love talking with and listening to and reading, thank you for making time tonight. >> thank you. >> that is "all in" on this monday night. the "the 11th hour" with brian williams starts right now. and good evening once again. day 1,285 of the trump administration, leaving 99 days to go until the presidential election. perhaps you're old enough to remember last week when a number of mainstream media publications and reporters and anchors were quick to report without a whiff of irony that the president, in his candor, telling us things were going to get better after they got worse, in his matter-of-fact handling of the pandemic at his newly revived press briefings. the president, to hear them tell it, was exhibiting a new tone. the new toners in the mainstream media were roundly mocked for having learned nothing during this presidency and for relying

on old rules used to cover past presidency. then just today, today he was back, the president in north carolina, his nation leading the world in coronavirus. he wants governors to open up more. >> i really do believe a lot of the governors should be opening up states that are not opening, and we'll see what happens with them. >> donald trump taking his old tone out for a spin while visiting a north carolina biotech company taking part in the race for a vaccine for this virus. a few hours earlier, the president learned that his own national security adviser robert o'brien had tested positive for covid-19. o'brien is now the highest-ranking trump administration official to become infected. >> i haven't seen him lately. i heard he -- he tested, yeah. i have not seen him.

>> when did he first test positive? >> i don't know. >> the pandemic continues to churn through the united states, urban and rural, young and old, rich and poor. with over 4.3 million confirmed infections, the u.s. now has about a quarter of the world's cases despite having just 4% of the world's population. our death toll is now over 148,000, and over just the past seven days, the u.s. has averaged about 1,000 deaths per day. the outbreak is still pushing a lot of hospitals across the nation to their own brink. the need for frontline medical workers still growing daily. there are still serious delays in getting results from covid testing with wait times stretching into several days or even weeks in some cases. doctors agree that that long a wait renders the results moot. this evening dr. anthony fauci offered a sobering assessment of where the nation stands five months into this pandemic.

>> we have a considerable amount of activity. you know the numbers. we're still seeing, you know, 50,000, 60,000-plus cases a day. you've just mentioned the total number. this is something we've got to get under better control. >> we might see tens of thousands of americans dying over the next few months, is that right? >> well, that is conceivable. unless we get our arms around this and get it suppressed, we are going to have further suffering and further death. >> on the upside, fauci said he did brief the president today on a major step in the fight against the virus. two companies, moderna and pfizer, have started late-stage vaccine trials, each involving 30,000 people. the first volunteer was vaccinated this morning. the president seemed eager to suggest this is a turning point. >> not only is operation warp speed accelerating the development of a vaccine, we're also directing a colossal

industrial mobilization to ensure its rapid delivery. nothing's happened like this since the end of world war ii. >> is today's event about giving americans hope? a sense of optimism? is that what you're trying to do? >> well, i think so, but there would be not that same kind of hope if we weren't doing so well. >> the state of florida now has the second highest number of infections, having bypassed the original epicenter of new york. they're now second only to california. last week a floridian died of the virus on average every eight minutes. thankfully a few other hard-hit states are reporting a slight plateau in confirmed cases. we're also watching several pandemic-related developments tonight in the world of sports. major league baseball considering its next move tonight after more than a dozen members of the miami marlins players and staff tested positive for covid-19. three major league games have now been postponed so far. tonight the nfl confirmed there

will be no preseason. we're also getting a preview of what the combative attorney general, william barr, will be telling the house judiciary committee hearing tomorrow morning. he's expected to deny that he's doing the president's bidding at all in criminal cases while defending the use of those camouflaged, militarized federal agents in portland and other cities. business on capitol hill was put on hold today, rightfully so, as lawmakers paid tribute to congressman john lewis, who died july 17th. today he became the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the capitol. much more on the life and legacy of john lewis later on in this hour. but first, we start off our discussion on a new week, on a new monday night. kimberly atkins, formerly of wbur and the "boston herald," now a newly minted member of "the boston globe" editorial board. also with us, robert costa,

national political reporter with "the washington post" and moderator of "washington week" on pbs. and michael schmidt, pulitzer prize-winning washington correspondent for "the new york times." good evening and welcome to you all. kim, i'd like to begin with you. with today's apparent reset, the president sounding back to normal, back to pushing reopening, despite, kim, what i think you'll agree is a bright line, tying early reopening to the spikes we've witnessed. >> that's absolutely true. this president -- for this president to get what he wants, which is the economy rebounding in order to help bolster his re-election bid, he needs for this virus to get under control, and the reopening has been having the exact opposite effect. we are seeing businesses scramble to close again, municipalities moving to impose stronger restrictions --

reimpose stronger restrictions after lifting. you have parents who can't send their kids to school or school boards, school districts who don't have a plan. and all of these things are making it very difficult for the economy to set itself on a strong course. this is, of course, coming as unemployment benefits are set to expire unless congress moves quickly to bolster those. so it's an economic disaster in the making, but the president is sticking to the same formula that is leading down this disastrous road, sticking to his own gut that reopening, pushing for reopening at all costs is the only way and not -- really not looking at a single warning sign or any of the fallout that has come from that plan. >> indeed, robert, what kim just said, the president's own gut, that is probably what we heard from today when he was talking to governors about continuing to push reopening.

but indeed your newspaper over the weekend had fresh reporting on the effort to get him to take on more of the effort to talk about the coronavirus crisis and talk about the fight against it. >> part of that story in my own reporting in recent days shows that the rise of different cases -- the rise of coronavirus cases in red states has led for a bracing moment inside the west wing because they're hearing it from the president's closest allies in places like florida, in texas, in arizona. this is a real threat to their state's health, to their own political power, and this is something that they're getting now pressure from congressional republicans on. what is the white house plan? when are they going to have more aids to states, perhaps, in this next congressional round of negotiations? a lot of open questions not only from democrats but now from republicans. >> michael schmidt, the

president was in a bit of a box today, and we can say this without editorializing. most of his public utterances involving the coronavirus are directed at diminishing the coronavirus. so when faced with the news that his national security adviser has it, ergo, the box he was in, he chose to say he hasn't seen him lately, which perhaps unknowingly diminished the relationship with the national security adviser, a title from modern-day history. some presidents quite literally haven't walked across the street without their national security advisers. >> i couldn't help but think when i -- you played that clip earlier of the way the president

used to talk about folks like mike the cohen and paul manafort when they got caught up in the criminal investigations of his presidency, and they looked like they were in trouble. it was sort of this kiss of death line when trump would come out in a similar fashion and say, you know, diminish his relationship with him. in this case, it looks like that same kind of presidential distancing, but in this time, it's to show that he is healthy and that there is no risk to him. and obviously that would be the probably ultimate embarrassment for the president to get sick amid all of this when he has taken the approach he has, when he's refused for so long to put a mask on, that, getting the virus, would be pretty damning. so it sort of makes sense if you understand the way the president tries to put distance between himself and things he does not like for him to make a remark like that. >> kim, we've talked about how it's become a running matter with members of the public

particularly on social media trying to keep us in the news media to account for the fact that so many days have gone by without the president facing a direct question about the alleged russian bounties on the head of our men and women in uniform overseas. the president was asked about it today. we'll play the exchange, talk about it on the other side. >> you did talk with russian president vladimir putin. i wanted to ask if you did bring up the reports of russia having bounties on our soldiers in afghanistan. >> we don't talk about what we discussed, but we had plenty of discussion, and i think it was very productive. >> kim, the truth is he has in the past discussed what he's discussed with putin. >> he has. he has been quite open about his relationship with the russian president, praising him openly, choosing to believe him over

u.s. intelligence sources throughout his presidency. so this is clearly a subject he doesn't want to touch. lately it seems that anything related to russia, he immediately attributes to what he calls the russia hoax, which was the mueller investigation, which remains a thorn in his side. we know that the attorney general, william barr, tomorrow is set to extend that narrative in his remarks to congress, calling that investigation really -- you know, denigrating that investigation and the origins of it. so this is a narrative that we have seen for quite some time. the president sees any questioning of his relationship with vladimir putin as merely a smear attack from the press when any other president, given just a reminder of what happened, the reports, the intelligence that russia put bounties on the heads of u.s. troops through the taliban -- any other president would have imposed some sort of retaliatory action at this

point, and this president instead wants to sweep it under the rug. >> robert costa, talk about transactionality when it comes to opinion polls. it's cliched now to say that he likes the poll he likes that show him up and dismisses the others as either suppression polls or fake. new poll out of north carolina, i'm guessing, got his attention as well as mr. stepien over at the campaign, showing biden up 51-44 in north carolina. any intel you can add toward the president's intake these days of polling, this one included? >> well, i was talking to some republican strategists today and they were looking not just at the president's numbers in north carolina but the number right under that, senator thom tillis, the incumbent republican, he's

underwater against his democratic challenger. this is what the real reality is right now for republicans. the president is out there. he's not going to change on his conduct, his message on the pandemic, but they're facing a very narrow senate majority at risk, and they're not really sure how to navigate it at this point. they can't leave the president too much, but they can't get too close to him at the same time, and they're all trying to run on their own message. that's why they're scrambling to get a relief bill through congress right now. but there's no real confidence inside the republican party that they're going to be able to figure this all out in 99 days. >> michael schmidt, help us with the intersection of news and sports because it nicely describes your career. former sports writer turned to news, longtime baseball fan, and that brings me to this question. it was long considered the worst-case scenario that major league baseball would open up for admittedly a shortened season.

but because of all the people those team members touch -- families, the 60-year-old crew chief veteran umpire, training room assistants, bus drivers, caterers -- that coronavirus, got forbid, would get on a run within the league. so far we have a dozen or more positive tests in one team. we've had three games postponed. mike, as someone who follows the sport carefully, how much danger is this season in? >> look, i think the season is in a fair amount of danger, and i think that the commissioner, rob manfred, knows that. but he also knew coming in that there were going to be positives, and the question was what was the threshold, and what is that threshold going to be? it's not going to be an exact science.

he basically says that if play comes into question, if teams are so decimated and so many teams are decimated, then, you know, they're going to have to stop play. if it's clear that playing is making it more dangerous for the players, they are going to have to stop it. but i think even at a more basic level, what we see with baseball is an industry opening up. look, we've been shut down for many, many months here, and here's baseball with teams scattered all across the country, trying to operate normally. but they're doing it with far more money than the average person or the average company or the average institution, and we are seeing the struggles in that. so if major league baseball is having a handful of positives here at the beginning and they have the most, you know, the most robust protocols because they can afford to do that, they can afford to take the temperatures of everyone, they can afford to do testing in a

semi-real-time basis, then how are universities or public schools or private schools or any other institution going to manage this virus with almost what will certainly be less resources. >> brian -- and again at the intersection -- yeah, go ahead, robert. >> there's a real fear, brian, inside of the white house that if sports shut down in any way, if college football doesn't happen, if baseball shuts down, that it will affect the president's re-election chances. they were talking about that to me back in march -- top white house officials and the president's allies -- that they need sports. they need this country moving. it's not just about reopening businesses. it's about sports, and they worry about the political cost of having this all shut down. i have to say, brian, disappointed my own university, notre dame, blue and gold, said no thanks to the debate today due to covid-19. a tough decision out in south bend. >> you see nodding in our panelists, all three baseball and sports fans. it's just that kimberly roots for a certain new england baseball team that tends to get

her in trouble during conversations like this. our thanks to our friends for taking on this intersection between news and sports. to kim atkins, robert costa, mike schmidt, thank you, all three of you, for starting us off on a monday night. coming up, she quite literally wrote the book on pandemics. why our next guest calls out what may happen in american schools as a moral and medical catastrophe. and later, why the 26th largest american city is getting almost all of the attention tonight. and what are those militarized, mysteriously uniformed, federal forces really doing there? as "the 11th hour" is just getting under way on this monday night.

i'm just still waiting to hear back on what they have planned for us. >> i want to be with my students, but i don't want to infect my family. >> part of my job is also

keeping my students safe, and i'm not going to be able to do that this next year. it's just -- i -- i can't. >> palpable concern there from some of our nation's teachers as the school year looms. the trump administration is pushing all schools to reopen, resume in-classroom teaching in a matter of weeks. but the nation's top infectious disease doctor isn't so enthusiastic. here was dr. fauci earlier tonight. >> i think you have to start off by saying what is the default position that you would like to hold, and that is we should try as best as possible to open the schools. however -- and i underline however -- having said that, what is paramount is the safety and the welfare of the children and of their teachers. and so we live in a big country

that has a lot of diversity with regard to the level of infection in a particular community. and the people responsible need to take that into effect. >> the answer was in the nuance right there. the federal government hasn't offered any guidance on how to safely bring kids back into the classroom or how to pay for additional safety measures. our next guest calls it nothing short of moral bankruptcy, and with us once again for more, laurie garrett. as a science writer, she is the recipient of the pulitzer prize, the polk, and peabody award. she is the author of "the coming plague" and "ebola: story of an outbreak." also happens to be contributor to foreign policy and a former senior fellow for global health at the council on foreign relations. laurie, it's so great to have you back on the broadcast. we look forward to your visits even though we would give anything to change the subject matter.

what an intensely personal decision for teachers to teach, for parents whether or not to send kids back. what in your view needs to happen before we reopen schools? >> well, brian, first of all, we shouldn't even be thinking about reopening schools in communities where there's so much transmission that 20-something super athletes for a major league baseball team are all getting infected just going about day-to-day business. we shouldn't be even thinking about reopening if you see 5% of random tests coming back positive every single day in community screening. if we are going to reopen a school and there's a lower rate of community transmission, then there has to be a smart way of doing it, and that's more than just using a lot of lysol and elbow grease to clean the hallways. it involves doing baseline testing of specific volunteer cohorts that represent different-age kids, teachers,

the staff, the cafeteria workers, the janitorial staff, and determine what's your baseline infection rates. and then keep track of those cohorts over time, and if anything changes, have policies in place to jump in, do contact tracing of everybody that they've been in contact with -- the students, the faculty and so on -- and isolate anybody who's infected for two weeks. this is the kind of basics that have been in place in countries that have done this right. but i don't know of any community anywhere in the united states that's ready to do this right. >> also i've heard you say we need money for things like hvac, ventilation that you don't hear discussed. we need money and room. it's space, sheer space and distance, in public buildings that in many cases they're very old. >> look. there's such disparity in the

quality of schools, in public schools around the united states. so you start, brian, with the basic point. if you live in a wealthy neighborhood with high property values and therefore high property taxes, you probably can make the right kind of air filtration systems, larger classroom spaces, perhaps double sessions with teachers getting paid to take on double duty with smaller classes. yeah, they could probably do it. but your average rural school, inner city school, schools in the sort of suburban areas that don't have any really good, strong economic base, these places don't have the resources. they have to have funding from somewhere else, meaning the federal government, but all that money is held up now indefinitely in debates on capitol hill, and there's not been a single finger lifted from the white house to indicate that anybody's prepared to pull some weight on this at that level. >> laurie, i'm also hearing such high hopes toward a vaccine by, you know, thanksgiving or christmas.

we're all walking around enjoying life again with impunity. you also hear people tossing around the phrase "herd immunity" as if that's a short walk from here and a painless walk at that. can you clear that up? >> yes. actually today with immunologist john moore i published in "fortune" magazine an analysis of why the search for herd immunity is delusional. we aren't going to get there. this is a coronavirus. it's from the same family as common colds. and one of the things we know about common colds is that you never develop lifelong immunity. you keep getting colds over and over and over again, year after year, because immunity is very short, very, very short, just a matter of months. and there's increasing evidence with this covid-19 coronavirus issue that we're also looking at possibly very short-lived immunity. certainly there are studies from around the world showing waning immunity within a matter of

eight to ten weeks with some people going down to zero detectable antibodies in their bodies within three months after surviving the disease. does this mean that maybe they have what's called memory, meaning somewhere deep in their immune system, the body will recognize the virus when it sees it again and have an immune response? maybe. we don't know. and we don't know what the duration of response will be. tony fauci is always warning about this. every time the question of vaccines comes up, he's always warning about this because here's the problem. this warp speed drive to get a vaccine, you know, practically tomorrow, well, that means there won't be time to test it in a population of people for a year. we're not allowing any sort of possibility for that.

so we won't know, even when we blindly begin mass vaccination, whether that vaccination is going to last for a few weeks, a few months, or, we all pray, be indefinite like a measles vaccine. >> laurie garrett, we could have you on every night -- not suggesting it, just saying it -- and still just scratch the surface of your knowledge in this area. thank you for making time for us. thank you for having us in. we'll invite you back obviously. laurie garrett, our guest on this topic tonight. >> thank you. coming up for us, the president's latest threat against the protesters in portland, oregon, and perhaps elsewhere. robinhood believes now is the time to do money. without the commission fees. so, you can start investing today wherever you are - even hanging with your dog. so, what are you waiting for? download now and get your first stock on us. robinhood.

we came out here dressed in t-shirts and doing hula hoops and stuff, and they started gassing us. so we came back with respirators, and they started shooting us. so we came back with vests, and they started aiming for the head. so we started wearing helmets, and now they call us terrorists. who's escalating this? it's not us. >> this weekend from seattle to denver to louisville, the protests against racial and social injustice continued, all of it sparked, let's not forget, by the death of george floyd beneath the knee of a police officer. tensions again boiled over in portland, which has now seen its 60th straight night of demonstrations. federal agents launched tear gas into the crowd after protesters attempted to breach the federal courthouse that has been the site of the most violent clashes.

"the washington post" reporting today, quote, more federal agents have been dispatched to portland as protests rise in other cities. the president for his part threatened protesters who vandalized federal buildings with a minimum ten years in prison. city officials say they've asked for a meeting with homeland security officials to talk about what they're calling a cease-fire and request the removal of federal forces. all of this as the attorney general, bill barr, scheduled to answer questions about the federal response to the protests on the hill tomorrow. and at long last, back with us again tonight is our friend barbara mcquade, veteran federal prosecutor and former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan. so, barb, if the legal cover the feds are operating under is the protection of federal buildings and facilities, why not take the

advice, if you're the protesters, of your friend and ours, your former fellow fed, joyce vance, who said today, take the protests away from the federal building, and in effect you'd be voiding their rules of engagement. >> i think joyce is absolutely right. i mean so often the problem isn't what agents are doing. it's how they're doing it. and so the problem we've seen here, certainly no problem with defending federal property. but what is happening is the aggressive tactics that we're seeing and the military-style uniforms and weapons that they're using. and so if there is no federal property to protect, if they're several blocks away, then they lose that jurisdiction, and they're just left standing in front of their buildings. so i think it's very wise advice. i think one of the challenges here is trying to de-escalate the situation, and it seems that these federal agents are escalating the situation, and perhaps that is what president trump has in mind.

>> labeling this as such, i'm going to play for you what a lot of people found to be a hyperbolic comment by the mayor of seattle. we'll talk about the legality of it and definitions on the other side. >> this is not a republican or democrat issue. this is about america and the proper role of law enforcement. i hate to say it, but it looks like this president is doing a dress rehearsal for martial law. >> so, barb, dress rehearsal for martial law. how long a walk is it from where we are tonight, knowing what we know about cities where the feds already are and what may be on their wish list, and what the mayor mentions there? >> well, i think what she has in mind is the idea that the president does have the power to call up military personnel to respond to unrest in cities. the president can do that even without an invitation from the locals.

that is an awesome power, and we entrust that power to our commander in chief. but what we have seen from this president is, some would argue, an effort to escalate tensions in cities like portland and seattle and perhaps creating a pretext that would allow him to exercise that awesome power. and so one certainly hopes that it doesn't come to that, but if you look at all of the conduct that president trump has engaged in, including the executive order that he issued this weekend that just talks about using our powers to the maximum, there's a lot of chest-thumping that goes on. effective law enforcement brings calm to chaos, and it seems that president trump is doing just the opposite. and so it isn't a long stretch to imagine that he reaches the point where he says law enforcement, federal agents, are not sufficient. we need to escalate even further by calling up the military, and he has the power to do that. >> finally, counselor, bill barr's testimony tomorrow.

if you were a member of that committee and you had one question, what would it be? >> i would want to know about what is happening with the investigation of the investigators of the mueller report. i fear an october surprise about what's happening with what he refers to in his testimony as the bogus russiagate scandal, and i would want to ask a question about, are you working with president trump to undermine the 2020 election? >> a number of people share that fear with you. barbara mcquade, what a pleasure. it's been too long. thank you for coming on our broadcast tonight. coming up for us, our next guest says without congressman john lewis, she wouldn't be here. the pulitzer prize-winning journalist nikole hannah-jones on what she says our country can do, must do to honor his legacy when we come back.

let's put it this way. the imagery of these past few days comes close, close to the honor john lewis deserved in life. as was said over this past weekend, this time they saluted the man who was almost killed at the hands of police. this time his final crossing of the bridge that may soon bear his name was on rose petals. john lewis witnessed his share of history during his time here on earth, and now in death, he becomes the first ever black elected official to lie instate at the u.s. capitol. we welcome to the broadcast tonight nikole hannah-jones, correspondent for "the new york times," focusing on racial injustice. this year she was awarded the pulitzer prize for her work on "the times" 1619 project, which analyzes how slavery has affected our country.

among her many other honors, she's also a past recipient of the macarthur genius grant. thank you so much for spending some time with us. all of us who were lucky enough to spend any time with john lewis are left just with our memories. but i'd like for you to talk about his personal legacy in your life for you. >> yes. thank you so much for having me on to talk about one of the greatest americans that this country has produced. john lewis was just a few years older than my own father. like my father, was born into the segregated south, into a family of sharecroppers. so i very personally understand how he changed the country that my father and that he was born

into that would allow someone like me an opportunity to work at a place like "the new york times" and to do the type of journalism that i do. i just would not be here without him and, you know, all of the other civil rights activists and everyday americans who i consider to be really this nation's true founding fathers. >> how do you keep the legacy alive of such a towering and unique american during a time in our lives where everything we see around us is kind of his antithesis sadly? >> yes. i mean the amazing thing about congressman john lewis is that he was not one who felt that he needed to dictate or control the movement that was coming. he was a supporter of black lives matter. we spoke about it when i interviewed him about freedom summer. one of the last things he did before he died was to go see the black lives matter banner that was painted in d.c. so i think he, much more than myself, was eternally optimistic.

he believed that we would need to keep fighting these battles, but they were worthy and we would have victories. and i think he has passed that legacy on to us, and it is our charge. we know that as john lewis died, there is a bill in congress right now to restore the provisions of the voting rights act that was gutted by the supreme court, and that is his legacy. if we want to honor him, then the way to honor him is to continue his work, and that is one way to do that. >> i hope my sarcasm comes through over zoom or whatever it is we're calling this technology because it is meant to be the dripping kind of sarcasm. you guys at the 1619 project must be working on some very scary stuff because it seems to trigger a lot of officeholders. >> yeah, it's been an interesting time. the 1619 project published almost a year ago. next month it will be a year, and yet it seems like the people

in the highest offices of this land have a bit of an obsession with the project. it's been -- it's been interesting. i hope, though, that this conversation will drive people in this country to do some reflection on why we hold so dearly to these founding myths and why we still, 400 years after the first africans were brought to this land to be enslaved, cannot deal with our history and our past. >> thank you for not minding a little well-intentioned sarcasm, and thank you mostly for talking about the life and legacy of the giant we just lost, john lewis. and i'm reminded people will line up tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. the line will stretch tomorrow evening until 10:00 p.m. just to pay their respects. nikole hannah-jones, it's been a great pleasure having you on. thank you so very much. coming up, after years of trying, efforts to approve some

type of compensation for slavery and systemic discrimination are getting traction and, importantly, not just here. an update on reparations, the effort overseas, when we come back. effort overseas, when we come back

these weeks of protests in our streets over racial inequality are bringing a renewed focus on finding ways to possibly compensate for injustices like slavery, like systemic discrimination. it is a third-rail topic for a lot of folks. leaders in the house of representatives say a decades-old proposal to create a commission at least on reparations could finally be approved this year. nbc news correspondent carl nasman reports the mood is

shifting on this issue in the uk as well. >> reporter: with statues falling from virginia to bristol, england, a new push to reconcile a dark history on both sides of the atlantic. the death of george floyd helping take the issue of reparations for slavery from the sidelines to the mainstream. in the u.s., joe biden saying he's open to studying the issue, and bills in the house and senate to create a reparations committee gaining support. barbara lee is one of nearly 140 co-sponsors of h.r. 40, named after the unfulfilled promise of 40 acres and a mule to emancipate its slaves. >> the political mood has changed. now what you see is a groundswell of people in the community who really recognize the need for h.r. 40 and who are insisting that their members of congress sign on and move this forward. >> george floyd! >> reporter: britain is also confronting its racist legacy,

and here its corporations facing pressure. many british companies built their wealth from slavery. here at these docks, ships would set sail, stopping in africa to take slaves to british plantations in the caribbean and then returning to london loaded with valuable sugar. and insuring those ships, one of today's insurance giants. for centuries, lloyd's of london helped underwrite those transatlantic trips, becoming a multi-billion-dollar insurance leader in the process. when protests spread to the uk in june, lloyd's issued an apology for its, quote, shameful involvement in the slave trade, promising to increase minority hiring and donate to charities supporting diversity. several other organizations with similar ties followed suit. esther stanford-xosei is an expert on the international reparations movement. she says the corporate efforts fall short. >> lloyd's have known for a long time about all of this.

it's not like they're just suddenly waking up and getting a conscience. that's about them trying to sort of do some kind of, i don't know, corporate social responsibility. this is not reparations. >> reporter: in fact, there were reparations in the past, not to britain's slaves but to slave owners. after britain abolished slavery in 1833, the british government paid some $3 billion in today's money to the owners themselves, in effect, buying the slaves' predom. historic documents show slave owners at the top of british society, at the british museum, even the church of england. but britain is still struggling to acknowledge the full extent of its history with activists demanding a national reparations process. a process the u.s. might finally be ready to begin. carl nasman, nbc news, london. interesting thing happened today when congress attempted to say farewell to john lewis. it turns out the best words to remember him by were his own. we'll have them for you coming up.

this year, the alzheimer's association walk to end alzheimer's is everywhere. on every sidewalk, track, and trail across this country. all of us are raising funds for one goal: a world without alzheimer's and all other dementia. because this disease isn't waiting, neither are you. take the first step on your walk right now. go to alz dot org slash walk.

tonight, the fact that there are people, thousands of our fellow citizens who are willing to line up as they will starting again at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, maintain their distance, to get a glimpse of a flag-draped casket atop the steps of the u.s. capitol in the midst of mid-summer washington, in the midst of the pandemic of 2020. that tells you we have lost a giant.

and beneath that majestic dome earlier today when he became the first ever african-american elected official in our history to lie instate, when his own recorded words were chosen as the best possible way to remember john lewis, that was proof all over again that we had lost a modern-day icon. >> as young people, you must understand that there are forces that want to take us back to another period. but you must say, they will not win. we made too much progress, and we're going forward. there may be some setbacks, some delays, some disappointment, but you must never, ever give up or give in. you must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. that is your calling. that is your mission. that is your moral obligation. that is your mandate. get out there and do it. get in the way. [ applause ] be bold. be courageous. stand up! speak up!

speak out and find a way to create the beloved community, the beloved world, a world of peace, a world that recognizes the dignity of all humankind. never become bitter. never become hostile. never hate. live in peace. we're one, one people and one love. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> two political parties can't agree on a damn thing most days. today the leadership led them, and they followed. standing up to applaud a man who so many tried to keep down for so long. the late congressman john lewis of georgia. that is our broadcast for this monday night as we start off a

new week. thank you so very much for being here with us. on behalf of all my colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night. with chaos on the streets of portland, oregon, there's new reporting that the trump administration is sending in more federal agents. >> also, the president travels to north carolina to talk about a potential coronavirus vaccine and wear as mask publicly for the second time. and members of the congress and lawmakers pay their last respects to congressman john lewis as his body lies instate at the u.s. capitol. good morning, everybody. it is tuesday, july 28th, and i'm yasmin vossoughian. we're going to b