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tonight on "the reidout" -- >> much as you try to bury it, the truth is out there. greater than your lies, the truth wants to be known. you will know it. it will come to you. as it's come to me. >> as agent molder explained on the x-files, the truth is out there. space aliens are probably not responsible, probably, but after the downing of that chinese spy balloon, unidentified flying objects were shot down over the weekend by the u.s. military. so what were they? also tonight, new information on the georgia investigation into trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. portions of the grand jury report will soon become public as the fulton county d.a. considers criminal charges. plus, why officials in mississippi approve a bill to set up a separate white appointed court system for the people of jackson, which just happens to be 80% black.

it's tonight's dispatch from our state of disunion. but we begin tonight on this 13th day of black history month with a legend of john henry. some of you may know him more as a folk hero, a legend you can find in everything from cartoons to ballads, plays, and children's books. an incredible story of man versus machine. according to legend, he was enormous, this strapping railroad worker who raced a steam powered drill to build a railroad tunnel through a mountain. he beat the machine, and then he died notably of exhaustion. that's how i learned it in school. the heroic black man swinging his hammer on the railroad line, but he was actually a real person. that's the conclusion of historian scott reynolds nelson who wrote a book about him. during the late 19th century, henry did do dangerous work, blasting tunnels for the new chesapeake ohio railroad.

it was done by hand, using a hand drill and hammer. the part about him battling a machine was also quite real, just not in the way you think. reynolds discovered documentation of a nene-year-old black american man by that name in previously unexplored records of the university -- of the virginia penitentiary. which helps explain why henry was forced to do this work in the first place. railroad work was escalating after the end of the civil war. the southern landscape was devastated by the war, and 4 million african americans were now free. but the south, as well as the entire nation, had a big problem. finding a replacement for the huge free labor force called slavery. in short, lots of industries needed cheap labor for the tough jobs, the inhumane, dangerous work of physically building american industry. the 13th amendment may have freed black people from bondage, but it also provided a loophole.

slavery and involuntary servitude were banished except for those who had been convicted of committing a crime. enter convict labor. where imprisoned americans could literally be leased to industries who needed workers. the prison convict leasing system of involuntary servitude filled the labor supply shortage in the southern plantations and in growing businesses like the railroad monopolies who were connecting the nation east to west. it became a huge industry, which relied on incarcerating as many black people as possible to essentially reenslave them. you could get arrested for anything. vagrancy, speaking too loudly in front of white women, true story, or even for just being unemployed. among other work, prisoners were tasked with the deadly work of railroad construction. now, the historian i mentioned, scott reynolds nelson, says that john henry was one of those men. "the new york times" review of his book details how henry was

from new jersey, a union soldier. in 1866, he was arrested for allegedly stealing from a grocery store, and sentenced to ten years in prison. he was sent to the virginia state penitentiary, where the warden desperate to raise revenue, had begun leasing prisoners to the railroad for 25 cents a day. nelson also says that john henry did not die of exhaustion as folklore suggests, more likely he died of sill aicosis, a fatal lung disease that took the lives of many of the workers forced to inhale crystalline dust from the rocks as they cut tunnels through the mountains. like many figures in black history, john henry's story has been transformed over time into feel-good folklore rather than an emblem of black oppression and corporate greed. and the ways in which slavery by another name persisted long after the civil war.

for example, balsaid, books, and statues like this one in west virginia depict john henry as large and muscular, a paul bunyan type, but the real guy was described as a small man, perfectly sized for tunnel work. and the machine that he battled, the steam drill, took his life with chemicals, not by noble exhaustion. and did the same to many of the black laborers who were forced to hand drill holes deep into solid rock in order to set explosives to cut into the mountains. their inhalation of dust and chemicals, the exposure to disease, that gets left out. we don't learn about the chinese migrants who laid the tracks of the transcontinental railroad either. but we do know about the railroad tycoons who emerged in the gilded age. theodore roosevelt sought to end business monopolies like theirs, going after a railroad holding company that threatened to monopolize rail traffic across the western united states.

but then ronald reagan undid much of that and donald trump made it even worse. fast forward to today, where an environmental disaster is currently unfolding in the town of east palestine, ohio. on february 3rd, about 50 train cars including several carrying hazardous materials derailed and later burst into flames forcing almost half the town to evacuate. now fortunately, no one was killed, but to prevent an explosion, officials conducted a controlled release of toxic chemicals sending a massive dark cloud of toxic fumes billowing across the small town. the environmental protection agency said the main chemicals includal vinyl chloride and phosgene, a highly toxic gas used as a weapon in world were i. just days after the toxic plume engulfed the area, officials told the residents of east palestine it was safe to return. one week later, some are still

not convinced, and honestly, why should they be? residents have told reporters they're experiencing headaches and nausea, smelling a pungent odor described as nail polish remover and burning tires. some say their eyes are burning wrk people are finding dead fish in the waterways and a local afiltiate there, wlwt, is reporting low levels of dangerous chemicals detected in the ohio river downstream from this incident. the ntsb is still investigating the exact reason for the derailment, but they say it was likely caused by mechanical issues on one of the rail car axels. and while that investigation is taking place, there is renewed scrutiny on some of the deregulation that has left the industry vulnerable to these kinds of disasters, including the trump administration's reversal of an obama era rule that required braking system upgrades for high hazard trains hauling flammable liquids and a rule created in 2020 allowing

liquefied gas to be shipped by rail with no additional safety regulations. trains can run 100 or more tank cars filled with 30,000 gallons of these substances, per the trump administration. to put that in perspective, just 22 train tank cars filled with liquid gas hold as much energy as the hiroshima bomb. some experts are sounding the alarm, urging the biden administration to undo these policies before it's too late. the secretary for the railroad workers united puts it bluntly, telling the guardian, the ohio wreck is the tip of the iceberg and a red flag, saying if something is not done, then it's going to get worse and the next derailment could be cataclysmic. joining me is the executive environment of the national wildlife federation and a former senior adviser at the environmental protection agency. and nbc news correspondent ron

allen, who has been covering this major story unfolding in ohio. ron, i want to go to you first. good to see you. please describe for me what folks in palestine, ohio, are telling you they're experiencing, feeling, seeing in their town after this explosion? >> i think this is a significant amount of fear and uncertainty, joy. that's fueling some of these reports of people feeling ill effects because of smoke and the water, what they're tasting, what they're feeling. not to say they're hallucinating but i think there's a lot of concern about the long-term impacts of this massive fire and plume of smoke. to see this, it was extraordinarily dramatic. just a huge thing to happen in a small little town of some 5,000 people. they opened schools today, so that happened. we just spoke to the epa in ohio about all this. they continue to say that they believe that the water, the ground water, the drinking water in that community is safe and the federal epa is monitoring

the air. throughout the past week, every environmental briefing has said that they are not finding levels of anything dangerous that's a concern. of course, the residents are not sure. they want to see this situation play out for some time because again, if you look at the wreckage, it's such a stunning thing. remember, this happened at 9:00 on a friday night. people were just rousted from their homes, there was this huge loud explosion, and now a week later, they're back in their homes. the evacuation order was lifted. the governors of pennsylvania and ohio in the corner there in the border area, said things were safe, but a lot of residents just are not so sure. >> yeah. it sounds like what was said about flint. before i bring mustafa in, you rode around the town, you talked to people. did it strike you as an affluent town, a wealthy town? >> a very rural town. very rural town. and again, about 5,000 people.

a lot of farmland, too, which is another big concern. a lot of waterways and so forth. this is not urban by any stretch of the imagination. very small downtown. very small fire department, which apparently used all, everything they had to try to fight this fire, and a lot of their equipment now is not in use anymore so they're looking for more firefighting equipment in the meantime. it's taking a big toll, and there are now of course many class action lawsuits being filed by residents who among other things want medical monitoring and screening to happen. >> they should get it. mustafa, it doesn't surprise me this isn't an affluent town, it's a rural town. that's where the biggest risk lies. and this controlled, you know, explosion to try to prevent an even worse catastrophe, these are some of the chemicals that were released into the air between the actual derailment and what was done after. vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate,

ethylene glycol, ice obutylene. i don't know what any of that is, but i doesn't sound like anything i would want to breathe or want my kids to breathe. how do we end up in a situation like this in the year of our lord, 2023, a train derailment, a train filled with chemicals going through rural america, and it leaves this kind of devastation? >> well, you know, joy, we continue to create these sacrifice zones across our country. some folks don't realize we have 160,000 miles of track out there. we had 1700 derailments in the last five years. and if you look at where many of those train tracks run, they run in lower wealth white communities, run through farmland, run through black and brown communities. so we have to pay particular attention to the sets of needs that exist there. we have to make sure that we're also taking care of the infrastructure that has to be in place because these trains in many instances are carrying these toxic chemical bombs, if you will, when you have these

types of derailments and explosions in place. and most folks need to also understand those chemicals that you laid out for everyone, a number of those are cancer causing chemicals. so if you breathe the average person breathes 20,000 times a day and you happen to breathe in some of these chemicals then you are exposing yourself to the possibility and the risk of having cancer, liver or kidney disease or a number of other diseases part of this. it all goes back to us making sure we're protecting our most vulnerable communities and the waterways where some of though chemicals are going to go also actually lead to places like the ohio river which is one of the dirtiest rivers we already have. >> and you know, during the trump administration, they rolled back -- we don't know that brakes were an issue here, but they rolled back this obama era rule that required these monopolistic train organizations, they're still a monopoly, to put in brand-new pneumatic brakes. that was rolled back under trump. should the biden administration look at putting this back in? these trains carry toxic

chemicals. about 4.5 tons of toxic chemicals are shipped by rail every year and an average of 12,000 rail cars carrying hazardous material pass through cities and towns every day, according to the department of transportation. the pittsburgh region alone has seen eight train derailment over the last five years. should this -- should the rules be strengthened. again, i know there are lobbies, the railroad company lobbies spent a lot of money to get deregulated. it doesn't seem to work out for folks in the rural communities. >> we have to make sure we're enhancing the safety protocols necessarily to keep both the folks working on the train safe and all the communities as well. so the biden administration most definitely needs to tighten these things up. >> pete buttigieg, give us a call. we would love to have you talk about this and whether or not the administration is considering retightening the rules back to the obama era because this is terrifying. mustafa and ron allen, thank you both, my friends. >> up next on "the reidout,"

mounting demands for answers as north america grapples with a series of mysterious objects shot down over u.s. and canadian territory. "the reidout" continues after this. is when covid hit, we had some challenges. i heard about the payroll tax refund that allowed us to keep the people that have been here taking care of us. learn more at getrefunds.com.

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what is true, and i'm actually being serious here, is that there are -- there's footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are. >> after the events of the past few days people are asking the biden administration the same question. luckily, the truth is out there. and we need to know what it is. it's flying through our skies, according to the white house press secretary, no, mars is not on the verge of an attack, however. >> there is no, again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. >> she was forced to state that on the record after yet another unidentified flying object was

shot down over lake huron on sunday. it was the fourth object downed in eight days when pentagon officials believe has no peace time precedent. the pentagon has been on high alert since a spy balloon from china emerged in january. speculation on unidentified aerial phenomena was fueled when pentagon officials said the objects pose no security threat but added so little is known, that pentagon officials are not ruling anything out, not even ufos. these sightings have increased since the biden administration uncovered a vast chinese surveillance program. officials told "the washington post" that china' surveillance has collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest to china, including taiwan and the philippines. white house national security spokesperson john kirby walks reporters through some key facts regarding the three now objects

which the u.s. has been unable to access because of weather conditions. now, he emphasized there could be completely benign and explainable reasons for why these objects are flying up in the air, such as for research purposes from corporate entities or academic institutions. he also explained why we're hearing more about these objects. >> one of the reasons that we think we're seeing more is because we're looking for more. they have modified the filters and the gains as we call it of the radar capabilities to look more discreetly at high altitude small radar cross section and low speed objects. and so if you do that, and anybody that's operated a radar will know you can set the parameters. if you set the parameters in such a way to look for a certain something, it's more likely that you're going to find a certain something. >> joining me now is ben rhodes,

former deputy national security adviser and msnbc contributor. i'm going to tell you, when people hear unidentified flying object, all people think is roswell. it's not just the roswell, here it is, the weather balloon explanation for the roswell ufos in the 1940s. that was jesse, head intelligence officer who initially investigated and recovered some of the materials holding up this weather balloon. i think because we live in the opposite of that era, where no one trusts the government, not no one, but lots of people have deep mistrust of the government and when we're so disunited, when you have marjorie greene saying people are scared, upset, believing crazy things being said on the internet about the three things we shot down. really? people are believing crazy things said on the internet? you're saying that, ms. jewish space lasers. that's the environment. how do you think the administration has responded. >> that's one of the more self

aware things marjorie taylor greene has said. this is a difficult position they're in, but if we're honest, if we step back, i don't think in talking to people in the administration and looking at what they're putting out that there's any way these three things would have been shot down had there not been the original chinese spy balloon. i think john kirby's explanation makes common sense, which is after the hull abulieu over that balloon, they have to look more carefully for balloon surveillance. when you do that, you find there is a lot of stuff in a vast swath of air space and they have moved from some tolerance for that to a zero tolerance of balloons that we're not familiar with up there, and they're shooting the stuff down. they do need to provide some explanations as soon as they can about what exactly they shot down, provide that information to congress and the american people. that's going to take time, it's going to take them time to recover this stuff in water, in difficult weather, in the cold of winter. >> yeah, some of the stuff is out over alaska and places where

you have to physically get there. it's not like you can go there and get it. but let me let you listen to some republicans. including mitch mcconnell who joe biden has made a big show of trying to friend him up, but this is how he's treating all of this. this is mitch mcconnell. >> the administration has still not been able to divulge any meaningful information about what was shot down, what in the world is going on? >> we're not hearing anything. which just shows you that the administration really doesn't have any idea what they're doing here. >> this is a time to hear from the president. if he doesn't know something, we're still trying to figure something out, then tell us. >> i mean, isn't president biden damned if he does and damned if he doesn't? in a way, are they victims of sort of like the overdisclosure because these spy programs have been operating for quite a long time, apparently. they operated during the trump administration, but it's biden that is disclosing, look, there

are these programs, we're discloeging it, and they're getting punished because of the politics. >> that's right, damned if he doesn't when it took him a couple days to shoot down the chinese spy balloon until it was safely over our land. now he's clearly decided to take a more aggressive posture. the fair criticism or at least the fair request of the administration is, what is the criteria under which you're going to now shoot down balloons? the reality is there's thousands of balloons up there, and even many more drones and things of that nature that are engaged in scientific research, weather balloons, corporate mapping, all this kind of stuff. presumably, most people that have something in the air have to file some kind of flight plan, so the stuff they're finding that doesn't match anything on their records, it doesn't are a flight plan, maybe that's what they're taking out. i think what they do owe is an explanation about when are we going to shoot something out of the air. and better to have all that information together in one place. i have been in government, when

you're moving into a new protocol, you have to get everybody around the table and say, what are the protocols under which we're going to decide to shoot something down, and then how do we explain that? i bet you that they're putting that together right now. and it's better to have all that information together rather than going piecemeal. it might be a little uncomfortable for a few days but i think they owe it to people to say, here is our protocol going forward. >> some of the stuff is not shaped like balloons. i think that's what scares people. two fears, one is that they shoot something down and then it causes some sort of international incident that could be dangerous, some russian thing or something from, you know, a hostile power that's even -- that doesn't have an economic deep relationship with us like china. and then the other thing that it really is some out there and then the question is, how many of trump supporters on the other side side with the aliens. i'm just kidding but your thoughts on the threats to shooting something down that gets us in some conflict. >> the reality is if it's over our air space and it's only

active in our air space, it's illegal. it's a criminal act for somebody to send something into our air space. even hostile powers kind of know it's fair game if we catch them in our air space. we can take that down. if it's the aliens, joy, we got bigger issues. whether we want to make first contact in that way, but you know what, i think we'll forget how this all started if it turns out this is coming from a distance unirrs. >> if they have observed how we roll here, they're not going to come here to help. they're going to be like, this needs to be gotten rid of. these people are nuts. let's get rid of these creatures, they're bad. ben, thank you very much. i think marjorie would side with them. just saying. >> still ahead, counting down to the release of at least portions of the report from the election grand jury investigation in georgia. that's next. at's next. ♪ today my friend you did it, you did it, you did it... ♪ good news! a new clinical study showed that centrum silver supports cognitive health in older adults.

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donald trump continues to spread false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. and to this day, he remains free from any prosecution for his interference in that election. more than two years later, there remains a lingering question of whether he will ever face charges in the federal or state cases against him. today, a georgia judge ruled that the public may soon get at least a hint of an answer to that question in the fulton county investigation of trump's actions. the judge ordered that three

sections of the special grand jury report be made public, including the introduction, the conclusion, and section eight, in which jurors expressed concern some witnesses may have lied under oath. in his ruling the judge noted that the report includes a roster of who should or should not be indicted and for what. but those parts remain sealed for now, at least until fulton county district attorney fani willis makes any charging decisions. willis told the judge last month those decisions were quite imminent. joining me now is glenn kirschner, former federal prosecutor and msnbc lyle analyst and charles blow, "new york times" columnist and msnbc political analyst. glenn, i want to start with you. imminent potential charges. a judge saying disclosing these three buckets of information was of great, compelling public interest. fulton county district attorney fani willis replied saying she believes his order is sound with her request, no plans to appeal.

what is the significance of releasing this info in your view? >> you know, judge bernie had to balance some competing interests. there's a searing public interest in what's going on in the georgia state criminal investigation regarding donald trump's election crimes. but the judge had to balance the release of that information against the impact it might have on fani willis' ongoing investigation. and when you read this eight-page ruling from the judge, i think he struck a sensible balance here. and i have to tell you, i was most excited when i read about how section eight, which will be disclosed, has information about how the grand jurors believe some of the witnesses that fani willis had to compel to testify, we don't know who, but we know guys like rudy giuliani, mike flynn, and lindsey graham desperately tried to avoid testifying about donald trump's georgia state election crimes, they ran to court and every

court ordered them to testify, and now the jurors said, you know what, some of the witnesses lied to us. the reason that's so important from this old prosecutor's perspective is now fani willis might have leverage over witnesses who lied in the grand jury. because potentially, they have exposed themselves to perjury, to obstruction of justice, and to accessory after the fact. so i always warned my witnesses before i put them before the grand jury, if you lie, i will be your worst nightmare. because i'll ask the jury to consider voting out criminal charges against you for those lies. so this could actually end up being a benefit to fani willis' investigation. >> yeah, it's very unusual to lie in front of a grand jury. like, people know that's a crime. and so it is interesting, charles blow, that i have sat on a grand jury before. the witnesses are very -- it's made very clear as glenn said, it's a felony. you cannot lie in front of this

grand jury. they're sworn in. so what do you make of the fact, i'm going to put up the list, these are some of the people, mark meadows is among them, john eastman, lindsey graham, brad raffensperger, brian kemp, giuliani, i can't imagine brian kemp being willing to lie for donald trump, but what do you make of the notion that people, some lawyers, who might be willing to lie for donald trump? and risk going to prison. >> it doesn't -- it doesn't surprise me as much as it may be surprising you. the question becomes whether or not they were lying to cover up something that they thought might be more incriminating for either him or someone else. that they may have been rolling the dice. and hoping against hope that they would not get caught in doing so. you know, this whole thing is incredibly fraught for everyone involved because it appears that crimes not only were committed

but that the special grand jury is going to suggest that some people be charged with those crimes. and that is really, really significant. and i think that the fact that fani willis basically said she agreed with the judge's take today and that she was not going to appeal the judge's decision means that her charging decision will likely line up with what the grand jury is suggesting. the big political danger for her was the prospect of having charging decisions that did not line up and then having to explain that politically. for instance, if the grand jury having not subpoenaed as best we know, donald trump, having not sat him down in that chair or at least requested to have him sit in the chair, what if they hypothetically suggest you charge other people and not him? and then fani willis based on her own investigation says no, i actually think he should be

charged as well. it would be a political problem or issue that you would have to explain to the public. fought a legal issue, but a political problem of how do you charge more than the grand jury requested you do. i think the fact she's not complaining suggests that she's probably going to charge as the grand jury has suggested. >> interesting. speaking of trump, let me play this. this is not him. this is his attorney, his name is timothy parlatori. there's so much trump has done at this point, it's heart to keep track, but this is on him taking classified documents. this is the lawyer's explanation of why a classified folder was found newly at mar-a-lago. >> it was in the president's bedroom. he has one of those land line telephones next to his bed. and it has a blue light on it. and it keeps him up at night. so he took the manila folder and put it over it so it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night. and it's just this folder, it

says classified evening summary on it. it is not a classification marking. it's not anything that is controlled in any way. there's nothing illegal about it, nothing in it. >> glenn, i'm not a lawyer or a former prosecutor like you, but that's the dumbest thing i might have ever heard. they found 48 more empty folders that contained classified documents at trump's house. last month, he said he had so many of those folder because he thought they were cool. they were a cool keepsake. how are any of these people not in jail? make it make sense to me, please. >> the only reason they're not convicted of federal felonies is because no one has deigned to indict them and put a prosecutor in the well of the court arguing the overwhelming evidence that donald trump has committed any number of federal felonies. he's not going to end up being charged with having manila voeld

folders that said classified evening briefing. i never read good night moon, good night classified documents. he will not be charged with those things. he will be charged with the classified documents, top secret, and sci documents that they had to wrestle away from him after he violated a grand jury subpoena. so this is his lawyer spouting out nonsense that is only persuading the gullible. it will never persuade a jury. >> or he'll be charged with nothing and the people around him will be charged with stuff. thank you both very much. >> up next, super bowl was no stranger to controversy, so what did conservatives find to freak out now this year? i'll give you three guesses. back in a second.

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the whole downstairs the whole fridge and the whole secret nap room because is it really a vacation home if you have to share a house with a host? ♪ only with vrbo last night's super bowl was in many ways a black history month celebration. a celebration of black excellence, with two black starting quarterbacks, philadelphia's jalen hurts and the game's winner, patrick mahomes of kansas city, facing off in an historic first for the big game. before kickoff, sheryl lee ralph performed lift every voice and sing, the black national anthem. unsurprisingly, right wingers had a complete meltdown over the inclusion of a rallying cry for liberty for black americans. lauren boebert pre-emptively

complained about what national anthem while marjorie taylor greene whined about the wokism of it all. in a league where nearly 70% of the players are black, actually, the ishould be singing that song, but anywhom. meanwhile at a time when women's bodily ought omany is under siege, reani used her platform to break the internent and announce her second pregancy. it was also an occasion for the nfl to pat itself on the back to do the bare minimum when it comes to promoting diversity and inclusion. prominently featuring calls to end racism even as kansas city fans brought a litany of racist iconography. and then of course, there were the ads which in my humble opinion were really not that great this year. but two from a group called he gets us really stood out. telling viewers to be childlike, and urging us to look past our

differences with a tagline, jesus loved the people we hate. but what those ads didn't tell you is who was behind the he gets us campaign. it's part of a $100 million campaign to help promote christianity and build the brand of jesus, according to its backers, because his brand has never been built before. most of its donors are anonymous, but david greene, founder of hobby lobby, the craft store with a history of funding right wing religious causes, is a donor. as leaver news points out, he gets us is a subsidiary of the servants foundation, a kansas nonprofit, adding that between 2018 and 2020, the servant foundation donated more than $50 million to the alliance defending freedom, a group that has led fights against abortion and nondiscrimination laws and is designated as an antilgbtq hate group. they drafted the mississippi law at the heart of the supreme court's overturning of roe v.

wade, and they're currently behind a texas lawsuit seeking to reverse the fda's approval of the abortion pill, and to ban the drug nationwide. it's not as apolitical as he gets us claims, and i think it is fair to say jesus christ wouldn't spend millions of dollars on television ads promoting his image. who knows. next year if his brand is sufficiently promoted maybe he can find a way to improve the officiating. just saying. >> up next, mississippi lawmakers approve a new court system in white elected officials will elect prosecutors in one of the blackest cities in america. that's right after this short break. type 2 diabetes? discover the ozempic® tri-zone. in my ozempic® tri-zone, i lowered my a1c, cv risk, and lost some weight. in studies, the majority of people reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as stroke, heart attack, or death in adults

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black history month. and starting tonight, going forward on this show, we want to introduce you to some of the states of our disunion, states where americans are struggling to exercise their right to vote, to make their way out of poverty, and to live free of government control, of their wounds. we will cover the states facing the hardest struggle for democracy, the ones banning books, and woman's right to choose, and passing draconian anti-trans laws. but we will also show you some of the states that are winning, where our democracy is working. but tonight, we want to start with a state that unfortunately is still stuck in its white supremacist past. mississippi, where a white

supermajority in heavily gerrymandered state house voted to create an entirely separate court system, and expanded police force within the city of jackson, the blackest city in america, that would be appointed completely by white state officials. that means that the voters of jackson, which is 80% black, do not get to elected judges or prosecutors in the separate district, unlike what happens in any other part of the state. white officials currently hold all of the state wipe positions, and they do the appointing. and no black official has ever held any of these positions. in fact, the last time a black mississippi held statewide office was during reconstruction. and the state, despite being one third african american, is gerrymandered to have exactly one black congressman, representative and general sixth committee chairman bennie thompson. meanwhile, the republican who introduced the republican bill, draconian bill says because it's there's a lot of court cases in the country that contains jackson. what i mentioned, the state capital, jackson's mayor has called the plan colonialist and

races. and he said it reminds him of apartheid. joining me now is the mayor of jackson, chokwe antar lumumba. and mayor lumumba, please, explain how it can be possible that the capital of mississippi, jackson, mississippi is i think to your point going to be governed apartheid style? >> well, i think to speak to it honestly, i am reflecting on the words of denis quickly who once said they are who we thought they were. as we've been calling out these clearly racist policies, that has been done much in the state leadership think we're giving mississippi a black eye. and to be clear, it's not our words that give mississippi a black eye, it is the actions that they're taking, actions that will not allow or disenfranchise voters in jackson, mississippi. this particular law is fraught with constitutional violations,

unequal protection, and it is sticking to create a district in which the most densely white population, populated area and the city of jackson, in addition to a police force, a more militarized force that does not have a direct accountability to the residents within the district that already exists, there have been numerous claims about issues of police misconduct that are not being challenged, that are not being followed up on. and so, there's a multitude of concerns here. >> it sounds like 1980 ad pretoria. i mean, 1890, mississippian acted a racist constitution to strip african americans of any rights and the right to vote because of the really, you know, historic and heavy voting by former enslaved people to elect statewide officials, lieutenant governors, really making incredible strides. how could it be that more than 100 years after the civil war,

mississippi still is governed this way, when it has the highest black population in the entire country, percentage wise? >> well, thank you for recounting that history, joy, because along with that history was a narrative that said that it was in the slave not in the black peoples and was not to be burdened with that heavy weight of having to select electoral leadership, much in the same way as they have created this district that they set to a the representative who created this legislation or introduced this legislation, suggesting the reason he thought that these judges should be appointed rather than elected his because he wanted, quote, the best of the best, which is to suggest that jackson residents are not intelligent enough, or aware of their needs enough in order to elect those individuals for themselves. and so, this has been the battle that we've been in for sometime. it is because they are allowed to bring trojan horses, such as the capitol complex district,

which was initially introduced in 2017, as a suggested aide to infrastructure. at that time, myself, along with the coalition of people that called ourselves, the coalition of economic justice, opposed it, because we saw what it was. but you did have some legislators that looked like us who are in support. but i do want to be clear that when they were presented with that, it was not what we see today. they were presented with an opportunity to assist a community that is in much need of infrastructure support. and so, we -- [inaudible] >> it appears now that the mississippi white legislator is trying to take over those funds, take them out of your hands and other elected local jackson's officials hands. this, at four, is threatening to sue the people who pointed out that he was in possession of funds to build his daughter a volleyball complex that belonged to the impoverished

people in the state of mississippi. he essentially -- a mode of taking from the poor. and now, he's suing for his reputation back. it feels like everything is upside down in jackson, and in mississippi. >> it feels that way because that's the truth. and at a time where the state is littered with questions of integrity, where there is incompetence there, they charge communities like jackson, who have been devoid of resources, of being the ones that are incompetent. there has been a willful indifference, or a intentional neglect around the things that jackson needs. and this is part of a larger effort. >> and my guess, they're busy trying to pass laws, trying to outlaw history, because he wouldn't want people to learn how we got here. jackson, mississippi mayor chokwe antar lumumba, thank you very much. that is tonight's reidout. all in with chris hayes starts now. s hayes st♪ ♪ ♪ >>arts now.