national political reporter. that is our show for tonight. time for the last word with lawrence o donnell. lawrence, i m gobsmacked by some of these numbers. i m just gonna leave it to you while i scratch my head. ali, you know that thing happens once in a while where one of our great guests really is getting warmed up right when we have to go to commercial break because that s life on commercial television? that happened last week with yale professor david blight, who is an expert on the 14th amendment. he knows everything about how it came to be, the congressional debate about it. we are bringing him back tonight to finish his thoughts about that. that is worth watching because the most important amendment nobody ever thought about six months ago, and this is worth staying and listening to. certainly not thought about in this context. and he will follow harvard law professor laurence tribe, also an expert on constitutional law and the 14th amendment, who will give us
lawrence, i m gobsmacked by some of these numbers. i m just gonna leave it to you while i scratch my head. aly you , know that thing happens once in awhile where one of our great guests guests really is getting warmed up right when we have to go to commercial break because that s life on commercial television. that happened last week with yale professor david blight, who is an expert on the 14th amendment. he knows everything about how it came to be, the congressional debate about it. we are bringing back tonight finishes thoughts about that. that is worth watching because the most important amendment nobody ever thought about six months ago, and this is worth staying and listening to. certainly not in this context. and he will follow harvard law professor laurence tribe, also an expert on constitutional law and the 14th amendment, who will give us his view of how the 14th amendment, how it has the power to keep donald trump off the ballot in some states. i look forw
here, and first of all i have to say, as a historian reconstruction, there are a lot of those who study this, and i am by no means the only so-called expert. but it s like section three is risen from the dead. it was just gone. nobody ever cared about. nobody ever read it. not every time i turn on the news i read the paper. i m seeing the full text of it. thank god for this constitutional education. but again, that came out of first what was known as the joint committee on reconstruction, a group of 15 members of congress brought together in the winter of 1866 to assess, okay, what has this civil where rot, and what should we do about reconstruction? and that led to the debates of how to fashion an amendment in various parts that would begin to put the union back together and define just who these freed
to put the union back together and define just who these freed african american people were and how the answers to that we re going to redefine what the united states was. that joint committee saw 144 witnesses of all kinds, including robert e. lee himself. they came up with conclusions that use language like, quote, the conquered rebels and traitors should not participate in making the laws for the conquerors. we re not in that situation. we haven t just had a civil war. but we are in a situation where one side wants to run a man for president who, according to the secretary of state of maine, and many other indictments on him, fashioned, organized, and abetted an insurrection against the functioning of the u.s.
lindsey graham and our correspondents analysts and guests who are standing by with full coverage of today s top stories. let s begins with jeff selenzeleny. he got specific. it s the first policy proposal we have seen and not surprisingly it was on immigration, one of the key issues that created his first controversy after he jumped into the race. he went further than many rivals say all illegal immigrants should be deposited, including young people who came in as children. this is a provision in the 14th amendment which originally allowed freed african-american slaves to become citizens after the civil war and said mexico would pay for a wall increasing fees on border crossing guards and increasing fees on nafta working visas and other things.