Transcripts For MSNBCW All In With Chris Hayes 20140805

Deported. Theres much more where that came from. This is a part of the war on whites. All in starts right now. Good evening from washington. Im ezra klein sitting in tonight for chris hayes. Theres big news tonight in the middle east where there are signs of a potential breakthrough. Both israelis and palestinians signing on to a 72 hour ceasefire brokered by egypt. The ceasefire is set to begin tomorrow at 8 00 a. M. Local time. It is worth saying, however, the two sides here do not have the best record in the ceasefires. A previous ceasefire put in place on friday lasted only two hours before fighting between the two sides resumed. Earlier today, israel initiated a partial ceasefire on its own as it began to withdraw Ground Troops from some of the more populist areas of gaza saying that are, extremely close to completing their mission of destroying hamas network of underground tunnels. An air strike hit a home killing an 8yearold girl and wounding at least 29 others according to the New York Times. That refugee camp it should be said is far from the Southern City of rafah which Israeli Army Officials said was the only urban area where there would be fighting on the ground today. Across the border in israel, in what the Israeli Government is now calling a terrorist attack, a man in jerusalem drove a construction vehicle into a bus, flipping the bus over and killing one pedestrian. The driver of the construction vehicle was fatally shot by Israeli Security forces. Hours later, a gunman on a motorcycle shot and wounded an israeli soldier in east jerusalem. Israel said its partial ceasefire today was intended to allow humanitarian aid into some of the hardest hit areas of gaugaza and let some of the almost half a million palestinians displayed in the fighting return to their homes in the areas where israeli troops are no longer engaged, if indeed, they have homes to return to. Nearly 250,000 of those displaced people have been sheltering at facilities run by the u. N. Relief and works agency for palestine refugees. And yesterday, for the second time in a week, a u. N. Run School Acting as refugee shelter was hit by israeli fire. An israeli missile struck near the entrance of the u. N. School in rafah where around 3,000 palestinians were seeking shelter, killing at least ten people and drawing the strongest condemnation yet from the u. S. Government. State Department Spokesperson jen psaki said in a statement, the United States is appalled by todays disgraceful shelling outside a unrwa school in rafah. We once again stress that israel must do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties. Israel said the missiles meant to hit three militants on a motorcycle. Instead, it killed ten people at a u. N. School. This comes after an israeli strike killed 21 people at a unrwa school at a refugee camp less than a week ago provoking an emotional response from the organizations spokesman. The rights of palestinians, even children, are wholesale denied in its reporting. My [ crying ] an examination of that by the New York Times suggests that israeli troops paid little heed to warnings to safeguard such sites and may have unleashed weapons inappropriate for areas despite rising alarm over civilian deaths. Joining me on the phone from telaviv, is spokesperson for the United Nations relief agency. Chris, i appreciate you being here. My great pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on your program. Much appreciated. What is your response to the New York Times reporting that israel may have ignored warnings about the location of one of the schools and fired artillery shells into a dense urban area . Let me say first of all we in unrwa made 33 calls to the israeli army telling them there were people in the school, 3,000, telling them after the precise gps of that school. The last of those calls was put through an hour at 09 45 yesterday morning to the israeli ae army, and in spite of that, we still had this terrible instant in which five children were killed between the ages of 3 and 15. Now, its interesting, you quoted quite accurately, extremely accurately the state departments statement and elsewhere in that statement the state department made it clear to israel that simply being, having a suspicion that there are militants on a motor bike would not justify a strike on an installation where there are 3,000 people. There is laws of war the principle of proportionality, and you simply cant because you hope you might kill a militant put at risk the lives of thousands of people in that school. And sadly, because that risk was taken, children died. So you said 33 calls . We made 33 calls to the israeli army. That is correct. Notifying them of the exact gps corrdinants of that school and the last call before the fatal strike was put in an hour before. This isnt the first time. As you said in your introduction, in another school, it was 17 calls informing them of the exact area. Now, im not accusing the israeli army of making a direct and deliberate hit. What im saying is that there are questions which i think need to be answered, and that is why we are asking for an investigation and interestingly, the state department has also said there should be an investigation. We owe the families of those killed, those children between the ages of 3 and 15, and others, an explanation because if youve ever grieved in a situation like this, i can tell you one of the first steps you need if youre going to move toward some kind of closure, is the truth. And we owe it to those people. Just as on the other side, the people who lose members of their family, for example, in the israeli army, its important that they should find out the truth about what happened to their loved ones. On the other side, its important that people should know what happened. Thats why we say we want an investigation. Thats one of the many reasons why there must be an investigation. Israel blames the civilian casualties in gaza on hamas which it says uses civilians as human shields and fires rockets and stores arms in heavily populated areas. Whats your response on that . Well, we are very clear, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the rockets that fly out. It is absolutely condemnable, absolutely unacceptable that 6 million israeli civilians are terrorized by these barrages of rockets that fly out. On the other hand, there is no evidence whatsoever in any of the schools that have taken direct hits by israeli shelling so far, there is no evidence whatsoever that in any of these instances there were any militan militants using our facilities either to fire rockets or, indeed, to store rockets. There have been examples of militants going into schools, most closed down by the summer, where our staff simply didnt have a presence. There are examples, three examples, of militants doing that. On all those occasions, we proactively came out and condemned it, but that is not the fact that there are militant rockets that have been found by unrwa in our regular inspections in schools elsewhere in the gaza strip does not justify attacks on schools where people are taking shelter. We simply cannot put civilians, children, women, at risk in that way. Given the recent record in the ceasefires that have been struck so far, are you optimistic about the 72 hour ceasefire that has been afreed to tonight . Look, i can say that this ceasefire simply has to work because there is a human displacement catastrophe which is unfolding. 270,000 people are in u. N. Shelters, unrwa shelters tonight, and that figure will simply rise further unless we have a ceasefire. It must end. And can i also say that beyond a ceasefire, there must be a Permanent Peace because it is utterly unsustainable to have a situation where every couple of years civilians in israel are terrorized by these barrages of rockets, and also 2 million civilians, nearly 2 million in gaza, are subjected to the wholesale denial of dignity and the wholesale denial of rights. Weve all seen the pictures of whats been going on in gaza. We all know that civilians have paid an inordinately high price. Its unacceptable for this to happen again. When the final guns fall silent, its important theres serious engagement with addressing the underlying causes of the conflict in gaza, and that includes the blockade because i think everyone in israel, everyone in gaza thats been through this experience can realize it must never, ever be allowed to happen again. Chris gunness from the United Nations relief and works aswrensy. Thank you for being here tonight and thank you for the work youre doing. Thank you so much for having me. The state departments condemnation of israels strike on the u. N. Shelter yesterday is only the latest sign of fraying u. S. israel relations over the course of this conflict. Now top officials in the Obama Administration are adding their voices to the growing chorus expressing concern over the high number of civilian casualties in gaza. U. S. Ambassador to the u. N. Samantha power issued a statement calli ining yesterday attack on u. N. School, quote, horrifying, while Valerie Jarrett said it was indefensible. Israel absolutely has the right to tee fend itself and we are israels staunchest ally, but you also cant condone the killing of all of these innocent children, so were very concerned, were monitoring the situation closely. The United States wasnt even present for the ceasefire negotiations in cairo today which may or may not have anything to do with the absolute shellacking secretary of state john kerry got from the Israeli Press and its Political Class the last time he got directly involved. But now german newspaper duspe fwrks al is reporting Israeli Intelligence evesdropped on telephone calls by kerry during the mideast peace talks and used the information obtained during the investigations. Joining me, Heather Hurlburt in the Clinton Administration and now a fellow at the new america foundation. Ezra, thanks for having me. What do the revelations into possible spying on kerry, not that america has such a clean record on spying on allies, itself, mean for the u. S. israeli relationship right now . Well, im tempted to say it cant get much worse than it is. And also ill say that im quite sure that secretary kerrys delegation assumed all the time that the Israeli Government was trying to do that. So in some ways that may not make things worse because it lets the u. S. Go and say, yep, we knew you were doing that, whats it gotten you . Actually i think thats a sideshow. You said a moment ago that it cant get much worse. Explain that for a minute. Has there been a serious deterioration in the relations between the two countries . And if so, is it something that will last beyond the end of this conflict . Well, we have to different shat the relationship between the countries and relationship between the governments. I think its fair to say its been a couple of decades since relations between two governments were as bad as they are right now. On the other hand, defense cooperation remains at unprecedented high levels. One could argue that the reason israel has suffered such a tiny number of civilian casualties despite the unprecedented number of rockets that have been aimed at it is the ramping up of cooperation of iron dome and the antimissile systems that occurred under this administration. So the picture is complicated, as you said, israeli Public Opinion left, right, and center in recent days has been united in saying whatever that is wrong here, its john kerrys fault. So that is a serious problem that israel is going to have to get over. I also think if you look at american Public Opinion polls, younger americans are taking a dramatically different view of israel than Older Americans are in part because a generation thats grows up on the kinds of pictures we just saw as opposed to people my age and older who grew up with a very different image of what was going on in the region. So, so long term there are questions about the relationship that are much bigger than netanyahu and obama. One of the things that happened the last couple of years was that secretary kerry, i think to some degree out of sight of a lot of the u. S. Political class, really put a tremendous amount of personal energy, personal capital into trying to broker a peace deal. Now were at a point where egypt is hosting these talks for longterm truce between israel and hamas and the u. S. Is basically at this point not involved. I wonder to what extent youre seeing a, might continue to see after the fighting has resolved, a shift in attention, a sort of exhaustion on the part of american political leaders that steps forward can actually be effectively taken . Actually i think youre going to see the opposite. For two reasons. One is that this horror that weve seen over the last few weeks, the casualties on both sides, the changes in public o p opinions on both side, levels of fear, despair, disgust youve now seen. People are going to understand a little better why john kerry was going around saying, look, we cant let this go, cant let it sit there. Something he was widely mocked for in the u. S. So i actually think there will be something of a resurgence of attention. The other thing, cairo is hosting the talks, but remember, hamas and cairo barely talked to each other. So in point of fact, it remains the case to, you know, whether you like this, whether you dont, that the u. S. Remains really the only party that everybody talks to. Now, everybody talks to the u. S. In order to heap abuse on us and tell us what john kerry is doing wrong, but point of fact, it remains the case that not egypt, not russia, not turkey, not the eu, not the u. N. , theres nobody else who has that relationship, so as every president before him, obamas going to find himself sort of stuck right in the middle of this. One of the features of this conflict has been particularly in israel a tremendous unanimity in public support for the offensive in gaza. And im curious what you think in terms of what will happen after, if there will be any cracking in the israeli position on what is best to do in gaza Going Forward . Im thinking particularly of st blockade of what is done in terms of hamas. What do you think the sort of status quo after the operation on the tunnels is completed will be . Well, again, you really have to differentiate because theres been tremendous support for the operation but a collapse in support for the netanyahu government. Thats actually the first place youre going to see a potential Seismic Shift in israel and youve seen, frankly, some jockeying among parties in netanyahus government thats made the job of kerry and other outsiders much more difficult. The second problem, the israeli public for entirely understandable reasons wants to see hamas punished, hamas completely removed from the political scene. But, frankly, thats who the Israeli Government has to talk to to get the ceasefire. And if theres one thing that comes out of this, it is that the netanyahu governments effort to frustrate the coming back together of hamas and the Palestinian Authority will probably have failed. So, the israeli public is now going to be stuck with having hamas in its universe in a way that frankly it was better able to ignore hamas before this happened and before everybody was reminded of just how appalling a force hamas is. So thats the other sort of Seismic Shift that i see. Heather hurlburt, thank you for being here tonight. Thanks for having me. Why the Ebola Outbreak that happened in africa will never happen in the u. S. And it is not for the reasons you may think. Well explain, next. Rn . Try alka seltzer reliefchews. They work just as fast and taste better than tums smoothies assorted fruit. Mmm. Amazing. Yeah, i get that a lot. Alka seltzer heartburn reliefchews. Enjoy the relief. For over 19 Million People. [ susan ] my promotion allowed me to start investing for my retirement. Transamerica made it easy. [ female announcer ] everyone has a moment when tomorrow becomes real. Transamerica. Transform tomorrow. When you try to talk about getting things done in congress, theres one word you hear over and over and over and over again. Gridlock. But tonight im going to tell you why that is a terrible metaphor for what is wrong in d. C. Politics. Stick around. Throughout the state. And startup ny companies will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in jobs and infrastructure. Thanks to startup ny, businesses can operate tax free for 10 years. No property tax. No business tax. And no sales tax. Which means more growth for your business, and more jobs. Its not just business as usual. See how new york can help your business grow, at startup. Ny. Gov today brought a flury of terrified headlines and tweets. Tweets. When word got out that new york citys mt. Sinai hospital was treating a man for ebolalike symptoms. A few hours later doctors announced it was unlikely the patient had the disease. The latest round of ebola scare mongering. Like this fear headline in the drudge report. Look at that. Had long since gotten under way. There is a very simple test for how worried you should be, you at home, should be, about contracting the ebola virus. It is so straightforward that it actually fit in a tweet. There it is again. By a guy with a coffee mug as his avitar. Heres the test. Are you exchanging bodily fluids with someone who has contracted ebola . No . Settle down. Ebola is a terrifying illness if you catch it. Theres no question. It has killed 887 of the more than 1,600 people who have caught it in this latest outbreak. Thats according to the World Health Organizations update today. But the other thing about ebola is it so far as these things go, it is kind of hard to catch. This is not an airborne disease like the spanish flu which killed an estimated 30 million to 50 Million People in 1918 and 1919. The only way to get ebola, the only way is to touch a patients bodily fluids. You arent going to get it by being on a plane or in a public space with somebody who is infected. And in the u. S. And europe, there are Health Care Practices in place to keep diseases like this one from spreading quickly. The problem is, in many countries in africa, nearly four decades after ebola was discovered, a lot of these very basic Public Health protections and practices simply dont exist despite the best efforts of genuinely heroic aid workers. It has killed people in sierra leone where the streets were largely empty today as people mourn the dead. The outbreak does not reflect the triumph of an unstoppable disease. It reflects a failure of economic and human development. In some african countries, less than 100 is spent on health care per person per year compared to more than 8,000 in the u. S. That is just money that is not being invested in good Health Care Practices. On the ground in guinea, liberia, sierra leone, aid workers simply dont have access to the basics needed to protect not only their patients but also themselves. Meanwhile, money that could be used to find a vaccine or cure which comes mostly from the private sector is spent instead in the areas where companies can make the most profit. Right now, more money goes into fighting baldness and erectile dysfunction than hem rojic fooefers like dengue or ebola. There are some signs of hope. Nbc news reports the two american aid workers who were infected, dr. Kent brantly and Nancy Writebol were treated with an experimental drug made in san diego. A drug developed with government funding, by the way, which led to a cig cabsignificant improve the condition of both. That right now is of no help to the hundreds of africans infected with the disease. Joining me, dr. Anthony fauci. Director of the National Institute at the National Institutes of health. Doctor, good to have view here. Good to be with you. Walk me through how afraid and worried people should be. Some people going into hospitals to get tested. Sure. They shouldnt be worried at all. As you said very correctly, we have the Health Care System in place now to be able to isolate people, to have the people who are taking care of these people with the personal protective equipment to protect them. As you said, the only way you get ebola is by coming into direct contact with bodily fluids like blood and feces and vomit. When people are really, really sick. So the fact that somebodys in a hospital under the right conditions is no threat to anyone else. And people ask the same thing, what about being on a plane or in a physical space with someone . Thats not the way this virus is spread. And just on the contagion point, one other question, when is ebola contagious . You remarked on this a second ago, but i think for a lot of people theres an impression maybe it can be caught when people are completely asymptomat asymptomatic. Some viruses can be transmitted for a short period of time before people get symptoms. Thats not the case with ebola. Ebola is transmitted when someone is sick, when one is taking care of them. When the person is, in fact, bleeding, vomiting, what have you and you touch that, as you said correctly, thats how you get it. Talk to me a little bit about the experimental drug that was given to the two americans. Its not a drug on the market. Its not a drug you can go and purchase in a hospital. But what are we looking at here . Do you think its promising . Well, certainly the animal experiments were promising. It is in, strictly speaking, a drug. Its an antibody which is a protein that the body makes that you and i make naturally when we get infected or vaccinated that tends to block viruses. What the intervention was was a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies that were developed artificially and infused into the two patients. Now, the reports were getting from emory is dr. Brantly is doing well and seems to be associated with the administration of the cocktail of antibodies. When you have only one patient, its tough to say. But the animal studies, monkey studiy ies done on this prior t giving it to a human are quite impressive. Were looking forward to further information on this. As you said, this was an intervention developed first by federal funding from my institute, the nih, and then now it is in the possession of a company which is trying to scale it up because interestingly, there are only right now as we speak three treatment doses available. So it isnt like theres a lot of it available. So we really have to scale it up. This is not much of a help for people in africa who are getting sick. No. What can be done there in terms of basic Public Health practices . Something people dont think about as clearly as maybe they could is you dont always need a giant advance in drugs. Right. Or antibodies. You can often do a lot through better practices. Is there an effort to scale that up in africa now . There is. The cdc is sending 50 of their Health Officers there to help out with Contact Tracing and the trouble is that the social conditions in those three countries, the complete lack of a functional Health Care Delivery system, superimposed and compounded by the fact that the traditions and the customs of individuals about how they distrust authority and distrust the Health Workers so that instead of bringing someone to the hospital where you can isolate them properly, theyre taking them back into their homes, infecting other members of the family and when they die, you should treat the same body with the same sort of isolation, making sure you have personal protective equipment. They have the customs of touching the body when they prepare them for burial. Unfortunately, thats compounding that. So we need a massive turnaround of societal awareness of what it is thats propagating this pandemic. Thats very difficult to do. The people that are over there now trying to do this are really challenged. Dr. Anthony fauci of the National Institutes of health. Thank you very much for being here. Good to be with you. So today, a republican congressman went on conservative Laura Ingrahams radio show and said something so totally outrageous even she wasnt buying it. Congressman, dont you thats a little that characterization is a little out there. Who said it, and what he said, next. In the nation, the safest feature in your car is you. Add vanishing deductible from nationwide insurance and get 100 off for every year of safe driving. Which for you, shouldnt be a problem. Just another way we put members first, because we dont have shareholders. Join the nation. Nationwide is on your side. Surrender to the power of accomodation grooveland booking. Com booking. Yeah i have a great fit with my dentures. I love kiwis. Ive always had that issue with the seeds getting under my denture. 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Then he wonders after hes enticed the illegal alien children to america how in the world do they come and why do they come . That was republican congressman mo brooks with chris here on friday night. But it turned out that congressman brooks was just warming up for what he was going to say today. This is a part of the war on whites thats being launched by the democratic party, and the way in which theyre launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else. Its a part of the strategy that barack obama implemented in 2008, continued in 2012 where he divides this all on race, on sex, greed, envy, class warfare, all those kinds of things. The war on whites. Even radio host Laura Ingraham responded by saying, that might not be the best choice of words there. To fact check the allegations of this war on whites, lets take a look at actual numbers that might show whats happening in the war. Like average Family Health over the last generation. That blue line is the average for a white family. And as you can see, theres been a consistently very large gap between that and the wealth of black and hispanic families. It is strange that the war on whites has not done more about this. Or how about income . Heres Median Household Income over about the past 40 years. As you can see, white families bring in nearly 20,000 more than a year than hispanic families and 24,000 more than black families. And as for the poverty rate, well, poverty rate for black households is nearly triple the rate for white families. Unemployment rate, black and hispanic unemployment has consistently been much, much higher than the Unemployment Rate for whites over the past 40 years and black unemployment is currently more than twice as high as white unemployment. And then theres incarceration rate. In the last 50 years we have dramatically increased rate in which we imprison all folks in our population, but the rate at which we incourarcerate minorit far more than the whites. If this is what happens, id hate to see what would happen if the government declared war on nonwhite people. To replace it. Depreciation they claim. How can my car depreciate before its first oil change . You ask. Maybe the better question is, why do you have that Insurance Company . With Liberty Mutual new car replacement, well replace the full value of your car. See Car Insurance in a whole new light. Liberty mutual insurance. [ woman ] if you have moderate to severe Rheumatoid Arthritis like me, and youre talking to your rheumatologist about a biologic. This is humira. This is humira helping to relieve my pain. This is humira helping me lay the groundwork. This is humira helping to protect my joints from further damage. Doctors have been prescribing humira for ten years. 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Save up to 15 percent and earn bonus points when you book at wyndhamrewards. Com my other job at vox. Com, one of our favorite pastimes is explaining stuff, the kind of stuff thats important to know but doesnt often get explained. For example, here in two minutes is everything you need to know about gerrymandering. There are some things in life that canada is just better at. Putine, for instance, being polite, appreciating robin sparkles, and these days, elections. America does something very weird in its elections. The way elections are supposed to work is voters choose their politicians, but in american, politicians often get to choose their voters. The word gerrymandering comes from elbridge jerry, governor of massachusetts from 1810 to 1812. After he took office his party redrew the map of the state Senate Districts in a shockingly partisan manner. The aim was to help his party win as many elections as possible by creating as many districts as he could or 51 of the voters would favor the allies. Thats basically what gerrymandering is. 235 congressional districts in this country. Somebody needs to divide them up. Amazingly, most states let politicians divide them up. The results are totally predikts bl. See how this works in north carolina. Democrats won 50. 5 of the house vote in 2012. Republicans won nine house seats for the democrats four. If you want to see why, look at the map. Look at district number four. It looks like two legs running away from the whole mess. Look at district nine, getting punched in the neck by district five and kicked in the gut by district 12. Damn, look at district 12. Its like a little worm wriggling away from north carolina. These districts may look weird but are what political scientists call efficient. They cluster the states democratic voters in a few districts where they have huge majorities and spread the Republican Voters into slimmer majorities. District 12, the democrat won by almost 60 . No republican won a district by more than 30 . That meant they could win more districts and more house seats in total. And thats what happens when you let politicians choose their voters. This is how canada did it, too, but then in the 1960s they took the power away from partisan politicians and gave it to independent commissions. America could do this, too, if it wanted and we could stop feeling bad about how much better better canada is got as. If you want to know whyjust, look look at florida where on friday a judge ruled that state legislature needs to redraw their congressional map so it adheres to the states constitution. Specifically, the judge wants a new Congressional Redistricting plan drawn for floridas fifth and tenth congressional districts which are represented by Democrat Brown and republican Daniel Webster respectively. Earlier this summer the judge ruled the districts are illegal writing, republican Political Consultants or operatives did, in fact, conspire to manipulate an influence in the redistricting process. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit brought by the league of women voters, florida, and other groups. Over the course of that suit, the judge found republican operative posts as unbiased citizens at public hearings to discuss maps, that, wait for it, had been drawn in secret. Very nice. Its up to floridas Republicanled Legislature to fix the mess the republicans were just found to have illegally manipulated. The judge gave them to weeks to submit a new proposal. Even he wasnt sure whether the whole map mess would be fixable by the midterm elections in november. We will be right back. [ male announcer ] if you had a dollar for every dollar Car Insurance Companies Say theyll save you by switching, youd have, like, a ton of dollars. But how are they saving you those dollars . A lot of Companies Might answer um or no comment. Then theres esurance. Born online, raised by technology and majors in efficiency. So whatever they save, you save. Hassle, time, paperwork, hairtearing out, and, yes, especially dollars. Esurance. Insurance for the modern world. Now backed by allstate. Click or call. Esurance. Insurance for the modern world. This is charlie. His long day of doing it himself starts with back pain. And a choice. Take 4 advil in a day or just 2 aleve for all day relief. Honey, you did it baby laughs how congress not doing in washington can actually lead to some big things happening. Thats next. We never thought wed be farming wind out here. Its not just building jobs here, its helping our community. Siemens location here has just received a major order of wind turbines. It puts a huge smile on my face. Cause im like, this is what we do. the fact that iowa is leading the way in wind energy, im so proud, like, its just amazing. Thats keeping you from the healthcare you deserve. At humana, we believe the gap will close when healthcare gets simpler. When frustration and paperwork decrease. When grandparents get to live at home instead of in a home. So lets do it. Lets simplify healthcare. Lets close the gap between people and care. Gridlock. Youve heard of gridlock, right . Like really bad traffic . This gridlock, what youre seeing here, is from outside beijing. 100 kilometer traffic jam that lasted for nine days. People got out of their cars and just wandered. There was nothing to do. There was nowhere for them to go. And when you look at those pictures, its easy to see whats happening. Nothing. Nothing is happening. Nothing is moving. People are just waiting. That is what gridlock is. It is what happens when nothing moves. That is a metaphor weve chosen in washington for what happens when congress cannot pass legislation. We call it congressional gridlock. And it is the wrong metaphor. There are roughly 12 million unauthorized immigrants in america. Theres tens of thousands of refugee children amassing on the border trying to escape drug gangs in central america. Last year the Senate Passed a comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that would have toughened the border and given the 1 Million People, at least many, a path to legal status and leadership. It is caught in congressional gridlock. President obama is considering doing something on his own and has the power to do it. Since there are way more laws violate ed on any given day tha the government can track or investigate, the president has a lot of authority to tell federal agencies what crimes to prioritize and which to deprioritize. Its why the irs doesnt spend all its time auditing the poor. And its how obama effectively legalized many dreamers back in 2012. The rumor right now is hell use that authority to effectively legalize or at least free from the threat of deportation many more unauthorized immigrants, millions more of them. In the new republic eric posner argues this would in effect be simply admitting reality. He writes, millions of illegal ail cent liens lived in the uni states for decades under a semiofficial policy that allows them to stay as long as they dont commit serious crimes and that many main many cases allow to obtain drivers licenses. The effect would be to officially recognize current practice. I want to emphasize, theres nothing yet. Writing in the New York Times, its argued, this would be something new in the a president ial power writing, it would be lawless, reckless, and a leap into the antidemocratic dark. Youre saying that if he were to do that, that impeachment would be on the table . I think then we have to start to sit down and take a look at that. Where would we draw the line otherwise . If thats not enough to bring that about, then i point kndon what would be. Weve never seen anything in this country like a president saying im going to make up all Immigration Law that i choose and drive this thing regardless of the resistance to congress. Supporters of the idea argue there are precedents for the kind of move obama is con te templatel contemplating. 1977, pardon power was used to pardon people who dodged the draft. Some argued that went further than what obama is considering. He forgave them their law breaking altogether. This goes to a deeper point about what happens in congressional gridlock and why the metaphor is so long. What happens when congress is gridlocked isnt nothing. Just because congress is too divided to do anything, its also too divided to stop the other parts of government from doing something. Congress cant pass a law solving the Immigration Crisis but also cant pass a law stopping obama from trying to solve it. Sometimes congress will even admit this when House Republican leaders realize their bill to address a Child Migrant crisis wouldnt pass originally. They pulled it from the floor and speaker paper put out a press release saying, there are numerous steps the president can and should be taking right now without the need for congressional action. We cant act, so you should. Were in a period now where polarized parties are the norm, so, too, is divided government. Its getting easier for democrats to win president ial elections. Geography and redistricting gives republicans a hammer lock on the house that isnt likely to lift until at least the 2020s. Theres going to be a lot of gridlock in congress, but that doesnt mean that nothing is going to happen. It means more of what will happen will happen through executive orders, through the courts, and the federal reserve. It means, in other words, our political system is going to become less democratic and more dysfunctional. The leap into the antidemocratic dark isnt just the president doing more. It is congress doing less. Joining me now is tim, senior Political Columnist at the Washington Examiner and sam sedar, msnbc contributor and most of majority report. After the break, im going to get their take on all of this, and we will be right back. [ female announcer ] we help make secure financial tomorrows a reality for over 19 Million People. [ mom ] with life insurance, were not just insuring our lives. Were helping protect his. [ female announcer ] everyone has a moment when tomorrow becomes real. Transamerica. Transform tomorrow. The summer of this. Mmer. 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Ny. Gov were back. Im here with tim carney and sam seder and talking about how things get done these days in washington or not. Sam, i want to begin with you. At the national review, there was an example, said liberals should think of george w. Bush failing to pass a tax cut and directing the irs to simply not enforce penalties for those who decide to not pay over 25 marginal rate. So how is this any different than that . Well, i think if the argument was that the irs didnt have the resources to collect those taxes, i think the president might actually have a decent argument. I wouldnt particularly like it, but this is really just a question of allocating resources. I mean, we know that theres not enough money to deport 12 Million People in this country. We have enough money maybe to do a half a million a year, if that. And so the bottom line is, theres going to be a lot of people who are not going to be deported and simply rationalizing that, making that processes rational, makes all the sense in the world. So, tim, to what sam says, in a world where congress is not going to match the resources and the actual law, and in a world where we are letting many, many undocumented immigrants live here, why shouldnt the executive branch bring some order and be clear about what the priorities are . Now, again, we dont know what this is all a little bit the premise is upsetting when i hear this, just because i hear, well, if congress doesnt act, thats sort of the words brian boitler uses in some of the articles. Of the new republic. That really just means if congress doesnt pass something thats afrgreed on by the white house. I know it looks like a bigger sort of afwreegreement on immigration, you have not only the white house, but the chamber of commerce, all these liberal groups. That seems to be why obama thinks he can get away with doing something because you have a unanimity among the power elite. Just because the republicans dont agree with them doesnt mean theyre not doing anything. There are bills that could pass both chambers that would address some of these problems, but they would also have to not have sort of a big influx of immigration. It would have to take care of some of the conservative concerns about massive immigration. So this idea, oh, well, theyre not doing anything so we have to act means theyre not doing something obama would like, so we have to act. Thats when we start to worry about it being undemocratic, its saying if you dont do what i want you to do, i will do it myself. Sam, doesnt tim have a point there . Isnt this really the white house saying that if theres not a legislative compromise that is agreeable to them, they will stretch executive powers to almost make that compromise fact before it is law . Well, i think what the white house is doing is just simply being, you know, exercising politics. The bottom line is the white house could have done this three years ago. They could have done it four years ago. They could do it at any time. I mean, so we can argue, we can say, tim can say that, well, president obamas not being very polite about it, or hes being a little bit trolly about it. That very well may be the case. That doesnt change the fact its certainly within his powers to do this, and frankly, there have been activists who have been asking him to do this for years and when he said a couple years ago he didnt have the authority to do it, in fact, he did have the authority. He just from a political standpoint didnt want to upset the republicans. And the republicans have shown that it doesnt matter if you upset their feelings at all, theyre simply not going to pass anything under any circumstances. Theyve said now the reason why they wont is because theyre afraid that president obama will not actually execute the laws that they pass which we all know doesnt pass the test. So, yeah, i guess the politics are a little bit disturbing to conservatives, but thats just the reality is he has the power to do it. Its disturbing because we see a continued march of obama doing what bush did before which is steadily expanding executive power. President obama went to war in libya without even a vote. Bush had a vote in iraq. Obama didnt have a vote in libya. Then you saw the enforcement of the Affordable Care act again and again. Especially expanding the employer mandate, extending the deadline. Let me ask you something very specific on this. We see him expanding executive power and sort of taking over congress job. He thinks hes still a senator. Let me ask you a let me try to draw one distinction. Bush did a similar thing on Medicare Part d. He waived and delayed penalties unilaterally. Why is there so much concern over obama now when there wasnt in the bush years . As far as the Medicare Part d that was a situation where he passed a bill that was more m menable to what the left was aiming for. Thats why the left didnt push back on bush. Why didnt the right . Why didnt the right push back . The bottom line i didnt want that bill to pass in the first place. I pushed back on bush when he was an entire theory the unitary executive authority. Listen, i agree with you in terms of libya, but congress did nothing in that instance, and if they wanted to sue the president , that would have been a great time to do it. Sam, this is a great conversation. Ill have to cut it off. Tim carney from the Washington Examiner and msnbc contributor sam seder. Thank you both for being here. That is all in. The im ezra klein. Read more of my work at vox. Com. The Rachel Maddow show starts now with Steve Kornacki sitting in. Thanks to now at home for joining us this hour. Rachel has the night off. Theres a lot of news in the world tonight including a possible move away from violence in gaza in a huge federal court ruling regarding abortion law in alabama. But we begin tonight with this. It was a byline that caught everyone who read it by surprise. It was a byline that shocked the political world as it woke up on the morning of march 29th, 1991 and opened up the New York Times. The headline why i am for the brady bill and the byline, author who wrote it, is ronald reagan, former president of the United States. A republican president. A staunch opponent of gun control, but now here he was coming out vehemently in favor of a gun control bill that the nra was bitterly resisting. Good evening. Federal gun control, one of the most emotional issues on the political agenda, has an unexpected new ally