The dog that didn't bark: Trump's calls for massive protests go unanswered 43:23

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MSNBC Live Democracy 2024, Saturday, September 7th in Brooklyn, New York. Join your favorite MSNBC hosts at our premier live audience event. Visit msnbc.com slash democracy 2024 to buy your tickets today. Really happy to have you here. Georgia U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock is going to be our guest here live this evening. Senator Warnock does not do all that many TV interviews these days. We feel really lucky to have him tonight.

particularly with the whole world's eyes on his home state of Georgia, given the ongoing drama there that is centered on the Fulton County Courthouse and on the Fulton County Jail. Again, U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock from Georgia is going to be joining us here live in just a moment. Very much looking forward to that. President Biden is in Maui tonight as we speak, meeting with Mahaina residents there.

And the aftermath of the horrific wildfires there, we're going to be checking in on that presidential visit this hour. It is ongoing right now as we speak.

We'll also be checking in on the big storm that roared ashore in Southern California today. We've also got a pretty mind-bending story that's going to take us to Arkansas tonight. We've got a lot to get to over the course of this hour. But I want to start tonight with a story that no one remembers the name of. It is technically called The Adventure of Silver Blaze.

but nobody remembers that. What happens in The Adventure of Silver Blaze is that a famous racehorse goes missing, a horse named Silver Blaze. The horse disappears before an important race, and also the horse's trainer appears to have been murdered. The trainer turns up dead in a field near the stables with a terrible head injury. So Detective Sherlock Holmes comes in to figure out the case.

And this is the part where I have to say, if you regularly read mystery stories from the 1890s, but you haven't read this one yet, this is your spoiler alert. So if you don't want to know what happened, just mute me for a second, okay? Okay. Basically what happens is Sherlock Holmes figures out that the horse, Silver Blaze, is still alive. The horse had just been taken by bad guys as some sort of money-making plot.

But it also turns out that the horse trainer, unfortunately, he is dead, but he wasn't really murdered. What Sherlock Holmes figures out is that the trainer was killed by the horse, right? Crazy, right? The horse, turns out, kicked the trainer in the head and killed him when the trainer tried to mess with the horse as part of this bad guy's money-making plot.

So the reason no one remembers that this story is called The Adventure of Silver Blaze is because the much more memorable thing about this story is how Sherlock Holmes solved it. The clue that everybody remembers, the clue that unlocks the whole plot of the story, is that on the night when the horse disappeared, when somebody came into the stables and led that horse out of the stables, there was a watchdog in the stables that did not bark.

Now, why did the dog not bark? The dog was fine. The dog was, you know, trained as a watchdog, supposed to be protecting the place. Why did the dog not bark? The dog did not bark.

Our hero detective surmises because the dog was not alarmed by these events. The dog, in fact, knew the person who came into the stables to get the horse, knew that person very well. The dog did not think it was weird or worth barking about. So Sherlock Holmes surmises, ah, the dog did not bark. It must have been the horse's regular trainer who came in and got the horse. That would not be weird to the dog. The dog would not bark at that. He unravels the mystery from there.

Turns out the trainer did take the horse. The trainer was part of the plot. The trainer ended up dead because the horse freaked out and kicked him. That's the mystery. That's the story. And absolutely nobody remembers that as the adventure of Silver Blaze because everybody remembers that as the dog that didn't bark. That idea, the dog that didn't bark, has become a kind of storytelling touchstone, a kind of storytelling shorthand.

for understanding that sometimes the key plot point, the key clue, the most important thing to notice is what didn't happen. And right now, we Americans have something important that is not happening. We have a dog that isn't barking, or at least that hasn't barked, and we should notice it. Because at our crime scene, our proverbial crime scene and our actual crime scene,

We're not trying to figure out who did it. We have no suspense, no question at all as to who the perpetrator is in this big alleged crime that is now at the center of all these existential questions of whether our democracy is going to survive, whether we're going to keep having elections, whether candidates and political parties and the people at large are going to believe in the results of elections and agree to abide by the results of elections.

We don't have any questions about whodunit, right? From the fake electors scheme to leaning on state officials to get them to falsify the election results, to telling his mob to go march on the building where Congress was just then certifying the election results. I mean, there's no mystery at all for us as to who did it, right? It's this guy. It's former President Donald Trump. That is why he has been charged with related crimes in multiple jurisdictions.

The mystery for us, the big open question for us is not who did it. Our open question is, can we handle this as a country? Can we handle this process, this particular guy with this particular following being arrested and charged and soon he will be tried for these alleged crimes? Can we handle that? Can we handle the law, the legal system, the criminal justice system being applied to this guy's actions?

I mean, he and his followers and his political party plainly hate and reject that the law is being applied to his actions. But what do they plan to do about it? What will happen to us as a country as a result? Well, the guy himself, the defendant himself, has said repeatedly what he wants his followers to do about it.

I mean, he hasn't just been calling on them to give him money to pay his lawyer's fees, right? He's been calling on them to bodily show up. He has been calling them to get out in the streets for him. Again, like they did for him on January 6th, when he told them to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and physically go to the building where Congress was doing its work.

They turned out in the streets for him. Then he has said he wants that again. He said it explicitly. He said publicly that if he were to be indicted, quote, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had.

And it wasn't a one-time thing. He was asked in a different setting what would happen if he were indicted. He said, quote, I think if it happened, I think you'd have problems in this country, the likes of which perhaps we'd never seen before. I don't think the people of the United States would stand for it. I think they'd have big problems, big problems. I just don't think they'd stand for it. He said all that before he was indicted, then in fact he got indicted. Indicted and arrested in New York this spring for the first time.

And when he learned about his indictment and his impending arraignment, he pulled the fire alarm. He got online. And in all capital letters, message to his followers, he said, protest, take our nation back. And just in case there was any lack of clarity there, he then said in all capital letters again, it's time, exclamation point, protest, protest, protest. Well, when the day of that first arrest and arraignment came,

Well, I mean, that was the scene. And yes, that's something. That is some supporters of his outside the Manhattan courthouse. But they are a small enough number of supporters that that day they were very much outnumbered by members of the media who, to be fair, had been told to expect that these would be the biggest protests we have ever had in America. That's what they turned out to cover, right? We've had a lot of big protests in America. This is not what a big protest looks like in America, let alone the biggest ever.

But then he got indicted and arrested again. That was earlier this summer. That was in Miami. And he tried again to call his followers out into the streets. He got on right-wing radio. He said, we need strength in our country now. They have to go out, meaning my followers. They have to go out, and they have to protest. Look, our country has to protest.

And then again, just to make it crystal clear, he got online and he literally spelled it out to his supporters. See you in Miami on Tuesday. I will see you there. You should be there. Well, this was Miami on that Tuesday. Some people, maybe.

A few hundred-ish? We had been promised, right? He had threatened the likes of which we've never seen. The likes of this, we have seen plenty of. This looks like, you know, the weekly protest at the farmer's market in your town, which is like a different cause every Thursday. He told the country his followers would erupt.

They would fill the streets. They would shock the nation with their numbers, protests like the country had never seen before. Their enraged protests would shock the country if anyone dared indict him. It didn't happen. He then directed his followers explicitly multiple times. Okay, yeah, this is what I meant. Now's the time. Get out there. This is it. Go like I said you would. But nothing happened.

And so when he was indicted a third time, when he had to show up to be indicted in Washington, D.C. earlier this month, Trump did not bother calling for protests. Presumably it had gotten through to him that if he called for them, they weren't going to happen. And now we're expecting him to arrive at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia this week for yet another arrest, this time with both fingerprints and a mugshot. And he is not calling for protests anymore because that dog has not barked.

which is an important plot point for us in this story. We were told to expect it to happen. The widespread expectation that it would happen, I think, inflected all the expectations, all the perceptions of boundaries and red lines and things that would be brand new and dangerous and unprecedented about this new territory that we're in in American history.

But it turns out the dog did not bark. It turns out just like in Austria, where their former chancellor was charged with felonies on Friday, just like in Scotland, where their first minister was arrested in June, just like in Italy, where they prosecuted their former prime minister. And in France, where they prosecuted their former president and former prime minister, just like in Germany and Argentina and South Korea, where they prosecuted former presidents and Croatia and Portugal, where they prosecuted former prime minister, just like in

all of these countries, none of which are banana republics. Turns out, life goes on. The rule of law applied to the high-ranking former officials and powerful political figures. And the rule of law goes on and politics goes on. Turns out the former leader does not snap his fingers and command a nationwide crippling uprising in his or her name.

I mean, even in our country where he promised he would, where he promised that would happen, where he overtly publicly tried to make it happen, it failed. He failed. He wanted that. He promised it. He was counting on it. And therefore, a lot of the country was counting on that being a consequence of this part of the process. It hasn't happened. The dog did not bark. And so that does sort of settle one big part of this existential question.

for us at this crime scene, right? This existential question for our country and our democracy, for our form of government. Will we be able to survive bringing criminal charges against this particular alleged criminal given his political power and his hold on his followers? Will we be able to try a man for his alleged crimes without riots in the streets, without the threat of civil war? Turns out, yes. Yes, we can.

despite what he threatened to do, despite what he promised to do. He tried to do it. He could not pull it off, which is good news for our democracy. The bad news is that instead we're getting something else, not mass violence again, like we saw on January 6th, not even mass protest. But instead what we are getting is individual acts, both violence and threats of violence.

by radicalized people and groups that support him. We saw it last year when a man who was enraged by the Mar-a-Lago search warrant shot his way into an Ohio FBI office and was then killed in a shootout outside Cincinnati.

We saw it a week and a half ago when another armed man was shot and killed by the FBI, this time in Utah, when they served a search warrant and arrest warrant on him in response to his threats to kill President Biden and also New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who had brought the first indictment against Donald Trump. Then last week, a Massachusetts man pled guilty in federal court that after the election, he sent bomb threats, death threats to this Arizona official.

to Katie Hobbs, who was then the Democratic Secretary of State in Arizona and who is now the Democratic governor of Arizona. That man pled guilty in federal court last week. He will be facing five years in prison when he is sentenced this fall. Then it was Alvin, Texas, last week, a woman arrested for phoning in a death threat to the chambers of the federal judge who is overseeing the other federal case against Trump in federal district court in Washington.

The woman admitted threatening to kill the judge and then also volunteered another death threat to federal agents, saying she would also kill Texas Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. She reportedly told agents she did not intend to go to Washington, D.C., to carry out her death threat against the judge, although she did make the threat. But she told them she absolutely would kill Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee when Sheila Jackson Lee came home to Texas.

Then it was a weird, attenuated story, sort of announcement out of Reno, Nevada on Friday. Hazmat teams and robots called in to respond to a cup of white powder and a threatening sign left outside the Reno, Nevada FBI office. And of course, it's all the news from Fulton County, Georgia.

where pro-Trump online message boards started immediately after his indictment there, circulating names and purported addresses and phone numbers and photos of the grand jurors who handed down the Trump indictment in Georgia, prompting the Fulton County Sheriff's Office to announce that it was investigating threats made to the grand jurors. That soon gave way to the news that the FBI would be joining the Sheriff's Department investigation of those threats to the grand jurors.

soon gave way to news that the sheriff himself was being threatened and that that was now under investigation, which soon gave way to news that security had also had to be increased around prosecutor Fannie Willis and her office because of threats to her. Now tonight, CNN reporting that employees of the Fulton County Sheriff's Office are themselves being threatened, including their homes and their families being threatened by Trump supporters.

Tonight, they've announced a total lockdown on the streets around the Fulton County Jail for when former President Trump turns up there this week to surrender himself and get booked, which he says will happen on Thursday. But honestly, at this point, do we really expect big street protests on behalf of Trump? I think we don't. I think we don't expect that. I think that dog has not barked. We don't expect big street protests on his behalf. We expect terrorism.

Or at least terroristic threats, like the ones that have been breaking out all over the country now, like Heat Rash. So what do we do with that as a country? I mean, it's a wild context in which to be pursuing politics, but we are and we must.

The first Republican presidential debate is day after tomorrow. It's on Wednesday. Trump is arguing that he is such a prohibitive favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, he should not bother with debating. And maybe that's true. The NBC Des Moines Register Mediacom poll that's out today puts Trump up 23 points over his nearest rival in the key early state of Iowa. That's basically unchanged from the 24 points he was up in Iowa in the last big poll there, which was late last month.

But at the same time, in that Iowa poll that's out today, the number of likely Republican caucus goers in Iowa who say that Trump has committed serious crimes is over 25 percent. The number of likely Republican caucus goers who say they have an unfavorable view of him is one in three. It's 33 percent. And when it comes to the question of whether or not Trump should be leading the Republican Party, look at this.

Well over 50% of likely Republican caucus goers in Iowa say either that Trump was a good president, but it's time to consider new leaders, or that the party just needs a new leader, one with better personal behavior and a different approach. You put that together, that's 57% of people who are planning on going to the Iowa Republican caucuses. 57% who say they want someone other than Trump to be leading their party.

57% don't want him leading their party, while no other candidate gets within 20% of him in the same poll. What are Republicans doing here? How do you feel about this guy? What do you plan on doing about it? I mean, every few hours we get a new law enforcement announcement about one or more of his followers threatening violence in his name while he's leading by 20 plus points in the early states. And even in those early states, Republican voters say they don't want him.

I mean, talk about an unanswered question. Talk about a mystery where we really don't know the answer. I mean, this is a soul of the country kind of moment. This is a big decision we have to make about who ought to be a contender here, about being a democracy, about violence versus politics, about force versus elections. I mean, these are some of the biggest questions of all in any country, and they're playing out now for us.

In our lifetimes, in our country, and it's playing out in these very, you know, detailed plot points every day, advancing the story in more or less important ways. Just today, the former president's bail was set at $200,000 in Georgia. He's going to have to put up 10% of that in cash. It'll be the first time he's had to make cash bail in all his arraignments.

The former president will also be restricted by his bail order, his lawyers affirming today on his behalf that he will, quote, make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against any co-defendant in the case, any witness, any unindicted co-conspirator, any victim, or, quote, against the community or to any property in the community. No direct or indirect threats to the community or any property in it.

The judge's order today spells out specifically that those restrictions on Trump include anything he posts on social media or that he reposts on social media, despite the fact that somebody else wrote it. Now, that is potentially an important detail because since his most recent indictment, his most sort of potent threats were

have often been in the form of him reposting sort of threats and otherwise inciting material posted by other people. So he's not typing it out himself. He finds online somebody else making a threat or making an inciting comment, and he retweets or reposts that person's comment. That sort of behavior, which he has shown an interest in doing recently, that is now restricted explicitly by this bail order. And he's got to put up $20,000.

And tonight, just like we knew would happen, a Republican Georgia state senator has started the process in Georgia that a lot of us had seen coming. One Georgia Republican state senator tonight threatening that Republicans in Georgia state government should now use the new power they just recently gave themselves to remove prosecutors in the state, to remove specifically

Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis. Remove her from her job as prosecutor to try to stop this prosecution of Donald Trump.

Georgia Republicans gave themselves the power to remove elected prosecutors from their posts on their own say-so because of behavior that, you know, they find untoward in some way. Under these very vague terms, they gave themselves the power to remove elected prosecutors. They gave themselves that power in May and made sure it would go into effect this fall.

As Donald Trump announces that he is turning up to be fingerprinted and mug-shotted in Fulton County on Thursday this week, tonight a Georgia Republican state senator has announced that now's the time for Georgia Republicans to move to take Fannie Willis out of her job. So here we go. And again, the mystery here is not who done it. We know who did it. The mystery here is

is how are we going to handle as a country the challenge of enforcing the rule of law against a political figure who wants to destroy it and who leads a movement that will try to destroy it. The dog did not bark on mass protests. It's this other stuff instead. And it's up to us to follow these clues and see where this is going and get ready. Senator Raphael Warnock joins us live next.

There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM Rewards benefits or earning bonus bets. So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team. Hey!

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MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. I grew up in the front row of the spectator section in courtrooms. My father was a Boston cop who became a lawyer and he had me in the courtrooms all the time. And I was learning literally the rules of evidence when I was in high school. My first book was about a case that went on for seven years. And so everything that happens in courtrooms makes perfect sense to me and my job is to try to make it make sense to an audience. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.

Weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC. So this headline was posted late this evening at the website of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. It reads, quote, State Senator eyes new panel as way to punish Fannie Willis over Trump indictments. This is a Republican state senator in Georgia tonight vowing that Republicans will use a new state commission that they just created to

to oust Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis from her job as a way to stop the prosecution of former President Donald Trump.

To be clear, this is happening the way you think it's happening. When it started to look like Fannie Willis' investigation in Georgia might lead to a possible indictment of Donald Trump, Georgia Republicans in May of this year gave themselves a brand new power they had never had before under Georgia law: the power to remove a Georgia prosecutor from his or her job. And now, as Trump prepares to surrender himself in Fulton County this week,

They are starting tonight to make noise that they are going to use that new law to, in fact, remove Fannie Willis. It's worth remembering that as this whole conspiracy to overturn the election results was unfolding in Georgia, there was also an absolutely critical U.S. Senate race that was taking place, a runoff election that would decide which party controlled the U.S. Senate in Washington.

In the midst of all of this, on January 5th, 2021, the day before the attack on the Capitol, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, was elected. Joining us now is Senator Warnock. I should mention he is also the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in the city of Atlanta. Senator Warnock, there's so much going on tonight in your home state of Georgia and in politics and all the drama around this. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us about it. Thank you so much. Always great to be with you, Rachel.

So what do you think people should understand around the country looking in on Georgia, living through everything that you've lived through, everything that you've seen up close that's happened, knowing what you know about Fulton County and the criminal justice system and political pressures in the state? What do you think people from outside Georgia should know about this pressure, about this process as the pressure just gets unbelievably intense on what's happening in Fulton County?

Well, Rachel, this is playing out in Georgia, in Fulton County, but this is a moral moment for our nation. We know who Donald Trump is. The question right now is, who are we? What kind of country are we going to be going forward? And as we watch all of this play out, we're reminded that democracy is not a noun. It's a verb.

We are required to remain vigilant and active. It's a lot like blushing, brushing and flossing. There's never a moment when you can stop. Otherwise you have decay. And so while Donald Trump and the other defendants may be at the center of this particular case,

My eye is on the democracy itself because I believe in democracy. I believe that it is the political enactment of a spiritual idea, this notion that each of us has within us a spark of the divine, and therefore we ought to have a voice in the direction of the country and our destiny within it. And that's what's under assault.

And all of us as Americans, as Americans, have to stand up and fight for that which is precious and rare in the history of humankind, democracy.

I was struck by reading today about an event that happened this weekend in Georgia. A bunch of different groups, including the Georgia NAACP and Black Voters Matter, met in Coffey County at the AME Church in Coffey County, which, of course, is one of the locations that has become famous because of the indictment of former President Trump and his co-defendants. Coffey County is one of the places where people who were—

shouldn't have had access to voting machines and tabulating machines nevertheless were given access and all the sensitive data from those machines was uploaded onto the internet and downloaded all over the world. People met in Coffey County this weekend to talk about the damage done to their democracy in Coffey County and to try to reckon with

with why it's taken this long to fix it, why the police weren't involved sooner, why there hasn't necessarily been any assurance to people in that county that the next effort to vote in that county will be safe. I wonder if your constituents in Georgia sort of feel this more personally, more directly, more acutely than all of us do looking at it nationally.

All my constituents who I'm so very proud to represent feel it. I have to tell you, I feel it personally. My mother is from that part of the state. I know a lot about Coffey County, and my mother was born and raised in Weir County, Waycross, Georgia, nearby. And as you pointed out in your opening discussion, the people of Georgia did an amazing thing on January 5th, 2021. They elected

uh, their first black United States Senator. And my mom, who was from Ware County, uh, that part of the state who grew up picking somebody else's tobacco and picking somebody else's cotton, picked her youngest son to be a United States Senator. That's what's at stake here. The ability of ordinary people to have a voice in their democracy. And, uh, that was assaulted, uh, by the former president, uh, and those, uh, who, uh,

are enabling him in so many ways. He deserves to have his day in court. He claims his innocence, and he's innocent until proven guilty. So that due process ought to carry itself out.

While, at the same time, what we've got to do is focus on the ways in which the actions of January 6th, this unprecedented attack on our Capitol, the most violent since the War of 1812, then metastasized into a cancer of voter suppression laws all across our country. Some—over 300 voter suppression laws were introduced in about 45 states just this year.

And about 13 of them have passed. And so it is the big lie that is driving this. So regardless of the outcome of the former president's case, we've got a problem and we've got to deal with it, which is why we need to pass the legislation that I and others have put forward on voting rights.

We've got to preserve our democracy. We've got to uphold once again that great American covenant, one person, one vote. Nothing could be more important because the democracy is the whole game. It is the framework in which we get to fight for everything that matters. And long after this case is over and the books have been closed here, we'll have to face one another. And our children are going to ask us, what did you do when the democracy itself was imperiled?

And I want to be able to look my kids in the eye and say that I stood up for the best in the American ideal, that I stood up for the best in the covenant that we have with one another. Senator Raphael Warnock, thank you so much for joining us tonight. I know there's a lot of pressure on the people and the institutions of your state, particularly in this week, heading into these next few days. Thank you for taking time to be with us tonight, sir. Thank you. Pray with your legs and your lips. Keep the faith.

Thank you, sir. All right, much more ahead here tonight. Stay with us. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, nos. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM rewards benefits or earning bonus bets. So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team. Hey!

The BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM, the sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. When I was working in the Senate, I didn't realize that it's the perfect training for the job that I have now. Covering government, covering politics, the complexity of it all. Mastering the detail is crucial to being able to present anything.

that happens in Senate buildings or any of the other news centers that we have to focus on every day. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.

Hi, everyone. It's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening? Author and philosopher Daniel Chandler on the roots of a just society. I think that those genuinely big fundamental questions about whether liberal democracy will survive, what the shape of our society should be, feel like they're genuinely back on the agenda. I think it feels like we're at a real, you know, an inflection point or a turning point in the history of liberal democracy. That's this week on Why Is This Happening? Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been governor of Arkansas for a little more than seven months, which is not that long. But, boy, has she hit the ground running. If you think the big problem with America is that we have child labor laws—

Well, she's taking care of that. Governor Huckabee Sanders immediately got to work as a new governor, getting rid of those, making it easier to put Arkansas children to work doing adult jobs. Kids younger than 16 used to need a state permit to verify their age and grant them permission to work. The governor now says that permit put an arbitrary burden on parents. So that burden is lifted. Let's get your 14-year-old to work.

Also, Governor Huckabee Sanders rolled out an interesting online application for anybody who wanted to be on an Arkansas state board or commission. The application to be on a state board or commission included this prompt for a 500-word essay. Quote, what is an accomplishment of the governors that you admire the most?

That's a requirement to be on an official state commission of any kind in Arkansas. You have to put together 500 words on what you love about the governor.

Governor's office blamed a design error for that essay prompt. The governor also got right to work kicking thousands of people off their health insurance in Arkansas. More than a quarter of the people who were kicked off their health insurance were dropped off of it for procedural reasons, meaning they didn't get their paperwork in time or something. It means that thousands of families, thousands of kids, all of whom had health insurance before,

are now kicked off, so they now don't have health insurance. That said, maybe the kids can get insurance at their new slaughterhouse jobs. As for the school part of being a kid in Arkansas, high schoolers in that state are now starting to feel the effect of a bill that Governor Huckabee Sanders signed this year, which, among other things, bars Arkansas teachers from teaching about race and racism.

This law went into effect August 1st. Just days later, the Arkansas Department of Education announced that the AP African American Studies course will no longer count toward graduation credits in Arkansas this year because it might amount to indoctrination. Now, I should tell you that of the six Arkansas high schools that had planned to offer AP African American Studies, all six of the schools have decided to offer the course anyway, even though the state says it won't count.

One of those schools that is defying the governor, defying the state on this, is Little Rock Central High, which is going ahead with AP African American Studies and never mind the objections from Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders' office.

Little Rock Central High is, of course, the exact same school where nine brave black students attended class for the first time in 1957. This is a time when the country was supposed to have desegregated our schools, but boy, they had not in Little Rock. And those kids had to be escorted to class, shielded from an angry, violent mob by members of the Army and the National Guard.

Those nine kids, the Little Rock Nine, hold a signal place in African-American history, in American history, but particularly in African-American history, which will be taught this year at the advanced placement level at their high school. We often say history rhymes. We say history repeats, but sometimes history is just a linear, direct rerun.

Joining us now is Bracey Harris, who is an NBC News national reporter who's been interviewing members of the Little Rock Nine about this decision in Arkansas. Bracey, I really appreciate you being with us here tonight. Thank you very much for making time. Yes, thank you, Rachel, for having me.

So you were able to track down members of the Little Rock Nine, meaning those nine brave students who in 1957 defied mob-enforced segregation to get into Little Rock Central High. And they are reacting to this decision to downgrade AP African American Studies and for Little Rock Central High to teach it anyway. What are they telling you when you track them down?

Yes, so I had the opportunity to speak with Terrence Roberts, who was one of the nine students to help cross that color barrier in Little Rock, Arkansas. And, you know, some of the feedback he just bluntly gave me is that he thinks, you know,

the state needs to get out of the way, um, that students need to have the opportunity to learn, um, that going over this, this error in, um, the country's history is something, you know, that needs to happen. And, um, Elizabeth Edford, who I think, um,

many people may recognize from that historic photo of wearing, you know, the sunglasses is there's just a white teenager just yelling behind her as she tries to, you know, go about that moment.

You know, she said that she felt like this is, you know, an attempt to this greater attempt to erase history. So they're definitely watching what's happening in this moment for sure.

Are any of the schools that are planning on offering this AP African American History course, as I mentioned, there's, as far as we know, there's six high schools in the state that were planning on offering it before Governor Huckabee Sanders said, well, you won't get credit for it if you take it. Her administration said you won't get credit for it if you take it because we believe this is some sort of indoctrination.

Are any of those schools expecting sort of fallout from the state because of this decision? It does feel like a pretty direct confrontation. I mean, it's not like an Army and National Guard confrontation, but it's a pretty direct confrontation with the governor's office.

At this point in my reporting, I haven't heard that concern expressed, but I will say, you know, one of the things that Mr. Roberts shared was, you know, it's, it's one thing that, you know, you've had a little rock central high school, which is the school that he helped integrate, commit to moving forward. But one question he has is, will they be successful? Um,

Ultimately, if there is continued pressure mounting, but so far, as you said, the six schools participating in this pilot are still planning to move forward, but we'll definitely be watching to see if there are any developments on that front for sure.

It should not be an act of bravery to take an African-American studies course. I'm just going to say it. And it should not be an act of bravery on the part of school administrators to offer it. But time is a flat circle. Bracey Harris, NBC News national reporter who's been all over this story. Thank you for your work on this story out of Arkansas and on the response of the Little Rock Nine in particular. It's really great that you did this reporting. It's great to have you here tonight. Thank you, Rachel. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us.

That was 2:41 p.m. yesterday, an earthquake, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake hit Ojai, California, which is just northwest of Los Angeles.

Just a few hours earlier, the same part of the country was faced with a natural disaster of a different kind. The first tropical storm to make landfall in Southern California since 1939 crossed the Mexico border and started hammering Southern California with flooding rain. Virtually all daily rainfall records in the region were broken.

widespread flash flooding and mudslides as the storm covered almost the whole southern portion of the state of California. The hardest hit areas were the desert regions east of San Diego and Los Angeles, places like Palm Springs, where

where record rain just does not sit well with dry soil there that can't absorb that much water that quickly. So we saw some serious flash flooding there and in neighboring communities. The Death Valley National Park is typically the driest place in North America and often the hottest place on Earth. Death Valley National Park is still closed as of right now because of the flooding there. But despite how bad that all is, despite a pretty significant earthquake happening during a first-time-in-80-years storm,

Southern California does seem to have weathered this pretty well. So far, there have been no deaths and no serious injuries reported in the state, which is a very good thing. Meanwhile, our Canadian neighbors have been fighting their own manifestations of the climate disaster. This, of course, has been the worst wildfire season in all of Canadian history, and it's nowhere near over.

Last week, last Wednesday, almost the whole population of the capital city of the Northwest Territories, the city of Yellowknife, were given an evacuation order. They had to evacuate the capital of Northwest Territories. Then on Friday, another 35,000 people were ordered to evacuate from parts of British Columbia. And that's all just because of two of the major wildfires that are burning in Canada right now. This year, there have been more than 5,000 wildfires in Canada.

The amount of land burned from the Canadian wildfires this season is quite literally, you know, almost off the charts compared to any other year on record. We're seeing example after example of climate catastrophe getting close and closer to everybody's doorstep, no matter where you live. Today, President Biden traveled to Hawaii, to Maui.

to survey the damage from a series of fires that brought devastation to Maui in recent weeks. The death toll for the fires in Maui right now stands at 114 people, but the number of people considered to be still missing will take your breath away. 850 people still missing. Again, 114 confirmed dead. President Biden didn't just give his remarks today in front of the damage from those fires, but also in front of something those fires represent,

could not take down Hawaii's historic banyan tree. To my left is the banyan tree, beloved by this community for over 150 years. Here in the former capital of the kingdom, Hawaii, that has stood for generations as a sacred spot, today is burned, but it's still standing. The tree survived for a reason. I believe it's a powerful, a very powerful symbol of what we can and will do to get through this crisis. And for this

For as long as it takes, we're going to be with you. The whole country will be with you. President Biden speaking just tonight in Lahaina on the island of Maui in Hawaii. We'll be right back.

That's going to do it for me tonight. One last thing. I don't know if you're planning on watching the first Republican presidential debate, which happens this week on Wednesday night. But whether you watch the debate or not, you should definitely watch the postgame, the recap that we're going to do here on MSNBC. It's going to be fun. I'm going to be there with the whole gang. I'll see you then Friday night after the debate, 11 p.m. Eastern. Sorry, I said Friday night, Wednesday night. See you Wednesday night after the debate, 11 p.m. Eastern. But it's going to feel like a Friday. It's going to be that fun.

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