and with longtime sports journalist william rhoden, author of "forty million dollar slaves: the rise,fall and redemption of the black athlete." all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. on capitol hill, far right lawmakers have blocked kevin mccarthy's initial attempts to become speaker of the house. in a dramatic day on tuesday, the house held three votes to pick a new speaker. mccarthy fell short each time of securing the needed 218 votes even though republicans now hold a slim majority in the house. on the first two ballots, 19 republicans opposed mccarthy. on the third ballot, the number of defectors increased to 20 with many backing jim jordan to be the next speaker even though jordan himself nominated mccarthy before the second round of voting. this marks the first time since that voting for speaker went 1923 beyond the first round. after the third vote, the house voted to adjourn until today at noon. >> no person having received the majority of the whole number of votes cast, a speaker has not been elec

let me bring you in here, william rhoden, because i think one of the things people have been talkingloa's injury -- it's a brutal sport in a lot of ways. what do you make of the fact that it took a long time for time game to be called with that game to be stopped? what do you make of all this? >> i thought that the -- doctor's explanation was great, one of the best i have seen so far but i think that -- there probably wasn't -- i would bet you dollars to donuts that -- remember, all of this is unprecedented. so, everybody is kind of freaking out. and i do you think the default, probably, at some point -- and this is a whole football thing -- it's kind of, all right, let's get together. let's kind of get together and we will give you guys a little time, let's get it rolling -- and i do think that somebody -- and it's probably troy vincent. it was probably troy vincent, the executive vice president for operations. he's a compassionate guy. i think he probably stepped in and said, listen, there is no way that we are going to send these guys back out there to play. so, i think it just to

but joining us now is william rhoden. let me start by asking it we know any more than what i've just summarized there. >> no, i'm just -- i'm looking at twitter and really i'm just kind of shocked. you know, i was down here -- i'm in baltimore and i was at the ravens/steelers game and, you know, rachel, this is, you know, right now currently i work on espn's andscape and i was with them. this has been a nightmare, the nfl's nightmare and i was just thinking about this the other day. what happens if something like this happens, it's like the nfl's worst nightmare. it's a violent game. we know it's a violent game. we've just been through the whole thing with tua tagovailoa, you know, the nfl players association investigating that, what the medical staff knew and i just think we become so anesthetized to this violence of this game that when something like this happens, it's just total stunner, it can literally happen on any play. this kind of stuff can literally happen at any time and, you know, i'm almost -- i know that's n