roberts. shutdown day seven, week two. this morning the white house and congressional democrats are playing a game of truth or dare with speaker john boehner, challenging him to put his money where his mouth is and prove this statement that he made sunday morning in an interview. >> if there had been some reports -- >> we are not going to pass a clean debt limit increase. i told the president, there's no way we're going to pass one. the votes are not in the pass to pass a clean debt limit. >> the white house press secretary, jay carney, tweeting the speaker says there are not enough votes to pass a clean cr. if he's right, why not prove it? with no signs of negotiations, the white house is looking ahead to the next crisis that's hanging on the horizon. we're talking about the date of october 17th. that's the debt ceiling deadline. treasury secretary jack lew ran the gauntlet of sunday morning political talk shows. his warning, it's looking a lot more likely the u.s. could default for the first time in its history. >> we're on the verge of going into a place we've never been. failure of congress to act would

for the first time put us in a place where we're defaulting on our obligations of government pauf congress' failure to act. >> here's what's making this looking more likely. the tea party republican saying in a sunday interview that he'd be willing to dance on the debt ceiling if it meant defunding obama care. >> we should look for ways to mitigate the harms from obama care. >> so you think that some facet of the president's health care plan should be attached to an increase in the debt ceiling? >> the debt ceiling historically has been among the best renlevee congress has to rein in the executive -- >> so yes? >> yes. >> independent vermont senator bernie sanders serves on five committees, including veterans affairs, which he chairs. as we listen there to ted cruz, i know you can put this into a balance of a unique perspective that you have as the longest

serving independent member of congress, you say republicans are trying to hijack the government until they get their way. we see ted cruz there and what his tactics are. this morning we have 300,000 pentagon employees returning to work. hundreds of thousands remain furloughed. if we take the nbc whip count seriously, there are enough votes to pass a clean cr but john boehner is not going to do it. so you heard the new ad out is calling john boehner a croy bab. is that fair or is that an overreach in trying to equate congress to children? >> i think most people would think the republicans are acting kind of childish. but here's the important point. boehner has basically acknowledged and everybody has got to understand this, that harry reid reached an agreement with boehner on a conservative budget. $986 billion. that is sequestration. that is $70 billion less than the budget that i supported in the senate. a major concession was already reached, point one. point number two, what we

believe is that some 21, 22 republicans in the house have said given the opportunity to vote on a clean cr, they would. so we think that boehner is not being accurate when he says there is not the votes. bring it to a vote, let's find out what's happening. third point, something i've been saying for a while and i think "the new york times" just confirmed it, confirmed it on its front page yesterday, let's not kid ourselves. this shutdown is not something that just came about a couple of weeks ago through ted cruz. this has been planned by the koch brothers and other very, very wealthy people from the day after obama was re-elected. and what they're feeling is let us go to the extreme. let us be prepared to shut down the government, not pay the national debt, let's use every ounce of leverage that we have, even if it means catastrophic pain for america and the world, so long as we get our way. >> sir, let me interrupt just one second because i want to show that again just so we have

it in context, the article that you referenced, a blueprint to defunding obama care, a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy basically to get obama care repealed. we know that the wheels were set in motion right after the president was re-elected. he ran on this. ran against somebody who was running against obama care, although mitt romney instituted basically obama care in massachusetts back in 2006, but we'll digress on that point. but on your website, you go on to say there's a larger end game here. their agenda is to end social security and medicare, aballish the medical wage, destroy the epa and undo every other program enacted to protect working families in america. are the two sides so far apart, sir, on this issue that government is basically broken from the inside out? >> no. the real issue is, if you look at what the koch brothers agenda is, look at what many of the extreme right wing people believe. obama care is just the tip of the iceberg. these people want to abolish the

concept of the minimum wage. they want to privatize the veterans administration. they want to privatize social security. end medicare as we know it. massive cuts in medicaid. wipe out the epa. you don't have an environmental protection agency anymore. department of energy, gone. department of education, gone. that is their agenda and many people don't understand it. koch brothers have poured hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the tea party and all other kinds of ancillary organization to push this agenda. so what you are fighting now is a continuation of the class warfare that has been going on in this country for the last many years. the rich are getting richer. number of people in poverty all-time high. middle class disappearing. these guys using citizens united and other forms are now banging away and doing everything that they can. they have got more tax breaks for the people on top and devastating cuts for working families. >> senator, meanwhile ted

krooucruz is coming out on top of this as a tea party hero kind of guy. here's what he had to say on cnn about whether this has hurt the republican brand and we have the president seeming to take aim square low at cruz in his interview. i want to show everybody. take a look. >> do you think you've hurt the republican party brand? >> not remotely, but i also think far too many people are worried about politics. >> i recognize that in today's media age being controversial, taking controversial positions, you know, rallying the most extreme parts of your base, whether it's left or right, is a lot of times the fastest way to get attention or raise money, but it's not good for government. >> so, sir, when you have people like ted cruz who feel they have nothing to lose by driving the show here, how do you ascertain being that you are an independent that someone like you can get in between these two

sides to help chart the right waters? >> well, i think it's -- my job is to speak for the american people. and i think what the american people are saying, in overwhelming numbers is you don't shut down the government because you can't get your way. what the american people are really angry about is not only do they believe we shouldn't have a shutdown. do you know what they do believe? they believe we have to create millions of jobs. real unemployment is extraordinarily high. they believe we have to raise the minimum wage. they believe we have to make college affordable. they believe in many cases we have to make this country more energy efficient and deal with global warm. so the american people are sitting there going what is going on in washington? my family is hurting, my kid doesn't have a job, i'm worried about the future of social security, an these guys are talking about shutting down the government because they can't end obama care? let me say one thing about obama care. we are the one thing in the industrialized world that doesn't guarantee health care to

all people. according to a harvard study, some 45,000 people every year die because they don't get to a doctor on time. obama care, as you indicated, similar to romney care in massachusetts, is a modest way forward to provide health insurance to 20, 25 million americans. you do away with that, you're going to see people dying, many people dying who otherwise would be alive. >> senator bernie sanders, thanks for your time. we'll let you get back to work. i appreciate it. joining me now, jonathan capehart. jonathan, here we are. we're in the middle of this day seven of the shutdown, so we've got that on the calendar and are living through it but looking down the line at october 17th. that's when it comes to the debt ceiling, and the treasury secretary, jack lew, went around on all the sunday shows saying that congress is really playing with fire. as we look at the markets today and we see red arrows across the board, still near the psychological benchmark of 15,000 but down almost 100 points and we saw over the weekend speaker boehner vowing

that his party, they won't vote to raise the debt ceiling without concessions and president obama says that that's not really up for negotiations. but your colleague, greg sergeant, points out that john boehner doesn't really want to negotiate with president obama. so is it possible that both sides are going to be getting burned here in the long run? >> i think everyone will get burned in the long run if the full faith and credit of the united states is destroyed because congress hasn't lifted the debt ceiling. one thing people need to remember is that raising the debt ceiling is not new spending. raising the debt ceiling means that the government can borrow money to pay for bills that congress approved. so if the united states doesn't pay its bills, if the united states doesn't not only pay the interest on the debt, which a lot of republicans think that that's all the united states government needs to do and not be in default, but if you listen to other economists and folks on wall street, even if the united

states were to pay the interest on a debt but then decide -- not decide, but can't pay social security benefits, medicare and medicaid benefits, federal pay and other things that are coming due, pickly on november 1st, that is -- would put the united states technically in default. and speaker of the house can't do it, president can't allow that to happen. >> jonathan capehart. we have an abbreviated time schedule this morning, i apologize, but great to have you on. our question of the day for you, msnbc has been asking how the shutdown is actually impacting you, so share us your thoughts. use the #don'tshutmedown and you can always keep the conversation going with us on facebook and twitter. u.s. commandos raid terrorist hideouts in somalia. what they reveal about the white house's tactics on terror. catch him if you can. how did a 9-year-old boy manage to slip through three levels of airport security, board a flight to vegas alone without a ticket? stay with us. [ laughter ]

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u.s. special forces launched two high stakes counterterrorism raids in africa over the weekend in the hunt for two high-value terror suspects. it ended with mixed results. first in somalia where navy s.e.a.l.s were searching for a top leader of the group al shaba shabaab. that is the group behind the attack in the mall in kenya. meanwhile, 3,000 miles away, the mission in libya was a success. american forces nabbed a type al qaeda leader right off the streets of tripoli. he was wanted for the deadly 1998 bombs of two u.s. embassies in africa that killed 220

people. here's what secretary of state john kerry said about those raids this morning. >> i hope that the perception is in the world that people who commit acts of terror and who have been appropriately indicted by courts of law, by the legal process, will know that the united states of america is going to do everything in its power that is legal and appropriate in order to enforce the law and protect our security. >> all right. strong message that they're not off the hook. joining me now terrorism analyst evan kohlmann. it's great to have you here. yes, this is a great message to people around the globe that they're not off the hook for crimes that they have been convicted of, as the secretary was pointing out there. what's the next step in his process of custody? >> right now he's going to be interrogated by individuals who were experienced at this and he's not going to be read his miranda rights. he's going to be interrogated for information that might be

regarding ongoing activities, not what he did back in 1998 or even later. right now does he know about anything going on with al qaeda's networks inside libya or does he know about what happened in benghazi, et cetera, et cetera. is there any information that he has that we can get out of him. his greatest value probably was ten years ago so we want to try to scoop up as much as we can as quickly as possible. >> when you talk about that it's in context to osama bin laden, his relationship, close relationship inside al qaeda and with bin laden himself when they were much more active. so is he going to be seen as a history gold mine almost of being able to connect the dots and put together a lot of missing parts? >> we don't really know. the question is what does he know about what's going on in libya right now. a lot of what happened back in the embassy bombings, what he was involved with, we already know a lot about that. there were two different federal informant that say testified here in court in new york in great detail about what he and others did as a part of that plot. i think what we really want to see is what does he know past

that, post that, because after those two informants left al qaeda, we lost our inside view. so maybe he has more information that can supplement that. but we don't really know right now. >> turning to the al shabaab and the navy s.e.a.l., their attempt that took place in somalia, it was successful. we did not lose anybody. so we look at it from that aspect, that the navy s.e.a.l. team, it came home but it did not fulfill the intended mission of taking the leader out. what does it say about the anticipation of what they ran into and the preparation that depose in goes into a mission? >> the whole purpose of doing this as opposed to launching a drone strike is the idea this is a crowded area, we don't want to kill civilians, we don't know who's there. the problem with that is you're attacking a guest house used by hard-core somali militants in the middle of their home territo territory. so as soon as they find out you're there, they're going to

start shooting. this is not the bin laden compound where bin laden is out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nobody who can protect him. this is in the middle of shab b shabaab's home turf so it's not too surprising that they figured out this and fought off the attack. i think the question is more along the lines of what was the target? was the target the leader of shabaab or was the leader -- or was the target this individual who was behind supposedly the embassy bombings in '98, attacks in 2002 in kenya, who was the target? >> evan kohlmann, great to have you here. >> thank you very much. reports that new york city police officers witnessed that unbelievable case of road rage in manhattan, why they were there and how the department is responding to their failure to intervene. and then really scary moments at the grand prix race taking place in houston. what sent one driver's car crashing into a safety fence at 100 miles per hour. if we want to improve our schools...

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a fourth biker has been charged in that terrifying case and chase that ended with the brutal beating of a suv driver. on sunday, 37-year-old reginald chance was in court to face charges that he used his helmet to smash through the window of alexander lien's ranger rover. he was pulled from the vehicle, beaten in front of his wife and child. chance faces the most serious charges. there are still so many questions surrounding the shocking incident of violent road rage. stephanie gosk joins me from new york city where the attack happened. steph, explain what we're learning about the other members of this bike group, that included off-duty police officers, at least one that we know of that's come forward so far. >> reporter: sure, thomas. well, the first thing that i'm going to tell you is in talking to people the last couple of days in this neighborhood, they are still really rattled by what they witnessed right here on

this street corner and what nbc news has learned that is an off-duty, undercover policeman may have been here in those final moments when lien was taken out of his car and beaten in front of his wife and child. now, we are told that he was so deeply undercover and involved in such a sensitive operation that he didn't come forward in the moment to help out and that 911 had already been called at that point, but internal affairs is investigating his role in that moment and they're looking into specifically why it took him so many days to come forward. now, on top of that, we're hearing that as many as five other off-duty police officers were involved or riding in that unauthorized rally a week ago. they weren't necessarily here in this spot when lien was beaten, but you may have seen some of the video in the hours leading up to this event here, there was a lot of rowdy riding. they were jumping curb, going through red lights and so they certainly have some questions as to why those off-duty police

officers were involved at all. thomas. >> stephanie gosk reporting in new york city for us. stephanie, thanks so much, appreciate it. here's a look at some of the stories topping the news now. ten years after elizabeth smart was rescued from her nine-month kidnapping ordeal the now 25-year-old is speaking out and did so exclusively on the "today" show's sa vsavannah guthrie. >> she said this man has taken so much from you. there aren't words strong enough to describe how wicked and evil he is. he's taken nine months of your life that you will never get back. the best punishment you could ever give him is to be happy, move forward with your life and do what you want to do because by feeling sorry for yourself and holding on to what's happened to you, that's only allowing him to steal more of your life away from you and he doesn't deserve another second. a race car driver was involved in a horrific crash at the houston grand prix on sunday. it happened when his car

collided with another and then he hit a fence at 100 miles an hour. the three-time indy winner suffered two fractured vertebrae, a fractured right ankle and a concussion. a monster truck spun out of control in northern mexico. four of those killed happen to be children. alcohol could have been a factor in that crash. a robbery attempt botched by a gutsy store clerk in long island, new york. look at this, surveillance video shows a man confronts the clerk with a gun when you pulls out a machete from behind the counter and he goes ahead to chase the burglar away. look at that. he goes and gets him right out the door. this is after the guy fires the gun at him. investigators are now turning their attention to this one trying to figure out how a 9-year-old boy got through airport security, sneaking on flights -- a delta flight, excuse me, from minneapolis to vegas last week. delta said they're taking this incident, quote, very seriously.

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this has been planned by the koch brothers and other very, very wealthy people from the day after obama was re-elected. and what their feeling is, let us go to the extreme. let us be prepared to shut down

the government, not pay the national debt. let's use every ounce of leverage that we have. >> that was part of my conversation moments ago with independent senator bernie sanders of vermont. right now the house is getting ready to start voting on another mini funding bill for food safety. new video just came in of house speaker john boehner arriving on the hill. members of the house are due to go back into session about a half hour from now, the senate not until 2:00 p.m. joining me right now is republican congressman michael burgess of texas. sir, it's great to have you here. i know we're starting out a fresh week, day seven of all this. as we look at an nbc news count, if a clean cr, continuing resolution, were brought up on the floor, it would be within reach of passing with as many as 22 republicans supporting it. even republican congressman peter king said he could see as many as 75 republicans voting for it if it would hit the floor. do you think speaker boehner should do it, just bring it to the floor for a clean up or down vote? >> first off, i would just

challenge the veracity of that report. as you know, there have been a number of procedural motions on the floor where if 20 or 25 people wanted to defect, they certainly could have. the defeat of that procedural motion would have allowed the democrats to do basically whatever they wanted with the next motion, which presumably would be their clean cr. so the fact that all republicans or almost all republicans have held together on this i think is telling. we've had a whale of a lot more democratic defections on our bills than any republican defections on procedural motions. >> there's a democratic super pac that's targeting the speaker and some vulnerable house republicans over the shutdown, launching a six-figure campaign. i just want to play part of an ad that aired in ohio yesterday. take a look at this. [ crying ] >> speaker john boehner didn't get his way on shutting down health care reform. so he shut down the government, and hurt the economy. >> all right. so calling the speaker a cry baby overall of this and the

tactics that are being installed, obviously, you know, americans are frustrated with what's happening or not happening in washington, d.c., right now. but ultimately what do republicans want to see happen at this point, sir? >> well, you just pointed out one of the big problems with super pacs. to tell you the truth, i think they have got to the point of not irrelevancy or near irrelevancy. who pays attention to superpac ads anymore? certain lly not me and i think majority of americans sort of join in on that. super pacs played out their hand in the last election cycle. what value are they? >> what's the end game for republicans at this point, sir? the president is saying that he's not going to negotiate, utilizing any time of obama care measures in funding the government. so why not just put down a clean cr that was negotiated upon sequester level spending and then take up the obama care law at a different time?

>> currently there are about six bills that have passed the house of representatives, gone over to the senate to keep portions of the government open. look, this is what we're supposed to do. we're supposed to do appropriations bills one at a time so today we will probably go back to the rules committee, do several more. there are seven small appropriations bills ready to come to the floor, one of which will fund the national weather service. might be a good idea. >> we just took a technical hit there as he was talking about funding the national weather service. we apologize for that, congressman michael burgess of texas. thanks for your time. i want to bring in today's agenda panel. irin carmon with msnbc.com, ryan grim with the huffington post as well as an msnbc contributor, corey dade is a contributing editor for the root. corey, let me start with you. we have house speaker john boehner saying the word "conversation" over and over

again, several times in his interview. take a listen. >> woe asked to sit down with the senate and have a conversation. >> we're interested inning of a conversation. it begins with having a conversation. it's about having a conversation. it's time for us to sit down and have a conversation. sit down and have a conversation. let's sit down and have a conversation. we've had conversations before. >> here's the thing. it's like sitting down to say we need to have a conversation about how you beat your wife. and basically it's you've got to go into that whole scenario of i don't beat my wife. why do we need to have this conversation? isn't it that separate approach that needs to happen here? why do we need to negotiate oversee confess tra-- sequestra. if you want to deal with the obama care law, let's deal with that separately. why do we have to deal with that tied to our government and the shutdown? it's just so weird. why do we have to have a conversation about that? >> right, yeah. as we are about to have a conversation right here. the conversation boehner needs

to be having right now, and i'm sure he is, is how he and his caucus can actually save face because with every day this shutdown goes on, their bargaining position gets weaker and weaker. of course this is now going to bleed into the debt limit. as tough as they're talking about the debt limit, wall street, which still is the biggest check writer to the republican party, is not at all likely to sign on with the republicans backing refusal of the debt limit increase. i think at this point now, we're going to start to see now the real impact of the shutdown on government employees outside of washington, and especially contractors. you know, government employees are going to get retroactive pay. the house already approved that initiative. but contractors, which is an even larger universe, they're not going to get back pay. they cannot survive going two and three weeks without a paycheck. >> irin, let me talk to you about this because it doesn't seem as if congressman burgess

agreed with this but we had a number of republicans saying publicly last week they would be in favor of a clean cr and if there were a secret ballot, that we'd probably see the numbers even higher. do you think that there will be more pressure on john boehner this week to break the ties that bind him behind the scenes? >> absolutely. john boehner said that he didn't have the votes to pass a clean cr. and over the weekend, democrats basically called him on his bluff and said, oh, yeah, bring it to the floor, see what happens. i mean the problem here is that john boehner is more concerned about keeping his job than he is about whether the country defaults on its debt obligations or whether the american people suffer under a debt shutdown. so, yes, it's possible that if he brings a clean cr to the floor and it passes with democratic votes as opposed to getting the support of the tea party insurgency, that he will lose his job. but we're talking about the fate of the country here. >> is it really that easy, ryan, if we look at it from john boehner's perspective? damned if he does, damned if he

doesn't from inside his own ranks. it seems as though we're living through the shutdown now and we're racing mach 10 toward the debt limit deadline of october 17th with nothing established, especially with the shutdown looming and wall street ceos starting to bang their fists saying we've got to figure out what these lawmakers are going to do. >> i don't quite understand how damned he really would be. you know, let's say that the worst case scenario played out and he, you know, funded the government and he upped the debt ceiling and he was thrown out of the speakership. so the worst case scenario from his perspective. you know, so what? at this point, you know, most of his -- most people close to him assume that he's leaving at the end of 2014 anyway and he's going to have an extremely good life afterwards. he can be involved in public policy giving speeches, he can lobby, he can work for these big law firms that bring former

speakers on at massive retainers, he can play all the golf he wants. i don't really understand -- i don't know what the huge downside is for him. and it's interesting that he said i don't have the votes, because that really puts the press on the line. now the media needs to go and find out. does he actually have the votes? and there are 22 republicans now who have said that they would be willing to vote for a clean cr. you add that to the 200 democrats and you have more than enough votes. >> let me just get this in there because the messaging wire just got this. majority lord in the senate, harry reid, against john boehner saying that boehner has a credibility problem for saying that the house doesn't have the vote for a clean cr. boehner responded by saying a cr at current funding levels, which is the level both the house and senate passed is not a concession and also saying the senate democrats need to stow their faux outrage and deal with the problem at hand. so that's just a regular ole

monday there in washington, d.c. just monday. all right, guys, thanks so much. irin carmon, ryan grim, corey dade, great to have you on. you can find out more on our panel on msnbc.com. follow the link to my name. randi weingarten joins me next. don't go anywhere. this cute blob is metamucil. and this park is the inside of your body. see, the special psyllium fiber in metamucil actually gels. and that gelling helps to lower some cholesterol. metamucil. 3 amazing benefits in 1 super fiber. metamu♪il. (announcer) answer the call of the grill with new friskies grillers, full of meaty tenders and crunchy bites.

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... nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation. let's invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. we need the support. teachers are out here on the front lines. the children we teach are going through so many things, things you would as parents might not even know about and the teacher hears it. and so we need the support of our nation to be behind us, not to vilify us, to help us so that we can educate these people. >> you've got to respect her honesty there.

that wass iyvette, pleading for help in the fight to educate and raise our children. she was present as nbc and msnbc kicked off our fourth annual education nation summit. so how do we give students and teachers the help and encouragement they need and how is the government shutdown impacting classrooms, students and teachers across the country. joining me is randi weingarten, president of the american federation of teachers. it's great to have you here. now we're in week two, day seven of the official government shutdown. over 4200 plus education department employees facing furloughs. explain the immediate impact that has. the ripple effect felt in the nation's classrooms. >> you heard that fantastic teacher from new york city at the eagle academy plead for help. the shutdown is the opposite directions. so we already had sequester, which essentially cut the

funding for poor kids throughout the country by a good 15% to 20%. so what that means in english is that we already lost 57,000 seats in head start. when we're saying that pre-k and early education is absolutely critical to help kids, particularly poor kids have a running start. now with the government shutdown, there's 19,000 more head start slots lost, 7,000 already. the flu shots, they're done, they're gone. the children's hospital in washington, no admissions. the d.o.d., department of defense, teachers across our nation, across the world, not getting paid. so what you're seeing is that when teachers are pleading for the infrastructure and the money that we need to actually give kids a running start so that there is more teachers, there's more preparation for early childhood, that's actually gotten cut in the nation because of the shutdown. >> it's basic oxygen for

development. >> exactly. >> we're looking at the fact that they already negotiated at sequester levels, at least in this cr that's not getting picked up. >> exactly. >> so none of that stuff is going to change but it is affecting and choking everything off. >> and you see it in the schools. like that -- i mean the tone and tenor, i have to give it to nbc, the tone and tenor of this ed nation is really different. it's really looking at what it takes and not vilifying teachers. and teachers' voices are being heard. but teachers are saying this is what i meade to implement the common core. not test bing but preparation. we want kids to be critical thinkers. but what's happening in the house of representatives is going in the opposite directions. >> you support the common core program, the new national academic standards bowing implemented in washington, d.c., and about 45 other states. there are some states that are starting to rethink that policy. teachers claiming that it's micromanaging at the federal level. teachers getting the blame when

standards aren't met so then it gets into that old dialogue of teaching to tests and teaching kids to pass tests. >> this is what the problem -- so we are a big believer in the common core done right. what the common core is, it's a set of standards that are aligned, aimed towards critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork and risk taking and perseverance for kids. and so the standards themselves, if we couple that with support, are really good things for kids. but you can't just on high announce that you're going to do this. this is really different. it's a different way of teaching. it's almost like if there was a new protocol in medicine, you have to have the preparation. but what happened was that the federal government basically through arne duncan and the federal government, they basically funded the testing consortium and none of the preparation. that's why teachers around the country and some of the right wingers are basically calling it test, testing, testing as opposed to teaching. we are for it. we need to actually make it work before you have high stakes

attached to it. and that's what teachers want. the more teachers have their hands around it, the more they see that it's really good for kids, but the kids need the supports. >> so when it comes, though, to what town halls across the country have revealed, because there's legislation that some people are trying to draft against common core. >> right. >> people taking a critical thinking approach to this, maybe not knowing all the basics that go along with it. >> what we are saying around the country is two things, and frankly what jerry brown has done in california is the best, because jerry brown delinked the tests from the common core in terms of implementation. which is what we actually called for a few months ago, before the new york state debacle happened in terms of common core implementation. but what we're also saying is two things. teachers not trusting it because the test had led the teaching. but the second thing you're seeing is the same people, the tea party folk who are crashing the economy in washington, they don't want it because they don't want to spend the money on it. they are using it and saying

it's national standards, which it's not, because they don't actually want to have a real viable public education. so there's a lot of mistrust here because -- some for the right reasons, some for the wrong reasons, but the common core is important if we get it right. >> all right. we don't know we're ignorant until we get knowledgeable about it. randi weingarten, thanks so much. you can watch the summit live at educationnation.com and the nbc news youtube channel. you can join the discussion boy using #education nation and #what it takes. bhap ready to run your lines?

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developing right now tens of millions of people included under a tornado watch. as we speak it covers big cities like washington, d.c. and new york. nbc meteorologist bill karins joins me with that. this is uncommon for us. >> for october. >> it's weird. you feel it in the air, humidity.

storms rolling over millions of people on i-95. we just had a tornado warning for fredericksburg, virginia. you can see the red triangle on 95. these storms are located over the top of 95. i imagine a couple of thousand vehicles pulled to the side of the road as bright oranges are torrential downpours along with strong gusty winds. that's going right through washington, d.c. it passed through the western edge of the beltway but now right over the top. if you're listening anywhere along 95 or in the washington, d.c. area, now is the time to stay indoors. it will blow through in a half hour then gone. further to the north, the line of storms, see the d.c. area, rain there. especially the capital, too. baltimore another half hour for you. further out the timing on it for philadelphia looks to be about two hours from now, 2:00 to 3:00 the worst will roll through the area and new york city right around 4:00 or 5:00. thomas airport delays as you would expect starting to pile up a lot of areas get worse as storms roll through. probably stoppages at the airports, too. the key is will we get

tornadoes. so far, no, we haven't. >> bill karins. appreciate it. we switch gears to this story starting a new dialogue about one person's story about a child that asked a fellow student on valentine's day on a dare and shot and killed execution style. a powerful documentary that begins today on hbo offering a gripping retelling of larry king. king a 14-year-old exploring gender identity when he was gunned down by a boy that he liked. >> when he asked me what to do about the situation, my response to him was nothing. what to do about this situation is nothing. and to keep it private and to dwell upon it. larry shouldn't have expressed himself so blatantly, openly trans sexual. >> speaking with those seared into memory raises questions

about lgtb teens, juvenile justice, small towns. martha, great to have you here. this is a heck of a directorial debut, as i understand, for you. what drew you to the story? what were the most challenging aspects of putting it together cohesively in the firm? >> first of all, thank you for having me, thomas. the biggest challenge was being empathetic to brandon. when i first started looking into doing this film, this documentary, i thought as an african-american woman and extremely pro lgtb rights, how am i going to empathize with someone who shot and killed larry. then i realized through my journey and sitting in the hearings and watching this child being tried as an adult in my core belief system i don't think this child should be tried as an adult. that was the biggest challenge for me. >> let me ask you more pout

brandon in all this. as we understand he's gone on to graduate high school. he'll be roughly 39 years old when he gets out. has he shown remorse and a better understanding of what took place between he and larry? >> i don't know specifically. from what his family told us, he has. i can't say from my own personal experience i felt that from him. >> how do you think larry king's family has evolved after this and how are they portrayed in your film? >> what i can tell you is larry was living in camrya, which is a shelter for youth. the people that worked there with him loved him very, very much and were devastated with the shooting, absolutely devastated and shocked. i think the journey of empathy, of understanding, of acceptance goes both ways in this story. that is why i think this story is going to engage in a real

conversation of change. because you can't make a film to preach to a choir. >> we hope a lot of people tune in tonight. thanks so much that reminder hbo's documentary valentine road on hbo. thanks again. that's going to wrap things up for me. you'll see me back at 2:00 p.m. filling in for tamron hall on "news nation." hi, alex, happy monday. >> happy monday to you. tom cole told me this summer that a government shutdown was a suicidal political tactic. we will find out what he thinks about it today. john peddesta, chief of staff under the last president to see a government shutdown joins us to discuss how president obama might find a way out of this. if you thought citizens united was bad, the supreme court takes up a case that could obliterate campaign finance laws. all that when "now" starts right after this.

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government shutdown. could speaker boehner be afraid he actually has the votes to end it? it's monday october 7th and this is "now." the country is now seven days into a government shutdown but house speaker john boehner is still refusing to allow a vote on any bill that would reopen the government's doors without delaying, defunding or dismantling in some fashion the nation's health care law. speaking to george stephanopoulos, boehner had this to say. >> there are not the votes in the house to pass a clean cr. the american people expect in washington when we have a crisis like this that the leaders will sit down and have a conversation. i told my members the other day, there may be a back room somewhere, but there's nobody in it. >> a back room with nobody in it or a back room with the majority of the house of representatives in it. according to nbc's own count, there are currently as many as 22 repca