investigation, talks it may be wrapping up. at least the mar-a-lago documents part. >> it's expecting that the case is going to wrap up soon, now this is the case where even donald trump's former attorney general said, bill barr said that donald trump is the most exposed, very interesting to see how this wraps up in the next few weeks here. >> ty cobb who used to represent former president donald trump he said he wouldn't be surprised if trump has jail time in connection to this. we should note that, though, classified documents were found at the residence of vice president biden and pence, they returned those documents. trump did not. national political correspondent for axios. alex thompson. thanks to all of you getting up "way too early" with us.

speaker told reporters that they're not close to a deal at this point. are you concerned about timing at this point in. >> look, i think everybody needs to relax. regardless of what may be said about the talks on a day-to-day basis, the president and the speaker will reach an agreement, it will be passed on a bipartisan vote in both the house and the gnat. live look at capitol hill, it's 6:00 a.m. on the east coast. and that was senate minority leader mitch mcconnell trying to calm fears about a u.s. default. we'll have the latest in the negotiations over the deceiling. plus, florida governor desantis chooses an unusual platform for launching his presidential campaign. we'll get into that, that has definitely never been done before and another southern state passes an extreme abortion

bill despite bipartisan efforts to block it. we'll also have new reporting on the status of the mar-a-lago classified documents investigation, which some legal experts feel is the strongest legal case against donald trump. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." . it's wednesday, may 24th. you've got willie and me. owe is off. you have jonathan lemire. elise jordan. katty kay and charlie sykes is with us this morning. you have to wonder, you had tim scott yesterday, wrouf got ron desantis announcing he's jumping in. a strange twitter connection there. the mindset of donald trump with

the documents case appearing to be heating up and we'll have more on that later. and obviously the georgia case, fani willis, there's strong indications, real information, possibly even an indictment in august if you look at the tea leaves and now maybe even a criminal trial for a former u.s. president, his mindset has got to be in a place of extreme stress or -- i mean, at this point, he calls it a witch-hunt, but things are really closing in on the former president. >> we saw exactly what you're talking about yesterday. the former president of the united states angry,up set, frustrated. a date has been set for the first-ever criminal trial of an american president. during a hearing in new york city yesterday the judge presiding over donald trump's criminal case decided on march 25th, 2024, yes, right in middle of republican primary season.

the former president will go on trial for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. trump who attended yesterday's hearing remotely appeared to react angrily when the date was announced. trump began to wave his hand and shake his head. later in the day, trump made his thoughts clear with a post on social media. he slammed a protective order laid out by a judge that restricts trump from publicly sharing evidence that his team gets during the discovery phase. charlie sykes, as mika says, this is just one in long line of cases likely to come on donald

trump during a presidential campaign not because it's political or prosecutors are trying to plop it in the middle of campaign because he committed potential crimes, maybe charged with some other crimes as mika said, in georgia and jack smith. this is going to play out in the campaign. >> this is extraordinary and it's unprecedented. i think you also saw some other trump at any rates yesterday with his complete lack of impulse control the judge had to lecture him about what he could and could not do with the evidence that's going to be shared with him and what does donald trump do, he immediately puts out a statement attacking the judge. this comes as he's re-defaming e. jean carroll. his former attorney michael cohen was right, it seems almost

inevitable that trump is going to violate these court orders. the possibility of the former president being found in contempt of court. even as the campaign heats up. it was really an extraordinary day yesterday and a reminder of how completely abnormal this political campaign already has become. >> completely abnormal and willie, i was trying the make the list, it's so long, it's easy to forget e. jean carroll has decided to sue him again. he's got cases he might consider annoying and expensive because he's got to pay for attorneys, but they are serious because he was already found liable of defamation. he's appealing that. she's suing again. some of these cases are going to take a tremendous amount of his emotional energy and some of them have the potential of jail time. real potential of jail time. >> yeah, and his former attorney

ty cobb a couple of days ago said as much, in this documents case, there's good case donald trump goes to jail. it's hard to keep track of these. the one has a date now, march 25th, 2024, that's stormy daniels hush money trial. he could say all he wants that this is a witch-hunt. he's going to have to deal with this while ron desantis is coming at him. >> so far it seems to only have been to his benefit. i'm kind of sitting here thinking about it, taking it in, you can't believe this guy has so many swirling legal problems and he's still is heads and tails above everyone else in the republican primary and seemingly only getting stronger for it. and i don't see short of, you

know, literal jail time how that's going to necessarily change in the near future if republicans are so scared to attack him that shows how strong he is, no one -- can you imagine having a political opponent with these problems and yet you're still petrified to go at them in. >> yes. maybe that will change. i was speaking to a senior white house official after this date came out, they concede this isn't going to hurt him in the republican primary. this will be damaging in 2024. in the general election as you're trying to persuade those swing voters, independent voters who decide elections, mika, little to no chance they would break for him now. you add a criminal indictment,

footage of him coming in and out of courtrooms, we've never been here before. >> this is new territory for sure. and there could be more than one indictment. it's very possible. now the wall street journal reports special counsel jack smith's investigation into former president donald trump's mishandling of classified documents at his mar-a-lago resort is close to wrapping up, people this the former president's circles familiar with the matter say some of trump's associates are bracing for his indictment. and anticipate being able to fund-raise off a prosecution. in recent weeks the journal reports prosecutors working for smith have completed interviews with nearly every employee at trump's florida home. the special counsel team has conducted a flurry of grand jury interviews that appear to tie up loose ends.

the paper couldn't decide whether smith has decided to charge trump. a spokesperson for smith declined to comment. so many questions. joining us now is the author of that new report, senior reporter for the wall street journal. aruna, great to have you on the show. first of all, everybody at mar-a-lago has been interviewed. are they still working there? that's personal curiosity, because president has that vow of loyalty because he thinks that he can put on people. secondly, what are the indications here that this is winding down to either charges or closing up? >> right, thanks for having me. so what we know is over the past few months, jack smith's team

has been very aggressive in trying to talk to almost everybody who works there, from his maids to his senior aides and calling them back multiple times to ask them more questions. and as far as we know most of them still do work there and work for him. over the recent weeks the questions have gotten even more pointed and very much jack smith's team trying to see if they can accomplish the elements they need to establish and there was a flurry of activity over the past few weeks where they rushed to get everybody in and get all of the evidence that they could and those requests have pretty much stopped at this point and they seem to be saying, okay, thanks, we have what we need right now and so that tees up for us this idea there's an end to this

investigation coming very soon. >> what's the process now? would jack smith announce charges himself? would he refer this to the attorney general in. >> right, it's still pretty -- we're unprecedented territory as other people have pointed out, but the way a special counsel normally works, makes a recommendation to attorney general, the attorney general accepts it or decides it's not warranted he can overturn it and report he's overturning it to congress. in terms of announcement, if he decided to bring charges we would see the grand jury returning an indictment and that would get unsealed. >> aruna, good morning. as you're reporting out this story, what's the level of concern from the trump team?

this is pretty real stuff, the former white house lawyer believes when all is said and done a good chance he believes donald trump will go to jail. how worried is donald trump's team in. >> i mean to be clear, some of his attorneys do firmly believe that there's no case here and they don't believe a case is going to be forthcoming but others are pretty much resigned to there being a potential case. you know the reactions are somewhat mixed. with the manhattan d.a. case he got a political boost from that and he was able to fund-raise after that and they see a pretty similar dynamic playing out here.

so, it seems like they're bracing for it but not necessarily super concerned. >> the wall street journal's aruna -- thank you for coming on the show this morning. jonathan there are the political angles of biden and pence having documents but we all know that this is really extremely different and from different reporting we're seeing clear signs that potentially the president also obstructed ys. >> that's where this investigation is going to be about. biden and pence also found to have documents, the difference is they gave them right back. and the trump camp did not. whether they're worried about this, trump posted to truth social last night a letter that his lawyers sent to merrick garland requesting a meeting about this. about special counsel's investigation.

here's the key, this is in some ways standard procedure, it's sort of the last step before charges, when the lawyers for the defendant go talk to prosecutor and ask them not to pursue charges or to pursue milder charges, a clue that a charging decision is imminent. the trump camp expects they'll hear sooner rather than later about this. >> a lot is happening in the legal round of donald trump. the 2024 white house race could see a dramatic shift tonight as florida governor desantis officially declares his candidacy. three sources familiar with the plans tell nbc news desantis will announce his presidential bid, tonight, during a discussion with twitter ceo elon musk. the two are set to host an event at 6:00 eastern time on twitter.

they have a platform for audio chats. after the announcement desantis' campaign is expected to release a launch video and florida's first lady casey desantis appears to have already put out a preview. take a look. >> in the face of darkness you can see that brighter future. a faith that our best days lay ahead of us. but is it worth the fight? do i have the courage? is it worth the sacrifice? america has been worth it. every single time. >> charlie sykes, your thoughts on the preview? >> well, let's talk about launching a candidacy with elon musk. this is not a parody when you

think about the fact that the governor of florida is launching a bid for the president of the united states bowing to a tech oligarch, decompensating an erratic narcissistic-like elon musk. it's going to generate a huge amount of buzz. we're talking about it now. it will throw a certain amount of chaos into maga world and it's going to be interesting to see how donald trump responds. it makes unlikely he'll return to twitter at this point. what an extraordinary choice for ron desantis to basically go all-in on elon musk at a time when he's been displaying all of his brain worms that working from home is -- but ron desantis

clearly thought that he needed a big shift, a big pivot, something dramatic, and so within maga world it's going to be interesting because it wasn't that long ago that much of maga world was looking to elon musk as their savior. we'll see a food fight for the ages. >> as charlie said it will get attention. for a man in governor desantis accused of playing small ball and fighting twitter fights while he wants to be president of the united states, maybe sort of leaning into that a little bit or emphasizing that for his critic. >> reporter: i find it very baffling the choice also -- it seems to make no sense, first of all, why do you share a big moment with a huge powerful billionaire who's more famous and more name i.d. than you do,

second you're on this platform that's diminishing in its popularity and its reach. maybe political journalists talk about it. but twitter is a diminishing force these days. you've seen how elon everything he touches, he does well when he's engineering his tesla but with twitter, he doesn't mind casually tossing multiple billion dollars, you've given so much power for your big moment. >> elon musk has become a hero to conservative they felt like their voices were silenced at least on twitter. maybe a shot across the bow of donald trump. what do you make of the platform

and the way ron desantis is finally rolling out the campaign in. >> a sign where musk's political ideologies lie. he's siding himself with one of the heavyweights in the republican party. it's interesting it shows his influence. i'm going to go the other way from charlie sykes, tonight at 5:59 p.m. is probably donald trump's first tweet back. katty kay, it's an unusual way to announce a campaign and it's certainly not going to silence those whisperers that ron desantis lack political skills, retail skills, he's not doing this with a rally, he's doing it in a safe space, he's got some real obstacles to overcome here.

>> another unusual thing, that's british voice. >> i've listened that's the third time i've listened to it. the top of it sounds very much like a british accent is sort of weird for an american presidential campaign launch. i think it's -- it does get him around the issue of having to interact with people which obviously the trump campaign is already pointing out if he's on twitter he doesn't have to talk to normal people. there's still a chance there are campaigns that stumble out of the gate and he'll get better on the stump. he still has significant amount of money in the bank although fund-raisers are looking at more wearily now. he needs to correct all of the problems that he's had up until now, the disney, he'll have to

develop a better way of interacting with voters and stoking something in them that doesn't sound awkward and uncomfortable because that's kind of how he sounds when he's with people now. maybe once mike pence gets in that changes the equation, let's see. it's still ron desantis' opportunity to take on trump and ron desantis' alone at the moment. that can change. i know it's early and late, it's still relatively early. >> yeah, it's early. and it's often interesting to see what happens when they get on the big stage if things adjust. charlie, i'm trying to be as on yektive as possible here, he'll

appear by the way on fox news, not completely snubbing them i think tonight at some point of course that's where he'll be and i don't know, i don't understand this announcement with elon musk. is it audio-only and you don't see his face, what is the strategy, what's the strategy in terms of appealing to who on twitter? >> there are so many questions about all of this. we've seen ron desantis lack of interpersonal skills on display and now you're seeing perhaps his lack of political judgment doing this. i mean the point about being in elon musk shadow is a really good point. he's also going to be on with a mega donor, an a notorious

anti-ukraine activist. the other point to be made here the risk/reward, he thinks there's going to be reward by siding up to the basically online right. but when you align yourself with elon musk there's tremendous risks, you know i've used the word "erratic" several times. he was tweeting out praise out for tim scott, elon musk can change his mind on a dime a week from now, ron desantis i gave him a shot and he totally fizzled out, he can cut ron desantis off at the knees 48 hours from now. this is the calculation that desantis has made. he's gone on this site that most people don't understand, i'm going to have to spend a little bit of time figuring out how to get to twitter space, i think

you're seeing his lack of political skills and his lack of political judgment and whiff of desperation here, you know how do i reset this campaign and change the narrative? but, boy, would you think there somebody in the room saying, governor, elon musk, really? could we do a little bit of background here, can i tell you how this might play out other than just triggering donald trump. there's a lot of down sides. >> yep, i don't disagree. charlie sykes, thank you very much still ahead, today marks one year since the mass shooting at an elementary school in uvalde, texas, we'll discuss theon going fight for tougher gun laws with the state senator who represents the area. plus, another gop-led state sends a controversial abortion bill to the governor's desk. we'll go over the impact of that and other similar legislation as

we head into 2024. also, ahead, congressman jamie raskin and elissa slotkin will both join us over the debt ceiling. we'll be right back. right back.

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states. hundreds of local and state police officers waited outside the school for more than an hour before breaching the classroom and finally killing the gunman. the shooter legally bout both of the rifles with him. joining us now is roland gutierrez who represents uvalde. thank you for being with us this morning. what is the feeling now on this terrible anniversary? >> well, i think the families are just devastated. i mean, you don't heal from this, you don't get over this. every one of those families has been devastated, devastated by legislature in texas that has done absolutely nothing.

the biggest insult there we did absolutely zero pieces of legislation that would have a monumental change or legislation that those families were seeking and that was legislation to raise the age limit, universal background checks. >> senator, we have that same feeling as we had tragically after sandy hook, certainly this will change everything. i was reading again last night some of the stories and this sweet 11-year-old girl who played dead and smeared her friend's blood on her own body so the shooter wouldn't come back for her. she had to think through that and experience that. so is there any movement, any hope for any movement in the

state of texas? there was some in the state of connecticut, i understand it's a completely different place than texas, after sandy hook they did get some things done, any hope that there might be something else that could prevent the next uvalde. >> sadly, no, the governor the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the house didn't move any bills forward, one bill in the house got through the committee process, two republicans voted for it to raise the age limit. they passed two bills that were about straw purchases and background checks for juveniles, but those were already federal law. indeed these families have been injured day in and day out in texas by the republicans in power that have created this chaos and even just today, not to deviate from this story you have a guy who wants to run for president making his announcement on the day of the

worst shooting in the last ten years in the united states. i think that's pretty tone-deaf and pretty disrespectful to these families. >> lot of scrutiny to law enforcement's response to that shooting and the discipline handed out there to some in uvalde, do you feel more confident that god forbid something like this happened again that the response would be better? >> no accountability and no real transparency, the department of public safety who had the most officers on scene, 91 officers, they claimed they fired one guy who was allowed to retire very recently they supposedly fired a dps ranger, mr. kendall is still on according to washington post, he's still employed because he

hasn't had his exit interview. that after a mental rw -- memo was leaked that the department of public safety said that no one would be fired from this incident. extreme failure, zero transparency. refusing to hear the truth about what happened. >> you've been as passionate and strong voiced on all of these issues, the families appreciate that. roland gutierrez, we'll continue this conversation with you sir. thank you for being with us. >> thank you so much. elise, so many mass shootings in this last year, you have to stop and read the stories again and remember what happened, you can't turn your head and move on from something like a bunch of fourth graders being shot in their school.

>> the fact that we've become almost numb to it. it happens nearly every week in same way, shape or form. it's just shocking that we're that stagnant as a society. it's not about shotgun, we're talking about weapons of mass killing and the laws haven't caught up with what's on the market right now and every day that this continues is unbelievable. and every day that parents have to worry that their child is going to get mown down at school it's just shocking. >> yeah, we'll go live to uvalde coming up on the show. also coming up, where things stand on the debt ceiling negotiations with just over a week until the default deadline. we'll get a live report for the white house. and national co-chair for president biden's 2024 campaign,

senator chris coons will weigh in. plus the brooklyn bridge marks 140 years of traffic today. acclaimed filmmaker ken burns joins us with his tribute to the new york city icon. that's next on "morning joe." you were always so dedicated... ♪ we worked hard to build up the shop, save for college and our retirement. but we got there, thanks to our advisor and vanguard. now i see who all that hard work was for... it was always for you. seeing you carry on our legacy— i'm so proud. at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner. setting up the future for the ones you love. that's the value of ownership.

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♪♪ ♪ like the folks you'll meet on the brooklyn bridge ♪ ♪ what a lovely view from heaven looks at you from the brooklyn bridge ♪ it was 140 years ago today the brooklyn bridge opened for traffic for the very first first

time. joining us now emmy award-winning filmmaker ken burns. good morning. >> good morning. >> ken, that was your first, 1981. >> i was trying to raise money for pbs. going to all these places where you're trying to get 1500 bucks. i looked like 12 years old. they said no, this kid is trying to sell me the brooklyn bridge. without a question it's the great engineering feat of the 19th century, and it's also, i think this is why michael and i are still so excited about it's a work of art. here it's a functional thing.

it goads us to do something that would last and be beautiful. michael and i have made a short little film about this that the times has posted today which is a discussion of the bridge 140 years out and i'm going to dinner tonight to celebrate and 40 years ago i was the only nonroblings there to watch the fireworks under the spectacular bridge. >> it's -- we're watching some of film here. michael, it has held up architecturally over those 140 years. this is just zblafk the most enduring icon in new york city and i think that's partly because of what ken said it remains a source of inspiration. an aspirational thing, we see

it, and say, how did they do this? it's a great work of art. >> jon is our resident brooklynite. >> the view from the other side of that bridge. but as you sat down, michael, it's also symbolic of an age we can do big things. >> as ken points out in the film he made that was a moment when we did the trans-oceanic cable, the suez canal, the light bulb and the telephone, all in span that the brooklyn bridge was built. mostly the desire of the bridge to be something that spoke to new yor as the great emerging

city. 100 years to build four lousy subway stations. you know, every project like this would get killed by opposition, both public opposition and a lot of government, you know, grid lock. >> i'd ask ken, why were we able to do it then? >> that's one of the points, first of all, let's remember what a bridge does to us, a log over your stream, anything that connects is good. there's this bedroom community, you know, south and east of manhattan called brooklyn and they're sending workers there, they need a bridge that the civil war has promoted the use of this new metal called steel, robli in g, has proved himself as the great architect of

bridges, one out of every four bridges is falling down in america. the network of cables that we love so much, the steel radiating that's so beautiful. he proposes it. he's killed in first few months of construction by an accident and his young son who's been this the union army takes over, of course in the sinking of the towers they have to do it underwater and under the seabed and they get the bends, so people are dying and the chief engineer is stricken. and his wife emily takes over and becomes his eyes and ears and exactly 140 years today the first passenger across the brooklyn bridge in a carriage holding a rooster, a symbol of

victory was emily robling because she was recognized as a person. then you think the function to get people from brooklyn to manhattan back again was achieved. they also achieved this extraordinary work of art. i mean it's one of the great works of art as well as engineering of the 19th century. i get the privilege when i'm in this city to walk over it at least once a day and that network of cables can wake you up and just make you realize the glory of our possibilities and maybe if enough people realize it we can begin to demand that we can do these things because we can still do these things. >> also, what he did was thei news of it was it was an engineering feat. you have to imagine that the city was three, four, five-story

buildings and this was a mountain built over, people walked across it, there were birds flying underneath it. no one had ever been in that kind of situation. he builds these gothic towers and there's something like the gothic ccathedrals, what this like, people watch this miracle being built, for all the costs overruns and the scandals and the deaths when it opened it was the biggest celebration that new york ever had. it was emergence of new york as the modern city. >> the pedestrian walkway, the view from the walkway still -- >> it's above the traffic and elevated so it creates kind of public square, when you go through the doors of the gothic towers, you then enter into this place and it's now filled with

people every day. all the time. and there are people on vacations, people are getting married, not a morning that i don't go by there's someone out with a photographer with a bride and a groom, it's a place you want to be memorialized. this is our grand canyon. this is man made. >> i think one of the really beautiful small things, they put the pedestrian passengerway right at the center of the bridge, so the pedestrian, the human walking across this mountain is the center of the story. and there's small thing which is the wood planks still when you walk across it you have this tactile, a beautiful feeling to walking across it.

it's very touching. >> it is. beautiful as ever. 140 years. >> happy birthday. >> happy birthday, brooklyn bridge. hear more about the legacy of the brooklyn bridge, see more at visitpbs.com. thank you both. i'm glad pbs took it up at 12 years old to make this movie. >> relaxed child labor laws. >> guys, thanks so much. >> thank you. still ahead, a look at the stories making headlines in papers across the country. we're coming right back on "morning joe." when migraine strikes, you're faced with a choice.

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a few minutes before the top of the hour. yet another state has approved a restrictive abortion ban in the wake of the supreme court's overturning of roe v. wade. the south carolina legislature approved a bill that would ban nearly all abortions around six weeks of pregnancy. the state's republican governor has promised to sign it immediately. the bill restores an abortion ban that took effect after the supreme court's decision, but was struck down by the state's supreme court for violating south carolina's right to privacy. opponents of the new law have already said that they will sue to stop it. the decision was protested heavily, both by demonstrators outside of the senate and by lawmakers inside. a bipartisan group of female senators dubbed the sister senators filibustered to try to stop the vote.

they had been successful in stopping previous abortion legislation, but could not stop a vote this time. scouts, carolina, had become a destination for women in the south looking to have the procedure as neighboring states enacted bans. look at this. look at these states. katty kay, you know, i'm wondering what you think the impact of this will be. i see two-fold, specifically. we've already seen some studies that show that young women are choosing where they go to college as it pertains where these bans are not in effect, because they don't want to go to place are they can't get health care. and secondly, i can't imagine being a woman in this state trying to have a pregnancy, being fearful that there may be fetal abnormalities or some sort of problem and being left to bleed out in a parking lot, which has happened already. >> yeah, we talk a lot about the politics of this heading up into the next election, but we should never forget what this means for

individual women. 25 states in the u.s. now have moved to restrict abortions since the overturning of roe last june. and 14 of those states have basically banned abortions at six weeks. you don't know whether you're pregnant. many women don't know whether they're pregnant in the time frame that south carolina is giving them. south carolina had actually been a place where women could go in the south. many of the states that have banned or restricted abortions have been in the south, and they need to go to other states. south carolina had been something of a safe haven. so for a woman in florida, for example, we've spoken to women who have had pregnancies that went wrong, who have had fetal abnormalities. who risked something like sepsis. they have to go somewhere else to get an abortion. they were going to south carolina. now they can't do that anymore. it's going to put a lot of pressure on the state of virginia and abortion providers in virginia. virginia now remains really one of the last states in the south that will give women abortions. it puts an awful lot of pressure

on women that for whatever reason need to have a dnc process, whether they need a termination for medical reasons, whether they have chosen to have a termination for their own mental health or life reasons, and those reasons are complicated. and it's going to put particular pressure on poorer women who find it hard to pay the money for the child care or for the travel to go and have those abortions. >> katty kay, thank you very much. obviously, we'll be following this especially as the presidential elections heat up. and coming up, a date has been set for the first-ever criminal trial of a u.s. president. donald trump will be in a courtroom during the campaign. "morning joe" is coming right back. campaign. "morning joe" is coming right back i'm your overly competitive brother. check. psych! and i'm about to steal this game from you just like i stole kelly carter in high school. you got no game dude, that's a foul! and now you're ready to settle the score. game over. and if you don't have the right home insurance coverage,

well, you could end up paying for all this yourself. so get allstate, and be better protected from mayhem, yeah, like me. thanks, bro. take a lap, rookie. real mature.

we could still fix this by june 1st, in a timeline. 97 days, the president wants to meet. so we're trying to convince everything in a short time

frame. the house passed a bill, the senate never passed one. so now it's more difficult. what else do you have to negotiate. from a lot of different perspectives, but we could still finish in time. >> speaker kevin mccarthy giving his side of the debt ceiling negotiations which are stalled over republican demands to cut spending. we will have more on what is expected to happen today in the talks in just a moment. democratic congressman jamie raskin of maryland is standing by to weigh in on the debt ceiling and much more. he'll join us in just a moment. and welcome back to "morning joe." it is wednesday, may 24th. it's only wednesday, willie. are you going to be okay? >> we're getting there. we're getting there. hump day. on the other side of the hill. >> you know what i'm always worried about? >> what's that? >> jonathan lemire with his 25 hours a week of television. i never know if he'll make it to friday. >> he does volume sales. >> it's incredible. >> thank you, though. i appreciate that. thanks, guys. >> willie, you're tried and true. you've got that sunday show,

you've got the stamina, but lemire, you know, he's just a kid. >> he's holding up pretty well. i've got to say. he looks fresh. >> it's credit to the makeup room. >> it is. >> all right. >> he's got a great surgeon. >> also with us, elise jordan still with us. and joining the conversation, we have the host of nbc's "inside with jen psaki," jen psaki. she's former white house press secretary, great to have you jen. and former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst, steve rattner joins us. all right, willie, you've got our top story. there's a big announcement happening today. >> coming up in just a few hours, as a matter of fact, the republican field of presidential candidates will grow by one today, as florida governor ron desantis is set to announce his candidacy tonight. he will do so in a conversation streamed on twitter, with the social media company ceo elon musk. nbc news correspondent dasha burns has the latest.

>> an expected major shake up in the republican race for president, with florida governor ron desantis ready to jump in. >> stay tuned. stay tuned. >> and now, nbc news learning exclusive details about that announcement, which will feature a surprise guest. desantis, set to reveal his presidential run in a discussion with billionaire twitter ceo, elon musk, wednesday night, that will be live streamed on twitter spaces, the site's platform for audit chats, according to three sources familiar with the plans. musk first tweeted his support for desantis last year, and a source familiar with conversations between murveg and the governor's team tells nbc news that musk does not think republican front-runner former president trump can win, and believes desantis is the future. >> my preference, and i think the preference of most americans is really to have someone fairly normal in office. >> musk saying he won't be making any endorsements wednesday. >> i'm not at this time planning to endorse any particular

candidate. but i am interested in, you know, sort of a public town square. >> the florida governor will instantly become mr. trump's top rifle. >> ron desanctis. anyone heard of that. >> the feud has been escalating. >> we can never allow warp speed to trump informed consent in this country ever again. >> reporter: now the sunshine state ground zero in a growing republican divide. those backing trump -- >> i would pick trump. >> trump has already proven what he can do. >> and desantis. >> desantis versus trump? who would you pick? >> if it was just those two. i would pick desantis. >> desantis all the way. >> why? >> well, i want a winner. >> nbc's dasha burns reporting for us there. so jen psaki, about 6:00 tonight, twitter spaces, if you

go on your phone and if you have twitter on it and click in the middle, these are what amount to podcasts, kind of live podcasts. it's aid only, obviously, an unconventional launch. as you look at it, if you can take away your -- i suspect you're not voting for ron desantis or supporting him in this race. >> breaking news right here, willie. >> but what is the -- can you kind of get to a strategy here? the thinking behind it? it does feel a little bit like narrow casting for a guy who's been accused of playing small ball and living in these twitter fights. >> yeah, look, when i heard this and i know elise made a similar point earlier this morning, but i was thinking, so advisers were sitting around in a room and thinking, how will we announce that ron desantis will run for president? something that's been highly anticipated. and the decision they made was to have him on an audio-only platform, only 20% of the country has access to or really plays in, mostly coastal, with a guy who, by the way, is not expanding his own base of support and is also not doing

anything to help with the awkwardness, because he's awkward, too. so i'm not sure the conversation went exactly that way. but, i don't fully understand the twitter piece, other than to say, twitter is sort of how ron desantis, because people weren't seeing him in person, because he wasn't interacting with humans, how he kind of got himself on the national map. maybe that was their thinking. the question really after this is, once you do the twitter, once you do the fund-raising and get as much as you can from donors as you can, how is it going to go in early states? we've seen an ink link, how does he do on a bus trip through iowa or in south carolina or new hampshire. we've only seen a tiny bit. and that to me is the real test. >> it speaks to elon musk's rising clout on the right. this does seem to reinforce the idea that desantis is playing to a smaller piece of the

electorate. another bet that was also underscored by his battle with disney. and there's a lot of republican donors really raising concerns about desantis, who had been a favorite of theirs for a while. but his answer about ukraine, his fight with disney, other book banning, other things has really got them concerned. what's your read of the financial picture for desantis going forward? >> desantis was the favorite child in the way of a business community. a lot of very prominent businessmen would tell me that they thought that he was the trump on policies, but not the -- the trump on personality, things we've heard before, kind of the mitt romney of this cycle. but they've really turned on him, and not just in the last couple of days, and it was over several issues. one was the fight with disney. these are mostly people who work in the business world and they think the understand why he was doing what he was doing with disney. felt that was fairly hostile. but the other thing that got him was a lot of the social positions that desantis took. and that's what they're looking for in a candidate. and to have a candidate show up

with six-week abortion bans and all kinds of things about what you can teach in the schools, he lost a lot of very significant support from the business and financial communities over those comments. and that's a pool of money in search of a candidate at the moment with desantis on their plaque list. >> ron desantis does have some money behind him. in your conversation, where are the republicans on wall street. where are they looking right now, as they figure out who to support with that big money? >> he does have some wall street money, and he will with money from wall street, but it won't be what he thought it would. he can make all kinds of adjustments. i would say for the rest of my wall street and business community friends haven't taken sides yet. there are too many candidates to kind of process. they don't know them. they're all in single digits in the polls. they're not that brave to sign up with the single-digit candidate just yet and we'll see how -- >> they have to fall back to

donald trump? >> well, i don't know. i don't think so. i don't think as a first choice, no. you can see them going to a nikki haley or somebody like that, but i don't see them falling back. >> this is part of why there's suddenly chatter on glenn youngkin. he's reconsidering his decision not to run, they've left the door open. there's some thought here that he might be the person who gets into that wall street money? mika? >> all right. we have got on the -- on the issue of former president donald trump, we have got a lot to follow. we've got another defamation lawsuit that the former president is dealing with. all indications are that the documents case out of mar-a-lago is heating up, with reports of evidence that the former president knew that he wasn't supposed to have the documents and obstructed the return of them. in georgia, there are indications this august there may be some touchpoint in that

trial of fannie willis against the former president. and now a date has been set for the first-ever criminal trial of a u.s. president. during a hear in new york city yesterday, the judge deciding over donald trump's criminal case decided on march 25th, 2024, the former president will go on trial for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. trump, who attended yesterday's hearing remotely appeared to react angrily when the date was announced. "the new york times" reports that although his microphone was muted, he started waving his hands and shaking his head before folding his arms in frustration. later in the day, trump made his thoughts clear with a post on social media, where he blasted the decision to schedule his trial in the middle of the republican primary calendar. he also slammed a protective order laid out by the judge, which restricts him from

publicly sharing evidence his legal team obtains during the discovery phase of the case. trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. nbc news has reached out to both sides in the case for comment about yesterday's hearing, but has not heard back. jen psaki, where to begin on what this looks like. i mean, this is, at this point, i guess you would call him the front-runner for the republican nomination. a lot of other candidates, though, jumping in, perhaps seeing how the walls could could close in on donald trump legally. some would say, finally. the former president facing some accountability. but perhaps potentially republican opponents saying this will be too much for the former president. this is my chance to jump in. >> i think that's potentially right, mika. we'll have to watch and see. the court date being seat, very significant for next march, just a couple of weeks after the

republican primary, super tuesday date happens. you mentioned one of the dates that is of most interest to me, and that is the fanny willis case or the georgia case, which could happen in august or she's given every indication that if there are charges, they will be in august. she's asked judges to stay home. she's asked people not to take vacation. you know what else is in august? the republican primary debate. and trump may or may not show up, but to me, the case -- that case, which is about election denying, which is about trying to rig votes, that is a case that could resonate with voters. remember, election denying is not a winning strategy. it's not a winning message. not just for democrats, but even for republicans. republicans in georgia have been pretty clear, leading republicans, that they are not embracing the election-denying message and even the kentucky secretary of state winner just a few weeks ago also ran a defeated election denier. this is a case, i think that's one i'm going to be watching very closely.

but yes, there's a lot of legal things that can happen. the question is when do these republican candidates feel that there's a messaging opportunity available around whatever the legal troubles trump is having, you know, presented to them. >> you know, bingo, jen. you nailed it, when you're saying, when do republicans finally start attacking donald trump. when are they going to feel amid all of this legal chaos and his problems that there is finally an opening. and i think that's just such a show of donald trump's strength right now. i really think that it's just misguided that there's so much of a media buzz that desantis versus donald trump, when since november, he peaked after he beat charlie crist, not the strongest candidate. and he really peaked. and since then, he's just been going down. and he's closer to nikki haley and mike pence at this stage in the game. >> and mika, we're about to find out about 6:00 tonight if the idea of ron desantis as the

alternative to donald trump, how it lines up with the reality of ron desantis as the alternative to donald trump. it's all been buzz and chatter and will he run and what's he going to look like as a candidate, starting about, i don't know, 11 hours from now, we'll find out. >> i know. and i'm just trying to imagine. i'm so kind of interested to see what this is going to look like and feel like with this elon musk audio announcement on twitter. it's definitely new and different. but i'm not sure how it's going to play. he's also making an appearance on fox news, as well. so ron desantis jumping in officially as donald trump's legal problems seem to close in on him. and just one more point on that, it's just so interesting, willie, that there are these republicans who still not only support him, but shill for him, push for him, push for donald trump and his conspiracy theories. you think of the days of watergate, when many americans

even, and politicians, when they heard the tapes. you know, when they saw the evidence, they thought, no, this doesn't work. and even, you know, richard nixon himself realized, you know, things were over. and yet, here, you have a former president who paid a porn star, who had an affair with a porn star and paid her off. and there are other women who have come forward and accused him of horrific behavior. you have him on tape, saying that he likes to sexually assault women and can, because he's a celebrity. and then he continues to defame the woman who accused him of rape in a civil suit after he was actually held liable for sexual abuse and defamation and then he defames her again. the list goes on and on and on. and these republicans, they just hang on for dear life. it will be interesting to see,

as these cases culminate, what happens to them. we'll move on now to the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations which hit a snag yesterday, according to a source familiar with the discussions. both sides are reportedly disagreeing on future federal spending levels. members from both sides spent much of yesterday criticizing one another on how they were moving forward with the process. however, if they were able to find a compromise on spending, the same source says it would help considerably in terms of reaching a final deal. joining us now, democratic congressman, jamie raskin of maryland. he's a ranking member of the house committee on oversight and accountability. it's great to have you back on the show. great to see you, sir. so where's this going to go? are we going to get to a deal so we don't have to default on money that's already been spent? >> well, nobody seems to know, but the positive development, in my mind, development in my mind

is that on the democratic side, people understand that the 14th amendment is not an option, as people have been saying. the 14th amendment is an imperative. that is, it's the whole framework for analyzing the problem. as section iv says that the validity of the public debt shall not be questioned. therefore, in the final analysis, the president must continue to pay the social security and medicare recipients. he's got to pay the bond holders of the united states. he's got to pay the veterans and fund the nutrition programs and so on. in the event that the republicans really are determined to drive us over a cliff. because all of those spending programs are federal laws and statutes, too. and the constitution says that the validity of the public debt shall not be questioned. so biden is really in the same situation, where abraham lincoln was with habeas corpus, where he said, should i enforce one law

or all the laws of the union and respect the constitution? and if he's forced to the extreme like that, we know what he's got to do. >> congressman, good morning. a glance at the calendar shows that june 1st deadline laid out by the treasury secretary janet yellen is a week from tomorrow. i would add that memorial day weekend is upon us here, that's friday and monday for a lot of people. that's not much time to get a deal. and even the proposal you're putting out there with the 14th amendment, that's going to go through legal challenges and that could take a long time. i mean, as you sit there, and as honest as you can be here, do you believe there's a chance that the united states defaults on its debt here? >> i mean, it would be an extraordinary, unbelievable, and reprehensible thing if they really drove us over the cliff. but i don't think there will be legal challenges by the administration, because the president doesn't have to challenge anybody. he just has to meet the full faith and credit of the united states by paying our creditors.

now, if marjorie taylor greene or someone else wants to sue, they would have to prove that they have standing, which means that they're injured by other people getting paid the money that the united states of america owes them. i think that would be a very difficult thing, even for this supreme court to say, and even if they found there was standing, it's certainly a political question under the constitution. it's never been something adjudicated before by the supreme court. and the final analysis, what is the remedy? if they think the president should not have paid the bond holders or the veterans, are they going to make the veterans pay the money back or are they going to make the bond holders pay the money back to the u.s. government? i think the president of the united states and the secretary of the treasury who want to do the right thing under the constitution hold all the cards here in the final analysis, if we're really being driven off the cliff by a maga extremist. >> and you know from your reporting, the white house has resisted this idea of invoking

the 14th amendment. and secretary yellen herself has said it would cause a constitutional crisis if they go that route. >> the president himself has said, even if they were to do it, because there would be such an appeal, it would slow things down and it would hit the "x" date anyway. they reserve the right to explore it as an option down the road, but seem to think it may not help in this particular crisis. congressman raskin, i wanted to turn your role to a ranking member of the oversight committee. your republican colleague, congressman comer has said interesting things in recent days about his investigation into the biden family, suggesting that, yes, this was largely poll driven. and also that they seem to keep losing informants and witnesses. so, how do you think it's going? >> well, yeah, i think that the chairman gave the game away. it was -- i can't remember if it was yesterday or the day before when he talked about how he felt that his investigation was

improving donald trump's poll number for the 2024 rematch. and i was just thinking about the great former chairs of our committee, people like henry waxman and elijah cummings and carolyn maloney, and how none of them ever would have talked about measuring the success of our investigative oversight to make sure the laws of the united states are being successfully implemented by the poll numbers of a former president, much less one who's been twice impeached for, you know, inciting insurrection against the united states or trying to undermine the election, or somebody who was recently found to have engaged in sexual abuse and defamation of a woman. so, you know, i think it speaks for itself. it's an embarrassment to our committee that they've wrapped themselves, just like jim jordan and the judiciary committee around donald trump's ambitions

to become president again, after he's completely discredited himself and turned the party of lincoln into an authoritarian cult of personality. it's just a remarkable turn of events. and just it marks the decline of the gop. >> all right. congressman jamie raskin, by the way, i don't think we've seen you since your health challenges. we're so glad you're doing so much better, you're doing we believe and it's great to see you. and thank you for coming on the show this morning. >> you're very kind. >> all right. take care. and still ahead on "morning joe," it's been one year since the mass shooting at an elementary school in uvalde, texas. we'll talk to a republican congressman from the state who was censured by his party over his support for new gun safety laws. plus, house armed services committee member congresswoman elissa slotkin joins us to weigh

in on president biden's decision to allow ukrainian forces to be trained on american-made f-16 firefighter jets. also ahead, is the united states poised for a green energy revolution? steve ratner will head to the big wall with his charts. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. watching" we will be right back.

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♪ is the ocean warm? yeah, it can be very warm. ♪ you were made to remember some days forever. we were made to help you find the best way there. ♪ welcome back. steve rattner has moved from our table to the southwest wall known noun as the ratner wall. what are you looking at this morning? >> this morning we're going to look at climate change and what the u.s. is doing to address it and talk about some good news in the sense that both it is working and it's working in large part because of government programs. some of which, by the way, the republicans even today are trying to either kill or substantially curb. so let's take a look at what's been happening with the development of renewable energy

in both the electricity area and the automotive area. so over here, you can see new capacity being added and renewable energy by our utilities all around the country. and you can see that until very recently, this was -- in renewables, that was a very small number. something like 22 plants announced before the passage of the inflation reduction act. that's the big signature piece of legislation that allows all of this to be possible. and that number has already doubled to 55. and if you look over here, when this was passed, the congressional budget office, one of our official scorers of such matters, thought we would be roughly here in terms of 2050 and how much renewable energy was being used to generate our electricity. and now goldman sachs and many others have substantially ratcheted up their projections. there's far more being done in terms of installing renewable energy capacity in our utility system than we thought at the time we passed the inflation reduction act. and that has a lot to do with it.

you have a similar story, if you look over here, at electricity cars. and what's being done in terms of the manufacturing facilities to produce those cars. we were at less than 15 in the year before the i.r.a. was passed. since the i.r.a. was passed, we're now at 55. we've more than doubled the number of new facilities for electric cars and their various components that are going to be made in the u.s. this is a case where government actually works. we passed a bunch of tack credits and other incentives to build these things and they are building them. >> so steve, where is most of this power coming from? is it solar? is it wind? is it battery storage? some combination of all of those? >> some combination of all of those, willie. but solar, as you can see in this yellow here, is clearly going to be the biggest part of it. this is wind, onshore wind, offshore. and we will be using in this green area some batteries, battery storage, where you store power that you can produce at different times of day when people are using it and use it later. and that helps normalize the grid as well.

>> so let's move to your second chart, keeping with the inflation reduction act, that the costs and the benefits were larger than expected there. what do you mean by that? >> so the way this was set up, it was mostly a bunch of tax credits. and people could apply for tax credits if they had a project they felt was economic. and not surprisingly, given what i just showed you, they have been applying for these tax credits in droves. and we see this in our own investing. projects that didn't make great economic sense before the tax credits are now economic. and so you can see that originally, again, this congressional budget office thought that this provision would cost $390 billion over a decade. they have since revised it to 570. you have some forecasters saying it's more like 780 or 1.2 trillion even in the case of goldman sachs. but this is good news in the sense that people are using this program, they're doing what they're supposed to in terms of building facilities. so, yes, we'll spend a little bit more money on it. and here's what the impact of it becomes, which is our emissions.

and just as a frame of historic reference, if you go back to 2005, we were on a completely unsustainable course in terms of how much co2, how much carbon dioxide we were putting in the atmosphere every year. and now that number has been coming down, even before the i.r.a., and down, and down. but look what the i.r.a. does. it will take our total emissions down into this light green area, almost to the pare accord target that we had to meet that a few years ago, we didn't think that we would have much chance of meeting. and if you believe goldman sachs, and they're one forecaster, they think that because of what we've. doing in terms of our government policies, as well as, of course, the cost of the stuff that's coming down and so on and so forth, you could get out to 2050 and find that the u.s. is actually emits very, very little carbon dioxide, and actually hitting the paris accord target. so it's really great news in terms of addressing our climate problem. >> that really is great news. that's a good-looking chart if

it turns out to be that way. we are on the cusp of a green revolution, but the only thing slowing the revolution is some red tape in the way. >> well, yes. so ironically, we are facing the kind of red tape that has stopped more conventional projects is now affecting solar. and here's one of the most surprising things. if you look at where new power generation, renewable power generation projects are occurring, they're occurring first and foremost in the great state of texas. probably not what any of you would have guessed, if we had started out by asking what you think. but this is a case where texas is kind of laissez-faire, build it where you want to build it, build it when you want to build it-kind of approach has actually worked for them. they'll have twice as many new facilities installed than as california. and in the northeast, you don't see as many dots, because in the northeast, you get into permitting issues and it as low as the process down. the i.r.a. was intended and two

other things the republicans are proposing is intended to help address this. texas on present course and speed will actually have more renewable energy generating capacity in solar than california, which you would have thought to have been the big state. and the last great irony, of course, is that the texas legislature, which is kind of fond of oil and gas, is trying to slow this down to try to have more oil and gas. but that's a story for another day. but right now, texas is in the lead on putting this stuff into service. >> fascinating stuff about the green revolution that is coming or maybe is already here already. steve rattner, thanks so much. always great to see you. mika? >> all right. a russian court has extended the pre-trial detention of imprisoned american journalist evan gershkovich, by three months. in response, his employer, "the wall street journal" released a statement yesterday, confirming that he had appeared in a moscow

court while calling the charges against him demonstrably false. gershkovich was taken into custody in march outside of a central russian city on spying charges. both "the journal" and u.s. officials have denied the accusation. "the journal" says u.s. embassy officials were able to attend yesterday's hearing as well as gershkovich's parents. it's unclear if anyone was able to speak with him. his pre-trial detention is now set to run until the end of august. it comes after moscow upheld his detention last month. and after an appeal -- and after multiple u.s. embassy requests for consular access were denied this month. gershkovich could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. joining us now, democratic congresswoman of elissa slotkin of michigan.

she's a former cia analyst and a candidate for u.s. senate. and i want to talk to you about the latest in ukraine and the fighter jets headed their way. but also, how this situation with gershkovich and others being held, u.s. citizens, the detention of american citizens in russia, how much is that complicated by the u.s. support of ukraine? >> well, look, i mean, we know that russia has long taken our version of political prisoners. people who are used to hold something over our heads. and we have this journalist, but also paul whelan, a michigander, who has been stuck in a similar situation for years now. and this is -- in my mind -- just a major distraction. russia trying to get the attention off of their significant losses in ukraine, sort of their failure to succeed there. and to get us talking about something else. and you know, it's working. >> yeah, and to the war in

ukraine, and that sort of parallel situation, the decision to allow ukrainian forces to be trained by allies, this is a dramatic change in the approach toward how much we support ukraine. what do you make of it and do you expect more support like this, more changes in just how much we escalate our support? >> i think it's a really important decision. and there's a bipartisan group of us who have been pushing for this first publicly and privately with the administration. i think we have to reset where we are in the war in ukraine, right? russia had amazing ambitions there, they totally overplayed their hands. they've got pushback, and now celebrating the taking of a town that's smaller than lansing, michigan, after months and months and a lot of casualties in taking it. they're not succeeding there. what we need to do is help the ukrainians with a major

significant push this summer, punch putin in the mouth a few more times, help change the status quo fundamentally, so the ukrainians can decide on when they can go to the negotiating table, from a position of strength. they have to decide that. but for me, this summer is really important. because we all know we can't go 10, 15 years, providing the same level of assistance. ukraine doesn't want to live like that for 10, 15 years. so for me, this summer is a really, really important moment of inflection. >> congresswoman, good morning. i want to turn you to a different subject in that state of michigan, and that is governor whitmer signing this new red flag law. michigan has put in a lot of work, democrats and with some republican help trying to approve some common sense ideas about safe storage and red flag laws and age limits and things like that. how significant is this move and what progress do you see? i would note today is the anniversary, the tragic

anniversary of the uvalde shooting at robb elementary school. what are you seeing on the state level there in michigan? >> well, look, i mean, we had our second, you know, terrible school shooting back in february at michigan state university. 15 months before that, we had oxford high school. both of them are places that i represented. and i think you have to understand that we sometimes get numb to these, you know, stories, but when you're personally affected, when it's your kid, your nephew, your spouse, it just changes you. and we saw with the michigan state shooting in particular, it really started to change sort of who was calling me and saying like, look, i'm a republican. i am a serious gun owner, i'm a responsible gun owner, but i really want you to protect my babies in school. we started to see that change and that's why we were able to do the significant gun laws that we passed now three separate times, culminating yesterday with red flag laws. so i think people change.

they do evolve, because they see our schools becoming war zones. and for me, i mean, uvalde was a terrible moment. and i will never forget a year ago today, hearing about the attack, and then a year ago tomorrow, i had to get up in front of the oxford high school virtual academy. so these are the students who never went back to school after their school shooting, they couldn't get back in a room in a public way after that shooting. they were so traumatized. and i had to stand in front of them. many didn't show up to their own graduation because they were scared again and re-traumatized to come back in a big group. and i had to explain how after yet another school shooting, nothing had changed. so in michigan, we're really changing the story. and i give our legislaors a ton of credit. >> certainly a daily and uniquely american tragedy, these mass shootings. congresswoman, we want to turn you to the ongoing negotiations about the debt ceiling. no breakthrough yesterday, by all accounts. but if an agreement is struck, even in the next few days with

that deadline rapidly approaching, it then has to get voted upon. play whip for us, if you will? speaker mccarthy, will there be votes there in the house? democrat and republican alike if needed to get this thing through? >> you know, i think in the current climate of american politics, we need these extreme deadlines to actually move us forward. so we're getting to it. it's getting pretty extreme. we're all waiting to hear whether we'll be kept here over the weekend. whether there's going to be something that's concrete enough for us to debate and discuss and eventually vote on, if not, next week. we are on high alert here to stay in washington right up until the deadline, as we should. that is normal for the state of play right now. >> congresswoman elissa slotkin of michigan, thank you so much for going on this morning. a lot going on. we appreciate it. >> you bet. and coming up on "morning joe," a restrictive ban on abortion in south carolina is the latest in a string of major policy changes for americans at

the local level. it's one of the reasons our next guest is making an argument for shifting the focus away from washington, as part of what he calls the battle to save democracy. that conversation is straight ahead on "morning joe." aight ahead on "morning joe.

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david, good see you. this is your second book, your second warning. you had one "laboratories for autocracy" in 2021 that sort of raised the red flag about what was happening, not in national politics, but what you saw on the ground. and we were just talking, it does seem since then perhaps, though i know you would argue that democrats are not all the way there, they have woken up to the fact that you have to earn this, you have to fight for it. that this democracy thing is not inevitable. >> yeah, it -- i wrote the first book to be a wake-up call that the front line in democracy are the states. that's where it's happening. we like to focus on the big doj cases, but where they are making non-stop progress, south carolina, ohio, tennessee, florida, they take over these state houses, gerrymander the hell out of them, suppress the other side, and that's where they can pass extremist laws that would never survive in washington. they're too toxic. and so, i do -- when i named the book laboratories of autocracy,

i thought, this might sound like a little much for people. it's not. i hear the term now more often. but i still worry, this is why i wrote the second book. most americans, while they see it more clearly, we're still fighting the battle of old. and until we get to the front of the battle, which is in states and statehouses. and build an infrastructure that supports running in all of those places, we're still fighting a battle assuming that democracy is in tact, when it's, in fact, in sort of jeopardy in all of these states. >> i know if joe were sitting here, he would absolutely love what you're saying, because he always says, democrats have to learn how to fight the way republicans have fought, that's the case you're making. you have a soccer analogy. stop being the goalie deflecting shots away, go on offense. >> i say all the time, my sons are 6 and 9, they're playing soccer. i put in the book, my son jack understands, the team always on offense wins. and they're on offense in states and statehouses. we're not even playing defense in many of these places. we have too many uncontested

races. so they take shot after shot after shot and when they score those shots like the dobbs case, the abortion bans, our main response is, we need more u.s. senators. i want more u.s. senators, too, but we are not obstructing the shots where they're being taken in statehouses. we're not even contesting half of the extremists taking them. and until we bring accountability into these statehouses, they won't stop doing what they're doing. in fact, they have ever incentive to be more extreme until we get in there and make the counterarguments. >> david, i really agree. i think it's such an important message to go back locally and not focus on what people in cable news greenrooms are talking about, those ideas in politics. i question, though, what about the money? how do you get people donors, interested in those races that are less-sexy, frankly, because it's fun to donate to a senate race, and you think that, oh, you're going to do something, but really, it's the long-term work of organizing and the money that frankly in a state like

ohio or mississippi where i'm from, and it's just not as much glamour associated with it. >> in recent years, we've shown when people understand that democracy is at stake, grassroots donors show up. wisconsin supreme court race. no one would have ever thought that all of a sudden that would lead to millions of dollars. but we had a grown-up conversation that democracy was at stake in that race and all of a sudden people respond and there's money there. that happened in the secretary of state races last november, where not a single election denier won in a swing state. what we haven't had, though, for years, and this is why i write these books, is a grown-up conversation to all the donors and all the grassroots activists that frankly provide most of the money, saving democracy is not only about a few u.s. senate races. and of course, they get $100 million, whether it's running against mitch mcconnell or florida or whatever. we need to say to folks, of course we need to win those races, but take 20% of the money that is going to these high-profile celebrity races, put them into uncontested or

swing statehouse races, and you're not funding just an extra add-on to a tv buy, you're funding entire campaigns of dozens of candidates. so the dollars are there. this is not a zero-sum game. we have to have a better, more savvy conversation, frankly, like the koch brothers have had for a generation, that going on offense in these states where democracy is under attack and can be lifted. you just had that thing in michigan, when you win, you can do good things, when you don't win, we see what they do. so get to bat for democracy on offense in these states. and all of a sudden, you can get great results. >> david, jen psaki is here with a question for you. jen? >> hi, david. i agree with you completely on state legislatures. and question. >> i -- >> jen, i will translate your question. >> thank you, willie. i want to ask him about ohio, and i know we have been talking about state legislature races and i totally agree. i hear from a lot of people who

say, tim ryan ran a great race, and sherrod brown is up, and what is the best case so people stop freaking out about this as to why brown has a good shot of keeping his seat there? >> great question. mike dewine got re-elected by 26 points and that's a huge difference and the republican party is giving the vance lane. there's a more moderate race in ohio. i think brown is a great candidate and he has the strengths of tim ryan but is better known. and if you look at the republican side, all the j.d.

vance endorsed the other day, and there is -- there's got to be more work because you can't win with that kind of turnout, and brown gets a lot of votes. >> ryan was a good candidate and ran a great race. you say there's nothing too small for you to get involved with, get involved with the school board, whatever it is to stand at the door of democracy. >> just keep in mind, almost everything the other side is pushing, and not everybody will like to hear this but it's true, is deeply unpopular. when they are trying to ban books that's a toxic thing, and

you show up for that meeting also. get a big crowd and say we don't want the angry parent down the street banning books from our library, and we want to have a chase in our education, and by showing up you are speaking for two-thirds of that community. we are seeing toxic school boards losing all over the place, including conservative areas. this is a crisis all over the country, some states like that tennessee republican legislature, half of those republicans didn't face an opponent last november. of course they are going to act like extremist. they have ever incentive to kick out the two justins and no reason to keep them, right? whatever you do, get somebody running. >> there you go. >> i go through this in the book, any non-profit in the

country in any city could be engaging voters, and let them see how they get a voter id, and we know cities are being targeted by the state voter suppression efforts. if you are the mayor of a city, get your entire city hall footprint dedicated to engaging the voters who are being left out intentionally. sign up to be an elections official. steve bannon is recruiting all the time and he wants election deniers as election officials. my broader point here is that the federal mind-set and the coverage of everything leaves most viewers thinking there's nothing i can do except watch in frustration, and the core of this book is the battle for democracy, the front line is where you live. >> that's an incredibly important message, and now for

something completely different, david, you were an intern for my dad at the center for strategic and international studies, so i want to hear what that was like. also, sort of an interesting ukraine story that you have. will you share with our viewers? >> yeah, out of college i was a research intern for dr. brzezinski. and outside of watching him schedule tennis matches, which was an important duty of the office, and this is when all of america were studying and celebrating russia, and dr. brzezinski had us studying ukraine. i am going through like old europe magazines and all this, and it was before the internet. at the end of the year, at the end of the summer, he said the

reason you did this paper is because the strength of ukraine will determine if russia is tempted to reexpand again in europe. >> what year was that? >> 1993, when nobody -- i kept wondering why am i focusing on ukraine and everybody else is celebrating yeltsin. in my little summer there showed me he was an amazing man. >> my brother, ian, went and lived in ukraine helping them establish defense policy among other things. david, was he nice to you? tell me the truth? >> he was wonderful. he was great to work with. by the way, your brother stopped by a couple times, stopped in the office, and he was wonderful. i was honored that summer working with them. >> thank you.

the new book is really important. it's titled "saving democracy: a user's manual for every american." david pepper shows you how you can do something. there's not nothing you can do. thank you for being on this morning and thanks for sharing the story about my dad. still aheada super pac for a republican governor is pushing back presidential campaign speculation. we will tell you who the rumors are connected to. plus, netflix making headlines for its crackdown on password sharing. we will explain ahead how it will work on "morning joe." add-n for severe eosinophilic asthma. nucala is not for sudden breathing problems. allergic reactions can occur. get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. infections that can cause shingles have occurred. don't stop steroids unless told by your doctor. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

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year since the mass shooting in uvalde we will look at what lawmakers have done to address gun violence since then. then a couple developments in donald trump's legal cases. there are so many. we will tell you when he could be back in a courtroom. and the status of the mar-a-lago documents investigation which appears to be heating up a bit along with georgia, that, too. plus, another defamation suit. can't count them. welcome back to "morning joe." it's wednesday, may 24th. along with willie and me, we have jen psaki still with us. willie, take it away with our top story. nikki haley taking an opening shot at ron desantis, the florida governor set to formerly enter the fray this evening in a conversation with elon musk. here's the former u.n. ambassador nikki haley hitting

ron desantis and former president donald trump at the same time. >> you're fired! >> then mr. trump said you're fired. i love that part. >> make america great again! >> make america great again. instead of calling the russian invasion a territorial dispute, republicans on the hill with tough words for desantis. >> do you want ukraine to win this war? >> i don't think in terms of winning or losing -- judges are a priority. >> honestly we have businesses in lockdown. ♪ >> so that's an ad from nikki haley. if you are listening in the car,

there was ron desantis mimicking donald trump, and then trump calling desantis disloyal, in need of a personality transplant and referring to him as robin -- instead of ron. did i miss anything? >> he begged with him, with tears in his eyes, no doubt, will you endorse me and then credited him for his victory. a few days ago, tim scott jumped in the race, and trump welcomed him, he's a good guy, and then ron desantis did not get that. >> jen, we are about to see at 6:00 tonight, there will be twitter spaces, and governor

desantis will do a tv interview on fox news shortly there after to launch his campaign. things getting more interesting today. >> no doubt. just looking at the nikki haley ad, one, the fact that she is painting desantis as a mini me, and he painted himself as having similar policy positions and approaches this tough anti-woke, whatever that means. the big question is who is nikki haley? she had great moments in her history as governor and fighting against the confederate flag and stood up against the base of her party and have not seen that yet in the primary, and it could get interesting even starting on the audible and awkward conversation with elon musk. the race is now beginning. we will see if desantis hits his

high or will have another resurgence in the case. >> yeah, and many pitting desantis as an alternative to trump. he trails, depending on the poll you look at, he trails donald trump by 30 points. donald trump is the runaway favorite at this moment. >> i said it earlier, but desantis has only gone down since his peak in november. you look at where he sits. he's closer to nikki haley and closer to mike pence and candidates that are single digit than he is donald trump. i think you don't want to have the expectations that are so huge for ron desantis right now that has been this imaginary two-person race. it really is just donald trump right now. >> all right. we will have much more on donald trump's legal woes, including

the fact that in the heart of the campaign he's going to be sitting in a courtroom for one of the cases that are building against him, the one he was indicted for. this afternoon, president biden will mark one year since the massacre in uvalde, texas, with a speech honoring the victims. last year 19 fourth grade students and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old gunman inside rob elementary school. 17 others were seriously injured. the shooter legally bought both of the ar-style rifles that he had with him just days before the attack. families of uvalde victims have fought tirelessly for new gun safety laws since the tragedy. many have made the 2 1/2 hour drive to the state capital in austin several times to plead with lawmakers to pass legislation. one of the bills they have pushed hardest for is hb 2744

that would raise the minimum age to buy assault-style rifles like the one that was used at rob elementary, from 18 to 21 years old. last month family members waited hours to get a chance to testify after lawmakers adjourned a committee meeting on the measure to go to the house floor. >> i arrived here today at 8:00 a.m., and as we waited more than 13 hours i am reminded of may 24th, 2022, when we waited hours to be told our daughter would never come home, and i expressed confusion then and i am perplexed now, did you think we would just go home? >> while your prayers may have -- comforted you, they did nothing to absolve our pain. while you may think about may

24th, we live it every day, and while you pray your children grow up to be healthy and happy and contributing members of society, we pray our children knew we did everything we could to get to them in that school to protect them. your prayers didn't stop that 18-year-old from purchasing those weapons and ammunition. your thoughts and prayers do not help the children that survived and were injured. your thoughts and prayers have not done anything in the 329 days since my son was shot through his stomach. your thoughts and prayers are useless unless you thought and prayed for legislation that you can help enact that could help change this. >> a little over two weeks later, uvalde families were packed in a small conference room as a sub committee advanced the so-called raise the age bill

to the full house. but that victory was short-lived. the next day the republican-controlled house failed to put the bill on its agenda effectively killing it. unless a special session is called, the texas legislation session will end on monday and not reconvene until 2025. so far only two gun safety-related measures have passed and one requires courts to report mental hospitalizations of juveniles to the federal straw system. both bills are already federal laws. joining us now, republican congressman, tony gonzalez, of texas.

yao sraul de is part of his district. are the children in uvalde any safer than they were a year ago today? >> i am happy to get into the debate. while we are healing, and it's going to be long time before we are whole again, we are very hopeful. when i hosted president biden, the very first sunday after the uvalde shooting, what we did is went to mass and the archbishop was there, and he called all the children in the church to come up and over 60 children that came up, and he reminded everybody at mass including the president and myself that we are going to heal through our children. i attended the first football game uvalde had and there was over 5,000 people in the stands

and one individual in particular was wearing the number 21 to signify the honoring of the victims killed, and that game was so electric and the uvalde school had an amazing season, and i tell you those stories, because the way we heal is by uniting and coming forward. these mad men don't kill republican or democratic children, they kill our children. i wanted to share those two stories with your audience. >> thank you very much for doing that. i know, also, you are working to try and help -- you have helped pass gun safety legislation, and you supported gun safety legislation and you have censured by your own party. tell us about that. what do you want to say to those that censured you that maybe you feel they are missing in this overall argument over the safety

of our nation's children? >> you know, we are in a very divided environment, political environment right now. you have people on one side and people on the other, and a lot demonize others, and i never viewed the world that way and i was proud to support the bipartisan safe community act and since that piece of legislation was signed into law, there have been over 160 cases of minors that had mental health issues that were prevented from purchasing a firearm. i have spoken with individuals that sell firearms and they tell me, tony, i don't want people that are deranged to purchase firearms. this is an important piece of legislation. also we invested the most in mental health in our nation's history, but until that money leaves washington, d.c. and makes it into our schools it doesn't exist. one of the issues that i have had is there has been six of my communities, the city of

casterville and bexar county and el paso county were denied department of justice cops grants, and i had a discussion with the attorney general on how we fix that. him and his office have been helpful in that. what i say, the fight is not over and there's much that has to be done and until our children are safe in our schools, more has to happen. today myself and other representatives from parkland, florida, we started a bipartisan school safety and security caucus. i think this is important. this is an area where we can bring people and have a frank discussion on how we keep our children safe in school. >> that's good news, congressman. i want to add my condolences again to your community today. if you will pass them along. you served 20 years in the united states navy, iraq and afghanistan among your stops, and you have seen real war zones

and you worked and lived in them, and now some schools have become effectively war zones like what you might see there. talk us through the bipartisan effort. there's so much frustration on well, there's another day and another school shooting. how do we bring it to an end? >> we can't allow this to be normal. it can't be just another shooting and you can't think it won't happen to us, and the world has changed. how do we come up with solutions? i get it. there are a lot of people that want certain things and fought actively for that and i encourage that. i look at it through the lens of what can we get accomplished through the 118th congress today, and what can this congress do today to make kids more safe. i think that starts with mental health. how do you get ahead of a problem before it happens? what about the teachers?

mr. reyes is the teacher that survived that classroom. i met with him a couple weeks ago and will meet with him again this morning. what about the teachers? the teachers are no longer teachers, they are social workers and coaches and mentors. how do we help them? i think there are a lot of problems we can devote our energy towards. i am interested in a bipartisan solution. when a tragedy happens, it's not republican kids or democratic kids, it's our kids. >> republican congressman, tony gonzalez of texas, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. >> thank you for having me. all right, it's time for a look at the morning papers. the daily advertiser has a front page story on tax breaks to promote gun sales. the bill passed after clearing the full state senate. it would include a three-day sales tax exemption for guns,

ammunition and certain hunting supplies over labor day weekend. in virginia, the richmond times reports youngkin's super pac is knocking down claims he's running for president. this suggests the republican might consider a white house bid. the spirit of virginia political team is denning that claim, posting on twitter the governor is focused on virginia. quote, anybody who anonymously says otherwise is not as close to the governor as they might think. finding a georgia school district may be in violation of federal discrimination laws by banning certain books. the district removed eight books, including tony morrison's

"the bluest eye." the district has now agreed to reinstate seven of the banned books. finally, the republican reports, schools want to limit student cell phone use. they are creating a matching grant of up to $1 million for districts that pilot a cell phone restriction policy. the goal is to help students focus on class and curve online bullying, and curb negative mental acts. we will have a new report on

the mar-a-lago classified document case. and then we will talk to chris coons about the ongoing debt negotiations with the country a week away from a possible default. that and much more when "morning joe" returns. joe" returns my asthma felt anything but normal. ♪ ♪ it was time for a nunormal with nucala. nucala is a once-monthly add-on treatment for severe eosinophilic asthma that can mean less oral steroids. not for sudden breathing problems. allergic reactions can occur. get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. infections that can cause shingles have occurred. don't stop steroids unless told by your doctor. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. may cause headache, injection site reactions, back pain, and fatigue. ask your asthma specialist about a nunormal with nucala.

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"the wall street journal" reports special counsel's investigation into former president donald trump mishandling of classified documents at his mar-a-lago resorts close to wrapping up. people in the former president's circle familiar with the matter say some in his circle are bracing for the indictment and anticipating being able to fundraise off the prosecution. prosecutors working for smith

completed interviews with nearly every employee at trump's florida home. the special counsel team also conducted a flury of grand jury interviews that appear to tie up loose ends. the paper could not determine whether smith decided to charge trump or if he presented a recommendation on the matter to attorney general merrick garland who would make a final recommendation on such charges. a spokesman for smith declined to comment. so many questions. now joining us to talk about that, a reporter for "the wall street journal." good to have you on the show. first of all, everybody at mar-a-lago has been interviewed. i am curious, are they still working there? how does that work? it's personal curiosity, because president trump has a vow of loyalty he thinks he can put on

people. but secondly, what are the indications here that this is winding down to either charges or closing up? >> right. thanks for having me. what we know is that over the past few months jack smith's team has been very aggressive in trying to talk to almost everybody that works there from the made to his senior aides, and calling them back multiple times to ask them more questions. as far as we know, most of them still do work for him and do work there. what we know is that in recent weeks the questions have gotten even more pointed and seem to be very much jack smith's team trying to see if they can establish the elements they need to establish if they want to try and prove a crime had happened. there was a flury of activity over the past few weeks where they just tried to rush to get -- it seemed like they were rushing to get everybody in and get all of the evidence that they could and those requests

have pretty much stopped at this point and they seem to be saying, okay, thanks, we have what we need right now. so that tees up for us that idea that there's an end of the investigation coming soon. >> would jack smith announce charges himself if he decides that's what the case merits? would he refer it to the attorney general to announce the charges? how does it play out from here? >> we are in unprecedented territory as many have pointed out, but the way it works, the recommendation is made to the attorney general and the attorney general accepts it or if he decides it's not warranted he could overturn it and turn it over to congress. if he were to decide to bring charges we would see the grand jury returning an indictment and

that would get unsealed and it's only then that we would see that anything has happened. >> good morning. as you were reporting on this story, what is your sense of the level of concern from the trump team, and they say they are going to raise money off the prosecution and they have done it in the past, too, but this is serious stuff here, and many believe when all is said and done donald trump goes to jail because of some of the things we have seen in the classified documents, so how worried is trump's team? >> some attorneys do firmly believe there's no case here and do not believe a case is forthcoming, but others are pretty much resigned to there being a potential case. the reactions are somewhat mixed. with the manhattan d.a. case he was able to get a political boost and fund raise off that, and they see a similar dynamic

playing out here so it may not be a terrible thing for them especially when they can compare it to president biden also having issues with having classified documents found at his residence and things like that, so it seems like they are bracing for it but not necessarily super concerned. coming up, nbc's kristen welker is at the white house for another day of intense talks on the debt ceiling? is there any compromise between the president and the speaker of the house? "morning joe" is coming right back. back ♪ i'm going to somewhere, anywhere. ♪ ♪ a beach house, a treehouse, ♪ ♪ honestly i don't care ♪ find the perfect vacation rental for you booking.com, booking. yeah.

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the 2024 white house race could see a dramatic shift tonight as florida governor, ron desantis, officially declares his candidacy. three sources familiar with the plans tell nbc news desantis will announce his presidential bill tonight during a discussion with twitter ceo, elon musk.

the two are set to host an event at 6:00 eastern time on twitter. they have a platform for audio chats. after the announcement desantis' campaign is expected to release a launch video and florida's first lady, casey desantis, appears to have already put out a preview. take a look. >> they call it faith because in the face of darkness you can see that brighter future, a faith that our best days lay ahead of us. but is it worth the fight? do i have the courage? is it worth the sacrifice? america has been worth it every single time. >> charlie sykes, your thoughts on the preview? >> well, let's just talk about

launching a candidacy with elon musk. this is not a parody. when you think about, you know, the fact that the governor of florida decides to launch a bid for president of the united states by telling a narcissistic maniac like elon musk, but it will generate a huge amount of buzz, we're talking about it now, and it will throw chaos in the maga world and it's interesting how donald trump will respond. i think it will be unlikely he will return to twitter at this point, but what an extraordinary choice for ron desantis to go all on elon musk when elon musk is displaying all of his brain worms, doubting whether a mass

killer was neo-nazi, and open the doors to twitter to every bigot and conspiracy theorists. but ron desantis clearly thought he needed a big shift and pivot and something dramatic, and so within maga world it's going to be interesting because it was not that long ago that the maga world was looking to elon musk as their savior, and now you will see a food fight for the ages. >> charlie said it will get a whole bunch of attention if you are with elon musk, one of the richest guys in the world, and for ron desantis, a guy accused of fighting in small fights, he may be emphasizing that or leaning into for his critics. >> i find it baffling. the choice seems to make no sense. why do you share your big moment

with a huge and powerful billionaire that is more famous and has more name i.d. than you do, and this platform is diminishing and maybe the far-right elites talk about it, but twitter is a diminishing force these days. you see how, three, elon, everything he touches, he does well engineering with tesla, but you see on twitter how he doesn't casually mind tossing a couple billion at, and for your big moment, that makes no sense. >> since he took over twitter, elon musk has become a hero to conservatives because they felt like their voices were silenced and he has given them back that

space, and what do you make of the platform that desantis is finally rolling out the campaign? >> well, he said he wanted to be independent and nonpartisan. i will go the other way from charlie sykes. i think tonight at 5:59 p.m. will be donald trump's first tweet back trying to steal some of the thunder. but catty kay, this is an unusual way to announce a campaign and it's not going to science the whisperers, and ron desantis is not doing this with a rally or a speech. he's doing it in a safe space where he will not likely take questions from the audience and certainly no reporters, and he's got obstacles to overcome and reverse the precandidacy period

has not gone well. >> that's the third time i listened to it, and is that a british voice? can i say the top of that sounds like a british accent, which is sort of weird for an american campaign presidential launch. it does get him around the issue of having to interact with people, which obviously the trump campaign is already pointing out, which is if he's on twitter he doesn't have to talk to normal people. there's a chance he can get better on the stump, which is obviously what his campaign is hoping for. he still has a significant amount of money in the bank, although fundraisers are looking at him more warily now. he needs to correct the disney thing. the tour abroad got widely panned. he will have to develop a better

way of interacting with voters and stoking something in them that doesn't sound awkward and uncomfortable, because that's kind of how he sounds when he's with people at the moment. he has a lot to do, but he is still, i think, at the moment, it's hard to see somebody who is amongst the pack, who is the frontrunner taking on donald trump. i have not seen another name out there yet and the polling doesn't suggest there's another name out there yet. so far it's still ron desantis' stunt opportunity to take on trump and maybe his alone. i know it's early and it's late, but it's relatively early. coming up, a live report from uvalde, texas, one year after the devastating school shooting there. how the attack changed the community and the country, when "morning joe" comes right back. k

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like to plant my feet on ♪ ♪ ♪ the brooklyn bridge ♪ ♪ what a lovely view from ♪ ♪ heaven looks at you from ♪ ♪ the brooklyn bridge ♪♪ >> it was 140 years ago today the brooklyn bridge opened to traffic for the very first time. joining us now to reflect on what he calls, quote, possibly the greatest engineering triumph of the 19th century. also with us, architecture critic for "the new york times," michael kimmelman. good morning to you both. 1981. >> yeah, i was trying to raise money and it was pbs and i am

going to all of these places trying to get $1,500, and i looked like i was 12 years old, and everybody said no, and it is, without a question, the greatest engineering feat of the 19th century. it's also -- i think this is why michael and i are still so excited about it, it's a work of art, too. >> yes. >> here you have a functional thing. arthur miller says at the end of the film, you see the city is practically a utilitarian invention, and then it godes us, as he put it, to do something. we made a short film that "the times" posted today, and i am going to dinner there tonight. 40 years ago, i was the only

non-robelins, the family that built it, that was there to watch the celebrations. >> this bridge has held up. it's a classic. >> it's the most enduring icon in new york city. it remains for us a source of inspiration. it's like an aspirational thing. we see it and imagine how did they do this? it was not just something that went across the river, but stood for new york's desire to be a great and lasting enduring place. it's a great work of art. >> the view from the other side of the bridge, brooklyn -- >> yeah, i came over the bridge this morning and at that hour, no traffic. we were speaking about how it's symbolic of an age where we can do big things, and so many

americans feel like we can't. how frustrating is that? >> it's interesting. as ken points out in the film he made, that was a moment when we did the finish -- the trends, the cable, the sue kwraz canal. mostly the desire of the bridge to be something that spoke to new york as the great emerging city, that was its simple. now it took us 100 years to build four lousy subway stations. you know, every project like this would get killed by the opposition. both public opposition and a lot of government gridlock. >> i guess i would ask, why were we able to do it then? it's not like there was nothing going on. this got approved two years after the civil war ended.

>> that's the point, and first of all, let's point out what a bridge does to us, and anything that connects is good, right? there's a bedroom community, you know, south and east of manhattan called brooklyn. they are sending workers there, and the ferries get clogged with ice in the wintertime, and the civil war promoted the use of the new metal called steel, and one out of every four bridges are falling down in america. he's known for stability and the beautiful network of cables that we love so much, the music of that bridge is the steel radiating stays that are so beautiful, they give the bridge the stability, so he proposes it. he has killed -- you can't make this up, in the first months of construction by accident, and

his young son in the union army takes over, and in the sinking of the towers, they have to do it underwater and in the seabed, and people are dying and the chief engineer, washington robeling, and his wife, emily, takes over and becomes his eyes and ears and exactly 140 years today, the first passenger across the brooklyn bridge in a carriage holding a rooster, a symbol of victory was emily robling because she was recognized as that person. this is a good of story as i know. and then the function of getting to manhattan and back again was achieved. they also achieved this extraordinary work of art. it's one of the great works of art as well as engineering of the 19th century. i just defy you, i get the privilege when i am in this city

to walk over it at least once a day, and that network of cables can wake you up and make you realize the glory of our possibilities, and maybe if enough people realize it we can demand that we can do these things. we can still do these things. we just lack the kind of political will mike was talking about. coming up, senator chris coons is standing by and he co chairs president biden's 2024 campaign. we will talk about that when we come back. campaign we will talk about that when we come back. i'm your overly competitive brother. check. psych! really? dude, that's a foul! and now you're ready to settle the score. and if you don't have the right home insurance coverage,

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about shingrix today. and this is ready to go online. any questions? -yeah, i got one. how about the best network imaginable? let's invent that. we don't have time for lag or buffering. who doesn't want internet that helps a.i. do your homework even faster. come again. -sorry, what was that? the next generation 10g network, only from xfinity. a few minutes before the top of the hour, the era of sharing netflix passwords for free is over. the streaming giant began informing u.s. account holders it will enact a new policy that no longer allows sharing the same membership across multiple

households. nbc news correspondent kaylee hartung will explain how it will all work. >> netflix is getting ready to press pause on password sharing. on tuesday, the company began sending emails to subscribers with a dreaded opening line, your netflix account is for you and the people you live with. with that, the days of account sharing appear to be in their final act. >> sorrows. sorrows, prayers. >> reporter: the streaming giant says it's rolling out the new rules gradually, asking users to set up their household by approving streaming devices on their home wi-fi. netflix says it will not use location data to find out where you're watching. instead it will rely on ip addresses, device i.d.s and account activity to see if you're watching on an approved screen. if not you're asked to sign up for a new account or pay $7.99 a month for each member. the shutdown on sharing comes after the company reported a

loss in subscribers last year and said the 100 million households around the world that share their credentials are cutting into its bottom line. >> this should not happen. this is avoidable. >> reporter: earlier this year, netflix began cracking down in other countries including spain where 1 million users dropped the service almost immediately after the rollout. the company called the cancel reaction temporary, but some subscribers here may also pull the plug. >> i'm not paying for additional people, there's a million other services i could use, bye. >> if netflix can make it work, other streamers may follow suit. >> there's no doubt that every streamer is trying to figure out how to get the most money out of their members. if they see netflix is very successful in cracking down on password sharing, you're going to see other streamers do it too. >> nbc's kaylee hartung with that report. earlier this week, vice president kamala harris visit add semiconductor research and

development facility in northern california. she was there to highlight the biden administration's continued efforts to bring manufacturing jobs back to the united states. >> today we are going to address a particular type of technology that is essential to the future of innovation, and that is the semiconductor. i am, as you probably can tell, just personally very excited about the work that has been done and the work that our administration has been able to do with so many of you to reach what i believe is the next plateau in all of this work. >> that work is a key focus of last year's chips and science act. for more, let's bring in the director of external and government affairs for the u.s. department of commerce, chips for america program, adrienne elrod. adrienne, great to have you

back. what more can you share not only about the vice president's trip and why she went to that facility, but also what can you tell us about the private sector's interest in signing up? >> thank you for having me. it's always great to be back with you on "morning joe." look, this is a really big deal, and i'm so glad the vice president went to applied materials earlier this week to highlight this investment. since the biden administration has been in office, we've seen over $400 billion in private sector investment, so these are companies that are coming up to the plate and saying we have the faith and confidence in this administration. we are going to invest more of our money so it's not only taxpayer dollars through the investment, the biden administration through the chips and science act, for example, but companies are stepping up to the plate. by the way, 200 billion of that $400 billion that companies have invested is already in semiconductor manufacturing, which is such a big deal here in the united states. right now we designed a lot of

chips but we make 0% of the world's leading edge chips. it's important that we bring back the manufacturing, that we onshore these jobs that used to be here, and that's a big focus of what we're doing through this chips and science project. >> we're relying obviously on china for semiconductor chips. how long -- i mean, is there even an end in sight to that reliance? when does america become self-reliant? >> well, that's a good question, mika, globalization is a reality, and china's always going to be making some sort of chip, the manufacturing in china is just going to continue to happen, but we saw, mika, during covid disruptions to the supply chain firsthand. a lot of us witnessed it, you know, you couldn't buy an electric car. you couldn't, you know, buy dish washing, you know, or kitchen manufacturing appliances. there were so many things that we couldn't buy because of supply chain disruption. what we're seeing here is we at

least need to be able to make our own chips here in the united states, leading edge, mature notes. chips that we use in our everyday life. anything that has an on and off switch has a chip. how do we get the capacity back here in the united states where we're actually producing more of that. china's going to be a reality. china will be producing chips, but we at the very least need to be making the chips that we use here in the united states in a greater capacity than we currently are. that's the goal. part of what we're also saying with the chips and science act, we want to make sure we're building two large scale leading clusters through this $54 billion we've been entrusted with to make sure we have the capacity to produce the chips we need here in the united states. >> adrienne elrod with an update, she's director of external and government affairs for the u.s. department of commerce's chips program. thank you, adrienne good to see you. 6:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. on the east, and we

have a packed hour ahead for you. we'll get a live report from the white house on the debt ceiling negotiations which are stalled over republican demands to cut spending. we'll also go live to uvalde where the community is marking a grim anniversary, one year since the deadly shooting at robb elementary school. and later this hour, we'll be joined by senator chris coons of delaware. we have a lot to talk to him about from the debt ceiling to his role as a biden campaign national cochair. also ahead, we'll explain how this iconic moment from president biden's inauguration is now caught up in florida's book ban. oh, yeah, we'll get to that, but willie, let's talk about 2024. >> speaking of the state of florida, mika, the 2024 white house race could see a big shift tonight as florida governor ron desantis officially declares his candidacy. three sources familiar with his plans tell nbc news governor desantis will announce his

presidential bid tonight during a discussion with twitter ceo elon musk. joining us now with more from miami, nbc news correspondent dasha burns who broke this story. dasha, good morning, what's the latest? >> reporter: even before he officially jumped into the race, florida governor ron desantis was the only republican even registering in the polling compared to former president trump, and he's been teasing this run for months as he's been traveling the country touting what he calls the florida blueprint. he is set to make it official tonight in an unconventional approach with an unconventional ally announcing on social media with one of the world's richest men. >> they call it fate because in the fate of darkness, you can see that future. >> overnight, ron desantis's wife all but launching his campaign, writing america is worth the fight every single

time. and this morning, the florida governor once endorsed by donald trump, now set to directly challenge the former president. three sources familiar with the planning tell nbc news desantis will make his long suspected presidential ambitions publicing in a conversation with billionaire elon musk on twitter spaces. >> he has quite an announcement to make, and it will be the first time something like this is happening on social media. >> reporter: musk who's faced intense scrutiny since purchasing twitter over his leadership style and controversial posts to his 140 million followers recently weighing in on the race with cnbc. >> i wish we could have just a normal human being as president, that's what i want. >> reporter: after launching his campaign, desantis plans to visit early voting states after memorial day, though he's already been making the rounds touting what he calls a florida blueprint. desantis has faced some blowback over his governing style, including his ongoing feud with one of florida's largest

employers and revenue generators, disney was just scrapped a billion dollars plan to relocate 2,000 workers to the state, and even before getting in the race, desantis has been a favorite trump target. >> ron desanctimonious. >> and the former president now blasting his launch plan, a trump adviser telling nbc news, quote, announcing on twitter is perfect for ron desantis. this way he doesn't have to interact with people. desantis who once embraced trump has begun to fire back but without naming him, appearing to blame him for recent election losses. >> we must reject the culture of losing that has infected our party in recent years. >> reporter: and willie, after that announcement, you will see a more traditional campaign rollout. we're going to see a launch video. he'll be visiting some of those critical early states that he's already been to. now this time he'll be there on the ground officially as a candidate for president. willie. >> so dasha, as you reported

this story out over the last couple of days, what is your sense of the strategy here from the desantis campaign with this first step anyway, which is to say sitting down with elon musk, what message are they trying to send there, and doing it on twitter spaces which amounts effectively to kind of a podcast launch before he does tv tonight. >> reporter: there are a couple of factors here as i've been talking to my sources. number one is the reach. look, 140 million followers and this is a candidate, almost candidate who has wanted to bypass traditional media at every opportunity, right, and this is a way to get away from the traditional approach to launching a campaign going directly to social media, a platform that was once former president trump's domain, he hasn't been attacking the former president directly. this perhaps another subtle jab at the former president by using that platform. the other factor here is, and this is what we're likely to hear in terms of the messaging from the campaign as he hits the trail is the contrast, setting

up the contrast of the past versus the future. this is a campaign that sees elon musk as a futurist, which he sort of has branded himself as, and putting the two together of once again showing desantis future looking to trump as more of a candidate of the past, and that's the message that the campaign hopes to get out tonight, willie. >> nbc's dasha burns from miami ahead of the announcement officially tonight that ron desantis, the governor of florida will enter the campaign. dasha, thank you. former president trump is attacking governor desantis on truth social calling him disloyal, in need of a personality transplant, and referring to him as rob instead of ron. and declared candidate nikki haley is out this morning with a new ad that takes on both governor desantis and former president trump. >> he was totally different, whatever i want, he wants. >> you're fired, you're fired. >> then mr. trump said, you're fired. i love that part.

>> make america great again. >> make america great again. >> instead of calling the russian invasion, a territorial dispute even some republicans on the hill with tough words for desantis. >> do you want ukraine to win this war? >> i don't think in terms of winning and losing. everybody here would do it. >> treatment available. >> and honestly we have businesses that have been locked down for over a year. so john, that's an ad from nikki haley sort of going at both of them, but really the suggestion there is that ron desantis is a poor man's donald trump, that he's a mini me going down to the hand gestures and all the mimicking that ron desantis has done for years now going back to those cringey ads. >> the tag line there was

america deserves a choice, not an echo. fairly effective ad. i don't know that it matters much for nikki haley who is polling in the low single-digits. interestingly, desantis himself is sort of making that case. he says that he's the person who can give you a lot of the trump policies, at least that republicans or at least the trump base seems to like, but not a lot of the trump baggage, including the potential criminal indictments coming later this year. but desantis has really scuffled. they're confident they can raise money, turn things around being tonight on twitter spaces, does he still have the best shot to be the trump alternative? >> i think the expectation game is out of control for desantis. i don't think that you want to be this over hyped so early. he had the moment where he was almost catching up with trump after the election in november when he won by double-digits, but then since then trump's attacks have actually, you know, really had an impact, and you've

seen desantis keep creeping down and down until now he's closer to pence and closer to nikki haley. i think i would rather be a candidate like tim scott and be waiting there in the wings and ron desantis and donald trump can tear each other apart, and you emerge as a kinder, gentler alternative with the same policies. amanda gorman, the first national youth poet laureate is speaking out against what she described as a book ban after access to the poem that she recited at president joe biden's inauguration was limited at a florida school. here is gorman reading one of her poems two weeks after the january 6th attack on the capitol. >> all right. >> we will not be turned around ore insurf recollected by intimidation. our blenders become their

burdens, but one thing is certain. if we merge mercy with might and might with rights, then love becomes our legacy and changed our children's birthright. >> that poem which has been published as a short book entitled "the hill we climb" will now be accessible only to middle school students at the pre-k through 8th grade bob graham education center after a parent filed a formal objection to the work. in a post on social media, gorman wrote in part, i'm gutted. i wrote "the hill we climb" so that all young people could see themselves in an historic moment, robbing children of the chance to find their voices in literature is a violation of their right to free thought and free speech. she also urged people to speak out, pointing to a lawsuit that

her publisher has joined to challenge book restrictions. a copy of the complaint form posted on twitter by gorman and the florida freedom to read project states the book is not educational and contains hate messages. the form also says the complaint believes the purpose of the book is to cause confusion and indoctrinate students. the school said in a statement they determined the book is, quote, better suited for middle school students and it was shelved in the middle school section of a media center. the book remains available in the media center, end quote. jonathan lemire. this and many other of ron desantis's policies, will they come to haunt him, you know, as the 2024 race, you know, maufs more nationally? i mean, how do these policies play out on the big stage? >> well, desantis's pitch is that he wants to make america more like florida. his opponents will say, well,

this is what you'll get. you will get florida like this and restrictions like this, book bans like this. it's not a coincidence that the dnc and the biden campaign as they start looking at the republicans in the field beyond trump when they talk about desantis, they focus on book burning. it polls so poorly. a lot of americans outraged that this is happening. and they say it's a piece of desantis being out of step with the rest of the country. the restrictive abortion ban he signed in the dead of night a few weeks ago, yes. this feels like another moment where desantis along with his fight against disney and the list goes on and on is playing to a smaller, shrinking portion of the electorate, that yeah, might help him in the gop primary, but it's difficult to see how he gets any advantage of this come next year were he to be the nominee in a general election. >> book bans are wildly unpopular. we need to look at a system where one parent who sees a book who doesn't line up with his or

her world view can have it yanked off the shelf. let's turn to the debt ceiling negotiations that reportedly hit a snag yesterday with the clock ticking. according to a source familiar with the discussions, both sides still disagree on future federal spending levels. that's a big disagreement. for the latest let's go to the white house and nbc's chief white house correspondent kristen welker, we are eight days away now from that deadline laid out by treasury secretary janet yellen. >> willie, eight days away and there's still no deal in sight, and i was on the phone with a democratic official who's familiar with the negotiations very late last night who said to me that these negotiations have hit a, quote, speed bump. so taking a step back, what are we witnessing here? we know that these high stakes negotiations come down to the wire, but this is really coming down to the wire. this official trying to turn up the heat on speaker mccarthy saying overnight as president biden has negotiated in good faith on the budget, speaker

mccarthy has bowed to mega extremists who want no compromise. he's been talking to reporters in the hallways of congress as he shovels back and forth between meetings. he spoke to ryan nobles who pressed him on whether the fact they are still deadlocked means there will be an increasing chance there will be a short-term deal on the debt limit. take a look at that exchange. >> i think you're almost there. would there be any talk of potential -- just to give you more time to fine tune it? >> look, i don't see kicking the can down the road being beneficial. i don't want to do anything that slows the negotiations. we've got to have the negotiations. even if it's really close. there's got to be concern that the clock is ticking. >> i never give up.

>> reporter: so willie, just to reiterate there, you heard him say we'll get it done, but look, i am told there's still a number of sticking points. you talked about some of them. the biggest one, i am told, is overspending. republicans want sharper spending cuts than democrats. democrats are saying, look, if we take a big bite out of nondefense spending that's going to hurt health care and education. will there be work requirements for social safety net programs like food and housing assistance. the president has said he will not allow medicaid to be touched, but he has cracked the door open just a little bit to the possibility that there could be some tweaks around the edges of work requirements. the president has tried to put taxes on the table, willie. he wants to close some loopholes. he's said let's increase taxes on wealthy americans. republicans are calling that a red line. some indicates are upset about that. they're saying the president waited too late to enter negotiations and now he's given up some of his leverage.

just to stress this point, look, if they can figure out the spending piece of this, i am told that would really open up the flood gates to some of these other sticking points. their one area of agreement so far, they've agreed to claw back unspent covid funds which i am told could save an estimated $30 billion, which is really a drop in the bucket of the overall budget. but it is an area of common ground. one more point, willie, still no word on when or if negotiations will resume today. we expect that they will but no word on timing. >> not much time to spare, nbc's kristen welker at the white house. thanks so much for your reporting, we appreciate it. even if they come to a deal, let's not forget memorial day weekend's coming up. we've got a short week here, even if they come to a deal, they've got to get legislation through. kevin mccarthy's got to get the republicans on his right flank to come forward, by the way, some democrats of the progressive wing, they have to get on board if joe biden gives

up too much. >> first, they have a right to tax. white house aides suggesting they feel like they may need to deliver 100 democrats in order to get this through. they feel like mccarthy is going to lose so many on his right flank. there are some conservatives, if they see any hint of a compromise are going to walk, are going to say no, are going to say, hey, we'll default. that's going to be a huge lift to convince those democrats. some progressives might not go along with it either. that's a lot of moderates in the middle having to make that leap. getting a deal is only half the battle. we also are nowhere near a deal yet. this is a lot to do in eight days. talks on the staff level will resume today. >> in that soundbite, kevin mccarthy said we're not going to do a short-term deal to buy us more time. we've got to get this done. coming up next, we will go live to uvalde, texas, exactly one year to the day now after a

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you don't heal from this, you don't get over this. every one of those families has been devastated, they've been devastated by legislature in texas that has done absolutely nothing. we will be memorializing the deaths of those children later on this morning in the texas senate, and yet, the biggest insult there is that we did absolutely zero pieces of legislation that would have a monumental change or the legislation that those families were seeking. >> that was texas state senator roland gutierrez who represents uvalde, texas, speaking with us earlier on "morning joe." one year ago today 19 students and two teachers were killed inside robb elementary school.

let's bring in nbc news correspondent guad venegas live in uvalde. guad, how is the community marking this day? >> reporter: mika, there's a lot of frustration. many of the people here say they're frustrated because of a lack of answers and also accountability when it comes to law enforcement. we now know they waited for over an hour in the hallways of that classroom before they confronted the gunman, and the people want answers. we also know the investigation into what happened is still ongoing, but of course today is the anniversary and much of the attention and focus is expected to be on the healing. for the parents who lost children on that terrible day one year ago, sometimes it feels like yesterday. other times like an eternity. >> we don't ever want them to forget our kids. >> they had the world in front of them, so much potential. >> reporter: tom llamas sat down

with three grieving mothers whose children were among the children killed. kimberly rubio's daughter lexi was just ten. gloria lost her daughter jackie and niece annabelle. they and other uvalde families have been calling for stricter gun laws and are angry that no measures have been taken to prevent 18-year-olds from buying assault weapons in texas. >> guns are idolized, that's more important than children, our children. >> you think guns are more important than children in this country? >> yes. >> when did you come to that realization? >> the day my daughter died. >> reporter: and the community still searching for answers about that day, when it took police 77 minutes to enter the school and stop the shooter. the ripple effect has continued. school district police chief pete arredondo was voted out unanimously last summer, though his lawyers have said he is not at fault. there are local and national investigations into the delayed

response, and a state report found that the shooter left a number of red flags online but was still able to purchase $5,000 worth of guns and ammunition. >> you've got to look internally. you've got to hold up the mirror. >> reporter: parents demanding the school district take threats seriously in the future. >> we're still stuck on may 24th. i think it's time that we start doing something better. >> reporter: today educators say they have no choice but to move forward. >> we've done a whole lot in a short amount of time. there's still a lot of parents who don't feel safe. >> reporter: a community looking far fresh start with a new campus set to replace robb elementary, construction scheduled to begin this summer including a massive tree memorial for the victims being remembered today one year later. >> it will be a new school for these students. i should add when it comes to gun reform, during the conversations that we've had with the people of uvalde, especially a year ago when we're here for a full weekend of

conversations, when we talk about this, nearly everyone, whether they own a gun or didn't own a gun, nearly everyone told us they wanted to see the age limit change from 18 to 21 when it came to an individual who could own a semiautomatic weapon. you can still see the memorial behind me, this is as photos and articles of the victims that died that day. tonight there's a vigil scheduled, a candlelight vigil scheduled by the families, open to the public with a lot of restrictions in what is expected to be an emotional day here on the anniversary of that tragedy. willie. >> nbc's guad venegas, thank you very much. the new episode or the award winning pbs series "front line" focuses on the aftermath of the mass shooting in uvalde. after uvalde: guns, grief, and texas politics, maria hinojosa speaks to parents, professionals and community members about the questions that remain there.

maria joins us live in our studio. it's great to see you. it's a very heavy day. obviously you've covered this story so closely and reporting on it deeper for front line. you've called our attention, and we've been staring at it for the last ten minutes or so to a picture above the fold on the front page of "the new york times." this is a girl named caitlin gonzalez. she's dancing and listening to taylor swift like any young girl her age would be except she's dancing at the grave of her friend jacqueline who was killed in the shooting. what do you see in this photograph? >> oh, my god, here i am smiling and we're talking about uvalde, but i think that's part of the story, right? actually, this cemetery -- and i've been to many cemeteries -- and it's weird to say this, it's the most beautiful cemetery i've ever been to, and i've been to beautiful cemeteries on the day of the dead, but this cemetery 24/7, 365 has become a place of flowers, light, balloons, you go there, and it's a place now to be with the kids and the two

teachers who were killed. so to me when i see caitlin, i'm just like this is what we were doing actually. she insisted on taking us to the cemetery and we're at front line and latino usa, we were like do we really want to go to the cemetery and kind of do more exposure, and caitlin was like you have to come, and i understood this is where she goes to hang out with her girl, her best friend, jackie. and so we had incense and before you know it, she's running around the plot, and i'm smiling and we're laughing and her mom is hugging, and so the idea is that we have to look at uvalde and understand what a horror, but that the families, many of them are really working on transforming this horror into something else. there's a tremendous amount of activism. that's why caitlin is on the front page because she's become an activist. she has turned the horror and the rage of what she witnessed into speaking out and speaking

back to power, and it's really been extraordinary to witness. >> as you get into it, it's unique in uvalde and maybe different than other school shootings with the horror comes this outrage that perhaps their children's lives could have been spared if police had acted more quickly, if it hadn't been 77 minutes of them sitting outside. how are they grappling with those two emotions, the grief but also the outrage? >> the thing is is that how do you explain away the fact that you had heavily armed police with ar-15s themselves with shields who got there within the first three minutes which is when most of the killing had been done because this is what an ar can do, it kills quickly, but for 77 minutes, all of the narrative that we understand is that powerful police go in. they advance, i saw the video,

they didn't advance for 77 minutes. and it's because what we understand, what report on in the front line, when they realized that the shooter had an ar-15, that's when they said, oh, hold on a second. they realized he could take them out. and so they waited, and they just waited, and the families, how do you -- how do you respond to that? you can't really kind of organizationally say, well, this person -- there were kids screaming, and they waited. >> and it was a violation of protocol. i mean, we've seen it time and time again, police officers running at the risk of their own lives to the sound of gunfire. maria speaks in this episode of "front line" to dr. roy guerrero who's the only pediatrician in the city of uvalde, and he described to maria what it was like to respond to that scene at uvalde one year ago, the damage he saw firsthand caused by an ar-15. we should warn you, give you some pause here, some of details

of what you hear are disturbing. >> so it's may 24th, 2022, just talk to me about that morning. >> i get to the hospital. i know something's wrong because there's doctors and nurses running everywhere. there's a few people that are injured. they're stabilized. there's these kids with minor injuries, and then you start to wonder where everybody else? so i asked one of the nurses, all these kids i see here, is this everyone that's here? they're like, no, there's some deceased children in the back. so they took me back there, and that's truly when i realized the caliber of what these weapons can do to a child's body. so imagine a child who's decapitated. that's it. what else do i have to tell you? huge chest wounds where it seems like someone bore a hand through the whole chest.

the only con sew lance i have to myself, maybe it was so fast they didn't have time to suffer, that they went quickly, maybe not peacefully, but quickly. >> maria, just horrifying a year later, so difficult to imagine, but in some ways so important to hear what the wounds caused by the ar-15 are truly like, so the families have -- many of them, we've heard, we played some sound earlier, really emotional calling for changes to the gun laws there in the state of texas and around the country. there was a little bit. there was a bipartisan federal legislation passed last year, not nearly far enough most people believe. are they committed to staying with this cause? is this something that will shape the rest of their lives? >> i have to tell you that i think they are committed. caitlin's mom, gladys gonzalez told me this has made my life hell. therefore, i will make governor greg abbott's life and the

politicians who stand with him hell. caitlin is 11. she's just starting in her world of activism, but if you know ewe uvalde. it's a city, a town where there's a history of activism. 1970 was one of the longest student walkouts in american history, they walked out because even though uvalde is an hour away from the u.s./mexico border, it's a majority latino town. in 1970 if you spoke spanish at robb elementary school, you would be paddled, you would be hit with a wet ruler. they spoke out, walked out. it was in time magazine, news week because they walked out against this injustice, and this horrible shooting is bringing back the history of uvalde. it's not really a surprise to me that caitlin has become an activist and i believe will probably remain one for the rest of her life. it's part of uvalde. >> maria, that clip of the

pediatrician you interviewed was just so powerful and i can't help to think of all the children like caitlin who they survived but they saw what the ar-15 did to their friend, to the children next to them. how are they dealing with the trauma in the aftermath? how are parents dealing with that aftermath too? >> so uvalde is a mental health desert. there was one psychiatrist for the whole town. so i would hope that this would mean that mental health is like a major issue, apart from gun restriction, which is what the families, some of them want, the advocacy around mental health. caitlin, for example, right now, she has to travel from uvalde to san antonio every week to go get the therapy that she needs that is working for her because even though the governor said there will be free mental health care for everybody in uvalde, it's not turning out that way.

and it's not necessarily the mental health that they need. so some parents like caitlin's mom, you know, are very adamant on the mental health and taking care and doing therapy, but there are other families like we know our own families who are like we'll be okay. we'll be okay. it's going to be okay. and it's like, no, actually, the entire town needs to be doing major kind of public therapy, music therapy, art therapy, bringing this city together, which it's divided. there's no doubt that uvalde is not a unified town. it's a divided town on many issues, but on this particular issue, they could bring the community together and try to do some town, city healing. so it's going to be an uphill battle and a lot of people are still in deep, deep trauma. you know, i got ptsd after 9/11. the most that i felt my ptsd, which was, you know, 20 years ago or more was being in uvalde and just connecting with this trauma, and also telling them you're going to be okay.

you've got to do your therapy, take it seriously. we do heal. it's just a long process. >> they need that help for sure. this is such an incredibly powerful documentary. it's called "after uvalde: guns, grief, and texas politics" premiers next tuesday on pbs at 10:00 p.m. eastern, also available to stream on front line's website and on youtube. maria hinojosa, great to see you as always. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." more "morning joe. t this view. or the 200-year-old tree in the backyard. or their neighbors down the hill. but one thing they did know is exactly how much they'd pay. because vrbo is different. you see the total price up front. of course, it's good to leave room for some surprises. boo! ♪ i'm barbara and i'm from st. joseph, michigan. i'm a retired school librarian.

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that was a preview of the upcoming new season of the award winning podcast "a slight change of plans" creator to help listeners understand who we are and who we've become in the face of the big change. maya joins us now. she served also as a senior adviser in the obama white house where she founded and served as chair of the white house behavioral science team. it's go ahead to have you on. i'd love for you to share with our viewers the story of exactly why you started this podcast. >> it's wonderful to be here, mika. this podcast definitely has a very personal origin story. i had a formative experience with change when i was a teenager. i was an aspiring concert violinist, finally saw some potential to maybe go pro one

day and then a sudden hand injury ended my career just in a moment, and i felt so disoriented by the change and so unprepared for how to deal with it because my identity had been so tethered to the violin for so long that i wasn't sure who i was or who i could be without it. and so the goal of a slight change of plans is to empower us all to navigate change with a bit more equanimity and wisdom by learning from people's stories, by learning from scientists and becoming more comfortable with uncertainty. that is a staple part of change, and it's what makes us so uncomfortable. there's a fascinating research study in cognitive science that shows that we are more stressed when we're told we have a 50% chance of getting an electric shock than when we're told we have a 100% chance. so it's pretty wild. we'd rather be certain that a terrible thing is going to happen than to have to manage with any uncertainty. i'm hoping that a slight change of plans can be a source of

wisdom for people as they're navigating the big curve balls life inevitably throws our way. >> this is a wildly popular podcast. you're being humble. you went to juilliard. you weren't just any violinist. you were able to recover from that hand injury to go on a pretty nice run yourself. i won't embarrass you with all the accolades, but you can look it up. i want to talk about the new season of the podcast, but also the episode that i think really introduced a lot of people to your podcast, which was the one last year about loneliness. and it is something that people have started to talk about a lot more in the last couple of years. there are metrics that show being alone can be as damaging as being obese, all these things, it's unhealthy for you. what do you think it was about that topic that sort of blew up and became this viral sensation. >> it's something we can all relate to. loneliness is a state of mind. it's not really about your environment and how many people

you're surrounding yourself with it, and i'm so grateful to the u.s. surgeon general, dr. vivek murthy or shining a light on loneliness and elevating it to the status of an epidemic. one thing they taught me on this episode is that when we're feeling lonely, it actually puts us into a compromised state of mind, a state of mind that sabotages our ability to form meaningful connections with people. it perpetuates the state of loneliness. this happens for a couple of reasons. one, when we're in a lonely state of mind, we tend to look inwards. we tend to focus on ourselves, and that can be somewhat off-putting for other people, right? it can also lead us to feel like maybe we're not worthy, maybe we're not valuable. so it's very easy for ourselves to tell ourselves a story. maybe the reason i'm lonely is because i don't bring value to people, i don't bring value to the world. that can be quite disspiriting. >> another one of your topics, it ties in with that,

self-compassion, and you dive into why we ten to be less compassionate to our own problems, even if we tend to be a compassionate person to others. you talk about what you learned with that topic. >> when i first dove into compassion research. i myself was a skeptic, what is this feel good nonsense, is this just letting me off the hook and not requiring that i take responsibility for the mistakes that i've made? but it's actually quite the opposite. we know from the research on the science of self-compassion that self-compassion is far more motivating than shame or self-blame. it leads us to be more accountable for the mistakes we've made, and i think one finding in the self-compassion work on loneliness as well and it's kind of counterintuitive, an antidote to some of these feelings of loneliness is acts of service. when you think about being in a lonely state of mind or being really self-critical, we think we should look inwards and

problem solve. when we look outwards and focus on helping others, what that can do is instantly help us with other human beings centered around this common goal we all care about achieving. and it can also signal to our minds that we are, in fact, valuable, that we actually do bring worth and value to those around us. >> purpose. >> purpose, yes. >> at the beginning of the segment, we played a couple of clip, not the one from the professional pizza enthusiast. that's a great job. the other was a champion debater. your conversation with him was about debate and getting your opinion across but also about listening. tell us what he said. >> yeah, so i think when we think about the world champion debaters, we think about that charismatic presence that goes on stage and has wonderful oratory skills and is wonderful at thinking on their feet, and beau reminded me that actually listening, active listening is at the top of the list. listening is not just the virtuous thing to do. it's actually essential in order

to move the conversation forward. when we talk about listening, what that really means is not simply playing a silent role but actually investigating the other person's point of view, drawing into the light their full set of views, and the reason why this is so important is that we will never be able to convince anyone to change their minds unless they feel that their concerns and their, you know, whatever issues they have with your line of argumentation has in some way been responded to. so again, we sometimes come to debates and think here are my five talking points, but actually a more effective way of engaging in discourse is to be a really thoughtful, attentive listener. i loved that reminder. i think it would make us all better at the disagreement table . >> if they feel they've been heard and seen, they might come around to your point of view. >> people are attuned to whether you're naturally curious about their point of view. we can pick up on that in conversation. when you display that natural

curiosity, walls go down. people are much more receptive to answering your questions and having that open mind. >> good lesson for our politicians who might be watching this morning: this is just a small taste of the podcast. you can see why it's so incredibly popular, the new season of "a slight change of plans" debuts on monday, june 5th. you can get that wherever you get your podcasts. maya shankar, thank you so much. great to see you. >> thank you so much for having me. coming up, senate minority leader mitch mcconnell has a message on the debt ceiling standoff saying, quote, everybody needs to relax. senator chris coons joins the table to weigh in as the default deadline is now just eight days away. days away

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regardless of what may be said about the talks on a day-to-day basis, the president and the speaker will reach an agreement. it will ultimately be passed on a bipartisan vote in both the house and the senate. >> senate minority leader mitch mcconnell in his home state of kentucky yesterday trying to ease fears about a possible debt default by the united states, with just eight days to go now before the deadline laid out by treasury secretary janet yellen. joining us from new york, a member of the foreign relations judiciary appropriations and small business committee. he's also chairman of the ethics committee and serves a as national cochair for president biden's re-election campaign. the last few weeks some rosy optimism, we heard it again yesterday from mitch mcconnell. you're suggesting that the time for that is over? >> we are very, very tight to the shortest amount possible to finish a deal, write a bill, introduce it in the house, give them the time the speakers promised they'll have to read it, pass it, send it to the

senate, have us pass it, send it to the president's desk. eight days would be right through without a single problem. if you look back for the number of votes it took for speaker mccarthy to become speaker mccarthy, he has almost no running room. he will be relying on a significant amount of democrat votes. this deal will have to be one that republicans and democrats can vote for in the house and senate. there's still demands on the table that are never going to get the kind of democratic support they deserve. this isn't a fight between one party that's serious about reducing deficits and one party that wants to spend and spend. this is about paying trump's bills. it's about making permanent the trump tax cuts, that's part of the house package, which would cost 3.5 trillion, and it's about paying the debts already imposed. this is about responsible governing, if we don't do this, if we actually default, which we've never done, every american will feel it almost immediately.

if you've got a mortgage, credit card, car payment, student loan, you're paying more for that. if you've got retirement savings, if you're in some muni fund, stocks and bonds, that's going to lose value immediately. internationally this will be a gift to putin and xi jinping, it would hurt us on the world stage. we don't do this every year. i had a ceo of a major company in my office last week who said don't you guys do this every year. i said no, we come close to not pasing our appropriations bills on time. we have short-term government shut downs. that's inconvenient. this default, which we've never done, we've only come close once before under obama when republicans controlled the house, it permanently cost us more to borrow as a result of that one incident. if we break this barrier eight days from now, we have lasting, harmful consequences for americans. >> i think part of the problem is that the people watching this

show, people out in the public, they hear that optimism. just like that ceo, they'll get a deal done. this happens, they'll get to the 11th hour and something will happen. just look at the clock, it's getting real tough to see that. >> a lot of observers have said when the markets start panicking, that's when we need to worry. they haven't yet. they've so far been calm. white house aides think it might take up to 100 democratic votes to get this thing through. when do you think the markets might start panicking or if not the markets, is there something else that's going to get lawmakers' attention to actually get this done? >> the most important forcing mechanism is what happens on june 2, on the 2nd of june, 67 million americans get their monthly social security checks. 90% of americans over 65 and they all vote and they all know how to reach their senators or congressmen. 90% of americans over 65 get a monthly social security check. when they find out they're not getting that check, our phones will light up like a christmas tree. the republican party of today is

not a governing party that listens to the business round table and the chamber of commerce. they're listening to donald trump who ran up a lot of this debt and who is cheering on default, which is profoundly irresponsible. we will all of us listen to senior citizens who pick up the phone and call us and say what do you mean i'm not getting my check. june 1 the payments go out to doctors for medicare and medicaid. june 2, the payments go out to seniors for social security. >> there's some nonstarters that republicans are proposing like making the trump tax cuts permanent. what are concessions that you think democrats might be able to make to get this deal so we don't default? >> one of the things that's been put on the table is a spending freeze. we have inflation, so if you have a freeze, if you continue our spending at the current level for another year, that means a 5% reduction in everything that's available for education and housing, for humanitarian relief and for our

department of defense and our veterans. if there is a freeze for more than two years, if there's a decade freeze, which is what's proposed in the house budget plan, that is a significant cut in what we have available to spend at home and abroad to make america stronger. they're also proposing additional work requirements beyond anything that's been proposed or enacted even when republicans controlled the entire federal government. that's a nonstarter for democrats. i do think there are ways we can work together. if we have revenue and spending on the table, we'd be having a full conversation. this isn't a debate between a party that wants to reduce the deficit and a party that wants to govern and solve problems. this is a debate between an irresponsible party that wants to ruin our standing in the world and hurt americans at home and a party that is willing to have a discussion about our spending this year and next year. >> you've got to get serious and moving with eight days to go. before we let you go, you are the co-chair of the 2024 biden presidential campaign, florida

governor ron desantis hopping in the race at 6:00 tonight in a twitter conversation with elon musk. your thoughts on that and what kind of a real threat you view ron desantis to be, not just to president biden but first to donald trump. >> sure. i'm not going to get into the republican primary, but the polling certainly shows that over the last couple of months as ron desantis has passed and signed into law bill after bill in republican-controlled florida to prove that he's more trump than trump, his standing has gone down and trump's standing has gone up. despite the legal challenges the former president has faced. i don't think he'll be a formidable threat or challenger. we'll see. that's what the american people will decide. i think his choice of announcing on twitter with elon musk is an interesting choice and suggests he may think he can bring the same voice to twitter and to the american people that donald trump did. i doubt that's going to prove to be the case. >> we will see, senator chris coons of the great state of delaware. thanks so much, appreciate it. >> thank you. and before we go, i've

waited this long to ask you about the celtics. hanging on, hanging on. is there any part of you that believes they're going to come back and win this series? >> so i've already talked myself into it, willie. obviously. i was so disheartened by game three, they were blown out, looked like they quit on the court. game five is at home. suddenly it's 3-2. all the pressure at that point is on the heat in miami game six, you get to a game seven, anything can happen. sitting last night courtside, derek jeter and alex rodriguez who blew a 3-0 series lead. >> i knew you'd get a yankees shot in. >> that was terrific. >> that does it for us this morning, we'll see you right back here tomorrow morning, for now yasmin vossoughian picks up the