doctors cannot provide health care they expect to be able to give. >> shefali luthra, who has been following this closely at the 19th, a very reliable source of reporting on this. thank you. >> thanks for having -- >> that is all in on this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight starts than that is "all in" on this wednesday night. alex wagner tonight begins right now. >> i just want to say, i think your last block is so important, and the fact that we are finally telling stories about women's sacrifices and suffering, it's so shameful that it has to happen under these aus miss, but the fact that we can finally tell these stories about the difficulties women face in motherhood, in child bearing, the health access that they are denied, it is so important and so critical so thank you for doing that, on behalf of all women. >> well, you're welcome. but yes, i mean, the point about

taking the abstract, they're not product experiments, it is real human lives, real people's lives ap i think public opinion is -- and i think public opinion is more on the side of common sense on these questions than the republican party and we'll see if that place out. we'll see indeed. my friend, i miss you in the studio. come back soon. >> i will. >> thanks for joining us this hour. tonight, as donald trump's former vice president considers talk together january 6th investigation, his former lawyer testified before an atlanta grand jury, and his ling time cfo prepares to plead guilty and turn on the trump organization. but despite the president's considerable legal woes he can't seem to find any qualified attorneys to represent him. carol lennon joins us live. and then we go down to florida, where republican governor ron desantis has soerded some new lessons for the start of school this week. revisionist history and christian nationalism. new yorker writer and dean of the columbia journalism school,

jalon cobb will be in the studio to discuss. and president biden canceled student debt for thousands who are ripd off for a for profit college chain promising jobs of the future that never arrived. we start tonight in mounting investigations into the former president of the united states. after last night's election in wyoming, donald trump appears poised to gain some allies in congress. but it comes as trump is quickly losing friends, basically anywhere else. today trump's former vice president mike pence said we consider talking to the january 6th committee. >> if they were to call you to the committee to come and testify, would you be agreeable. >> well, if there was an invitation to participate, i would consider. it any invitation that would be directed to me, i would have to reflect on the unique role that i was serving then as vice president, if there is ever any

formal invitation, we could give it due consideration. >> the former vice president's potential willingness to testify before the january 6th committee comes after his chairman bennie thompson told nbc news last week that depositions continue on an almost daily basis and that investigators spoke to pretty much every senior person in the trump cabinet and for the most part they have all indicated a willingness to talk to the committee. well, okay now. that's more trump allies signaled that willingness, other member was administration are being subpoenaed by the department of justice as part of its own investigation into january 6th. yesterday, we learned that former white house lawyer eric herbman has been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury in that investigation and if that name sounds familiar, he is the one with the eclectic wall art who gave expletive laden testimony to the january 6th committee about the white house effort to overturn the election. and "the new york times" has brand new reporting tonight that

the justice department has subpoenaed the national archives for all trump white house documents that the agency previously turned over to the january 6th committee. according to the times, the grand jury subpoena, which was issued in may suggests that the justice department has not only been following the committee's lead in pursuing this inquiry, but also that prosecutors believe evidence of a crime may exist in the white house documents the archives turned over to the house panel. that is new tonight. and then, there is the other "other" trump administration also being conducted by the justice department, looking into trump's potential classified information mishandling at mar-a-lago. nine days after the documents were collected, the fbi team is still sifting through the documents to determine which ones are covered by executive privilege and which ones are relevant to the investigation.

this comes after we learned that two top trump white house lawyers, pat cipollone, and pat philbin have been interviewed as part of the d.o.j. investigation into trump's removal of the documents. "the wall street journal" reports that investigators have also reached out to several other trump aides who had knowledge of record-keeping practices including trump's white house assistant. and then there is a totally separate trump investigation being conducted in fulton county, georgia. today, trump's attorney, rudy giuliani, testified for over six hours before a special grand jury in that investigation. once rudy giuliani managed to get through the door of the fulton county courthouse. a federal judge in new mexico also ordered trump lawyer john eastman who of course advocated pressuring the vice president to overturn the results of the election, he has been ordered to testify before the same grand jury by the end of the month. and don't forget about senator lindsey graham who has also been order bid a judge to testify

before the same grand jury, in fulton county, and finally, is your head spinning yet, because mine certainly is, there is the criminal investigation here in new york, where tomorrow, trump's long-time cfo, allen weisselberg is expected to plead guilty to tax fraud and other crimes and as a condition of that plea weisselberg will have to testify as a witness in the case against trump's business. with this colossal legal drama, the former president is in desperate need of good legal help but as the "washington post" reports today, that expert legal help is not easy to find. here is the headline. trump is rushing to hire seasoned lawyers but he keeps hearing no. quote, former president donald trump and close aides have spent the eight days since the fbi searched his florida home rushing to assemble a home of respected defense lawyers, and the answer they keep hearing is no. instead, the president has had to rely on a c list team and

honestly that may be kind of generous, a c list team of lawyers and one that includes a florida insurance lawyer who has never had a federal case, a past general counsel for a parking garage company, and a former host at far right one america news network. the former president of the united states is facing an unprecedented level of scrutiny over his numerous unprecedented actions against american democracy and national security, and most of the legal team he has assembled to defend himself looks straight, looks like they came straight out of a bus stop advertisement, and that is perhaps not being so fair to bus stop litigators. but what does it all mean for the former president and for the future of all the sprawling investigations? joining us now is carol letting, national reporter for the "washington post," one of the by lines on this story about the former president's difficulties in getting seasoned lawyers to represent him. carol, their for being here and listening to that roster of legal woes facing president

trump, let's just start with the lawyers he has assembled. i think just looking at their cvs, the amount of inexperience is fairly staggering. how did this come to pass? >> well, as described to us, by sources, alex, the president, the former president, often is a reactive individual as a client and he is often trying to plug holes as crises arrive. or arise. and in this case, a lot of crises have been brewing and brewing and brewing, including the one that led to the search warrant at his home in mar-a-lago for many months. the problem is, until the tea kettle started to boil, donald trump didn't act. so he has the lawyers that are actually quite experienced in terms of having been federal prosecutors in the past, but he has quite a few legal advisers

as well who have very limited to no experience before the federal bench, and that is a problem for the president. alan dershowitz told us, for our story, that the president, you may remember, alan dershowitz is a fan of donald trump's, he has said the president needs a top flight lawyer stat. and he should have had one for months, somebody who is nationally known, who has a track record of success, because right now, the president is facing legal jeopardy on at least four fronts as you perfectly summed up at the top of your show, and this one in mar-a-lago is on the front burner, but it is not the only problem that former president trump faces. >> i mean also, if you're a top flight legal mind, you might also look to see how other fellow top flight legal minds have faired working for donald trump. i mean ty cobb, a former lawyer

for the president, now tweets about how much he hates donald trump. don mcgahn, was a star witness for the mueller investigation, pat sinema, and pat philbin, they're cooperating with the d.o.j.'s investigation. these are not people who are pledging fealty to donald trump and probably for good reason and i'm sure those are all data points that act as deterrents for other lawyers who may be considering representing the former president. >> well, absolutely. well summed. don mcgahn ultimately became a witness for four extraordinary and overwhelming instances of obstruction, you know, criminal obstruction, by the sitting president of the united states. if he had not been the sitting president, the department of justice would have normally indicted a person with the level of evidence that don mcgahn provided about how donald trump tried to derail a criminal investigation and avoid embarrassing information coming out about him.

in the case of pat cipollone, there's really not a lawyer who wasn't a bigger fan of donald trump, and wanted to help him achieve his agenda, was proud and honored to become his white house counsel. and has now left with some disgust after january 6th and after watching the president repeatedly in office reject his sound advice that you cannot claim the election was rigged when there is no evidence of it. you cannot seize voting machines every run election, mr. president, when we don't have any evidence that they should be, and martial law is not warranted in this instance. you know, all of these people tried to give him good counsel, let's add bill barr to the mix, his attorney general. >> right. >> who repeatedly told him, we investigated all of this, and there's nothing here, sir, all of them found this client

unusually difficult and rejecting facts and evidence. >> i mean it bears mentioning that the team of legals he has assembled at present aren't just unseasoned lawyers who represent a cross-fit and parking garages, you mentioned kash patel, former white house aide, is raising money for a legal defense fund by selling merchandise such as tank tops and beanies emblazoned by the logo k money sign h, meaning cash. this is a problem, everyone wants a goods lawyer and not one that is mnzing the hell out of a case but the president doesn't have a team to protect him anymore so it is actually meaningful in a way that it hasn't been before given the fact that he is out on his own and he is a normal guy now and he needs a good lawyer, i guess i wonder whether in your reporting there is a sense of

an, an adequate sense of alarm from the confines the trump land over all of this. >> absolutely, there is, alex. it is such a good question. you know, what i heard over and over again was among the adults and again, it is a limited group but among the adults around dtd, there is great consternation and fear that he doesn't have the kind of sort of star legal beagle to lead him out of the thick ets, or at least to give him good advice for how to respond to the department of justice. incredible tern, concern, and that concern is growing for the last couple of months because remember this mar-a-lago search warrant, it has been brewing for month, the fight between the department of justice, and the trump team in mar-a-lago, over turning over all of the records to the national archives. turning over all of the records that, you know, were 234

, were in question, you have given us everything back, and lawyers and colleagues of donald trump, felt that he was essentially taunting department of justice, he was making decisions that ultimately led to this search at his home, instead of just turning over the records, which would have been fairly easy to do. i will also say there is a big problem, there are good lawyers working for donald trump, but some of them are now potentially compromised. legal experts that we've spoken to said that lawyers who tried to assert to the department of justice on donald trump's behalf that they turned, that he had turned over all the records, that was false, that information turned out to be false, and now those lawyers who made that assertion, made that claim, may end up being witnesses, who are conflicted, and unable to represent donald trump. that's really important and also a big bucket of problems for donald trump. >> a big bucket of problems. self created. it's not like he can't afford a

lawyer. i will just say, contributions to trump's pac topped $1 million at least two days after the fbi raided mar-a-lago. so he can afford them. we know that. carol, "washington post" national reporter, thank you for making the time to be here tonight. >> thank you, alex. florida republican governor ron desantis is on a mission to change what is being taught in his state's public schools. >> obviously, in the classroom, we've battled a lot of ideologies. we're not going to let this state descend into some type of warped dumpster fire. >> we will go to florida where desantis' efforts to dismantle that so-called woke dumpster fire are alarming teachers and parents alike. due to lessons that now offer a revisionist history on things like slavery. new yorker staff writer and dean of the columbia school of journalism joins us live in the studio to break it all down. much more ahead. please stay with us.

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critical race theory. i call that the black experience in america. >> trying to divide people by skin color, absolutely makes no sense. even if it is not settled that there's systemic racism, you think it is important to present both sides. >> there are always people who

are like that but do i think it is rampant in our schools or in our society, no, i really don't. >> in all my years, this is the biggest attack i've seen on the freedom of the classroom as i'll call it. >> i am just so scared of the future of public education in florida and i am scared it will be a movement across the nation. >> i feel like learning history so we can progress as a country, for us we just make the same mistakes. >> that is the state of affairs in florida. where schools started this week for most students in public schools. and where, in each and every one of those schools, there is a new guy in class. his name is ron desantis, the governor of florida, he is in the first re-election battle this november and while he has made a big impression in the first term running the state it seems clear that desantis' eye is fixed on the white house in 2024 and the path to get there

seems to run through florida's public school system. he has made it a priority to re-fashion the florida school system according to right wing conservative principles, a culture war over textbooks, lesson plans, book fairs, and classroom conversations. you may recall two signal pieces of legislation particularly courtesy of governor desantis, the so-called don't say gay bill, from kindergarten to third grade and the impact on higher grades remains tbd, and the so-called stop woke act which spans the teaching of any lesson special race and racism that makes any group of students feel, quote, discomfort which suggests anything that systemic racism is real and might make students who benefit from it feel guilty. they have become national flash points and have lent the governor a lot of status in the republican party, but in the

classroom, began well before the notorious pieces of legislation and desantis started the ideological campaign with something so seemingly innocuous and so bipartisan it raised very few red flags at the time but what it create and what is arriving in florida classrooms this week is alarge. in 2019, shortly after taking office, governor desantis called for a complete overhaul of florida's teaching standards for the subject of civics which is how florida students learn about their government and what it is to be an american citizen. democrats in the legislature, they supported the effort and maybe they were taking optimistcally, maybe we will have renewed interest in civic responsibility and maybe young people will vote but when the department of education released the first draftd of the standards for review in 2021, a koufrm alarming things jumped out, how the standards suddenly seemed to emphasize religion, particularly christianity. for example, the new standards for civics teaching, for the new

standards for civics teaching, required 7th graders to be able to quote recognize judo-christian values, and their influence on the founding ideals and documents. including that these seventh graders should, quote, recognize the influence of the ten commandments on establishing the rule of law in america, which is just not something that is universally acknowledged this this country by any stretch. and along with the ten commandments, the new standard calls for students to be able to quote recognize the influence of the protestant work ethic, on economic freedom and personal responsibility. now, some of those evanss were eventually dialed back in the final package, but the ideas behind them, those appeared to have survived. the standards won't be fully implemented in classrooms until next year but the desantis administration is already pushing them out to teachers. in 2021, governor desantis announced $106 million to establish south carolina called the civic literary -- establish

something called the civic literary excellence initiative this. summer the florida department of education, held a series of trainings for public schoolteachers, each session held over the span of three days. and teachers, they were paid $700 to attend them which for florida public schoolteachers, the third lowest in the country, $700 is a tempting sum especially for teachers who are new to teaching. one of those new career teachers a broward county government teacher with one year in the classroom under her belt, she went to a training in june. three days later, disturbed by what she had witnessed in that room, she blew the whistle on these teacher training sessions. and other teachers started talking, too. they noticed that one big theme running through the three days of courses was an emphasis on christianity, and one teacher said, quote, it was a very strong christian fundamentalist way towards analyzing different quotes and different documents. that was concerning. and another teacher said there was this christian nationalism philosophy that was just baked

into everything that was there. we got a hold of some of the slides they used in the trainings. they tell. so story of what happened but not all of it. so, we took a trip down to florida, to find out what exactly has been happening to public education under the stewardship of governor ron desantd is, and i sat down with tatian album, a teacher who blew the whizle on the training and walked me through what the state of florida wanted her to teach students about one of the most fundamental principles of our government, the thing that many people believe makes america, america, the separation of church and state. >> articulate the founder's view of separation of church and state and their view of religious liberty. >> church and state. the wall between the two coming down. >> right. >> what are we learning here, tatiana? >> so this slide was coupled with a discussion about the separation and church and state may not be a wall, it is more

like a fence, like a graded fence they even mentioned. so it was weird because this is definitely when the flags were going off in my mind, where they were immediately kind of saying, no, there wasn't really this separation of church and state. which when you look at history, and you kind of know, maybe that's, you know, somewhat true, but it is definitely more complex and nuanced than the way they were presenting it, so lots of red flags were going off. >> i mean also, it sounds like they're advocating for a more pourous separation between church and state and not only saying, it was much more fluid, the relationship between church and state, and the founding fathers but that's the way american society should view structures today. >> yes. >> this conception, the founders decided strict separation of church and state and the

founders only wanted to protect freedom of worship. >> yes. >> so this kind of misconception thing followed us throughout the entirety of all of the sessions. they would kind of hone in on, these are things you might know to be true but they're a misconception. and so this was a big one for this workshop, where they length matly said to us, the founders didn't want this strict separation, they wanted religion to influence people's values. >> and there's a long lineup of about how it is christian tenets, and that's what the founders intended, and so when they talk about this church, they're really talking about the christian church. >> right. >> and this is kind of, this is the end thesis of this whole presentation, or this is the end conclusion that they want you to come away with. >> right. >> it doesn't really feel like, this doesn't feel like a training slide, this feels like, to borrow a phrase from the governor, indoctrination.

>> it can. it is definitely of concern. it doesn't feel like any sort of other training i've been to. >> and other teachers, i would assume there are other teach wloers not christians in the audience. >> yes. >> and what were they saying? >> they were really concerned a lot of the teachers that i knew that were there, especially those that didn't grow up in a christian household, they were very concerned, and very worried about what was happening, especially those who w-a lot of tenure in the field. >> nobody could raise their hands and question this? >> no, if you asked a question, they used my favorite teacher strategy, which is essentially to say that's wonderful, great, you know, great topic of discussion, we're going to come back to that. and then never come back to it kind of hoping that they'll forget that they raised those questions. >> and then there is what the training had to say about how the court should interpret the constitution. and in the real world, there is an ongoing debate between two fundamentally oppositional

methods of interpretation, on the one side, there is originalism, the believe that the court should interpret the constitution, based on what the founding fathers believed when they wrote it way back in the 18th century. on the other side, the idea that the constitution is a document whose interpretation evolves throughout the years, as american society itself changes. but according to tatiana, our teacher who sat through these training, the state of florida appears to want teachers to think there is really only one correct view. i'll let you guess which one. >> oh, yes, this is interesting, so tell me what you see in this slide. >> so something they did here was they kind of brought up how the supreme court is the reason that we have this separation of church and state. not necessarily the constitution. and so they talked about how through these cases and others, the supreme court has interpreted the constitution to mean this strong separation of church and state. however, through originalism,

that might not be what the constitution was saying, and there was a strong focus on originalism in terms of kind of understanding the constitution. >> and originalism is seen as the right way to interpret the constitution? >> by way of what we were taught at this training, yes. >> right. so this suggests that the supreme court is going against the founders' original vision, in engel vertale, which is the ending of school prayer, that's seen as maybe a bad development, moving away from the founding principles of america. >> uh-huh. there's a slide somewhere in here where he goes to talk about originalism and interpreting -- >> yes, it's this one. >> interpreting the constitution. who's that? >> scalia, justice scalia, who is probably the most notorious in the modern supreme court for being an originalist, and a more

conservative court and here they mention originalism and no mention of any other justices in this slide. just him. and just originalism. which i think is a disservice, you know. i think that if we're going to talk about it, we have to bring up all of the different sides. we have to make sure we're including all of the ways that people hon, on our supreme court currently are interpreting this documentation. >> so the only way you are taught originalism, picture of anthony scalia, this is how i would interpret the constitution. >> uh-huh. >> i mean like, i mean this is, as explicit as it gets. >> yes. >> right? >> yes. especially in this moment in america, when we're looking at the legacy of scalia, and what originalism is doing to american society. >> yes. >> what you see is enacted by the 6-3 conservative court

obviously including the overturning roe v. wade and the signal sent out by die-hard originalist justice clarence thomas that the right to same-sex marriage and contraception, well those should be reconsidered as well. that viewpoint is what florida appears to be emphasizing when it comes to teaching public school tunes about their government and wait until you hear what the state of florida wants civics teachers to teach about slavery. you will get to that, and one of america's most prominent voices on race, history and politics coming up next. voices on race, history and politics coming up next if you have diabetes, then getting on the dexcom g6

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so, down in florida, there are public schoolteachers alarmed about low the state wants them to teach civics to their students, and republican governor ron desantis' version of american history, governance, church and state, not so separate, and the constitution to be interpreted through the lens of originalism, that idea that everything the founding fathers believed in 1787, a long time ago, should take precedence over everything we might have learned since then, which brings us to the topic of slavery. when i sat down with florida high schoolteacher tatiana before the school year began she walked plea through the official state department education training on the sunt of slavery. >> the only thing i can find in this slide is in this entire presentation, about enslaved people, it is about one slide and says less than 4% of slavery

in the western animals fear was in colonial america. and the number of en -- western hemisphere was in colonial america, the number through enslaved birth. what is happening in this slide? >> this is a map, kind of showing how the trans-atlantic slave trade brought enslaved people to both of the americas. there's a heavy emphasis that those people were brought to south america. it is a much bigger arrow. and where we're at, in north america, you know, our colonies are a very small sliver and there was a heavy emphasis that most of our enslaved people were born here, almost to say it was less bad -- >> to enslave children for generations. >> so say they were born here, and we didn't bring them on a boat, is kind of what it felt like. >> sort of making the difference between slaves born in the united states and those born in

africa, and suggesting somehow that slave life, that our moral debt is less, because they were born into slavery as opposed to snatched from their homes. >> that's definitely how i felt they were portraying the information. >> and also that less than 4% of the western hemisphere was in colonial america, was that to minimize the number of slaves which were here which still numbered in the millions. >> i believe so. >> two-thirds of the founders held slaves, even those that held slaves did not defend the institution of slavery. in november 1789, benjamin franklin described slavery as an atrocious debasement of human nature, did they give you the source of the two thirds of founders. >> they did not. >> who didn't approve of slavery. >> he had did not. there was a heavy focus on primary sources. so it be given the information without the source, how i can take that back, other than in my head, you know, how i can take that back to my students in a

tangible way, if i'm supposed to be relaying this information to them. >> and then these are the slides we were talking about. george washington saying, it being among my first wishes, where slavery may be abolish bid law, the abolition of slavery is great desire in the colonies and happily introduced in n-their states. these are two men who are known to be slave owners. thomas jefferson, and the people he enslaved, it's notorious, you know, it's a huge topic of discussion. so it's really interesting to see them position these two specific figures, with quotes that aren't sourced, saying they opposed slavery. knowing they owned slaves. >> they owned slaves. >> and at least one of them -- >> this seems to be the framing here which is that slave owning

in america wasn't as bad as it was elsewhere, the slaves that were owned were born slavery and the people who owned them did so were -- >> my next guest is the person to talk about the teaching of history and race in america, he has been a long-time staff writer at the new yorker, providing analysis on everything from politics to policing, during his time at the new yorker, he has co-edited the matter of black lives, a collection of the magazine's most ground breaking pieces on black history and culture featuring the works of renowned writers like james baldwin and toni morrison and numerous books and an award winning documentary series and the dean of the columbia school of journalism. jelani cobb, thank you, professor, for joining me there is a lot to talk about here. and i want to start with the

slide that seems to minimize the american role in the slave trade and that descent is less morally egregious than the initial slave boats that brought slaves over to the new world, if you will. sociologists and law professor dorothy roberts explains what descent-based slavery actually meant in the americas. >> it is breeding, breeding human beings like livestock. >> i will read a quote from her book. enslaved black women give birth to children, even if the children are white and that law allowed white men to profit from their sexual assaults on black women, freed from the worry that mixed race off spring had any legal claim to freedom, white men could rape with total impunity, their control of black women's bodies was key to creating a permanent labor

supply. >> that reality has no place in the civics training. what does this mean, practically speaking? >> practically speaking, it is a mechanism by which lies can be given the cloak of truth, and so if we want to go back to that document about irthere being only 4% of the people brought, in the trans-atlantic slave trade to the north america colonies, that is technically true, and what they don't talk about is the british were late to the transatlantic slave trade so when we think about the 1619 project, it is more than a century, after particularly the spanish and portuguese had been bringing enslaved people to brazil and the caribbean and the route of south america, that's why there were fewer, and so when we get to the other part about the descent-based slavery, versus trafficking and kidnapping people, that is motivated by the small thing called the haitian revolution,

which sent shock waves throughout the slave-holding world, where haiti, on this island, which was all along populated by enslaved black people, lost the revolution, and overthrew their french oversears, and this terrified slave holders throughout the west, and so we began to see a push to say that there needed to be an abolition, not of slavery, but specifically an abolition of the trant trans-atlantic slave trade because places like south carolina already had a majority black population. there were more black people in south carolina than there were white people in south carolina, this made people paranoid so they ended the trans-atlantic slave trade and continued to keep the people enslaved and through the process of reproduction, which led to people being bred, like livestock, as i said earlier, and so they are, using a cloak of humanity, to disguise utter

inhumanity. >> i wonder, when you look at these moments, when you have the sort of white patriarchs offering a revisionist history, lost cause, you know, after the civil war, and again, this sort of revisionist history and white apologia, enslavement, in the civil rights area when we feel like progress is being made, do you think that is what is happening now? >> that the desantiss of the world, that the organizations that are working to implement this type of teaching in schools, are doing so because they feel like progress is on the doorstep. >> absolutely. >> this is the whole victim, that he who controls the past controls the present and he who controls the present controls the future and a gender-skued analysis of that but the battle about the past is always about the present and rationalizing a particular state of affairs that we see in the world right now, and so if you can diminish the claim of what racism and white

supremacy have done in the society, you automatically and implicitly diminish the moral claim that people who are the descendents of those groups have in the country right now. so that is the ball game right now. and so if you can muddy the waters about how difficult it is for people to achieve citizenship, you can do things that make it more difficult for them to gain access to the vote. and so all of these things are about rationalizing present policies. >> and we are going to talk to you more about all of this, jelani cobb, please stay with us. we will talk about christian nationalism, right wing politics and whether ron desantis would like to bring the country back to 1778. stay with us. to 1778. stay with us

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obviously, in the classroom, we battled a lot of ideologies -- [ applausing about the . >> but the state of florida is a state where woke goes to die. we are not going to let this state, we are not going to let this state descent into some sort of woke dumpster fire. >> that was florida republican governor ron desantis trying to rephrase his civics into a woke battle, there will be no woke battle, put it on a license plate and he is drawing a line between woke leftist values an his state, american, which is to

say christian, virtues and values. it is a theme that comes up repeatedly in the state's civics training for educators. joining us again is jelani cobb, dean of the columbia journalism school. what is the utility of this moral instruction of what is a cultural battle that governor desantis would like to have? >> i mean generally speaking, if you're talking to the public, people don't want nuance, they want stark lines, they want to be told, to be illustrated that the distinctions are absolutely clear and unerring. and so by framing this as woke, and also, woke has become kind of a drinking game, just toss the word out as many times as you can, and by framing it as a melt formetaphor for everything you find contemptible you are ame able to have implicit what you are trying to do, they're unchristian and immoral and opposite you and you should be afraid of them. >> christian, many teachers said

to the press, to us, that the christian nationalism thread flowed throughout that, and it seems to be a really convenient tool from which you, can you know, you can, there are a number of different -- it is an arsenal, a rich arsenal, if you will, for a number of convenient theories. >> it is cynical in a particular way because in trying to break down the wall between church and state, it is not an attempt to break down the wall between synagogue and state and not to break down the wall between mosque and state, it is a very specific attempt to reframe the nation itself as a kind of default christian state. and so the upturn about that, he's not talking about freedom of religion but the primacy of one specific religious doctrine. >> did it surprise you that they were so explicit in their civics training and literally the picture of amtonin shalla, it wasn't sut toll me, but was it surprising to you? >> we saw this type of assault, even in the middle of the trump

years, and where people began trying to frame any kind of anti-racist, you know, trainings that people had been doing, that at the department of justice, and the various institutions, that you know, government institutions, trying to frame them as ideological indoctrination, and that created a rationale to do the opposite, to kind of counter-indoctrination, so it was almost always, especially the kind of manifold lies around what critical race theory is, it was opening the day for exactly this kinds of thing. >> we have so much more to talk to you about on this. we will have more from this trip we took to florida and learned a lot, and so appreciate your time and your wisdom in all of this, jelani cobb, dean of the columbia journalism school, thank you for your time and good luck in the school year ahead. it's going to be a wild ride. we'll be right back. 's going toe we'll be right back. scholl's t. our insoles are designed with unique massaging gel waves, for all-day comfort and energy.

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tonight but we will be back here tomorrow to take another crack at it. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. if there was an invitation to participate, i would consider it. the unprecedented, it would be unprecedented in history for the vice president to testify on capitol hill, but i would don't want to pre-judge and if there is a formal invitation rendered to us, we would give it due consideration. >> if the january 6th committee wants testimony from the former vice president, it appears that they just need to ask him. meanwhile, federal prosecutors are working to get their hands on all of the white house documents that were given to that panel. plus, we're just hours away from a major decision