it's the white house rolls out a new plan to fight domestic terrorism. more than five months after the insurrection at the u.s. capitol. we'll dig into that. plus ahead to a big day of hearings on the capitol attack. new documents released by the house oversight committee revealing how trump pushed his doj to embrace election lies. i'll speak with the top member of the oversight committee in a moment. and president biden lands in geneva ahead of that highly anticipated one-on-one with russian president vladimir putin. how is he planning to address the attacks on democracy. bob menendez joins me live with his thoughts, ahead.

welcome to tuesday. it is "meet the press daily" and i'm chuck todd on a very busy day here in washington despite the fact the calendar says june. new developments from the white house, the justice department and congress all focusing on the rising threat of domestic terrorism and violent political extremism. today the white house is rolling out its strategy to tackle the issue. we just heard attorney general merrick garland talk about the challenges facing to address the domestic terrorism threat in part because it comes in so many forms. it does challenge some of our key constitutional protections. speaking about the new strategy. garland mentioned the church shooting of 2015 and the congressional baseball shooting that same year and the tragedy at the tree of life synagogue in 2018 and the 2019 shooting in el paso just to name a few. >> such attacks are not only

unspeakable tragedies for the victims' loved ones, but a tragedy for our country and an attack on our core ideals as a society. we must not only bring our federal resources to bear, we must adopt a broader societial response to tackle the problems deeper roots. >> in short, the american idea is what is under attack by these violent extremists. garland's remarks come the disclosure of an unidentified fbi report the strategy to address the violent extremists is, of course, happening in the very long shadow of the january 6th siege on the capitol. just an hour from now, two house committees will be grilling a number of officials about the attack, what led to it including the fbi director christopher wray, charles flynn, michael flynn's brother, mind you, and the captain police inspector

general. the committee has released correspondence in the runup to the january 6th siege. they reveal the extent to which the president and the team around him were at the time pushing the justice department to act, to embrace crazy lies about the election that somehow it was stolen from him. and amid it all speaker pelosi has huddled with leading house democrats and their next step in investigating the siege and whether another push for an independent commission. let's try to get our arms around all of this right now. joining me now, we have our justice correspondent and sat down with mayor mayorkas and ben collins, senior reporter, of course following this rapidly evoling threat particularly as it shows up online. so, pete, let me start with this sort of, obviously, today was,

you know, that intentional roll out, if you will. right. the white house. justice. you speak to department of homeland security. they're certainly trying to send the message that the whole of government is focused on this. but you've been here before. what is new here and what feels like it's just part of a press release? >> well, i think that is a significant question. what is new here, clearly, is the biden administration coming right out and saying domestic terrorism is a problem. something the trump administration in some forms was reluctant to do and also saying the whole government needs to get involved in fighting. that there is a role for the defense department, homeland security, the state department, the justice department and many other aspects of government. that is in a sense new. we need to do more of what we are already doing. more money for investigators, more money for prosecutors and better coordination with social media companies and this is

something that ben collins has been following so closely. so one of the questions here was why wasn't the federal government, intel agencies, fbi, everybody more aware of what was being said on social media before january 6th when people like ben collins were raising their hands and saying this is worrisome. so, one of the things that this strategy says is how do we work more closely with them but at the same time the justice department and homeland are being very careful to say we're not targeting ideology and we're not going after just right-wing people or left-wing people. here is the way senator mayorkas said it to me. >> the first amendment right of free speech. we are not targeting speech. we are not attacking speech. what we are focused on is violence. >> in america, a hateful

ideology is not unlawful. we do not investigate individuals for their first amendment protected activities. >> and this is one of the challenges with the domestic terrorism. we could declare al qaeda or isis, foreign terror groups and, you know, take investigative action against them because they have no first amendment rights. they're not in the u.s. but we can't do that with the 3 percenters and that's the challenge for the government. >> well, i am curious on that, pete. and that is you brought up what i was basically going to follow which is, you know, after 9/11, that's when the patriot act was passed. obviously t was focused on trying to deal with this international threat. are there new laws that mayorkas or garland would like to see proposed that would give them a better insight as to what these domestic extremists are doing or

does that just but up against our bill of rights? >> you know, after the oklahoma city attack, when there were so many bombings in america the justice department looked at what was out there online and in libraries and said, gee, so many bombmaking instructions, can't we make the spreading of that illegal. and the justice department concluded the answer was no because that's free expression. so, advocating the overthrow of america, saying that, you know, you hate certain races or ethnic groups, that's protected speech. that's the problem. how do you classify a group or an ideology as a domestic terrorist group and then not violate free speech. this is evolving because it used to be when you asked the fbi about it, we have plenty of statutory authorities, we can charge use of destructive device and conspiracy and i think they are trying to look at, is there some way to make domestic

terrorism a crime that would give more investigative authority without violating these free expression ideas and it's a very difficult question. >> well, let me pivot over to ben collins. ben, obviously, you've been sort of, you were sounding the early alarm on domestic extremism and let me first follow with that question. when you, the social media companies limit what they do about this sometimes. saying that they're running up against, frankly, the bill of rights, if you will. is there authority that's missing that would allow them to police their hate speech that may be inciting violence a little bit more? >> they can do whatever they want. currently the law states they can remove anybody for really any reason. they're running a website. if you were running disney.com you would not allow the proud

boys, it's a political issue, a much larger place. so there's no statute that says that they can or should or shouldn't remove things from their platform. like pete said, there is no, there is no larger statute saying that advocating for the government is in some capacity unlawful. you have to have a concentrated plan, which, by the way, was the change in tenor. people were saying i am going to go to the capitol and bring these weapons and do these things. that's the sort of things when it becomes unlawful. they were planning something and they did it. that's the difference there. the other problem right now with qanon, where they do reference in this fbi threat assessment, they reference qanon directly and they say we don't want to talk about specific necessarily here. it's a tough thing. we're not limiting people from saying that the government is run by but they have been

responsible for these attacks and as this gets further away from reality as people lose their leader, q from qanon hasn't posted in six months. what is going to happen here? are these people going to get desperate? that's what they're worried about. >> i just wanted to say that was my follow, you anticipated some of it. is there something that has happened that is making, that you've seen that is making the fbi this nervous to issue this report or is this more of, hey, this happened to other fringe groups when their leader disappears? >> yeah, i got to be honest, i haven't seen anything specific in the run for the 6th there were so many specific things it was hard to pinpoint even one. since then qanon has become a very fractured movement because the leader is gone. again qanon based on the premise that they are posting and that guy has gone away and she hasn't posted since december 8th. while there are true believers

waiting for a new thing to come around and give them instructions and tell them what to read and tell them how to read things. a lot of them have moved on to different extremist movements. people do not believe the world is run by cannibals. groups after the 6th were recruiting those people anticipating that they would be angrier if the government after the 6th. maybe that's what they're worried about. that's what they say in this report they're worried about domestic extremist groups recruiting qanon people into their cause. you've seen both. white supremacy groups like say the proud boys recruiting in that space but you've althemsel frankly stupid antisemettic conspiracy theories that could lead to lone wolf terror. >> if you look at it, a line that goes all the way back to the clan and all of it, the names of the groups may change,

but the ideological motivation and beliefs seem very similar. pete williams and ben collins, thank you, both, for getting us started. ben, you get to come back and do a second beat for us. you have an amazing piece. some incredible reporting on right wing propaganda impacting what we teach and how we teach our children from school board to school board. let me bring in illinois school board on the house intelligence and oversight committee and questioning the fbi director of extremism this afternoon and i want to start with what you're seeing and what the white house is putting out. what you heard from the attorney general. is this enough of a start for you so far? is this, do you feel as if this is something that they feel the need they have to do to get ahead of something or that they are truly on top of what is a growing threat? >> i think it's a good start, but there needs to be more. we need to learn a lot more about the intelligence failures leading up to january 6th.

a lot of people feel like the plot was in plain sight and then we need to understand what the heck happened with the response on january 6th. why was it so delayed despite the urgent pleas from folks like the capitol police and others for a federal response. and then, last, how are we going to bring people to justice with regard to january 6th? it's now been five or six months and many, many people have still not been prosecuted and we need to understand what is the hold up there because until the people are held accountable, i think a lot of folks in the domestic violent extremist movement feel they can get away with this. >> do you believe, congressman, that the reason we've not prioritized this sooner that maybe the threats weren't taken as seriously, even though the intelligence was passed along is that there has been this line where either people didn't

believe fellow americans would do this or that there was sort of a failure by some in power to believe that what they were reading online would translate into a violent expression. >> i think so. in regard to this domestic terror threat and, also, of course, we are so focused on our external threats. whether they are from russia or other nonstate actors. but now we have to realize that our threats are both external and internal. >> well, let's talk about the commission or what to do and how to investigate january 6th. i know that speaker pelosi met with committee chairs. what outcome would you like to see? do you want to see one more attempt at getting a bipartisan

stamp of approval? >> far be it from me to tell speaker pelosi what to do but i personally think that doing nothing is an option. that's how the leadership views it, as well. i believe this bipartisan commission was a few votes away in the senate and i understand that there might be a change of heart from a couple people potentially because of the very narrow focus of the investigations currently and the product of some of those investigations that came out recently in the senate. so, i'm hoping that perhaps senator schumer may be able to get 60 votes on a bipartisan commission and we could move forward because that is the one way in my estimation that we can keep politics out of this and at the same time, get to the bottom of what happened because we have to know the truth of january 6th. >> all right. i got to ask you, though, the oversight committee today released a bunch of e-mails that

just includes some shocking attempts at obstruction and manipulation between the former white house chief of staff mark meadows, former president trump, perhaps working with somebody inside of justice to almost overthrow the acting attorney general perhaps. where is this headed and what do you think the consequences ought to be for some of the behavior whether it's mr. meadows or the lone person at the justice department that was trying to essentially do their bidding? >> i think we have to probably learn even more about what happened. as you said, there was an individual who tried to, i guess, over throw jeff rosen when he was the acting attorney general over there because he refused to prosecute the complaint or the case that

donald trump wanted him to make in throwing out the election. and so we need to learn more about that. and then i think we're probably going to have to take next steps after we learn further information. but certainly i personally feel that folks have to be held accountable and some of those folks, who knows. they may still be in government. >> i got to ask you this, congressman. in a previous decade,ed there be calls for a special council or a special prosecutor essentially to, you know, is this too much for the inspector general? i mean, it seems like what happened between say december 15th and january 15th between what happened between the white house and the justice department, is that something that we can use a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of? >> possibly. but i do think that mr. horowitz the inspector general commands a lot of respect around here. he often does a thorough job and calls balls and strikes and i

think that folks will want to see what he comes up with even at the same time that we hold hearings to bring transparency to what occurred and potentially take further steps as you have suggested. >> congressman democrat from illinois, always good to get your perspective here. thank you, sir. coming up, what we can expect from that highly anticipated, high-stakes face-to-face between biden and putin. just 24 hours away. i'll speak with the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. later that new reporting i teased with ben collins. well it's his reporting. how right-wing propaganda, some crazy stuff is fueling a growing fight at school boards on what we teach our children about history. stay with us.

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welcome back. president biden is now in geneva

ahead of tomorrow's meeting with vladimir putin. ahead of his arrival the preparation included a two-hour session with a group of outside russia experts. president biden said, look, no guarantee that he could change putin's behavior. here's part of what he said yesterday about his approach to the meeting. >> i'm going to make clear to president putin that areas we can cooperate, if he chooses. and if he chooses not to cooperate and acts in a way that he has in the past relative to cybersecurity and some other activities, then we will respond. we will respond in kind. >> joining me from geneva, richard engel. richard, it feels as if the biden administration is making it crystal clear, don't expect

anything major that in many ways this first meeting is maybe more an airing of the grievances and you figure out if there could be a relationship down the road. is that realistic? is that what we're looking at here? >> i think it is about resetting relations and expectations. the last four years under president trump saw an unprecedented kind of relationship with russia. you saw the american president effectively to the russian president. you remember the last summit between putin and trump they were together at the podium after having a meeting in absolute privacy and then they were, you saw president trump basically saying to taking president vladimir putin's word on things. saying there was no hacking, even though the u.s. intelligence agency says there was election interference.

and i think what we're seeing now is a reset. and the u.s. wants to go back to more of what you would consider a classic relationship. and by the way what you're hearing there is a steamship, a paddle boat that is pushing off here. an absolutely beautiful evening in geneva. this city has seen quite a few diplomatic summits. maritime patrols and convoys of diplomatic vips and also life is continuing in this city and steamer boats are pushing off. what we're seeing in general is this reset of relations with president biden saying, what happened over the last four years on president trump, those chummy relations, those times where we're just going to take your word for it. those days are over. and it's important, i think, to note that this is really coming at the tail end of this big international trip.

first president biden wanted to meet with the big diplomatic. the big democratic powers. then he wanted to show that he had nato in his corner. nato, the world's biggest alliance and almost an after thought. on his way home, he's meeting with vladimir putin and i think the administration wants to say that russia is not going to be at the center of foreign policy and not be america's best friend. it needs to be spoken to and it needs to be dealt with firmly and the u.s. wants to focus on other things primarily china. >> richard engel, getting this conversation started for me, thank you. >> senator bob menendez chair of the senate foreign relations committee. senator menendez as richard was finishing up his remark. you're vladimir putin. put yourself in his shoes. he's got to be, obviously, disappointed. he had an american president that was somebody to be

generous. he could get along with. somebody that he thought understood him. and now he's obviously not happy an american president that will have a much different strategy in dealing with him. i assume he's going to be very at first and is that your assumption? >> well, look, putin has always looked at when we had previous quote/unquote resets or new engagements as a sign of weakness. number one lieutenant was recently here in washington and he told me that when putin sees resets he sees weakness. that's the difference. i think you're right that he is going to test president biden. he is going to see what advantage he can get, if any. but he's got a totally different

paradigm going in. he's got a president who has said that, you know, putin is a killer. he is a president who has got deep experience in foreign policy, both as vice president and the senate foreign relations committee as his chair and travels abroad. he has a president who is clear eyed on who putin is and he's got a president who just united our allies both in europe and at nato coming into this meeting. so, it is a totally different dynamic. i think president biden has set this up perfectly for his conversation with putin. >> senator, it seems as if we're struggling as a, on our foreign policy as a country in figuring out how to punish putin where he pays a price. you know, basically give him a

bloody nose so he knows what it feels like if we come in and punch harder. do you think we have tried to bloody his nose and it hasn't worked or he just ignores these attempts and we've got to go about punishing him a different way? >> chuck i came from a neighborhood if a bully picked on you, he wouldn't stop bullying. putin only understands strength. he's kgb as president biden said he's a ruthless murderer we want to paint a strategic relationship but when we're dealing with is very clear. we're dealing with someone who used chemical weapons to wipe out their political opponents. we have someone who actually, you know, went in by force and grabbed crymia and stabilizing

ukraine. we have someone who committed war crimes in syria. so, so, yes, we've attempted to bloody his nose, but, in my mind, to use your metaphor, i think you need to do more than bloody it, you need to break it so he understands you're really serious. the administration to their credit rolled out sanctions about the solar wind impact but we still have chemical weapon sanctions that are pended under law for what he did and i think if you want to hurt him, you ultimately go after the rich people that he has set up to be his funnels for money and you freeze their accounts and their ability to travel to the west and now you really get his attention. >> all right. on one hand i hear this, but, you know, as an observer watching all these sanctions as it hadn't worked. are we hand strung by various allies. i'm thinking the north stream pipeline for germany.

>> look, he has been smart. he is a worthy adversary. worthy in terms of what he is willing to do, not worthy of who he is. the bottom line is, yes, he has been seeking to european elections to support parties that undermine the democracies in those countries. he has created economic relations, the dependency that many countries in europe have on russia for their energy source. sort of like their gas station. so when it comes to north stream and germany and when it comes to what we see happening in several other countries in europe who are part of the european union and have to act by consensus of all the countries in the european union, which is an enormous challenge. so, you know, he is, you know, systematically working it. but we also had an

administration for the last four years that allow him to do so with immunity. this is a totally different paradigm. the beginning of this trip that president biden took to the eu or the g7 and with nato, i think begins to set the structure to push back and make it very clear that there will be consequences. he started off his administration by delivering some consequences and we did. see that before. look, it tells you the difference between trump who very recently said he had a good meeting with putin in 2018 and he believes putin against all of our intelligence agencies. if republicans don't get it now. this was the party that was the biggest anticommunist and antirussia under putin party. they've embraced trump and he seems to be embracing putin. i don't get what they don't get about it. >> i'm curious of your reaction to this idea that nato is now

being enlisted in the effort to, i guess, check china. i don't know how you would classify it. but, you know, does that make sense to you? am i overinterpreting what this announcement is. what is your understanding of nato's role in confronting and checking china now as a military alliance? >> look, i think president biden led for the first time recognized that china is under strategic terms, not just to the united states, but to europe. it is a challenge to our collective security. look at the incredible advancements that they are making on the nuclear front and weaponry. look what they're doing in the south china sea, which all the european union countries, our nato allies have concern of

freedom of passage in the south china sea for both defense, as well as economic purposes. look at what china has been involved with in term of cyber issues. it is appropriate when nato was created, of course, it was russia. the soviet union at the time. but now the reality is that those threats have and china is our biggest single strategic challenge and also a challenge for nato and appropriate for them to take a role in the dimensions of that challenge as it relates to national securities of our countries. >> so, i mean, this is just a, this feels like a large expansion of nato's portfolio. do you think all member nations of nato are going to be on the same page considering many member nations would like to do economic deals with china. >> well, you know, nato also works by consensus and the consensus was to enlarge its mission to specifically designate china as part of the

nato portfolio. that is a good beginning that some countries could have said, no, we don't think we should. that's nato's mission. we shouldn't enlarge it. we should deal with china separately. we're starting off in a good way that the unimty of nato on designating china and china and i think china will, of course, like russia, have like we just discussed try to pick at the threads of nato but i think that the nato alliance is far more important to members than pulling the threads that china may find. >> well, i think you are right about that. we will start to see china try to do to nato what putin has been trying to do for his entire time in power. senator bob menendez senator from new jersey and chair of the foreign relations committee. really appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us. thank you. >> great to be with you. coming up, growing questions

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president's own white house counsel. all by the trump department of justice. senate judiciary members are calling on this attorney general to turn over key documents including those belonging to current justice employees to the data seizure. jerry nadler announced last night his committee is taking up a formal investigation of the subpoenas. both of these announcements come after garland announced on friday that the matter would be investigated by the department of justice's inspector general. and then now you have the revelation of the subpoenas on democratic lawmakers. trump era rhetoric. senator schumer called the actions of the trump doj fingerprints of and using investigations to attack the former president. well up next i'll speak to one of the justice department's top national security officials during the trump administration about what exactly was going on.

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welcome back. so for a deeper look at the actions of the department of justice joining me now is mayor mccord former acting assistant and currently the executive director for constitutional advocacy at georgetown law. mary, originally we booked you today, we wanted to discuss what was happening with these leaks. we wanted to discuss this, you know, what we're learning about subpoenas that were issued to apple. and then we also have what is technically a separate story, but to me, perhaps converges with this story and that is the release of those e-mails in and around after the election with the chief, with the president's chief of staff at the time, mark meadows trying to orchestrate a department of justice coup of some sort. so i guess i ask it this way, considering everything now that we don't know that was happening

at this trump department of justice, this feels like an investigation that's much bigger than simply an inspector general investigation. is it? >> well, i think the inspector general investigation is a good start. certainly a lot of pieces that a lot of threads to pull here and whether they're all connected remains to be seen. undoubtedly as we already have heard congress is going to be investigating this potentially issuing subpoenas to hear from the former attorney generals, both of them, as well as the former deputy attorney general and then looking for any possible connections. >> walk me through how the department of justice is brought in whenever a leak investigation, when a leak is alleged, right, and a call for an investigation, you know, whether it's the sitting president or the white house counsel, they go to the justice department and say, here, walk

me through how justice gets brought in to a leak investigation? >> sure, well when there has been a leak of classified information or what is called in the statute national defense information, that is brought to the attention of the intelligence community including the department of justice and i think it's important to recognize we're talking about national defense information. because a criminal leak investigation is not a crime to leak confidential like nonlaw enforcement just internal communications within the white house or within doj or any other department. it's only potentially a crime if it's a leak of national defense information, right. so, that is things that is injurious to the national security of the united states if they were made public. if they were disclosed to those who are not entitled to know that information. so, when there is that type of a leak, the intelligence community who sort of owns that information, brings it to the attention of the fbi and the

department of justice and it makes a suggestion about whether it's something that they want investigated or not. and that's an important point, too. because sometimes the information is so sensitive and so dangerous to national security it might be something that really can't be investigated because the government would never want to go in court and actually, you know, confirm the accuracy of that national defense information. so, it's a strange inverse relationship between the kinds of leaks that are able to be prosecuted without making it worse for national security and the desire to prevent leaks of such important information. >> who makes the decision of whether a leak is injurious to the national defense. whose call is it? >> i mean, we have under presidential executive orders there are definitions of the different levels of classification, right. so, each of those has a different level associated with it.

secured compartmentalized information is at a higher level than any of those and they each come with a corresponding level of injury to the u.s. so if the government is going to prosecute a leak case, prosecute somebody for leaking or disclosing is the real legal word national defense information that to someone not entitled to receive it, then it could be prosecuted whether it's at any of those levels. even prosecuted at the confidential level. but the government would then need to prove in court that it meets up with the injury that coincides with that level of classification. >> assuming that any time a subpoena is issued targeting a member of congress the then attorney general would be notified. can you think of a situation where somehow either attorney general sessions or attorney general barr at the time would have been kept out of the loop

of a meta data request from apple under subpoena that included a member of congress? >> so, let me just back up a little bit and sort of explain what the regulations are. any time there is an investigation that involves any elected official, that is considered under department of justice internal guidelines to be a significant matter and that triggers an immediate reporting all the way up the flag pole to the deputy attorney general and the attorney general. in addition, leak investigations national security investigations must be approved every step must be approved by the assistant attorney general of national security who anything as sensitive as what we have been talking to for subpoenas for the members of congress and would be briefed up to the attorney general and deputy attorney general. any scenario by which they would have not been aware of these subpoenas. i can think of two.

one is that if it wasn't actually a subpoena for congressman schiff's meta data and instead it was a list of numbers, say phone numbers that were received for other legal process maybe the subpoena of someone else's phone records, those numbers showed up on the phone records and they're just simply looking for the identification of whose accounts are those. in that case, go up the flag pole for approval first because you wouldn't know that what you're going to get in return is information. the other possibility is that something went completely awry and someone was trying to usurp the authority or misrepresent authority of the order to approve something like this. but that's kind of getting into wild conspiracy theories. >> bottom line, mayor mccord, we all have to hear from jeff

sessions and bill barr under oath. that, i think, is a fact. mayor mccord, appreciate you coming on and sharing your expertise with us. >> thank you. how teaching honest history has now exploded into a political fight. in school board meetings all across the country. the country history has exploded into a political fight at school board meetings all across the country. . what happens when we welcome change? we can make emergency medicine possible at 40,000 feet. instead of burning our past for power, we can harness the energy of the tiny electron. we can create new ways to connect.

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dad, why didn't you answer your phone? your mother loved this park. ♪♪ she did. welcome back. what started as an academic concept 40 years ago has exploded into the latest propaganda show, and it's an area of academic studies and racism's perspective impact on the country, and what it is is a fight over whether we are teaching american students an honest history or whitewashed history. according to new nbc reporting

165 local and national groups backed by right wing media are aiming on disrupting lessons on jen duh. florida and tennessee have banned elements of what they are calling critical race theory, in public school and more than 50 school districts have witnesses scenes of unrest. we have our senior reporter, ben collins, he's back. you have been at this nixious of sort of online propaganda and how online propaganda is used to create issues out of thin air frankly, buddy, this issue is like something that was created out of thin air and now school boards all across the country are dealing with something they did not know was an issue. >> yeah, we talked to one superintendent school district

in maine and he said i did not realize until now that these are tactics. his schools over the last year has had to deal with this group of national organization called no left turn that has ties to right-wing media and pays for forums to find all the secret critical race theory in schools, and probono lawyers, and these are organizations that are parachuting into towns and in a lot of ways causing a lot of chaos, and their goal is to say what started to crop up over george floyd's death, and that's what happened in maine, a man sent a letter condemning white supremacy, and it's called bobby trapped billboards is what we saw in maine and a fight that winds up on tucker carlson's

show at the end of the day. >> there's obviously school board members, some of who have been elected are being targeted for recalls, and this looks very familiar, you know, it's christian coalition groups started targeting school boards in different ways trying to ban things in public schools or limit certain teachings. it feels like they are using the same tactics here. >> steve bannon said in the past to save the nation is to save the school boards. you don't have to win a lot of votes at the school board level. also, you don't have to win, you know, you need to engaged voters, you need people who are laser focused on one specific idea. the good thing is, the critical race theory could mean whatever you want it to mean, so if you get people really riled up in

conservative media, you can win the seats back. it does win throughout the country, and it's having an impact where it's being saturated naturally and having a downstream affect. >> ben, i was talking to school teachers that happened to be in florida, and who live and work in the state of florida, and they are a bit confused by the law. does this mean -- can they not teach american history correctly? there's a fear among civics teachers that they are going to the front lines, and the tucker carlsons of the world will character assassinate them? >> that's the worry. i talked with a superintendent, and he said the biggestworry for me is the kids, and he doesn't want a video to emerge

of a man screaming at a school board about critical race teachings, and it has something to do largely with national politics. >> ben, it's one of those reports like many of the things that ends up on your beat, you read it and you can't believe what you are reading and you can't believe this is what happened to this school board in maine, but frankly, if anybody knows anything in education, they know sadly that this is playing out all across america. anyway, ben collins, terrific reporting, sir, and good to have you on twice. thank you. >> thank you. we'll be back tomorrow with more "meet the press daily" when we cover the biden/putin summit, and we will have special coverage for that, and msnbc's coverage continues with jeff bennett right after this break. k and it relieves my symptoms fast

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