caller: i get discouraged what young males are doing to each other and they live in an environment to get money for drugs. and it's a deep issue that goes i try to avoid that. predged.e off as being i don't like to be forced to

like people. i like to be led to like people through example. and what can i do to change to e a better american? >> thank you for being honest and one of the most important ones we have to have in this country. >> you said more but tell us what happened after that? >> that was a remarkable moment. i didn't realize until i stepped off the set because there were more calls after that how powerful it was. something in his voice that touched me and you could hear it and authentic as he searches for the words to say something to a national audience that many won't admit in my homes. i'm prejudiced and the way he ended his questions and what can

i do to change and be a better american and reached in and grabbed my heart. i had to pause and i was trying to communicate with this person who reached a hand out to me. sister things that as a of a black man and daughter of a black man, they were painful to hear and there were more layers of stereotype, but i know we are swimming in a sea of racist stereotypes and the media overrepresents black crime and it's become the sort of aim of a lot of politicians actually to make people distract one another and particularly distract people of color. can you blame here particularly when he was asking for a way to change? i had to thank him.

>> what happened next? >> i work in law and public policy. before that call i had been talking about student loans and economic inequality and race relations, but as an instrument to talk about public policy. i could tell gary from north carolina really wanted really simple answers to his questions about how he could integrate his life. at the top of my head, get to know black families and if you are a religious person join an interracial church and joining in with different races with a higher common purpose. i did tell him to turn off the nightly news because there is a warped kind of vision who commits crimes in this country that comes in many media markets and asked him to read about

black history and i got a sense of who he was talking about black people, immigrants and muslims but with his questions he was asking me as a black woman to tell him how to overcome his prejudice against black people. >> and then what? >> i kept going with the program and i walked off the set and i had a text message from my colleague gwen and she watched it and she was there another one of my colleagues. she is a young white woman from e south and they looked at each other with tears in their eyes and they said something special just happened. and a few days later they put it on facebook. they put it on facebook of gary's question and my full answer.

and on monday, it had a million views and that has never happened to me before and different sites and video and put different headings on it and became a racist c-span caller asks this black woman a question and here's her response. and it went viral and had comedians and public figures talking about it. but the organization that works in public policy and people who follow us on-line are wonks and nerds and don't care about policies we work on. but this was getting out there. my black sister-in-law's hairdresser said i saw this. it was started to break out of the bubble. and this is august. we have had this racially charged summer with donald trump's campaign with black

lives matter and police shootings and tragic events all in baton rouge and dallas and it was a time when people felt like all they were seeing on tv about race was bad news. and here was first a white man admitting that he was prejudiced, which for people of finally. know we say and had donald trump that mexican immigrants are racist and then saying i don't have a prejudiced bone in my body. >> we found this video on your website and tell us how this happened. >> i went down to north carolina and i met with gary. and we furthered that conversation about race and asked each other hard questions and it was amazing.

> here we are talking again. don't let it go by. you have eight million people responding positively to my insecurities. they must be having the same thing. and taking ething that first step is the hardest thing. >> how did you find gary? >> gary found me. as i now know gary a few days later was watching tv and watching cnn and i went on headline news and had interview about the fact that this video went viral. and he heard my voice again and never heard or saw me before and he ran into the living room and saw me talking about the clip

and at the bottom it said my twitter handle. gary went to his computer and first fweet said how does this thing work and he found me. he entered in my twitter handle and said i'm gary from north carolina. and i wanted to know. the way those shows work, i gave my answer and went on to another call, so i didn't know how it landed with him or if he brushed it off. i didn't know anything about who he was and no way to know. he found me and said i'm gary from north carolina. and i sent him a direct private message. i said gary i would love to talk about what you thought about my answer to my question and i gave him my phone number. and few days later, i got a phone call and sitting at a burger joint having a lunch

break and decided to call me. he called me and he was nervous and i was very nervous and he said what you said changed my life. to which i was shocked. i thought, sure when asked a pretty hard question and gave some pretty decent answers but something that he would take seriously. and he explained to me that he's now on a path. he wanted to get right about this before he died. he said he was inspired by the fact that newspapers across the country and obviously, it went viral on social media but picked up in the normal press and he was inspired by that. he said there are probably a lot of other people like me out there who have these prejudice and i worry about what is going to happen to them if they admit

it but they can change if they admit it. >> when did you go down there and why? >> we had a couple of phone conversations. i thanked him for his courage and he said what he said in that video and he said i don't know what you want to do with this and this is a big thing and if you are willing to keep talking about this, he said, i'm willing to talk to you. keep this conversation going. and so i kind of took that to heart. i didn't know exactly what would come of it. away from life went my work. i got married and i talked to gary and told me about the books he was reading. i gave him some ideas. told me a funny story about gone to the book store to get

african-american study books and sent me a video of himself and the heading for the african-american studies section of the book store and tell me he was in the book store. and then i got an invitation to speak at wake forest in north carolina. and so my new husband and i said well, let's call gary and see if he can drive by and meet with him. so we did that. gary and i were both very nervous to meet each other and no idea. my husband is a documentary film maker, i said gary we should record this meeting. he said absolutely. nd it was a really beautiful conversation, the first one in person and kind of exceeded my expectations. >> where is that? >> he lives outside of asheville

north carolina and wanted us to meet in washeville. it's a park outside of a hotel in downtown asheville. beautiful fall day, the changing leaves. it was about a week before the election. and we didn't talk about the election much. we didn't talk about politics. he told me about his life. just got to know each other, where he is from. >> how old is the man? >> mid-50's. he was born in new haven, connecticut, but was in the navy. and had a heart condition and went down to asheville in his early 20's for heart surgery at the v.a. down there. and his life in connecticut, this is one of those beautiful

things that happens in america's stories where really the same things that he was afraid of from the media stereotypes about african-americans, had been part of his experiences growing up in connecticut with gangs and drug and when he got his heart surgery, he stayed down there and slower pace of life. he is an lish and. >> had he been married? >> no. >> no children how often in your life have you heard the kind of things he was saying about what he as a white man thought about ack people

>> it feels like to me personally, not so many times. i, in my career, really started out as an economic policy person and would go across the country role, talking to groups of people about the economy. and oftentimes just in church basements in grange halls, union halls about what happened in our economy why working people were finding it to go ahead. i could tell that story and talk about demrobblization and technological change and corporate power in washington and trade rules and tax rules nd workers' rights, but i felt if i didn't mention race, i was

not telling the whole story, some on piece of the puzzle was really missing about how it was that my grandfather's generation, you could have just had a working class job and didn't have to go to college and great job with benefits, retirement security and public schools were well funded and go to college debt free and something changed in the late 1970's. and there are lots of reasons why that changed but something shifted in our politics to where the very idea of government that invests in its people and supports working class folks and supports investments and mobility has become hard and in fact racialized so the conservative argument against government carried on these stereotypes of undeserving people of color who would actually benefit from

government. it felt like i was getting drawn into more and more conversations about racine when i was talking to a white laidoff field worker about the economy. and i learned a way to talk about race with white people that allowed them to see their self-interest in it. >> back in your own life. tell us where you were born? > south side of chicago. my mother at the time i was born, she was a health practitioner on the south side of chicago and worked into more social policy. so i have come buy it lately. >> were they together? >> they got divorced when i was young but lived with both of them. had a community. south side of chicago.

michelle obama has. my grandparents on both sides had come up from the south and worked in the public sector as a cop and social worker. it was a great way to grow up. >> how many white people were in your high school? >> that is a great question. mostly ually grew up in all black schools until i went away to boarding school and this is a decision my mom made when i was in seventh grade. i went from growing up in icago to virtually all white rural new england school. very small school in western massachusetts and i was one of think of two black children in the whole school. phenomenals a pretty adjustment. i was young.

i was 11. young even for seventh grade, but being that young kind of helped. it helped me still be a child and sense of adventure about this incredible cultural shift that i had just experienced. and so in my high school that i went on to, it was diverse but very elite prep school and most of the kids of color came in on scholarship. that was outside of boston, massachusetts. >> how were you treated when you were 11 years old by the white girls? >> it was hard. we were kids. so in some ways we were just young enough to have that childhood innocence and some of the kind of harsher status concerns that come in high school. we were before that. i was 11 years old. there were a lot of moments they

didn't understand some of the things about being black and young. i went from living with my family to living with all white people, all white dorm parents and fellow students. little things about just the way i had grown up was different than the way they gue up. but i developed wonderful friends. wonderful friends. i flourished in the school. it was going from a big public classroom with five students and a book and a teacher. and it was many ways a very fortunate. >> were your parents wealthy? >> no. but they were able to use financial aid and it was a big leap that my parents made to say

i wasn't getting the challenge i needed in public school. >> one of the things that people answered gary on the call-in show and there wasn't an ounce of anger in your voice. were you ever angry about race? >> get angry about race every day. >> when people are not nice to you, how do you get this even temper about you? >> i went to the obama school of race relations -- no, i'm kidding. >> what does that? >> obama he had to do it all the time. the amount of disrespect thrown above, he has had to rise it. that's the way he has managed to be president of the united states. >> how do you do it? >> i think there has to be -- to

white person of color in dominant society, you learn how i've learned to ave empathy first. and gary's question was extraordinary. it's different when they are racist at the store. he was saying i'm prejudiced and i need to change. it comes back to this idea of is racism and prejudice something that is an individual evil or is it something that is baked into the fabric of this country and that is communicated in subtle messages every single day in our media. and this we believe as most

racial advocates do, that it's the latter. not a story of just evil sinners and good people, but rather about a system that was set up in this country to communicate a belief in the hierarchy of human value, then is it any surprise that people wouldn't absorb that belief? i'm not saying it takes the blame, but when someone identifies and is willing to admit that they have absorbed racist stereotypes about fellow americans, should we answer that call? i think we have to. i think we all have to. one of the mistakes this culture has shifted over the course of my lifetime, the voices of the civil rights faded, we stopped talk ng about race and admitted

that prejudice is far, far more common. >> how many times have you been with gary? times lk to gary a dozen and met with him three times. >> what's the future of the gary -heather relationship? >> he is on this incredible journey that i'm posting for him. he created this system on his own where he forced himself to interact with people of color that he normally would not have. he started in the waiting room at the v.a. where a black man sat next to him and thought, my assumption about this person, on scale of one to 10, is that i'm not going to like him. we would have a bad interaction. i'm kind of afraid of him,

anxious. so we put him low on the scale. he rated the person a three and forced him see self to say, really bad traffic on i-91, some kind of opening and get to talk. and after the interaction he would rate after he felt him afterwards and there was a five, six-point spread. that was gary's system, not something i would have come up with and showed him to do but in some ways it is simple. and the basic spirit of it, which is if you have gotten to a point where not only do you consume a lot of stereotypes on television, but in your life, you are finding it is affecting who you feel comfortable sitting next to, and work up the ladder, paying taxes to support their

education, we've got work to do. >> i want to talk about class because this may be an example, when you look at your background, what happened after high school? > i went to yale and studied american studies and law school. >> how did that happen? >> just debt. student loans and debt. >> why were you interested in going to yale and a law degree? >> i always wanted to, that community i talked about on the south side of chicago where i grew up, there was a sense owing up that, you know, you pay for living. everyone had to do something whether it was work in the public sector or work at a nonprofit. that was kind of how i grew up.

i never really questioned the idea that in some ways making this country better was going to be the work. >> what did you start after you went to law school? >> i started working right after college as entry-level position in the economic opportunity program. i was 22 years old. the organization had only been around for a year and a half, two years and i got a job because i had some jobs during college actually doing research for a small public policy issues on low-income families and able to get this job working on the issue of debt. at that time, we were working on how the issue of how credit card debt and mortgage loans and pay day loans had been the safety net for working and middle-class

families, early on before there was a dominant understanding of the economy and i worked on that issue for a couple of years and decided to go to law school. >> how much education does gary have? >> i don't think gary finished college if he went. >> he was in the navy and had interaction with people who didn't look like him? >> i did talk about him. it surprised me because we think of the military as the most integrated institution in our society. but i think that was a long time ago for him. and since then, he has in many ways lived the life of a working south.uy working the north carolina has a very

diverse kind of political landscape and everything, but it became clear through our conversations that among his stuff , racist jokes and like that were just part of the way that he entertained himself. >> tell us about the organization, how much money do you spend a year? it is 16 years old and have about 60 staff and grown from a handful of people working on democracy issues and economic sues, $108 million organization. i became president three years ago. you know, when i took over mid-60's miles, a

white guy, i had grown up with the organization, i was there for a number of years and went to law school and came back in 2009. i did want to raise the understanding of all of us staff, the person in accounts payable and political sciencists and lawyers how race affects us all. the biggest thing to transform the organization was to embark on what has been a three year racial equity transformation practice. the organization is predominantly white and much more so when i took over. that conversation with race with white people is we took it head on in the organization. >> what is the most offensive thing a white person can say to you? you say to yourself, there it goes, that's it.

it's a signal. > i think one of the most -- probably one of the most personishous lies of people of color and i say that because it is pervasive and core to undermining the sense of social sold art and shared contract which is essential for our country to thrive. but the lie that people of color, black people, immigrants -- did don't ys want the same things that everybody else wants, that we re lazy, not intelligent, that any kind of -- not did he serving of any kind of the same kind of support that frankly

made the white middle-class flourish, it's that idea that, for example, we see it in the health care debate today. there is so much prejudice undertone in the conversation medicare,ng away from which is sort of seen by many folks, particularly white folks that older white people have earned and put money aside to give three things, to undeserving people who just don't deserve it basically. and the communities of color that i grew up among, that i now, are just so seldom in the popular imagination among white people, particularly those who

frankly watch a lot of conservative media, where there is a very clear racial narrative, the stories that are cherrypicked -- it is donald trump's vision of plaque america. you have nothing to lose, shooting people every day, the families are broken, all of the immigrants who come to this country are rapists and criminals, that idea tears at the fabric of the country. how do you hear that message and then say, yeah, i think those kids should have health care subsidies. i think we should raise all of our taxes so that college is debt free for those community college students. t's a very slippery slope from a stereotype to tearing the sense of who we all are as

americans and that comes back and affects white people, too. >> going back to the video, it was eight mill union at one point, do you know what the number is? >> it was eight million before the "new york times" op ed. >> what has happened to you as a result of that? >> that was the week i was in north carolina meeting with gary the week before the election and in many ways personally and for many other people who dedicated their lives to social justice and racial justice and economic justice, the election of a billionaire who spattered a lot of disdain, distrust and disgust for many members of the american community, it's a pretty rough and continues to be a pretty

rough proposition. my relationship with gary who should be a trump voter by demographics, he should be a trump voter and he is not a democrat when we first met, but he didn't vote for trump and he has become someone who recognizes his own stereotypes, almost a little bit of joy, of touching them as he thinks them and shifting his consciousness to a more generous idea about who fellow americans are. >> i'm going to say something that people watching this right now it's going to affect them. and you know why. and you'll know immediately. who is the chairman of your board? >> i thought you were going to say you were prejudice? >> no. no.

stereotypes and beliefs about to some people it may be about muslims, for some people it may be about immigrants or women or obese people. >> do you know why i ask you this question. i don't want to make a big deal, when you tell us who the chairman is, one way or the other. >> the daughter and collaborator on a number of books with elizabeth warren, the senator from massachusetts. >> it's her daughter? >> daughter and collaborator. not only her daughter but they worked together on a number of books including the two-income track which we first got to know elizabeth warn when she was a professor. this argument about credit card

debt and the rules had changed . d drowning working and we got to know each other and i have been a fan of senator warren and senator warren and i have had a number of conversations about race and how you talk about the economic pop lism she delivers and how that missing piece of the story of how race has been used as a weapon in the class war to drive people apart. >> if donald trump, president trump said i would like to meet with you, would you? >> that is so interesting. when i was in north carolina and emilia, she said if hillary clinton called would you go work for the white house? i said no.

and then she said if donald trump says i want you to lead my racial reconciliation, would you do it? i don't know in your hypothetical, i don't know why he's calling me. >> he's calling you because he wants you to come to the oval office. he will have nobody there and get to sit with him, no dama and he is going to say tell me why it is that black folks dislike me so much and what can i do about it? >> you know, i would have a lot to say to donald trump about the story he holds in his mind about people of color in this country nd how dangerous it is for our sense of being a whole people that are together in one country. i have a have a lot to say to donald trump.

>> you look him in the eye and let's assume he will say i'm not prejudiced. and he said i can't say this, but this is all part of the act. >> and i would tell him that he incredible -- his ga phone that he has used to stereotypes about immigrants, about muslims, about women, people with disabilities, african-americans. >> how deep is it? >> it's so damaging. if he was able to connect, the thing that is actually one of the most significant crises of our time, the crime in livingston among people without a committee college degree and

wealth and inequality and can't work your way out of poverty today, he if he was able to that, i ith that and mean particularly for those of us who dedicated our whole libes to trying to call the country's attention and call the elite's attention to what has happened to the working and middle-class in this country, maybe the solution to that, a, voting for someone who says, i alone can fix it as opposed to saying it's actually about collective action. actually made the middle class good-paying ry and action and collective bargaining and b, the fact that he tied the concern about the decline of violence in america to

, encouraging scape goating, anti-democratic litmus tests for coming into the country are based on religion is devastating. and it's going to last much longer than the donald trump presidency. >> one of the questions i have heard asked a lot, why are most black folks so anti-a black person who is a conservative? i mean the anti-clarence thomas, ben carson. they don't speak for me and it's a big negative on them. >> in some ways it's similar to white folks opposed to elizabeth warren. it's about the politics. i wish the conservative ideology

create a division among racial lines. race -- racism has been so central to the policy solutions and the story about the country that so many conservatives have old, it's really hard and when you get a -- an african-american or latina, a person of color who gets into political life and wants to stop the enforcement of civil rights, wants to abolish butt nimum wage, wants to -- which is a ticket to the middle class for working black folks and latinos because the message is so strong outside the unions, it's not about race and what they have done. >> bill o'reilly talked about

race on his show december 20, -- but i was about want you to hear it and then react to it. >> commentators the heart of living in america today is based on race. it per me eighths every issue. white men have set up a system of oppression and that system must be destroyed. bernie sanders peddled that and hillary clinton did. and the liberal media tries to sell that all day long. white privilege, bad. diversity. >> sure. based on race is bad and diversity is good. i think racial and ethnic diversity is the source of american exceptional iffle. the fact that we are a country

that where we were not descendant from one ethnic group as the european countries were or where our immigration laws have created a place where there is someone here in the united states with ties to every single community in the globe, these are the things that makes us exceptional and extraordinary. yes, diversity is good. and yes, privilege that is based on skin color is not democratic. ogalitarian. >> is there white privilege? most whites -- white sprema sifts. what do black people say about white people when we're not around?

>> that's a good question. think of an actual example. sure. listen. our country it's so funny, we have this very strange kind of double consciousness in this country, where we admit usually on january 15 on martin luther king day, that, in fact, yes, our country was legally and racially segregated until very recently but the footage is black and white. and yet, we really don't want to actually admit that that has some effect on all of our systems and that those beliefs, which were predominant. it is about the beliefs. there is this idea that sort of

-- white people who were race ists before the civil rights movement, maybe they were just bad people. we don't think that is actually true. the vast majority of white americans tolerated a system of apartheid in our country and es that mean they were violent? then how can we help but tacit and that the beliefs and they have different justifications. it may not be biology but just black culture is infor i don't remember and of course there are some good black people and i want make sure we don't fall into that trap and it was very easy to do so when you had an african-american family in the white house. it's not just all black people but just the culture of too many

black people. >> i want to go back to some more video, april 30, 2016. larry and the president and said.n -- hear what larry >> to live in your time, mr. president, when a black man can lead the entire free world. [applause] >> words alone don't do justice. mr. president, i'm going to keep it 100. you did it. thank you very much. good night. >> i originally saw the movie

sentence and the n word is used by black folks in the movie. what should people react to the use. good lack folks use it, but when white people use it, bad. >> one of the difficulties of understanding race relations is the need to understand there is a difference between equality and equity. communities have different different -- are situated differently. so the idea that saying -- there is a power differential among the different communities in this country. that rsonally don't use word. my family grew up didn't use that word but at the same time,

i know a lot of people have defended because it's reclaiming a word among when used by white eople is used with hate, division, disrespect. and when used by people of color, the intent, as you can tell by larry was saying was not hate, divisive and disrespect. so what is the meaning or the intent of the word? it's obviously very different. so that kind of thinking, the understanding is that if you are going to be in a society that has a lot of different communities and frankly has communities that are not -- that have different power differentials, where there are group dynamics. you are the one asking the questions and i'm answering them, but groups as young

african-american woman, an older ite man there are -- [laughter] >> there are power differentials there, right? >> you got the law degree from u.c. berkley. >> i'm glad you said that because there are exceptions in the individual case. you look at the median wealth of white man, it is 10 times the typical wealth of an african-american household. that's still the case when it comes to white and black families of equal education because of the history of racial segregation and predatory lending and wealth driven. the thing that is challenging but not so challenging and gary has been able to understand it and make it a part of the way he sees the world, there are group

dynamics. u and i are individuals with who we are as individuals. but as groups in this country, all white men, african-american women and look at the way they have access to power, who is represented in the senate and the congress, 90% of the elected officials in this country are still white. 2/3 are white men. if you look at the difference in wealth and income, the ability to walk in a room and get a job on a call-back, if you have an name,n--american sounding you are less likely to get a call back than if you are a white person earn with a criminal record. it does mean that these group dynamics still exists and we

have to acknowledge them. >> your parents alive? >> yes. thank goodness. >> what do they think of your success? >> they are proud of me. my mother really has dedicated her life and career to the project of racial she lives in prince george's, maryland, she lives outside of maryland. my grandfather is not still alive and he was a chicago police officer. was very close to harold washington and just very involved -- host: former mayor of chicago. heather: yes, first black mayor of chicago. i wish you was still alive. he would have a lot to say. my dad is in sacramento. host: so, where did you meet your husband? heather: i met my husband in high school. host: and his name is? heather: his name is cossom shepherd.

he is a perfectly american story. his mother was a foreign exchange student from pakistan in the 1960's and met her husband, my husband's father, in school. they have this incredibly unlikely love story. he was a white american from denver and she was a pakistani woman. from karachi. so he grew up in this sper faith, intercultural family. host: so you have a mixed marriage? heather: yes. host: any of your own black folks resent that? i hear people talking about that, they don't want whites to marry blacks and all that. what does it look like from the black community? heather: i think there are resistance -- there are prestigiouses in every community. -- prejudices in every community. i would just say that prejudice in the white community is backed up often by the force of law and the economy.

that is why it matters more to the state of black children that white people are prejudice. than it may that a black woman is prejudice against white people. i will say that i fortunately -- my marriage has been in -- embraced very much by my community and by his community. host: so those who may have tuned in late, gary is who again? heather: gary is a -- he said i am a white man and i am prejudice. that is how he opened up his call on c-span. he lives in royal north carolina. host: he changed since that call with you. heather: tremendously. he has done -- first of all, on a personal level, this is someone who spent most of his time watching tv and did not have many interactions with people. he has really pushed himself to interact with people of different races.

he has been flown to d.c. and to new york to meet with me. he has been interviewed for the new yorker magazine and on cnn last week, but more importantly, he's taking it on himself to learn about the truth about race and racism in the country. host: here is a little bit from that cnn. and actually, the fellow interviewing you is on your board. heather: van jones, yes. [video clip] van: how are your friends reacting? gary: i think they are curious. i think they are wondering what i have gotten myself into. i have a few friends that i can count on my hand. i don't make a big thing about it. i told them i was doing this thing and had this new friend ho mentors me. it wasn't a long time ago but i

was having different conversations with them. host: is there more to do on the part of demos and you with the story? heather: i think so. for about a year now i have been wanting to write a book. started working on the book proposal before that faithful the idea of ry, and the book is to really catalog the different ways that racism is actually bad for white people. host: will you write it for whites and blacks? heather: for white people and people of color who are trying to find common cause. gary was in a lot of pain. the degree of anxiety and fear hat he had, coupled with the sense of moral guilt.

one of the things that really -- him was the murder of in charleston, north carolina. dylann roofs murdered people in mother of emanuel church. that really bothered him. he thought about his own prejudice views and racist jokes he told. he said, if i don't do something about this, i will have a stroke. it really caused him pain. i do not think that any of us, as americans get away scott -- away scot-free with racism still being the cancer that it is in our society. host: heather mckie, president of the demos organization. if people want to contact deemos and get on your website, what's the address? heather: www.demos.com host: unfortunately we are out

of time but thank you for joining us. heather: thank you, brian, very much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. isit ncicap.org] >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about is program, visit us at qand a.org. q&a" are available at c-span podcast. >> and today in the senate, debating the nomination of betsy devos to be education secretary. democrats say they have speakers lined up throughout the night and into the morning. a confirmation vote is scheduled for tomorrow with work on more nominations