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the ballot box. >> are we still teetering on the brink, or are we in crisis? >> well, i think -- i think we have to worry when one of our major political parties is willing to embrace a way of thinking about our democracy that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago. when you look at some of the laws that are being passed at the state legislative level, where legislators are basically saying, we're going to take away the certification of election processes from civil servants, you know, secretaries of state, people who are just counting ballots, and we're going to put it in the hands of partisan legislatures who may or may not

decide that a state's electoral votes should go to one person or another. and when that's all done against the backdrop of large numbers of republicans having been convinced, wrongly, that there was something fishy about the last election, we've got a problem. and, you know, this is part of the reason why i think the conversation around voting rights at a national level is important. >> we'll have lots more from the former president barack obama just ahead. the current vice president, kamala harris, in guatemala, sending a strong message to central americans thinking of coming to the united states. don't come. you'll be turned back. plus senator joe manchin frustrating his fellow democrats, doubling down on his position to killing the filibuster. let's discuss now. joining me now, cnn political analyst toluse olorunnipa and

mark mckinnon. it's interesting to listen to the former president, like a president actually thinking about what they're saying rather than just spewing, like, some -- oh, everybody's out to get me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. it was a very powerful warning, a contemplative warning about our democracy. but with joe manchin saying he's going to vote against the for the people act, is the fate of this dire crisis essentially in one senator's hands? >> it appears to be. i think the former president really put his finger on the primary issue on these voter laws that are being enacted. [ inaudible ] and that is the notion that you can have a political body overturn a civil servant's adjudication of the results, which means that basically they're rewriting the laws to

say that we could undo what happened in 2020 in 2024. that's what he's saying. so, but yes, this is in the hands of joe manchin who keeps seeking a bipartisan solution when republicans have shown no sign of stepping up to the plate on anything bipartisan. if there was ever going to be a bipartisan vote, it would have been on the covid relief plan. the notion that democrats are going to get on the voting rights act is pie in the sky for sure. and so somewhere it's going to break, and whether or not that means there is a provision where you just say, okay, we suspend the flilibuster on this issue, y the way, noting that the only places filibuster don't apply on the two things republicans care about, judges and taxes. >> listen, you would think that it would be some bipartisanship

on a committee or, you know, to investigate january 6th, especially when they were all running for their lives. you would think they could all say, okay, let's figure out how this happened so that it never happens again. but no. so this bipartisanship thing, i'm sorry. it's never going to happen. >> yeah. 33 hearings on benghazi. zero on our capitol. >> when was benghazi? 33 months? >> 33 hearings. anyway, toluse, i want you to take a listen to the former president weighing in on the media landscape and how it plays into the polarization of this country. here it is. >> this is part of the challenge. it's part of the challenge with social media. you know, i think there's been a lot of conversation about how we are able now to just filter out anything that contradicts our own biases, prejudices, and

predispositions. it's not symmetrical, but what is true is for all of us. there is a great danger that we just shut out anything that contradicts our own sense of righteousness in these big debates. >> so let's talk about this, toluse, when trump was deplatformed from twitter. disinformation online went down a lot. he was just banned from facebook for another two years, but that is not stopping disinformation from spreading all across social media at lightning speed. then there's the polarized media where people only listen to or watch people who they agree with. how do we get down to the truth in a time like this when you have such polarization? >> yeah, don, that's a really tough question because there's a huge market behind that polarization. there are people making millions and billions of dollars behind keeping people polarized, keeping people angry, keeping people clicking on social media.

and until that market breaks down, that's going to continue to happen. they're going to continue to be social media misinformation that's put out just because it can get clicks. it can get people riled up. it can get engagement. even if it's not true, people will spend time sharing it with their friends and family. and by the time, you know, reporters and fact checkers can get around to dispelling some of these rumors, it may be too late. so the hard work remains to be done. it needs to be done in newsrooms. it needs to be done by journalists. it needs to be done by classrooms to teach people social media literacy and media literacy more broadly. and obviously the market behind social media disinformation needs to be dealt with because it's confusing people and misleading people. it's going to continue to happen, and that's what we have been seeing. it has really had a major impact on our democracy as we saw on january 6th. a lot of those people who stormed the capitol had been living in social media bubbles,

and they had been forced to believe or led to believe that what they were doing was righteous when it was based all on a lie. >> mark, president biden is heading out on his first foreign trips as president on wednesday. vice president harris is on her first one in latin america and had a warning for potential migrants considering entering the u.s. illegally. here it is. >> i want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the united states/mexico border. do not come. do not come. the united states will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border, and i believe if you come to our border, you will be turned back. >> how significant is this strong language from the vice president on her first foreign trip in office? >> well, that right there, don,

is cleanup on aisle four. as the biden presidency has done a lot right and planned for contingencies they encountered, and this is one that caught them flat-footed. the border did. it is a problem. there's no question about it. there's going to be record numbers of people coming across the border, and people are either sort of for that or against it. but the fact is that the biden message out of presidency is, we're relaxing the border, and people got that message in foreign countries and they came. we're seeing record surges. the biden administration has to figure out what they're going to do about this issue long term and short term. short term is what kamala harris started with today. but they've got a lot more to do, and it's pretty muddled right now, don, to be honest. >> mark, toluse, thank you, gentlemen. i'll see you soon. i want to bring in cnn political commentators bakari sellers and ashley allison.

y'all know what y'all talking about. that's why i invited you on. good evening to both of you. bakari, let's start with you. anderson and the former president barack obama, they spoke a lot about race in this country. take a look, and then we'll talk about it. >> looking back as president, did you tell the story of race in america enough, do you think? >> yeah. well, look, i tried. i think i told a lot of stories. you take a look at the speeches i gave in selma and the speech i gave during the campaign about reverend wright and that whole episode. and, you know, each and every time i tried to describe why it is that we are still not fully reconciled with our history. but the fact is that it is a hard thing to hear.

it's hard for the majority in this country of white americans to recognize that, look, you can be proud of this country and its traditions and its history and our forefathers, and yet it is also true that this terrible stuff happened and that, you know, the vestiges of that linger and continue. and the truth is that when i tried to tell that story, oftentimes my political opponents would deliberately not only block out that story but try to exploit it for their own political gain. >> the former president -- david axelrod mentioned this last week on the show. he said after he spoke out about professor skip gates getting arrested back in 2009, polling showed that his support among

white voters dropped, bakari. the first black president well aware that he had to be cautious when it came to bringing up race. how has his calculation changed now? >> i think first and foremost, we have to acknowledge that the speech he gave in philadelphia on the campaign trail was arguably one of the best pieces of oratory on race in america that we've seen. but i do think that the president, at the time, he got kind of caught in betwixt and in between. i would argue that he wasn't forceful enough on the issue of race, and it was weird because anytime he stepped out there, even if he stepped out lukewarm, you know, he still got blamed for being a radical. so many of us were saying, if you're going to go, simply go all the way. tell us how you feel. i mean i think that axe and i have had many conversations about this. a lot of times when it came to issues of race, the language wasn't as strong as it could be because there was this belief

that barack obama as a black man didn't have to state or reaffirm his blackness because people could see it. but here we are now where people need to do more than be able to see it. they need you to tell your stories, and that's something that i appreciated about this interview with anderson, besides it being refreshing as you said to have a president whose subjects and verbs actually agree. it actually was an opportunity to hear him relaxed, be what we all know him to be, which is a black man in america, married to a black woman who is raising black children and having to duck and dodge and deal with all of those successes, all of that pride, but all of the obstacles that come with it. >> we should say former president, because we have one now whose subjects and verbs actually -- >> but i think that people know the comparison between 44 and 45 -- >> i get it. i just want to clarify. you know how people take things out of context. it will be like, bakari is criticizing joe biden for -- >> thank you. >> i just want to make sure about that.

ashley, i want to bring you in. you worked in the obama white house. both of you the perfect people to have on. do you think the former president thought that he could do more for race relations as a symbol rather than actually moving things forward with specific policy or speeches? do you understand what i'm saying? >> sure. you know, we did everything in our capability in the executive office to try and move things forward. i started working in the obama administration a month before michael brown was murdered. we hadn't felt that type of protest, at least not in our generation that we saw hit the streets of ferguson or black lives matter coming up and the call for racial justice. we brought people from the streets protesting in to have conversations, and we were doing criminal justice reform. we were bringing formerly incarcerated people into the white house, which actually wasn't even allowed before our administration. but the reality is we would have

commissions. we would do executive orders, but then there was someone always on capitol hill, mitch mcconnell and people following him just like we're dealing with right now, that the legislation when we tried to pass things, it seemed to have actually have bipartisan support, it got stalled. he used his bully pulpit to say that he could have been trayvon martin after he was killed by somebody unjustly. that's powerful, and we had never seen it in a country. and the backlash from that is the tea party. the backlash from that is someone who wouldn't even acknowledge his own citizenship and then became president of the united states right after him. so he tried and tried, and we did as much as we could. but we also were the country's president for everyone, unlike many people who sit in that seat, i.e., president 45, who didn't care about me, didn't care about you, and surely didn't care about wbakari. >> next time we have you on, why don't you say what you really feel, ashley?

>> i try to. >> thank you both. i really appreciate having you on. thanks. how are democrats going to get anything done if their hands are tied by the filibuster and its long, disgraceful -- our new scented oils give you our best smelling scents. now crafted with more natural ingredients and infused with essential oils that are 100% natural. give us one plug and connect to nature.

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but your stomach doesn't. that disagreement ends right now. lactaid ice cream is the creamy, real ice cream you love that will never mess with your stomach. lactaid ice cream. so we hear a lot these days about the filibuster, the filibuster. senator joe manchin vowing not to kill it despite a lot of his democratic colleagues that want to scrap it altogether. but if you only know about the filibuster from jimmy stewart's classic role in mr. smith goes to washington, there is a whole lot more to it. >> tell you that a certain man in my state, a mr. james taylor, wanted to put through this for his own profit. a man who controls a political machine and controls everything else worth controlling in my state. yes, and a man even powerful

enough to control a congressman, and i saw three of them in his room the day i went up to see them. no, sir, i will not yield. let's talk more about the filibuster with the former deputy chief of staff to senator harry reid. he is the author of "kill switch: the rise of the modern senate." i'm so happy to have you on. it's so important what you write about. can you please tell us about the filibuster, how it's being used today. >> yeah. so the thing about the filibuster is it has a very sordid history. it came into existence primarily to support the existence of white supremacy. you showed the clip of jimmy stewart in "mr. smith goes to washington." that movie came out in 1939. during the entire jim crow era, the filibuster was being used almost exclusively to block civil rights billed. the only bills killed during

that period were civil rights bills. and civil rights bills were actually ready to pass long before they started to pass in the 1960s. the nation was ready to support them. gallup found 72% of americans ready to support an anti-poll tax law that was ready to pass in the 1930s, and it was blocked by the filibuster. fast forward to today and the filibuster continues to support the forces of the status quo and entrenched power over progressive change and its use still disproportionately is over -- >> i mentioned earlier that you worked with harry reid -- as harry reid's deputy chief of staff when he was the democratic leader. the filibuster was being used to block president barack obama's nominations. reid lowered that threshold. it was dubbed the nuclear option. then republicans came into power. senator mitch mcconnell took that and then lowered the threshold for the supreme court nominees.

so the gop held up obama's nominee, then rolled out the red carpet for trump's. so what happens in the future? what happens in the future if the gop holds the house, the senate, and the white house? what would stop them from passing just whatever they want? >> well, they would probably do it anyway. i think that's what democrats need to realize about the filibuster. as you mentioned, as soon as the filibuster stood in mitch mcconnell's way when it came to supreme court nominees, he got rid of it with the flick o f

they won't let the majority senators vote. certainly they wouldn't want the majority people to vote because they know they do not represent the majority of the american

people. in fact, they represent in their own states a very small minority. >> i mean is that what you see happening now? a lot of these bills had a ton of support from people all across the country, and they used the filibuster to block them. >> yeah. i mean dr. king put his finger on it. and, you know, at the time that he was speaking, the filibuster was being used to allow a predominantly white and openly white supremacist minority at the time -- they were not shy about their motivations -- an openly white supremacist minority to block civil rights bills. at that time, civil rights bills were the only thing being blocked by the filibuster. fast forward to today, what the filibuster does is it still allows an overwhelmingly white minority of conservatives to block and exercise a veto over everything that the diverse majority of this country wants to see enacted. that's not just bad for democrats. that is an unhealthy dynamic for our democracy. it causes the agenda of the government to get far out of

step with the will of the governed. that's not something that's sustainable long-term in our democracy, so this isn't just about what's good for democrats. this is about what's good for the health of our democracy overall. >> can we put adam's book back up? just go on and do a google search or a search for adam jentleson talking about the filibuster. you will learn so much, and read his book "kill switch: the rise of the modern senate indication. i promise it will make you a smarter person. thank you. i appreciate you being on. senator ron johnson denying systemic racism exists and he is twisting dr. martin luther king's vision to try and make his point.

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in chicago, 55 people were shot in 41 incidents, 5 of them fatally over just 40 hours. >> our shootings are up 17% over last year. >> reporter: the list goes on and on. at least eight people were wounded in new orleans. four killed in a shooting in portland, oregon. in st. louis, missouri, four people injured. one dead and four others injured in salt lake city, utah. two people dead and two more injured in indianapolis. seven injured at a graduation party in cleveland, ohio. and three killed and five injured outside a graduation party in miami-dade, florida. and in new york, a 10-year-old boy's life was taken when an unknown shooter fired numerous rounds into his home in queens. >> the fact that this reality in our nation, in our city, that a

child's life is taken by gun violence is something we are way too used to, is unacceptable. >> reporter: more than 8,200 people have died from gun violence in the united states this year, not including suicides according to the gun violence archive. 256 of them were killed in mass shootings. a 23% uptick in deaths from gun violence so far this year, far outpacing the amount of gun deaths at this point in 2020 according to the archive. many left wondering what it will take for lawmakers to take action on this disturbing trend of gun violence in this country. reporting in atlanta, ryan young, cnn. >> ryan, thank you so much. america's gun violence epidemic creating endless frustration for those desperate for change, including survivors of marjory stoneman douglas high school's shooting, that shooting in parkland, florida. freshness that lasts.ils for crafted to give you amazingly natural smelling fragrances, day after day... ...for up to 60 days.

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different for brooke harrison. >> i love you too. i'll text. >> reporter: but for that graduating senior, everything else about high school has been different. >> shooting call. it's at stoneman douglas. 72 sierra sector. active shooter. >> i was in the 1200 building which was where the shooting happened. i was on the first floor in room 1216. >> reporter: brooke was a freshman at marjory stoneman douglas high school when a former student carried out one of the worst school shootings in american history. >> and elena, alyssa, and alex all died in my classroom. and eight people total were shot in my classroom. so everyone that was around me, like where i decided to try to hide, was either shot or killed. >> there's no way it can't change you. >> yeah. >> how do you reflect on the last four years? >> i really only had like the first semester of like my freshman year that was like

normal. and then the rest just kind of was what it was. sophomore year was probably the worst for me mental health-wise because i was just recovering from witnessing everything i witnessed, like being in the building. >> reporter: that was the year's brooke's classmate, lauren hog and her family decided they had to leave parkland and move to d.c. >> so much has happened that it feels like i've been living in dog years. >> really? >> it feels like i've been in high school for 20 years. >> reporter: and in those years, they've turned their pain into action. >> i'm 14. i shouldn't have to think about getting shot in my school. >> reporter: starting a movement against gun violence that has gone global with march for our lives, and a crisis that's only gotten worse. there's been more than 150 mass shootings since the beginning of this year. >> mm-hmm. >> and i'm sure my number is low and outdated. >> yeah, it is. >> people are always saying if sandy hook didn't change anything -- you already know what i'm going to say. >> yeah, i know what you're going to say, and for, like, two

years after the shooting, i thought that the reason why these things kept happening is because they just needed to hear one more story. politicians just need to hear one more voice. so as a child, i tried to do that. and then i got older, and i worked more, and i realized it's not that they don't know what to do. they choose not to. >> reporter: it isn't just a horrific mass shooting that scarred their high school years. since then they've been hit by another trauma, coronavirus shutting down school and their lives. >> it's been awful, and also with everything else going on in the world, it's compounded our trauma and the fact that we're isolated makes it even worse. >> what does this moment signify for you? >> a new beginning. really you've grown to be such an amazing person. i wish -- i wish you didn't have to go through all this.

i wish it could have been different, that these other fa families -- sorry. that their kids were taken from them, and they don't get to see their kids grow up. they all should have been able to graduate and go to college. so it's hard. >> reporter: like so many moments already in these young girls' lives, forced to grow up too fast, forced to miss out on so much. so hard. but still they look forward. ♪ >> does college feel like a do do-over. >> kind of, yeah. it kind of feels like a chance to have a semi-normal school experience. >> do you allow yourself to reflect, or is it at this point it's just you're ready to go,

ready to move on? >> i think reflection is necessary for me moving forward because i think if i moved forward without reflecting on all the work that i've done, all the things that i've been through, it would just be putting all of those experiences to waste. >> yeah. >> and i cannot stand for that to happen. >> reporter: tomorrow is graduation day for the seniors at marjory stoneman douglas high school. brook tells me she wants to study journalism when she heads off to college in the fall. lauren says she's still undecided though she wants to focus on her art and her writing. both agree that no matter what they do in the future, they will never leave their activism far behind. they will never stop pushing to stop gun violence. they simply can't. don. >> thanks, kate. courageous young people. thank you for watching. our coverage continues.

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hi. welcome to all of our viewers joining us here in the united states and from all around the world, i'm robyn curnow, live from cnn center in atlanta. so just ahead on cnn, a joint u.s./australian operation may have dealt a major blow to the criminal underground, how so many alleged criminals fell for the trap. plus exclusive access to the phone calls that became the center of donald trump's first impeachment trial. and then a texas mom gets caught posing as her teenage daughter in school. she says she did it on purpose. ♪