unfortunate syndication of the rerun of this movie too often. the senseless murder of one of our sons at the hands of the police. to say, we, too, are grieving with you. we too, are sick and tired of being sick and tired of these kinds of funerals. we, too, remain restless and will be restless until justice is served for tyre and his family. we, too, join the voices of others calling for the termination and persecution of the police officers and the first responders that stood by and did nothing as tyre's life was being taken. we, too, use our collective voices at every level of government declaring now is the time to pass meaningful police reform legislation to give our mothers and fathers some degree of confident peace as their sons leave home that they may return home. we, too, are fathers and mothers whose hearts are hurting because

of your needless pain. we, too, stand with you. and we, too, are committed to remaining on the battlefield until justin run down like waters of righteousness in an everflowing stream. we join you in finding meaning in his records. his purpose will open fast, unfolding every hour. the bird may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. god bless you, and god keep you. [ applause ] >> greetings to you. thank you for allowing us this space, certainly to madam vice president, dr. sharpton, and pastor. you've been incredible. to this family, especially to this mother and father who has calmed the beast in america, thank you so very much. there's a pass only of scripture that says in first thesz loan

yals 5:13, forgive my voice, i've gotten over covid, but i'm good, "and everything give thanks, for this is the will of god in christ jesus concerning you." mother wells, you said something incredible. that there's a reason for your son's death. i've never seen a tree eat its own fruit. in other words, your gift must be for somebody else. and you're the tree that bore this amazing fruit. we've all been touched by the truth of tyre's life. going through life, you know, there's a word that's mystery and another one called mister wrong to have truth revealed. the four gospels, matthew, martin, luke, and john, they're gnostic gospels because they're

similar. there were some body cameras that malfunctioned but there was another camera called the sky cop that caught the view. in other words, when one witness at a scene doesn't see everything, because one witness saw it was a chevy, the next witness says that i saw the license plate, the next witness said i didn't see what kind of car it was or the license plate, but i saw an accident. i don't care what you summarize. we still saw brutality. we saw an offense. and that is something that has been revealed. i would encourage you to know that even suffering has a point to it. jesus had a crown of thorns. but guess what? a thorn has a point to it. mother, you're right, there is a reason for this, and as the old folks say, we'll understand it better by and by. justice for tyre! >> justice for tyre!

>> justice for tyre! >> justice for tyre! >> the privilege al sharpton has given me, i represent the church of god and christ. thank you for coming to mason temple. our presiding bishop is in to detroit, but the bishop from houston came here is going to read a statement from he and his wife, lady karen clark. hear this statement, and we've only had 45 seconds of peace. amen. blessings to you. god bless you. i love you. >> and i heard a voice from heaven saying unto me write, blessed are the dead which died in the lord. ye, said the spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works. i, along with my wife, karen

clark shear, and the entire church of god in christ are saddened to learn of the loss of your son, mr. tyre nichols. we offer you and your family our deepest and most sincere condolences. as the days and weeks pass, may you feel the comfort and love of family and friends. may your memories give you peace. and the prayers around those -- of those around you through these difficult times. the lord promised never to leave you. he will always be with you. you have our prayers from the office of the presiding bishop and chief apostle of the church of god in christ, the bishop jay drew shear.

[ applause ] >> as we prepare to go down from this place, i need us to thank god for all of these women and men of god from the city of memphis, tennessee, all the pastors from memphis, tennessee, who are here to be in solidarity with this family, please stand to your feet. [ applause ] one, two -- >> let us also thank reverend stevenson. we've been having the press conferences at his church. give reverend stevenson a hand. [ applause ] >> kenneth thomas. thank you so much. then i want to ask all the pastors who have flown in from around the country to be here on, will you stand quickly.

we want to acknowledge you and thank you for your solidarity and your presence today. thank you. please be seated. i want the directors from m.j. edwards to come forward now, and i want everybody to remain in place until the family has recessed from the sanctuary. but at this time, i want to pronounce the committal. ♪♪ >> in submission to the will of our heavenly father who has seen fit to take out of this world the soul of tyre nichols, therefore commit hiss remains to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to

dust, looking forward to the glory of our great god and our savior, jesus, who at the cry of command shall descend from heaven, christ shall rise first, and those of us who are alive and remain shall be called up to meet them in the air. and there we shall with the lord forever more. and i heard a voice from heaven saying, blessed are the dead who die in the lord from now on, that they may rest from their labors and their works do follow them. lord, have mercy upon us. christ, have mercy upon us. lord, have mercy upon us. will we all stand to our feet with the exception of the family. reverend toone, the national field director of the national action network, is going to give us our benediction. and i really need your compliance to please remain in

your place until the family has recessed from this place. as they're removing the flower arrangements, come on, dale, sing something real quick. ♪ i was born by the river in a little tent ♪ ♪ oh, like that river i've been running ♪ ♪ ever since it's been a long time ♪ ♪ oh, oh long time coming ♪ ♪ it's been too hard

i'm not afraid to die ♪ ♪ i know what's up there beyond the sky ♪ ♪ it's been a long time oh, long time coming ♪ ♪ but i'm not ashamed ♪ >> our hearts and minds are clear, all those that came to support this family, and if you loved tyre, say his name. >> tyre. >> do me one favor. all those who loved tyre, loved this family, you need to remain in place, please, so they can usher the family out.

all of you please remain in place so we can get this family to where they need to be. is that all right? >> yes. >> are we going to cooperate? >> yes. >> thank you again, god, for another day's journey. you've given us all something none of us earned or deserved. somehow you look beyond our faults yet supply our needs. we leave this place but never from thy presence. give us traveling mercy, some heading south, north, some east and west. give us travel and mercy as we get to our final destination we find that all is well. those who believe, say amen. >> amen. >> those who believe, say amen again. one more time. please, remain in place so we can escort the family out. please, remain in place. >> hi, everyone. we come on the air together after watching yet another

family endure the public rich -- rituals after losing their son, brother, nephew, tyre nichols in a brutal beating by five police officers who have been charged with murder. but today was not about that. today is about tyre nichols and the community of memphis that has stood by with his family through this unspeakable grace. in attendance on this first day of black history month, the brother of george floyd, almost three years after the death in police custody, briana taylor's mom, and kamala harris. joining us from memphis is antonia hilton. she's been our eyes and ears on this story from the beginning. david henderson with us, a civil rights attorney, a former prosecutor. tony, as this went two hours, and they're still singing. i feel like maybe we need this.

one hour and 45 minutes was the service. family, i have to start with the family. our colleague, the rev, delivered an extraordinary eulogy. we'll play some of that for our viewers. the vice president, extraordinary remarks. but it's always the families that stand there in the moment of the unthinkable and sort of brings the house down with their strength and their courage to talk about what this is like. your thoughts. >> reporter: absolutely. this was emotional i think from start to finish, from the musical performances, which were incredibly moving, to the speeches that you heard. and we had a sense from our reporting of how this was going to all be brought together and handled, because they wanted the focus on tyre nichols' life, a celebration of him. we saw new photos of him we hadn't seen before, some of his photography, so much of the life he lived and the fun he liked to

have when he was skating or hanging out with friends. some of that was material we hadn't seen of him before in recent days. but anyone who's spent time in a black historic church knows that no matter what, you're always going to get a message. and as i've been talking to people who surrounded his family in the last couple days, they want to make sure his loss of life was not in vain, a call to action, that supporting tyre and the family means a lot more than just condolences and well wishes to them, that they want to see forward movement the words of the vice president, you know, the passing of the george floyd justice in policing act. benjamin crump, the attorney, made it clear there's a new standard of the number of days they want to see for these investigations to go by. it needs to be a matter now of days or weeks, not months. he kept repeat 20 days as now the new standard for these

investigations if cases like tyre nichols happen again. they also are pushing for the end of qualified immunity. they want people to be able to sue police officers directly. and so, you know, the funeral for them had to be so much more than just his memory, so much more than just, you know, saying sorry to the family and that we're here with you. they want his life to take on this national level of meaning. and i think you saw that woven in really delicately throughout the entire ceremony that, you know, he's become a symbol now for people who want to push this conversation forward, who are frustrated after george floyd and the protests and the movement that seemed to completely fall apart in action by our federal government.anger people's faces, and all that was present throughout a ceremony still ultimately about celebrating his life.

there is a push on the investigation front as well. they want to see more people charged and they want to see more people on the scene fired. so it's all those pieces, the local, the state, and the federal elements here. they really want tyre's life to take on significance and they don't want his death to end in vain. >> antonia, his mom, who, you know, i think mustered the courage to speak on this unthinkable and sad day for her, this is her boy, her husband and others talked about tyre as her baby, she cited and thanked the d.a., the chief of police. she called out the state. but i hear in her also, you know, don't stop, right. get to the bottom of this. tell me what the feeling and what the talk on the ground is

about where the end of this lies. >> reporter: you know, those emotions are complicated, because there is this gratitude toward the d.a. mulroy, toward the chief of police davis, and people give them credit on the ground for the pace of this investigation, for their transparency, their willingness to answer questions from reporters. but there's also from everyone that i talked to close to the family or, you know, just there in support of the family, this gnawing feeling they're still going to find out more. i think a good example of that is some of our new reporting at nbc, we got copies of these five police officers' records, and four of the five have histories of infractions, and they range from, you know, not filling out paper work, important paperwork properly, to use of force issues to -- one of the examples that stood out to me, you know, as just one of those moments where you're thinking to yourself, you can't make this up, nicole, is

that one of the five officers was put on leave for two days and had to go to a remedial driving school because they drove to recklessly they caused a three-car crash as they were headed to a scene one night. and you remember the whole -- apparently the precipitating action before this stop was that tyre nichols had driven recklessly. we have no evidence but that was the allegation. when you learn that about these officers and recognize there's more history here, a developing story around their record, the police chief and others must have known that they had some of these issues in their past, how did they get put on the scorpion unit? how were they placed on an elite police task force like the ones we see across the country that are meant to do some of the most important crime reduction strategies and work here? when you see that, and these additional stories come out, you know, dion hampton reporting just the other day that some of these officers had been in incredibly violent incidents

with other community members in the past. as we find more out, there already more questions. that's why the family is leaving the door open and the push open for whatever additional names come out, whatever other people may have been on the scene or involved in the police report that they say was false, a false picture of their son painted initially, they'll be calling for those people to be held accountable, whether through fires and administrative changes or additional charges. >> the rev picked up on this message, as well, antonia. let me play some of that for our viewers. >> in the city that dr. king lost his life, not far away from that balcony, you beat a brother to death. there's nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors that you walk through those doors and act like the folks we had to fight for to get you through them doorings.

>> you didn't get on the police department by yourself. police chief didn't get there by herself. people had to march and go to jail, and some lost their lives to open the doors for you, and how dare you act like that sacrifice was for nothing. you ain't in no new england state. you're in tennessee. >> yes! >> where we had to fight for you. >> yes. yeah. >> and you take that position? >> i want to bring david

henderson in. the rev, as he started to do on friday when we were around this table, very much going there, speaking to something antonia has talked about since the earliest hours after the details of this tragedy were announced. >> absolutely. and here's the thing. you can't start off with a clip from sam koch, a rendition of his song that change is going to come, and expect to go there, because it balances out exactly what we're talking about here. also tyre's mom expressing hope and optimism, as a civil rights advocate, i have to use that to tell myself i have no excuse not to be optimist you can, but also part of what we have to do here is relieve the family of the burden of objectivity that the rest of us need to maintain because the truth is the response we received from memphis police department has been woefully inadequate. if you look at the totality of what it is they are saying. so, you have this unit the chief sent out to do an aggressive form of policing. it was violent, and there's prior indication that you knew

that the people who ultimately beat tyre to death were violent. i have worked on every type of violent crime there is, i'm not exaggerating when i say that. i've never seen a situation where something did something this bad and there wasn't a prior history. and if anyone questions that, just look at the fact that you beat a young man to death on camera and you knew you were on camera, and you're part of high-level investigations, so the question should be, why would you ever do something that stupid? and the answer is because you've done comparable things before and you've gotten away with it. this brings us back to the memphis police department because they're still maintaining the position, hey, these officers don't represent the totality of our police department, but the reporting indicates that there is somewhere between 30 and 40 members of the scorpion unit, six members of that unit, which makes up 20% of that unit, were involved with beating a young man to death, and you still won't admit that you have a systemic problem in your police department and your solution to

take the remaining 80% and treat it like a deck of cards, shuffling it back into the reminder of your police department, and you have the nerve to suggest that is progress. at the very least, we should have seen an internal audit of the scorpion unit before it was disbanded. >> so, how does -- what sort of higher authority takes that on? i mean, you're making a really important point. this was the management under which this occurred on camera. so this management, as you said, reorganizing the unit that carried out this violent, heinous beating that resulted in a death for an underlying crime that we see no evidence of and a police report that is now known to be a lie, to say it stops at these six doesn't seem plausible, david. >> it's not plausible. and we're repeating a problem that we've been repeating at least for the past 50 years since the commission issued a

report back in 1968 and evidence there are systemic problems with policing. the george floyd justice and policing act is the only solution here, and actually, you know what, it goes back further than 50 years because after the civil war, the government recognized, you know what, if we just leave this up to the states, the people who are now freed are going to be exploited by local authorities. there has to be some means of them seeking redress in the federal court system. the exact same thing is necessary here for the police department. if they were going to do it, they would have done it. and even here, where we're seeing the swiftest reaction that we can recall, it's still inadequate because they're not acknowledging the problems that exist within the police department. the only way for this to happen is for the feds to step in, but keeping in mind the sam koch song, that's going to be a long, hard fight, and we're nowhere achieving it yet. >> antonia, i feel like your reporting on this story has balanced these two things that are intention, right. this incredibly fast response,

so fast that it raised a lot of questions before the tape was released about what's happening on the tape. the next phase of that, the next iteration seems to be so fast, so transparent, charges so quickly, who else knew? who else knew about what kind of people were on the scorpion unit? what is the responsiveness and the transparency in that line of questioning? >> reporter: well, we're not seeing quite the same level of transparency on that front. and reporters, myself included, are pushing on all of those questions right now. that's why we've done things like our affiliate getting those personnel records on hand so that we can start trying to answer those questions and put those pieces of the puzzle together on our own if we're not going to get, you know, transparent, available statements from the powers that be here. and i think that's why, as the days go on, some of the gratitude toward people like the

d.a. or the chief of police here is starting to not completely dissipate but shift toward a questioning. you know, i actually had one resident say to me that, while i'm grateful for how fast this investigation moved, i'm nervous that it's moving so quickly that their hope is that i'm going to just accept that these five officers were it, i'll be grateful when they get sent off to jail, and i won't ask any other questions about what's going on here. but the activists on the ground say they know better than that, that they are going to keep pushing. in fact, they have other protests planned in the coming days, potentially into next week, until they get a better sense. we now know about these two additional officers who have been placed on leave. one is a white officer, preston hemphill, who you saw banishing a raise thor, who recommends that his colleagues stop tyre nichols in the video. but the other, we don't know their name or anything about them yet. that alone is a detail that has disturbed people in the

community and left them feeling like there's more to the story, are they protecting any additional people? and because of all the, you know, what i described to you before about what we're starting to learn about these officers' backgrounds, there's an understanding here that higher-ups in the department, likely even the chief, would have known some of this. and when you put together these units, they're supposed to be the greatest, the best, the people you trust when some of the most difficult policing and crime reduction tasks, so what does it mean if folks no, in the first place in some cases haven't been on the force that long, joined only back in 2018 or so, but have these records? what does it say they end up on this elite team? those questions aren't going away. >> they are not at all. i'm going to do two things. i'll ask both of you to stay with us. i want to bring charles blow into our coverage, who always asks provocative questions. but i also want to show our viewers vice president kamala harris' remarks today. let's start there.

>> mothers around the world, when their babies are born, pray to god when they hold that child that that body and that life will be safe. for the rest of his life. as vice president of the united states, we demand that congress pass the george floyd justice in policing act. joe biden will sign it. and we should not delay, and we will not be denied. it is nonnegotiable. >> charles, you were at the service, there for whole thing.

i know it was the passing the act and signing it that got the rousing applause. but for me, what was so haunting was the baby comes into this world and should be safe, and you tie it to tyre's mom and family talking about tyre just wanted to go home. he was just trying to get home. he was beat ultimately to death. that was a couple hundred yards from his house. >> yeah. you know, the thing that struck me about the funeral service -- and i have been covering these cases for decades since trayvon martin in 2012, i sat with the families, i have been to funerals -- there is a tradeoff that happens where, in order to gain justice, the case must be nationalized and universe lized. but the tradeoff in that is that the person is often lost, that we forget that it's a human

being and not a hashtag. and so, for me today, the most striking part of the service was not the politicians, was not the national figures who spoke, it was his family, it was his sister saying that she, you know, didn't always like to baby sit but she liked to baby sit him because all he wanted to do was watch cartoons and get a bowl of cereal. another sister said he was polite -- even when he was being beaten, he kept saying "please," and that was supposed to be his name and his mother got his name from the movie "silverado." he said the only thing that makes her go out is he may have had a higher purpose. i think we have to remember the humanity of the person in addition to fighting for the cause of universal liberty, because if we do not, we rob

ourselves of a sense of humanity, and these people begin to blend together in a stream and become a fixture of society, and they become kind of ritualized part of what we do. we have these kind of outrages. we have these services. and then we just go home and wait for the next. in order for that not to happen, we have to remember this is a kid who liked to eat cereal and his sister liked to baby sit because of it and he was polite even while being beat on the death. >> charles, the brother that spoke near the end before the parents that said he lost touch a little bit with tyre and he really regretted it because after listening to -- i think it had gone on about an hour and 15 minutes, before he got up, he said after listening to how you saw him and how many lives he touched and how everyone that interacted with him had that experience with him that you just described, was for me one

of the -- you know, that's -- i know you're giving us an admonition against universality, but that's every family, to me, he was everybody, and he made me want to pick up the phone and call everyone in my life i haven't talked to. that is this moment. it's the family that's deeply connected to his mother and stepfather. he was racing to their house, on his way home. but you see a family, a life, like all families. for some you're talking to every day, some you have lost touch with, and he is gone for all of them. in a lot of ways, that rather broke my heart as much as anybody. >> right. i'm not admonishing against the universality of humanity. what i'm saying is we have to universealize the figure, take them out of being a person, make them a mascot, and that is the danger i think in dehumanizing

people. and i think on a certain level we have to do it in order to get the national conversation going. sometimes you have to do it to get legislation passed. but it is a loss because there is the moments in mourning for us as individuals where you may have the reaction of the brother, which is to say, i regret something, and i want to say that. and what we end up doing is lionizing our ability to be strong. people constantly tell the family members how strong you are, so proud of you, how strong, you are, but in actual natural mourning there are moments when you are strong and moments where the only noises that your mouth can make is to wail or to cry or to moan, and that that also is natural and normal and human. and we have to be able to recognize that and celebrate the kind of -- the sanctity of mourning as a complete

experience and grieving as a complete experience. what i have noticed -- i've been covering these families for a decade, is they sometimes get robbed of the ability in their own natural, normal for them kind of way. they have to be strong. they have to have kind of a grieving so when the cameras come on it reflects the light that the camera needs to capture and it advances the cause of standing up for the killed person. but there's also a natural person inside of them that is hurting and in pain and sometimes just wants to go home and curl up. and we have to be able to protect that person because that is a normal part of grieving that we don't allow for these families because they are these families. >> antonia, another hallmark of today was to see these other families there. the rev talks a lot on and off

tv about bringing together the floyd family and this club no one wants to be a member of, no one wants to be part of this club, but if you've lost a loved one and up to endure what charles is talking about, the public rituals of grief and the moments of strength and the moments of falling apart, which is natural and normal for anyone who is at moments drowning in grief and loss, that was striking to see all those families there today. >> reporter: it was striking. and this is, you know, part of part of the experience as a reporter, too, is you realize after you've covered one story after another, you see the patterns, you recognize the pain in these families, and you see them start to form these clubs, these sort of small communities of support. we talk about it often in the

context of mass shootings or senseless gun violence, the parent who is wake up one morning and their kid went off to school and now they're in the group together or they're going to capitol hill to fight with each other and never expected a parent from uvalde and a parent from colorado or highland park would be to working together, but they are. but for generations in this country, there have been black parents in every city, in rural communities, every community across this nation who have this experience where they woke up one morning or in the middle of the night to the news that their loved one, their son, their father, their cousin has had an encounter with police and their life has been snuffed out. and that randomness brings them together. and so, in a way, it's heartening to see these groups, these support groups form, but it's also incredibly disturbing as someone who's observed it time and time again. you know, you don't want them to have to find those groups.

you don't want them to have to keep coming forward and ask for often the same things over and over again. you can see in the pain of the family members who have been through this before that it's hard for them to come forward after years of grieving their loved one and realizing the same patterns are still ongoing. it's hard as a human sit downs and interviews these people. but then, you know, i even received outreach the other day from someone i know whose cousin had been murdered by police many years ago, before i was born, and for them, this happened in the '70s, and it had triggered emotions for them. and, so there are people who kind of come together in these moments and grieve and look for that support, and it's really -- it's hard to watch but it's an important part of the story here to tell, too, on the ground. >> grief on top of grief. antonio hylton, our eyes and ears, david henderson and charles blow, thank you.

when we come back, we'll make a turn to politics. despite admitting that the obsession we election fraud quite certainly cost them gains in the midterm elections, the republican party is today doubling down on that failed strategy for the next cycle, 2024, creating a national network of big-lie watchers from state to state. and later in the broadcast, all of the red flags about the growing domestic extremist movement in our country missed by the head of the fbi ahead of the january 6th insurrection of the capitol. don't go anywhere. hi, i'm tony hawk, and like many of you, i take a statin to reduce cholesterol, but statins can also deplete coq10 levels. that's why my doctor recommended qunol coq10. qunol has the number one

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>> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ i'm sure you've heard the expression the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. it's safe to say the republican party has officially lost its mind. news out of the winter meeting suggests the gop has decided to double down on the two things that led to its incredibly underwhelming performance in the midterm elections. most of the election liers flocked and an anti-abortion platform so extreme it turned off people to vote for republicans even in states as reiably red as kansas.

"the washington post" says a new internal report proposes creating a permanent infrastructure in every state to ramp up election activities in response to widespread fraud and the way the country elects its leaders. the report prepared by the rnc's national election integrity team and obtained by "the washington post," reveals the degree to which republicans continue to trade on donald trump's false claims that democrats and their allied rigged the election in 2020. the rnc is formally urging lawmakers to go on offense in the 2024 election cycle and pass the strictest anti-abortion legislation possible. the rnc passed a resolution that called on republicans to pass laws that acknowledged the beating hearts and experiences of the pain in the unborn. the procedure was outlawed after

six weeks, before many realize they're pregnant. joining us, yamiche alcindor. ben rhodes here. charlie sikes is back with us. part of me says knock ourselves out. 97% of all americans, including the majority of republicans, oppose those super strict bans that eliminate exceptions for the life of the mother. 83% of all moerns, including the majority of republican, oppose bans that eliminate exceptions for rape and incest. and that's where this gop is heading. >> certainly. when you think about this, you think about the midterm elections, not only the republicans not win as big as they historically should have won, but when you look at abortion referendums, you saw even in conservative states like kentucky, you saw voters go to the polls and say they did not want more restrictions on abortion. of course the republican party is looking at their base and

saying we need to play to the people that are excited by this and lean in on the things they continue to think will win them elections. it's a curious decision as you're saying. also when you look at election denying and what happened there, we election deniers moving so many elections across the country and not being able to really generate the support they thought they could. a third topic, because i know abortion and election denial is one, you have someone like jim jordan saying that there's possibly no law, no policing reform that could be passed to prevent deaths like the one we saw with tyre nichols. of course as you said, he was eulogized today and is going to be laid to rest today. when you think about republicans leaning in on the idea there's nothing we can possibly do on policing reform, nothing we can do to stop a nation where black people are killed at two to three times the rate of other ethnic groups, it's in some ways

questionable and hard to imagine why that is the stance they're taking. they must be talking to pollsters and the focus groups and think this is the message for their base. >> if urpt to assemble the winning obama coalitions of two runs, the winning biden coalition, the formula, not a state secret, you energize and excite african american voters, you energize and excite women, democratic and republican, you energize and excite independents. independents are repelled by the election denialism. that is now trump's lunatics lost, why mitch mcconnell had problems. it's almost like they picked up the wrong, you know, election strategy. they've got the dnc's book, not the rnc's book. >> yeah, but i think the reality is that this is the only play they know how to do. this stuff was not a bug of the

republican party, it was feature. it is what the republican party is. they have been counting on the message they've been delivering to their own base for many years now about conspiracy theories and election integrity, about all these things that frankly most people -- and we saw this in the election -- just don't care that much about, or in the case of abortion, they're repelled by what the republican is pushing. and it also shows they don't really have any other agenda now. i compare this to 2010 was the last time there was a republican takeover of the house. now, look, that was the chief -- tea party takeover. mark meadows and pompeo, but add in paul ryan and those people, an agenda that i don't think was the right agenda but cutting spending, entitlement reform, about repealing obamacare. they came to try to do certain things. what is so striking to me is now they have control of the house of congress and they have no

idea what to do with it other than to make it a forum for these kinds of investigations. they don't have a policy around cutting spending. they just talk about it. they don't have a policy around taxes. they just talk about it. they don't have a policy around foreign policy and the war in ukraine. they just oppose it because it's something that joe biden is taking leadership on. so i think what we're really dealing with is a republican party that no longer has an affirmative governing agenda but just a list of things that mobilize their base and play on fox news or talk radio, and that's the only thing they know how to talk about. so, they can't correct what went wrong in the election because it's the only thing they know how to do. i do think that's really a gift to the biden administration and the democratic party going into some very important fights in the next two years. >> charlie, republican politics, when i practiced them, you know, if it were like a snowman, the bottom ball, the middle ball, the top and the top hat for fox

news. republican party is the snowman's entire body consists of fox news rundowns. they don't have a top hat. they have a carrot for their nose. not a personal opinion. i am completely indifferent of what they do. knock yourselves out, guys. like the titanic, you can't totally pivot and convince voters you care about women's health care or the economy or democracy when you realize this isn't working. but polls have been conducted. 75% of americans, according to a cnn poll, already dislike what they're seeing from the house republicans, which is the only branch of government republicans control. it's like they hit the iceberg and they want to just keep going, baby. what are they doing? >> this has become the party of longtime listener, first-time caller. ben is exactly right. they don't have an agenda because it has been captured by an activist base that is more

interested in striking a pose and making liberals cry. the abortion issue is fascinating because, rather than saying we need to figure out a way to talk about abortion, we need to find a way to get back some of the republican women voters who were alienated by that, no, what they're saying is let's go to the most draconian types of laws. by the way, these proposals divide republican lawmakers and republican politicians as well. a lot of republicans would like to say, well, can we go for, you know, more moderate legislation, you know, longer deadlines that better that have exceptions. and what the rnc is saying no, you need to go to the far edges of the extreme agenda and that is not driven by focus groups or polling. that is driven by the ideological i.d. of this party. what plays on fox news, on talk radio. what the most ginned up activist

is saying. and the irony of this from a political point of view, if you are a passionate pro-lifer you are locked in. the republicans locked in that vote. the votes in play and that determines who win in 2024 and beyond are the people who are more squeamish about this, who need to be won back. who look at the extreme agenda and are saying do i want to be part of this. once again you're seeing a party stuck on stupid because this is who they have become. this is a party that is held hostage or made itself hostage to the extreme activist wing and they cannot quit it. >> here's the thing that voters will not unlearn. what voters rejected in the midterms was the overturning of roe v. wade. republicans have innovated on that. we have become more extreme. what they are pushing is now criminalizing abortion medications, proposing criminal

investigations of miscarriages. what the results were in these midterms is that baseline from which republicans are devolving. the policies are getting more extreme and that's what they're putting in their strategy books. who's -- you know, who thinks that that is the national messaging campaign for success in '24? >> again, comes back to this curious decision they're making. it is a big question and a key question to ask, who is making these decisions because as someone who was out there as a reporter, out there on the ground during the midterm elections i remember there were some republican pundits who said abortion wasn't going to matter, women weren't going to be concerned. i was confused because whether i went to missouri, michigan, ohio, florida, you saw women, including young republican women saying i do not want these rights taken from me you had the

devolving of two labels, pro-life and pro-choice. people who thought of themselves of pro-life, supporters of abortion restrictions, they didn't mean they were supporters of having to carry rapists child or being a victim of incest forced to carry that child. it was hard for so many women in this country to be told that is part of what it means to be a supporter of abortion rights. when you think about being stuck in this position of playing to extremes it goes back to the legacy of donald trump. the republican party before donald trump was trying to think of ways to message to black, latinos it wasn't saying the wall, but you had donald trump come in and do and say those things and be successful that changed the dna of the republican party saying we should just lean into the extreme, if we don't win this time, maybe next time.

it's hard this time because you have the 2018 midterms, the 2020 midterms and the 2022 midterms showing that extreme messaging that is losing for them when it comes to places like the senate and the white house. >> ben, to your point, it is an opportunity for the democrats. i think as yamiche is talking about chris christie saying loser, loser, i want to go back -- but loser, loser, loser. the track record is in front of them. it hasn't worked. >> that's right. the reality is for the obama coalition that you spoke about that sat out in 2010. even having that republican congress, which felt extreme at the time, but is nowhere near where this group is. that made it much easier for barack obama to run against and beat mitt romney, because we were able to point to the extreme positions of the republican party on a set of issues. i think fork in the road was after the 2012 election remember there was another document

prepared by the rnc, the autopsy of that election where the official party decided maybe we do need to come to the table on immigration reform, be more moderate and they went the opposite direction and overlearned the lesson of 2016 where the fox viewer is the viewer of the party. and they've basically lost every election since then. it worked for them in one black sheep election in 2016, and they can't let that go and they don't know where to go. they're reaching down a dead end and democrats have to drive home the extremism of the party, they have to help define republicans. we can't step back as a democratic party. joe biden and democrats in congress have to point out the extremism and the danger it poses to the things americans care about not just think that everybody is going to get it on their own. >> that is the opportunity for the broader coalition, charlie. you may not see yourself as a liberal or democratic voter but

i think the real opportunity for growth is the rejection of extremism on abortion, being repelled by the election denialism and being pro democracy. the real shift is to create a generation of democracy voters. when you see republicans saying things, casting down on the political violence, san francisco and other places, it does open the door for that. >> let me strike a more cautionary note here, there's something ominous as well. this is a republican party that has not learned its lesson and is not ready to make a course correction. for people who think republicans are going to look at 2018, 2020, and 2022 and say we need to move on from donald trump and the maga policies it's not happening . it's not happening in the house of representatives, the rnc and the issues we're talking about. we're an eventually divided country. i do think this will give the

biden administration and the democrats an edge but we can't be too cocky about all of this. because they could win. they could come back to power. there could be a recession and in a closely fought presidential race, bad things could happen because there's no indication this is a party that's serious about governing that wants to solve the problems. it's a party addicted to the extreme, reckless, and this is why we need to be vigilant on all of these things. because they could win. >> i am totally pro-vigilance. thank you all for being here. a quick break for us and when we come back, new reporting today on where some in the fbi had their focus. spoiler alert, it was the wrong place, ahead of the january 6th capitol attack. we'll bring you that story next. k we'll bring you that story next. with the freestyle libre 2 system, you can know where your glucose level is

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what we view as the most dangerous threat to americans today is largely lone actors, some cases small cells if you will, largely radicalized online, already here in the united states, attacking soft targets using crude readily accessible weapons motivated by gee ha dis inspirations or domestic inspirations. >> a failure was assessed by the commission as one of the biggest underlying failures as the u.s.

intelligence and law enforcement communities when when it went about understanding and analyzing the attack on our country on september 11th. that our leaders were unable to consider something like that happening here. and that was part of why thaw weren't able to prevent it. a failure of imagination is something we've hypothesized about on this program many times and showed the lack of preparedness by law enforcement in the capitol insurrection. there's reporting that shows how narrow the fbi's imagination was when it came to preparing for january 6th. the times reported on a team of analysts who tried to game out possible scenarios around a disputed election. an exercise known as a quote red cell inside the fbi. the team's conclusions said there was no single failure agents ignored warning signs flashing in the open on social media and relied on confidential

sources. still bureau officials played down not preventing the worst assault on the capitol since the war of 1812. as you heard in the testimony from fbi director christopher wray there's a focus on lone wolf attack. the particular focus obscured its ability to see a broad right wing movement come together. according to the draft document, the unclassified red cell analyst, which is dated october 27, 2020, discussed four potential situations that involve lone offenders, but none suggested the rise of a mass movement that might support an agrieved losing candidate. an actor such asthmaly sha groups or white supremacists who took a leading role in the attack. that wasn't the only bias that prevented the fbi from seeing the possibility of a january 6th

like event from occurring. there was an order from donald trump and then bill barr to focus on leftist groups like antifa. despite evidence, including from the director of the bureau they were not the biggest threat to the home land. quote, this decision by the fbi was an exercise in false equivalent len si. noticing the lethal threats posed by far right violent extremist in recent years far outpace the threats from the left. officials at the fbi and doj have said white supremacist extremists were the top domestic terrorist threat. a deep look at the fbi failures when it came to january 6th is where we begin this hour. joining us one of the journalists on that reporting we read from, adam goldman is here. also joining us asha rengapa,

assistant deal at yale jackson school and neil katia is back. adam, it is an unbelievable piece of reporting. it comes as tim is out doing public speaking and interviews about some of the questions they posed and started to answer. but your report fills in a lot of blanks on what went wrong at the fbi. explain. >> you know, i was there at the capitol on january 6th and i cover the fbi and the past couple of years i, myself as a reporter, wondered why couldn't the fbi have done more, why didn't the world's premier law enforcement agency do more. and the mandate, in fact, is to investigate and stop international terrorism and domestic terrorism. so the committee itself has been

well publicized now, spent a lot of time focussing on trump but there was a subset, a number of people looking at the fbi, including, you know, fbi -- what they were doing on j 6th, that includes informants on the ground on j 6th and trying to understand the structural failures of the dhs and fbi. and the reports i reviewed came to these two conclusions. one is there's a fixation on lone wolves we've been hearing it for years and years. there isn't a single doj or fbi person that gets up to talk about terrorism that doesn't talk about lone wolves are the big threat. they are. but what this committee draft document said was that in itself was causing something called an anchor bias. and it was literally weighing down their critical thinking.

you see this in this red cell exercise they did when they couldn't move beyond, four examples of lone wolves and failed to see the wider movements that were happening with the oath keepers and proud boys, the two of them especially. and then the other thing, as you mentioned, was the false equivalency, they call it an ineffective prioritization. this threat banding they have where antigovernment and racially motivated violent extremists like white supremacists are on the same tier and thus deserve the same attention. this draft document pointed out that was ineffective. >> adam two questions for you. can you help us understand what happens at the fbi when a sitting president invites a domestic extremism group to stand back and stand by?

does nothing happen? does nothing happen because he's the president and their boss? what happens when donald trump says stand back and stand by after putting out into the ether the lies about a rigged election? what happens at the fbi? >> i'm not here to defend the fbi. but i think the fbi, given its history from the days of hoover, the infiltration of the black panthers is leerily of opening up enterprise investigations. it touches on the first amendment. so i think they err on the side of the first amendment, certainly when they're not getting information about criminal activity. and clearly that played a role in what they did or didn't do. despite there being indicators that the oath keepers, for instance, had evolved into

something more than an anti-government group, they had a rapid reaction force with guns in virginia, they attacked the -- the storm clouds were brewing but nobody recognized that. >> that explains why nothing goes into place after trump calls them. your colleagues have reported on trump's december 19th tweet where he goes, we know now from your colleagues that he leaves a meeting where he wants to overturn joe biden's victory and in sort of a fit of -- a peak at the pillow guy and the overstock guy and everyone he has working on the coup, he sends out the tweet, come to washington, it'll be wild. does your reporting suggest that anything happens after that or is that in the same category of speech from a political leader? >> i think it's in the same category as speech. i don't think anybody an tis paid there ought to be an

obstruction of an official proceeding, that's what they've been charging with, that statute didn't seem to be on people's minds as the individuals moved on the capital. another thing we looked at here is the fbi's use of informants in not only the proud boys but the oath keepers. and why when they had the two groups penetrated, including the number two in oath keepers they weren't able to detect these two seditious conspiracies. that raises concerns what agents were asking informants and how the fbi was driving intelligence to get the information to those informants. >> what's the fbi's response to what transpires. we know that when the president wanted to go to the capitol his detail surveys the route and

that's the footage we saw in the january 6th public hearings where they're talking about guys with aks, an incredibly armed group of trump supporters on the exact route that a president would travel from the white house to the capitol, what did they do once the threat was clear on january 6th that we may not appreciate? >> in what sense do you mean? >> were they involved, were they supporting? were they then springing into action? i think it's still a black box. what did they do? >> well, they -- you know, they had positioned two s.w.a.t. teams and their elite hostage rescue team to move if there was serious trouble. the fbi -- and those teams, they went into action and that h.r.t. the hostage rescue team they were deployed to the capitol. the fbi, i think their position is, you know, they don't -- they

didn't -- they weren't -- they're not supposed to fortify the capitol. they're not putting up the gates to do the capitol. i think the criticism is the fbi, you know, if they were able to analyze and digest everything it was seeing, it might have been able to sound the alarm to such an effect that the capitol police would have been done more, the whole of government would have done more. but, you know, that didn't happen. i think there's some soul searching going on at the bureau. you can see in the statement they gave to me that they're reviewing everything that happened on january 6th and they talk about collection and analysis. and they -- i think they're going to try to figure out what went wrong. whether they -- whether they release that or not, i don't know. the department of the -- the department of justice inspector general is looking at doj's components and what they did, and that includes the fbi.

there might not be one clean answer to all of this. >> i've seen some of your tweets, asha, i know you retweeted pete strzok who was on our show yesterday. difficult to read, fair to ask if four years of intimidation by trump and the fact the january 6th participants were white men, leads to the lack of imagination that adam and his report looked at. is that where you stand, your analysis? >> yes, as adam said there were structural problems in the bureau. the emphasis on lone actors, biden's domestic strategy for countering extremism focuses on lone wolves they add in militia

extremism, but say most are loan wolves. so that's not far-off. where pete is right is that the fbi was receiving a lot of tips from social media from some of their informants, other fusion centers and they weren't putting it together. and so, to me, i don't think this idea of a failure of imagination is applicable here. i mean, if osama bin laden had been tweeting for months in advance he was going to send two planes into a building and then that happened, we wouldn't call it a failure of imagine napgs we -- imagination we would call it a failure to react and stop that event. >> neil i see you nodding. >> yes. i have respect for the individual agents of the bureau, men and women like asha when she served there. but the leadership around this story it depicts a real problem and the intelligence community

is going to have difficulty sorting through all the incoming information about a national security threat. but as asha is saying the explicit reports on social media of a planned attack on the capitol on the day the election is being certified so break highly up on the fbi's list of priorities in the connect the dots thing. the fbi didn't miss a few small warnings here they missed giant interstate signs flashing in bright red lights saying an attack is coming. there was one that the fbi got on a website called donald.win. the quote is they think they'll have a large enough group to march to d.c., armed, so they can't be stopped, they think the election was stolen and it's their right to overtake the government during this coup no u.s. laws apply. their plan is to literally kill

people. people take this seriously. that's the tip the fbi got and we saw no preparation by the bureau for the assault on january 6th. it's unforgivable. >> i want to press on this with you for a second you talk to folks close to the military and it's clear their view was we do not patrol or watch or gather intelligence on domestic actors and until someone calls the guard and that's approved it's not our job to move. adam's reporting that trump's tweet stand back and stand by, he sends more plans on where to come, what to do, bannon on his podcast -- all of this is in full view but falls into the category of political speech. so the fbi stands back. the head of homeland security for d.c. seems to be the only person who was able to predict a mass casualty event, order blood

at the blood banks and articulate what was going to happen on january 6th and he was right. as well as the members of congress, who called their husbands and wives and told them where their wills were, or left their staff at home. democrats knew what was going to happen. help me explain whose job it is supposed to be next time if we're looking forward to make sure this doesn't happen again. >> so, nicole, it is the fbi's job to disrupt these plots before they come to fruition. it's called intervening left of boom. like basically before the big explosion or event happens. it is true, as adam mentioned, that for domestic actors, the fbi cannot intervene left of boom that much. the way we can for, for example, foreign terrorist, we can engage in surveillance and other investigative tools very early

and in intrusive ways we can't. what i can't get my mind around as adam noted the fbi had informants in the groups. i think they had like 20 informants in the proud boys. it defeats the purpose of having informants if your informants aren't telling you about the criminal activity that organization is preparing for. what we see in the seditious conspiracy indictments is that there was a lot of preparation, arms being gathered, military tactics being formed, there were, you know, communications, extensive communications, and it's really hard for me to understand, even if you needed that -- the actors to cross that line of criminality before you can intervene, that line was crossed, and why there wasn't enough for the fbi to take more action than to tell them as they apparently did, just stay out of trouble to these people.

i don't know if that's a problem with the handling of the informants, getting too close to them, trusting them too much but to me there is a big red flag there. >> nicole -- >> go ahead. >> i was going to make a point. and i made it at the end of my story, which is that, you know, the fbi and the capitol police and these others were basically looking at the same information/intelligence about what january 6th could look like. rightly the capitol police say, hey, we're the target. congress is the target. they accurately say that. yet they were still woefully unprepare. they themselves identified they were the target of this and woefully unprepared to defend and secure the capitol. >> why? >> you know, it hasn't been adequately explained. it has not been adequately explained to me. >> this is where i lose the

plot. donald trump told us what he was going to do he told us on twitter and had steve bannon tell us on his podcast and the people around him, michael flynn, john eastman tell us again at a rally. i think one of adam goldman's colleagues was live tweeting it on the 5th. i remember thinking this is sounding terrifying. everybody knew what donald trump had planned. i thought he was a terrible president but he was the president of the united states. why didn't anybody do anything? >> yeah, i mean, one possible reason is i do think that the fbi suffers from, particularly the leadership, suffered from kind of fighting the last war mentality, so they really focused on, for example, islamic terrorism to the exclusion of domestic threats. we know this attack was planned and we know it wasn't like some

masterfully executed secret covert plot. the bureau had the intelligence pieces it needed to put together what was going to happen. they had detailed tips, relationships as asha was saying with members of the groups and informants. the ability to scour online posts and left really with the capitol unguarded. i don't blame the capitol police as much, because their job is a much more daily basis to secure the capitol from ordinary threats. this was an extraordinary threat. it required the fbi and the fbi was basically awol on that day. >> adam, you know the beat and the men and women inside the fbi and the leaders. let me ask this as bluntly as i can. what was the impact -- donald trump wanted to fire christopher

ray, i think bill barr writes in his book how he saved him. but donald trump wants to get rid of him from the get-go. was it hobbling for the fbi that the plot of the january 6th insurrection was planned by donald trump and his close advisers and the people that carried out seditious conspiracy were his supporters? >> you know, i don't think i can answer that. specifically. but i mean, it's pretty clear that, you know, that the fbi had taken a lot of incoming fire over the last -- you know, over the last few years, ever since the start of the russia investigation. and their posture was not to make any waves. in fact, they -- you know, they were so concerned about donald trump firing wray and putting one of his sin koe fants in there, that they had a plan to do a mass resignation on the

seventh floor. so, you know, they were thinking about this. but, you know, i can't specifically answer that question. >> asha, do you want to take a stab at it? >> yes, i think, you know, on -- they understand that this is a land mine and they have been in the cross hairs of, you know, the political right for the lang -- last six years. they still are. but i think we can't gloss over, i don't think this is necessarily pervasive or systemic there may also be a significant contingent that felt aligned with at least maybe the overall partisan alignment with trump and if you're looking at intelligence through rose-colored glasses, then red flags just look like flags.

you may not see pip you may assume that all of these things are going to unfold. these people you might identify with aren't going to do the types of things that terrorists do. so i think that there might be some culture bias there as well. that could have been playing a part at least at some levels and where all of these pieces should have been put together. >> adam goldman it's an important piece of the puzzle this document that you were able to view and write about. thank you so much for joining us to talk about it. asha and neal thank you for joining us. when we come back another ethical question about the much maligned supreme court. questions raised now about the activities of the wife of chief justice john roberts and potential conflict of interest. that reporting is next. on the first day of black history month with teachers

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it's hard to believe that the apparent conflicts of interest and lack of public trust in this supreme court could get any worse than it is. but today it has. the latest the ethics of the chief justice john roberts has come under scrutiny. jane roberts, the chief

justice's wife has made millions of dollars recruiting lawyers to law firms with business before the court. that's according to an ex-colleague. "the new york times" reports this, quote, the chief justice himself from the case, listed her lawyers but not the name of her clients on annual financial disclosures. however legal discovery unearthed spread sheets listed six figure fees for mrs. roberts, including $690,000 in 2012 for one such match. the documents do not name clients but a former colleague recalled her recruitment of one candidate, ken salazar the then interior secretary under president obama to a global law firm that posts of arguing more than 125 times before the

supreme court. the complaint has testimony from jane roberts herself which she notes the powerful officials whose agencies have had cases before her husband for whom she has worked. she said this about the benefit of working with senior officials, successful people have successful friends. a spokesperson for the supreme court said in a statement to "the new york times" that all the justices were attentive to ethical constraints and complied with financial disclosure laws. joining us is host of the amicus podcast, danica liftwikc.

i put this out there to i guess the chief justice, 7% of all americans, according to gallup have a great deal of trust in the u.s. supreme court. it's hard to get a number smaller than 7 but it seems like they're trying. >> yeah there is this cart horse problem in some sense which is the plummeting trust fuelled by these stories. the justices would say please stop reporting on our ethical misconduct and then the american people will have bountiful, joyful trust in us again. the view of it is these stories are trivial, nothing is different. justices' wives and spouses have been for years slightly profiting off access to their spouses. and now it's a story and the answer to your question is it's not the fault of the press reporting the story. it's the fault of the justices

each of these things that we have talked about the last couple of weeks is correctable by judicial behavior and they won't correct it. it seems as though there's one person in each of these stories that could change their conduct and that's the justice. the press cannot change their conduct and clearly the american public cannot change their views about the court. >> brian fallon, here's the problem. we don't know what we don't know. so a lot of this is covering the public's perception of the court. here's what we're not going to do here, we're not going to cover anymore supreme court justices who give speeches bemoaning the 7% of americans who trust them when they continue to ignore and deny all the laws of gravity, it's the lack of transparency, this ruse that you can somehow police yourself, investigate your own leaks, this idea that you are above the law, which is how they act, and this idea that they are

this body that can say things before another branch of government, congress that has no resemblance to what they do in their branch of government, the judiciary. >> right, nicole. the court, in this case specifically chief justice roberts only have themselves to blame about the story that came out about jane roberts is news. it's news because for the first time we're getting details of the work that jane roberts does. and the reason we never had those details before is because the disclosure requirements that the supreme court lives under is so pourous they have to file every year and you can look up and view and see on page 2 of these documents there is a section that requires them to identify sources of income and their spouses receive.

however, all that it discloses is the name of the employer. it doesn't say anything about how much they made and in the case of somebody like jane roberts or in the case of ginni thomas who have consulting companies or work for firms that operate on commissions they don't have to disclose clients. when you look at 2016, 2017, disclosures from john roberts it lists the firm, major lindsey, that jane roberts worked for. doesn't say wilmer hail was a client that paid her. so the person bringing this lawsuit and sent this letter to congress has an ax to grind bringing a wrongful termination suit, but what he's saying is true john roberts should have to disclose on her behalf the clients paying her since they're the firms appearing before him at the supreme court. >> i want to just put out there the stories that have made news about the supreme court lately. things we've called on you for.

ginni thomas lobbying mark meadows, the text messages revealed by the january 6th committee. as well as stories written in "the washington post," where she wrote emails for them to overturn the results of the arizona election. i think there was another state. clarence thomas turning out to be the only justice to side with trump in his efforts to withhold documents. "the new york times" reporting that justice alito was accused of leaking the hobby lobby decision to some religious activists or stakeholders or it came out from someone in his circle. the ruse and failure to investigate the dobbs leak which could lead to the assassination of the justices, it was conducted by an internal investigator. and justice amy coney barrett's

husband opening a branch of his firm and now this the chief justice's wife her talking about successful people attract successful people. dahlia, they don't seem to want to deal with this. this is on us. we shouldn't make lists like this, we shouldn't cover these stories. if they wanted to turn it around, what would that look like? >> everything brian just said. there is a reason that we have disclosure rules. we have disclosure rules that judges are asked to abide by because we're supposed to know, not just do they have skin in the game. not just is their spouse profiting somehow from placing somebody in a white shoe firm that will have business before the court. it's weather there's an appearance they have skin in the game. that's the standard. the standard is, does it look to us, in other words we're the material people here, not the justices. i think the category error they

continue to make is they feel nobody is paying for special access to us. we know they are. that was the whole supreme court historical society. people were paying hand over fist to the historical society to get accesses to the justices to lobby them. we know that law firms were willing to pay a premium for jane roberts. i'm sure she's an excellent recruiter but that was not the draw. the draw was access to the power circle in which she operates. so for the justices to kind of think, no, i'm not bothered by this, this doesn't affect my vote in a case, we saw some of that in the jane roberts story from yesterday in the times is not what's relevant. what's relevant is the appearance which is why you bring up the polling numbers. they could say we don't care about the reality of hiding things or moving things around or what people think. we care about the appearance

that we are not unbiassed that we are not above the law. it seems to me the acts they could take to correct for that are, as i said before, fairly trivial changes behave the way other federal judges are asked to behave and stop saying the clerks and employees in the court are held to a higher ethical standard in terms of their participation in political events than you yourselves are. >> brian, in my political life there is no institution that has morphed more than the supreme court. putting aside trump rewiring and corrupting and sort of taking down the republican party. but other than that, the supreme court went from being a motivating animating, aspirational voting issue for republicans for all my political career. it is now a political dead weight, costing republicans elections in places like kansas because of its extremism.

what is the other piece of this? what is the political opportunity for democrats and independents? >> well, you talk about -- you ask any pollster about trends and the dropoff in trust in institutions, there's a general drop off across the board over the last few decades. congress' approval ratings are in the tank. and the catholic church and police. two institutions that defied that trend are the u.s. military and the u.s. supreme court. and that's no longer true for the supreme court anymore over the last two to three years. the ground i think is shifting under the court's feet. it's not clear that the justices realize it. when you talk about scandals or controversies, political issues that emanate out of the other branchs of government, whether it's joe biden's classified documents or trump's classified documents issue from several

months ago or january 6th in the media we talk about drip drip drip every week it feels like there was a new story it's that way with the supreme court now. it used to be in june you would hear about the court when they made their decisions. but now you hear about the supreme court every week and it's continuing to keep those numbers down and they're still dealing with the antiquated public information officer putting out glorified no comment statements. "the new york times" this is an interesting development, for years they had one reporter that covered the supreme court decisions. two weeks ago they created a new beat at "the new york times" to cover the politics of the supreme court. because everybody from the times down is fascinated with how do we get to an institution that's handing out decisions so afield from where public opinion is,

it's going to drive more coverage of the trends going on behind the curtain and seeing more clerks speak out and be sources for the stories. i don't think the clerks understand what they're in for in the coming months. when we come back we'll turn to the chilling effect florida governor ron desantis is having on america's teachers as black history month gets under way. teachers are more fearful than ever that the history lessons they teach could get them in trouble. now the ap course that ron desantis criticized has been significantly revamped. we'll tell you about it next. sid we'll tell you about it next

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those smiles. that's why i do what i do. that and the paycheck. last august we covered on this program a small but we thought significant moment in education in this country. the college board announced then that it would finally teach the history of race in the united states of america with a brand new ap course on african american studies piloted in a select group of about 60 high schools around the country. news of that decision was received as a significant step in acknowledging and teaching african american studies. more than 50 years after the first black studies courses were taught at san francisco college in 1968. today as black history month begins the progress made on the course has been stopped in its tracks. the college board released the

curriculum for the course earlier today and what remains today is different from the one proposed last year. "the new york times," quote, the college board purged the names of many black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and feminism. it ushered out topics like black lives matter from the formal curriculum and added black conservatism. now offered as an idea for a research project. the narrowing and stripping down of the curriculum comes amid a wave of criticism of big name republicans, led by ron desantis, he seems obsessed and hell bent on launching a culture war over the issue, banning the teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation and limiting what schools can teach all ahead of a presumed run for the white house in 2024.

joining our coverage jason johnson, professor at morgan state university. also an msnbc contributor and guest of this program. and bazle michael is back a professor at hunter college. jason, you first what is this about from the college board's perspective. what it looks like is it is easily intimidated by a single republican bully. >> that's all it is, nicole. that's it. there's nothing more sophisticated to this. for context, for people to understand. the ap courses are electives. you don't have to take them in high school. they're something you can take if you want a.p. credit going to college and the program isn't to start until 2025 but because of

so much noise and screaming and threats from the state of florida and a high profile republican like ron desantis, the college board decided they were going to pull back and change curriculum that affects everybody in the country. it's not just a matter of changing things here and there. the fact of the matter is teachers can choose what curriculum they want that they think will help children about the exam it's the idea you're not going to teach students they need. st. louis teachers were told you can't talk about ferguson when it's happening. to create an a.p. course where you don't talk about black lives matter when all of these kids' lives have been affected by black lives matter but you can teach about black conservatism which we don't know what that is given what donald trump has done to the conservative movement. this is not black history month this is blank history month. they want to take everything out

that that has to do with black people to satisfy a bunch of bigots working for the governor of florida. >> i always try to back up, it used to take me one step, then two, now ten, to understand in their minds what are they doing? i can't get there on this one. ap a.p. course -- i don't think i was smart enough to take them, but i know you had to qualify before you could get them. what is is why here? why? >> well, let's just add to this conversation that there were over 500 bills enacted or proposed across the country to limit race theory teaching in schools. if you add that to the over 200 bills to restrict voting, you see the pattern here. you see the intentionally,

around robbing african americans not only of their ability to exercise their rights but honestly of understanding the history behind those rights. you know, like jason said before, i mean, the college board, this college board decision is so vexing because they produce standardized tests, the a.p. exam but also produce the s.a.t.s and in many ways they are the de facto pathway or gate keeper for higher education in this country. if they're making this decision at the decision at the beginning of black history month, bays after the american people have seen the video of tyre nichols in memphis, you have to think that that's incredibly disheartening for teachers on the ground to not even be able to include this in their curriculum. i trust the teachers to be able to do this and do this well. clearly the college board does

not. there is intentionality and a larger national thrust behind all of this. any school system that teaches botticelli, it's clear there are people in this country and courses in this country that don't want me learning about my own identity or being able to offer my own narrative. again, there is intentionality behind that. >> jason, i'm glad basil brought these two things together. i wanted to -- at a moment when i think what tyre nichols' family was asking us to do today was not wall off our humanity. charles admonished me about overdoing the universality. there's a universality about being terrified for your child. there's a specific terror if your child is a young black man.

the ability to feel that and understand that and want to be part of making sure that doesn't happen to anybody's son ever again seems like the only way out, right? we're down on our knees. it seems like at that moment, and i think polls suggest most people share that as a goal. at that moment the narrowing of what we teach seems like the absolute opposite of what we should be reaching for as a country. why? >> well, that's if everybody in the country wants that, nicolle. there are lots of people who are perfectly happy with black people being murdered on a regular basis. let's be honest. they're happy to see black people be killed, or i think the most charitable interpretation, black people being killed to them, to politicians like ron desantis, like cameron in kentucky. they don't care about not teaching people about that. they don't care about teaching the actual history of the

country. they don't care if students develop empathy for each other. nicolle, this isn't about protecting kids it's about protecting bigoted adults. it's ability them coming home and saying mom and dad, what did you do when x happened? mom and dad, i never learned that my town used to be a black town flooded out by the state government. mom and dad, do you treat may neighbors the way i read about in my book. they're worried about the next generation learning the story. a third grader figuring out the sneechs is an allegory for racism and parents didn't want the kid to understand a dr. seuss story. while you and i and most decent human beings on the planet want to recognize the universality, there are people who like america as the violent ab tore that it is for black bodies. they don't want to start it in

the classroom. >> basil, i'll give you the last word. >> i just add very quickly, some party, probably not the republicans, but if it's going to be the democrats, it better be the democrats and now, has to figure out a way to deal with this because they are going to inherit the next generation of black voters. and if you're going to screw around with their k-12 education and high school to college transition, if you're going to screw around with their ability to cast a vote, what are you doing in terms of the civic engagement and future of our country. both parties are going to lose if at least one doesn't address it right away. >> jason johnson and basil smikle, thank you. i appreciate you both. a quick break for us. we'll be right back. r us we'll be right back.

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