we'll hope you join us tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. eastern. sarah mcbride is going to be our special guest. the first transgender person elected to congress. we discuss her plans for the state and country. follow us on social media and reminder, we are now on blue sky. give us a follow there, too. velshi continues our coverage. good morning, ali. good morning to you. my dry cleaner did yeoman work. i have the shirt and jacket from last saturday, but the tie, because i got up and watched michael. he has a solid tie. i won't get in trouble for this. >> you look good, baby. >> i like it, ali.

okay, see, i think i'm color blind. i didn't see the brown in the jacket. >> little brown and blue. i have all of the colors today. no one can be mad. whatever color you got, i'm wearing today and i got the michael steele pocket square. let's see how it all works out. i'll see you on blue sky. have a good afternoon. see you tomorrow. "velshi" starts now. ♪♪ ♪♪ good morning. saturday, november 23rd. 58 days until donald trump's second nauginauguration and how administration is taking shape. we have nine new cabinet and administration picks. all of them announced in the last 24 hours and since last night, scott bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager for treasury secretary. dave weldon, who endorsed the

debunked idea that vaccines cause autism to head the centers for disease control and prevention. scott turner, former pro football player, and motivational speaker to head the housing and urban development. sebastian can gorka having ties to neo-nazi groups and forced out of the first administration as the telling of the new appointments and consequential is this man, russ vought. the co-author of, i hope you are sitting down for this, project 2025. he is going to lead the office of management and budget. it was a few months ago that project 2025 was oxic to the bid that he and his members of the campaign were forced to deny it repeatedly. in july, trump posted i know nothing about project 2025. i have no idea who is behind it and disagree what they are

saying and some of the things t they are saying are restick less ridiculous or abysmal. i wish them luck. that lie was repeated by trump campaign officials so the deeply unpopular project 2025 would not derail the presidential campaign. now that trump has been elected, he is appointing the architects of project 2025. people who already have deep ties to trump to key cabinet level posts. case in point, the russ vought announced last night as the director of office of management and budget. a role he held in the first trump administration. vought say prominent christian nationalist. he is the author of one of the key chapters about how to enhance the powers of executive office in large part by

dismantling the state. splashing budgets and eliminates the independence of regulatory agencies. he also has been in charge of preparing a secret playbook for the first 180 days of the second term overseeing executive orders. all of those plans are in service of making the powers of the presidency stronger and more centralized and it end the backing of trump and allies. steven miller said it is a transformative pick. he described vought the guy for the last four years developing the plan to take down the deep state. miller, as you know, is another supporter of project 2025 who is set to join the incoming administration. this time, he's going to be the deputy chief of staff for policy. the group miller founded america

first legal served on the project 2025 advisory board before jumping ship before the public scrutinized it. besides, those have been joined the administration. carr, the chairman of the federal communications commission who wrote the chapter in project 2025 about the fcc. one of the appointed was tom homan who will serve at the border czar. he was the acting director of i.c.e. who carried out the family separation policy in the previous administration. ratcliffe is a contributor to project 2025. he has been tapped at cia director and ambassador to canada. and incoming white house press secretary appeared in a training

video associated with playbook 2025. the transition team is using the ex-tensive data base which has been referred to as a conservative linkedin to look for potential hires. kevin roberts, the president of the heritage foundation, which authored project 2025 called jd vance one of the leaders, if not the leader, of the movement. apparently project 2025 is not nuclear anymore. despite the denials, the architects of project 2025 will soon be inside the white house. for more on this, i'm joined by joins vance of the northern district of alabama. she say columnist and co-host.

also joined by speelzmichael st which is a host on "the weekend" here on msnbc. michael, i remember i had project 2025. i was talking about it every day. people were trolling me on social media. you idiots. trump said this has nothing to do with him. of course, that didn't make sense then because it was full of trump people. it certainly doesn't make sense now when you look at the actual appointees who were actual trump people who wrote chapters in project 2025. many of these things may now come to pass. >> many of these will come to pass, ali. the reality of it is, ask yourself a simple question. why write a 900-page tone or contribute to the 900-page tone with the folks on the screen there, the contributors, were

write the pters and verses, why write the ward and delay it because it got toxic and now embrace it? why do all that not to implement the very thing that i spent my time developing and writing and putting in place as a foundational instruction manual, if you will? so, yeah, they got the heat. we did on our show brought that heat early in this process. people focused on it. then the naysayers and the negativity bombs came out and said, no, no, no, we would never do that. we are all about agenda 47. we put that up on the web site. that was the bait and switch to move it off of project 2025. folks, here it is.'s now coming. it is the foundational recipe for what this administration is going to do.

there are large elements that will come into fruition on january 20th shortly after the president is sworn in with executive orders and implement the firing of federal employees and launching the mass deportation process. it's all baked there, ali. what more can we say at this point other than we gave you the 900 pages, folks, we told you what was in the document. now on january 20th, guess what they're doing? page by age, putting it in play. >> joyce, let's talk about russ vought. he has been chosen to return as the director of the office of management and budget. it's an important position. it is also a big red flag about what the administration's plans are. give me a sense of this guy and how he could help achieve up

ending the federal government. >> well, i think up ending is a good word, right? the portion of project 2025 that vought's chapter is in talks about taking back and seizing the reins of the executive branch. this is expanding the notion of a powerful president who overrides the federal agency which overrides the will of congress which sets the agenda for the agencies. anyone who is not in government may not know how powerful omb is. this is setting up russ vought to be trump's right-hand man. his job is to implement policy and to use the purse strings to control people who don't want to fall in line. in that sense, he has the ability to be an enforcer. this is someone who is deep in the policy aspects of project 2025 which was written by sort

of this loosely arranged cloak yum of 100 different conservative groups to set force a new vision guided by christian principles. vought is a krigschristian nationalist. there is an ppetite to change t direction because of the powerful position he will hold if he is confirmed. >> michael, polls from earlier this year, show project 2025 was deeply unpopular. anybody who read it, hated it. of course, it's a 900-page document, so not a lot of people read it. donald trump makes it disappear. he did what trump does. he gas lit us and said he didn't have anything to do with it. oh, my god. he told us he is going to do it. he's going to do it now or is

that baked into the cake? people assume i've just chosen this guy over the other candidate and whatever they do, they do. tell me how this plays out. >> i think -- i think it's a little more of the latter than the former. i think for a lot of folks u you know, they discounted the -- the efforts around project 2025 because they had greater concerns. you know, the price of rent, the price of gas, their economies. their personal economies outweighed their concern for a battle plan to strip away their rights and their -- and their opportunities in this -- in this economy, quite honestly. they didn't see it that way. that is why it was easy for trump to gas light and pretend to know jack about project 2025. people are like, yeah, yeah, i don't know what it is.

it's 900 pages and i'm not reading 900 pages. what i'll say is the media was not helpful here. they were as dismissive as trump and his surrogates were outside of your show and my show and of a handful of others who consistently and persistently said here is a big dot. off of this dot are a lot of veins that will impact your life. there was no that reinforcing message. it was easy to be dismissive. now the test is when the implementation starts on january 20th. when the doj and the department of education and the department of commerce and treasury, omb and other agencies start to implement these strategies. how do we talk about them? what do we say?

there can be no surprise in the room when it happens because we have spent the last year telling you here it is. >> you had kevin on the show telling you it was real to your face. it's -- it's hard to deny this stuff. joyce, you are another one who has been on. back in august, you had a post on substack of the denial of project 2025. it is so important that project 2025 is one of the few times that trump has backed down. for a man who usually doubles down and keeps going no matter how unpopular or crazy, trump's reversal on project 2025 is remarkable, unquote. to put that in context, you thought it was amazing he would even bother to say i'm not connected to this. >> it was. it was really a spectacular reversal. i actually at the time thought it was a good sign.

it showed trump could be forced to respond to popular disapproval. at the same time, we understood when trump said he didn't know anything about project 2025, he was simply lying. the connections were all across the board. they included his relationship with heritage foundation folks and speaking at heritage foundation and telling crowds heritage was putting together the plan he would implement in his next administration. ultimately the lesson here may be for the public. we may need a refresher course, as surprising it is to the three of us, on the fact that donald trump will lie. he will lie in an outright fashion as he did here about project 2025 back in august and if he thinks it will get him out of trouble. the public's job for the next four years is stick to the truth and steadfast to the truth. it's not going to be fun. i think it's going to be a difficult job, but the reality is that donald trump has to be

held accountable and the last folks standing left to do it is the public. >> thank you, friends. joyce vance is the contributor and columnist. michael steele is the co-host of "the weekend" here on msnbc. coming up, the oklahoma school superintendent issued a directive to show a video of himself praying for donald trump. it is, indeed, weird and bizarre and dangerous and part of the wider moment to even trench christian nationalism. president biden announced 91 years of the holodomor which killed several thousand ukraines. up next, i'll talk to nbc's richard engel in kyiv where the war against ukraine is rapidly intensifying. nsifying

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vladimir putin says russia's use of the nuclear capable inter immediate it ballistic missile is a threat to the west. fired at the city of dnipro. he said it was due to the use of the british missiles to strike deep inside russia. in a straight forward threat, putin said russia has the quote right to use the weapons against the military facilities of the countries allowed to use weapons against our facilities. meaning america and great britain. putin said russia is ready for any development. there will always be a response, end quote. putin said the new missile

cannot be intercepted. the u.s. officials say the missile carried conventional warheads, throw it can carry nuclear weapons. all of this comes as moscow is fighting to reclaim territory in the russian region of kursk which ukraine captured over the summer. russia is making slow and small and steady gains on the front in eastern ukraine and continuing the attacks in ncluding in odesa and kyiv. the city of kyiv closed this week due to a quote threat of significant air strike. and the weapon against which it cannot defend itself. this is the first time since the start of the war that parliament has canceled a session. that includes during the early days of the war when russia advanced into the suburbs of kyiv. joining me now in kyiv is the

chief correspondent richard engel. richard, this is a development in the longstanding story. you are in kyiv and the area in government establishments. it is uncommon. when an air raid siren goes off in kyiv, people don't take it seriously. they carry on about their day. something has changed. >> reporter: vladimir putin issued a threat and it is good to be with you, ali. it is too long and back talking with you on the air. so, yes, this city has been attacked for two and a half years regularly. what changed was this hypersonic missile. what was different about the missile was the speed. according to vladimir putin, it can fly mach 10. ten times the speed of sound. ukraine said the fire was detected at 11 times the speed of sound. we're talking about a very, very fast ballistic missile, intermediate range.

did not go very far this time. it might not have had any kind of warhead on it at all. it didn't cause casualties. putin described it as a test and came back on television and said the test was successful and that now these missiles will go into full production and full military production and the next use is in combat conditions. it sent a message. it sent a message to washington, it sent a message to the biden administration as the biden administration escalates in one of its final acts before donald trump takes office, it was a message to this city that was received. you mentioned yesterday the parliament was closed. parliament was closed because of the missile threat. the missile that ukraine can't stop. the president zelenskyy's office issued a statement saying that the president is still working as normal and is going to his office and performing the duties, but will take shelter if necessary if there was an air

raid siren. they wouldn't give that kind of ssurance unless something has changed. from putin, an escalation, but the message at the biden administration, don't go too far because we have the technology that can be armed with a nuclear weapon. >> richard, the biden administration is escalating. they gave ukraine permission. >> reporter: everybody isses escalating right now. >> is biden thinking he would like to give ukraine the upper hands by the time he leaves office expecting that donald trump and republican congress will not? they will withhold aid? what do you think is happening here? >> reporter: uh, yes. that seems to be clearly hang happening with the biden administration. we didn't just see this situation to authorize ukraine to fire deeper into russia. we saw this a few months ago

with the new by lateral security agreement with the biden administration and president zelenskyy. talk about nato funding and in the final act is doing all it can to flood this place with weapons and give them the best possible chance and best battle field position that they can be in before biden leaves with the expectation that president trump could force some sort of cease-fire deal, as he promised, by putting that supply of weapons and cutting off ukraine making them more amenable to go to the negotiating table. >> all right, my old friend, i know you know how to stay safe. you are staying in a place they are sending interceptable missiles. >> reporter: the message was directed where you are, to the u.s. >> missiles are going to you.

>> reporter: this is a global conflict. >> thanks, my friend. richard evening the in kyiv, ukraine. up next, i talk john stavridis over what the recent military moves mean as former president trump returns to power. mer president trump returns to power. so comfortable you'll wish you had more. visit bombas.com and shop our big holiday sale. have you compared your medicare plan recently? with ehealth, you can compare medicare plans side by side for free. so we invited people to give ehealth a try and discover how easy it can be to find your medicare match. this is pretty amazing. i can go on a vacation with this money. i have quite a few prescriptions. that's why people call us. we're going to compare plans, and i'm gonna try to get you as much bang for your buck as possible. that's great. this one here covers all your prescriptions, your doctors as well. oh, wonderful. i have a hard time with this.

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joining me now is former supreme allied commander john stavridis. he is the author of multiple books, including the novel of the united states navy. admiral, thank you for being with us. i want to pick up from my conversation with richard. in addition to president biden's decision to allow ukraine use these american made attack ems

in russia, biden reversed course allowing the ukrainians to use. in the summer months of 2022, just months into the war, the biden administration ended a trump era policy allowing the use of the land mines. talk to me about that. this is certainly an escalation in this war. >> no question, it is. really, the history of the biden team's approach here has been cautionary. let's take our time. let's wait until we send the tanks. let's wait until we send the air defense. let's wait until we send the f-16s. now at the very end portion of this, they are in my view, opening the flood gates of the missland mines, both of which w be important but not definitive in the course of the war. ali, if you go back one click

earlier, what probably pushed this over was the arrival of the north korea troops. 10,000 north korea troops. richard used the phrase global war. this is becoming a global war. i think that is what precipitated opening the use of a-tak and anti-personnel mines. bottom line here, as trump team starts to populate and moves in, it's quite probable we will see a negotiation. so, on our side of that firing line, we ought to do everything we can to get the ukrainians in the strongest possible position if and when that negotiation begins and i think it will probably in spring of 2025. >> you make an interesting point because while everybody has been arming everybody, iranians arming russia and west and nato

arming ukraine, north korean soldiers on the ground in disputed area, not disputed, but russian territory has changed the game. you wrote in a piece that ukraine and russia can find peace with a dmz. demilitarized zone. tell me about that. >> if you think back to the end of the korean war. the conflict moved up and down the korean peninsula. part of the key to getting to a cease-fire -- and by the way, north and south korea are still in a technical state of war. it was a conflict. getting there created a demilitarized zone meaning five to ten miles between the forces where there were no combat operations and the dmz in the

peninsula in north korea and south korea. it would be by russia or international peacekeeping force or nato troops and russian troops. you can think of variance here. the idea is get the sides part geographically. i think that has some saliance and part of the conversation when the negotiation begins. >> admiral, thank you for talking to us. admiral john stavridis at nato. coming up, the same group that seeded the case that got roe v. wade overturned is now looking into the separation of church and state in public schools. i might be surprised how much progress they've already made. we'll have that story next. eady. we'll have that story next ot ea. chase ink has supported us from studio one to studio three. when you start small, you need some big help.

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i want to bring your attention to a crucial story playing out in oklahoma right now which has become ground zero in the escalating battle over religion in public schools. the oklahoma superintendent ryan walters iron ssued an email of himself praying for the president-elect trump. he encouraged his students to join him in that prayer. this is aimed at the office of religious liberty and patriotism housed in the department of education. walters claims the office will

carry out the trump educational agenda, including the freedom to pray initiative. the directive sparked backlash and several districts in oklahoma refusing to comply with the order. the seven districts have the backing of the state's attorney general who is a republican. a spokesperson for the office said not only is this ed ict uneven nforceable unenforceable. walters crusade to inject this into public schools is not new and comes at the time when the oklahoma educational system is second worst in the country according to u.s. world report of public education. just hours after releasing his prayer video, walters' oklahoma education department announced the purchase of more than 500 bibles to be used in advanced placement government classes.

apparently, they're not just any bibles. the bibles are the trump bibles. walters describes the bibles which cost $25,000 as an academic and lit either resource for public schools and the first step to providing bibles for every classroom in the state. the source of the funding for the bibles remains a mystery, even to republican state representative mark mcbride who is in charge of the committee on education including he did not authorize the purchase of bibles. walters' crusade is part of a campaign to reshape america and involves a slate of actors, including the alliance for defending freedom and the christian non-profit that led the charge in overturning roe. it is actively working to demolish the wall with the church and state. the two-prong strategy and

paving the way for publicly funding religious schools is part of the effort to refuse nationalism into society. the first prong seeks to attack public education by ing christian symbolism in schools along with the curriculum. in louisiana, for example, a new law requires to display the ten commandments was blocked by the federal judge and will remain on hold until the case is argued in january. similar legislation has been introduced in at least six states. meanwhile, yesterday, the state board of education approved a bible based curriculum to take effect next year. a number of states have done so, including south carolina. the second prong that i was talking about seeks to create publicly funded religious charter schools, which are now seen as the first phase in the larger fight to do away with the u.s. department of education

which is the far right sees as a woke cartel. at the heart of the fight is the charter school in oklahoma. st. isadore catholic virtual school. it would be the first publicly funded religious charter school. the alliance defending freedom that led the successful campaign to overturn roe recently petitioned the u.s. supreme court to hear the case after the oklahoma highest court deemed it to be unconstitutional. st. isadore is represented by the notre dame initiative which is closely linked to the legal mind leonard leo who is the co-chairman of the federalist society and seen as the architect behind the supermajority. andrew slidel, how the supreme court is weaponizing religious freedom views this as a crucial

cross roads for the future of church and state separation. quote, schools are the last bastion and if they have become a target of christian nationalists. in 2022, they got a change in the personnel on the court thanks to leo. amy coney barrett was a law professor for 15 years and worked with figures involved with the school's religious liberty initiative. the same month, the school's clinic was launched, the supreme court overturned roe v. wade. the month later, the clinic funded a trip for alito for a gala in rome. this is a tight-knit group working to advance a christian nationalist agenda. the court has ruled in favor in 86% of cases. that is a sharp increase from prior eras. key decisions such as the 2022

carson v.macon case set precedents with voucher programs eroding the principle of separation of church and state. florida and texas redirected public fu proposals to teach christian history while banning books on racial injustice and lgbt plus themes are more widespread and expected to intensify. the founding fathers who experienced religious persecution crafted the first amendment where religious freedom could thrive without government interference. thomas jefferson wrote in 1802, i contemplate the act of the whole american people, which declared the legislature would make no law respecting an establishment of religion or free exercise thereof.

building a wall of separation between church and state. today, that foundational principle is directly threatened by far right forces who found a hope in trump's republican party like the oklahoma department of education and its leader ryan walters. if you look at walters' praying video, i might notice a mug sitting on his desk. a small detail, but one that signals the coming battle. inscribed on the member -- with kardiamobile, you can take a medical-grade ekg in just 30 seconds, from anywhere. and it's proven to detect three of the most common arrhythmias. yeah, before i had kardia i didn't know what my heart was doing, and now i do. it gives me great peace of mind. it's in my pocket all the time. it goes where i go. i never am away from it.

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before the break, we talked about the growing battle to dismantle the church and state in america's public schools. i'm joibd by the professor of law of new york. melissa, grast eat to see you.

this is a complicated issue. it really is about the supreme court balancing competing ideas that exist in the u.s. constitution. what we have seen in recent years is a shift toward one piece of this that defends, exercise of religion over the one that prevents the establishment of religion. >> are you you are absolutely r. it has two clauses that requires the government to do nothing to impede the free exercise of religion and one that says it cannot establish national religion. we had them in complete allow for free exercise of religion, but not look where the government is endorsing a particular religion. in recent years, the conservative super majority on the supreme court has pushed the free exercise logic to the outer bounds and collapsed the idea that the constitution demands

there be no establishment and a separation of church and state. we saw the case you mentioned earlier which says that if you are providing certain subsidies to secular schools, non-religious schools, you have to make the same to religious schools. we never decided that before. it is a case if you fund religion, you may run into an establishment clause problem because you are perhaps endorsing another over another. the supreme court says this is not an issue here. all of the cases you are teeing up if you can have the ten commandments in school or teach the bible in school, the courts try to strike a balance. they never said you can't teach the bible. they said it has to be in service of a secular curriculum. this is what texas is trying to disrupt. >> prayer is different from teaching the bible. >> exactly. they are trying to disrupt this entire settlement and tee up a long line of cases that

incrementally chip away or completely blow up to the supreme court. it is going to the 5th circuit and then the supreme court. >> the argument in favor of using the money that would go to charter schools, by the way, let's be clear, money would have gone to public schools, to fund charter schools that might be parochial schools is often framed within the defense of helping underprivileged children, including black children. >> yes. this is quite interesting. these woke warriors who hate the idea of teaching african american history in public schools or what not, none the less defend to expand the ranks to include parochial schools that racism is done. they have written about this extensively.

as a matter of racial justice, you have to expand the first amendment to allow these religious schools and charter schools. >> it is a strange piece of logic. we can agree a racial injustice is committed. >> a protection clause. >> the logical legal leap to use public school funding. >> we have seen this logic in other places. one of the arguments advanced about dismantling and invalidating abortion laws before dobbs was abortion was a species of racial genocide. to remedy a racial injustice. abortion was used to target black ommunities. there is a weird inverted racial justice logic that the right harnesses because they know it is compelling to some degree. it is now being used here. the question we should ask is if we are really interested in advancing racial he equality, w

are we unwilling to do it with the 14th amendment? why are we withdrawing abortion rights and expanding free exercise rights under the first amendment to achieve racial equality? those are big questions and there aren't terribly good answers. >> a lot of people don't understand what the department of education does because it is a political football. talking about dismantling it under vivek ramaswamy and elon musk, that might happen. that is a body that tries to remedy some of the injustices. >> yes. >> we have the effort in the courts and prayer in the school and we've got the potential dismantling of the department of education to maintain some level of equity in the public education system. >> they are all joined up. to be clear, these are all rooted in the same ethos. dismantling the department of education to remove the authority and put back in

localities like oklahoma, for example. we are seeing that. the department of education has been a backstop. it has been a force for integration mandates post brown. it has been enforcing title iv. we will dismantle this and move this all to local schools. what many people miss is this is also the government agency that enforces and provides funding for high poverty school district s through title i. it providers services for students with learning isan builds. they would have the funds instead of ieps or students with lerj disabilitying, they can use them for trump bibles. it is about removing and redistributing the government resources to different places. here places that have a real ideological/religious bent.

>> the good news is people can take action on this because these are happening in your locality. all is not lost on this. melissa, thank you. professor of law at nyu and the strict strutty podcast. another hour of velshi begins after a quick break. begins ter a quick break.

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