>> thank you very much, chris. that is "all in" for this week. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, chris. thanks for joining us on this friday evening. we're going to be talking about president biden and his remarkable meeting with pope francis today at the vatican. we'll talk about the pressure that is coming now from all sides, including some very unexpected places in terms of getting something done on climate. it's a sort of tailwind for the president as he heads from the g-20 toward the big climate summit. it's actually i think a good news story in terms of what's looking like it's going to happen in washington. we'll talk about that. we'll talk about the huge, huge supreme court case that's going to be argued on monday. we should be able to get oral arguments of that court case, we should be able to hear the oral

arguments of it before the court when that happens on monday. we'll talk about how you can listen in on it and what the stakes are there. we've got a lot to get to tonight. it's been a really big week in the news, it's been a big day in the news, but it's also friday. so are you ready for a story? i want to start with something that i promise you haven't heard anywhere else that has -- that has -- for which i have no competition elsewhere in the news media tonight. but this is absolutely fascinating to me. it's a friday night story, if ever there was one. all right. here we go. do you know what the streisand effect is? poor barbra streisand, nothing against her at all. but barbra streisand's name will be associated with this phenomenon until the end of time. i'm sure it makes her crazy but it's almost unavoidable. it was almost 20 years ago where she brought a lawsuit. there was a collection of photographs that had been taken of the california coast.

thousands of pictures all along the coastline of california. the idea was to document coastal erosion. but barbra streisand had a big house on the california coast and it was in one of the photographs in this collection and she filed a lawsuit claiming this photograph was an invasion of privacy. she sued to have that photo taken out of this publicly available collection. and thus was born what we now call the streisand effect. because nobody had seen that picture as part of the coastal erosion documentation project. but once it became news that she had filed a lawsuit to keep the photograph private, well, then the photo immediately became of intense interest to everyone and everyone wanted to see the photo. there was an incredible demand to see that photo that had never existed before. not only did she not win the lawsuit and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people sought out

and ultimately looked at that photo, people who otherwise would have had no interest in it. when all she was trying to do is make sure that nobody would ever see it. quite the opposite effect. it's called the streisand effect. it's largely about how particularly on the internet where things are infinitely replicable and things are a click away, humans' interest in things can't be squashed, it can only be spurred, so choose your battles. it's kind of an internet-specific thing. but there is a news corollary to that. in our newsroom for this show we call it a boomerang. in this case it's related but it's sort of specific to the news context. what a boomerang is, is when somebody is trying to kill a story. somebody is trying to stigmatize a story or delegitimatize a story, maybe trying to punish people who are part of a story,

maybe trying to punish or mock or threaten people that have reported on a story, but in so doing they, oops, manage to get the story confirmed and backed up and they bring new attention to it and bring it back to life. they actually advance the story further and put it back on the front page in their efforts to try to disprove it and make it go away. those efforts come back at them like a boomerang. they want the story gone. they want the story to seem like bad news and wrong news and disproven. it gets proven. it gets back in the news and more people see it and believe it than ever before. that's a boomerang. and that is what has just happened with a story that started in 2016. it's now more of a problem for attorney general merrick garland at the justice department under president biden. but it started in 2016. part of the way that it has become a boomerang, part of the way that it has come back around right now, is that right before

bill barr, william barr, resigned as one of the gazillion attorney generals who served under trump, right before barr resigned, he appointed a special counsel at the justice department to investigate the russia investigation. because how dare anyone ever wanted to investigate that. i mean big picture here, as you know, russia hacked the democratic party and the clinton campaign during the 2016 election. then they leaked those hacked documents strategically during the campaign to try to help trump and beat clinton. they also deployed armies of paid trolls, social media, full-time propagandaists working from russia to promote content in the united states that they thought would help trump and hurt clinton. we all agree, we know this is what happened. this part at least we can agree happened. after those actions by russia started to come to light, it would soon emerge that

contemporaneously, the trump campaign was having all sorts of contacts with people in the russian government. contacts between the trump campaign, the trump orbit, and the kremlin. things that they were trying to keep secret and worse, things that they lied about when they were ultimately asked about it. everybody from trump national security advisor mike flynn to trump's first attorney general, jeff sessions, to trump's campaign chairman and jared and his son donald jr. all had these communications and contacts with people connected to the russian government. they all tried to keep them secret. then they all lied about them when asked. it also emerged that during the campaign the trump organization was trying to develop a major building project in moscow. that would have been the biggest building project in donald trump's life. publicly, he lied about that. he said he had no dealings related to russia whatsoever. but like literally the night of one of the republican primary debates, he signed legal documents about pursuing his

trump tower in moscow. so russia is doing all this stuff to help trump and hurt clinton. turns out that trump has all of these connections to russia that he's trying to keep secret and then lying about, him and all the people around him. so that's the nutshell of what happened there. and, yeah, you put those two things together and, duh, of course an investigation was opened into that. and thus we all know what happened thereafter. we have been living with and through the consequences of that for the past five years now. but as that scandal was first coming into focus in 2016, a little separate piece of it broke as almost a side bar to the main article. in 2016 several news organizations published stories describing provocative but unexplained commuter pings, computer connections between servers associated with the trump organization and servers associated with a

kremlin-connected russian bank. american researchers who were experts in foreign hacking exploits who had access to the kind of core technical data about internet traffic that's used for that kind of security work, they had actually gone during the 2016 campaign, they had gone to look to try to see if when russia was hacking the democrats and hillary clinton's campaign, might russia have also hacked the republican party and the trump campaign. that's what they initially went looking for. they didn't find any of it that russia had hacked and targeted the republicans and trump the way they had targeted the democrats and clinton. but what they did find, much to their surprise, was evidence that computer servers associated with a big putin-connected russian bank and servers associated with the trump organization were in some kind of communication. frequent, sort of intense levels of communication that were

inexplicable. nobody could tell why. you know, it might be innocuous, so coincidental random connection between these servers. might conceivably be something commercial between that bank and the trump organization. you know, marketing or spam or something going on in terms of business stuff that had nothing to do with the coincident politics of the moment. might have been another deliberately concealed communication between trump's orbit and the kremlin's orbit at a time trump world was trying to cover up a lot of other things like that during the campaign. nobody knew what it was. but again, the evidence that there was some kind of inexplicable communications between this russian bank and trump's organization. this surfaced briefly in the press in 2016 but then it pretty quickly faded away. maybe it's ringing a distant bell for you when i'm describing it right now but probably not. it never really got that much public attention because nobody

could ever prove what these connections were. the researchers had effectively meta data showing that there was communication. they didn't have anything about what the content of the communication was. so nobody could say what this meant and there was a lot of other stuff going on and pretty quickly slid out of the news. when it came time for robert mueller's report, the mueller report didn't mention the alpha bank thing at all. the senate intelligence committee report on what russia did in 2016, they actually did look into it but didn't come to a conclusion about it either. quote, the committee could not positively determine an intent or purpose that would explain the unusual activity. okay. so it sort of petered out. the story drifted off into the wind years ago. until now, because it's a boomerang. because it is apparently an ongoing concerted republican and pro-trump project to try to turn

the investigation of the russia scandal into some kind of scandal itself. okay, knock yourselves out, you guys, but be careful what you throw out into the wind. might come back at you sometime. as i said, trump and william barr left behind at the justice department this special counsel. his name is john durham. to investigate the people who had to investigate the temerity of the people who investigated the russia scandal. last month that special counsel who was still in place, even though the biden administration is there now and the justice department has changed its leadership. john durham is still there bringing his work. last month he brought an indictment against a lawyer. a lawyer who brought the allegations about these computer contacts between the trump organization and the russian bank, he brought allegations and data about those unexplained

contacts between those servers, he brought it to the fbi. the same data the researchers had uncovered showing those thousands of contacts between the trump organization and the russian bank, the same data that led to the news stories in 2016, this guy brought that information to the fbi. it makes sense that he brought it to the fbi. he himself was a former national security lawyer at the justice department. he had worked on lots of high-end national security criminal cases in his time in government service. he knew this information was going to the press. he decided to bring it to the fbi so they wouldn't be blindsided by the press coverage and also frankly because the matter did have obvious national security implications that the fbi should know about if the worst implications of that data were ultimately borne out. last month, special counsel john durham brought a criminal charge against that lawyer who brought the data to the fbi saying the lawyer did not consistently explain whether he was acting on behalf of a client when he

brought the fbi that data or if he was acting on his own. now, why that would matter materially at all is -- it really would matter to the fbi if the guy was like, i'm here on behalf of my neighbor, i'm here on behalf of hillary clinton, i'm here on behalf of i just came across it myself. is it going to make a difference? he's a former national security lawyer from the justice department, like with a security clearance and everything who's worked on serious national security cases in the past. he goes back to his colleagues at the fbi and says this is going to end up in the press and has implications, you guys ought to look at it. do they care on whose behalf or anyone's he brought it in? i don't know. but that's the charge john durham made against this guy and that will ultimately be for a jury to decide, not you or me. but here's the rub.

in their tireless efforts to try to make the russia investigation itself a scandal, in trying to bring this prosecution, this guy, john durham, barr's special prosecutor, he wrote this whole long 27-page indictment against this lawyer. and the indictment spells out this kind of inexplicable charge against the lawyer about whether he inconsistently described who his client was. but that 27-page indictment, it doesn't take that long to say that, right? the reason it is 27 pages because the indictment spins out this tale, this allegation that the trump alpha bank communications, the data this guy brought to the fbi about the connections between those computer servers, durham spells out this sort of conspiracy theory in the allegation that that whole story was a deliberately concocted false allegation that was made up out of whole cloth on purpose just to try to hurt trump and the people who came up with this a little, they knew it was false

but pushed it anyway. john durham didn't charge any of that behavior but wrote it into the indictment along with thinly veiled references to all of the researchers and tech people doing the research, all of the people who discovered these communications between the trump organization and the russian bank. none of these people were technically identified by name in the indictment, but they were all described by durham with such specificity that it took about five minutes for people to figure out who these researchers out and fewer minutes than that for all of their names and very specific personal information to be all over the internet and less time than all of that for all the threats to start. this has naturally made their lives a living hell. now they have a kremlin-connected bank run by oligarchs coming after them for this and they have all the trump trolls in the world coming after them as well since durham basically accused them in print of having made up this terrible thing to make trump look bad which they knew was false but pushed it anyway.

well, here comes that effort boomeranging right back at them, because it turns out you can drive these folks into it. you can ruin their lives. you can smear them with allegations you never intend to prove, that they were somehow bad faith actors here doing bad things to donald trump and the russians. but these people can defend themselves too. they can at least speak for themselves. it turns out what they know, what they know, what they found, what they are now willing to say out loud, is that not only was it absolutely the right thing to do to hand over that stuff to the fbi when they discovered it back in 2016, but also this is kinds of a real story. the connections between the trump servers and the alpha bank servers were real. they were covert communications that someone was trying to hide, that the trump organization and alpha bank appear to have been trying to hide.

they say this was not made up. and these are the people who figured it out in the first place and so they're the ones who have the receipts. so we're starting to see their pushback a couple of weeks ago. this is from "the new york times" several weeks ago. lawyers for one of the researchers whom the indictment discussed said the alpha bank results, quote, have been validated and are reproducible. the findings of the researchers were true then and remain true today. reports that these findings were innocuous or a hoax are simply wrong. a lawyer for another of the data experts cited in the indictment said his client had a duty to share this information with the fbi. well, now tonight we have reviewed a letter, i have reviewed a letter written to john durham, special counsel, and cc'ed to attorney general merrick garland from the lawyer of one of the technical experts who is very -- who is described in the indictment. he's not one of the people

charged. he's described in the indictment. they don't describe him by name but they describe him in such detail that he was instantly doxxed as soon as the indictment came out. durham basically says in his indictment helped make up this whole thing about trump and alpha bank and shopped it to the fbi knowing it was made up. look at this boomerang. look at this boomerang. look what they just sent to the justice department and to john durham himself and to merrick garland. the computer scientist who reviewed this data thoughtfully and thoroughly performed the research necessary to assess the nature of the alleged trump/alpha spectrum health connection and collaboratively shared their views about what the data showed or did not show. in the end the researchers unanimously concluded that the data reflected the existence of a covert communication channel between the trump organization, alpha bank and spectrum health, and that this channel warranted further investigation. again, the unanimous conclusion of all of the researchers.

remember that durham said that the researchers concluded this stuff was false and pushed it anyway. no, they unanimously concluded these allegations were true. moreover, quote, to this day the researchers who performed the analysis as well as other leading experts in the field maintain that this conclusion is supported by the data and no credible expert has refuted it. the researchers ultimately concluded that the data did in fact support the conclusion that there was a covert communications channel between alpha, the trump organization and spectrum health. this letter to durham then quotes emails among the researchers at the time they were looking at this data. these are emails that durham apparently had for his investigation that he ignored in writing up this indictment, because he wanted the indictment to make it look like this was all a hoax and the researchers knew it. well, the researchers also still have access to their emails from the time. they know it wasn't a hoax. they know they never believed it was a hoax and they know they never discussed it in those

terms themselves contemporaneously while they were reviewing the data. for example, quote, if the white paper intends to say that there are communications between at least alpha and trump which are being intentionally hidden by alpha and trump, i absolutely believe that is the case. and from another researcher, quote, facts. it's clear there's hidden communications between trump and alfa bank. these contemporaneous communications convince the researchers that number one there was a covert communications channel between alfa, the trump organization and spectrum health and the existence of a channel was relevant to an investigation of potential criminal law violations. and so, yes, therefore they brought it to the fbi as they should have. again, this is from a letter sent to the justice department, sent to special counsel john durham and to attorney general merrick garland that we reviewed

today. i personally reviewed it. this is a letter from a lawyer for one of these technical experts who was outed by john durham, a computer researcher who is being hounded and threatened constantly because durham cast these public aspersions against him and his colleagues. that this russia investigation was something they made it, they're bad actors and knew it was false but pushed it against trump anyway. that doesn't appear to be at all what happened. but those people's lives are being destroyed by those allegations, by the threats and the targeting of them by people who were sicced on them by what durham did. these are also folks that can speak for themselves. and in so doing, trump and barr's special counsel, john durham, and all the people trying to make this russia investigation some liability for the people who figured it out, some kind of scandal that they discovered what they did, all of those folks are now catching this boomerang right in the teeth because, boy howdy, is

this story revived now, right? when's the last time you had heard about this story at all? i hadn't thought about it in years. but it turns out we now know that the trump/alfa bank story isn't disproven? it isn't a hoax? the people who found it out in the first place to this day think that what they found was conclusive evidence that a covert communication channel was open during the campaign between the trump organization and a russian bank connected to the kremlin. it was a covert communication channel that existed during the campaign and that both sides deliberately covered up. really? tell me more! hadn't thought about this in years, but now i want to know a lot more about it because now it seems like way more of a live question than before you tried to ruin these people's lives as a way of trying to make this story go away forever. boomerang. we contacted john durham's

office today at the justice department for comment on this matter. we have not heard back, but i live in hope. watch this space. watch this spa ce ♪ (vo) subaru presents... the underdogs. they may have lost an eye, or their hearing, or their youthful good looks. but there's a lot of things the remarkable dogs haven't lost... like their ability to lick, wag, and love with the best of them. join subaru in helping underdogs find a loving home and celebrate all dogs during our third annual national make a dog's day. at heinz, every ketchup starts with our same tomatoes. but not every tomato ends in the same kind of heinz ketchup. because a bit of magic unfolds when there's a ketchup for everyone.

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this cartoon was published in 1960. it shows a man sitting on a throne. he looks almost like a king, given the robes and the head thing. on his lap is what appears to be a little boy who he's patting on the head and the caption reads big john and little john. be sure to do what your papa tells you. that was published in 1960 at the height of the u.s. presidential campaign that year. the big john depicted in that cartoon is not a king, it was the pope at the time, pope john xxiii. the little john, the one who's getting a pat on the head, that was supposed to be john f. kennedy. the implication was that if jfk ever made it to the white house, the u.s. would be under foreign control because jfk would be taking his orders from big john, the pope, at the vatican. he'd be so compromised by his

catholicism that there's no way that he could govern with the interests of the american people at the fore, he'd be beholden to the pope for everything. by today's standards it does seem ridiculous that a solid chunk of the american electorate might think the vatican might be secretly pulling the strings when it comes to u.s. policy making. that you couldn't trust a catholic with public office essentially. but at the time jfk was incredibly concerned about how voters would perceive his faith, both in the lead-up to the election and when he eventually took office. it had only been a few decades since the last catholic candidate, al smith, had been absolutely flattened by herbert hoover. he lost the '28 election by an electoral college vote of 444-87. and that walloping was driven in no small part by rampant anti-catholicism that was pushed

by a parade of lovelies, including the ku klux klan. so when jfk managed to win, barely, in 1960, he remained wary about the optics surrounding his faith and specifically surrounding his relationship with the pope. at no time was that more evident than it was in 1963 when he was set to visit the vatican. the trip actually came shortly after a new pope was coronated, pope paul vi. given that it was his first visit to the vatican, the u.s. press at the time was infatuated, was obsessed with the question of whether or not kennedy would adhere to the traditional practice of kneeling in front of the pope, kissing the pope's ring. much to the chagrin of jfk's critics, he did no such thing. >> the vatican said here is one of the last stops for president kennedy on his european visit. and as we see with pomp and ceremony. the master of the chamber accompaied mr. kennedy to pope paul's library where they hold a

40-minute private conversation. mr. kennedy is the third president of the united states to be received in audience by a pope. the other two were president wilson and president eisenhower. mr. kennedy's sister is in the presidential party. the pontiff spoke english, one of his seven languages. when the visit ended, mr. kennedy as a visiting head of state does not kiss his ring. >> he does not. we checked. he does not. news reports were fixated on the fact that it was a simple handshake between president kennedy and the pope. but what's even more striking is that contemporaneous print reports even speculated that, yeah, it looked like a handshake but we're sure secretly jfk kissed the ring, he probably did it behind closed doors. the president did not kneel or kiss the pontiff's ring when they first met. he bowed slightly and shook hands.

however, it is possible that mr. kennedy later kissed the pope's ring in the privacy of the library. that was, you know, mainstream newspapers. that was being printed mainstream press around the country. when all the cameras were out of the room, must have been when kennedy knelt down and kissed the ring. we can't be sure but it totally could have happened so that means it must have happened, right? a lot has been made of the fact now that president joe biden is only the second catholic president after jfk and, therefore, he's just the second catholic president to have an audience with the pope. that of course is true. but it also simplifies it too much. it fails to capture how much the world has changed since kennedy visited the vatican six decades ago. in a great many ways, president biden's catholicism is much less of a fraught political issue than when kennedy was in office. yes, there are definitely still those on the far right who question biden's faith, who think he's not really a catholic

or there's something they should be questioning about his catholicism but nobody is debating anymore whether or not the pope is secretly pulling the strings when it comes to how the u.s. is governed. for his part president biden has not had to tiptoe around the fact that he's catholic. he's met with three different popes over the course of his political career. in fact he's felt so comfortable with all the various pontiffs that he told pope benedict to his face that he was being, quote, entirely too hard on the american nuns. after the vatican under pope benedict criticized various female religious orders when it came to issues like poverty. you have to be comfortable enough with the pope to say, hey, mr. infallible, i've got a bone to pick with you. so today's visit was not particularly fraught for president biden. he's met with pope francis numerous times in the past. he keeps a picture of one of their past meetings in the oval office. it's probably no surprise by all accounts today's visit went well. the two held a private meeting

for close to 90 minutes. that's triple the length of the meeting that president trump held with pope francis back in 2017. aside from just looking genuinely happy to be there, you could tell that president biden had been looking forward to this visit for some time. i know this is true not just because of how warmly they hit it off but also because of the gift that he brought for the pope. if you, like me, sort of make a habit of following the visits that world leaders make to the vatican, you know they all bring gifts. most of the time they're not that memorable. if they are memorable, it's because they're really bad. lbj famously gave pope paul vi a bust of one of the american presidents. and you're probably thinking, oh, maybe it was a bust of george washington or abraham lincoln or fdr. theoretically he could have given the pope a bust of john f. kennedy who had that visit to the vatican shortly before he was assassinated. but no, lbj gave the pope a bust of himself. he gave the pope a bust of lbj.

like i said, the memorable gifts are usually just exceptionally bad and that's why we remember them. but president biden today basically dropped the mic on future papal gifts. he'll make it hard for everybody's from here on out. he presented the pope with basically li turj cal vestments. the vestments that priests wear when they're saying mass. this was not just any set of those, it was one designed nearly a hundred years ago by one of the most famous papal tailors in the world. hand woven in 1930, worn during a visit to the united states by a cardinal who would become pope pius xii. in the years since those vestments have been looked after and taken care of by the jesuit order here in the united states. i mean since 1930. not to belabor the point here, but this is essentially like giving a really big yankees fan like the babe ruth jersey from the world series game where he hit three home runs. future world leaders should

forego papal gifts. they will embarrass themselves. nothing will -- this was a good one, don't try. president biden also gave the pope something that is called a challenge coin. >> i'm not sure if this is appropriate, but there is a tradition in america. that the president has what is called a command coin. that he gives to warriors and leaders. and you are the most significant warrior for peace i have ever met. and with your permission, i would like to be able to give you a coin. i know my son would want me to give this to you because on the

back of it i have the state of delaware, the 261st, the unit my son served with. now, the tradition is, and i'm only kidding about this, if next time i see you, you don't have it, you have to buy the drinks. >> president biden said there right at the end of that, you have to buy the drinks. and then he said, quote, i'm the only irishman you have ever met that has never had a drink. i'm going to go out on a limb here and say that jfk did not make jokes like that with pope paul back in 1963. the presidency and the politics around religion and catholicism in particular have changed a lot since kennedy met with pope paul in '63. we got proof of that today with president biden's sitdown with pope francis. but for all the ways that relationship has changed, the

one between a catholic leader and the leader of the world's catholics, so have the challenges facing our globe. in the readouts of the meeting today we learned that president biden and pope francis spoke a lot about the things you might expect, advocating for the world's poor, for people suffering from persecution, but something else took center stage during their meeting, something that wouldn't have been a focus 60 years ago and now is top of mind. the two of them devoted much of their conversation to the climate crisis, the need and the moral responsibility that they both believe in in terms of tackling that issue head on. that became very practical in a very serious way today. we'll have more on that straight ahead. stay with us. on that straight ahead. stay with us keep ng you. and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day

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after president biden leaves rome this weekend, he's going to head next to scotland for the big international climate summit. the summits only happen every six years. as he left washington for this overseas trip, these were the headlines that trailed president biden toward that summit. new budget deal marks the biggest climate investment in

u.s. history. the white house's build back better plan represents the biggest clean energy investment in u.s. history with a $555 billion package of tax credits, grants and other policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling climate change. on the one hand it must feel good for the white house to be walking into this big climate summit having just proposed the largest single investment in clean energy in u.s. history. on the other hand, that proposal is still a proposal. the pressure to make it happen is becoming sort of excruciating, though, in all sorts of ways. today was day ten of a hunger strike in washington, d.c. five young climate activists from the sunrise movement have been depriving themselves of food to urge congress to pass bold climate change legislation. they are on ten days without food now. tonight we heard from one of those activists that she and another person on hunger strike were taken to the emergency room

as a consequence of what was a lengthy and dangerous hunger strike. the sunrise move activists, the hunger strike for climate justice. today there were big climate actions around the world, new york, san francisco, israel, germany. protesters in great britain held a big climate change demonstration targeted at a series of london banks demanding that they stop investing in fossil fuel companies and the other industries that contribute to climate change. this week veteran climate activist bill mckibben wrote about the incredible success that the divestment strategy has actually had in recent years. even if it hasn't been well sung as a climate change success story. he said on tuesday activists announced that the fossil fuel divertment campaign has reached new heights. endowments, portfolios and pension funds rort $40 trillion have committed to full or partial abstinence from coal and

fossil fuel stocks. divestment has helped rub much of the shine off what was once the planet's dominant industry. if money talks, $40 trillion makes a lot of noise. for a long time climate has loomed as this big and seemingly insurmountable problem, but sustained and relentless activism around this issue has also yielded major results in the past few years. now it seems as if the u.s. is on the precipice of something big. joining us now is bill mckibben, one of the founders of 350.org. he himself is headed to glasgow for the g-20 climate summit. it's nice to see you. thanks for making time the night before your trip. >> well, it's a great pleasure to be with you. >> are we on the precipice of something important in terms of american policy on this issue? >> well, look, partly the bar is super low. congress has never done anything. and so whatever they do will be bigger than what they have done

before. and there's a lot in this bill, if it ever gets passed, that will be really important. joe manchin, prime minister manchin, has taken his pound of flesh. there's many of the most important parts of it were gutted along the way. basically they took out all the sticks and left the carrots, a series of tax credits and subsidies. but there's so much money there that it will jumpstart in important ways the move towards renewable energy. it's not a home run, but it's probably enough to keep the giem game alive and send us into extra innings and maybe enough to salvage at least something out of this glasgow conference. >> bill, that dynamic you're talking about in terms of all the sticks, all the punitive or required actions are taken out and all the incentives are put in, mostly in the form of tax incentives, it did make me wonder if those initiatives, such as they are, might ultimately be more sustainable

than more restrictive or punitive measures? even if you'd want both. you'd want them to go further, but the kinds of things they did choose, because they are incentives to people who are designed to economically provoke more energy and related technologies, those might be the sort of things that will be hard for congress to get rid of or let lapse after a few years. >> i think what you're saying in a way is since our political system is run in a lot of ways by money, once solar power and wind power guys have enough money to buy their own congressmen, the process will be somewhat different than it is at the moment. we watched yesterday as ro khanna and his oversight committee tried to hold the ceos of the oil industry to account. they were slippery and they dodged, but katie porter and aoc and people got in some good shots. and what they're seeing sort of

in action is a rejiggering of the balance of power here. movements have grown strong enough that they have begun to challenge the previously unchallengeable political power of the fossil fuel industry and that's getting stronger. the important thing today were these demonstrations around the world aimed at banks. i was in boston today with a bunch of colleagues from third act, this progressive organizing outfit for people over the age of 60. we were backing up the young people outside of chase bank, the biggest fossil fuel lender on earth. i think that message is starting to get through. the problem is time is extraordinarily short. the scientists have told us we have to cut emissions in half by 2030, which is eight years and a little loose change away. this is the last probably push we're going to get out of the congress, if history is any guide. and so now we're also going to have to take this fight not just to washington but to wall street in a really serious way. >> bill mckibben, climate

expert. bill, safe travels, thank you for joining us tonight and good luck. >> thank you very much. >> we'll be right back, stay with us. right back , stay with us. tonight, i'll be eating a club sandwich with fries and a side of mayonnaise. (doorbell rings) wonderful. mayonnaise... on fries? a little judgy, don't you think? ♪ that's weird ♪ ♪ so weird ♪ i am robert strickler. i've been involved ineird ♪ communications in the media

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mission control, we are go for launch. ♪♪ t-minus two minutes and counting. ♪♪ um, she's eating the rocket. -copy that, she's eating the rocket. i assume we needed that? [chomping sound] ♪♪ lunchables! built to be eaten. she has eaten the rocket. [girl burps] over. when you're driving a lincoln, stress seems to evaporate into thin air. [girl burps] which leaves us to wonder, where does it go? does it get tangled up in knots? or fall victim to gravity? or maybe it winds up somewhere over the bermuda triangle.

perhaps you'll come up with your own theory of where the stress goes. behind the wheel of a lincoln is a mighty fine place to start. so halloween is on sunday. i decided to wear my costume tonight as a preview as you can see. going as a --s a middle-aged childless lesbian wearing a $12 blazer. spooky, right? nailed it. nailed it. i love halloween. i love my eternal costume. baboom. but because i am in addition to being lazy about halloween also a nerd, i also like to think of this time of year as oral argument season. october is the start of the supreme court's new term each year. and on monday morning we are going to get arguments at the united states supreme court on the texas abortion ban which

went into effect at the start of last month. one challenge to the texas abortion ban has been brought by a clinic in texas called whole womens health and another challenge brought by the biden administration, by the justice department. the supreme court is going to hear arguments back-to-back monday morning one at 10:00 a.m. eastern and the other at 11:00 a.m. eastern. this is a big deal. when the supreme court let the texas abortion ban go into effect it was the first time any state has been able to effectively ban any abortion since roe vs. wade supposedly established a precedent that wouldn't allow that back in 1973. and there are no cameras allowed inside the united states supreme court, but they do stream the audio of the hearings live on the supreme court website, which is very cool. so on monday morning, i'm just saying, it will be possible to plug in a pair of headphones and curl up with those oral arguments starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern. there's two thing you should

know if you're going to do that on monday morning. first the texas abortion ban being challenged here quite directly violates a woman's right to get an abortion as established by roe v. wade and subsequent supreme court decisions. that is not likely to be the direct legal question the supreme court grapples with on monday. instead they're going to deal with the really unique and novel parts of the texas abortion ban, specifically the vigilante part. they wrote this law in such a way that the state 06 texas is not directly in charge of enforcing it. instead individual private citizens are empowered to bring lawsuits against anybody who provides a woman with an abortion in texas or helps her get one in any way. texas says that because their state officials aren't the ones enforcing the law that the state of texas can't be sued over it either, and in fact maybe no one can. so that's the legal question that judges are going to be considering monday. the other thing to know ahead of the oral arguments is just how quickly we got here.

the supreme court is not a fast moving entity. it is the slow loris of the judicial world. it's like it's a horse and buggy but the horse is super old and has to keep stopping and taking notes. i mean from start to finish it very often takes years before the supreme court, you know, takes up a case, hears oral arguments, gets anywhere near to making a ruling. but in this case of the biden administration suing over the texas abortion ban, it took the supreme court ten days -- ten days to schedule oral arguments once they agreed to take up the case. that is unheard of. the legal scholars we have talked to about that say they have heard of almost zero cases in the modern world in which the supreme court has moved that quickly to prioritize a case. the last time anybody remembers the court moving this fast on a case was for bush v. gore in 2000. nevertheless, oral arguments on the texas ban are going to start 10:00 a.m. monday. each side will get a half-hour

to argue their case. if you've never listened to a supreme court case before you'll be amazed how much everybody interrupts. the justice department will go second at 11:00 a.m. i was going to say watch this space, but listen to this space live at the supreme court website monday morning. i'll be right back. i'll be righk you've never seen anything quite like it. we've never created anything quite like it. the all-electric, all-mercedes eqs. the new sensodyne repair and protect with deep repair has the science to show that the toothpaste goes deep inside the exposed dentin to help repair sensitive teeth. my patients are able to have that quality of life back.

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just one last thing before we go this fine friday night. we're doing something a little bit different tonight here on

msnbc. usually after me is "the "last word" word." but tonight we're doing something different. we're airing this new super thought provoking acclaimed documentary which is called "civil war or who do we think we are." it's really well-done. the executive producer is brad pitt, which is the brad pitt, which i think is a first for an msnbc production. it's called "civil war, who do we think we are" and it starts now. have a great night.