air, confusion and frustration grows for families and loved ones over the agonizing wait. but, first, these are live pictures you're looking at after a massive explosion leveled two new york city apartment buildings killing at least two people and injuring more than a dozen others. president obama has been briefed on this and hundreds of fire fighters are responding to it. >> there was no warning in advance, but from what we know now, the only indication of danger came about 15 minutes earlier when a gas leak was reported to con eds son. con ed dispatched a team immediately to respond. the explosion occurred before that team could arrive. >> and nbc's katy tur is live on the scene in harlem. can you tell us what's going on there now. >> reporter: right now it's

still a five-alarm fire. i'll step out of the way so you can see what's going on. a lot of activity. over 200 fire fighters here and a number of heavy machinery including exrate issors going through the rubble no. word on the number missing. mayor de blasio would not confirm. he said people may be answering their cell phones at work and may not be aware of what's going on. tears commercial on the bottom floor and residential up top. 15 apartments total between the buildings, and it's unclear how many people were still home at the time. it's been confirmed that two people have died from this, and there are 24 injuries. two serious life-threatening injuries, five serious, but not life-threatening injuries and 15 minor injuries. don't know where the people were at the time of the explosion, whether or not they were on the street or whether or not they were within the building. now this happened around 9:30 this morning. con ed was called about 15 minutes earlier to a billing down the street. somebody thought they smelled gas. before they could get here, this explosion happened. they got here two minutes after

the explosion occurred. you can see in the street, cars literally stopped in their tracks, covered with dust and rubble right now. obama was briefed on this. of course, in manhattan it's always concerned that it might be related to terror in some way. not the case here. this is just a gas leak. they want to confirm that no criminality is expected. the shock from it all, the force of the explosion was so strong, that people felt it for many blocks away, as far as 15 blocks away. it blew out some of the windows on this block next door to where the explosion happened. columbia university even recorded a seismic wave. that's how strong the explosion was. as of now the investigation is still ongoing. mayor de blasio says it will take some time to figure out exactly what went wrong, some time to figure out exactly who is still missing. joy? >> all right. nbc's katy tur in harlem, thank you very much. now to missing malaysian flight 370.

today's news conference seemed to deepen the mystery over what happened to the missing flight and its 239 passengers and crew. nearly five days into the search and with no signs of the missing 777 malaysia's defense minister confirmed that the beijing-bound plane may have veered hundreds of miles off course to the west. authorities also said they have been given new data -- they have given their new data to american aviation authorities as the hunt expands, and as they are not yet certain that the plane, the military track flying west was indeed flight 370. authorities from india and other countries have joined in the search which encompasses 27,000 nautical square miles. malaysian authorities, however, denied the search was in any state of confusion. >> this is utter confusion. >> i don't think so. i think it's far from it. it's only confusion if it want it to seem to be confusion. we have made it very clear, we've been very consistent in our approach.

>> now moments ago senior u.s. intelligence officials told nbc news that the nation's spy satellites have found no evidence of an in-flight explosion. jim tillman is a former pilot and aviation expert. you heard the malaysian defense minister saying there's no confusion at all. do you agree that assessment? >> i can't believe he's said that. he's obviously not hearing what i'm hearing or seeing what i'm seeing. it's full of confusion. >> how shocking is it that the confusion is over where the plane was? they don't even seem clear on the trajectory of the flight. is that unusual? >> yes, it's unusual. i mean, what was going on on the ground? were they looking at radar? was the radar return giving them anything? and i've been hearing things about the transponders being turned off which would not give full data to the ground as to what the airplane was doing and all that sort of thing. if it was turned off, okay, then you've lost some of your radar

control and contact, but not all of it because you still get a blip on primitive radar, i call it. you should be able to track and follow the airplane. >> but, i mean, why would a pilot turn off the transponders, any logical reason for that to be done? >> i can't think of a single good reason for that to happen. now, there has been -- there's so many scenarios, joy, you know, like pick your scenario du jour, who knows. maybe they had absolutely total electrical failure which is very difficult to imagine but let's say that that happened. if that happened then the captain's instruments would still work. he'd be able to see his navigational instruments. would have one radio that's very limited in range, and he would be able to navigate using some rather, you know, simple kinds of navigation aids, nothing like he normally uses to fly and navigate the airplane. but it is so simple that it would be easy to make a mistake on your heading. if he was trying to get back to

the airport. if that happened, he would be flying on the wrong course thinking he's right on target going back to the airport and he really wasn't. you know what, joy? we don't even know enough to know if there was a crash. we don't have anything. we don't have any details. we don't have any parts of the airplane. we don't have any communication with the airplane. it's really a very puzzling situation. >> and it's got to be incredibly frustrating for these families because a giant plane can simply not vanish, and now they are not sure where to even look. should the family members be angry at the airline thinking that they may not be as open as they should be or is it really the malaysian government at this point? >> i don't think that anger would be a proper response, even though i understand the intense emotional trauma they are going through. the malaysian government, i believe, is doing all that they know how to do, and that's why they are asking for our help from everybody in the world to help them to find out what's going on.

i don't think that their anger is really going to help things at all. it's -- it must be very, very frustrating, very difficult to deal with, and -- and all that, but that's not going to help anything. we have to realize that this is a very awkward, unusual situation, not following any of the norms that we normally see when you have an accident or whatever, so i think they are doing the best they can. it's just not enough. >> lastly, just to take a step back for a moment. if the traditional means of locating an aircraft are not available because, as you said, maybe the transponder was on, not sure if the plane made a 100% turn, is there a way to see where the plane was headed, based on the route it was taking, it was headed to beijing? are there more old-school methods employed to figure out where this plane was going? >> yes. you know, there was a day when we didn't have all of this high-tech stuff and all these exotic radars and everything

else, and during those days we did have airplanes that went astray and we had to try to find them. so, yes. just go back to the time when you didn't have all of this technology, and you use your eyeballs and use your thinking in terms of what logically makes sense, and you have to go with that. that's all there is to it. thank god a lot of assets there to try to help them to find it, even if it's down to just using their eyeballs to look and see if they see anything that's going to give them a clue. >> and, of course, not knowing even where to start is one of the most frustrating thing about this most incredible mystery. aviation expert jim tillman, thanks so much. to the white house now and a show of support for ukraine. this hour president obama welcomed ukraine's interim prime minister into the oval office. the prime minister just wrapped up a meeting with secretary of state john kerry. the visit comes as the u.s. and its allies warned russian president vladimir putin against further action in crimea. putin has stationed troops in the region ahead of a vote on

sunday to decide whether crimea should secede from ukraine and become a part of the russian federation. meanwhile, the president is sending secretary of state john kerry to london to meet with russian foreign minister on friday. coming up, a democrat named sink just lost in florida, but does that really mean that democrats are sunk in november? and chris hayes will be here to discuss the cia versus the senate. why explosionive allegations of spying on members of congress is a shock. more on shenanigans that date back to the bush administration. ancient pyramids were actually a mistake? uh-oh. geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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back now with breaking news out of arizona where governor jan brewer has announced she will not seek a third term in november. brewer's team had been arguing the state's term limits don't

apply to her since she didn't serve a full term after succeeding then governor janet napolitano. she previously served as secretary of state making her next in line for the governorship when napolitano left in 2009. all right, meanwhile, it's official. the race for 2014 is already under way, and democrats are already getting the jitters. as both parties try to read the tea leaves from the gop's narrow hold in a special house election in a florida swing district, a new "wall street journal"/nbc poll shows president obama's approval rating has dropped to 41%, a new low for him. of course, the same poll shows republican -- the republican party racing to the bottom with a 45% negative rating and just 27% approval. and yet the parties are in a statistical dead heat on the question of who voters would prefer to control congress. with republicans up by one point, 44% to 43%. so what's a democrat to do? for now the democratic strategy

is to keep pressing on income inequality. as the president prepares to unveil new rules regarding overtime pay, house democrats just moments ago officially began their push to help families by reinstating extended unemployment benefits. >> think of their children, their families, their inability to put food on the table. in fact, their inability to say in their homes, so this is about our country, think of the women who are losing unemployment insurance in great numbers, our veterans, our economy, the strength of our country. >> polling shows that most americans think the country is still in a recession, also bad news for democrats. it also shows the national health care law is still very unpopular. despite new numbers showing the rollout having effectively shaken off its early problems, but with the florida special election being read by the beltway as a referendum on obamacare, republicans are going full speed ahead with the mid-term election that promises to center on those two things, economic cynicism and the health

care law. case in point, john boehner. in republican's weekly remark this morning he said this. >> it's about the economy. it's about obamacare. listen, i've stood here after losing some special elections. i try to put lipstick on a pig. it was still a pig so you can bet they will try to put lipstick on it but you all know what the facts are. >> let's start with that florida raise. kevin kay is a democratic strategist and head of kevin kay communications and a former communications director for the democrat in the race, alex sink. okay, kevin, what happened? >> well, joy, first off congratulations on "the reid report." it's appointment and dvr viewing in my house hold so i hope your viewers set up that dvr recording. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. unfortunately, for the republicans, i'm not here to put any makeup on anything. we lost, but in florida instead of trying to spin, what we're doing is looking at 2014, and the lessons that we've learned from this -- this campaign.

number one, rick scott is toxic. david jolly, insider republicans here in florida, washington, d.c. republicans kept rick scott as far away from possible from this special election. that's number one. number two, unfortunately, alex sink, who was a tremendous trailblazing woman who both of my daughters look up to, couldn't turn out enough votes on election day. that's going to have to change in 2014, and number three, the florida democratic party has continued its progress on vote-by-mail ballots and also our early voting, and that's going to be critical in 2014 when we elect carly crist, the people's governor. >> i want to mention the surrogates. rick scott not a surrogate. nobody was inviting him but jeb bush was used by the jolly campaign as their surrogate and bill clinton came in for alex sink. what role do you think those two surrogates played? it was pretty low turnout, but what role do you think those two played? >> a little bit. i think the bigger question here

is what's going to happen in 2014. we looked at this race, and it wasn't a race against alex sink or david jolly. it was a race against the field operation on election day. you know, going into election day alex had more than a 3,000-vote lead based on a great program. what failed to happen was to motivate those voters to get out, and what bill clinton or jeb bush swung that, i don't believe that that's the case. what i believe is on election day democrats have to do better, and we will do better in 2014. >> i want to put that result back up again. we just showed the turnout. it was 182,000 people voting versus 330,000 in the 2012 election which is not analogous but 267,000 in 2010 so a relatively low turnout, a special election, but to your point, kevin, 112,000 absentee ballots cast in that race, 5,000 people voting early, so, once again, the weakness for democrats in that special election was on election day, and we don't know yet about the absentee ballots but republicans

are typically strong there. did the democrats improve at least their absentee ballot performance? >> we're still looking at the numbers, but if you'll remember in 2012 on this very network i talked about how absentee ballots and vote by mail was going well for president obama in 2012. special elections are unique. we can't real look at this data and say this is what's going to happen in 2014, no matter how much the d.c. establishment wants to have happen. what we have to look at is what are the lessons learned? my friend steve shale who is notorious for telling people to underreact said it well yesterday. i mean, this is an election that comes down to turning out the vote, and democrats weren't able to do it, unfortunately, in the special election. it was partisans on both sides coming out. it was a republican-leaning district, and i believe that alex sink, you know, could have turned out more voters on election day. that's what she had to do to win the election, and, unfortunately, that didn't happen. she made it competitive but didn't take it over the finish line. >> yeah. it's got to be tough to lose by

4,000 votes and with the third-party guy in there and losing by such a small margin but underreact tries to be the theme by which i live my life. a great way to do things. thanks so much, kevin. >> thank you, joy. all right. turning now for a broader discussion on the 2014 mid term election, goldie taylor, msnbc contributor. okay, goldie. the florida race being read by everybody now as uh-oh, democrats are toast. is that the way you're reading it? >> no, i don't. i do read it as our beltway press and beltway politicos, they are looking at this race for ratings to raise money, for any number of things. what we can say about this race though is although it doesn't bode well maybe for 2014, we are talking about a special within a special, and those are driven by turnout numbers on the daily -- on the day of the election and less driven by issues so when you have specials within specials those people tend all

the time, vote like shock troops. gop, older white voters who show up even if it's a special election for dog catcher. those are the people who are going to decide elections. who doesn't vote are those people who are least likely. they show up maybe during a presidential on year, almost never in a mid-term and never ever during a special election like this. what democrats have to do is change that behavior over time. they have to show that every election matters, that these issues matter and that who they send to office, who is going to be voting, going to be voting for or against your interests, and so we have to show that every election is critical, but that's a fight that we've been fighting for decades, and i'm not sure that we're going to change it by 2014, you know, maybe 2016 means something different. >> 2016 is when they come back. that's so frustrating with democratic voters is they sort of come and go. i want to talk specifically about the health care law. in the nbc/"wall street journal" poll and the other thing being

pied is president obama's popularity is tied at least in the punditocracy to the affordable care act, but if you look at the poll people say they are more likely to support a congressional candidate, a democrat who supports fixing the law 48% and a republican who wants to repeal the law, 47%, statistically that's a tie. this is an issue that's not clear in the minds of the voters. they both don't like the law but don't want to necessarily repeal it but republicans are reading this particular election because jolly is against the affordable care act, go full throttle on the affordable care act? do you think that's wise? >> a messaging problem for democrats once again that if you take and strip apart the components of the affordable care act, everybody is for everything, keeping for kids in the health care, they are for ensuring the pre-existing conditions. i mean, they are for everything until you put the title affordable care act or obamacare at the top and then you see some of the support drop off or some of the animus that come out for it comes then. in terms of messaging, we've got to come back and do this the

old-fashioned way. and show that this website works, that people are getting covered and tell the real american stories about how this is saving families money, about how it is saving them from catastrophes and making sure that it raises the wellness of america. we have to go back and re-message this thing all over again. quite frankly we lost the messaging war on the affordable health care act and it will cost us in 2014 and continue to be an issue even though the website is fixed and getting on. >> even the opportunity that those numbers show it's sort of middling in people's mind but you never know. it could change. there will be more polls. >> more polls between now and november. goldie taylor, thanks so much. all right. got a question for you burning me to answer. i'll be taking your questions live in a google video chat. join the readers group on msnbc.com and you can also tweet your questions to "the reid report" on twitter. i'll have your answers this

friday at 3:30 eastern.

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the lines on polls that will tell you more than you think about yourself. but first, it's time for the stories you can't stop buzzing about on social media in a little segment we like to call we the tweeple. the hilarious skit with president obama promoting the health care act on the comedy show "between two ferns." republican wandy weber tweeted this. instead of wasting time with a parody interview he should be focused on finding happenses, re, #benghazi. too bad that matter was already settled through formal hearings. the healthcare.gov website saw a 40% jump in traffic overnight. on a nicer note, "rolling

stones" lead guitarist keith richards known for wild partying and songwriting will soon release a children's book about gus and me, a tender retelling of his grandfather gifting him with a guy tar. i have just become a grandfather for the fifth time so i know what i'm talking about, richards said in a statement about the book. the special, special bond between kids and grandparents is unique and should be treasured. keep telling us what's important to you. coming up, the latest cia mess that everyone is talking about, and i'll talk to chris hayes about just that. s you have to se to make sure they're soft. other things, you don't. [ female announcer ] charmin ultra soft is so soft you can actually see the softness with our comfort cushions. plus you can use up to four times less. enjoy the go with charmin ultra soft. thcar loan didn't start here. it started with that overdue bill he never got. checking his experian credit report and score

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computers. i have great concerns that the cia's search may well have violated the separation of powers principle embodied in the united states constitution. >> as far as the allegations of, you know, cia hacking into, you know, senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth, and we wouldn't do that. i mean, that's -- that's just beyond the -- you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do. >> senators on both sides of the aisle are rallying around senate intelligence committee dianne feinstein following her bombshell speech yesterday of accusing the cia of spying on the senate. today nbc news is reporting colorado senator mar udall has jumped into the fray and is putting a hold on the president's nomination of caroline kraft to be agency's top lawyer. last night on msnbc he had harsh words for cia director john brennan. >> i've lost confidence in director brennan, particularly

because he won't acknowledge the misdeeds and misconduct of the c cia. >> meanwhile, south carolina senator lindsey graham called the allegations richard nixon stuff adding people should go to jail if it's true. and if true, the legislative branch should declare war on the cia. oregon stan ron widen said i'm extremely troubled that the cia leadership has neither responded to specific questions about this search or even acknowledged that it occurred. feinstein's hour-long speech exposed a rift over important issues that date back to the bush administration and those issues are not about spying. as my colleague chris hayes sprained on his show "all in" last night. >> it's about torture. it's about the 6,000-page cia torture report that the agency does not want you to see. today feinstein gave us a hint as to why. >> the interrogations and the

conditions of confinement at the cia detention site were far different and far more harsh than the way the cia had described them to us. >> for far too long the senate intelligence committee and the cia have functioned basically as partners, colluding to withhold information about the activities of the agency from the american people. >> and chris hayes, host of msnbc's "all in" joins me now. chris, does it drive you crazy that we're now getting all of this umbrage and all of this desire to investigate and linds e graham saying somebody might have to go to jail when it's about the senators? >> yes, i mean, i think that's -- that is the crazy thing. dianne feinstein has been one of the most reliable allies of the cia, of the entire intelligence community and has fought back against disclosure and condemned people who called more about it. nobody wants to be the person spied on. ask angela merkel in germany.

germans spying on everyone and she got bugged and she's not happy. >> the good from this could be to get to the core issue, not about the senators and what was done to them. the core issue is about torture. >> no one was ever held accountable for the fact that the united states tortured people for a period of time and here's what's even more galling, not only was no one held accountable and we had an election, a new executive was ele elected, another election, five years later, the agency that committed the horror still believes what they did was effective, still is unwilling to accept the fact that she is were crimes. that's what's crazy. we're having this discussion 2014. this should have been litigated long ago. >> and the other issue, too, as you've said is we've had elections about this. not litigated this. there's been no accountability, but now what are the chances that the same leaders of committees like dianne feinstein

who basically rubber stamped, were read in on a lot of programs, knew it was going on. we didn't have the outcry then really what. are the chances that we'll have accountability now? >> well, i think a big part depends on what is in this report and what it gets out. i don't know what's in the 6,000 pages, might really be explosive stuff that makes us look into the heart of darkness once again because it's a chapter we've all sort of changed the page on, closed the book, nod looked backwards, if we learn things from that report that shock the conscience we might have another round of this, and i think that that -- we never had the first round in certain ways and that's the problem. and i really think, of all the things that i would like to see leaked at this point, or i would like to see some parts of, that 6,000 pages or some of it, that needs to make its way to the public in some way. >> and brennan said he's not going anywhere. he's one person who said, listen, he's upset that these things have come out, you know. panetta has said he's upset and disappointed. this is panetta's quote, i wish

they would work together because ultimately we ought to be focusing on the threats of today and not the past so there's bipartisan agreement we should move on so if you don't have the leaders of these agencies and former leaders of them saying, you know what, something should change and this stuff should be disclosed, i guess i'm overly cynical. >> that is why i find this so stunning. the cia, let's remember, destroyed evidence of almost -- of possible crimes. they destroyed 70-plus interrogation tapes. go try to do that, joy reid or anyone watching this on a crime that's been committed when you're holding evidence. try to destroy that and see how the legal system treats you. the cia did this and are totally unre.ant about it. >> right. >> that's the issue this. agency strikes me as an agency that is in need of a deep institutional transformation in how they understand their role in executing and abetting what was a very dark chapter in american intelligence history. >> also, there's numbness on the part of the public. the public has become much more risk averse because of iraq.

a lot has changed including the limits of our foreign policy. the american people looked at syria and said, no thank you, we don't want to get involved, but there doesn't seem like there's been an outrage brewing up from the public itself to go back and relitigate those policies. without that, how do we get our representatives, people like these senators, to actually go back? >> that's why -- again, that's why i think the revelations in the report matter. you're right. all this seems very remote to folks at this point, and, again, we turn the page. the chapter is in the past so the only way that you actually are going to get -- the only way you might have something approaching an accountability moment, aside from the 2008 election we have not had in any kind of judicial or institutional sense. the only way you get that that is if we learn a little bit more about actually what happened. >> and that would take weeks. >> that takes weeks. >> and that probably won't happen. >> it's not going to happen, although the speech and debate clause, the pentagon papers were read into the congressional record. if dianne feinstein feels so strongly about that, she can choose portions that she thinks

are safe from a classification standpoint, get up there in the well of the senate right now and she could read what americans seem to think. she's protected by the constitution to be done and there's precedent. >> follow her own moment welcome. >> if she really believes what she's saying. >> chris hayes host of "all in" which you can watch weeknights at 8:00 p.m. eastern monday through friday. thanks so much for being here. >> pleasure to be here. >> coming up next the president is in the zone, the promise zones he promise that had would help struggling americans is doing just that. that story is coming up next. no two people have the same financial goals. pnc investments works with you to understand yours and helps plan for your retirement. talk to a pnc investments financial advisor today. ♪

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i wasn't sure what to expect at the meetings. but i really love going. i do! it reminds me we don't have to do this alone. it's so much better to have some backup and to do it together because we all face similar challenges. the meetings keep me focused and motivated. and i have a newfound determination that i'm really proud of. i've never been happier. [ female announcer ] join for free and start losing weight right away. try meetings, do it online, or both. hurry. offer ends march 22nd. weight watchers. because it works. a year of action. that's what the president has been promising on a number of fronts as he chris crosses the country. chief among those promises is extending opportunities for the middle class with a particular focus on areas where the uphill climb is nearly impossible. the president first mentioned the idea during last year's state of the union. >> this year my administration will begin to partner with 2069 hardest hit towns in america to

get these communities back on their feet. what will work with local leaders to target resources and public safety and education and housing, do more to encourage fatherhood, because what makes you a man isn't the ability to conceive a child, it's having the courage to raise one. >> in january the white house named the first five zones, san antonio, texas, los angeles, california, philadelphia, pennsylvania, southeastern kentucky and the choctaw nation of oklahoma. the goal is to improve job training, invest in infrastructure and partner with schools and parents to improve literacy. the choctaw nation in particular is an area with a troubled history because of the federal government. the tribe, along with four others, was driven out of what are now the states of alabama, louisiana and mississippi into so-called indian territory starting in the 1830s. that exodus became known as the trail of tears because nearly 2,500 choctaw died along the way. today the area suffers

disproportionately from poverty, teen pregnancy and learning disabilities, and a growing number of young people can't see their way out, but as msnbc.com reports there is hope. joining me now is msnbc.com national reporter tremain lee. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> you went in and spoke to people in the choctaw nation including people on the advocacy side. tell me with jesse pecheko. >> every month he travels to the choctaw nation, 11,000 square miles, area is huge, they go out and meet with at-risk youth, he likes to say at potential youth. but jessie is a small army of workers on the front lines to go deliver that tough love some of these young people need, to go in and help young mothers bolster their skills around parenting, really amazing what they are able to do with a small handful of outreach workers. >> to punctuate the difficulty in that community. 23% of those living in the

choctaw nation live below the poverty line, seven points above the national average and in some communities the rate is above 50%. an area of extreme need obviously. >> right. >> so what is the promise zone program designed to do specifically for the choctaw nation. >> what the promise zone doesn't do is deliver a boat load of cash. it's about strengthening federal partnerships with the tribe and local communities so the hope is with greater access to the grants they will be able to fund their programs, their outreach programs that are critical. they make a lot of money off casinos. in the last decade they made a lot of money but a lot goes to the homeless services and elderly so a lot of grant money goes to at-risk youth. there's not any jobs, nothing out there, very rural stretches where there's nothing to do but get into trouble in a lot of cases. >> you say cynics would look at this and say these are agencies that are already there, in the community and getting additional grant. it's up until now they haven't been able to make a significant

change in the lives of these young people. what would additional grant money, how would that change anything? >> think about the entire wrap-around approach here but it's not about money. it's broken homes and systematic failures in education and incarceration. we talk about all the historically oppressed groups but in this situation it's about giving these kids an opportunity through outreach, right. people think somehow these folks are living high on the hog and getting free government money. some of these people are living in homes without running water, so, i mean, so it's not about necessarily shipping money in. >> the president in his 2015 budget proposal asked for money, right? >> right. >> though the white house has billed this as something they want to do in partnership and not make it about congress having to act, they have asked congress for $100 million to support this program and another $200 million to expand it. the problem is that's not getting through. no hope that that will happen. >> mo knows whether it will or not. the infrastructure is real, don't have adequate pipes to get water to homes, you don't have jobs and much of what these

people to survive so whether it happens or not, at least the president has followed through on the good faith action saying i'm going to take executive action even if congress won't work with me. >> sort of man on the street, the people living in those community, are they starting to feel this already, are they hopeful about the outcome? >> already have been doing good work in the community. unfortunately, in communities like this there's a lot of hope on the folks that are working and believe they can help everyone you can but when you're talking to the average person who doesn't have a job, is barely making it and can barely feed their kids, dealing with alcoholism and grandparents raising a generation of kids and they are getting older and trying to introduce their traditions and language to connect these people back to who they really are, not who they are because of all the despair, it's a tough way between hope and hopelessness. that's the eternal battle. >> this is the discussion people are used to seeing within the african-american community. this is zeroing in on a

different community. trying to continue a culture that was really displaced by the united states. >> the choctaw is one of the first five tribes with the chick saw and seminole, actually a slave-holding tribe. they held and enslaved africans and sided with the confederacy in the civil war. a lot of these kids, this is southeastern oklahoma, not far from the border with texas and the red river. they identified in a lot of cases more with the rural right culture than the choctaw culture so a whole generation of older choctaw forced into these boarding schools and barred from speaking their languages and practicing their traditions so they are a dying generation so they are trying to instill the stick ball game is the predecessor of lacrosse. they invented that. languages being beamed to dozens of schools, trying to do all they can to ground these young people because they don't have much. >> that's fascinating. is that folded into this promise zone program? >> once they get the grant money they can figure out what's going on. it's not like they are saying here's the money to do this.

it's infrastructure, it's employment, outreach work so they are still working out details of how best to allocate the funds. >> the promise zone program which i think people mistake it for the enterprise program, that happened during the clinton administration. the rollout to the choctaw nation, how is that going because there's other communities getting the program implemented? >> when you speak to the choctaw nation, those who secured the grant, they haven't got the official white papers. the hope is they can use this to already -- to help folks with what they are already doing and that was part of the deal, saying we'll identify best practices f.kentucky is doing something well, philadelphia doing something well, why don't we give you the resources you need to grow it to scale. >> and hopefully measure it and maybe even convince congress, who knows one day, to try to fund it. thanks so much. appreciate it. and be sure to head over to thereidreport.msnbc.com to check out the full report. >> reading between the lines for one of the biggest dangers for democrats, it's not republicans,

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so the messages in the latest nbc news/"wall street journal" poll could not be more contradictory. according to the results a majority of americans want a congress that will work across the aisle and compromise, cut federal spending but also bring federal dollars home to their hometown, raise the minimum wage, repeal but also fix the affordable care act and most of all propose no reductions to social security and medicare all while being controlled by republicans. this despite the fact that the totally not secret prime directive of the republican party in washington over the last five years has been anything but working across the aisle up to and including shutting down the government over health care. to slash away at federal spending, even during the recession, and to essentially ban their members from seeking money for their districts. not to mention the multiple votes in the house of representatives to partially

privatize medicare in the ryan budget. now if this makes absolutely no sense to you focus on a less reported number from today's poll. 23%, that's the percentage of respondents who identified themselves as retired. in fact, a quarter of the poll's respondents were over the age of 60 and 35% were 55 or older. those older voters hold the key to prospects for republicans and democrats in the mid-terms because they are the ones who actually show up and vote in what we maddingley call the off years. one of the great ironies of american politics is older voters, poem from the generations that benefited most directly from the new deal turn out to be the most conservative when it comes to spending cuts today. just not their retirement programs. and they have been skewing more and more republican over time while still opposing republican policies that would seriously undercut the entitlement programs so many of them and their families depend on. david wasserman of the cook political report put it this way. voters under the age of 30 were

19% of all voters in 2012 but just 12% of all voters in 2010. likewise, voters 68 and up were 17% of all voters in 2012, but 21% of all voters in -- in 2012, and herein lies the biggest danger for democratic candidates in 2014. the combination of growing cynicism among younger voters and solid voting behavior by older ones means whatever gains democrats make in presidential years they almost always give them back two years later. the turnout in that florida special election, it was under 40%. that's not about the party, the candidates or the president or obamacare. that's about you, and that wraps things up for the reid report." i'll see you back here tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. eastern when our guest includes music mogul russell response and i'll be taking your questions in a live google chat at 3:30 eastern. to submit your questions logon to thereidreport.com.

"the cycle" is up next? >> we'll have the very latest on the deadly explosion in new york city, mystery that conditions and in our hour we expect to hear new remarks from president obama as he sits down with ukraine's prime minister, and did we mention temperatures will also fall 40 degrees tonight. >> what? >> in some parts of the country. >> no. >> say it isn't so. say it isn't so. but we're still happy that "the cycle" is coming up next. ♪ [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. ♪ she can print amazing things, right from her computer. [ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. ♪ my mom works at ge. ♪

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geico motorcycle. see how much you could save. as we start this hour, news is breaking across the nation and the world. we are waiting for an update on one of those new york city hospitals treating patients from this morning's deadly building collapse. right now fire fighters are combing through the rubble to see if anyone is still trapped inside. >> breaking news about our weather. a dangerous line of storms is cutting across the eastern u.s. millions of americans are in its path, and tonights severe weather is only the beginning.

>> with every hour that passes, the details about that missing airliner seem to get murkier and murkier. new today the chilling final words from the cockpit to air traffic control. >> and that is where we begin. >> the way forward, ladies and gentlemen, it to bring more experts to analyze both the civilian and the military data in the east or in the west, on land or in the water, and that is exactly what we're doing today. until we find it, we'll do whatever it takes to find it. >> whatever it takes. three ntsb investigators are lending their radar expertise to the malaysian government. search and rescue teams are spread out over 31,000 square miles around malaysia for flight 370. that's roughly the size of south carolina. if the search area was shrunk down to the size of an average sports stadium rescue crews would look for something the size of a dime. thinking of it that way, it's no

wonder after five days there's still not a scrape of evidence as to where this boeing 777 is. of course, there are theories and confusions only made worse which the malaysian government walking back reports that military radar picked up an unexplained blip hundreds of miles off course. witnesses report seeing a plane in flight off malaysia's coast but none have been confirmed. they are also investigating an oil rig claim he saw a plane on fire in the south china sea, in the complete opposite direction. 42 ships and 39 pieces of aircraft are now involved in the search and can you help from home. a u.s.-based satellite imaging country is posting hoy res images on the web. users around the world are looking frame by frame and tagging anything that could be a clue. nbc's tom so sello has been all over this story for us. tom, what is the lateest? >> the late set both the faa and nets bao with in malaysia and