval blockade for at least 3 to four months before facing more severe economic hardship. a finding that appears to raise new questions about President Donald Trump's optimism about ending the war. And there's new reporting in the Atlantic today that Donald Trump is bored of his war in Iran. Trump is tired of the war, which has proved far more difficult and lasted far longer than he expect he had expected. His party's wearily watching rising gas prices and falling poll numbers. He doesn't want to be bogged down in a Middle East conflict that some of his predecessors were. He doesn't want it to upend his highstakes summit next week in China. He's ready to move on. One outside adviser who speaks with him regularly told the president told me the president is bored with the war.

[00:03:45]Let that sink in for a second. Donald Trump is bored with his illegal war in Iran that is incredibly unpopular with 66% of Americans disapproving of his handling of Iran barely in its third month of war. A war that's costing Americans every day. The national average for gas prices, $455 a gallon, surging more than 50% since before the war started, as expected because oil went up by that much. In many states, the price is higher. In Pennsylvania, it's $4.69 a gallon. The war-driven inflation is also understandably crushing crushing consumer confidence.

[00:04:22]CNBC reports that surging gas prices due to the Iran war sent consumer sentiment to a new low in the early part of May.

[00:04:29]According to a University of Michigan survey on Friday, and companies are feeling the economic pressure as well, Whirlpool's shares plunged more than 20% after the company said that consumer confidence has fallen to recession level lows because of the Iran war, tanking demand for big appliances. And even though the Pentagon claimed to Congress that Trump's war in Iran only cost $25 billion, the economics professor Justin Wolfers writes in a New York Times op-ed that that figure doesn't come close to the true cost to the American people.

[00:05:04]Quote, "By my calculations, the bill for a typical American household likely runs to thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. The toll from this upheaval must be counted in lives disrupted, jobs lost, companies shut down, sea spirit airlines, and the income and output sacrificed. The less easily quantified costs, death, disability, and mental health, could become much more dramatic should President Trump trans send troops into Iran, which still can't be ruled out. The best any economist can do right now is get the order of magnitude right.

[00:05:39]And my math suggests the Iran war will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and very possibly trillions.

[00:05:48]It's not just that Donald Trump doesn't know or understand the cost of war for Americans.

[00:05:54]>> Do you not know? You had no one do the analysis of what the increased cost of gas and food on the American people are going to be.

[00:06:01]>> What is the cost of Iran holding that straight at issue with nuclear weapons?

[00:06:05]It's $631 billion, which means it's an increase of $5,000 a year for American households. Now, let me give you this point. You're saying that your operation is preventing a nuclear Iran. Will you acknowledge that there is an economic cost to the American people for doing what you believe is necessary to make Iran uh denuclear? Will you acknowledge the economic cost? We have an incredible economic team that's managing this better than Yeah, but what the previous administration did to our economy the previous admin You don't even know what the average American is paying. You don't know what we paid in terms of the missiles that hit the Iranian school.

[00:06:45]You don't know what we're paying in terms of gas. You don't know what we're paying in terms of food. Your 25 billion number is totally off. It's the incompetence.

[00:06:55]And amid all those costs, now the American taxpayers are on the hook for a billion dollars for Trump's ballroom.

[00:07:04]I'm paying for it. I'm paying for it.

[00:07:06]The country is not. And that's an expensive ballroom.

[00:07:09]>> These are all uh private individuals that put up a lot of money to build the ballroom. Not one penny is being used from the federal government.

[00:07:17]>> We're giving them myself and donors are giving them free of charge for nothing.

[00:07:22]>> So, we did this no charge to the taxpayer whatsoever. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.

[00:07:30]>> Okay. Well, that Vanity Project ballroom that taxpayers quote won't pay a dime for, not 10 cents, now has a billion dollar price tag in the reconciliation bill because Republican lawmakers in Congress are now fully convinced that the only way to protect the American president is with a ballroom.

[00:07:51]>> The ballroom will will be a solution for this. We need a place. We have needed a place like that. And the president keeps pointing it out. The sooner we get the ballroom built, the more hardened it is, the better for the country.

[00:08:05]>> I support Trump building a ballroom.

[00:08:07]Yes, of course. Especially after this weekend.

[00:08:09]>> I'm working on legislation to uh ensure that we are getting the ballroom funded.

[00:08:13]It's obviously a national security uh element to that and it needs to be done.

[00:08:18]>> This has to be addressed. At a minimum, we have to have a safe place to protect the president of the United States.

[00:08:26]Trump's stupid ballroom will make none of us safer. It will make none of us lives better. And worst of all, Trump has already wrecked the White House ground so that even if he doesn't succeed at building the ballroom, we're stuck with the hole that he's created, which is a metaphor for America right now. We, the American people, will have to fill the vacuum he's created, rebuild what he has torn down. Sort of the same thing as a straight of Hormuz. I was there during the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal during 2015. Most people I know never gave the thing much thought. I'm guessing you never had much reason to think about this random waterway halfway around the world before because it was open to everyone to use for free. But Donald Trump has wrecked it. And no matter what deal he comes up with with Iran, if he comes up with any deal at all, things will never go back to the way they were by because Iran now knows that it can close the straight of Hormuz whenever it chooses and disrupt the global economy. So, Donald Trump basically helped Iran get a new weapon.

[00:09:23]Today also marks 8 years, 8 years since Donald Trump ripped up the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated under the Obama administration. A deal that was working.

[00:09:34]And now Donald Trump is desperately trying to get Iran to make a deal again and end his war that we are all paying for every day and will be paying for for years to come. Leading off our discussion tonight is the Democratic Congressman Brendan Bole of Pennsylvania. He's the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. He's a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

[00:09:52]Congressman, good to see you. Um I I I whatever one thinks of this war or the reasons for it or the justifications for it, which are highly problematic uh to get to the bottom of, it ain't cheap.

[00:10:04]This is costing us a lot of money and you are in a district where you see this. You can't gaslight people about the fact that their costs are higher because of this war.

[00:10:13]>> Yeah, great to be with you. And as you know, Ally, since you know the Philadelphia area so well, I represent about half of the city. I represent a a largely workingass district where the majority of the constituents I represent live paycheck to paycheck. So they are really hurting when they see higher gas prices. Prices today are more than 50% higher than where they were just two months ago. They are being hurt when they see higher outofcontrol food costs.

[00:10:43]They are being hurt in terms of their health care premiums going up. And what is the Republican reconciliation 2.0 bill going to do to help any of what I just talked about? Absolutely nothing.

[00:10:58]>> But they have $1 billion for Trump's big, beautiful ballroom. It is in many ways the perfect illustration of Republican priorities.

[00:11:08]>> It's a billion for the ballroom. It's a trillion for the military, which is I think more than the next 44 countries combined. Uh much of which is going toward this war. There was a remarkable story in the New York Times uh by Eli Sasslo. It was called the last days of Butter Ridge, and it's about a a farmer.

[00:11:27]I want to just read you from that story.

[00:11:29]The costs of running a family farm had skyrocketed by as much as 500%. Brad had supported Donald Trump in 2024 in part because Trump promised to change all that by becoming the most pro-farmer president you've ever had. Instead, new tariffs have cut into Brad's potential export market and the emerging war in Iran had sent gas and fertilizer prices surging by as much as 70%. He was losing thousands of dollars each month and falling behind on his feed bill until he made the call he'd been dreading his whole career. He dialed up an auction house to arrange the Watson family's final dairy sale last month. I wish, Congressman, this were an isolated story, but it's not.

[00:12:09]You know, I read that story and and was profoundly uh shook afterwards. It's about a family. You you read an excerpt there. I encourage everyone to read it.

[00:12:19]They're in the northern tier of Pennsylvania, right on the border of New York State. The family for five generations had run that farm and been in the dairy business. And now Trump's tariff taxes combined with other policies are finally driving that fivegeneration family off their farm and out of business. So it's one story that represents so many families out there.

[00:12:42]It's a reason why just this past month in the latest University of Michigan consumer sentiment data, we hit an all-time low for consumer sentiment.

[00:12:52]This survey, mind you, goes back all the way to 1952. So, not even in the Great Recession, as bad as that was, were people as pessimistic about the economy as they are today.

[00:13:02]>> But the reason for that, Congress, I've been I've been thinking about this for a few days. And I think the reason why in prior recessions, including the Great Recession, people didn't feel as pessimistic, is because you felt like you were all in this fight together, including your government. Your government was helping you. They understood that there was a recession.

[00:13:18]They were trying to do the things necessary, whether they were right or wrong, they were trying to do the things necessary to get out of it. here the things that affected Brad's family and Brad's farm and people's gas prices and people's tariffs and people's food prices is imposed by the government.

[00:13:33]Yeah. You know, there is a part of the presidency that is um you know, they used to tease Bill Clinton a little bit about this because he would say, "I feel your pain." Um but you know, whether it was Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or or George W. Bush or Barack Obama, past presidents had the ability to convey empathy for the American people and be out there and actually show that they were attempting uh to help the situation.

[00:13:57]>> Donald Trump so clearly doesn't care and give one wit. He easily transmits that and all he talks about every single day is his ballroom. He doesn't talk at all about prices except when he does he calls it the affordability hoax. Are you surprised that the borrow is suddenly going to at least a portion of it is going to be paid for by taxpayers? Now, >> there is nothing in the Trump era that will surprise me uh anymore. Um I I can't believe though that Republicans who are in tough seats would actually be politically stupid enough to vote for a billion dollars of taxpayer money to go to a ballroom. That I can't >> which which may keep the president safer. I don't know. It's a stupid idea because the president actually has to leave the White House like building stuffed around the White House because it's safe is doesn't make any sense. But it makes zero sense for the rest of us, right? I'm never going to be in that ballroom. I imagine you're probably never going to be in that ballroom.

[00:14:52]>> Yeah. And let's uh not forget that the whole security line now is total BS.

[00:14:57]When the ballroom project was announced, nowhere in there did they mention one word about security. For months and months, the president hasn't talked about security. Only after the attempted or the shooting at the White House correspondents dinner uh did he rather shamefully latch on to this as a new excuse for his big ballroom >> and and Republicans went along with it.

[00:15:18]Congressman, good to see you as always.

[00:15:19]Thank you for being with us today. The Pennsylvania Congressman Brendan Bole is the ranking member of the budget committee. All right, coming up today, the Virginia Supreme Court threw out the new congressional map that voters just approved in a referendum a couple of weeks ago. Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court has cleared the path for southern Republicans to draw majority black congressional districts entirely out of existence. There is no cavalry coming to save American democracy. The only people who can save American democracy are you, the voters, on mass in the November midterms. And it can't stop there. I'm coming up next with Professor Mim Melissa Murray.

[00:15:57]Tonight, there's a stunning twist in the redistricting arms race that was started by a president with a 60% disapproval rating who's desperately trying to hold on to power any way he can. Today, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned a congressional redistricting map that was approved by Virginia voters in a statewide referendum. The New York Times reports in its 4 to3 opinion, the Virginia Supreme Court wrote that the problem was that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would authorize Democrats to redraw the map, occurred days before last fall's legislative elections. Meaning that some Virginiaians who cast their ballots early did so without knowing how their state lawmakers would vote on the new map. that the justices wrote violated the process laid out in the state constitution.

[00:16:49]Constitutional process matters.

[00:16:52]Following the law matters. We care about that. Courts are supposed to care about that. But context matters, too. And it is completely justified for voters to feel that our democratic institutions are not meeting the moment that we're in. There is a gross asymmetry in our politics right now. In 2025, Virginia voters elected a Democratic governor by a whopping 15 points. In 2025, Virginia voters expanded the Democratic majority in the House of Delegates, giving Democrats complete control of the trifecta of state government. And in 2025, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, the majority of early ballots were from likely Democratic voters.

[00:17:34]Was some early voter in Virginia denied votechanging information? Quite possibly. But all Virginia voters had the chance 17 days ago to vote directly on the map issue and a clear majority of them voted for it. And now the Virginia Supreme Court has invalidated all 1.6 million of those votes. It has invalidated the clear preference for Democratic governance in Virginia that Virginia voters have voted for loud and clear since November 2025. Two times.

[00:18:06]Meanwhile, Republicans in southern states are aggressively drawing black majority congressional districts out of existence after the conservative Supreme Court weakened key voting rights protections. Yesterday in Tennessee, Democratic lawmakers attempted to filibuster and disrupt proceedings as Republicans pushed through a map that would effectively erase the last Democratic held congressional district in the entire state.

[00:18:33]That district, which is a majority black district, is now being carved apart and divided into multiple Republican leaning districts. The new map is designed not to reflect those voters, but to outmaneuver them, to render them powerless to elect a leader of their choice. Here's the Tennessee state senator London Lamar talking about this yesterday.

[00:18:55]>> This is a deliberate um plan to take away the black vote. Uh black people aren't Democrat or Republican. We vote our issues. And so far, the black people in Memphis vote their issues. And to see them act like they don't know what they're doing and deliberately take away our ability to have a solid voting power and representation in Congress is one of the most egregious acts since reconstruction. Our ancestors died. They are bodies all across fields and in rivers across this country because they marched, they were lynched, they were beaten just to advocate for the right to vote. And to see them do this in 2026 is a direct insult on the black community.

[00:19:33]Everything that we contribute to the Tennessee, all our tax dollars, what we do to make this state the state that it is, they are deliberately taking our voice away. And it's appalling.

[00:19:44]And today, Republicans in South Carolina advanced legislation to delay that state's congressional primaries for two months while they draw out of existence the only district represented by a black house member, the Democratic Congressman James Klyurn. This man, the same James Klyurn who marched for civil rights in the segregated psych south. The same James Klyurn who was arrested protesting segregation in the 1960s.

[00:20:12]In a series of posts on X, Congressman Klyber wrote, "Republicans are trying to break apart South Carolina's sixth district. Not because voters demanded it, but because Donald Trump requested it." This fight is bigger than one district. It's about whether our democracy belongs to the people or to the politicians who change the rules when they don't like the results. We cannot let them succeed. So, here's the questions that many Americans are asking tonight. If Virginia voters can directly approve something and still see it overturned, while lawmakers in other states can impose maps with no public input at all, who who exactly is this system protecting? Who's it for? This asymmetry is why so many Americans are angry and feel like their dem democratic institutions are failing them. The conservative Supreme Court handed Donald Trump broad presidential immunity in 2024, clearing the path for his return to power despite his criminal conviction in New York and multiple federal criminal charges against him, including for conspiracy against the United States. And now in state after state, courts and legislators, legislatores are creating conditions where a president with approval ratings hovering near 30% could maintain political power through engineered congressional maps and weakened electoral accountability.

[00:21:35]Which is why this conversation is way bigger than re redistricting. It's about whether democratic systems can still respond to public will. And it may be why this moment feels so unsettling to so many people because Americans have seen this before. The truth is democracy in this country was not realized in 1776 or 1787.

[00:21:56]It only started to be fully realized during reconstruction starting in 1865 after the Civil War when black Americans could fully participate in public life.

[00:22:07]And for a brief period 12 years or so that democracy worked. Black Americans voted across the South in massive numbers. They ran for office. They won elections. Between 1870 and 1901, 22 black Americans served in Congress. And then piece by piece, it was dismantled.

[00:22:27]In 1901, North Carolina Congressman George Henry White, the last black member of Congress during the post reconstruction period, knew what was coming. He stood on the floor of Congress and he said farewell not just for himself but for an entire era of equality, representation and possibility. He said quote this, Mr. Chairman is perhaps the Negro's temporary farewell to the American Congress, but Phoenix like he will rise up someday and come again. End quote.

[00:22:55]And he was right. Black political representation did rise again through a generation of organizing and bloody protests and arrests that ultimately triumphed with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

[00:23:08]But now, after years of the Supreme Court weakening those protections, we're entering a dangerous period of democratic backsliding. The challenge now, how we rise up again in this era, and what we will demand of our democracy.

[00:23:22]Joining us now is Melissa Murray, professor of law at New York University and MS Now Legal Analyst. She's the author of the brand new and very, very, very important book, The US Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader.

[00:23:34]Uh, Professor Murray, thank you. You and I had some of this conversation in a commercial break last week, and I've been I've been dying to have the rest of this conversation with you, and the Virginia decision made it imperative.

[00:23:47]It's not I I don't know whether to take issue with the Virginia Supreme Court or not. I think the bigger issue is that we are slipping into a place that took a long time to get to a a place of democracy and fairness that took a long time to get to. It's it's slipping away from us at this point.

[00:24:03]>> Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Ali.

[00:24:05]And again, it's not one actor, but rather a confluence of actors. It's not just the Virginia Supreme Court today, but the Virginia Supreme Court acting at the behest of the Republican party, it would seem, uh, to consolidate partisan advantage in that state. uh the Republicans across the country consolidating their political power by wiping black electorates off the map at the behest of Donald Trump who began all of this by insisting upon midcycle redistricting. As we've said before, when legislators sit down to draw their congressional maps, they do so after the dennial census. That already happened.

[00:24:43]We are midway through this decade. This isn't supposed to happen until after 2030. It's happening because Donald Trump knows that his control over the Congress is going to wayne in the course of this midterm elections and if he can't win, then he's going to change these elections, change the map so that they give him a win and we're all seeing it. So, he's gotten a major assist from the Supreme Court of Virginia. He got a major assist last week from the United States Supreme Court. Um, they too have been deviating from accepted procedures.

[00:25:14]They usually take 32 days to certify a decision like their decision in Louisiana versus Cala. Instead, here they basically decided to allow that decision to go into immediate effect so Louisiana could begin the process of wiping majority black districts off the map and they have done so with stunning elacrity.

[00:25:33]>> Yeah, they've canceled they delayed their primary. South Carolina is delaying its p like they're really they're upending the system. Um, how do you get people to care about something that sort of nerdy data people like me look at and we we we track these maps all the time. How do you connect this to the fact that this isn't really about black people? It it it definitely is like the undoing of reconstruction. This is about a democracy that took us a long time to kind of make into a fair thing, right? after the Civil War, after the 19th Amendment, after the civil rights uh movement, and we finally mostly got there, and that it is dangerous for us all to to not go there, to not be to not have everybody's vote count equally.

[00:26:13]>> So, black people are usually the canary in the coal mine for these sorts of things. It happens first within that community. But it definitely doesn't stop there. And I think we have to emphasize for those who are inclined to think that this doesn't matter for them that our fates are linked. Um this is a president, a party that is bent on consolidating political advantage for a small sector of the electorate. And the rest of us, we're either going to rise together or we're going to fall together. We may not fall at the same time, but we will all fall inevitably.

[00:26:47]And that's important to remember. Um, you know, right now the New York Times is being pressured into a like there's a lawsuit against the New York Times by the EEOC. The whole question there is whether the New York Times in seeking to diversify its newsroom discriminated against white men. The goal of that lawsuit isn't necessarily to win. I don't think it's likely that the law is on the side of the administration here, but the lawsuit's intent is to simply intimidate newsrooms in general, whether it's the New York Times or smaller newsrooms with less resources to bring all newsrooms back to the status quo that it was before we were focused on those goals. And that's the same play that they're doing in the context of voting rights to take us back to where we were before the Voting Rights Act. To take us back to where we were before 1965. We have only been a multi-racial democracy since 1965, like since the Voting Rights Act. Um, we've never had the full promise of full democracy, as you say. and they're trying to pull it back and they're doing it in every level. Whether it's attacking DEI, whether it's limiting the economic availability and economic resources that are available to all of us by promoting this ridiculous war in Iran to simply rolling back the map so that we can't participate in our government. This isn't government for, of the people, and we all need to recognize that. We are about 60 years into being a a full democracy. Uh so it it is well within the lifetime of many people watching our show tonight. We don't want to go back to where we were before. Melissa, thanks as always. MS Now legal analyst Melissa Murray, whose new important book is called The US Constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader.

[00:28:28]By the way, it's a very accurate description. It is an annotated guide to the US Constitution. Everybody needs one of these. Thanks for joining us tonight.

[00:28:35]All right, coming up, we're going to cover news out of Pennsylvania today involving Republican state legislatores legislators and a bill about housing for whites only. You heard that right. It's 2026 and there's a bill before the Pennsylvania legislature about whites only housing. That's next.