The Growing Power Of The Resistance

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Good morning.

It is Sunday, March the 8th.

Explosions were seen over Tehran overnight after President Trump warned of a ramping up

of attacks.

And there's new reporting from Reuters that the committee inside Iran charged with selecting

a new Supreme Leader has come to a consensus.

We're going to watch very closely to for news of who they selected.

We'll be monitoring the war closely this morning and later in the show we'll talk about

the high-stake standoff in Iran and around the Pentagon's use of artificial intelligence

in war fighting, which is spilling over into questions of mass surveillance of American

citizens.

But we begin this hour back home with a power shift in America, a rising resistance that's

already beginning to wall off Donald Trump's power and hold over this country.

As public opinion has turned on the Trump administration, some Republicans have turned

on it too.

The GOP's narrow majority in Congress means it doesn't take much to create something

that starts to look a lot like an opposition party, one that wields real power in the push

to hold Trump's corrupt and lawless administration to a counter.

We saw that power unleashed this past week against the Homeland Security Secretary Kristi

Nome, and Democrats are not wasting time looking for their next targets.

The Attorney General, Pam Bondy, who's lost the public's trust with her handling of the

Epstein files, is now facing the very real threat of impeachment, and five Republicans

recently joined Democrats on the Oversight Committee in voting to subpoena her to force

her testimony on her handling of the Epstein case.

The two congressmen who led the effort to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Democrat

Rokana and Republican Thomas Massey, have been threatening to hold Bondy in contempt of

Congress, which would allow the House to punish her, including potentially calling on the

Sergeant at Arms to take her into custody.

Kana has said that up to 20 Republicans may be open to joining Democrats in filing those

contempt charges against her if the Department of Justice continues to fail to comply with

the law.

All of this is a sign of the pressure that Republicans are feeling from their constituents

as the midterms loom.

Bondy did appear on Capitol Hill to answer some tough questions about her tenure last month,

and that did not go well.

It will likely be remembered for how she turned her attention away from the group of Epstein's

of survivors of Epstein's abuse and their families, and the heated exchanges that she

had with members of Congress.

Well, she'll be back on Capitol Hill soon, this time to answer questions solely about

the Epstein matter, including what at least appears to be a cover-up of the links between

Jeffrey Epstein and some Trump administration officials, including the president himself.

And by the way, Bondy's not the only one who's soon going to have to testify about that.

The Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik has agreed to appear in front of the House Oversight

Committee as well.

That decision came after the revelation that Lutnik had misrepresented and significantly

downplayed his relationship with Epstein.

Lutnik had previously said, pretty definitively, that he cut ties with Epstein after being

creeped out by him.

Well, it turns out they kept in touch for far longer than Lutnik acknowledged.

He's even traveled to Epstein's island.

In fact, there's a photo that appears to show Lutnik on that visit, a photo that appeared

and then suddenly disappeared and then suddenly reappeared in the Justice Department's public

database after the public outcry.

Lutnik, by the way, has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

He's denied any involvement with Epstein crimes.

But it's not just the Epstein issue that's bogging this administration down and costing

its support.

There's Pete Hegsha, the Fox News host turned defense secretary who calls himself the

Secretary of War, who's repeatedly talked about the war with Iran like he's a kid playing

a violent video game, saying in apparently prepared remarks about the war this past week,

quote, they're toast and they know it, and dismissing news coverage of fallen American

service members as bad PR.

When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front page news.

I get it.

The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality.

Tragic things happen there is code for six American service members died right at the start

of this war of choice, but it doesn't even stop there.

For many Americans having cash betella's FBI director in this moment of peril doesn't

feel great.

The former podcaster who came under fire last month for using government resources to hop

around the world and party with the Olympics hockey team, shortly after returning home

from that trip, by the way, at the end of the Olympics, it was reported that he fired

at least 10 employees who once helped investigate Donald Trump's alleged mishandling of classified

documents.

Okay, interesting enough.

Except it turns out those employees were part of a counterintelligence unit that monitored

threats from Iran.

Just days after Patel fired them, America launched its first attack against Iran.

It's also worth giving some thought to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the country's top public

health official whose top qualification may be that he himself is not afraid of germs.

And I said, I'm not scared of a germ.

You know, I used the snort cocaine off the toilet seats.

I'm going to leave that one for now.

That guy is now Health and Human Services Secretary presiding over America's worst measles

outbreak in decades.

Measles is a disease that was declared eliminated in the United States in the year 2000.

Medical groups have filed lawsuits against him for the changes that he made to vaccine

policy.

And the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics said of his leadership, quote, experts

have been sidelined.

Evidence has been undermined and our nation's vaccine infrastructure is now threatened.

Every child's health is at stake.

Okay, something's happening.

People being held to a couch.

And even now is the Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.

He's a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations Committees.

Senator, great to see you.

I just want to start with something that's important.

And that is that within the last 24 hours, we've had what's called a dignified transfer.

The bodies of six American service members were returned to the United States.

This is a real warning.

No matter what anyone wants to pretend it is, American service members have been killed.

A lot of innocent civilians have been killed in various countries in the region.

This is more serious than then, heggs of would have you believe.

Well, that's right.

I mean, heggs s's comments showed the callous disregard he has for the sacrifice of our troops.

And of course, Donald Trump himself used to disparage the service of our troops.

That is the attitude they take.

And, you know, Donald Trump, of course, campaigned on a promise to not get America dragged

into these wars.

Because America doesn't think we should be losing our men and women and six have died already

and spending billions and billions of dollars and we're spending a billion dollars a day.

Plus they've asked for another 50 billion.

Americans don't want to be spending their money on a war of choice.

One is one of this making us less safe, not more safe.

Let's talk about this accountability issue, holding the people around Donald Trump who

are getting us into messes all over the place to account.

So with Christi Nome was remarkable.

You are the one that got Howard Lutnik to admit that he had visited Epstein's island.

And after that, you wrote him a letter asking for more information.

Has he responded to you because it looks like he's going to have to, he's going to have

to update us on exactly what his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was?

He's not responded.

And in that hearing, it became clear that he had absolutely lied to the American people,

right?

He said that he was a great judge of character, that he immediately recognized back in the

early 2000s.

That Epstein was a very bad person and would have nothing more to do with him ever again.

And turns out years later, after Epstein is actually convicted of trafficking with minors,

Lutnik and his family, including the nannies, show up on Epstein's private island.

It also turns out Epstein's had dealings with him.

So we've set a deadline of March 13th, so just five days from now, to get us all of

the communications that Howard Lutnik has regarding Epstein and all of these episodes.

Let's talk about Christy Nome a little bit more.

You asked Christy Nome.

You were one of the people who challenged Christy Nome on this idea that she is still not

recanted, in which very shortly after Renee Good's killing, she called her, she called

Renee Good, a domestic terrorist and said that she was trying to kill an agent.

She said some of the things about Alex Prety.

She was asked several times.

She was given many opportunities.

And I actually think that was the nail of the coffin for her.

She was given several opportunities to say something different, to apologize for that,

to recant that.

She simply did not.

Well, that's exactly right.

Look, we should remember in all of this that command central for the corruption and the

chaos is the White House.

But it's being played out in all of these departments, including Israel saying with

Howard Lutnik and of course, Christy Nome and Pambundi.

So you're absolutely right.

I think the real issue in the end for Christy Nome was the fact that all of America could

see the videos, right?

They could see the videos of Alex Prety and Renee Good.

And by the way, they could see them because the good people in Minneapolis were shining

the light on it.

And all of America could see that they were lying.

And when she refused, absolutely refused to take responsibility and retract her clearly

false statement, I think everybody said, what the hell is going on?

And I do think that that was a critical factor in getting her pulled in the end.

Let's talk about why she resigned.

There's some people who think it's because she had this $200 million, $220 million dollar

ad campaign and that she said that Donald Trump had approved of that.

I'm not sure.

I think it's more complicated than that.

I think there are protests.

I think there's political pressure.

I think that these hearings make sense.

I think that there are people out there, as you said, recording what's going on.

There's polling that indicates that this government and its matters are not popular.

What does accountability really look like?

Because these are not, none of these people are president Trump.

You can get rid of Christy Nome, Mark Wayne Mellon goes in.

You can get rid of Cash Patel, someone else will go in.

You can get rid of Hambondi, someone else will go in.

Why does what is happening right now help America?

Well, it's very important that people from around the country continue to stand up.

I like the people in Minneapolis who were literally blowing whistles both to protect

their neighbors and blow the whistle on wrongdoing.

That is why people sometimes ask me what we can do.

What I say is each of us has a responsibility to do whatever we can.

In Minneapolis, that meant coming out and blowing whistles.

In other places, it means making sure you come out to no Kings Day events.

We had a rally on the National Mall yesterday to protect science because this administration

was cutting NIH and other investments that help every American.

I do believe that all of these forces are making a difference and we saw that, of course,

with the firing of Christy Nome.

Look, Donald Trump, he's happy to discard people as the heat comes closer and closer to

him.

He is the cause of all of this, but hey, he's always looking for sacrificial lambs and that's

what Christy Nome was and that is also what Hambondi could very likely be as well as Howard

Lutnik.

People need to keep the pressure on.

Let's say it is Hambondi and let's say it is Howard Lutnik and maybe even Cash Mattel.

If Donald Trump's happy to discard people, does this ultimately hurt Donald Trump?

Does this weaken him?

I think it does because it shows the pressure.

As you point out, look, he's going to replace these people with other folks in these departments

who want to carry out Steve Miller's policy, for example, on immigration.

They'll all be dear leader folks.

What it does show is that the ongoing pressure from the public is making a difference.

Of course, we're now headed toward the 2026 midterm elections and I do believe it helps

build momentum.

We're seeing that because Donald Trump's popularity numbers are very low.

Now we started a war of choice.

People are asking themselves, why did they say we had to cut Medicaid and cut food and nutrition

programs?

Well, we spent a $11 of money for those, but now we're spending billions of dollars on

a war.

Yeah, that's a really, really important point.

We're spending a lot of money that otherwise we've seen cut, right?

We've had this argument from government that we've got to cut, but we can't afford these

Medicare, Medicaid subsidies.

We can't afford affordable care acts subsidies, but somehow we can afford adventurers

in Venezuela and in Iran without explanation.

Wars in America typically don't get more popular as they go on, as people die and you

see the consequences of it.

This one has started underwater.

The majority of Americans do not support the swore, and the overwhelming majority of

Americans think that if Donald Trump wanted to do this, he should have gone through

Congress to get authorization.

Well, that's exactly right.

And they don't want to because they recognize that number one, we're losing people.

We lost six good, courageous people already.

We're seeing the civilian loss that you mentioned.

We're seeing billions of dollars spent.

You know, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said just a few days ago that he'd been waiting

40 years, 40 years for the United States to join in this attack on Iran.

He just hadn't found a president as reckless enough and stupid enough to do it until Donald

Trump came along.

Senator Goodes he always thank you for joining us this morning, the Democratic Senator

Chris Van Holland of Maryland.

All right, coming up a new wave of attacks in Iran, we're seeing explosions and flames

in southern Tehran following President Trump's warning of an ex-escalation.

This is Reuters reporting that the panel charge was selecting a new Supreme Leader in Iran

and has reached the consensus we're watching for word on who that panel has chosen.

Plus, alarming new allegations that the war with Iran is being pitched to American service

members will be fighting it as God's divine plan.

Or else you have to break it.

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It's already been a week since President Trump plunged America into a deadly war of choice

with Iran.

It's not unestimates that Trump's latest military action is costing taxpayers a billion

dollars a day.

But the true cost could be even higher.

Former Pentagon budget official Elaine McCusker told the Wall Street Journal that just

repositioning US military forces and equipment to the Middle East cost taxpayers at least

$630 million.

And the equipment now being deployed in military operations will likely drive costs higher.

A major U.S. radar system in Qatar, reportedly damaged by Iranian strikes, is valued

at $1.1 billion, three F-15E strike-eagle fighter jets that were shot down in Kuwait

last Sunday in a friendly fire incident, cost-and-estimated $19 million each.

Patriot interceptor missiles cost more than $3 million each, and U.S. Tomahawk missiles

cost roughly $2 million each.

This week, the White House is reportedly mulling whether to ask Congress for $50 billion

dollars in supplemental emergency funds to back Donald Trump's war effort.

That's on top of the $990 billion already earmarked for defense this year, in addition.

In addition, the Pentagon is seeking yet another $12 billion to boost its F-35 program.

So all of this adds up to billions more in military spending going for a war that's a

week old.

And that's far from an exhaustive list because U.S. forces need energy supplies to fuel

the war effort.

Last week an energy official in Qatar warned that the price of oil could hit $150 dollars

a barrel if Iran continues to shut shipping traffic out of the street of Hormuz.

That's the narrow conduit in the Persian Gulf that normally moves one-fifth of the world's

oil.

Oil futures have already shot up 36 percent to more than $90 a barrel since the latest

hostilities began a week ago.

It's driven up the average U.S. gasoline price to more than $3.45 a gallon.

That's a 16 percent jump since the war began, but that jump is almost always exactly the

same as what a barrel of oil increases by.

You can expect oil prices to go higher, gas prices to go higher.

Looking back at our recent history, the long drawn out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are

estimated to have cost taxpayers between $4 and $6 trillion in total, massively contributing

to the national debt.

Jury U.S. taxpayer paying your fair share over the last two decades, on average, over

$16,000 of your tax money has gone toward paying off those wars.

We are long from done for paying for Afghanistan and Iraq, and as unjustified as those wars

may have been, they both had wide public support.

At least in the beginning, not so today, 56 percent of Americans say they oppose military

action against Iran.

That's according to one recent poll.

The New York Times calls Trump, quote, the first president in the modern, the first president

in the era of modern polling to take the United States to war without the support of

the public.

End quote.

Now this all matters down the line because Republicans frequently talk about the need

to get the federal budget under control and to rein in the national debt, but they've

got no problem throwing unlimited sums of money at the military, pushing the debt up

to fight senseless wars at the expense of funding public programs like SNAP or Medicaid

or even social security.

After the break, I'll be speaking with the longtime Democratic Congressman Lloyd Dogget of

Texas.

He was a strong opponent of the Iraq War, and now he's leading the charge to enforce the

War Powers Act to rein in Trump's war on Iran.

I'm joined now by the Democratic Congressman Lloyd Dogget of Texas.

In 2002, he voted against the Iraq War, and in the years that followed was the leading

voice against the Bush administration's actions.

Now he's leading the charge against Trump's unilateral war in Iran and was a co-sponsor

of the War Powers Resolution that failed in the House of Sweet Congressmen.

It's great to see you again.

We're joining us.

Always good to be with you, all I even at this very troubling time.

Yeah, and I think this is important for folks to understand that one might have been

in favor of the Iraq War, then most people are not in favor of it in hindsight, but even

then, whether you thought the Bush administration was being honest or misleading about why we

got into that war, even then they had some sense that they had to convince both Congress,

the American people and the UN.

There's no such effort underway at this point.

No one's even bothering to try and convince anyone about the necessity of this war.

So true.

23 years ago, we were bombarded with lies at the same time that Baghdad was being bombed.

Now this administration, as it bombs Tehran, bombards us with so many lies, they can just

not keep up with all of them.

They think that Trump is not only keen of America, but keen of the universe, and that he

can do whatever he wants, as acting President of Venezuela now to select the new leader

of Iran, and then mixing in arguments that you referenced like this is carrying out the

book of revelations.

This is a very troubling and costly enterprise, and we know from what happened in Iran that

when it was over, and it's not really even over yet, 4,400 American lives who are lost

over $2 trillion in costs that were paid.

Think of all the good that could have been done with those resources and those individuals.

And we have the same thing now, the same people that just weeks ago were telling us we couldn't

afford to provide a reasonable level of healthcare and access to a position for millions of

Americans are spending a huge amount every day on a war that will make us less safe.

Yeah, and this is important.

One of the reasons you and I enjoy talking to each other over the years is because you

really have an understanding of budgeting and that process.

It's weird, right?

When you end up with these things where we're dojo is shutting down entire departments and

healthcare costs are not being subsidized and snap payments don't make it out and affordable

care subsidies don't happen.

And then you look at stuff like this and you say, this is like, this is just easy to not

spend a billion dollars a day.

We were in negotiations with Iran.

There is no evidence that there was an imminent threat.

You can really hate Iran's leaders all you want and you'd be justified in doing so.

But why are we paying a billion dollars a day when we have these other problems?

Exactly.

There was a strong evidence that these negotiations were going to be fruitful.

And once again, as when he was negotiating with the Iranians last summer, the president

interrupted the negotiations with this attack.

And as you've noted, they have a little leftist in seeking advice anywhere else.

As if Congress had just a nuisance, international law, suggestion and the courts can be circumvented.

We can't even get the Republican leaders to admit this is a war.

In fact, they're following the Putin example of calling it a special military operation

that requires no action or approval from anyone.

We will shortly, I believe, have substantial appropriation requests made.

And then the question will be whether the members of Congress have the courage to stand up

and say the best way to protect our troops is to not have them fighting in a war that will

make us only less safe.

Yeah, it's wild because they won't ask Congress for the permission to fight this war.

It's not like Congress has even said no.

It's not even being put forward as a question, but they're asking for the money.

They're going to ask for 50 billion dollars in an appropriation.

Let's just be clear on this.

First thing is costing at a minimum of a billion dollars a day, and that's a few

measure it in terms of the cost of munitions and things like that.

There are other costs that are larger than that that might make it more than a billion

dollars a day, and they're asking for 50 billion dollars.

So let's just hope that this is awful short.

But these wars are often not as short as we'd like them to be.

Example Afghanistan, example Iraq, example Vietnam.

Well, Trump has told us it will take as long as necessary.

He gave us an estimate of a month or so.

The damage that can be done during that time, and certainly if there's additional loss

of American life there, we'll extend this war, perhaps, on an endless basis.

We always forget that these wars, so much easier to get into than get out of, that the

other side has a voice in this too, and the Iran, of course, have a much greater ability

to retaliate than did the Iraqis.

So I'm very concerned about this, and I believe the only way that the Congress will stand

up to Trump, given this Republican majority, is if people all of this country are speaking

out and saying no war, get out of this area and protect us by not feeling that you have

to be kind of me too with Netanyahu.

It became clear from Secretary Rubio's comments that this really wasn't Trump's initiative.

He wasn't America first, he was America second behind Netanyahu, who, hey, may have different

interests than the United States, clearly no imminent threat here, a time for Americans

to speak out that we don't want this war.

The irony is that Netanyahu and Trump have probably intersecting interests in terms of

their own political futures or their own safety, right?

They both need sort of a bright, shiny object outside of their domestic issues because they're

unpopular in their own countries for things that they've done, but there's no disassociating

this. If you think there's no accountability in Epstein and you think there's no accountability

for doge and there's no accountability for budgetary, this is not different.

This is a continuation down the same road, no accountability for war.

Absolutely, and I've been at a few protests, no Kings Day that you've referenced in the

like of in the last year, but the one protest that will really make a difference that will

do more than just make us feel good that day is at the polls.

And we saw the turnout here in Texas go up substantially this past week in the primary.

If we can keep people focused on the election and holding their Republican enablers for

Trump accountable in this upcoming election, we have a chance to turn this around before

so many lives are lost and so much money is wasted.

Well, Texas saw more Democrats come out in the primary than Republicans, which is something

it hasn't happened in a long time. I think you'll correct if I'm wrong.

Texas last elected a Senator, a Democratic Senator in 1988, right?

That would have been Lloyd Benson when he was running to President 1990, a Democratic

governor. Both of them were out of office in 1994.

So Texas has not had a Democrat statewide since 1994.

And I know everybody always likes to pretend this is going to happen, but there feels like

there's some real momentum in Texas right now for Democrats.

There is what we have as hope and we have a new face on the state and national horizon

in James Tolerico. I think he brings a great deal of hope.

He's reaching out to people. He's talking about his faith, not as a way to encourage war,

but as a way to bring us together.

Yeah, well, in fact, he talks about his faith, not just as, as you said, not just about

wars, a way to bring people together, but he's able to sort of talk about his faith being

a faith of inclusion, the idea that his faith is in keeping what he believes America is.

As I tell friends, there were a different Protestant denominations.

We went to the same Sunday school that Christianity was about love, not about hate, and he's bringing

that into real life and talking about the challenges that we have today in this country

and now around the world.

Congressmen, people may not pay attention to why authorizations of the use of military

force or war powers are an important thing for Congress to deal with.

I'm a little bit worried that this president is just getting, softening us up for the

idea that not only do I not need to convince Congress, I don't even need to go to Congress

because that opens it up. He mentioned Cuba this week.

We're going to do a war there. He talks about Canada being the 51st state.

Are we going to invade Canada or are you just going to take Greenland because once you've

set the example that you don't have to ask Congress, you don't have to get permission,

then I guess what stops you from doing whatever you want?

What's the isolate?

And whatever he wants, not only abroad, but here at home.

As these elections loom, what other desperate measures that he will take to interfere with

the elections?

That's why we need such a massive turnout so that he cannot defeat the will of the American

people.

He views this Congress largely as a doormat.

He knows that Republicans will, with water to major exceptions that we saw this past

week, we'll let him get away with anything.

And he continues to push the red line just a little further each time that he expands

his authority.

We're on a path to one man authoritarian unrestrained rule if we can't turn it around in this

election.

Except we can't.

That's the good news.

Congressmen always bring to have here.

Thank you, Alan.

Congressman Lloyd Dogg at Democrat of Texas.

All right, coming up, the last no Kings Day drew seven million Americans to the streets

in 2,700 protests across all 50 states.

The next one is happening later this month against the backdrop of a new unconstitutional

war.

But this moment calls for more than another no Kings Day.

History teaches us that we need organized, localized movements that tackle specific injustices

without waiting for ideal conditions.

After the break, I'm going to speak to someone who's no stranger to protests.

The Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones about what comes after no Kings Day.

Instagram Tina Counts default teens into automatic protections for who can contact them and

the content they can see.

Explore Tina Counts and all of our ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com

slash Tina Counts.

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I want to show you a picture.

You've seen it before and you may recognize it even if you wish you didn't.

This is a photograph taken on May 14, 1961 in Aniston, Alabama.

It's a burned out greyhound bus.

It sits on the side of the road.

Its windows are completely shattered, completely destroyed.

Just earlier, a mob had firebombed this bus.

It engulfed the bus in smoke and flames.

Inside, that bus were young American black and white who had boarded that bus knowing

that violence was likely waiting for them, some barely escaped with their lives.

Now we often remember these images as a story about courage.

And it is a story about courage.

But if that's all we remember, then we misunderstand what was really happening that day and that

year.

You see, the freedom writers were not simply protesting segregation.

They were testing whether the government of the United States would enforce its own laws.

A year earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled in Boynton, V. Virginia that segregation inside

of interstate bus terminals was unconstitutional.

On paper, the issue was settled.

In practice, nothing had changed.

So the Congress of Racial Equality, known as Core, organized a campaign.

Volunteers were recruited very carefully and they traveled on buses through the deep

south knowing that it would likely provoke a reaction from segregationists.

But the freedom writers trained in nonviolent resistance.

They rehearsed how to endure harassment and arrest, even beatings without retaliation.

They studied legal procedures.

They coordinated with lawyers and organizers who were waiting all along their route.

The freedom writers were the farthest thing from spontaneous protests.

They were a structured experiment in democracy.

When the writers reached Aniston, Alabama, the response was immediate and it was brutal.

A mob followed the bus, it slashed its tires, it hurled a fire bomb through a broken window.

As passengers fled the choking smoke, they were beaten.

The plan could have ended that day, but instead it grew.

Students from the student nonviolent coordinating committee, SNCC, stepped forward to continue

the rides.

They understood something essential.

If violence succeeded in stopping their campaign for civil rights, then violence would become

official policy.

And so more writers came.

Ultimately the scope of the thing caused the federal government to enforce the Constitution,

rather than to allow mob rule to prevail.

By September of 1961, new federal regulations finally required desegregation in interstate

travel facilities.

But desegregating businesses and gas stations was never the final goal.

Organizers understood that access to transportation meant little without access to political

power.

So the movement shifted quietly and methodically toward voting, which makes this old American

story highly resonant today.

Across Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia activists began helping black Americans register

to vote in systems that were deliberately designed to prevent that.

Literacy tests demanded impossible interpretations of constitutional passages.

Registrar's rejected applications arbitrarily, citizens risked their jobs, their homes, even

their personal safety simply for attempting to register to vote.

There was outrage, but the response was not outrage alone.

It was organization.

During freedom summer in 1964, hundreds of volunteers, many of them college students from

the North traveled to Mississippi to build what organizers called freedom infrastructure.

They opened freedom schools to teach civics and constitutional rights.

Churches became coordination centers.

Lawyers arranged bail funds.

When door-to-door helping neighbors navigate paperwork, understand requirements, returning

after rejection, and then that summer, that summer three young men disappeared.

James Cheney is the man in the middle.

Michael Schwerner is to the left of him, Andrew Goodman is to the right.

These were civil rights workers investigating the burning of a black church near Philadelphia,

Mississippi.

After being arrested by local law enforcement, they were released into the night and murdered

by members of the Ku Klux Klan, working alongside police in Mississippi.

Cheney, the man in the middle, was from Mississippi, but the men on either side of him, Goodman

and Schwerner were from New York.

They were volunteers who could have lived untouched by segregation's daily injustices.

They were both Jewish.

They were raised within awareness that discrimination left unchallenged, rarely remains confined

to one community.

They were not driven to these protests by personal necessity.

They were driven by moral conviction.

Their murders forced the country to confront a difficult truth.

The struggle for voting rights was not a regional dispute.

It was a national test, a test of conscience.

Americans who had watched from a distance suddenly understood that neutrality was itself

a choice.

And so even the murder of Cheney and Goodman and Schwerner did not halt the work.

Organizers continued to register voters.

Communities continued meeting in church basements and living rooms.

The freedom infrastructure held.

And by the time Marchers crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma in 1965, the nation

was no longer seeing isolated protests.

It was witnessing the cumulative weight of years of organized citizenship, demanding protection

under the law.

The Voting Rights Act did not emerge from a single march.

It emerged from sustained work that made participation possible.

And history leaves us with a lesson that feels very relevant today.

The young people who traveled south in 1964 were not all directly denied the vote.

What moved them was not personal grievance, but moral proximity, the understanding learned

across generations and communities that discrimination tolerated anywhere, eventually tests justice

everywhere.

Every generation must decide how close injustice must come to them before it feels responsible

for confronting it.

The freedom writers and the organizers who followed them answered that question in a particular

way.

They did not wait for perfect conditions.

They helped one another navigate the imperfect conditions.

They showed up physically.

They explained rules that were confusing by design.

They accompanied their neighbors.

They returned after they were set back.

They transformed citizenship from an individual right into a shared responsibility.

The burning bus in Aniston is unforgettable because it captures a moment of violence.

The real story is what followed.

Americans deciding that democracy requires more than belief in democracy.

It requires participation made possible through collective effort.

History remembers the marches and the flames because they were dramatic, but democracy rarely

turns on dramatic moments.

It turns on whether ordinary people decide to help one another participate, to make rights

usable, not merely admirable.

The freedom writers did not know how their story would end.

They only knew that the work belonged to them.

They knew that the work was theirs to do.

Every generation eventually reaches that same conclusion.

The question is never whether history will ask something of us.

It will.

The question is whether we will recognize the moment when it does.

Joining me now is the Texas Democratic State Representative Justice, Judgedson Jones.

In 2023, Jones was one of two lawmakers expelled from the state house in Tennessee for protesting

against gun violence.

They were later reinstated.

Brother Jones, thank you for being with us.

You are someone who knew full well when you were called to action.

That's the thing about us, right?

The call is there.

We just have to be able to receive it right now.

That's exactly it.

Brother Velstein and I just get goose bumps here and what you're saying.

I just got back from Reverend Jesse Jackson's funeral in Chicago.

We lost another freedom writer, Nelliter, Dr. Bernard Lafayette, who did the groundwork

for the Selma Voting Rights Act, which we celebrate today, Bloody Sunday.

What we're seeing is we're seeing this chiral moment where so many of those elders we talk

about in the civil rights movement are passing at a time where this administration is dismantling

that infrastructure.

It's dismantling every institutional win that we saw during the civil rights movement.

So it's upon us to pick up that torch and say that the civil rights movement is not just

in history books, but it's a movement that calls us to pick up that torch and to push

forward against the new generations of bull corners and George Wallace's that we face

today in our government.

It requires us to stand up and to speak up and to let them know that we're not going

to let anyone turn us around and to really give breath to what democracy means in this

country.

You know, we're celebrating 250 years of America, but for multi-racial democracy, it's

only 60 years young in this country.

Real democracy, only 60 years young in this country.

It was bought with days in jail cells and nights of bomb threats through the smack of

Billy Club and the blast of fire hoses.

That was the cost of democracy, but it was something that these young people mainly

young people were willing to pay and to push forward toward that vision of what America

ought to be.

It was done by people who, some of whom felt the injustice directly and some of whom

didn't, but they understood that the cause is the same.

Our cause of justice and liberty and equality in the United States should be exactly the

same as for you as it is for me.

Exactly.

They recognize that if they come from one of us, they're coming for all of us and that

there is this need for moral clarity and urgency.

And I want to shout out the young people because I want to say something that we see often

today is that these young people were often told that they were acting too quickly, that

they should, you know, they should seek gradual change for these young people who are here,

who were started here in Nashville where I'm sitting right now, were the ones who picked

up the freedom rise after the buses were bombed in anison.

Those young people like Diane Nash and John Lewis and Bernard Lafayette and CTVV who said,

we are not going to allow violence to overcome nonviolence.

We're going to pick up this, this movement and let them know that we're not going to wait

for permission.

As Fannie Lou Heymer said, she said, move on over or we're moving on over you because

we're moving on.

We're going to build something new, make America live up to what it says on paper.

And that's what we must do today.

And so when young people are told, oh, you're being too radical, you're asking for things

too quickly, these young people back then who we now celebrate as heroines and founding

fathers of this multiracial democracy were told the exact same thing, but they did not

let that stop them.

They said, we're going to sit in as a way to stand up by these lunch counter.

We're going to get on the freedom rise.

We're going to march to Selma and force this government to face the issue that they want

to keep under service.

We're going to bring it to the surface and force this creative tension to make America's

democracy a reality for all people in this nation.

So I'm looking forward to March 28th and no kings and seeing the rallies that are out

there.

And as I often say, people are welcome to not watch this show that morning and to go

out there.

That is one amazing part of it.

We are seeing the actual, this protest that people can get involved in no matter who they

are, what walk of life.

But the part of freedom riders thing that interests me is that there is another space

as well, right?

For people who are who want to do something else who can say, I can go out.

We saw it in Texas this weekend on Tuesday.

We saw what voter suppression looks like.

What if there were an army of people, an army of citizens who said, we will protect our

right to vote everywhere in this country, even if I'm not from there.

I mean, that's what we need to see.

We need, you know, and I want to lift up the South because often the South, whether it's

Tennessee, where I am Texas, the Weasan Mississippi, it's the tip of the spirit, it's the front

light of democracy.

And so right now we're becoming a Confederacy again without protectors from the federal

government.

And so we must go to places where these battles are taking place.

What we saw in Texas was reprehensible.

It was immoral.

And it's sad that today we have less protections for voting rights than we did after 1965

because they dismantled the Voting Rights Act.

And so what we must do is we must go to these places and not just mobilize on one day,

but we need sustained, consistent, persistent agitation.

You know, what we saw in the 60s was liberation through agitation.

That's what we must continue to see.

We can't just have a one day protest on the day that buildings are closed, but we must

go there when they're open and let them know that if they suppress the voting of people,

we're going to find ways, as John Lewis had to get in good trouble to do things out of

the ordinary.

Sometimes our democracy requires disruption.

We saw that in Tennessee when they turned off my microphone, I had to pull a megaphone

out my pocket by the voices of my constituents.

That's what we must do.

We must do things out of the ordinary and push forward and force them to see these issues

because what I'm fearful of my brother is that if we don't act now, we may not have

an election and democracy come in next election.

We're already seeing them saying they're going to have ICE agents, the poor mass agents

trying to intimidate people outside of polls.

We see the games are playing with the electoral process and trying to close voting scenes.

We see what's happening.

And so we have to be proactive and not reactive after it happened because then it'll

be too late.

Must act now.

It is underway now and now is the time to act.

Brother Jones, good to see you as always.

Thank you for being with us.

Democratic State Representative Justin Jones of Tennessee, we'll be right back.

As Donald Trump's chaotic war against Iran has unfolded this past week, we've been asking

the question on this show, why?

Why Iran?

Why now?

Why in the middle of negotiations?

Well, now some American service members reportedly say they're being pitched a holy war.

We'll go inside the explosive new allegations after the break, plus a tech company with

a government contract told the Pentagon not to use its AI technology for mass surveillance

of Americans.

The Pentagon had other ideas.

We'll talk about that another hour of bellshave begins after a quick break.

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