television which is what you're watching. if you've never watched the podcast and you watch the show this is a taste. we're going to share two conversations i've had with two people who have been on if the forefront of what i think in some ways the most important story of 2021 which is american democracy on the knife's edge. of course the year 2021 begins with the first ever insurrection. the second time in american history we had sustained violence around the transfer of power, the first being fort sumpter, the second being january 6th. the aftermath of the insurrection, the attempts by the republican party to put into place means of stopping future peaceful transfers of power and democratic accountability and the onrush towards a future and one of the parties has become essentially anti-democratic in a profound way. that's the big story of 2021. so in this episode tonight two people who have been really at the forefront of identifying, warning and then fighting against these tendencies. one of those people is sharelen ifill who might be familiar with you. she's actually stepping down next year. she's one of the most remarkable lawyers, legal thinkers, social critics that we have, one of the very best voting rights lawyers in the entire country. so i got to talk with her about the state of civil voting rights in this country and the nature of american democracy, what it has been, what is now and what it could be. first i spoke with gelman. he's a long time reporter, was at "the washington post" for a while, wrote about dick cheney, one of the nation's most respected journalists. and he's kind of pivoted off of being a national security officer for a while to be a full time national democracy beat at the atlantic. bart wrote one of the most seminal pieces on this topic before the election, in fact before i think it was apparent on what happened. it was published in september 2020, so that's two months before the election. it was in the atlantic where he's a correspondent for the atlantic, and the piece was called "the election that could break america." and basically it's always risky to write about the future if you're a journalist because the future is unwritten. you don't know what's going to happen, and you could end up looking very, very silly. i myself have made predictions about the future that end up being silly. bart wrote a piece that was the opposite. it was remarkably prophetic because it basically laid out a blueprint for how trump with sufficient allies in the republican party across the country could attempt or perhaps be successful in overruling the democratic will of the american people and essentially steal an election or steal an electoral college majority to keep himself in power even if a majority of americans both in the popular vote and in terms of electoral votes voted against him. and he lays this out. it seems like harebrained and nuts, and yet it is in many ways ends up being precisely accurate blueprint of the steps that donald trump and mark meadows and all of his collaborators took in the run up to january 6th. and in december he wrote another piece, a follow-up. basically saying, look, it didn't stop after january 6th, and as you know if you watch the show or the podcast, we cover this all the time, it kept going. that piece published just a few weeks ago called trump's coup has already begun about american democracy is about how adherence to the big lie, adherence to the notion that donald trump -- that joe biden is illegitimate, in a broader sense the democratic party is illegitimate has become orthodox. as we were thinking about this podcast and the year end show i thought to myself there's no one i want to speak to more than the atlantic's barton gillman. you've already got the trump team taking the position the vice president can just decide like i don't like those electoral votes. they're already talking about that in september. >> because the idea of stealing an election you didn't win is with them from the beginning. >> exactly right. and this is what i think is key, though. they're already thinking about stealing and then comes all the ridiculous empirical claims about fraud. and my question to you is, like, what role is that playing? >> that's really an interesting question. it's -- it's justifying the idea the state legislature has no choice, you know, what can we do, our hands are tied, no one knows what the vote really is because it's so tainted by vote rigging and fraud we don't have any idea who the people voted for. so we're just going to have to make that choice ourselves. remember the whole thing strategically is based on the fact that there are, what, six or seven battleground states where biden narrowly run but where the state legislature is controlled by the republicans. so if you can say the people don't get to decide, the legislature does, you are turning seven states red that were voting blue. >> right, but my point here is as articulated in your piece, right, they're already thinking about how to steal it in this sort of facially anti-democratic way before any votes are cast, right? then the votes are cast, and then there's this like frenzy whipped up around individual allegations of this fraud and increasingly insane theories like an italian satellite or the ghost of hugo chavez or whatever is inhabiting the machines, right? what i think that does to your point is gives a predicate because the anti-democratic nature of what they're after is so indefensible, they need to rest it on this foundation, right? >> predicate is the right word. they are setting up a story line in which they're not overruling the people. they're just we can't figure out what the people want because there are so many spaceships that are beaming votes down and dumping ballots in the middle of the night. i guess there are very few politicians in america who are willing to stand up and say i don't think you should have the vote. >> right. even donald trump. >> even donald trump won't say it. that's true. >> then the question becomes to me -- and this i think carries through to where we are now, right? i don't know if this matters but i suspect it does because there's something interesting happening with the nation's deep core democratic ethos, the offensive of the idea they're floating and the role voter fraud plays in of bridging the gap. it's like it's not acceptable to us as americans across ideological class lines or whatever of just take our vote and we get to decide. that's actually what you want to do because you want to validate a legitimacy of votes. so the bridge you build between those two things is fraud. and i guess my question is, like, of the people now, the tens of millions of people radicalized against democracy and maybe it doesn't matter, but do they believe the fraud story? >> oh, yeah. i think there are tens of millions of people who believe it in their bones. who if you ask them to -- >> if you took a lie detector test -- >> to bet their child's life, they'd be that sure. i've talked to someone who said, you know, if you're asking me whether if i'm wrong about this you could just shoot me, i'll say, yeah, there was fraud. they're -- they're completely convinced. they're overwhelmed by the volume of propaganda and all the technical language of it, and, you know, talking about terrabytes of data. and they've used fancacy language and snowball all the details. i guess the people in trump's base figure if this one is not right and the other one is there's too many, they can't all be wrong. this much smoke there's got to be fire. >> i think that's well-said. the barrage of propaganda on this really i think if you haven't witnessed it, you can -- and i mean, again, i have to have a little -- i try to sort of put myself -- i have -- i have had the experience often in my life -- and this is in some ways what being a journalist is and i'm sure you have, too, where there's some expert debate about a thing -- >> right. >> -- and you don't anything about it. and you're like who's right on this? these people are fighting on it then. and you start to weigh in on the final reporting. ultimately what's ends up happening is a lot of that is how you figure out these trust relationships. >> yes. >> who's trustworthy and who's not. and there's no escaping those trust relationships in how we form any of our beliefs around the world. and there's tens of millions of people who just trust untrustworthy people. >> yeah. and this is something that troubles me greatly as a journalist because i don't know how to reach those people. i've always thought of myself as someone who is reporting and writing for someone with an open mind who's willing to use common sense the same as they would use in their everyday life. i mean, they wouldn't trust this snake oil salesman if he was selling them a used car. their spider sense would tingle and they would say how come you haven't mentioned anything about the carburetor. and they wouldn't fall for it if someone just snowed them with talk. but that's in their every day life. and somehow when they're thinking about politics their brain just works in a different way. >> you said something recently about your role as a journalist i found really fascinating just in terms of your training and the tradition you've come up in and the situation you find yourself now in. and i want to talk about that right after we take this quick break. t right after we take this quick break. ♪ feel stuck and need a loan? move to sofi and feel what it's like to get your money right. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ move to a sofi personal loan. earn $10 just for viewing your rate — and get your money right. ♪ no one can deliver your mom's homemade short ribs. that's why instacart helps deliver the ingredients. and you add the love. small businesses like yours make gift-giving possible. now, comcast business has an exclusive gift for you. introducing the gift of savings sale. for a limited time, ask how to get a great deal for your business. and get up to a $500 prepaid card with select bundles when you switch to the network that can deliver gig speeds to the most businesses. or get started with internet and voice for $64.99 per month with a 2-year price guarantee. give your business the gift of savings today. comcast business. powering possibilities. all right, back with barton gellman. staff writer for "the atlantic." you had a quote about how you've come to view your role as a journalist and this question of objectivity. i'm curious to hear you say it again and sort of follow up on. >> terry surprised me with the question and i sort of blurted out a answer. and i don't regret it. it's uncomfortable for me to talk about the way my role has changed as a journalist in these recent years. because i grew up with sort of the mainstream training to keep myself out of the story, to keep my opinions out of the story, to take no side when one side is fighting with another. and i realized that there are at least two things that journalists are allowed to be for and to defend. one of them is the truth. and one of them is the fundamental tenants of democracy, the people get to make their own choice of who leads them. we are in favor of that. we are pro democracy. >> you are allowed to have that take. >> allowed to have that opinion. >> there's a hot one from bart gellman. >> and the problem is we have one party that is pro democracy and one party that is small "d" democrat, willing to lose an election, willing to uphold the rules and stay within the safe guards. and so if i point out that mainstream positions in the republican party are simply lies or are authoritarian or anti-democratic, i'm not doing that because i'm trying to put myself on the side of the democratic party. i'm just telling the truth. >> and there's also the fact that the nature of american electoral politics with the two-party system is fairly zero sum at a certain level. and i mean that in a few different ways. it's zero-sum in terms of electoral outcomes. it's also zero-sum in terms of, like, this democratic ethos insofar as, like, if you say my core commitment as a journalist and as an american citizen, which i would say for myself even -- is democracy and one of the parties is abandoning that as an ethos. like one plus one equals two there. >> right. and it's an emergency. it is an emergency. it is the biggest story there is, and it needs to be treated that way by journalists and by society at large. >> how much do you think it's getting that treatment? >> not enough, i would say. there's been a lot of good journalism done, but i don't sense that there is a tone to it or an overall context in the journalism that says red alert, our democracy is at risk here. it's sort of high jinx and bad behavior in state parties and one side using bad smelling efforts to seek advantage. but it doesn't look to me like the scale of the threat is reflected in what's being said. what you're not seeing in the coverage is an underlying message this is abnormal, this is beyond the pale, this is off the tracks. something's going on here that we haven't seen before, and that leads to a very bad place. that's the context that's missing. >> and the place where i see this most squarely and there's a bunch of different examples to me is the georgia primary with david perdue where you've had a crashing together of the normal and abnormal because david purdue is like ten years ago an ostensibly normal politician. i wouldn't think of him as an anti-democratic force in american politics and now he's primarying kemp for governor of georgia on an exist essentially pro-coup. >> and you see purdue in a very opportunistic way seizing on a very powerful undercurrent in american politics now. trump's greatest source of strength is that he has convinced many tens of millions of people that the election was stolen. and that's a -- that's a cataclysm. right, i mean if you believe that. what isn't allowed to you? there's an impostor in the white house who is a tyrant who stole the office. that's an extraordinary thing to believe. and trump has managed along with this whole ecosystem around him to convince tens of millions of people of that. now, if you were to administer truth serum to republican elected officials, to david purdue, they would say, yeah, okay, well, biden won fair and square. but that's not what the base thinks. >> right. >> and they're afraid of the base. and some of them are happy to take advantage of the base to advance their careers which is where i think i'd put purdue in this one. >> you have all these states that take extraordinary measures to make voting easier because we're in the midst of the pandemic. and in this context the republican party does fine, well in some certain ways. they won a bunch of congressional races they didn't think they would win. it's not like this idea they have is just not even empirically correct which is if everyone votes we're toast. they're a very competitive party. there's lots of conservatives in america. but in this case it's like what will they do with that power? and so you've got this crazy thing where the stakes of the normal politics become the actual full total democratic health of the polity. >> well, right. if you have to worry about what one party is going to do the first time it gets into power with the ability across the board and the next time it gets into power, then the stakes change completely and normal politics don't suffice. >> what does suffice? what do you do? >> well, you know, i -- >> people ask me that and i have the same reaction. like i'm just out here ringing the alarm. what i have is a megaphone so i shout into it every day. >> yeah, i feel the same way. it's hard enough to figure out what's going on and state it clearly and analyze it intelligently and to say, hey, there's a big problem here, everybody, let's pay attention to it. it's asking a lot to also know what all the solutions are. but the first one is that people have to look at this with a sense of urgency, have to notice what's going on and have to say, wait, this is not something that is okay. we have to do something about this. i mean, i know what i would do if i were, you know, working for the other party and trying to organize my precinct or my county or my state. i'd be paying attention to these local races to supervise the election because the republicans are putting a lot of attention into it, and they are essentially infiltrating what were bipartisan or completely nonpartisan institutions like, you know, the election supervisor for the township of whatever and saying we can't let the election be stolen the way it was last time. there are vowed believers in a completely nonsensical claim that the election was stolen and they're going to go in there and fix that. god knows what they'll actually do if they have the power to decide whether to certify or not certify votes. so you would want to see small "d" democrats organizing as much as the anti-democratic forces are organizing, and they're not. >> barton gellman is a staff writer at the atlantic. as you read both those pieces and his latest trump's next coup has already begun. that was great. thanks, bart. >> thanks very much for having me. >> journalism is one american institution that's had to fight and improve itself and figure out a way to hold ground for the preservation of american democracy and the expansion of american democracy against the forces that seek to undo and undermine it. the court that's been a whole other battle. i think one of the most -- one of the wisest and most brilliant people in all of american public life and also one of the most prominent voting rights lawyers in the country and one of the most -- one of the most righteously ferocious defenders of american democracy is a woman by sherrilyn that runs the naacp fund going back to last century, and she joins me for a conversation about this moment in american democracy next. conversation about this moment in american democracy next ugh. finding understanding doesn't have to be. together, we can create a kinder, more inclusive world for the millions of people on the autism spectrum. go to autismspeaks.org i have moderate to severe ulcerative colitis. so i'm taking zeposia, a once-daily pill. because i won't let uc stop me from being me. zeposia can help people with uc achieve and maintain remission. and it's the first and only s1p receptor modulator approved for uc. don't take zeposia if you've had a heart attack, chest pain, stroke or mini-stroke, heart failure in the last 6 months, irregular or abnormal heartbeat not corrected by a pacemaker, if you have untreated severe breathing problems during your sleep, or if you take medicines called maois. zeposia may cause serious side effects including infections that can be life-threatening and cause death, slow heart rate, liver or breathing problems, increased blood pressure, macular edema, and swelling and narrowing of the brain's blood vessels. though unlikely, a risk of pml--a rare, serious, potentially fatal brain infection--cannot be ruled out. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions, medications, or if you are or plan to become pregnant. if you can become pregnant, use birth control during treatment and for 3 months after you stop taking zeposia. don't let uc stop you from doing you. ask your doctor about once-daily zeposia. ♪ i'm a reporter for the new york times. if you just hold it like this. yeah. ♪ i love finding out things that other people don't want me to know. mm-hmm. [beep] i just wanted to say... ♪ find yourself in these situations and see who you are. and that's just part of the bargain. ♪ (vo) subaru and our retailers believe in giving back. that's why, in difficult times, we provided one hundred and fifty million meals to feeding america. and now through the subaru share the love event, we're helping even more. by the end of this year, subaru will have donated over two hundred and twenty five million dollars to charity. this is what it means to be more than a car company. this is what it means to be subaru. shareal. shareal. >> . she'd currently the head of the naacp legal defense fund though she's stepping down next year. she started in 1988 working on issues of voter rights. and as you're about to hear, we live now in a moment where the right to vote is under assault, where democracy itself is under assault and a nearly unprecedented fashion in certain ways, but is in line with a long history of pro-democracy and anti-democracy forces in american life often that have revolved around the color line, specifically around white supremacy and anti-black racism. and she has been part of that fight and the lineage of that fight in the naacp legal defense fund stretching back to brown v. board and cases like that that were pushed by the folks at naacp. she has a really unique perspective about what this moment is. and i will say we sat down together for this conversation. i was feeling a little down about where things are, which is a thing that can happen, i think, when you spend all your time thinking about it and hear someone who has a far more robust career than i have had and spent more time fighting in the trenches of american democracy. and she gave me a charge of hope. so it was a great pleasure to get to sit down and talk to sherrilyn ifill. so you, naacp legal defense fund, you have been running it since 2013. >> since january 22nd, i think. >> and you're going to step down next year? >> i am going to step down next year. it's a big deal. >> yeah. you -- it's been a -- it's been a tough ten years. i'm going to tell you the joke i was going to make earlier but didn't want to make in front of you because i thought you'd take offense but i think it's funny. in basketball there's a stat called plus minus. plus minus is independent of how the player is playing what the score is doing on the floor. i was like sherrilyn ifill is plus minus. >> i think you're making a different calculation than i'm making, right? i actually think -- and it's the part i feel good about. i feel incredibly pleased and gratified and actually even surprised and hopeful about the progress that's been made in helping millions more people understand the issues that i've devoted my life to than ever before in my lifetime. that is pure plus. >> the issues you work on, voting rights and the protection of multiracial democracy, have never been essentially an activating issue people have talked about in my lifetime. >> and many more people who understand the reality or at least have a sense that there is something that is real and systemic about racism in this country and that it is dangerous to this country. that has not been the understanding of certainly of most white people. and even some black people who believe we get the black president and everybody's doing so much better, really didn't understand the depth of it. and for the 30 years i've been doing this work, i've never felt more affirmed and equipped to -- to have conversations with people about creating a world that we want, which i think before people were inclined to think it's okay, doing okay. of course some things happen, of course there's some bad people. so i can't complain because honestly i started out in 1998 as a voting rights attorney. no one knew what voter suppression was and very people outside our realm in the communities we served cared. in fact, while voter suppression was being unleashed against black and brown communities and particularly in the south not in swing states as they're now understood, very few white people paid any attention to it. and that is not just about republican or democrats. it's just in general. >> right. >> but as i've always said what they workshop on us is the stuff that's coming for the whole republic. >> that's such -- it's a profound and true. >> so at the end of the day the reason you and i and many others feel overwhelmed or feel like this is a catastrophe we can't get out of is because the u.s. is now alabama, which if it didn't check alabama it was going to be. so you want me to be sad about the fact not just the people i represent are living in place that is anti-democratic? i am not. i am actually hopeful that the metasization of this terrible thing means we'll actually make a change, and that change will be for all people including the communities i represent, the 52% of black people who live in the south. so when people say they want to write off red states and why don't we separate from them, they're actually talk about a majority of the black population in this country. if people understand their fate is tied to our fate and that whatever is happening and being tried out on marginalized communities is the stuff that they're coming for the whole republic with. so that part feels -- i don't know if there was any other way to get there. i don't know what would drive tens of millionps of people of all races into the streets in 50 states except the video of the torture and killing of george floyd. it's an awful thing to say about this country but it happens to be true. >> well, i would say just to reaffirm your point it was more than the video because it was the work you and others have done to create the context. and i was thinking about this yesterday because yesterday when i was speaking to you, yesterday we lost the great -- and it was really profound to me and moving that here's this writer i encountered first in college as a young straight sis white liberal, blew my mind. but also from mars, right? and then to watch 20 years later she -- >> like the outpouring on social media. >> the outpouring and the language, the consciousness, her way of formulating things, her conceptualization of the problem as a thing that is in the main -- i mean, if not quite the mainstream. >> yes. >> far more central than it was 20 years ago. >> so i'm going to demand you rethink your plus minus calculation. >> it was a dumb joke. >> if you're fighting for real transformation -- this is something we have to discipline ourselves to do. i just said this to a couple of lawyers on our team in the office. are we fighting to get back to 20 years ago? i mean i started this in 1988, okay, so what part of the last 50 years have existed when ldf hasn't had a full docket of voting rights cases, justice cases. so this will be an opportunity to decide will we as things unravel have a chance to build, not rebuild but build the way we want. you do that before the whole dog gone thing caves in on itself. it's happening. it's like you're in the middle of a global pandemic that won't end because of a concerted misinformation campaign and because the stickiness of white supremacy can be tied to anything. you can attach it to anything and it has legs. so now it's attached to masks and it's attached to schools and it's attached to vaccination and all of that. and so that's kind of what i believe in trying to write this book is what i'm writing about. the stickiness of this thing, if we don't get that thing under control -- >> i want to talk more about that. i want to talk about the vision of solidarity that you're enunciating here because i find it very hopeful in a moment i'm maybe feeling a little -- >> that's what i'm here. >> you are delivering. we're going to come right back with sherrilyn ifill. with sherrilyn ifill back with sherrilyn ifill, president and director counsel at naacp legal defense fund. the thing i've found as i've gotten older i used to value intelligence above all, like smartness was everything. then i sort of realized there's a lot of smart people and judgment is actually everything. and you are a brilliant person but i think your judgment is incredible. i always look to you -- >> oh, that's nice. >> no, really, your perception of politics and how you're able to blend with a pragmatic vision how to move forward has been a north star for me. and hearing you enunciate the case for optimism was actually very effecting for me honestly. and i think, you know, one thing i keep coming back to is american liberal democracy and the way we think of what an actual democracy is basically is a, you know, 46-year experiment. >> absolutely. >> it's not the majority of the time. it's a small little thing, and your idea more about the idea we're not trying to rebuild things. the idea is we actually want to make something new, which is like an actually equitable, just, flourishing, true multiracial democracy in the 21st century in a way we've never had multiracial democracy. >> that is true. and it is a big experiment. there's no country we're modeling ourselves after. one of the reasons i revere, you know, the thurgood marshals. in 1940s maybe you could. you create this organization of black lawyers and march through this system, we're going to use the tools, and i mean really? what was the thing that made them think it was possible? so i do feel like that's the space where we need to be, where we're imagining something that doesn't exist and we feel okay about that. we're willing to take that chance. we're willing to be strategic. we're willing to fight for short-term gains but we also have a long game in mind, but we also recognize it's not fun. listen, chris, i think it's -- you know why i say this all the time because i think for those of us who grew up like watching the civil rights movement, i mean for me it's the reason why i became a civil rights lawyer, why i wanted to. i don't mean like fun, it looked so noble, no beautiful it's like they knew what they were doing, they had a plan, a strategy. they used to have a strategy. when i took this job i got a little bit nervous because i knew people would be asking me all the time. and i went to a talk one night taylor branch was doing and he said on the stage in baltimore. he said, you know, during the civil rights movement leaders and activists, how did he describe it? i think he said we're eternally -- no, perpetually anxious about what to do next. and that was it for me. yeah, like, they too were trying to figure it out as they went. >> it is elevated. it is almost a sublime moment of democratic sacrifice, physical sacrifice for this beautiful ideal. and the taylor branch books where he would chronicle over 25 pages of meeting in a church for nine hours with no a where people were at each other's throats. i mean they ran john lewis -- like john lewis, the john lewis like out of here. >> yes, yes. and i think we -- because we have come to -- not we but the civil rights movement has come to be used in the service of a narrative about this country, right, of nobility, of a place of opportunity and so forth, that actually we gave them that they have used to their own advantage, and we covered everything and it looks so beautiful and so wonderful, and we forget how painful it was. we forget how absolutely painful it was. >> and the thing i find reassuring because i find there's so much intraconflict all the time and i think well that's social media and that partly is, but it's the nature of democratic politics. people have conflicts. even people who are alive -- >> it's actually part of the things we believe ip. so when people say, well, the right they're so disciplined, they're all on message, they clearly got the memo. if you want to be in a cult, you're right. discipline is one of the major qualities of people lock step in a cult. people interested in a progressive vision and a democracy not only want outcomes, but they also value process. that means we necessarily value dissent. dissent, engagement, input from lots of people, deliberation, noticed transparency -- see you're getting exhausted, right? >> thinking through the personal -- >> all the things that make it difficult to answer quickly, make it hard to have everybody onboard, makes it hard to have the kind of discipline. and we have to accept that. and i will say that to you as part of the journalist class is that the constant the democrats never have their crap -- i'm not saying the democrats always have their crap together, often they don't. but what they're trying to do around the set of principles is a completely different enterprise than what the republican party is trying to do. >> i mean, the -- yes, the idea of making -- a, making space for conflict at that point which is really a profound one that the process is part of the value. >> the belief system is not like low taxes. it's like how would you get to a decision about low taxes. we also care about that and also the caucus that wants to say why we shouldn't lower -- and that's part of what we believe in. it's always going to be harder for us. >> it's a harder coalition to keep together. >> yes. it's a true big tent. >> it's a really big tent, and people love to ride in on this thing of like, oh, well, you don't know that actually older black voters in queens don't want to defund the police. it's like, no, i know that. >> like i'm from queens. i do understand. >> it's like these liberals it's like -- no, no, we're talking to tens of millions of people from lots of backgrounds. >> that's exactly right. and in fact, black people have always had lots of conflict. >> there are many of them. >> so all of that is to say that i think for mes it has been very helpful to be a student of the real civil rights movement because it shows you the kind of conflict that goes into making something that is worth it, something that is noble, something that is true, something that is democratic. and it ain't fun all the time. now, i will say this, though, we have a ball at ldf. just like you and i are laughing right now, like we do. >> you're a profoundly joyful person in my interactions with you. >> we have fun. >> i'm going to say something. i've been obsessed. i don't know if you've watched the beetles documentary. >> i haven't but i've seen clips of it. >> you're seeing this like they're fighting with each other, they're almost breaking up -- >> they're making songs. >> they're making songs. they're doing something. they love each other. >> they do love each other. >> and they're in conflict with each other and they're doing something sort of beautiful together and all of that is together. >> that's a great metaphor. >> it's like good, democratic political work is like that, too. it's tough, period. >> this is one of them. and i say to people oh, the last five years and we can't recover. the civil rights movement will be counted from brown in 1954 and that is to now to ignore everything that happens before brown. let's take it from 1954 to 1968 when dr. king is assassinated, fair housing act, last big bill is passed. that's 14 years. we're talking about the last five years, oh, my goodness. how do you think it felt in 1963? how do you think it felt when the four girls were blown up in the church? there are all these moments. and i've said before that every major piece of civil rights legislation was preceded by some horrible act of violence, right? the voting rights act the edmund pettus bridge, we had the four girls, even 1957 civil rights act was like the montgomery bus boycott had start. so it's always something that, like, pushes us into this. and that's what we have to be able to tolerate. we have to be able to tolerate the painfulness of it. >> let me ask you this final question on the court because you just mentioned, you know, the thurgood marshal, the two brilliant visionaries who understood and crafted a legal strategy that was not the only part of the civil rights movement by any means but was one key part that, you know, struck down apartide in the u.s. now, the court had been for most of its life a reactionary institution that upheld white supremacy at almost every turn. then it has this period where it does the opposite. >> brief. >> a brief period. what are we in now? >> well i think now we're in something quite reactionary. you know, this is the most conservative court that we could i think could have imagined in the last, you know, 50 or 60 years. there's no question about it. and there are lots of elements of the way in which this court operates that should concern us and that concerns me as a lawyer. and so it's not just the outcome of the cases. but it's also the process. and if you actually believe in the legal process, which i do. i'm kind of nerdy about this stuff. then you are alarmed about, you know, the conduct of the court with the shadow docket. you are alarmed about thought just that section 2 of the voting rights act was weakened by the decision but that a majority of the court was willing to give the pen to justice aleto to arrogate himself to rewrite the bill the senate wrote, that he could rewrite the test himself for how judges should apply the section to vote denial cases. this should bother us as well. it doesn't mean there's nothing can be done with the court. a democracy is made up of all the component pieces, and one piece is the political piece. there is a piece about the professionals that i'm a part of, and so i'm not going to let it go. you're a professional and the journalists haven't done their truth and reconciliation. so we're going to be in the same position again if journalists don't pause -- and i don't mean individual journalists. i mean collectively and take a look at examination of its own practices and how they contributed to the unraveling of democracy. these are the elements that have to take responsibility. and so i think we have a lot of work to do, and that's kind of where my head is at right now. what's the work we can push ourselves to do to cleanup these elements that allowed this to happen? trump didn't just ride in and rollover the country. he was given the opportunity to unravel the country. i describe him as an accelerant. but, you know, the sticks and the twigs were already stacked. and there were many people who saw that, you know, he was a fire starter and thought it was kind of a fun show. >> yeah. sherrilyn ifill is the president director counsel naacp legal defense education fund, now writing a book. and it's just always a great, great pleasure to get some quality time with you so thank you for making that happen. if you enjoyed the show tonight, that's great news. i'm glad you did. why is this happening has over three years worth of conversations just like those that you just saw ready for you to listen to. you can just binge the heck out of it over this holiday season. we do a whole variety of topics of stuff we've never done on the show. we talk to one of my great heroes, singer, songwriter, al roker, there are new episodes that go out every tuesday. and we'll be publishing interviews to those feeds. search why is this happening and subscribe. thanks for joining us on this very special edition of why is this happening. good night. happening good night hey lily, i need a new wireless plan for my business, but all my employees need something different. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this. your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep lisa has to send some files, like asap! so basically i can pick the right plan for each employee. yeah i should've just led with that. with at&t business. you can pick the best plan for each employee and get the best deals on every smart phone. ♪ christmas music ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ if your dry eye symptoms keep coming back, what?! no! over the counter eye drops typically work by lubricating the eyes and may provide temporary relief. xiidra works differently, targeting inflammation that can cause dry eye disease. it can provide lasting relief. xiidra is the only fda-approved non-steroid eye drop specifically for the signs and symptoms of dry eye disease. one drop in each eye, twice a day. don't use if you are allergic to xiidra. common side effects include eye irritation, discomfort or blurred vision when applied to the eye, and unusual taste sensation. don't touch container tip to your eye or any surface. after using xiidra wait 15 minutes before reinserting contacts. ♪♪♪ this holiday, ask your doctor about xiidra. umph! ♪♪ the only thing a disaster can't destroy is hope. ♪♪ donate now at redcross.org if you could give me some dance lessons you would be saving my life. how do i know that you're legit? ♪ ♪ yeah, that's more like it. hello and thanks for joining us this hour. nice to have you here. so one thing it has going for it is it has a nice view of the kremlin. this is the bolshoy moskvoretsky bridge in central moscow. and you know, location, location, location. it sits right up against red square across the from kremlin it has a great vow. in the end the bridge is where they got him. boris nemtsov was the leading opposition leader in russia in 2015.