is how a lot of political and media conversations go these days but opening our mind to the possibilities. my question tonight is what other ideas should we consider for our open mind series, because we are trying to open. you can hit us up as always at ari melber on any social media you like to use, twitter, instagram, facebook. you can post a comment are there big ideas that you think we should consider spotlighting in the open mind series or experts? are there other experts who have a bundle of ideas or different ways of thinking about the world that we ought to welcome in to our conversation here on msnbc and give them an open mind let us know at ari melber. "the reidout" with jason johnson filling in is up next. tonight on "the reidout" -- >> we're going to deliver. we're going do get the best people in the world. we have the greatest business

people in the world. we don't use them. >> we're going to use our smartest and our best. we're not using political hacks anymore. that's the people that do these deals. they're political hacks. >> we want experts our finest people. we don't want people that are b-level, c-level, d-level. we have to get our absolute best trump hired all the best people, now many of those same people, his former attorney general, defense secretary, national security adviser, and others say he endangered national security. also tonight, new reporting seems to answer the question as to why it took so long for the justice department to begin an investigation into trump's plot to overturn the 2020 election. plus, republicans' loyalty pledge they're basically asking all of the presidential candidates to support trump if he's nominated again, and probably pardon him, too. i'm jason johnson in for joy reid, and we begin tonight with justice delayed. today, of course, is juneteenth. marking the day in 1865 when

enslaved black people in galveston, texas, learned they were free, two month after the end of the civil war and more than two years after president lincoln's emancipation proclamation took 150 years, constrt work from activists ato recognize tha juneteenth had to happen this is typical for a country that takes too much time to address its problems we'll have more on that coming up speaking of justice delayed, ironic but fitting on this day, according to a damning new report from "the washington post," we're learning that in the face of a once in a lifetime danger to our democracy posed by donald trump, the attorney general and the director of the fbi also delayed, allowing trump's role in instigating the january 6th attack to go unscrutinized for more than a year according to the post, quote, a weariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much

evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of trump and those around him all contributing to the slow pace. attorney general merrick garland and the deputy attorney general lisa monaco charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust, you know republicans and the department, while some prosecutors below them chafed. feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by trump and those close to him but the report notes that the delay in looking directly at trump started in the period shortly after the attack on the capitol. quote, acting u.s. attorney michael sherwin, senior department officials, the top deputy to the fbi, chris wray, quashed a plan from prosecutors and the u.s. attorney's office to directly investigate trump associated for any links to the terrorist attack premature, according to five people familiar with the decision instead, they insisted on a methodical approach, focusing first on rioters and going up the ladder

a strategy embraced by garland, monaco, and wray according to the post, the leaders at both agencies held on to the ladder up proosz to avoiding trump, even as evidence emerged that trump and husband allied had schemed to overturn the election weeks before their henchmen laid siege to the capitol. the approach could be to avoid allegations of partisanship. the report added, inside justice however, some have complained the attorney general's determination to steer clear of any claims of political motive has chilled efforts to investigate the former president. quote, you couldn't use the t word, said one former justice official briefed on prosecutors' discussions. the post also sheds new light on the ways the house january 6th committee may have forced doj's hand by investigating the scheme to install fake electors to

deliver the election for trump news reports that the committee was looking into the matter as well as exhaustive reporting by rachel maddow inspired new urnl aenls at main justice. one person directly familiar with the doj's interest in the case told the post, if felt as though the department was reacting to the committee's work as well as heightened media coverage and commentary. only after they were embarrassed did they start looking, the person said. joining me now to discuss is paul butler, former federal prosecutor, msnbc legal analyst, and professor at georgetown school of law. and alley mistal, correspondent for the nation, and author of allow me to retort, a black guy's guide to the constitution, available now in paperbook paul butler, i'm going to start with you you were a justice tell me after you read this article what the impact on an investigation could be when the

head of the department of justice is basically saying, i want you to do this with two hands, one toe, and an ear tied behind your back >> when you slow walk an investigation of the former president for violations of national security that led to the worst attack on the u.s. capitol since 1812, when you slow walk that investigation, you slow walk the rule of law. you slow walk justice. the u.s. attorney's office had teams investigating deaths that happened on january 6th and teams investigating the pipe bomb that had been planted near the capitol, and teams investigating groups like the proud boys and the oat keepers but doj officials at the very top made them slow walk the investigation of trump, even his connection to people like roger stone, even though roger stone was tight with the oath keepers. he was tight with donald trump

so the post says that prosecutors weren't even allowed to follow the money on how the insurrection was financed because of political concerns about who might be implicated. so jason, we'll never know all of the costs of this delay in terms of losing leads, emails, and text messages get deleted after 15 months, which is how long it took for the fbi to get seriously involved in focus on donald trump after 15 months, witness memories fade. but one cost is right now, the doj officials hadn't held trump to this different standard, he would have been indicted months ago. not just for mar-a-lago, but also for january 6th so ironically, in trying to rise above politics, merrick garland has enhanced the politics because now there's a federal prosecution of a presidential candidate smack in the middle of a presidential campaign. >> elie, i just want your

immediate reaction to this article. just the core idea that merrick garland was basically, as paul butler is saying, telling everyone to slow walk. what was your first reaction having observed this entire process over the last two years. >> my very first reaction was to quote the late great denny green. they are who we thought they were you want to crown them, crown them, but they are who we thought they were. what we thought they were, were operating a two-tier system of justice where as they put in the report, they were going to start at the bottom, at the low level people who couldn't defend themselves, like too many prosecutors are all about this using the office, their incredible resources to put the screws to low-level people who can't defend themselves and without having the courage to go after the top level people that from the january 6th case were

these maga barbecue sauce idiots to go attack the capitol they didn't want any bit of that i know this is difficult for democrats to hear because we like institutions. we once believed that good people are trying their best but putting your faith into garland, he's a mirage you're drinking sand when you support this guy, because as we have seen in this report, and not just that, for his entire first two years in office, first year in office, let's say, what we saw is a person who was unwilling to do the work everybody knows that if you are a ref, and you swallow the whistle, and you don't call a foul, you're not being neutral you're not being fair. you're helping the team that fouls. i'm an old school knicks fan if you don't blow the whistle, you're helping anthony mason and charles oakley and bill laimbeer

rough up everybody if you blow the whistle fairly, that's being a neutral arbiter, and merrick garland never was willing to do that >> you know, elie, i want to follow up and take this to charles. i think this is really key it's like, part of what was also discussed, and we see it in the report, interviews were delayed for months some of that, paul, was because there was difficulty in staffing you had a new administration in. there were hold-ups with appointments and everything like that some of the delay is because republican resistance to filling the department of justice. the problem that i see with that as an excuse for the delays is when you see that the republicans are specifically trying to stop you from staffing yourself to investigate, that should make you more aggressive, right? not less aggressive, or paul, am i missing something? i'm not a lawyer >> you have it exactly right, jason. and at this time, people in the military and congress and the

judiciary were pleading for an investigation. there were those three former generals who wrote in "the washington post" that doj needed to act urgently because if no leader was held accountable for january 6th, there would be another insurrection the house panel, the chief investigator for the house panel privately reached out to doj to alert them about what they were finding about how trump had tried to pressure doj and michael pence to overturn the election that fell on deaf ears then that federal judge, david carter, said donald trump and john eastman had attempted to overthrow the government, that it was obviously illegal and that doj needed to step up its responsibilities jason, none of that worked it took almost two years >> you know, i want to play you some sound by a pair of incredible analysts and get your thoughts on the other side

>> we have so much information here about what appears to be conspiracy we have people sending text messages back and forth saying hey, want to take over the government sounds cool. let's do it. legally, are there ways we could be moving faster >> what i see is congress, which is an oversight, which has an oversight function, doing with deliberate speed, as quickly as they can, putting together a case, and the fbi doing nothing to go get these people that is my question and that's my problem i think it all comes back to joe biden's decision to appoint merrick garland, a slow-moving institutionalist to the department of justice. >> now, the guy on the right has great hair made a point two years ago that merrick garland probably wasn't the best, most aggressive person to do this also, i want you to speak to this idea that the report also

implies the doj really only started moving because they were getting embarrassed by the january 6th committee meetings last year. it was the public, it was congress doing the oversight that you were talking about that made them say, oh, my gosh, jesus is coming, i guess we should get busy. >> which is obvious. we said it in real time. cassidy hutchinson is the hero of the story it's cassidy hutchinson that put the fear of god into the doj, into merrick garland, into lisa monaco and made them act there's another kind of more hidden bad guy here who is getting away a little light. that's, if you look at that clip, what did i say where's the fbi? jason, i cannot explain how fbi director chris wray still has a job. chris wray botched the brett kavanaugh investigation, botched the larry nassar investigation, let all of these people on january 6th just walk out, scot free there were immeasurable resources that had to be spent

recapturing the people that chris wray let walk free on january 6th, and now we see in this report that once again, in that interim from january 7th until merrick garland takes over in march 2021, who is basically in charge? it's chris wray, and he does nothing. i don't know what he has to do to lose the job. like, does he have to slap chris rock like, what does it actually take for chris wray to lose a job behind his stuff because he is not -- he has not been a good fbi director based on any objective metric. >> that is the most effective reference to emancipation that i have heard on juneteenth thank you very much, ellie mistal and paul butler thank you for starting off "the reidout" tonight three of trump's former national security appointees tell him how they really feel about his classified documents hoarding and his bumbling attempts to explain it all away. "the reidout" continues after this break

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remember how donald trump boasted as president he would hire only the best people? well, what does it say that some of those very same people are lining up to condemn their former boss for his mishandling of classified documents as well as his really, really bad defense of it? >> it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk.

>> it was very disturbing. we could see in the course of meetings with him, intelligence briefings, decision meetings that sometimes he liked to retain things, and it became a practice just to make sure that we got them back in as many cases as we could. obviously, we failed in many cases. >> the legal theory by which he gets to take battle plans and sensitive national security information as his personal papers is absurd just as wacky as the legal doctrine they came up with for having the vice president unilaterally determine who won the election >> let's not forget while in office, those trump officials were happily complicit in letting trump destroy america and undermine democracy. we have to look at what they say now with a grain of salt, but it's hard to write them off as democrats or deep staters or rinos even though the maga terrorist movement is framing them as just that, and with that taken into consideration, it doesn't diminish their key points especially bill barr on the absurdity and wackiness as he

puts it of the alleged legal doctrine on which trump is basing his defense according to trump, a president has the absolute right to take whatever documents he wants. as the new yorker's amy davidson sorkin rites, what it comes down to is the former president claims if he just calls a document personal, rather improbable or not, no one can even question him about it such extreme legal theory, he says, come from the same type of people who convinced trump in 2020 that their big idea was that vice president could use his position presiding over a joint session of congress to toss out the electoral votes of several states and that to do so would be constitutional. of course, it wouldn't have been constitutional and all we remember is how this turned into a terrorist attack joining me now to discuss is joyce vance, former u.s. attorney, msnbc legal analyst, and professor at the university of alabama law school.

now, joyce, i'll start with this obviously, trump's legal justifications are a bunch of nonsense, but what does it say for further prosecution and further investigation now that he's been indicted that many of the men and women who worked with him are now turning around and saying, yeah, man, this guy was nuts, he was wild. this had nothing to do with the constitution does this have an impact do these interviews become evidence brought against him in prosecution? >> i think these comments we're hearing speak more to the court of public opinion than to the case that prosecutors are building and it's difficult, and jason, you point this out, to listen to these comments and to wish that bill barr had had a modicum of that common sense wisdom that he now seems to have suddenly come into possession of when he resigned from the justice department and wrote a glowing letter about the accomplishments of the trump administration and his pride in serving under president trump.

i think none of these folks are johnny come lately to the awareness that the former president's longterm handling of classified information was dangerous, to say the least. they may have had information about facts that could have been helpful and relevant at some point. but now they're just preaching to the choir >> joyce, this is a thing that sort of also gets me about this. this core theory, this idea that well, because i'm the president, i can take whatever i want i mean, is he like nic cage from national treasure? if the president decided the emancipation proclamation, if he decided the constitution or any other important document was just theirs, that they can just walk out with it, makes no sense. what could have been on the mind of people who were telling him these things were they just telling trump lies and figuring, this will make him feel better, and 20 minutes later, he's like, okay, how do we do it? or were they true believers in absolute nonsense. >> i'm going to engage in a

little speculation here. we know trump is fixated on this notion that bill clinton had tapes in his sock drawer well, those tapes were something akin to a personal diary, and clinton designated those as personal records, kept them at the end of his term in office. so trump is thinking, well, gee, i should have just designated everything as personal records maybe i magically did in my head so i get to keep everything. and the fallacy that's built into that approach, that's going to form his defense, is that you cannot designate top secret materials that were written by other people, by folks in the intelligence community, as personal records they simply don't have that character. >> joyce, i want to play you some sound from trump's latest interview where he tries to explain why he didn't just give the documents over to begin with when the doj was asking and the archives were asking >> because i had boxes, i want to go through the boxes and get

all my personal things out i don't want to hand that over and i was very busy. as you have sort of seen >> according to the indictment, you then tell this aide to move to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you had fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn't. >> before i send boxes over, i have to take all of my things out. these boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things >> look, joyce, i'm not going to question everything trump says but i figure if you felt there was something port in your boxes, you would fiebt a better way to handle them than sticking them in a really tacky bathroom in mar-a-lago with curtains that you clearly got from marshall's. does it make any sense for him to be claiming that he needed to go through these boxes and that was the only reason for the delay? is that the kind of thing that is going to be a part of his legal defense or is that something he wants to say to the fox news audience? >> well, i think that's a confession that's what a prosecutor would call that, a confession to retention of classified materials. and an effort to prevent their

return to doj. so as a prosecutor, i would be delighted to have that tape. i would probably play it to a jury at trial and use it as evidence to convict the former president, much of the evidence against him are words that come out of his own mouth >> so when we talk about the sort of amount of classified documents, one of the complications is that you almost have to provide security clearance to trump's lawyers in order for them to look at some of the evidence, but the judge has ruled that trump can only see the evidence when he is with his lawyers because he's not trustworthy enough there's a possibility that he could take discovery materials home with him. how rare is that for a judge to essentially say, i don't even trust you with your own evidence, so you need to leave it here behind a closed locker like you're going to target and you can't get to the toothpaste? >> so trump has certainly given judges reasons to doubt his

ability to respect the boundaries that are typically imposed on discovery in a criminal case. here, it's a little bifurcated this order we saw today is a pretty standard order and it relates to rule 16 discovery, that's the nonclassified discovery. there will be an entirely different set of rules that will apply to classified discovery, and as you point out, jason, the lawyers will have to get a security clearance before that discovery can be provided and the former president will only be able to look at it in the presence of his lawyers, in essence, they'll be held accountable for his proper handling of it >> you know, joyce, we started the show today sort of talking about the blockbuster report that there were delayed in the department of justice, that this could take a while if we're making a time estimate for this current investigation, you know trump is going to try to delay as much as he can he's going to do as many interviews as he can what do you think might be the timeline we're looking at for this investigation talking 18 months, two or three

years? when do you think we might actually see a trial begin and a conclusion given the depth and breadth and importance of this case >> well, there are a lot of variables at play here and the key one is how the judge will handle any motions that are brought. we know for classified information, the law requires that the 11th circuit treat any appeals that are taken from the judge's order on an expedited basis. they showed us when they considered the mar-a-lago matter they know how to expedite a case when they need do that look, this is not a complicated case, as prosecutors view cases. it's complicated because of who the defendant is but if you were just looking at this, this isn't a case that goes to trial in 70 days there are complicated issues certainly, the classification matters will slow it down. getting clearances, figuring out how to handle the information, letting the judge rule pretrial, sorting out anything that needs

to be appealed that's going to necessarily extend the timeline, but there's no reason this case couldn't be tried before the election. i think that's what we're all looking at right now, and wondering about. that's why the reporting in the post, i think, is concerning, given that there is really just a little bit more than a year, can we get there >> joyce vance, thank you for joining us tonight on "the reidout. really appreciate it coming up, the rnc wants all republican presidential candidates to pledge to support the eventual nominee no matter what but some of them are saying, but what if it's trump that's next. jason johnson on "the reidout. when you sleep more deeply, you wake up more energized. introducing purple's new mattresses - our unique gel flex grid draws away heat, helping you fall asleep faster. it relieves pressure for less "ow," and more "ahhh."

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for the past seven years, the republican national committee has been a subsidiary of trump incorporated. from dismissing the january 6th insurrection and the events that led up to it as legitimate political discourse, to paying for trump's legal defense. it should come as no surprise to anyone that the rnc is demanding a pledge of loyalty to the party's nominee. polls show trump is leading, but not all their candidates are treating that pledge with the seriousness the rnc is demanding. over the weekend, chris christie told cnn he would treat the pledge the same way donald trump

did in 2016. trump signed a similar pledge, and then walked back on that commitment >> i think the pledge is just a useless idea, jake by the way, in all my life, we never had to have republican primary candidates take a pledge we were republicans. and the idea is you would support the republican whether you won or whether you lost. you didn't have to ask somebody to sign something. it's only in the era of donald trump that you need somebody to sign something on a pledge >> christie has repeatedly said he would not support trump if he's the nominee he did say he would sign the pledge in order to participate in the debates which is one of the rnc's requirements christie's campaign has focused on stating the obvious, which is donald trump is a three-time loser trying to launch a tired rerun of his first campaign. and polling suggests christie's condemnation of trump might be resonating with a few voters

joining me now is charlie psychs editor at large of the bulwark and an msnbc contributor charlie, i am looking forward to this conversation immensely. look, chris christie does not impress me right? chris christie impresses me about as much as any other politician that has sold their soul to donald trump and suddenly magically found some backbone because they have ambitions to run in 2024 but, he does appear to be getting some momentum by eking out the space as the guy who will actually take it to trump right off the top, how far do you think that can take him? it's not going to be the nomination how far do you think it's going to take him being that guy saying trump is a paper tiger? >> i don't know, and he doesn't know either. you're right, he's not going to get the nomination, but he can still be a very consequential candidate. donald trump is the apex predator of the republican party. if he can draw some blood, get the apex predator to stumble,

maybe somebody else will come out of the weeds as well because chris christie is quite frankly doing something no other candidate is doing he's taking the fight to donald trump. he is giving as good as he's gotten so far. by the way, on this issue with the pledge, i thought it was interesting that asa hutchinson, the former governor of arkansas asked the rnc, can we at least clarify i'm not pledging to support someone who is a convicted felon, and the rnc said no, a pledge is a pledge. we're okay with a convicted felon, we're okay with someone who is convicted of the espionage act. that gives you an idea of how deep in donald trump's back pocket the rnc is and how far they're willing to take this pledge >> look, none of these people are necessarily soft they have all run for office, they have all been elected, all these republicans who have announced to run for office. if they collectively come together, like a group of orcas or something, if tay all came together and said we're going to

attack donald trump, you might get him to do more than bleed. you might get him to self-implode you might get him to make mistakes that may not prevent him from getting the nomination, but would possibly hobble him from being a successful candidate. do you think that's something that a nikki haley, a tim scott, or anyone else might think of doing collectively >> jason, let me introduce you to the modern republican party no, they're not going to do this that is the key question because the republicans have a collective action problem, which is that no one wants to go first. they all know who donald trump is they all know all of the baggage. they know what would probably happen in 2024 but nobody wants to be the first one. if they collectively all said, you know what, this man is completely unfit for office. he's deluded, he's deranged and we cannot nominate somebody in milwaukee next year who might be wearing an ankle bracelet, that might make a difference. as we saw back in 2016, they're

not willing to do that everybody is looking for somebody else to take the bullet and they're -- nobody wants to lead so this is why what chris christie is doing is at least interesting because he's stepping out does that create more of an opening for the other candidates to be more critical? we don't know yet. >> this is the third cycle in a row you had a fairly diverse field of republican candidates i don't think we're ever going to see an era again where candidate running for office for either major party are all white. but what's been interesting is despite having tim scott, despite having nikki haley, republicans don't poll particularly well with black, brown, latino people, basically non-white folks in america i want to play audio from nikki haley and gets your thoughts as to whether or not this kind of messaging is part of the problem? >> there's one thing that bothers me the most is this

national self-loathing that has taken over our country the idea that they say america is bad or that it's rotten or that it's racist you elected me the first female minority governor in history america is not racist. we're blessed. >> you were the governor of a state where a man went and massacred nine people after praying with them and you didn't want to take down the flag that he was inspired by you don't have much to say when you hear these things, it goes over well with the crt crowd and conservative white people and racists and the proud boy types, but is this going to get latino voters in the suburbs of austin? is this going to get working class african americans living outside of cleveland is this kind of messaging going to go anywhere or is it really just for the ears of the white

primary voters that republicans pretty much tend to have a lock on in a general election anyway? >> democrats do have a small problem with working class voters, including latino and african american but this kind of message, though, i think is going to drown that out because what you have from ron desantis and nikki haley and even tim scott is the necessity of checking the box there is no racism, that we solved that problem, we had the civil war and everything is fine what's interesting and ironic on juneteenth day is this is a day where america remembers this part of history and celebrates it, at the very same time the republican party seems very deeply invested in not remembering that history not going back, taking it out of the schools or downplaying it. i was watching charlie kirk, who is a big trumpist, on social media all day, just melting down how everybody should be at work. this is crt inspired holiday

unfortunately, that has put them into a box there was once an effort by republicans to be more diverse, to reach out and nikki haley was one of the leaders of all of that but now there is this gravitational pull that you have to check the boxes you have to talk about being woke and crt being anything that makes you uncomfortable about race i don't see how they get out of that box >> charlie sykes, thanks so much for breaking down the current state of the gop still ahead, the bitter struggle behind the push to make juneteenth a national holiday. we'll be right back. it's jason johnson on "the reidout. she found it. the feeling of finding the psoriasis treatment she's been looking for. sotyktu is the first-of-its-kind,

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♪ a beach house, a treehouse, ♪ ♪ honestly i don't care ♪ find the perfect vacation rental for you booking.com, booking. yeah. today, we're celebrating juneteenth i mean, i'm still working but i'm celebrating juneteenth it was on this das in the year 1865 when union army major general gordon granger wrote in a galvinston texas and issued general order number three delivering the news to the last enslaved americans that they were truly free. of course, that news arrived two years five months, and 18 days after president lincoln's emancipation proclamation. the holiday has been celebrated by black americans for decades now but was only officially made a federal holiday two years ago. first, since martin luther king day. it is a celebration of freedom, but also this year a stark reminder about the hostility

black americans still face more than a century and a half later. especially as the country sees a rise in white supremacist hate groups as well as new laws in florida and other states that restrict the teaching of black history and racism or ban books that are written by black authors. joining me now to discuss is one of the leading voices who fought for years to make juneteenth a federal holiday. congresswoman sheila jackson lee of texas congresswoman, great to speak to you this evening i always ask this question up front. >> good to be with you >> what did you do today thank you so much. what did you do today to celebrate juneteenth >> well, the real question is, and so good to be with you, thank you for your great leadership and hello to joy. happy juneteenth, everyone what did i do the 16th, 17th, and 18th here in texas that is to reflect and to honor juneteenth specifically today, i started out in galveston, texas, to be able to be with those who are in fact reminiscing and remembering

both the pain of slavery and, yes, the joy, if you will, of general granger coming to issue order number three it should be very clear, 2 1/2 long years that those who gathered at that spot in the brutality of slavery had to wait because texas would not adhere to the order of president lincoln. so he said, i don't know what's going on down there, but general granger, you need to go. guess what, he brought with him union soldiers who were black. it was the bloodiest war, but people were willing to engage in this violent war to end the violence of slavery. so from there, of course, i am back into houston, celebrating at the antioch baptist church, church founded by jack yates, his great granddaughter was there. he was a freed slave who came to texas and was reenslaved because his family had been sold to texas. so this is a great texas story

but the real point of it is, i want everyone to know, this is america's holiday. and america's holiday is not just for black people. it is about freedom, and it is about democracy. and the very fact that we have a holiday should be in fact the basis upon which we ignore the banning of books about our history, ignore orders of eliminating diversity, culture, and equity this is an opening for america to talk about its history, to reflect upon what transpired, and also to reflect upon a commission that will study slavery and talk about repair. this day, i'm now at a place that one would not expect, a synagogue where we'r >> people working in the fields but again, a beautiful risin community today. i want this to be the holida

for the entire nation abou freedom, liberation, and the ending of slavery. >> congresswoman, i want you t respond to a sort of cynical internet response. this is not me, there ar people, and sometimes loud voices in the african american community who say hey, we go juneteenth because president biden went to tulsa and didn't want to give reparations this is crumbs, this is not real way of addressing long-standing systematic ills, you know, you have black peopl work for free for 400 years an you give them one extra da off. how do you respond to thos kinds of criticism that ofte come from within, within our own community about the valu or significance of juneteenth? >> i understand the pain and conflict in this because this was a painful time. and it was not a short time. it was centuries of bondage. but i think the way i explai this is that the past, the job the mission, the revolution, i not yet over

it is not over in houston wher we look to equity, equality, and inclusiveness, not over in texas, not over in state around the nation. and for everyone to think so they are certainly sorel mistaken this holiday should've com about. it's the first holiday in 38 years, it's the only federal holiday where slavery is a conspicuous theme of thi holiday. at the same time we ar fighting to ensure votin rights because it is impacting texas and many others, the voting rights asked act must b passed certainly issues dealing wit equity, dealing with socia justice and criminal justice all of that must continue. no one is ignoring that. and the commission, there is not a day that i am not engage in a discussion to ensure we d have h.r.40, a commission to heal, to repair, to restore,

and to place slavery and its trajectory at the highest leve of study in the federa government let me be very clear, we shoul be studying about api, latinos we should be starting abou southeast asians, africa americans, anglo's, america is a mosaic in no one should be ignored. but certainly, slavery has bee something that has been longed to be talked about i believe juneteenth, commemoration of freedom, an our commemoration today, we li candles, we prayed, and we thanked and recognized those who had lived, who were born and died and never saw freedom i think that is a legitimate powerful reason to hav juneteenth, as well as thi inspirational rally on freedom and democracy. and that the work is not finished, it is stil continuing and we will go on and on and o

until freedom comes in it' totality use juneteenth as a catapult t the challenges of the future and bring people from al backgrounds, americans this is an american holiday, not a black holiday. it is about what happened in america. tell the story and make it real that's what juneteenth i about. >> congressman sheila jackso lee, thank you so very much. that is fantastic. we've got to go to a quick break. before the break i wanted to mention, that this weekend als marked a somber anniversary. eight years ago, last weekend, nine black churchgoers wer assassinated by a whit supremacist during a bible study at the mother emmanuel church in charleston south carolina among the fatalities was a senior pastor. state senator, and my personal friend - the first political campaign ever ran was for him back in 1997 he taught me about life, community, and faith

and his death wasn't just personal tragedy but a political one. republicans like nikki haley and lindsey graham tried t downplay the attack, i wrote now is not the time to avoid politics we must engage an attack white supremacy in al of its forms and be willing to call out the political leaders who dog whistle it int existence for electoral gain those words still ring tru toda our hearts go out to him, hi wife, his children we'll be right back. voltaren. the joy of movement. ♪♪ tired muscles and joints were keeping me th from my family.t. now i can be myself again. blue-emu supports healthy muscles and joints. blue-emu, it works fast, and you won't stink. my mental health was much better,

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carson, joy is back with a really big show tomorrow with special edition you don't want to miss this, of the readout as we approach the one yea anniversary of the u.s. suprem court overturning roe v. wad joy will be joined in dallas texas by vice president kamala harris for discussion of reproductive rights in america where they are, and which ones we have left and what a path to federal protections could look like an why abortion rights will defin the 2024 election and beyond you do not want to miss this one. set your dvr's, get your famil together, get your kids who ar going to college to watch this with you so please join joy reid for one-on-one one year post roe with the reidout special tomorrow with vice president harris right here on msnbc