>> the former president's chief of staff a no-show at the january 6th committee, showing up on trump tv instead. >> i'm not aware of anybody in the west wing that had any advance knowledge that the security was going to be breached at the capitol. >> tonight, the push to hold mark meadows in contempt. and new details about the white house plans for january 6th. then -- >> senator, could you please just allow her an opportunity to respond? >> could you please stop your pattern of interrupting me repeatedly? >> how biden nominees were held hostage because tom cotton wanted an apology. the right-wing plan to turn clean energy into the new critical race theory. good news about boosters and the latest variant. >> when you get a booster, you dramatically increase the level of projected protection. >> "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. today the january 6th committee announced it is moving forward with criminal contempt proceedings against mark meadows. donald trump's former chief of staff. now, this comes after meadows told the committee he would no longer be cooperating with them in their investigation and would not appear for his scheduled deposition today. that's despite being subpoenaed. committee chairman bennie thompson released a scorching letter to meadows, condemning his actions and detailing some key documents meadows has already turned over to the committee. those thousands of pages include emails and texts about the planning that took place ahead of the insurrection on january 6th. meadows turned over a november 7th, 2020, email discussing the appointment of alternate slates of electors as part of a direct and collateral attack after the election. a january 5th, 2021, email regarding a 38-page powerpoint briefing entitled "election fraud, foreign interference, options for january 6th" that was to be provided on the hill. another email from that same day, the day before the insurrection, about having the national guard on standby. that's interesting. meadows also provided the committee with a november 6th, 2020, text exchange with a member of congress, apparently about appointing alternate elector in certain states as part of a plan the member acknowledged would be highly controversial and in med shows reportedly said, "i love it." a text exchange, early january 2021, between mr. meadows and an organizer of the january 6th rally. "the select committee is left with no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend the body in which mr. meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution." here's the thing. all that stuff that i just laid out that's detailed in that letter is already a lot of evidence for the committee to work with. it's right there in black and white. mark meadows may not want to cooperate, but he can't take any of that back. although that does not mean he won't try. last night meadows spoke to fox news and attended to contradict his own evidence, claiming the white house did not know about what was going to happen on january 6th. >> we can all condemn what happened on january 6th, and rightfully so. but i'm not aware of anybody in the west wing that had any advance knowledge that the security was going to be breached at the capitol. >> boy, any advance knowledge that the security was going to be breached at the capitol. a very specific kind of denial. meadows literally turned over an email to the committee about having the national guard on standby that day. the reality is mark meadows wrote a book that has angered donald trump, is he finds himself between apiecing the boss and a criminal referral. he cannot take either back. he can't take back what he turned over to the committee, and he can't unwrite the book. today the chairman of the committee did not hold back in his criticism of meadows, publishing the book in which he talks about january 6th while refusing to cooperate with their investigation. quote, that he would sell his telling of the facts of that day while denying a congressional committee the opportunity to ask him about the attack on our capitol marks an historic and aggressive defiance of congress. i think that's understated, honestly. the book in question is titled "the chief's chief." it was released just yesterday. it's already gotten meadows in a lot of trouble. it is part of the reason he now fines himself in this position, facing crip natural contempt charges. the book is reportedly, and i have to admit i haven't read it, i've just read selections and reporting about those selections -- reportedly quite revealing. perhaps uni think tellally. it tells a lot about meadows' character and that of his former boss, donald trump. there's one anecdote that stands out from early october last year, when donald trump had covid. tested positive six days before we knew, as disclosed in the meadows book. meadows writes about the day when the former president was leaving the white house to be hospitalized at walter reed medical center because he had covid for so long, they were covering up. he says that trump laid his briefcase on the floor and apologized for being unable to carry it because he's so weak. according to meadows, trump said, i'm sorry, i just can't carry that out there. that's a very sick man. took awhile to get there, while they were covering it up. the president was so sick, so weak from the virus, he didn't have the strength to carry his own briefcase. so meadows and another aide,est while caddie dan scavino, were left to decide who would take to it marine one for him. "we stared at each other in silence wondering who was going to pick up the possibly contaminated briefcase, although i'm sure dan would have if i'd hesitated for a second longer. i ended up being the one who squirt on hand sanitizer, bend down, and grab it." he continued, "as i walked with president trump he looked at the briefcase in my hand, seemingly impressed, and trump said, quote, i knew you were my guy." there's a lot there. i'll just note, that was trump's approach to the entire pandemic, that if you wanted to be loyal to him, you should probably just go out there and get the disease. right? like, that's how you show your loyalty to donald trump. don't hide in your house, get out there. get sick. mark meadows' loyalty to trump clearly continues to this day, and arguably the reason why he will likely be held in criminal contempt. he's certainly not the only trump ally who feels that way. steve bannon has already been particularlied with contempt of congress after he refused to comply with a subpoena from the committee. yesterday we learned bannon will not face trial in july, although he wanted his case delayed until october. the committee's also recommended a contempt charge for former trump department of justice official jeffrey clark who aided trump in his attempts to overturn the election. they're currently holding off on referring the charge to doj as clark is scheduled to provide a deposition next week, though clark has said he will plead the fifth. john eastman, the lawyer who wrote the now-infamous coup memo, outlining a plan to keep trump in power against the will of the voters, has also been subpoenaed, and also purportedly plans to plead the fifth. as does trump's longtime ally, roger stone, who has refused to turn over documents or speak with the committee. there are plenty of others cooperating, including one of the main organizers of the stop the steal rally which brought trump supporters to washington on january 6th. his name is allie alexander, and he is said to testify in front of the committee tomorrow in response to a subpoena issued to him late last month. "new york times" reports alexander plans to tell lawmakers he had nothing to do with any violence or law-breaking on january 6th, but has pledged to supply the committee with voluminous documents. nick broadwater is a congressional reporter for "the new york times" and he joins me now. luke, let's start with setting up who alexander is for folks that might not know the name, what his role was what we know about his cooperation thus far. >> sure, yes. ali alexander is a right-wing provocateur. and he was the person who first really amplified the stop the steal narrative and started pushing it out at rallies, first in arizona, then this different states across the country. and ali alexander claimed that he along with three members of congress schemed up the idea of the january 6th rally at the capitol to put maximum pressure on the members of congress and hear this sort of loud, roaring crowd cheering them on to throw out the votes of biden electors and install mr. trump as president for another term, despite the will of the voters. so he has taken the step of now complying with the committee's subpoena. and so he's scheduled to come in tomorrow. he's already supplied an opening statement to the committee. and he's pledging to give them many, many documents. and one of the things he's already emphasizing is he's trying to insulate himself from blame for the violence that occurred that day, and he's starting to blame others. and he's saying, other organizers of these rallies did not take the appropriate steps to prevent violence. he's in a dispute with some of them over some language about where they were to direct the crowd to walk after the rally. and he's saying that he -- he's arguing he tried to stem the violence, while they hung out at a fancy hotel and drank champagne, in his words. >> yeah, and i think there's a commonality here. we know the rally was planned. it was publicized, we saw it on television that day. there were buss that brought people in, donations to groups that brought in buses, there were people on various social media posts. we know that. that's all in the public record, that's been disputed, that's been established. the dispute for people like ali alexander, and i think it's true of alex jones and roger stone, to the extent i can see, that is they're trying to sort of slice the salami fairly thin. yes, we planned this rally as covered by the right to peaceably assemble and free speech. what we didn't plan was the criminal invasion and violent confrontation with police that happened subsequently. that's sort of the case they're trying to hold up? >> yes. i would say that that is the main defense that many of the rally organizers and planners of january 6th have put forward. yes, we spread what we all know is false information about widespread election fraud. yes, we riled up the crowd. yes, we tried to get votes thrown out and keep president trump in power against the will of the people. as we know, the true election results were for president biden. but they say largely what they are engaged in is maybe violent rhetoric or heated rhetoric, not a coordinated attack on the capitol. now, of course, we do know from court documents and the federal cases that are going on that there was coordination for some of the attack and some of these extremist groups. so the question i think for the january 6th committee is trying to connect the dots between some planned attack, some planned violence that we do know about, and the overall planners of the rally and planners of the objections in congress and how those -- to the extent to which those things are related and connected. >> all right, luke broad water, great reporting and thank you for filling us in on that. i want to bring in congresswoman zoe lofgren, a member of the select committee investigating the january 6th attack on the capitol. your response to meadows' announcement that he's no longer cooperating, his failure to show up for the deposition today? >> well, he's all wet, legally. i mean, he sent us 2,000 text messages that obviously he didn't think were privileged or he wouldn't have september them to us. we'd like to ask him about those. he sent thousands, more than -- we think more than 6,000 emails from two private email accounts. obviously he didn't think those were privileged. some of these documents were contemporaneous communication while the riot was going on. and the events leading up to the riot. so to think that somehow he doesn't have to tell the committee about the things that he sent over is simply wrong. and also, you know what bothers me a bit, that he is out making money off a book relaying conversations he said he had with the president. but he doesn't want to come in and talk to the committee about those conversations. that's not what the law really envisions. so next week, the committee will be meeting to consider referring mr. meadows for criminal contempt. and we expect the house to take that up next week as well. and send it to the department of justice. >> so that's the plan now. i mean, just to reiterate your point, steve bannon, obviously, i think everyone watching the case agreed that the executive privilege indication, to the extent there was one, was as flimsy as humanly possible, right? >> right. >> he's not an employee, it's not the current president, the current president has not asserted this privilege. with meadows you have someone who clearly was the chief of staff, and if it were with the current president, privilege might obtain, but it wasn't. it seems like you waive a lot of that when you hand over documents and publish a book for profit. i mean, is that your understanding of the legal situation? >> he's already made the determination that the documents he sent to us were not privileged. that's why he sent them to us. so to say that we can't ask him about that is just legally indefensible. and then also there's such a thing as waiver. once you start talking to others about it, you can't claim, well, i'm not going to tell the congress, i'm only going to make money off the book. that's not the way it works. so i'm disappointed that mark has taken this route. i think it's improper. and, you know, why -- we have a lot of information already. >> yeah. >> i mean, we've worked we hard, we've got thousands and thousands, over 30,000 documents. we've had more than 250 witnesses. we're having interviews practically every day. we're putting the pieces together. no one witness has all the information. but meadows does have some information that we want and need, and we hope to get it. and we will piece it together from others if he continues to defy his obligation under the law. >> yeah, i wanted to segue to that, precisely for that reason. obviously we've covered the very high-profile cases of folks refusing, of steve bannon, now meadows. the back and forth with jeffrey clark. the fact that others are planning to invoke their fifth amendment rights for nonindiscrimination when coming before you. the ali alexander news was interesting insofar as the broader scope and context. looking at the chairman's letter about documents he has, other documents, you've talked to a lot of people. i'm just curious how you feel it's going in terms of putting the picture together. >> well, we have a lot of evidence, and we've got an ever-clearer picture, but we're not done yet. i will say also in terms of fifth amendment, you know, if people think what they've done could constitute a crime, the fifth amendment allows them to not testify against themselves. but there's a provision that allows the committee to give what's called use immunity, that we would not use the testimony they give us, would not provide that to the department of justice. so we have to consider that possibility too. and if we decide to go that route, then they're required to answer the question. >> you don't want to end up in the bull gravano situation. congresswoman zoe lofgren, thank you very much. >> thank you very much. all right, there's been a lot of news about the omicron variant. honestly, it's been difficult to know what to make of it. there's a lot of data, a lot of discussion, it's all preliminary. so on the one hand action we're getting new data that seems pretty concerning about evading vaccine protection. there's also encouraging statements about the pfizer ceo about their booster's efficacy against this specific variant. i've been trying hard the very last 24, 48 hours to parse this data, figure out how we should be thinking about what lies in front of us. we're going to do that together with really smart guests next. financial picture. a plan with tax-smart investing strategies designed to help you keep more of what you earn. this is the planning effect. designed to help you keep more of what you earn. ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ i thought i was managing my moderate to severe crohn's disease. then i realized something was missing... ...me. my 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failure has resulted in increase in crime against asian americans. - the da's office is in complete turmoil at this point. - for chesa boudin to intervene in so many cases is both bad management and dangerous for the city of san francisco. - we are for criminal justice reform. chesa's not it. recall chesa boudin now. all done. >> all done? >> all done. >> all right. >> exactly one year ago today, then 90-year-old margaret kenan became the first person in the world to get the pfizer coronavirus vaccine. now, one year later, we have even more evidence of just how well those vaccines work in the fight against the virus. today pfizer announced that their own preliminary lab studies show their booster shot provides strong protection against the new omicron variant. we should be clear, this data has not yet been peer reviewed and they're announcing it, so it's by no means a complete picture, it's going to require further scrutiny by health agencies. even so, this announcement has left a lot of people feeling optimistic about the new variant, including dr. anthony fauci. >> the pfizer data now gives us very important information that although there's diminution of the effect of a two-dose vaccine, when you get a booster, you dramatically increase the level of projected protection by about 25-fold. which means that people who get boosted after their two-dose mrna should really do quite well. that's what we're projecting that we will see clinically. >> that's very good news. but it's still early, very early, and lots of people haven't been boosted. the new variant is only a few weeks old. there's still a lot we do not know. there's still a bunch of questions that need answering. i'm joined by two people who are going to help me unpack what we know and don't know. dr. celine bounder has served on the biden-harris covid advisory board. dr. eric toppeles, writer of the "ground truth" blog who's been following this closely. dr. toppele, let me start with you. we've got i think three new preliminary data sets out in the last 24 hours from different labs, basically conducting experiments on how the omicron viral variant interacts with the antibody t-cell response, immune response in vaccinated individuals. >> right. >> give us a gloss of the finding there. >> okay. well, good to be with you, chris, and my friend, celine. so what we have are now five studies, really exploding new knowledge. we don't have anything on t-cells yet, but what we do have is the antibody response. so-called neutralizing antibody. at least 25-fold to 40-fold increase with the booster. that's the amount of reduction that's occurring with omicron. omicron has this feature of immune escape which is because of all of its mutations in key sites of the virus. so the good thing as dr. fauci said in your opening here is that we can get omicron effectiveness back with a vaccine with this third shot. so it's encouraging. as you said, this is a new variant and we don't have durable information, that is, how long will that effectiveness restoration last? but this neutralization antibody problem with omicron, looks like there's a work-around with the booster. >> you've got a ton of mutations on this virus. the mutations on the virus are acting to essentially disguise from it antibodies that the body has created to find the virus, and it's slipping past them because it has put on a disguise, if you will. and so that's slipping past the protection given by the antibodies produced by the vaccine. the scale of that, celine, doctor, it seems like -- my takeaway reading between the lines, reading the conversation on this, the scale of that evasion, my understanding was the people looking at this data thought it was not great but not as terrible as they feared? does that seem like a fair characterization? >> chris, i think that's about right. another way to think about this is, as if antibodies are like pieces of velcro where one piece of velcro would have worked to stick to the old variant, maybe now you need 10 or 20 pieces of velcro. but as long as you increase that level of antibody, those pieces of velcro, you can still get around it. that's really what the booster does. the good news is that you can work around it with an extra dose of vaccine. and probably for most people who have gotten two doses, they are still well protected against severe disease, hospitalization, death. but, you know, that said, given what we're seeing with these neutralization antibody assays, it probably is the right thing at this stage to get that extra dose to give you extra protection against the immune-evading properties of the omicron variant. >> i think the sort of now more than ever message on boosters, i mean, i've gotten the booster, i've been urging people on-air to get the booster. i really, really, really think it's important. in terms what was we can expect from omicron, dr. toppele, 71% partially vaccinated, 60% fully vaccinated, 24% boosted. some have been vaccinated went the window so they don't need to be boosted because they've been recently vaccinated. but that's not great. if omicron is going to evade antibody response and that's our current numbers, that doesn't add up to something awesome, seems lick to me. >> far from it. firstly, it's important to note in the new england journal today, there was a big study to show that the booster reduced death by 90% for people over age 50. and a very large study coming out of israel. our problem as you well know and have emphasized is delta. we have 100,000 cases a day, a second delta surge. now, of course, the extra bonus of the booster that would work for delta is that it will also make a difference for omicron. you know, the other point that selene mentioned is a good one. it's the t-cell story that helps prevent the severe illness, the hospitalizations and deaths. and we're hoping, of course, that the two -- the vaccine will make a big difference there. but you know, we're woefully undervaccinated, underboosted in this country. age 50 and above, we are at most 40% of those people at high-risk. they've got to get the booster of the primary vaccination because that's why we're failing to contain delta. >> yes, that's a great point. delta right now is killing 1,000 people a day of our fellow citizens. we have brutal, brutal numbers that continue. part of the problem here is, with a safe and effective vaccine available, it's politically untenable, i think somewhat understandably, to impose large nonpharmaceutical interventions, npis as politicians call them. you can't close down bars. that's a break glass situation. you've got the vaccines, you can't put people out of business. and yet that means there's a lot of vectors for infection. one thing that ryan cooper wrote about in "the week," just focusing on airflow and how we move air around buildings. one would think sitting in a tin can for hours with people packed in like sardines would be a huge infection risk, talking about airlines. airlines have rapid air purification systems that introduce fresh air, filter it through hospital-grade hepa filters. despite hundreds of millions having flown the last couple of months there are only a few confirmed cases of coronavirus transmission on airlines. it seems like this is a place we should have been focusing the last 20 months and need to focus on more now. >> joseph allen, indoor air quality expert at harvard, joseph and i wrote an op-ed on this exact same topic a couple of months ago for "the hill" focused on improving indoor air quality ventilation and infiltration in k-12 schools. there is over $170 billion in the c.a.r.e.s. act, the american rescue plan, and other legislation that allocates funding -- as i said, almost $200 billion of funding for k-12 schools to make these kinds of infrastructure upgrades. but that has to be planned at the school district level. school districts need to assess their buildings, come up with infrastructure plans, work with vendors to do that. and then spend the money. and that is not an easy task for school districts to do. >> i will say this. you can buy hepa filters. they're not cheap, but they're also not astronomically expensive. they're not like getting a new car or something. you can order them online, you can put those in spaces. everyone who's running buildings should be looking into doing that, consulting with people that have expertise on this. thank you both. still ahead, the republican red scare wins out as a top biden nominee withdraws from contention. why it matters next. >> i don't mean any disrespect, i don't know whether to call you professor or comrade. >> senator, i'm not a communist. if you have high blood pressure, a cold is not just a cold. unlike other cold medicines, coricidin provides powerful cold relief without raising your blood pressure be there for life's best moments with coricidin. now in sugar free liquid. my retirement plan with voya keeps me moving forward. they guide 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communist organization while i was growing up in the soviet union? >> who knows, i just wanted to ask you that question. have you resigned? >> from the youth? >> from the young communists? >> you grow out of it with age. automatically. >> did you -- did you send them a letter, though, resigning? >> senator, this was many, many years ago, as far as i remember how the soviet union worked, at a certain age, you automatically stop being a member. >> could you look at your records and see if you can find a copy -- i don't mean any disrespect, i don't know whether to call you professor or comrade. >> senator, i am not a communist. >> that was republican senator john kennedy of louisiana interrogating cornell professor soule omarova, born in the soviet union where membership was compulsory, which explained the red bating from the senator. omerova was president biden's nominee for top regulatory to oversee the banking industry. she had previously worked in george w. bush's treasury department. many republicans and some democrat dtds not want her in that position because their donors in the financial industry among the banks are afraid of someone competent and vigilant overseeing the banks. so they use this preposterous and gross line of tack on her upbringing to block her nomination, she's a communist, using her secret training to destroy capitalize from within. it worked. she formally withdrew her nomination, rejected public service for the crime of being born in a country that does not even exist anymore. would not be the first time a qualified nominee was denied a job in government for petty reasons. there's been many examples. i keep thinking of one, a woman named cassandra butts, president barack obama's nominee to serve as ambassador to the bahamas. qualified public servant with decades of work in government for nonprofits under her belt. but republican senator tom cotton of arkansas blocked her nomination for 835 days. not because she was controversial or unqualified, 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fewer ulcers than plain aspirin. try new vazalore. aspirin made amazing! back in march, the senate judiciary committee held a hearing on the nomination of vanita gupta to be associate attorney general, and during that hearing the committee's democratic chair, senator dick durbin, interrupted republican senator tom cotton of arkansas to move to a vote. >> she said, make no mistake, a vote for is a vote against, you guessed it, civil and human rights. >> senator cotton, i'm sorry to interrupt you, we've been notified there's going to be the two-hour rule invoked and we have four minutes left before that happens. i'm afraid we have no choice but to call the roll. i'll stay here afterwards to hear the completion of your remarks. >> so like senator durbin politely explained, he was forced to move things along when the republicans tried a procedural trick that would have prevented the committee from voting that day if the questioning had continued. cotton refused to accept that. >> during the nomination just minutes into my 15-minute remarks, the chairman of the committee cut off my remarks mid-sentence and called for a vote in violation of the committee rules. there must be consequences when the democrats break the rules. and here's what the consequences are going to be in this case. i will refuse consent or time agreements for the nomination of any u.s. attorney from any state represented by a democrat on the judiciary committee. >> it's a bad faith argument by senator cotton. the only reason that happened is republicans tried a procedural trick that forced the democrats to cut off his questioning. instead of acknowledging why it happened, cotton stopped five u.s. attorneys from being confirmed for nearly eight months. luckily, none of them died of leukemia while waiting. and his justification has not improved over those eight months. this is what he said just yesterday. >> i reiterated today, i would be happy to confirm these nominees in the following few minutes if the senator from illinois would simply express regret for what happened in the hearing that day and commit that it won't happen again. >> moments later, senator durbin reluctantly expressed regret, those five u.s. attorneys were unanimously confirmed, and literally the only reason they were not confirmed earlier is because tom cotton was having a performative tantrum. the latest example of the utter breakdown of governing in the republican party. adam jaelson, former deputy chief of staff to senate democratic leader harry reid. author of "kill switch," the executive director of battle been directive. let's be clear. senators are as a rule egomaniacs and a little nuts. and they really don't like when people tread on their territory and across the political and ideologically spectrum will often zealously guard their turf. given that context, does cotton's performance here fall in like the category of the normal, or is it out in the abnormal range? >> no, it's absolutely far, far out in the abnormal range. i think what's important to understand is, if he was giving a speech on the senate floor and he was cut off, that would sort of be one thing. but committee hearings drag on and are hours and hours and hours. the chair has to interrupt frequently to let members know what's going on, give them updates on the proceedings. it's not like there are many people in attendance anyway. to be interrupted in the middle of a hearing by the chair to give an update that was relevant to every other member who was there, and that was being forced on him by republicans as you mentioned, is entirely part of the status quo. for cotton to react the way he did is far outside the norm. >> yeah, and it's also a reminder that the senate -- senate rules are just this mysterious talmudic text that very few people understand. you need unanimous consent to do anything, but the senate has to do a lot of things, so it has to rely on that. i guess the argument is if you have to rely on unanimous consent the forces people to work together and find accommodations. but often it looks like, eight u.s. attorneys haven't been confirmed, and everybody would be better off in the public interest if they had been. >> that's right. senators exercise a lot of power. it's not like the house. senators have a lot of control unto themselves. but there's something different about senator cotton, something uniquely ghoulish about him. he's been in the senate for coming on six or seven years now. he's never accomplished anything. and he seems to take sort of a perverse pleasure in using these opportunities to twist the knife on democrats. this seems to be why he exists in the senate. i was there when he blocked cassandra butts, a friend of mine. it was deeply heartbreaking then. he clearly has not learned anything. he clearly regrets nothing about that episode. this seems to be what gets him up in the morning what gives him purpose in his service in the united states senate. i think that's deeply sad. >> so the other big news out of the senate today is there's some deal -- i can't even honestly make sense of it -- they're going to raise the debt ceiling with a one-time vote to evade the filibuster, so the vote for the thing that would raise the debt ceiling without the filibuster doesn't count as a vote to raise the debt creeling? it's like procedural nonsense. but it's the way the senate functions. and a lot of people said elizabeth warren among others, if we can make this exception here, why not make it in other places? >> look, senate rules are what 50 senators want them to be. you know, there's myth of tradition that it likes to wrap itself up in as an institution. but really what it is, over 200 years of history of people sort of doing what was politically convenient at the time, then shrouding it in these grand myths of tradition. so it is absolutely true that if you were making an exception to the filibuster on the debt ceiling because it's politically advantageous to mitch mcconnell, he doesn't want to have this fight because he's worried if he filibustered the debt ceiling the democrats would go through with the nuclear option and change the rules, so he's making this exception. senator warren is right, there's no principled reason why if you're going to make an exception here you couldn't make it on other things, such as voting rights. hopefully -- it's a weird thing that's happening but hopefully this is at least a modest step forward towards rules reform. it is things like this, it's the small steps, it's things like senator cotton just driving senators crazy that sort of build momentum for reform. that's the way that it's happened in the past. and hopefully they're inching towards that outcome now. >> thank you very much. ahead, republicans found success with their critical race theory fearmongering. now they're trying to copy and paste that strategy onto a new target, critical energy theory. right's new "woke" bogeyman after 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stay safe during an emergency. on this show we have covered republican state legislators, passing similar kind of bills all at the same time, things like voting rights restrictions, changing polling locations or hours of balloting methods which disenfranchise voters or critical race theory bans that outlaw phrases or books or concepts in schools, and part of this is due to the, you know, natural ebb and flow of political movements, things become hot issues, but then there's this centralized organization called alec, the american legislative exchange council where legislators get together, craft legislation, and pass it around to consider introducing in their own states n. an amazing new turn chronicled in the new republic, the next frontier for this group is taking language of the critical race theory bans as well as the model of very constitutionally dubious laws passed to stop private entities from any boycotts of israel, mix them together and turn the legislation against any company to move away from fossil fuels, and any government agencies passing rules or policy that might pressure or incentivize banks to lend to oil and gas companies. the term that aranof uses tongue and cheek is critical energy theory, a term no one has used but maybe it will be coming to you soon. joining me now is the staff bringer at the new republic covering climate author of that amazing piece. it's really great reporting, i chuckled at the critical energy theory headline, so tell me first of all what you how you reported on this with alec. >> the center for media and democracy has been following this story for years, and has been close to the ground tracking these conferences for years. i was in contact with them as well as a contact i had there, and getting sort of updates on what was happening and in particular, i'm a climate reporter following the sort of energy module which is one of my many of these subject areas they're recording on. there are modules on voting rights on critical race theory, on any number of things, and energy is obviously a big concern for alec which has gotten a lot of support over the years from the koch industry. >> so the idea is and i'm going to read from your piece here, the group energy environment agricultural task force voted to back two pieces of legislation that portray climate policy as unfairly discriminating against fossil fuel companies. the mental frame they're trying to invoke, if you're trying to do things as a private entity or government to get off fossil fuels that's discriminatory. similar that it's anti-israel or anti-semitic to boycott. that's the intellectual lineage, and what would the legislation do. >> you're exactly right. this comes out of a couple very specific place, the anti-bds legislation criminalizing protests and the legislation itself would really require companies or require comptrollers at the state level, excuse me, to create and maintain a list of financial companies which are boycotting energy companies. and so this is voted on unanimously and would require, i think, a pretty huge administrative lift for pretty under funded offices in a lot of these states, which, you know, these offices don't have a ton of resources to do something like this but they would be required to divest from companies. so pension funds, right, state pension funds would be required to take out any holders if bank of america got too woke and decided they were going to divest and, you know, take on the fossil fuel industry, which they haven't. they haven't. >> what's fascinating is there's a what's good for the goose is good for the gander turn about. the climate movement has been putting pressure on firms on pension funds to divest from fossil fuels, oil and gas. the teachers union of california because they see that as a lever to get us off fossil fuels. this is like we're going to boycott the boycotters. the idea is that like if you listen to those woolly headed activists trying to get you off oil and gas, we the state of arkansas will no longer invest in your thing. >> right. and the irony is that these companies aren't doing that, right, the 60 biggest financial institutions have spent $3.68 trillion to finance fossil fuel projects so it's responding to a problem that just doesn't exist. the financial sector is not taking climate change seriously and at the sort of inkling that they could you see republicans trying to aggressively drag this conversation into the culture war space that they have grown very comfortable with during the trump administration. >> also the way that these anti-bds laws, their model almost exactly word for word on them. the idea is if you're a company of an entity that has decided to boycott israel over, you know, the occupied territories or what you have viewed human rights abuses, which is a first amendment protected political expression, the state is going to punish you for severering -- severing contracts, and that is being poured into the climate sector. >> yeah, and this is, you know, a play book that after the palestinian solidarity movement have been raising alarms about for years. we know the right, we'll pick and choose from different play books and plop them on to whatever issue they want, and that is exactly what folks have been raising alarms about, the anti-bds laws have been saying, we'll see sooner or later they have applied to energy and climate or whatever it is, and that is happening right now. >> the thing i note here too, which i find interesting is for a long time the argument against alternative fossil fuels, they needed heavy subsidies, the government was propping up, and you're just seeing the balance of the shift, just the cost structure, increasingly what you're going to see on the right, and you're seeing this in some states like wyoming, it's just straight up state efforts, subsidies, to keep dirty fuel going, even past the point at which the market has totally rejected it. this, i think is showing us what's to come. kate aronoff great reporting, thank you so much for coming in. that is "all in" on this wednesday night. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, and thanks at home for joining us this hour. we've got a lot of news to cover. there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. this is one of those shows what we plan to talk about, it's like six shows in one. in part that's because a lot of things we have been covering for weeks, in some cases for months, for whatever reason today was the day those things finally got resolved. for example, the bizarre story of former president trump playing down serious battle injuri

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