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he's not rationale. he is rationale not radical. president-elect trump defends rfk jr. his choice to lead hhs as kennedy tries to easy senators' fears over what will happen if he is at the helm of america's health care system. trump's assurances came with an asterisk, asked about the polio vaccine, it's not going anywhere, but added everything should be looked at. how can they not know? after a month's worth of sightings across the northeast and around the country lawmakers are stepping up the pressure on federal agencies to clarify who or what is behind them. a drone expert joins me this hour with his take on what's going on and take a look at this dramatic and deadly scene. that's half of a 400 foot long russian oil tanker nose up in the water after it collided with another tanker in a bad storm and torn in half. we have the latest that damage

coming up. we start with the test for republican senators and their willingness to put a prominent critic of everything from childhood vaccines to ultra processed foods in charge of america's health. donald trump's pick to head hhs robert f. kennedy jr. on capitol hill today, the person trump said he wants to, quote, go wild on policies covering food and medicine. but kennedy is expected to take a much more measured approach in dozens of meetings with lawmakers this week. the plan according to the "wall street journal" is to downplay controversial positions on issues like vaccine and emphasize areas where he and lawmakers tend to agree like promoting healthy food and preventing chronic disease. here's president-elect trump talking about kennedy a short time ago. >> i think he's going to be much less radical than you would think. he has an open mind or i wouldn't have put them. he's going to be very much less radical but there are problems. we don't do as well as a lot of

other nations and those nations use nothing. we're going to find out what those problems are. >> i want to bring in nbc's ryan nobles covering capitol hill, vaughn hillyard covering the president-elect from west palm beach, florida, sheryl stolberg is washington correspondent covering health policy michael steele is an msnbc political analyst and host of "the weekend." vaughn, what more do we know about how rfk jr. is approaching these meetings? >> he has dozens lined up and every vote will count for him to pass through this confirmation process. the difficulty for rfk jr. is on the vaccination front. it's not just a one off comment about skepticism or suggesting there was a link between autism and vaccines, instead this is a lifetime of work by mr. kennedy dating back to the '90s in which he has been at the forefront of

publishing books and other papers that have defended and argued that vaccines, preservatives in preservatives in them, are linked to autism and other diseases with other science peer reviews have found no such link. that is where this comes down to the incoming president of the united states, donald trump, here in mar-a-lago, in palm beach, florida, mere weeks before taking office, having named his nomination fors comi him and if kennedy is confirmed and if he will buy into the policies he put forward. that is why the vaccine skepticism kennedy has pushed is pertinent at this moment in time. listen to kennedy when asked by a reporter at mar-a-lago specifically about whether he believes that children should be required to have vaccines when they are attending school. take a listen.

>> i think everything should be looked at, but i'm a big believer in the polio vaccine. the salk vaccine. >> do you think schools should mandate vaccines? >> i don't like mandates. i'm not a big mandate person. i was against mandates. mostly democrat governors did the mandates and a poor thing in retrospect made a big mistake. >> it's notable, chris, he says he is against mandates to be clear there's no federal law on the books requiring vaccines for kids to attend schools. those are long-held state laws in all 50 states as well as washington, d.c., that require broad number of vaccinations for kids to be able to attend school. but what we've seen from donald trump is deference repeatedly towards kennedy on vaccines, and he said in this press conference that he would have kennedy prepare an investigation into

vaccines and present him with a report to make a determination of where the administration would go. of course these are questions that are going to be essential for not only democratic senators but republican senators when kennedy makes his way to capitol hill. >> so, michael, that is an interesting quote from the president-elect. i think he's going to be much less radical than people think. should people who are concerned about access to vaccines, who are concerned about sending their kids to school, if maybe other kids aren't vaccinated, should they take him at his word? >> no they should not. they should not. the plan has been articulated is to downplay the controversial positions of a man who has been on the record on these positions since the 1990s, as vaughn has aptly pointed out. you think that's going to change? you have 30-plus years of this belief system, this core belief system, that you're suddenly going to walk away from that in

year one of a trump administration when trump has more than embraced it by saying you can go wild in health care. the only thing donald trump doesn't want him to do is step on anything that hurts, you know, his particular transaction on oil and gas. that's his concern. so, you know, the plan is the lie. the plan is to go and sit in front of these senators and lie to them. and that's essentially -- oh, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. it's not going to be that bad. just as those same senators were lied to about the positions that supreme court justices from the trump administration -- nomination process would take on abortion. oh, no no. star decisis, roe versus wade is settled law. y'all need to understand what the plan is. the plan is to lie to get past

the post on this issue, to get the man confirmed. then if donald trump said he can do whatever he wants as long as it doesn't impact what donald trump wants to see out of the oil and gas industry. that's it. >> sheryl, rfc jr. laid out what donald trump expects from him. he wants me to do three things, one clean up the corruption at the agencies, particularly the conflicts of interest that have turned those agencies into captive agencies for the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry, the other industries that they're supposed to be regulating. number two, to return those agencies to the gold standard science empirically based, evidence-based medicine that they were famous for when i was a kid. and number three, to make america healthy again, to end

the disease epidemic and president trump has told me he wants to see measurable concrete results within two years. >> i mean, sheryl, to most americans they hear that it sounds good. clean up corruption in the agencies, use the gold standard of science, make america healthy again. but is the devil in the details? >> yes. absolutely the devil is in the details. let's pick those apart. first of all, make america healthy again. that does sound good and scientists and public health across the board are worried about the chronic disease epidemic. when he talks about rooting out corruption and regulatory capture, one thing he's not saying is in our system for better or for worse, the drug industry partners with government to bring vaccines, to bring drugs to market. the people who advise the cdc and the fda often have relationships. these outside scientists have

relationships with the pharmaceutical manufacturers. they are required to disclose those relationships. if you took all those folks off the vaccine advisory committees that recommend approval and guide recommendations on how to use vaccines, you wouldn't have the nation's experts in -- on that process because they all work with the industry. that's number one. when he talks about returning the agencies to the gold standard of science, i think what he is referring to here is this idea that all vaccines should be tested in placebo controlled clinical trials. in other words, half the people in the study get the vaccine. half get nothing. a saline solution. that's how vaccines been tested when there were no vaccines. but once you have a vaccine for a disease like polio and you're going to make a new vaccine you would never withhold that

existing vaccine from an infant. that would be unethical. when you hear a lot of talk about placebo controlled clinical trials that sounds great, but are you going to keep your baby from getting the polio vaccine so that baby can be an experiment to see if a new vaccine is better than the old one? probably not. >> yeah. cheryl, it's interesting, senator mitch mcconnell, wee rt suffers the effect of when he was a kid he had polio. he has strong and specific feelings about this. i want to quote him. efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed they're dangerous. anyone seeking the senate's consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts. where does this stuff come from in your reporting?

>> where it comes from is a lawyer who has represented mr. kennedy, his name is aaron siri, a new york lawyer, and he has represented vaccine injured plaintiffs. he's also representing a group called the informed consent action network run by dell bigtry, kennedy's campaign director on the campaign. siri, the lawyer, has petitioned the fda for withdraw of the polio vaccine on the grounds that it's not -- it wasn't subjected to a placebo controlled trial and as you saw, mitch mcconnell is up in arms about this. i think mitch mcconnell is really the senator to watch here. you also saw interestingly, the president himself or the president-elect himself say, you know, we're not going to touch the polio vaccine. that's a third rail for kennedy.

i will say while kennedy is not the petitioner in in this case to withdraw the vaccine, he has espoused the same ideas in the petition. in other words, he wants the vaccine to be tested against placebo. that's where all that concern is coming from. i think kennedy will probably downplay it as your other folks have said and we'll see if senators like mitch mcconnell believe him. >> well, let's see where we are with all this in mind. i wonder what you're hearing from lawmakers, particularly. inwonder if the main concerns are around these statements. if there's anything about whether or not he has the skills and experience to run an agency with 80,000 employees and a budget something like north of $1.7 trillion. >> i think the first stage over

his confirmation, chris, is about his controversial positions on a wide range of issues, not just vaccines. his position on abortion, which is not the same position as held by the majority of senate republicans who are going to be charged with this confirmation battle. he is very pro-abortion rights. the senate republican conference is very much not. it could have something to do with his positions on agriculture and wanting to overall -- the agriculture system. many senators in very agriculture states not very comfortable with the way he wants to overhaul the food processing system along those lines. before you can begin a conversation about whether or not he has the qualifications to run the day-to-day operations of an agency as vast as the department of health and human services -- for instance, he's had no experience ad ministering a program the scale and the substance of which the medicaid and medicare programs are which fall underneath the department

of hhs, you have to get over the hump of where he stands with these controversial issues. what is different with the rfk nomination versus what we've seen with pete hegseth and matt gaetz, for instance, is that there are one or two serious hold ups for many of these senators and the senators are going to vote no all kind of agree with the hold ups. with rfk jr. there could be a number of senators that have different reasons for voting no against him and we're going to have to see how this confirmation process plays itself out to get to a place of being comfortable with him and the answer may be that he's just going to adopt donald trump's position when it comes to these things. but that may be a tough sell for many of these senators, but again, we've seen a willingness to -- for these senate republicans to bow to donald trump and let the process play itself out. there's still a degree of skepticism as to whether they will stand up to any number of

these nominees as the process plays itself out. >> one wild card the timing of all this. we know the shooting of a health care ceo has brought up issues with health care coverage in this country. we know people feel strongly about it. gallup recently asked americans what they thought of the quality of health care. 44% rated it good or excellent. this is the lowest level since gallup started asking this question 23 years ago. i wonder if it could make it easier for senators to justify their vote for someone like rfk jr., who, you know, big picture, says he wants to make sweeping changes and who, as sheryl pointed out, within these different things he says he is tasked with there are some pieces of it. too many obese children or just making -- making americans healthier, that sound pretty good. >> no, there are. there's no doubt about it. the issue around processed food has been a conversation among

parents for sure and certainly those in the health care industry for quite some time to pay some attention to that is important. but as you started the conversation, you know, it really is about the devil in the details. what does it mean and how do you address what it means? and so those -- the aspect of that if you have any indication from, again, going back to what rfk jr. has said and how he will operate as the secretary of health in the trump administration when the president-elect says go wild and do whatever you want to do, don't touch this one thing, yuan -- you know, and now trump can't give you a clear signal when he says oh, yeah, i don't want to touch the polio vaccine, but everything's on the table.

well then is the polio vaccine on the table or not? is the rubella vaccine on the table or not? what other vaccines do children get that, again, as vaughn noted, is ad ministered by the states, not the federal government, required by the states, not the federal government. are you, mr. secretary, thinking about doing and having an impact on? there's a lot of that, chris, that comes into focus that sounds good, feels good, but at the end of the day the devil is more than a devil in the detail. you're talking about the lives of children and not just the children whose parents idiotically say don't vaccine my child, my opinion, just for the record, idiotically saying, i think you want to protect your child, but what about my child in that classroom. that's where this becomes controversial and very, very

problemic given the position of both of these men on how they're going to address the health care crisis that many families suffer now and could suffer in the future. one last little point, no one is talking about insurance companies. and what insurance companies are going to do when this vaccine program is deconstructed and children are no longer required to get these rubella or polio vaccines and the kids come down with polio? insurance companies haven't had to cover the equipment involved from the -- from the i ron lung to the leg iron these kids had to wear and the other issues that go -- that impact their health from polio. anybody going to -- who going to pay that? insurance companies i can guarantee you aren't going to put their hand up and go we got

you covered. that's not going to happen. >> i'm beyond that. the suffering that would go on is incalculable but something mitch mcconnell understand. michael steele, vaughn hillyard, sheryl, thank you very much. we have breaking news any moment now we are expecting an update from police in madison, wisconsin. they are investigating a school shooting at the abundant life christian school in madison. we know multiple injuries have been reported. maura barrett is following the latest report for us. what do we know? >> well, chris, we are waiting any minute now for the madison police chief to come out and address the media to give any updates. so i'm going to be watching that with one eye and we can toss to that. there have been multiple injuries but don't know much more information in terms of how many or the terms of injuries they're experiencing. we do know that this occurred just in the last hour and a half or so, a public safety alert

went out to people in the area at 11:20 central time 12:20 eastern time, an hour ago, and this is at the abundant life christian school in east madison, outside downtown madison, so it is within the city limits that's why the city police is responding. dade county is responding. we know police are actively investigating the shooting. active and ongoing investigation. they still have the surrounding roads blocked off. unfortunately as you know we've covered several school shootings i've covered an attempted school shooting in this same area, as police are locking down the roads, blocking off the roads, what they typically do is go through the school meticulously to make sure they haven't missed anything else. students are usually held off site. we don't have details where students are being held or if they are able to get in tact with their families. there is video of families to get in touch with their

students. this is a small school in the community. it serves about 200 families in the madison area. it's a 28 acre campus. we don't know any other details about security measures in place at the school as of right now. we should learn a lot more from this upcoming briefing from police. so that's what we know as of this moment. again, multiple injuries, but no details on whether it's children, adult, the shooter. there's still a lot of questions swirling just in the last hour as this all has been unfolding. chris. >> maura barrett, come back as you get more information. thank you so much for that. the kids were just a week away from christmas break. looked at the website. there are basketball practices for boys and girls scheduled later and now you have parents getting together at a reunification center having gotten word there was a shooting at their school, the abundant life christian school. what one parent just had to say.

>> my mom, obviously, she lives nearby and she watches my kids so she did give me a call that she saw a ton of police and, obviously, my daughter goes here, and my nieces and nephew, my sister, so she called me on the phone. she told me please remain calm. so i was already trying to mentally prepare. yeah. after a bit i was like okay, and she's like there is an active shooter at the school. had an inside source tell her. and i just bolted out, called my husband, and he made his way over here. obviously, i couldn't get in, but i went around the back to my mom's house and talked with her. and like i said, my sister is involved with the school so i was able to get a little bit of an inside take on what was going on, but she did tell me that they were okay. but -- >> your kids are okay. >> >> yeah. >> one mom who got at least some

good news her kids are okay. bethanie higman, whose kids and other family members are at that school. i want to bring in former secret service special agent and msnbc law enforcement analyst evy palm. sorry to talk to you where it is a terrifying situation for parents, terrifying situation for students who are there for the teachers and other staff members. it can be incredibly chaotic and understandably so. you've got little kids there because as we reported this is a kindergarten through 12th grade. police are walking to the microphone. so let's take a listen. this has been a combination of local police and sheriffs. >> the media is to our community, but the truth is today is a sad sad day. not only for madison, but for our entire country. where yet another police chief press conference to speak about

violence in our community specifically in one of the places that's most sacred to me as someone who loves education and to someone who has children that are in schools. so i'm going to tell you what i know. i'll answer any questions that i can. there will be a secondary briefing that our p.i.o. will let you know about. okay. today around 10:57 a.m. our officers were responding to a call of an active shooter at the abundant life christian school here in madison. when officers arrived they found multiple victims suffering from gunshot wounds. we train on this almost quarterly. the last time we trained on this as commanders was approximately two weeks ago. the protocols are simple. stop the killing, stop the dying, find out who is doing this. the officers did that. they did that adamantly.

we had officers from around the county and around the state that came in support of this particular incident. located a juvenile who they believe was responsible for this deceased in the building. additionally the officers began ad ministering life-saving efforts to anyone who was wounded and making sure that those persons were transported. what we know is that a total of about seven persons were transported from the scene to area hospitals for treatment. we know that at least three people have lost their lives, including a juvenile person. i don't have any other information about those persons who have lost their lives, and i'm not going to release that until we, of course, have spoken with family members and insure that they are fully aware of this tragic, tragic scene that occurred today. i want to thank all of the law enforcement partners and

community members that came out to help our friends at the atf. i've gotten calls from our friends at the fbi, state patrol, sheriff's office, the police department, our fire department, it goes on and on. because this is something that we all prepare for, but we hope we never have to do. as you can see, we have a unification center that was immediately set up where parents and guardians and loved ones and grandparents wanted to get information about their loved ones and we wanted to make sure that they were unified immediately so we were doing more than one thing at one time. we're still going through methodically clearing that school, clearing every vehicle, and making certain that there's no other threats to this community which we believe there are none. we immediately alerted our mayor's office and i've been on the phone with her and her

office constantly. we also alerted madison schools. we put the schools on lockdown. but there's no threats to the mms at this time. we wanted to make sure that we did our due diligence in this particular case. again, we're still going through collecting evidence, collecting information, making sure that our community is safe from what is a sad day for our community and for our country. and we have to do a little bit better. i don't have all the answers that you want right now. but i will tell you this, we have some of the best officers in the entire country, our desktives are amazing and we're going to work hard and go through the scene so we can piece together what exactly happened. again, there will be another briefing in about two hours and if i have additional information i will certainly let you know what that information is. again, around 10:57 a.m., officers responded to an active shooter.

they responded per our protocol and found the person who they believe was responsible who was down, deceased. we know that it's a juvenile. we know that there are other persons who have lost their lives. we know that we've transported about [ inaudible ] after giving them life-saving measures. it's important to know this too that about three miles from here is our training center. today, our special event team medics were in training. and so they got to practice in realtime. they left the training center immediately and came down here and doing in realtime what they were actually practicing for. and that's why training is so important and making sure that we can provide the best possible training and the best possible response to our community members. i'm asking everyone, to send your heart, your heartfelt wishes an prayers and thoughts,

yet again, to a community but this time it's my community. dillon. >> yeah. can we start over here with questions. >> chief, you mentioned you're a father, the police chief in madison, what emotions are you feeling after going through all that? >> to be honest with you i'm feeling a little dismayed now. it's so close to christmas. every child every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever. these types of trauma don't just go away. and we need to figure out and try to piece together what exactly happened. right now my heart is heavy for my community, my heart is heavy for madison and we have to come together as a community and figure out what happened here and make sure that it doesn't happen in any other place that should be a refuge for students in our community. >> what sort of gun related policies if any were in place [ inaudible ] the school have

metal detect tors. >> i'm not water the school had metal detectors nor should they have metal detectors. it's a safe space. it's a private christian school. it's not under the authority of mmsd and that's something we have to look into. >> of the victim, the seven victims, how many are students or teachers? >> i'm not going to give information about who the victims are, students, staff or parents, because we need to make sure that we can notify people. i think that's the most important thing before we go any further. >> are you -- >> police never fired their weapons? >> that is correct. i don't know if it's a male or a female, but the police department did not fire their weapons. thank you. >> three things you mentioned including the suspected shooter. >> that's correct. >> three total. >> that's correct. >> are the seven that was transported three fatalities in that? >> within that seven, yes. >> was the shooter a student at

the school? >> we believe the shooter was a student at the school. >> what can you tell us about the status of the other transports? >> we know that they range from minor injuries to life threatening. i know that's a huge, you know, spectrum, about us that's what we know now. and so we need everyone again to send your thoughts and prayers out to them. one thing i know we have some of the best medical care in the country here in madison and so we hope that everyone will recover but at this time we don't know. >> so we did just get an update from our command post, five deceased at this time, five injured. >> so total of ten. >> again, this is -- this is a ever-evolving situation. you know, just hearing that, what does that make you think? how does that make you feel? we have to do a better job in our community on a monday right, so close to christmas, that we're updating victims. and so there's a lot of work

that has to be done and we're committed to doing that work. we just ask for your patience. i think the most important part is the reunification again that we spoke about, making sure that those persons who were in the schools whether they're staff, students, or what have you are reunified and we have done that. i want to say thank you to our partners. our friends here from the atf. i heard the question about the gun. i don't know yet which is why we have a great partnership with the atf that will help us determine the origin of this gun and where it happened. i'm going to leave it at that and we will have another press conference. stephanie has the location. >> we're doing 2:30 at fire station 14 in their community room. 2:30, fire station 14. >> can you confirm the five dead does that include the shooter? >> it would. >> victims students teachers, a mix? >> we're not going to talk about that until we notify all the families that may be involved.

again, this is -- again -- this is an ever evolving situation and we're trying to figure that out. >> have the schools been cleared? >> the school has been through a secondary clearing. we're doing another one now with the help of bomb dogs just in case. we want to clear vehicles and things of that nature. we're going to take our time and we're going to go through and do everything we can. thank you very much and we'll see y soon. >> fire station 14, the community room. >> that was police chief shawn barns with the horrific news that we have seen another school shooting and in this case at least five people have died, including the shooter. the suspected shooter who they say they believe was someone who went to that school, was a student in the school. at least one of them, at least from the initial reports, was a juvenile. we don't know who the others were. it will take them some time to do the identification. five others injured.

let me bring in mara barrett, joining us retired atf special agent in charge and terrorism contributor, jim kavanaugh and former secret service special agent and msnbc law enforcement analyst evy pomporeis. i know that the folks at the secret service work with the department of education, for far too long, necessarily school shootings and how to deal with them have been an all hands on deck. we heard from the police chief they train just about quarterly to do something like this, just two weeks ago, commanders had another training. tell me what, as a professional, you heard that was important in that press conference just now? >> they gave us a lot of information, although there was some information they didn't share and historically u.s. secret service has worked with the department of education. one of the things they strive to do is prevent these.

they have gone to the u.s. secret service in the past and said can you help us identify these individuals beforehand. is there a way to prevent these things? are there any common factors? over the years the u.s. secret service has done analysis on these individuals of what to look for. a couple of things that were discussed in this briefing that were brought up, the police did advise that they found the suspect it sounds like from what he said already deceased. that tends to fall in line with what we see in scenarios like this where the shooter may die of self-inflicted gone gun wounds. it does happen in these situations if they're not faced with police, police may find them. you have to keep in mind that these shootings happen very, very quickly within seconds or minutes, so we're looking at five individuals. they're not telling us exactly who. you are looking at a school k

through 12. it was brought up if there were metal detect tors. a lot of schools don't have metal detectors and there is that psychological effect is it good to have plettal detectors in school. there's going to be psychological trauma for the students post this event. you have to understand it's not just a shooting itself, but it's the trauma and the psychological aftermath that the studentes go through. they're they're doing now up to three clearings. did their first clearing, going through the school. think about that process it's quite traumatic for the students how do they know it's police, how do they know it's safe. what should they be doing? having a second clearing looking at a third clearing. that's another interesting thing because he said they're doing a sweep of the area for explosives. so they want to know, did the shooter have any explosives? is there anything in their vehicle? are you going to go to the shooter's home to see if there are devices in the home? another thing it is a juvenile. and that it is likely a student

from the school. so now that begs the question, why? were there motives? did the student articulate in advance, tell anybody in advance, post it or share it? one common thing we see is that before we have a shooter engage in a scenario like this, they often share it with somebody in some way, shape, or form. they have put it out there. that will be another thing to look for in this scenario. >> we do know they will be talking to family and friends of the suspected shooter who, again, is -- is deceased, self-inflicted gunshot wound, because at least according to police, the police did not fire a weapon there. certainly they'll do analysis of any computers and any social media sites that he may have had. but on scene right now, jim, and we heard the police chief saying that we are going to work hard to find out what happened. what are they doing on scene toward that end right now?

>> well they'll do a normal forensic crime scene examination the medical examiner looking at the bodies. they're going to have to recover any projectiles that are in the bodies at the medical examiner's autopsy. they're going to determine how many rounds were fired. they're going to photograph the victims, the placement of all the bodies, placement of the killer. and then they're going to try to determine how he or she got in. you know, and then walk the whole thing back into what we call, chris, a psychological autopsy of the killer. in other words, going back 90 days, six months, or even more depending on what they're finding, to what's in the mind of the killer. because what you see in these cases so often is a suicidal ideation and you see here, it ends with a suicide. it's a suicide and homicide

together. and the person goes wanting to kill themselves, but they want to exact their revenge or send their message or get noted or become infamous while they're doing it. and there are signs of -- 77% of the shooters, we know, from the fbi study, leakage before the event happens. they tell friends. post it on the web. others hear of their intentions or say i want to shoot up a school or going to get even with these people, and you have a juvenile then you have firearms involved. atf special agents on-site, they will be doing an urgent trace of the weapon. but in half of the shootings that involve children like this, the weapon comes right from the home. the parents' weapon or, you know, even a grandparents' weapon or sometimes the child's weapon that's been given to them as a gift and they -- they just take the weapon from home and come to school and create all

this horror. so, you know, it's the same lesson we don't learn over and over. guns aren't secured in the home from juveniles who have, you know, emotions that they are not fully grown, not fully developed in their brains. they have all these emotions. it's normal to be emotional as a teenager. we all were teenagers. it's the way it works. but then when they have access to firearms, you know, that are unsupervised, you can get this. it's the same lessons. we don't want to learn them in america. >> we don't know how old the student might be because this is a full-level school starts at kindergarten through 12th grade. some of the things we may be learning and we should mention if you missed the press conference that the public information officer is expected to brief again we don't know exactly when. back to maura barrett, i understand the school is posting for the first time on its facebook page. >> yeah. they just posted a statement

asking for prayers, saying prayers requested. we had an active student incident. we are in the midst of following up and we will share more information as we are able. please pray for our challenger family. this is a private christian school serving about 200 families in the east madison area. it's a 28 acre campus. as you mentioned serves all grades. so this is something they are processing as police said that they quickly put up a reunification site for parents and families to immediately come and reunite with their children as they responded. police also said just in a matter of minutes of that very short press conference it started with one report of loss of life and then got updated in the middle of it and so we know that five people have died, five people have been transported to the local hospital with a range of injuries, ranging from minor to life threatening is what we were told. we don't have details on how many of these people are

students, teachers. the only thing we do know is that the juvenile that is believed to have been the shooter was found deceased by police in the school. the police chief emphasized that police did not fire any of their own weapons and i know you were discussing that as well and so this is something they said is still an active investigation, though they did emphasize they don't believe there's any further threat to this school or any of the public school district locations in the area as well but they're going to continue to sweep both the school and all of the cars surrounding in the parking lot to make sure there isn't anything that they might have missed. in terms of that next update from the madison p.i.o. we expect that to be around 3:30 eastern in the next couple hours. so we hope to get more information about the injured and deceased but they can't share any more information until they get more information to the families of those who have been affected. >> former assistant director for

counterintelligence at the fbi, frank figliuzzi. obviously, the key question for a lot of people is a very simple one in every mass shooting and it is why? it's a question that doesn't change the equation. it doesn't bring the people back who have been killed. it doesn't stop the psychological trauma that we've been talking about. but it is a piece of a puzzle that hopefully other schools, other places build on as we have been building on them for so many decades now to try to figure out is there a way, as evy was touching on, can we present this in the future. what are the questions you have in this early hour after this happened, frank? >> well, we don't know the age of the shooter slash student, and it appears to be a juvenile, and it appears to be a student. but we know this, wisconsin has a law that says you cannot leave

a loaded gun unsecured around a child of under age 14. we don't know this person's able, but we'll find out. that leads us to the question of the parents being charged, whiz is a trend now. virginia, michigan, and georgia, parents have been charged so we're probably headed there. as to the question of why, it's likely based on what my colleagues have told you there was leakage occurring, this young person may, if known to the teachers and faculty and students may have leaked his or her grievances, somebody, a counselor, somebody is going to say, yeah, i'm not that surprised. i'm not that surprised. things gets to the issue of the need for training of not only faculty and counselors, but students themselves to recognize the warning signs and indicators that someone around them is on a

path to violence. i know it's unpleasant to think are you suggesting it's part of teacher training or even school curriculum to recognize when someone is speaking in a way that endangers others? yes. that is what i'm suggesting. often there's a gap there in the incidents of private schools. particularly private religious oriented schools who often don't have the resources or have an ideology of it's not going to happen here. we're a nice quiet school. we're private. they may not have a school resource officer from a municipality or an armed officer. we don't know how this young person died. we'll find that out. but the why is probably known by somebody, maybe the parents even, and, you know, the who knew will get answered soon. >> so what are the key questions to answering that, at least

preliminary? what might they know at noonish, in madison, wisconsin? they knew the situation on the ground, obviously, there's no further threat. they believe the person responsible for this is down. so talk about how much they can do in the course of a day and how much information they can likely get? >> yeah. even as we speak i assure you a district attorney responsible for the madison area is helping law enforcement complete affidavits for search warrants. those will be served at the house. i wouldn't be surprised if there are already officers securing the home. they'll want to take devices, computers, laptops, they'll want to conduct a thorough interview of parents or whoever has -- whoever is a guardian of this young person. you know in this day and age as i mentioned with the possibility of criminal charges hanging over

the heads of parents or guardians, it's sad, but they have to think about legal representation. you know, am i getting charged? they will be asked questions, where was the gun? is it your gun >> was it secured? was it loaded or not? more importantly to get to your question, what's going on in the life of this young person? what's your insight here. similarly this should be done with his or her teachers and then, you know, depending on age appropriateness, even classmates interviewed who want to come forward and say what they know or don't know about this student. >> i wonder if time of year might have anything to do with it? is that one of the things they would look at, frank? >> look, as all schools, they were headed soon into christmas break. >> one week from today actually. >> yeah. everyone is stressed out during the holidays sadly. whether or not there was something playing out in the home, whether or not there was something playing out over grades at an end of a semester, we don't know.

but bringing someone to their flashpoint, there are multiple stressors and variables that are in place every single time. it's never just one thing. >> let me read you a couple statements that have come out in the last few minutes from the governor of wisconsin. i am closely monitoring the incident at abundant life christian school in madison. we are praying for the kids, educators and the entire abundant life community and are grateful for the first responders who are working quickly to respond and from senator tammy baldwin, i have been briefed on the active shooting at abundant life christian school in madison and my heart goes out to all those impacted. my office is in touch with local and state officials, and i stand ready to assist law enforcement and anyone affected. from the time those went out to the time of the middle of the press conference, we learned that what was initially believed to be a few people killed,

three, is now believed to be five with five people injured among the five, at least one juvenile and among the five, a juvenile found deceased in the building believed to be a student who is the alleged shooter in this case. evy, we were talking about the fact that they very quickly -- this is part of the protocol that schools have now -- they have a reunification center, place where families can go in a mass shooting situation. i remember vividly during the mother emanuel ame shooting in charleston where nine people were killed, i just happened to be staying at the hotel where the reunification center was, and i stood at the end of the hallway and the sounds of grief coming from that room are something no person should ever have to feel, no one should ever be faced with what these families who are going to be

notified about their loved ones should ever have to face. what can you tell us, given that the secret service has worked with the education department about the kinds of programs that are set up for exactly the most horrible situation which we are seeing today in madison, wisconsin, and to help these families and to help this school? >> the loss of a child is probably one of the worst losses anybody can face. i don't think anybody can deny that. and a lot of the trauma as i was mentioning is going to come after the fact. it's not just that the shooting is over. it's the aftermath. it is the family that have lost their loved ones, coping with that grief, dealing with that grief, there's group therapy, there's individual therapy, there's group talks that they can do to work with these families, but it's also the students that are impacted. think about this. you've got k through 12, especially younger students being in this building,

lockdown, hearing gunshots. those students not just those that were lost but there are multiple victims here, are these students going to be able to go back to that school. is that going to reopen to have students and again these are things that are going to happen down the line but these are things to think about. as listening to my peers talking about the processes here, they're going to be looking at and they're looking at family what's going on within the family, with the student, who knew what, who had information and quite frankly was that information shared, not just with potentially charging the family, because the one thing that might colleagues also mentioned which is actually accurate when we look at the data, the weapons used in these incidents, the shooter typically gets it from home or from somebody they know. almost in all these circumstances. there is liability put on families to say you need to secure these weapons. that is how these children are getting these weapons. but in addition is also what did the school do?

we're not looking to lay blame here on anybody, but they're going to be looking at the teachers know. was this articulated to other individuals. did people follow up? was there something that could have been done to catch this, to prevent this, to have avoided the scenario. also, another common thing we see with the shooters of these incidents, often mental illness. typically in mass shootings, when we look at mass shootings specifically there will be mental illness going on there life stressor. a divorced family member. a divorce with parents. loss of a loved one, stressors. what's going on in that child's life. the vast majority we tend to see. we didn't get a gender for this one, but historically when we look at them, they tend to be male. we didn't get any conversation

yet. that will be something else we will be waiting to hear. sadly in agreement with my colleagues here, we're checking the same boxes over and over and over again. there is absolutely nothing new that we're saying here that hasn't been said here with the previous mass shootings. >> we only have about a minute left, frank, but the obvious question is, are we making any progress? are we doing any better? we know the response to this seemed to be fast. they were well trained. the commanders had a refresher just two weeks ago. but that's an after the fact, that's a response. by the time they got there the shooter was apparently dead. are we getting any better at figuring this out? >> i don't see significant enough progress. you know, the -- you'll have certain sides saying it's -- it's all mental health and we need to get better at that. that's true. but it's not all mental health.

we'll have people say we need to lock down schools more and have mane armed officers all over a school. there have been numerous cases where there have been armed officers and they didn't get there fast enough. that's not the issue. guns continue to be the issue. and particularly access to guns to people who should not have them, criminal actors and young people who should not have access. until we address all of these issues together and acknowledge the role of guns we're not going to see significant change. >> i want to thank everyone for being with us for this breaking news coverage. we're going to have much more on the breaking news at the top of the next hour. quick break and we'll be back with more. with more. or flu fizzy chews. chew. fizz. feel better fast. no water needed. new alka-seltzer plus fizzychews. i used to leak urine when i coughed, laughed or exercised. i couldn't even enjoy playing with my kids. i leaked too. i just assumed it was normal. then we learned about bulkamid. an fda approved non-drug solution for our condition.

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powering possibilities™. we are back with a second hour of chris jansing reports, and we have more on that horrible breaking news. at least four people are dead after a shooting at the abundant life christian school in madison, wisconsin, and police say the suspected gunman, a juvenile, is also dead. so a total of five. police say they found multiple gunshot wound victims after responding to an active shooter call. police never fired their weapons. here's how quickly the facts are moving. during the press conference, the police chief found out that the number of dead had changed. >> we did just get an update from our command post, five deceased at this time, five injured. a total of ten. >> again, this is a ever evolving situation. >> nbc's maura barrett is following this for