righteous book banners. >> yeah, and there's an election on the horizon. i think there's a notion that certain people can get energized motivated by this. and they're going to play to that segment. and rile them up. and it's up to us to mobilize the rest, the majority. this is about parents rights indeed. it's not the rights of those 11 parents, it's the rights of the millions of parents who access, kids access is at stake. >> suzanne nossel, and lindsay durtschi, thank you both, appreciate it. that is all in on this tuesday night. alex wagner tonight starts right now. good evening, alex. t starts right now. good evening, alex facebook seem to pull well it like so many other things desantis is overseeing in the state of florida, it is a mystery to me how he does not think this is an absolute kryptonite. >> i found "the washington post"

filing with 11 people and i was like that scans in a nation with 30 million people. i think the rest of the folks are like i don't need to go through every book in my kid's library. >> please make me less involved. >> enough e-mails. >> that's for another show. thank you, chris, as always. and thanks to you at home for joining us this evening. today for only the second time in american history a former president appeared in court as a criminal defendant. now, the first time was last month when donald trump was arraigned on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the manhattan district attorney's case against him. and now today mr. trump appeared in that courtroom again virtually by videoconference from mar-a-lago. the reason for this hearing was that the judge in this case needed to explain to former president trump why he is not allowed to post any of the evidence from this case on social media. which seems like it was probably quite necessary because donald

trump has a real tendency to post about his various legal entanglements. this weekend, for example, the former president went on a truth social tirade. the radical left democrats will step up their fake investigations on me because they can -- they now see they can't win at the ballot box. trump hating special prosecutor jack smith whose family and friends are big time haters, also will be working overtime on this treasonous quest. mr. trump tends to do that kind of frenzied posting when he knows the stakes are getting higher. and this week there is a ton of new reporting suggesting that when it comes to special counsel jack smith the stakes are, indeed, about to get a lot higher. for starters we've got a whole new host of reporting about how the special prosecutor is now in possession of detailed notes taken by trump's former lawyer, evan corcoran, notes that

describe exactly what was happening down at mar-a-lago while trump was refusing to turn over classified documents to the fbi. they are very detailed these notes taken by mr. evan corcoran, and they tell us a lot about one key figure in donald trump's orbit. this man, his name is walt nauta, and he's trump's long time aide. ever since it was discovered trump told nauta to move boxes of classified information out of a storage room both before and after the fbi issued its subpoena for those classified documents. at this point walt nauta is no longer cooperating with doj prosecutors. he apparently gave them some conflicting narratives in separate interviews about what went down as it pertained to the

moving of those documents. after they threatened to charge him with a crime he ceased communication with the special counsel's team. but trump's lawyer, evan corcoran, the one who took all those notes, he is cooperating. he has to. he's been ordered to by a federal judge. and the detailed journals handed over to special counsel jack smith, those journals tell a story. this is from the guardian about what happened after the doj first subpoenaed all those missing classified documents. quote, the notes describe how mr. trump told nauta about the subpoena because corcoran neated him to go through the storage boxes. but going through around 60 boxes in the storage room took longer than expected and the search ended up lasting several days. again, evan corcoran's notes,

they also suggested to prosecutors there were times the storage room might have been left unattended while the search for the classified documents was ongoing such as when mr. corcoran needed to take a break and walk out to the pool area nearby. okay, so consider all of this information for a minute. trump's lawyer &s trump's body man to unlock the storage room. hey, walt, do you have the key to this room. hey, evan, do you need any help? and corcoran says, no thank you, walt, and can you also please stay outside? trump's lawyer then leaves the storage room unlocked and walks away, and this is where the record of what happened gets a little fuzzy. the special counsel has subpoenaed security footage from mar-a-lago from around the time of the search, but there are reportedly gaps in that security footage. now, prosecutors have been

asking witnesses questions about those gaps, and we know from previous reporting that mr. walt nauta is at the center of those questions about the security footage gaps. he's at the center of those questions, too. after the fbi requested the security footage from mar-a-lago, mr. nauta reportedly reach out to trump's head of security, texting the security guys to, hey, call him. why did walt nauta need to talk to trump's security team on what was on those tapes? and does it have anything to do with why there are gaps on that security footage? that is one of the many things we still do not know, but the special counsel investigators they just might because they have talked to almost anybody involved in this whole thing. they have talked to maids and staff at mar-a-lago. they have talked to high level officials. they have obtained the cooperation of an insider witness. and they have subpoenaed a ton

of documents. in just the past 24 hours "the new york times" and "the washington post" both report the special counsel had subpoenaed records from trump's businesses going back as far as 2017 as part of that same mar-a-lago investigation. and now the special counsel's investigators appear to be ready to reach a conclusion. "the wall street journal" reports today that jack smith is wrapping up the mar-a-lago investigation. which means we could -- we could know any day now whether the former president of the united states will face yet another criminal indictment. joining us now is devlin barrett, reporter covering the fbi and doj for "the washington post." also with us is joyce vance, former u.s. attorney and co-host of the sisters-in-law podcast. devlin, let me first start with you and your reporting and the

reporting out there. does the time line surprise you that the special counsel may in fact be wrapping up? >> so i think wrapping up is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. it is certainly true there are a lot of indicators showing they have done let's call it a majority of the investigative work here, but i feel like we also have to caution folks. prosecutors have a habit of doing what bob mueller used to call playing with their food, and i don't think you should assume just because a lot of the grand jury work has been done that the prosecutors themselves are ready to move to the next step. we see to be honest in a lot of federal investigations, we see time and time again how the decision making process can actually get bogged down, and that's a big question right now i think in terms of this special counsel. >> i like that metaphor disturbing though it be to some. joyce, do you think the other special counsel probes looking into documents pertained to for example president biden's office

that might factor into the time line in terms of potential charging decisions in the special counsel's probe of mar-a-lago? >> i suppose it's possible, alex, someone made a decision it would be easier, it would help the public understand if they're announced together. he's looking at his evidence and i think devlin is very accurate when he says prosecutors like to play with their food. we definitely do. and after you're done playing with it in the grand jury, then the appellate lawyers want to come along and take a look at the food you've got on your plate and figure out if it's enough to pass some of the legal bench marks they're looking for. for instance, do you have enough evidence to both maintain and sustain a conviction? so sometimes we see a little bit more legal work going on in the background. i think it's relatively rare for prosecutors to consider these

extraneous factors like other investigations that may be under way. >> setting aside the timeline, which, of course, is a mystery to everybody except jack smith, probably. devlin, the strength of the case here and what we're learning about the fact evan corcoran was a copious note taker down to it reporting in the guardian says in addition to his exchange with trump corcoran described trump's facial reactions whenever they discussed the subpoena. it was said to irritate trump who only learned about them after the notes themselves were subpoenaed. this sounds like what sounds like a treasure-trove of information especially since mr. nauta isn't cooperating. i wonder how and what your questions would be for evan corcoran if you had access to these notes. what sort of passages here would be of most interest to you? >> so i think corcoran's account is important not so much as a

direct or intended witness against the former president, but i think corcoran's notes are very important for one basic question that has hovered over this case the entire time, which is did the former president himself, not anyone around him, but the former president himself. did the former president himself lie to people around him about what he had even after the subpoena was issued? that is really the crux of this case. and were those lies knowing laer or unknowingly conveyed to the government? that is the whole core of this case. so i don't think evan corcoran is a willing and even necessarily particularly fulsome witness for the government, but i think those notes and the broader picture of what corcoran says he was told is important to understand the president's own words and actions. >> yeah, i would say, joyce, i wonder how you read this. the am very fact that trump's lawyer, who, by the way, is still working for trump, the

fact that he's taking these notes in the first place suggests to me and other people that this is someone who maybe knew the kind of client he was dealing with, right? it doesn't seem like common practice for a lawyer to be jotting down notes about what his client's facial expression was when they talked about the subpoena. that seems out of the ordinary at least to me. does it to you? >> it really does. it's much more the stock and trade of a prosecutor, which evan corcoran once was in the district of columbia. it's what year doing when you're interviewing a witness and trying to find out if they're credible and what kind of information they might have. it reminds me very much at the point in the mueller investigation where trump is -- we're told in the report that trump learned his white house counsel don megan took copious notes and trump said he never had a lawyer that took notes and

that was alarming. that suggests to me the former president is not someone who likes to have people taking a written record of his conduct, and the fact that corcoran had it here is important. it does suggest he had a certain healthy amount of concern about himself. but, alex, what's so remarkable here is that we've seen instance after instance where some of the best witnesses against the former president are his own lawyers. it is such an uncommon occurrence to see the attorney-client privilege pierced by the crime fraud exception, but i think it's just the kind of dinner table talk in america. we're all conservient with this notion when a client uses a lawyer it dint have to be conspiracy, it can literally be the client asking the lawyer for advice they can then use to admit a crime that the relationship no longer blocks that evidence from scrutiny by prosecutors, and that's what's happened here. >> right, and to that point to elaborate on what you said earlier, devlin, this can show

what andrew wiseman referred to as a mens rea. the piercing of the attorney client privilege the fact that trump may have obfuscated or down right outright lied to evan corcoran, and presumably there are other lawyers in the mix who told trump this is what you need to do, this is why you need to return these documents, this is how the declassification process works. i mean there's probably not just one lawyer here that can attest to trump's state of mind as it concerned the document -- giving the documents back to the doj. >> right, and that gets to a really important factual point in this case particularly with evan corcoran. evan corcoran is brought into this late after other lawyers have talked to trump about this. so evan corcoran in a way comes into this cold and has to get lot of information from the former president. that puts evan corcoran sort of at the mercy of trump's version

of events when he's brought in late, and i think that's part of the reason why his notes are so important and part of the reason why what evan corcoran is told may be significantly different than the facts because he is new to the issue. >> yeah, i -- there's another piece of this that i think is important if not specifically legally but for the narrative, which is why did trump want to hold onto these documents? and devlin, you had a piece i found seminal, it's like bookmarked on my browser about trump's sort of motivation for all of this, which sounds like it was vanity, and yet you have some new reporting and "the seattle times" has some reporting about the doj subpoena financial records from the trump organization specifically as it pertained to business deals that he made since 2017. can you talk a little bit about those business deals and how they may dove tail with -- or how they do dove tail with the mar-a-lago investigation sph. >> right, so the subpoena that went out in april asked for

information on essentially two types of things. one, what foreign nation business deals did the trump organization make from 2017 on? trump and his aides have long said they made no such deals while he was the president, but they did make such a deal in oman after he stopped being the president. so what various folks have said to me, look, if you're going to look at this topic, it's fine. but to a lot of people who have dealt with this, it seems to be more of a box checking exercise to make sure they aren't missing anything. is there some lurking financial motive to these things, and that's i think an understandable thing for prosecutors to look at, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's a smoking gun there or even a gun at all. >> i got to ask you, joyce, there is the legal sort of narrative -- the narrative as it pertains to legal exposure and then there is the narrative in terms of how guilty this makes

trump in the court of public opinion. the motivation part i think a lot of americans are asking why -- why do all of this, the information that we have so far suggests it may not have been more than ego, and i wonder if you think that matters in terms of this broader investigation, that it might not have been to do a deal with some foreign government or, you know, sell classified documents for personal financial gain. >> so motive is rarely an element in a criminal case. often it's enough to prove, alex, what andrew called mens reas, state of mind, and then action, the action reas of the crimes. and those two things and perhaps additional circumstances -- here when we talk about classified material it's the fact these are documents that pertain to national interests, and so that's enough to convict in a courtroom. and prosecutors are very skilled at explaining to a jury the absence of evidence of a motive and why they don't have to prove

it. although juries are human and they love to know about motive. sometimes that can help to bring a case home. when we get into the court of public opinion we have this notion there are some things that are just awful. they may not be unlawful, but they are awful, and they are the sorts of conduct that should bar someone from holding office. five years ago i might have thought that committing a sexual assault would be one of those. apparently that's not the case anymore. and something that we'll look for very carefully as this investigation begins to wind down is whether some of the conduct even if it doesn't end up being charged is the kind of conduct that will convince them, that will sway public opinion and say here is someone so cavalier about handling the nation's secrets that he's simply unsuited for office. >> five years ago i didn't think a lot of things were okay that is apparently okay right now. it's a brave new world. thank you both for your time this evening. i really appreciate it.

when we come back on the eve of his long expected presidential campaign announcement, florida governor ron desantis is working on his likability issue. but how he is expected to make his presidential campaign announcement may not help him all that much. that's next. that's next.

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♪♪ >> now is the time for all good americans to come to the aid of their country. vote for eisenhower. that campaign ad was the first of its kind in 1952 not just for the jingle but the 1952 presidential race was the first to make use of television as a campaign platform. world war ii had ended several years earlier and dwight eisenhower, a famous wartime general, he was on the ballot. there's no question about eisenhower's likability. a 1952 gallop poll determined general eisenhower was the most admired man in the u.s. that year. so his campaign created a little jingle reminder everyone they liked ike. since then likability has been

omnipresent and also elusive. barack obama was considered likable which led to this. >> he's very likable, i agree with that. i don't think i'm that bad. >> you're likable enough. >> thank you. >> and today there's one person in particular whose ability to be likable enough is really sort of in question, florida governor ron desantis. in 2018 during debate prep for his first run for governor desantis had to be reminded to be likable. >> i think when you walk up there if you have a pad you have to write in all caps at the top of the pad, likable. i do the same thing because i have the same personality. >> ever since then the republican governor has been trying to get people to like him, to find him likable. and while he has not yet announced his white house bid, mr. desantis has already made a few preemptive visits to early

campaign states in a sort of choreographed attempt at being likable. according to "the new york times" desantis and his team had internal conversations acknowledging the need for him to engage in the basics of political courtship, small talk, handshaking, eye contact. and it certainly seems like the governor is trying. here he is laughing or something while meeting with supporters in iowa a few weeks ago. that -- whatever that is, does that make him seem likable or human for that matter? this is, after all, the individual who reportedly used his fingers to eat chocolate pudding, who failed to learn the name of his own staffers, who asked the leader of the florida republican party to fire a recent cancer survivor just a week after that person returned from surgery. whether or not voters can look past the pudding fingers and the terrifying laughter, the thing that has made people question whether governor desantis is

truly likable is what he's done to his own state. last month governor desantis rounded up asylum seekers and sent them to martha's vineyard. last year he signed don't say gay into law which in addition to marginalizing lgbtq people setoff a massive feud with his state's largest employer, disney. there's stop woke, the governor's assault on history lessons about race in k-12 classrooms paired with his state's takeover of the university system. all of that and more prompted the naaacp this week to issue a travel advisory warning the state of florida has become openly hostile towards african americans, people of color, and lgbtq plus individuals. according to the naacp president derek johnson, black lives are not valued in the state of florida. and now governor desantis wants to make america florida.

literally that is a chapter in his book. and so he is expected to announce a run for the white house tomorrow with help from elon musk. his likability is in the eye of the beholder. that is probably being generous. three sources tell nbc news that the announcement will happen tomorrow night in a conversation on twitter, which ssk is the company musk purchased last fall for $44 billion, and since that time musk has retweeted conspiracy theories and replatformed self-described neo-nazis and created a public square for bigotry. along with a surge in hate speech on twitter since musk took over, the country has also observed a spike in white nationalist activity and violence. and this week some of that activity might have made its way to washington. that's next. way to washington. that's next.

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hurt anyone who stood in his way. park police say after the vehicle stopped the driver got out and took this flag out of his back fack, a flag emblazoned with a swastika. he said he bought it because, quote, nazis have a great history. he told investigators he admired the nazi's authoritarian nature, eugenics and their one world order. he said he looked up to hitler because he was a strong leader. now, we still do not know what that man intended to do with that nazi flag, but, boy, are we seeing a lot more nazi stuff around the country these days. earlier this year ohio education officials uncovered nazi approved home lesson plans created and shared online by white supremacist. in march we saw swats caws by neo-nazis storming a drag queen story event at a park in ohio.

and earlier this minute we saw a swastika and other tattoos on the body of the man who killed eight people. thanks for being here tonight, and i'll just get right to it. i mean i think there are a lot of people who are familiar with the -- with the sort of phrases of white supremacy that we have heard in greater degree over the course of the last several years, but nazism seems like another level up in terms of distressing, disturbing developments in american culture. do you -- has this been building for a while, or do you see this as a precipitous increase in the sort of waving of the nazi flag, the emblazoning of the swastika on body parts and elsewhere? is this -- is this a gradual increase, or has this been building for some time?

or is this all of a sudden that we're seeing all of this? >> i think it's all of those things. so, first of all, neo-nazi symbolism and the swastika, the sort of regalia of the nazi regime has been very popular in the militant right since at least the late 1970s, early 1980s, which is when neo-nazi klansmen, and a number of previously disparate groups joined together. from the 1980s forward that movement used symbols alongside things like the klan robe and hood, burning crosses and other familiar white supremacist trappings all for the same purpose, which was to recruit and rad cualize and wage a war on the federal government. this culminated in that period in the oklahoma city bombing in

1995 and has reappeared in our current moment in all the ways we've become very familiar with beginning perhaps with the ayoonite the right rally in 2017 and on through to january 6th. it's all the same movement. what is different in this current moment is how emboldened these activists are not only to enter our politics, to enter the public sphere but to do so bearing the symbols of hatred that had for a long time been anathema to everything we think of as part of america and its democratic system of governance. >> when you talk about, you know, how they are emboldened i wonder if you think the sort of normalization of white nationalism especially on the part of republicans, whether that has done its share of making nazis feel like there is a place for them. and i'm thinking of people like senator tommy tupperville who was asked about whites and

whether they should be involved in the military, and he said, well, they call them that as in white nationalists, i call them americans. is that the kind of stuff normalizing, main streaming white supremacy by a sitting u.s. senator that further emboldens nazis to come out and play? >> yes, absolutely. and another example in the last few weeks is the revelation paul gosar employs on his staff, someone who has allegedly contributed to nick fuentes and other white power activists and posted on white power websites. all of this is made somewhat more complicated because this is a opportunistic moment constantly seeking ways to expand and invent itself. we've just come through the story of the allen, texas shooting with the shooter of the latino gunman, andee see to have

in this white house event a south indian person who's identified with parts of this movement and the neo-nazi flag. the sort of expanding access to these symbols is one of the things that's different in this present movement, but, again history gives us some parablees to work with here. for instance, the inclusion skin hut activists in the 1980s, which also was for the people in the white power movement then a very, very different kind of cultural presentation but was deemed necessary because of what they saw as a state of emergency that required everyone to sort of mobilize and use whatever army they could find. at bottom the people in this movement are much less concerned about distinctions between the klan and neo-nazi, between neo-nazi and say other groups and much more concerned about the looming common enemy, which is the federal government, people of color, and the idea

that the white race or the white culture or the white nation might be extinguishedch. >> yeah, and i think that's a really important point to make because defenders of white nationalism have said the fact that a person of color was allegedly or is allegedly the suspect in all of this sort of makes it -- it's impossible that it can be white nationalism if there's a person of color behind the act. and what you're saying that is patently untrue, that people of color can also be white nationalists, because it's an embrace of the broader agenda of white supremacy and white nationalism. and oz confounding as that may be, that apparently is something that seems to be happening right now in america. >> yes. and it's mobilizing in a number of different complex ways. one is that within the latino community there are a lot of definitions at work about what is whiteness. our idea of whiteness in the united states is not the only

one. and in many countries in central and south america there is a different sort of schema based on population of formerly enslaved people on an indian population and on a spanish population, and that's the racial hierarchy. this case of a south indian person being involved is interesting because there is also a quite old strain in this movement of thinking about areanness which in the u.s. has to do with having white skin but in south america has significance. part of what we're seeing is this track coming home to roost and the fundamental opportunism the people driving the recruitment, driving the violent action are much less concerned with what i suspect they might see as temporary alliances than

they are with sort of the long-range strategic game plan, which will be either, you know, the historical record which points us towards mass casualty attacks, opportunistic attacks on communities of color, infrastructure attacks, or this new open road into our political system, which points us towards things like intimidation of election officials and attempts to jeopardize voting returns. both of these are threats, and both of these require our full attention. >> absolutely. thank you as always for your wisdom and expertise on this topic. sincerely appreciate it. >> thank you for having me, alex. still more to come tonight. texas lawmakers are increasingly trying to end the division between church and state, and there is a bill on tap tonight that could put religion in every public classroom in the state. that is next. ate. that is next an angry rhino you've never heard an angry rhino baby i hear one every night... every night.

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this is a brand new children's book. quote, if there is danger and it is safe to get away, we should run like rabbit instead of stay. if danger is near, do not fear. hide like pooh does until police appear. if we can't get away, we have to fight with all our might. parents in the dallas independent school district in texas found out this week their kids, kids as young as pre-k

were sent home with this book. it is called "stay safe," and it uses characters from winny the pooh to teach run, hide, fight which is the guidance in the event of an active shooter. it teaches that to young children. we talked today the publisher of this book today and he told us he was thinking of the school shooting in uvalde, texas, last year that killed 19 fourth grade students and two teachers. the book's publisher said he just wanted to a make a resource for parents not knowing how to have this conversation with children that young. and he told us he is, quote, heartbroken that we as a society have a need for something like this. now, we are showing you this book today because tonight at midnight it's incredibly significant in the state of texas. first off, tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the uvalde shooting. on top of that tonight at midnight is the deadline for any new legislation of any kind to pass the texas legislature until

its next session. and if you did not know, the texas legislature only meet every two years. the legislature can technically meet more than that if the governor calls for a special legislative session, but with the conservative greg abbott in the governor's mansion that means after midnight tonight only republican priorities are going to see the light of day. other than that, if bills are not passed by midnight tonight, then nothing will happen in the texas state legislature until it meet again in january of 2025. i'm not misspeaking here. there will be no new legislation into the year 2025. and in the year since the uvalde shooting the big thing uvalde parents pushed for was to raise the minimum age for buying semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21. but the republican controlled legislature wouldn't even do that. so in a state where schools are

now turning to winnie the pooh to teach 4-year-olds how to survive mass shootings with just hours left to pass anything for the next year and a half and hours until the anniversary of the deadliest school shooting in the past decade, what are republicans in the state of texas focused on? well, yesterday the texas house passed a bill banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on college campuses and another bill regulating drag shows. today they passed one bill that gets rid of the county elections administrator in just one single county, harris county, which is the largest most diverse county in all of texas. and they passed another bill that gives the texas secretary of state the ability to take over elections administration in any county where a complaint is file. so that's basically any county republicans want. earlier this month they passed a bill that would allow schools to

employ chaplains who are religious figures to essentially serve as school counselors. and in these final hours we are watching to see if they will pass a bill requiring the ten commandments to be posted in every classroom in the state including public school classrooms. those last two measures are among a handful of bills that have passed at least one chamber of the texas legislature and that are alarming people who believe that the church and state should remain separate here in america as they have been for much of the 20th century. one texas state senator who sponsored several of those bills told "the washington post," quote, there is absolutely no separation of god and government, and that's what these bills are about. that has been confused. it is not real. with just hours left for the texas state legislature to pass anything, former public schoolteacher and current democratic texas state rep james

is going to join me live next here. stay tuned. to join me live nex here stay tuned daily for non-drowsy, long lasting relief in a scent-free, gentle mist. (psst psst) flonase. all good.

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and i say this to you as a fellow christian, representative, i know you're a devout christian and so am i. this bill to me is not only unconstitutional, it's not only un-american, i think it is also deeply unchristian. >> that was texas state representative james talirico earlier this month as the committee was taking up a bill that would require public school clasm ares to display the ten commandments. his arguments did not win over the majority of his republican led committee, and the bill was

later voted out of that committee and into the full statehouse. and that is where it sits tonight. it is on the agenda for a full vote, but even if does not pass or it does not happen in time the bill will effectively die. even then it's just an estimated 1,600 bills in statehouses across the country that attempt to dismantle the separation between church and state. joining me now is representative talirico. thank you very much for stepping away from house business for our behalf. just if you could for people who have not been following this issue in your state, what are republicans trying to do to public education in the state of texas? >> well, first, thank you for having me, alex. and thank you for shining a national spotlight on what texas republicans are trying to do to our public school students. they're trying to indoctrinate

and impose their vision of christianity and it should be offensive to all of us, those of us who love the constitution, those of us who love democracy and particularly those of us who are christians. you know, i'm the grandson of a baptist preacher from south texas. i attended the same church where i was baptized when i was 4 years old, and i find these bills deeply offensive to my faith, so i think it's incumbent upon christians to speak out that these bills are exclusionary, they are iodoltrust and they're diameticly opposed to the teachings of jesus christ. >> and this is coming on the eve of the uvalde school shooting anniversary which is tomorrow. a lot of parents would like to see legislative action on schools when it comes to gun reformch but instead republicans are focused on the separation of church and state. i think to anybody alive in the 20th century it is shocking that that is not only being talked

about but being acted on. can you talk a bit more about that opinion that this is a christian nation that needs to return to its christian roots and how that's been embraced by the right as their sort of new reason de'etre. >> we're called as believers to see christ in all things. that means we're called today see christ in kids of all color, voters in harris county trying to access their god given rights at the ballot box, and we're called to see christ in those 19 babies and those two teachers who were massacred in a classroom at robb elementary in uvalde, texas. the fact we have not lifted a finger to prevent a tragedy like that from happening again should be offensive to everyone

watching across the state of tex. we desperately need people in public office who will fight for the students of this state and who will truly live out the values of their faith. >> do you have any sense whether the ten commandments bill is going to pass tonight? >> i stepped off the floor to chat with you and your viewers, and my colleagues as we speak are fighting tooth and nail on the texas house to prevent that bill to go up for a vote. i'm going to join them as soon as i hop off this call and i hope we can prevent them frut getting that bill on the house floor as soon as tonight. >> we really appreciate you taking the time tonight. good luck out there. that is our show for tonight. see you again tomorrow. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. 97 days the president didn't

want to me