ranked sixth, sixth, among advanced economies and the share of women in the workforce. you know where we are today? 23. 22 countries have a higher number of women in the workforce making a competitive wage than the united states. we're standing still. and the fact is millions of american parents are feeling the jeez. having a hard time doing a job, earning a paycheck while taking care of children and aging parents at the same time in a sandwich generation. my build back better plan is going to change that. it's going to cut the cost of childcare by more than half. extend historic middle class tax cut to the childcare tax credit which we passed in my american rescue plan. most people don't know, if you walk up to the average informed person and said childcare tax credit, they're not sure what it means. it means if you're making a decent salary and had two or three kids under the age of 18, you get to deduct $2,000 for each child. if you're making 15 bucks an hour, you don't have any taxes to pay like that. so you got nothing. zero. no help. my friends have no problem getting billionaires and millionaires gigantic tax breaks. this is a tax cut. you know what it does is now that it's in place and people in your state are understanding it now, instead of it provides, up the ante how much you could get for a child under 7, you get 3600 bucks on a yearly bases and 3,000 for a child under 17. but guess what we did. that means we're doing it on a monthly basis now. it means you're getting either 300 a month or 200 a month just like a social security check at home. it's cut child poverty by 40%. in michigan, it's 44% cut in child poverty. we need to keep it going. my plan's going to put americans to work in safe and affordable housing to help ease the cost of housing while generating more jobs and most of the metropolitan areas of america, can't afford the housing and it helps to meet the moment on climate change as well. we're setting the course for america to achieve 50 to 52% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. so reach net zero emissions by 2050. this bill helps us get there. in a way that creates good jobs, makes us global leaders of fast growing clean energy industries like electric vehicles, solar and wind powered, battery powered. the bottom line is this. when we give working families a break, we're not just raising the quality of life. we're putting parents in a position to earn a paycheck. we're also positioning our country to compete in the world. that's what these bills are all about. if you want proof, just come to this training facility. this is where hard working folks come to learn how to operate road graders and so much more. where workers use virtual reality to master operating a crane and learn how to deal with drones to look underneath bridges and so on or young people in michigan show up and emerge as expert technicians, heavy equipment operators. they leave here with a shot at something great. a union job with good wages and benefits that allow them to maintain their dignity and pride. it's a ticket to the middle class. this is where the economy starts. with you. your skills, your dreams. and your limitless potential. the only thing we've been missing is the will from washington to finally build an economy around you. an economy that gives you and your family a fighting chance to get ahead. gives our country a fighting chance to compete with the rest of the world. we can't get here thinking small. we have to think big. let me be clear. we need to prepare for ten years down the line. that's what these bills do. both these bills spend out over ten years. not in the first year. so if you take the infrastructure bill, folks, it's described as a $1.2 trillion bill. what that means is all those investments of road, bridge, high speed internet, it would be less than one-half of one percent of our economy each year and it's all paid for and they don't increase the debt because they're paid for by asking the very wealthy to pay their fair share. as a matter of fact, significant portion of this plan cuts taxes for working people. and best of all, the cost of these bills in terms of adding to the deficit is zero. zero. zero. and i made a commitment when i wrote these when i was running. no one making under $400,000 a year will see a penny in their taxes go up. that's why in the infrastructure bill, there is no gas tax increase. because people making under 400 would have to pay more. it's simple. you're working here at this facility. your spouse is teacher, a firefighter, there's no reason why combined why millionaires and billionaires in this country should be paying at a lower tax rate than you do. hear me again now. a lower tax rate. police officer, teacher. a union crane operator. and a nurse. they paid a higher tax rate, a higher tax rate, than a significant portion of major corporations in america and the super wealthy. look, it isn't right. isn't right that 55 of the largest corporations in this country. and i come from the corporate capital of the world. more corporations are incorporated of the state of illinois than any other state combined. but you know how much those 55 companies, i could go on, more than that, they made over $40 billion and paid zero. zero. in federal income tax. since the pandemic began, the number of billionaires, i forget the exact number there are in america, have seen their wealth go up collectively by $1 trillion. $1 trillion. isn't fair. needs to change. look, working folks understand that. that's why despite the tax misinformation, my plan has overwhelming support in the polling day from the american people. they understand what's at stake. they understand that workers and families have a better shot. americans have a better shot. i'm a capitalist. i think you should be able to go out and make a million dollars or a billion but just pay your fair share. join the crowd, man. they know this is about dignity and respect. it's about changing the paradigm so the economy works for you. not just for those at the very top. it's about building this economy from the bottom up and the middle up. that's what i've done my entire career. that's why i ran for president. as i said, i'm a capitalist. i think you should be able to make a lot of money in america, but just pay your fair share. pay your fair share. i took this agenda to the country. they said it was time to build an economy that looks out from scranton, pennsylvania, where i grew up as a kid, instead of looking down from wall street. an economy from looks out from hollow, michigan and towns like it from all over america that brings towns from every race, background, and religion back into the game. that's why 81 million americans voted for me. the largest number of votes in american history. clear majority who supported when they supported me. look, it's now time to deliver. let me close with this. the world's watching. not a joke. the autocrats of the world believe the world is moving so rapidly that democracies can't generate consensus quickly enough to bring the people together to get things done. they think democracy is not a joke. my meetings with putin, with xi, and other leaders. they truly believe that we can't compete in the 21st century because things are moving so fast, democracies take so much time that they are so divided that they can't get together in time to act. they believe, they believe in a win, they'll win the day and can dictate their way forward and can leave us behind. they're betting for the first time, we won't respond to this inflection point in history and we'll fail to rise to the occasion. but you've heard me say it a lot of times. it's never, ever been a good bet to bet against the american people. never. look, just look back a little ways. after world war ii, the united states did what we're trying to do now. invested in the american people to lead the world. at the time, presidents and congress of both parties and americans of all political views stepped up. not being sent mental here. we know how deep rooted racism was. we saw the klan marching and again in recent years. it's a never ending battle, but think about what else will unfold in these critical decades. great protest moment. some of the nation's most promising. the gi bill sent millions of veterans to college. the federal government helped make home ownership possible because it's the vehicle by which people with generate wealth. most of us who come from lower and middle class backgrounds, that's how our parents were able to generate any wealth. for those who could only previously dream of having a house to call their open. we invest in interstate highway system. propelling our economy into the feature. we invest in the space race which led to huge strides in technology. we invested in a program in the federal government that helped create the internet. folks, we need to step up again but the challenge of the day is one of economic competition. let's learn from that history. not because it was perfect. because americans then did what we must do now. invest in ourselves to show the world that american democracy works. and that given half a chance, there's nothing. not a single thing we can't achieve when we do it together. i know we can do this. i'm positive we can. i've never been more optimistic about this country than i am now. we're going to restore faith, pride, and dignity in this country and we're going to pass both of these bills and start building this economy and beat the competition and deliver for working families. thank you. may god bless you. may god protect our troops. let's get this done. thank you. >> hi there, everyone. that was president biden in michigan in remarks designed to rally support for his infrastructure bill and his spending plan. together, the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. stressing his plan to every day americans and urging congress to act to reach a deal and pass both measures after negotiations stalled at the end of last week. nbc news white house correspondent mike memoli is in michigan for us, plus ab stoddard. this was taking place in michigan, but i couldn't help but wonder if most of this was directed back at the politicians in washington, d.c. >> that's right. think about where we have been over the last two weeks. all the focus has been on the behind the scenes, closed door meetings his team was having on capitol hill with those key senator, congressmen, who are standing in the way in this democratic divide in moving both of these big infrastructure and human infrastructure bills forward. and during the course of that time, we didn't hear much from the president and when i spoke with white house officials about that, they said well the american people are convinced. poll after poll show that eechl of the provisions of what the president was trying to pass were popular. but in the course of those conversation, we were talking about the price tag. the divide amongst democrats. so the white house really needed and opportunity to reset, get back on favorable terms. it had been three weeks since president biden had delivered a major speech outlining what was in his plan outside of washington. so the white house taking advantage of the pause, hitting the road, and in a critical state. there's a message being sent by president biden in being in this part of michigan. it's a county that went overwhelmingly for donald trump last year, but it's represented in congress by a democrat who is going to face a tough re-election campaign. it's represented by a democrat who has said she's for a bipartisan infrastructure bill, but isn't yet a yes on the larger reconciliation bill. one, he's trying to lobby allilisa slotkin. or it's a message from the president saying i have your back. he has campaigned in michigan more than many other places over the course of the 2020 campaign. i say that as somebody who flew a lot to the detroit airport to cover those events. so he wants to say to all those moderates who are bristling a t the price tag or not sure this is going to be a political winner, that it is a winner. he's going to be behind them to sell this to the american people. >> ab, one of the points mike touched upon and something the president also alluded to is that he has the mandate for these two bills. he took them to the american people. he said when he campaigned, it was about build back better and he reemphasized the point he won with an overwhelming majority of the american public supporting it and because that have the center piece of his campaign, he has the mandate to get this done and it's time for congress to act on them. >> right. mike is right that he is trying to take this to swing district and trying to sell it in places the polling indicates it's not overwhelmingly popular as it might be in bluer districts and bluer states. people are worried about the price tag and the white house is concerned and congressional leaders are concerned in the democratic party that this has devolved into a process where no one is highlighting the benefits in both packages and the party isn't showing their voters they're united behind that. he noted the congresswoman isn't yet convinced about the social spending part of this. he sided with progressives on friday when he was at the capitol, on the timing of the vote. now he needs to show those new democrats and moderate democrats who are the front liners and districts that make the majorities in house that he is going to sell this hard. it is not like joe biden to talk about dark data and things, saying things like we're at the bottom of the heap, but talking about why these are universally attractive, badly needed improvements that will get at our competitive disadvantage. using all those facts and figures about how america has fallen behind shows that he's really convinced he has to keep on messaging on this to bring the party back together then go out and spend all the months between now and the midterm elections selling what the united behind. >> and of course we'll see if this actually gets done the way the president wants it to. thank you very much. please stick around. we're just getting started. when we come back, hours of testimony on a supremely important topic. facebook's profits over people. the question now in front of lawmakers, are we at the doorstep of a new era? and you might remember this from the capitol. hang mike pence. now, he says the media's focus on the insurrection is some sort of plot to demean trump supporters? huh? and what president biden called the most significant test over democracy since the civil war on the battle for voting rights. you'll want to hear what senator warnok had to say about it. don't go anywhere. warnok had to say about it don't go anywhere. helen knew exercise could help her diabetes... but she didn't know what was right for her. no. nope. no way. but then helen went from no to 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doing to teens. >> i'm here because i believe facebook's products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy. no one truly understands destructive choices made by facebook except facebook. we can afford nothing less than full transparency. as long as facebook is operating in the shadows, hiding research from public scrutiny, it is unaccountable. until we have transparency and our ability the confirm ourselves that facebook's marketing messages are true, we will not have a system that is compatible with democracy. >> over hours of testimony, haugen described a company that either struggled to address or outright turned a blind eye to a whole host of problems on its platforms. everything from threats of violence to human trafficking to the toxic effect on the self-esteem of teens and in the wake of that global outage yesterday, haugen made this incredible statement pointing out how crucial facebook has become to all of our lives. take a listen. >> for more than five hours, facebook wasn't used to deepen divides, destabilize democracies and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies. it also means that millions of small businesses weren't able to reach potential customers. and countless photos of new babies weren't joyously celebrated by family and friends around the world. >> so facebook firing back in a statement released after the hearing, a spokesperson saying quote, today, a senate commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision point meeting with executives and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question. we don't agree with her characterization of the many issues she testified about. among the most damming statements she made about facebook, she compared the company to big tobacco and pharmaceutical companies that make opioids. the only solution she says is for the government to get involved. >> when we realize big tobacco was hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. when we figured out cars were safer with seat belts, the government took action and when our government learned opioids were taking lives, the government took action. i implore you to do is same here. >> joins us now, nick gold. also -- as well as a former u.s. assistant attorney for the southern district of new york, now msnbc analyst. and a.b. is back with us. nick, i'll start with you. this conversation around big tech, certainly facebook and its role in our lives, it has been around now for a couple of years, but is this time different? is this a watershed moment now that we have a whistleblower with these documents captivating the attention of lawmakers in a way that is based on facebook's internal communications? >> i think it absolutely is. and for this reason, in 2018 when the cambridge analytica scandal broke, it was mostly about privacy and user data and it was sometimes hard for people to understand what's the harm, what's the bad thing that happened from all this. we see now a real big tobacco moment and that is, we're seeing reports from inside facebook. facebook's own evidence, its own studies, its own words, attesting to the actual harm the platform is causing to girls, to countries, to citizens. it is actually causing harm and it's not an outside analysis. it's coming from inside the company, which is so powerful. >> the comparisons being made to big tobacco, big pharma, others are saying it's more than just what big tobacco went through in the sense that facebook not only does harm to the people consuming it, but those consuming it then go out and do harm to the greater society. whether it's disinformation on covid or the violence on january 6th. you think that comparison is fair? that this is a big tobacco like moment? >> i do. i think it's very similar. the tobacco companies ultimately really got nailed because they had internal documents that they suppressed that showed all of the terrible consequences of nicotine. you look at the sackler family and the opioid crisis. they were aware of the negative consequences throughout society of their products yet they hid that and they continued to sell them. this is very similar. it's just on multiple different levels. because you have instagram, where they know that it's demoralizing for girls in particular. and then you also have facebook where we're well aware of all the political disinformation that has been out there. it's a very difficult problem to tackle. but if facebook is aware that there is disinformation and misinformation on its site, that there are individuals around the world trying to foment violence using the platform and they turn a blind eye to that and try to target their most lucrative advertisements to those areas, that is incredibly damming and i expect there to be enforcement from the sec and civil lawsuits and perhaps for congress to get involved in some way as well. >> a.b., one of the most alarming moments in the testimony was this when frances talked about the correlation between disinformation and acts of violence like we saw on january 6th. listen to this. >> facebook has been emphasizing a false choice. they said the safeguards that were in place before the election implicated free speech. the choices that were happening on the platform were really about how reactive and twitchy was the platform. like how viral was the platform. and facebook changed those safety defaults in the run up to the election because they knew they were dangerous. and because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration back after the election, they returned to their original defaults. and the fact that they had to break the glass on january 6th and turn them back on, i think that's deeply problematic. >> we all know the big lie started and originated with donald trump. if you had not had that big lie, you wouldn't have had january 6th. could you make a compelling argument that if you hadn't had the big lie amplified by facebook, you could have also prevented january 6th? >> oh, there's no question. the way this is organized and gained strength and was so for many of them inside the capitol that day, well planned and they were well resourced in touch with each other. not to mention the fact that they were continuing to live stream their violence on facebook. without that, they just couldn't have done the kind of damage they did and we know it actually would have been so much worse as i always like to point out. but for d.c. metro, and capitol police, but this is, this is so damming that she point out that not only is it the content that makes people angry, that is the most engaging and most viral. but that they turn their algorithms to their benefit to respond to that very content that is so divisive and dangerous. i think that it's likely true that there will be some kind of response because the alarm was so bipartisan today and i think that's a good thing. just very hard to see because there are free speech arguments. because there's a difference of opinions between democrats and republicans on whether you have to go after the noncompetitive monopolies and break them up or whether or not is really is an issue of facebook revealing their data and sharing their processes and letting people and experts inside their algorithm so they can be regulate d. whether or not that's the issue. while it was heartening to see everybody respond in sort of a universal way, we're all really disgusted and really discouraged by what she's revealed, it's going to be really hard to believe that in this polarized environment, republicans and democrats will come together on a solution and actually sign a thing into law to address this threat. >> i was going to say to that point, the problem daniel is that you have facebook becoming really a hot bed of right wing disinformation and people rely on that disinformation to mobilize their base around core issues that get a lot of traction. that's part of the algorithm that a.b. was talking about. let me play you this from frances talking about that algorithm. >> facebook has done experiments where they take brand-new accounts. so facebook has said before, you are complaining about the misinformation you're seeing. it takes two to tango, right? you picked your friends. you picked the topics they engage with. don't just blame us. it's on you. so they've taken brand-new accounts. so no friends. and all they've done is follow donald trump, melania, fox news, a local news source and all they did was click on the first ten things. facebook suggested a group, they joined that group. not doing any conscious action here and within a week, you see q anon, in two weeks, things about white genocide. and you can say how did that happen? why are these the things that facebook is choosing to show you and it's because those things get the highest engagement. >> what's stunning in that is that you're literally engaging with qanon pages after one week. is this going to be a subject of interest for those investigating january 6th? could you potentially want to see more information on the way this hot bed of disinformation was used to lead us to january the 6th? >> i think you would want some of that. i think more than anything, you want the facebook accounts of the individuals who organized the january 6th account. i do think a.b.'s right. i think it's going to be very hard to figure out a way for congress to agree on what to do about it even though they do agree it is a problem and part of that is because there's this sort of false dichotomy between censorship and giving disinformation off of the platform. the other thing i would just add, and i've dealt with a lot of whistleblower as a prosecutor. frances haugen is incredibly impressive in the way she delivers what she delivers and has the document to back her up. not all whistleblower are created equally. the way she explains things and the problems she identified resonate with the layperson. you don't have to be a computer programmer to understand what she's talking about. then she has documents that she copied that she has to corroborate what she says. it's not every day that you get a whistleblower who's got the goods so to speak to back up what they're saying and i think that will have a really significant impact. particularly i would say on the sec, which she's also cooperating with which can bring enforcement actions against facebook for withholding information to the regulator. >> i was speaking to her lawyer over the weekend who told me that was part of the allegations being made. the defrauding of investors. nick, final question to you and probably the hardest one since everyone has brought it up. what does congress actually do? they haven't passed a law to regulate anything to do with the internet in i believe almost 30 years. everyone came out of that committee meeting today. they went to the microphones. they said something has to be done. nobody has articulated what should be done. >> well there's a reason for that because the dominant strain of thinking is that facebook ought to act as a senator and on the right is that people can post what they want. i could see some movement on things for children. on raising the age for the use of instagram, but i think it's telling that the whistleblower said the best solution she can think of for kids is to stop them from using the platform at all. if that's the best solution for kids, what's the implication for us and our country and the right balance to strike with these platforms? >> very valid question. thank you so much. stick around for us. a little bit longer. former vice president mike pence joining the chorus of voices now down playing the events of january 6th just as the committee investigating that day suggesting pence's role as a matter of interest to them. we're 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you had, you know, i believe that jamie suggested to the "washington post," that there are valid questions as to the whole mike pence may have had in this on the same day that the crowds were chanting, hey, mike pence, there was this push at least by pence to see what options he had to decertify the vote. >> it's really remarkable to hear him -- he used the word demean trump voters. it's shocking given they were parading around the capitol saying hey, mike pence. i think this is an area that the january 6th committee needs to explore. not so much to figure out exactly who organized or fomented the insurrection, but more to identify what aspects of our voting laws need to be changed and in particular, the electoral pact. what is so scary about what we're dealing with right now is that there are any number of republicans particular who would have done what john eastman wanted mike pence to do and what is going on around the country is that trump supporting republicans are trying to change voting laws all around the country to make it easier for either elected or appointed officials to overturn the will of the people in individual states. so that mike pence could have done what john eastman wanted him to do. that is incredibly scary. and i don't think it gets enough attention. we are really at an existential crisis now because if this happens, there is very little question that if donald trump runs in 2024, this is the playbook. if they don't win the vote, they will do whatever they can do overturn the vote and it all goes back to what john eastman was suggesting mike pence do. so the january 6 committee needs to look into it and they need to suggest legislation that will correct for this hole in our law. >> to dan's point, if you want to use this term that some have thrown out there, the eastman blueprint for how to overthrow our election has now become the center point of what mike pence was willing to consider doing according to bob woodward and robert costa. it was dan quyale who told mike pence you have no way out of this. do not do it. you can't do it unilaterally. it begs the question, was mike pence when he adopted a talking points of donald trump, was he doing that to avoid confrontation with his boss or do you think he might have been trying to figure out how to appease his boss and throw the election? >> it is a central question you asked. the most important one. i kind of cough cough at the idea of the eastman blueprint because that's so crazy. remember, bill barr heard of this idea, of this political idea, and pushed it aside as like rancid fruit on the plate. like this doesn't hold water. every single constitutional scholar, incredibly republican leaning, said this doesn't work. including his former boss who told pence and wrote for him a memo saying you can't do this, vice president. this idea is not legal. it's not correct. everyone rejected it. so as a blueprint it sounds more like a fig leaf. as for your central question about pence, our reporting for our book showed that pence did not want to tick off the president. he wanted to find a way to yes. you know, if he could find a way to yes that was defensible, he was willing to do it. but as time went on -- the judge wrote an opinion for him that said this was ludicrous, as time went on, pence realized as did his aides, there was no face saving way to keep pleasing the president and keep fulfilling his role. i think the vice president, the former vice president, has gone through three stages that a lot of republican elected officials have gone through, although pence more slowly. first was how do we make the president happy? second was if i can't do that, well then i'm going to do my constitutional job. and the third was absolute shock and horror that the people's house, the capitol, would be attacked by trump supporters. the fourth and final moment is when a lot of republicans have decided they're going to rewrite january 6th and say that it wasn't so bad and now pence has reached that point today. >> yeah, it's incredible to see him say that on fox news. thanks to both of you. after the break, a commitment from merritt garland, even with so much on the plate for the biden administration, they are vowing to protect voting rights in the midst of an all out assault by the republican party. that's next. asulsat by the republican party. that's next. ♪ ♪ there are beautiful ideas that remain in the dark. but with our new multi-cloud experience, you have the flexibility you need to unveil them to the world. ♪ ♪darling, i, i can't get enough of your love babe♪ ♪girl, i don't know, i don't know,♪ ♪i don't know why i can't get enough of your love babe♪ ♪oh no, babe girl, if i could only make you see♪ ♪and make you understand♪ get a dozen double crunch shrimp for $1 with any steak entrée. only at applebee's. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. what do we want for dinner? with any steak entrée. only burger...ee's. i want a sugar cookie... wait... i want a bucket of chicken... i want... ♪♪ it's the easiest because it's the cheesiest. kraft. for the win win. one of my favorite supplements is qunol turmeric. turmeric helps with healthy joints and inflammation support. unlike regular turmeric supplements qunol's superior absorption helps me get the full benefits of turmeric. the brand i trust is qunol. if you have diabetes, you should wear a dexcom. i'm on this one because it's the best. and because it works. it's easy to wear. you put it on, and the numbers are there. no fingersticks. i can't say that enough. the dexcom is a game changer. this is an inflection point in our country. we got to pass voting rights. whatever else we care about, we get to debate about this because we have a democracy. and i think this is a defining moment, and if we don't get voting rights done, regardless of our party, i think history will rightly join us harshly. i was john lewis's pastor. he literally crossed a bridge, risked his own life, to secure the right to vote for everybody. we have to secure infrastructure, and we have to secure the infrastructure of our democracy. the moment demands it. >> senator raphael warnock emphasizing the need for congress to act to protect the right to vote. today, democrats introducing a new version of the john lewis voting advancement act but with little republican support, it faces an uphill battle to actually becoming law. attorney general merrick garland, though, vowing to leverage the power of the department of justice to protect the right to vote, saying in part, quote, we are seriously and urgently investigating and examining other changes and procedures in practices and particularly looking at all the redistricting. garland adding that he was also concerned about increased threats to secretaries of state, poll workers and other election officials. garland, however, admitted that the power of the doj to protect voting rights has been eroded, saying, in part, quote, are our tools weakened? yes, they are, but our passion hasn't weakened. let's bring in former acting solicitor general neal katyal. this is a justice department under a loft pressure to get a lot of things done. people are looking at it as one of the most important institutions right now. neal, i don't know if you can hear me. can you hear me? all right, it seems like neal katyal there might have an audio problem, we're going to see if we can re-establish connection with him. you have 19 states -- neal, i think we have you back with us. i was just talking about the 19 states that have attempted to pass or are passing voting restriction laws, and we're talking about the department of justice and the role that department is going to play as perhaps one of the most strained departments right now with everything else it's tackling. talk to us a little bit about how you see the justice department going about this and trying to reverse this trend of voter suppression. >> great. i haven't heard the beginning, so pardon me if i repeat anything, but basically, you know, the justice department has had, traditionally, strong legal tools to enforce the voting rights act. the strongest of which was called section 5, which required before many states and jurisdictions passed any sort of restrictive voting plan to have that pre-cleared by the justice department. that was struck down by the supreme court in a really controversial 5-4 decision in 2013 called shelby county. and so the justice department's left with what's called section 2 of the voting rights act, which allows them to come in and sue a state or locality for discrimination in voting, but that, too, was hampered a bit by the supreme court in an opinion by justice alito coming from arizona just a few months ago and i think what the attorney general has done over the past few months, attorney general garland, is say i'm going to enforce section 2 as it's written to the tee and so he's actually filed a lawsuit against georgia, saying, look, your new voting restrictions violate section 2 of the voting rights act and what he's doing now in signaling today and yesterday is he's going to bring aggressive enforcement actions against other places that do this, and this is so important because we're seeing an unprecedented attack on voting in this country. you know, that should be something that, you know, whether you're a republican or deputy, you agree we should be expanding access to the ballot box, it's what makes us americans, and here we have some states trying to restrict it so garland's absolutely right to do what he's doing. >> the pessimist in me, neal, and correct me if i'm wrong, says it cannot just be the department of justice that can prevent voter suppression and reversing voting rights in this country. you have to get something done in congress and we're seeing that now, stonewalled, even in the wake of very controversial supreme court decisions that, as you said, gutted the voting rights act. can something be done on a federal level to shore up voting rights without congress or is it going to have to lead through congress? >> yes, it's super simple for congress to pass a bill. it will require a majority vote, so it doesn't need, you know, some sort of super majority unless there's a filibuster. but you know, i think if there's anything to be broken over a filibuster, it's voting. it is truly what makes us unique. so, you know, like the john lewis voting rights act would just reverse what i was talking about, section 5 and shelby county, and pass a new version that's really simple and clean and easy to do. now, short of that, the question is what could be done if congress sits on its hands and does nothing, which would be, obvious, unforgivable. i think these lawsuits have very strong merit to them, even with the gutted section 2 or weakened section 2 that has happened after the arizona case by the supreme court. i still think what georgia's doing, what texas is doing, what arizona's contemplating doing is so extreme that even the restrictive section 2 interpretation that the supreme court gave it earlier this year, the -- these laws aren't going to stand up under it, so, there's lots to do. >> i was going to say, i can't think of any greater threat to our democracy than diminishing the right of people to vote in this country. neal katyal, thank you. good to see you. that's going to do it for me. the next hour of "deadline white house" with jason johnson starts right after this quick break. its right after this quick break ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ do you take aspirin? 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today, that same whistle-blower, frances haugen, pleaded with lawmakers to hold the social media company accountable for putting its astronomical profits before people. haugen addressed how the social media company knows its product are for children and it has a negative effect on children and teens' mental health. yet, she explained, the company repeatedly ignores these findings from its own researchers. >> the dangers of engagement-based ranking are that facebook knows that content that elicits an extreme reaction from you is more likely to get a click, a comment, a reshare. facebook's own research says they cannot adequately identify dangerous content and as a result, those dangerous algorithms that they admit are picking up the extreme sentiments, the division, they can't protect us from the harms that they know exist in their own system. it is causing teenagers to be exposed to more anorexia content. it is pulling families apart, and in places like ethiopia, it's literally fanning ethnic violence. >> facebook released a statement after her testimony, saying, quote, today, a senate subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager of facebook who worked for the company for less that be two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with c-level executives, and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question. we don't agree with her characterization of the many issues she testified about. despite all this, we agree on one thing. it's time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. it's time for congress to act. a sentiment we heard from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle during the hearing today, acknowledging the need for a reckoning around the regulation of facebook and other tech companies. >> and big tech now faces that big tobacco, jaw-dropping moment of truth. it is documented proof that facebook knows its products can be addictive and toxic to children, and it's not just that they made money. again, it's that they valued their profit more than the pain that they caused to children and their families. the damage to self-interest and self-worth inflicted by facebook today will haunt a generation. feelings of inadequacy and insecurity, rejection, and self-hatred will impact this generation for years to come. >> clicking on like on facebook's harmful practices is where we start this hour. joining us now, kara swisher, host of "the pivot" podcast and a "new york times" contributor, plus clint watts, former consultant to the fbi counterterrorism division and now a distinguished fellow at the foreign policy research institute, plus former congresswoman donna edwards is here. thank you so much. kara, i'll start with you. we had testimony today. ms. haugen came forward and said, look, this company is doing bad things. we need to do something about it. what were your impressions from just today's testimony? is this going to be the moment where the dam breaks and congress actually does something or is it going to be a bunch of chest-beating and performance? >> it is in congress's hands now. they have documents. they have testimony. i thought she was incredibly articulate. i thought she explained very difficult issues very well, and she brought documents. i think this is a lot of stuff we've all been writing about and saying for many years now, and congress has sat there on its hands. now she's right in front of them, showing them and walking them through it and i thought it was very effective. i think if they don't act, it's not facebook's fault anymore. it's congress's fault. what i thought was interesting was facebook trying to impugn her by calling her a nobody. i think that's what they were doing. but you don't have to run the sausage factory to understand when the sausage is rotten, and that, to me, was really appalling by them. but typical of facebook, which is to shoot the messenger. >> donna, one of the things that's always concerned me, whether it's facebook or snapchat or instagram or anything else like that, is that there is a gap between the expertise in senators and members of congress and what technology is. and i'm not suggesting that they're all completely out of date, but you know, do you think that there are enough members of congress who are knowledgeable enough about social media, about facebook and instagram, that they could actually construct functional policy to regulate these kind of entities? >> i think, you know, i was thinking the same thing when i listened to ms. haugen's testimony and i thought one of the most compelling things about her testimony is frankly that it was in plain english. and there was an ability for lawmakers both to ask questions and for her to respond in ways that not only members of congress but the american public can understand. i come out of technology, and so, it was always complicated to be in a congress where so many members don't have a technological background and tough to kind of grapple with some of these issues but look, it's congress. they have the ability to get the kind of expertise that they need to be able to regulate these platforms in a way that will create more good and less harm. and i think that was the important value of the testimony today, and i agree with kara. it really is now in congress's hands. there is no absence of information or data that can stand in their way, and this really has to be done because it will be in the public interest. >> clint, speaking of public interest, one of the most important things, and again, you know this. i know this. everybody who's been paying attention to this for the last several years, that facebook basically seems to profit the most when they are promoting or advancing or turning a blind eye towards the most provocative and incendiary elements of their website. the websites that are screaming at you that the world is being taken over by a terrible cabal of people in new york city and muslims are invading from the south, and black people and black lives matter are going to take your free cell phones. that's the kind of stuff they make the most money from and get the most engagement with. what actually is the day-to-day security impact of having so many people linked in to a website that profits off of basically pain and anguish? >> jason, i think we've seen it, which is it starts with anger, a little bit of emotion, then it comes to people linking up in the real world with their emotions and their anger to january 6th. where they mobilized and undermine things like democracy or commit extremist acts. you know, we have had terrorism now for about 15 years in different forms on social media and the internet. and that's one of the problems that i also see for congress, that they don't really address. many of the actions that they talk about, either breaking up big tech or trying to reform it, ultimately to the problem that the profit incentive and motive is directly tied to human psychology. the system is designed -- it is called a like button. it's designed to give you more of what you like from people that look like you, talk like you, and share your opinions and what you want the world to be. it's going to be impossible to engineer out without making a massive cut in profits. it cuts down on engagement. no one wants to go to a really boring social media app and hear things that are really boring from people that are very boring. so there is a fundamental problem, i think, for the social media companies, which is, how do they get back to what i call cats and kids? that's the two thing that kind of cherished in the beginning and get away from things like extremism, war, social conflict and politics, and the last part i would say, jason, is, look, some of the worst offenders are on capitol hill. they're the ones who use facebook to target their voters so this is going to be an enduring problem and why i've testified, i think, four times regarding social media and different facets and not one rule has ever come from any of those things. >> i'm glad that you said that, clint, because again, i think the election impact is the biggest thing. facebook in and of itself can't do anything. but facebook can facilitate people who want to do harm getting together. i'm going to play this sound from miss haugen and i'm going to get kara's thought on what the impacts are and what facebook has been doing when it comes to american elections. >> facebook is emphasizing a false choice. they've said the safeguards that were in place before the election implicated free speech. the choices that were happening on the platform were really about how reactive and twitchy was the platform. how viral was the platform. and facebook changed those safety defaults in the run-up to the election because they knew they were dangerous. and because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration of the platform back after the election, they returned to their original defaults, and the fact that they had to break the glass on january 6th and turn them back on, i think that's deeply problematic. >> kara, so, when we hear that, we're basically hearing facebook was, like, all right, yeah, yeah, rah, rah, okay, be quiet now. somebody's paying attention. and then the moment the election is over, they're right back to it. what do we do about that? >> they don't want to make money from hate. let me be clear. facebook didn't invent hate and that's the point they make, which i think they're correct about. what they've done, though, is amplify and weaponize it and that's something that's never happened before. you can't have enough billboards to do this. as much as fox news or other organizations contribute to misinformation, it's not this big. and that's the problem. it's big. it's global. it's uncontrollable. and then the people who run the company are unaccountable and by the way, they can't be fired. mark zuckerberg, in particular. he's the one that actually can't be fired. so what she was saying here was that they want to -- the focus of facebook since its start has been on growth, growth, growth, and an obsession with growth. and so anything that gets in its way, they find to be a problem. and when you build an architecture where virality rather than context or speed rather than accuracy, you're going to run into -- it's very easy. you don't have to be a computer scientist to understand the human hate can be made into a twitchy, angry organism rather quickly. by the way, you can do the opposite and make a lot of money. look at snapchat. look at tiktok. they also have some problems, by the way. but not nearly in the amount that facebook does. >> right. for every sort of angry, screaming television show out there there's a "ted lasso." there could be a clean, nice version of facebook if we wanted it. my question about this, because i think there's a technical issue that kara alludes to. when people talk about, hey, we need to break up facebook. it's not a phone company. there's -- you could turn facebook into five different entities and it's very possible they would do the same thing. what kind of policy could congress actually pass to reel this in, other than essentially turning facebook into a newspaper where they would have to start editing their content, which would almost defeat the purpose of the site. >> well, i think you hit on it. if you break it up into pieces and the pieces still are enabled to act in the same way, that does not change the environment. and i think one of the things that we know is that facebook, as has been described, is able to manipulate its algorithms when it wants. so then the question becomes, why are we enabling those algorithms to be used and to be created and manipulated in a way that manipulates the public? and so, those are questions, i think, that congress can begin to address and to put some -- begin to put some limits on, but this is also about the responsibility of facebook and its executives and accountability and as they've been increasingly scrutinized, they've gone from the, you know, sort of, i don't want to -- i'll apologize for this to being defensive about their platform instead of creating ways in which to have a conversation about how the act to be cleaned up. >> clint, yesterday, i don't know if you recognized this, i did, there was five hours of relative peace. facebook and instagram were down. people were talking to each other. kids were dancing in the streets in the middle of covid. we had a shutdown on facebook. but i think for a lot of people, it was also this realization of how influential this website has become and you've got some people from an economic standpoint who are like, hey, look, my business requires that i'm on facebook. you have some national security people who were saying, this place is -- facebook makes $54 billion a year. they influence elections. they're essentially a hostile power. how do we frame facebook now? it's not a newspaper. i think it's unrealistic to say it's a hostile power. it's not a terrorist -- it's not hydra or cobra. how do we frame this so we can start addressing it from a national security and a domestic security standpoint? >> jason, i think you're right. the outage essentially plunged america into productivity yesterday instead of distraction, which was kind of interesting. but look, in certain countries, facebook is almost a utility. i think india is a great example of this. many of the countries around the world, i'll never forget the first time i was in africa talking to somebody, let's look something up on the internet and you said -- they said to me, you mean i'm going to facebook it? that is their concept of the internet is facebook. and it does provide essential services, linkages, around the world, and remember, it was not that long ago that we were celebrating facebook and twitter for the arab spring. i mean, we saw it spray painted on the walls of cairo. so from this broader perspective, there are great and amazing things that have happened in the developing world in terms of communications and commerce, so we can't always just say, hey, we don't like what our politicians say and january 6th. there's a lot going on around the world. but that comes to the point of, we are essentially a country that has a utility provider for the world that resides inside the united states that is basically unregulated and hardly regulated in most of the developing world and that was the comment about ethiopia you heard during her testimony there. in some of these countries, myanmar, ethiopia, it incites violence. in other countries, it's the backbone almost to the civilization and how it works. we really need to think very, very broadly about what policies reimplement, and oh, by the way, what doesn't come up in any of these conversations is china is sitting there, ready in the void, maneuvering, accelerating their infrastructure, their applications and use of artificial intelligence, and they have no boundaries and no barriers on it. so it is a global sort of discussion that we need to have and think about, and it's one that is not going to be solved in just a couple committee sessions. i think that's two parts to it. one, the biggest offenders are also on capitol hill but the problem goes well beyond capitol hill and all the way around the world as well. >> once we start adding more and more a.i. to things like social media, we are five steps away from sky net. kara, i want to make sure we get to this. facebook also owns instagram and there's been a lot of discussion about how instagram has affected young people, affected self-esteem. i want to point out from a demographic standpoint, my colleagues from oregon state university, they're not on facebook. facebook is for old people as far as they're concerned. they're on instagram. instagram can be just as poisonous when it comes to self-esteem and politics. what's something that we might be able to do about that site, which is primarily about images and people performing lives we know they're not really living? >> it's just a continued regulation and transparency on what's happening there. so, people could, just like you put warnings on cigarettes, there could be warnings, lots of things they could do and so i think what's really important is that facebook become more transparent. as much as they hate it, they're going to have to do that because now employees are going to be throwing documents over the wall, and it's not going to look good. and so the best thing we can do is really work together and recognize they have a problem. and that they're critically important and that they have no accountability. now, they can say, we call for regulation, but none of it matters if the ceo can never be fired. i mean, think about that. someone who runs the biggest communications medium in the history of the world cannot be fired. and to the utility thing that you were just talking about, when i first met mark zuckerberg and we went on a walk, he compared facebook to a utility. he said, i want it to be a utility. at the time, there was a much sexier myspace going on, which of course died, but he really wanted to think of that company like that. well, if he's a utility, utilities are regulated. and when they screw up, things happen to them. and that's how i kind of look at it. if we think of facebook as a utility, because you cannot put it in any bucket, really, and by the way, they do edit. they do communicate. they do content. they do a lot of things. if you think of it as a utility, you can start to really think about how you want to regulate this medium. >> i love the idea of putting warning labels on instagram. this drip is not real. this lifestyle isn't how they're living. kara swisher, thank you for spending time with us. clint and donna are sticking with us. when we return, the threat of violence now hanging over school boards across the country. how education officials found themselves increasingly in harm's way as the biden justice department takes action. and it's not just school boards. healthcare workers are facing a sharp rise in violence, including this scene from new york city where a covid mobile testing site was trashed. and later, why does the state of alabama spend taxpayer dollars to support a confederate memorial while african-american historical sites struggle? i've got the answer. "deadline white house" continues after a quick break, so don't go anywhere. ontinues after a quick break, so don't go anywhere ♪ ♪ there are beautiful ideas that remain in the dark. but with our new multi-cloud experience, you have the flexibility you need to unveil them to the world. ♪ wealth is your first big investment. worth is a partner to to help share the load.rld. wealth is saving a little extra. worth is knowing it's never too late to start - or too early. ♪ ♪ wealth helps you retire. worth is knowing why. ♪ ♪ principal. for all it's worth. alright. y'all know when they say your home is a reflection of you? well helene found herself in a lamp. no joke. i got a fancy grown up lamp to make me feel like a fancy grown up. mhm. adulting ain't easy. ooh! check this one out. waffles loves her dog bed. we can hardly get her out of it. she's kind of a diva. yes, waffles! living your best life. [woof] i'm telling y'all there's no place like wayfair to make your home totally you. ooh! i want that. yeah. you took my picture. >> hey, hey, hey. come on. officers. officers, please come in the room. >> officers. >> this is ridiculous. >> that was a scene at a school board meeting. yes, not a high school football game. a school board meeting last week in minnesota. a fight broke out during a meeting largely focused on masking. in a version of america where school board meetings have become the new culture war battlegrounds with children caught in the crosshairs, sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively. now after the national school board association had to ask the president for help investigating and stopping threats over policies like mask mandates. attorney general merrick garland is stepping in, marshaling the fbi in response to what he called a, quote, disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence. garland directing federal authorities to hold strategy sessions in the next 30 days with law enforcement to confront the scourge. joyce vance, former u.s. attorney and now law professor at the university of alabama, and an msnbc legal analyst, is here. lucky for us, clint watts is also back. clint, i got to start with this. to me, this sort of rise in violence that we're seeing in schools, it's just a reflection of a rise in violence that we're seeing all over the country. we're seeing it in schools. we're seeing it in grocery stores. we're seeing it on airplanes. to me, is this really about people being upset about mask mandates or are there sort of underlying disruptive forces, white nationalists, anarchists, whatever, in this country, that are using mask mandates and a public health crisis to sort of wage chaos? >> jason, a year ago, i think we started talking about mobilizations to polling places and primarily we were worried about local polling locations, and we did see sort of vigilante poll monitoring, you know, surface after the election. we saw people show up at election recounts, and that's only continued for about ten months now, and it really encapsulates every single issue. it is masks. it is vaccines. it's vaccine mandates. it is anything involving the local level, and if i can say anything since january 6th, the protests and the mobilizations to violence have gone from national to local. it is really school boards, health officials, election officials that are facing a lot of the toughest challenges and threats to violence and there are no resources and very limited sort of intelligence to preempt this. that's what's so difficult about this. it's a capacity issue. and one where you're seeing kind of these national movements mobilize on very local locations. >> joyce, you and i are both educators. you know, you are a law professor, i'm a professor at morgan state university and i'm old enough to remember where the only thing you really had to worry about in an academic environment was a mass shooter, which is bad enough as it is, but speak a little bit to this idea of what does it mean that something that is generally boring and neutral, like a school board meeting, has become a locus for violence. how does that end up trickling down to what is and is not taught and possibly trickling up to higher level educators like yourself? >> well, the focus that this brings to education is something that we're not used to having. i think you're absolutely right about that, jason. and one has to wonder how this trickles out. will school boards become far more careful, far more hesitant to do things that are brave and bold in terms of education initiatives? right now, we're talking about issues that involve school boards and how they're competing in this new marketplace of ideas that exists after the trump administration, but that could have far-reaching implications. it certainly has spun out in some areas with bans on teaching critical race theory, which of course impacts the work that both you and i do and helps us understand how policy developed in the wake of american racism and what we can do to improve policy in the future as school boards are challenged, for instance, over issues of whether critical race theory can be taught in our schools. that, too, becomes a flash point, and i would add to what clint says. the fact that we're living in the middle of a perfect storm. we have not only this eruption, this not so much an eruption but a normalization of some of the white supremacist ideology that we've seen emerging and some of the conspiracy theories that we've seen emerging, we also have a country that, to be honest, is not at its best mental health-wise, 18 months into a pandemic, and those issues are crashing together now. that's very much what we're seeing. we're going to have to have some form of a national health restorative mission in this country to right size things and get them back to normal. >> i want to get a little nostalgic for a minute. i never watched the west wing but the closest thing for me might be the obama years. i want to play some video from arguments in local town halls during the debate over the affordable care act. and clint, i want to get your thoughts on the other side. >> you are not letting -- >> you want to be -- you want to be -- you want to be let out of here, you're welcome to go. now, wait a minute. now, wait a minute. now, wait a minute. now, wait a minute. wait a minute. >> now, clint, i'm the person -- look, i believe in a rowdy public. i don't care if you want to protest outside mitch mcconnell's house, confront somebody at a restaurant, you know, follow senators, okay, those things are fine. but as angry as the public was about getting free healthcare 12 years ago, we've never seen anything like we're seeing at the school board meetings now. what on earth has happened in this country in the last 11, 12 years that has normalized a level of anger and violence that would have been bizarre just 11 years ago? >> two things, jason. one, elected leaders and candidates essentially using the language of violence and mobilization, that that is the best way to handle issues. it's not to have public debate or discourse, not to have a discussion. it is to immediately go into confrontation and if you went to steve bannon's war room, and is called a war room after all, any given day and you watch what that conversation is about and how to extend that to fox news, it's very much about confrontation and combat and it's bizarre. the second part is, look, social media, we were talking about it in the last panel. that video there, those videos of combat and conflict that you see at a lot of these local places go viral very quickly so it gives a lot of people who are maybe considering conducting those sorts of acts more ammunition or more belief that they should do it too. it is the copycat phenomenon that we see in social media today. so, it's one part the way our rhetoric has changed in this country and what our elected leaders will say and the other part being aware of a nationwide push around every single issue that ultimately falls under the trump banner. >> yeah, 15 years ago, if you did something like that, people gossiped about you in church. now you might end up on fox news. clint watts, thank you so much for spending time with us. joyce vance is sticking with us. the threat of violence, hardly limited to schools and school boards. up next, the rising number of incidents aimed at healthcare workers. we'll get a live report from a hospital where cases are soaring. 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what are the real concerns that the medical staff are having now about violence on site, people being violent when they come in, people being violent when they're leaving? what are they facing down there? >> reporter: yeah, it's so bad that some of the medical staff is telling me that they're taking their badges off before they go to the supermarket at night. it's not just even in the walls of the hospital. there's a cultural thing happening and a backlash happening towards healthcare workers. inside the hospital, i think you have these friction points with not only patients but family members as well and it's unfortunately not even confined to one area of the hospital. listen to what one emergency doctor told me yesterday. >> they're exhausted. i mean, there's fewer and fewer people that feel that they can bear the risk to come to work. we've seen a tripling of the cases of verbal and physical assault on our healthcare workers, and it's not just an emergency department. i work in the emergency department, but we're seeing this in the icus, on the medical floors, in our psychiatric units, outpatient settings, pre-hospital setting. it's all over. >> reporter: this is a problem that is happening nationwide and it is getting worse across country. go ahead, jason, i'm sorry. i didn't mean to interrupt. >> yeah. i've got to find out, like, one, the doctor looked kpais exhausted. he looked disturbed. what are the nurses and doctors and healthcare workers saying? how is that affecting their ability to do their job? if you go to work every day thinking you might get attacked or cussed at or spat on, do they think it's having a negative impact on their ability to deliver healthcare to people? >> reporter: 100%. absolutely. there's a staffing shortage of nurses, of doctors around this country. it is hard to get people to come and work in hospitals in a pandemic. that should be fairly obvious. i think what we know is also obvious but i don't think we talk about enough is there is a disinformation war happening in this country about vaccines and masks, and there are a number of people in this country who do not believe that people are dying of this virus. and so you have sometimes people who arrive at the hospital, family members, and they're diagnosed with covid and then taken away and they're separated from family members because this is an incredibly contagious virus and you have some people, this is by no means the majority, but you have some people who don't believe it's true and they lash out at these doctors and become violent and that is happening and it's scary for the people who work inside these facilities, jason. >> cal, i want to play you some sound from senator lindsey graham. it goes right along the lines of what you're saying about disinformation. the fact that even when people are sharing information, common sense things, they're sometimes shouted down. >> if you had the vaccine or think about getting it because if you're my age -- get it. think about it. well, 90% of the people in the hospitals in south carolina are unvaccinated. >> not true. >> now, look, i know chickens coming home to roost when i see it and lindsey graham has been out there sort of promoting nonsense and everything else like that under trump, but when you see something like that, when you see a senator who's like, guys, look, i got the shot, i'm fine, i haven't grown horns, you need to do it and he's shouted down, what hope does that give sort of the doctors who have less authority than lindsey graham? >> reporter: i'm so grateful to you and your producers for playing that video. i told them that hours ago. this so encapsulates exactly where we are as a country and so many different places. lawmakers, governors signing laws that they know are unconstitutional. i'm not just looking at you, florida. this is happening in texas. i'm going to tennessee next to do this. you have this battle that is along political lines that has nothing to do with science or medicine or the virus. it is a place that people see they can make a gain and they can divide people on, whether it's masks or vaccines, whatever the case may be. that is what is happening around the country, and unfortunately, the people who are paying the price for this are children who are going to schools who are in some of these districts where the governor said you can't put a mask mandate into place or you can opt out and we don't have good numbers on who's getting sick. long covid patients are paying a price for this and our frontline health workers again. it was so disheartening to hear that people are removing their badges before going to the supermarket. 20 years ago, we were all applauding firemen and first responders after 9/11 and we are in such a different place as a country, and it's frankly depressing, jason. >> it really is. cal perry, thank you so much for spending time with us today. even if the news is depressing, we need to know it. when we return, new questions about why the state of alabama pays to support a confederate memorial while black historical sites struggle. that story after a quick break. . that story after a quick break ♪darling, i, i can't get enough of your love babe♪ ♪girl, i don't know, i don't know,♪ ♪i don't know why i can't get enough of your love babe♪ ♪oh no, babe girl, if i could only make you see♪ ♪and make you understand♪ get a dozen double crunch shrimp for $1 with any steak entrée. only at applebee's. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. regina approaches the all-electric cadillac lyriq. it's a sunny day. nah, a stormy day. classical music plays. um uh, brass band, new orleans. ♪ ♪ she drives hands free... along the coast. make it palm springs. ♪ cadillac is going electric. if you want to be bold, you have to go off-script. experience the all-electric cadillac lyriq. i just became eligible for medicare and, can i say? 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>> alabama's history and alabama's present are complicated in this regard, and it's difficult to identify consistent trends. there are many important developments. we now have a national civil rights park in birmingham through the work of alabama's congresswoman terry sewell, which commemorates the district that includes 16th street baptist church and the civil rights museum in birmingham, but in other parts of the state, we're at risk of losing parts of our history that are not well funded. i'm not sure if it's fair to lay that at the doorstep of alabama's, you know, turn of the last century constitution, which is a cumbersome document, which makes progress difficult in many different areas, but what it does serve as a marker for is the fact that we could do a better job of funding history, of telling history through the lens that it encompasses all paints of view and we should frankly embrace the notion that african-american history is american history and we need to teach it in a robust way. >> donna, you know, you're aware of the fact there's historical markers all throughout maryland. it's always difficult for people to get funding for these sorts of things. you've got the tabernacle church that's in alabama right now, saying, hey, we're trying to get funding, running the risk of shutting down. if you can explain to us not just the idea of how difficult it is to get this funding but what happens to these historic sites if they don't receive funding. do they just get sold to private people? how much history could we potentially lose in a state like alabama if these places are allowed to rot while confederate monuments continue to be sort of supported and put together? >> well, i mean, the reality is that if you don't preserve your history, you lose your history. i mean, that is true. i mean, what is different about this particular confederate memorial park in alabama is that it receives a direct funding line, funding stream from the state because it was written into the constitution whereas other historical sites compete for funding, they compete for grant funding. they compete for state and federal funding. and so that is the difference. i actually spent a good bit of time along the alabama river in southwest rural alabama and could see during my time there that, you know, there are a lot of historical markers that mark the confederacy and i think one of the pieces that we should not lose in this entire conversation is how robust the activity is around preserving the idea of the confederacy, and that is both in statute, in practice, and certainly -- to funding but we have to fund our history and we have to tell a true picture of our history, which is why i think it's so important to embrace and support these african-american historical markers and monuments, because otherwise, without funding it, we will lose it. >> and i think this is important to remember, we're not just talking about the past. we're talking about the present. i want to show this video of a recent attack on a george floyd memorial, and i'm going to take this to joyce when we come back. so, what we're seeing right here is, you know, this is a recent george floyd memorial, and you got a guy who runs out there and just defaces it. just defaces it. this memorial is relatively new. and i think what's important -- i want the audience to really understand. it's not just an issue of memorials to african-americans and african-american history are often fighting for funding. they sometimes need more funding because they are consistently attacked and defaced by bigots and white nationalists and racists. we know famously that the memorial for where emmett till is consistently shot. that teenagers and college kids and grown men shoot at the memorial every single year and take pictures and post it on facebook. so, joyce, you know, is there an argument that can be made that not only do these black sites need to be preserved but they actually need more money because they're under assault in ways that memorials to confederacy and white nationalism are not. >> so, i think it's important to preserve that history, and we need to do what it takes to get it done, but all too often, that becomes the responsibility of the federal government, and that's where much of the preservation comes from. jason, you point out correctly that the situation with the park in alabama is unique, where it has dedicated state funding. that typically does not exist for these sites and certainly not in that measure. citizens w that our history be preserved through state funding. typically in alabama where we have memorials, it's either a federal preserve, or in montgomery, alabama, where many people have visited brian stevenson, the head of the equal justice initiatives memorial to people who were lynched during the civil rights area. these are moving and important ways of learning about our history. they are not one-sided. they present history through a lens that approaches the black experience and helps people who haven't lived it try to understand it better. but they are at the same time very objective observations of history. they are important. they need to be funded. so whether it's, as you say, to protect these sites from the attacks that all too often occur on them, or whether it's simply to permit them to function -- you talked about churches in selma where so many of us go every year to observe the anniversary of the bridge crossing, and yet those churches lack of the funding they need to preserve just the bare structure of their buildings. if we lose that history, we lose ourselves, and we simply can't let that happen. >> for much of american history, the south operated as an apartheid state for black people. no matter how many people today try to destroy that, it doesn't change the fact that it happened. thank you both for sending some time with us today. we will be right back after a quick break. i got a fancy grown up lamp to make me feel like a fancy grown up. mhm. adulting ain't easy. ooh! check this one out. waffles loves her dog bed. we can hardly get her out of it. she's kind of a diva. yes, waffles! living your best life. 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[beep] i just wanted to say... ♪ find yourself in these situations and see who you are. and that's just part of the bargain. ♪ people with moderate to severe psoriasis, are rethinking the choices they make like the splash they create the entrance they make, the surprises they initiate. otezla. it's a choice you can make. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. he also didn't want to challenge putin because for putin -- putin it for him the ultimate strongman. it's the person he wants to be most like, and he wanted putin to like him. the one question he actually asked me directly, in fact the only real question i remember him asking me directly is, am i going to like him, about putin. >> she was such an essential figure in the first impeachment of donald trump, and on thursday dr. fiona hill, a former top white house aide on russia and europe joins our friend nicolle wallace here live. she has, of course, a unique insider perspective on trump and his autocrat envy, not to mention she's got a new book out," there is nothing for you here." we'll be looking forward to that chat on thursday. thank you for spending the hour with me. nicolle wallace will be back tomorrow. the man so clean they call him ajax. the beat with ari melber starts right now. hi, ari. >> always love the toss, jason. thank you. i want to welcome everyone to the beat. i am ari melber. we have a special show for you right now. many attacked president biden's partial vaccine mandate when it was announced. is it working? we actually have the data and a progress for you later tonight. also a deep dive into why this whistle-blower criticizing mark zuckerberg matters. and later, some new developments in a court filing from that sex crime probe involving republican matt gaetz. so all of that is ahead as our top story picks up on the spending clash with new data showing most americans are with president biden when it comes to is