The failed test kits, the utter inability for weeks to ramp up testing to know where the virus was and how prevalent it was. The fact that they took way too long to begin to recommend social distancing. The fact that the president during this entire period as the virus was spreading would come out and do a series of song and dance routines to pump up the stock market as if that was the goal instead of taking action on the virus. Right. All those errors are what got us to this point. Right now, there are almost 30,000 americans who have lost their lives. Its an incomprehensible toll. New york city death toll alone shot past 10,000 today just in new york city after a revised count added 3,700 additional people who had not been counted and today, the daily toll of fatalities is the highest daily number we have had so far. All of that is crushing. We know that, though, if theres some bright Silver Lining defined here that death is a indicator of the pandemic and there is good news in the data elsewhere. Hospitalizations, for instance, have fallen in new york, other places like yapd appear to ha have like maryland appear to have reached their peak. It appears the Trump Administration is literally remaking all the same mistakes, the same three mistakes they made in the beginning, nearly three months after we got our first case, still to this date, the president fails to appreciate just how transmissible and dangerous the virus is. Hes set on opening the country as soon as possible. He floated easter a few weeks ago, and all the experts say if you open back up without a plan, the virus is going to come back, and then we will be right back where we started. What do you think the stock market is going to do with that. Every expert from trumps former fda chief to the yale professors wrote this in usa today, and to every doctor and epidemiologist who has been on the show for weeks insisting we need to massively scale up widespread available testing if we want to open the country back up. In fact, heres what dr. Anthony fauci told the Associated Press just today. I think if we are assuming that two weeks from now that all the curves are going to be down, i think thats a bit overly optimistic. I think how you reopen, if you want to use that word, the economy in those communities is going to depend a lot on the ability to contain what we know will happen. Ill guarantee you, once you start pulling back, there will be infections. Its how you deal with the infection thats going to count. There will be infections. Thats dr. Fauci talking about just how transmissible and dangerous the virus is, not thinking best case scenario, thinking worst case scenario, and here we are three months into this, trump is trying to think best case scenario. Number two, testing remains the biggest problem. We ramped up testing, and we a plateaued. The New York Times has the devastating report about the bottlenecking. Everyone is saying we need to test and test widely, and its an apollo moon mission, the president himself just said theres no need for testing in areas of the country. Theres only a small number of cases. That is the opposite of the truth. Thats the whole thing, the whole thing about the virus. Right . Every place starts with a small number of cases. Then it grows. Thats why you need tes testing. And the third and final error, its been clear from the very beginning, painfully clear, the president has focused on what this pandemic means personally, and he views his political fortune as tied to the state of the economy. When the stock market started to crater, because of fears about the pandemic, trump was mad. He wanted to bring the markets back up instead of fighting the virus, and letting the markets take care of themselves after the virus was vanquished and now hes watching an unprecedented Economic Contraction, which is genuinely awful, brutal, Great Depression level during the pandemic and he wants to bring the economy back as if thats some separate thing other than the virus, just like he did back in late february when the Expert Consensus was we needed to move to mitigation, social distancing and lock down. New york times reports on the everyday documented in the red dawn emails, a top Disaster Response official decided on february 24th to recommend to mr. Trump he publicly support the start of those mitigation efforts, such as through school closings. Before he could discuss it with the president , another official went public with a warning sending the stock market down sharply and angering mr. Trump. The meeting to brief him on the recommendation was cancelled and it was three weeks before mr. Trump would reluctantly come arounded around to the need for missi mitigation. The administration did nothing, and the president has assigned a task force to unqualified lackeys who want to reopen the economy without one Public Health voice. Thats the problem, right, the Public Health part is the problem. Politico reports, the counsel is to include mike meadows, larry kudlow, Steve Mnuchin, Vice President mike president who is not expected to provide a leading role. Its literally the same mistake all over again. He was late to act, thousands of people have died. Now he wants to be too early and risk the same disaster. We all want the nation to reopen. We need a National Strategy to do that. Thanks to this president , that is completely absent once again. I mean, there is a lot we do not know about this virus. We dont know everything about it, and its frustrating. A lot we do not know, and theres internal debate amongst smart people about a lot of things. There are Crystal Clear areas of consensus as there were back in february, and once again, the president is ignoring them. It is very clear were in the midst of an entirely unprecedented Economic Contraction that could surpass the Great Depression and the federal government is going to have to do much more to cushion the blow and theres intense jockeying over what the next piece of legislation will be. Republicans led by donald trump and senator leader Mitch Mcconnell, want to add extra money to the Small Business fund without working with democrats, and jam democrats and not allow them to add things to it. Democra democrats have a whole host of priorities. The person that will determine what happens next is the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, democrat of california im happy to say joins me now. Speaker, its great to have you, from what looks like your house. I want to start with a Dear Colleague letter that you wrote today, just sent it to your colleagues, a setting the record straight letter. Ill quote part of it from you, the truth is a weak person, a poor leader takes no responsibility, a weak person blames others. You also record many of the missteps the Trump Administration, why did you feel it important to send this letter . During the easter weekend, i had more time for prayer and reflection, and it just bothered me so that so many lives were at stake, so much livelihood on the table, and i had to say something. Now, for a long time, we proud to be as apolitical as possible, working together. The American People want that. But the fact is that you ignore the facts and you ignore the truth, you cannot possibly solve the problem. Our first bill that we passed. We had passed three bills in a bipartisan way in the month of march. The first one we prepared in february and brought to the floor the beginning of march, testing, testing, testing. It passed the house on march 4th, but were still not where we need to be on testing more than a month later. Testing and trying to identify what the problem is and what it means and to our communities of color and the rest had in that document. Other initiatives that the president failed to take but saying that he did, telling his supporters it was a hoax and it would magically go away. Lives are at stake. People are dying and so ran the risk of looking people said it looked political if you say this, and ill say if lives are at stake, and looks political to insist on the truth so be it. Is it true, you just referred to these three bipartisan bills and i want to get into some of those negotiations, on the last one, the 2. 2 trillion package, my understanding is you were negotiating directly with treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, is it true you and the president have not spoken personally in months, is that correct . Probably since the state of the union address, you remember that. But. I do. I speak to the president as an needed basis. Has to have preparation, it has to have a goal, and again, it makes history. I didnt see any opportunity for any of that. However, we do need to Work Together for the to save the lives of the American People, the livelihood of the American People. And quite frankly, the life of our democracy itself. All of that is at stake from what is happening now. There seems to me, i mean, obviously theres consensus that there is going to be more legislation needed from Congress Even after that very large bill. Mitch mcconnell says the payroll protection program, which is for Small Businesses, which they said was going to be first come first serve and has had huge administrative headaches and lots of people had a hard time is going to run out of money. Lets pass 250 billion, clean just that, why do you not want to just do that. What are your priorities for this next piece of legislation . Well, let me say that c. A. R. E. S 1, were getting ready for c. A. R. E. S 2. C. A. R. E. S 1 had many good features, we are successful in changing it from a corporate triple down bill to a workers first pull up bill, and part of it is Paycheck Protection Program which is very important. However, i will not allow anything to perpetuate the disparity in access to capital that exists in our country, and so what they said, first come, first serve, were just serving the customers that we know with the bank, well, what happens to all of our under banked folks. So last week when they came with they asked for a quarter trillion dollars in 48 hours. I said, well, i dont think so. Lets see how we can open this up to many more people. Chuck schumer and i, this happened on the senate side. I congratulate the senate side, they went to the floor when Mitch Mcconnell in for 250. They objected and then they said we have another proposal, which opens the door to the under banked there. 60 billion, 10 of what they were asking for to be used for a Community Development financial institutions, know the neighborhood, know the language, know the culture, know the people, know the businesses to enable them to participate in the Paycheck Protection Program. In addition to that, we still gave them half the money, 125 billion, but we used some other for this initiative and also for the grant and other loan programs that benefitted everyone. Okay, so then we also said while were at it, what we desperately need is support for state and local government as well as for hospital. This is urgent, and they just said, no, they only were going for the 250. We said, lets negotiate. Lets see how we can come to some conclusion that will benefit all of the needs, the underbanked, the hospitals, the state and local governments who are carrying enormous burdens, and also with the hospitals still talking about testing with imperative for us to have the data, racial data that is in there to see how this is affecting everyone in our community. We were not going to let all of this money that is spent because of the coronavirus crisis, which is heartbreaking, the number of people who have died or others who have lost their loved ones, but we could not allow the big money that was put to fight it to perpetuate disparity and access to capital, and access to care. So what i have heard from your priorities in terms of access to capital, and i know this has been a concern for lots of Small Businesses in lots of communities particular in the africanamerican communities. For a long time. Yeah, so money for the states and hospitals, all of that, i get. I wanted to talk about two other things that people have been talking about which are sort of adjacent to the virus itself as priority. One of them is it seems possible that the post office, which has been around since the countrys founding just goes under, like is just a victim of the coronavirus and we dont have one anymore. Is that a realistic possibility, and what needs to be done to stop that . Well, any negotiations on c. A. R. E. S 1, we put forth an initiative for 20 billion for the post office in recognition of their ongoing needs but also that they were delivering so much to peoples homes now that we were, both by mail, and the fact is that we offered 20, they came down to 3. We worked it up to 6 billion, not enough, but something. But that went just like a piece of mail, right to the president s doorstep and he said no. This was personal in my view with how it was reported back to me from those who had negotiated it that the president said no to the postal service. What could he be thinking. In any event wait a second, can i ask you to spell out the implication there . What are you saying there, that he bears a grudge against the post office because of his fixation with jeff bezos and them delivering for amazon and the Washington Post which some people have speculated . What are you saying . Dont ever ask me to psych out this president of the united states. Thats for others to do. Fair enough. I have to cope with the consequences but i cannot analyze his thinking, so to speak. But it is something that has to be stopped. The postmaster general was one of the first cabinet officers in our in our country in the beginning of our country. The mail is so important to americas families. So we really are going to have to have another discussion about that. There has been bipartisan support in this regard, and thats why we thought we could negotiate a number until the president himself said no. Again, that is just one of many consequences that we have of the, shall we say, truth matters. What is the truth here. What is it that is the problem the president has . Perhaps we can make some adjustments and fix it, but if, again, the public has to know. For a long time now, mistakes have been made. Okay. That was then. Lets go into the future. If you dont learn from your mistakes, you have to insist upon the truth in order to go forward, and you cannot go forward unless you have testing, testing, testing. Unless you have a documentation of how that is affecting communities. Unless you have the data from how this money is spent in terms of the Paycheck Protection Program which we fully support, but lets make it be fair and also inclusive so that everyone can participate in it. Those are Small Businesses. We salute Small Business, entrepreneurship, and many of them are newer, younger, or newer in terms of being minority owned, native american, and rural america, veterans, so many elements of our economy who are brave, courageous and optimistic to start a business just dont have a banking relationship sufficient enough to be in first come, first serve. Two more topics i just want to get to, and then i will let you go but first on oversight because it obviously is extremely important. 2. 2 trillion pushed out the door. 500 billion, Steve Mnuchin has tremendous discretion, the president immediately signing legislation with a signing statement, essentially xing out many of the oversight provisions you put in. Theres one person appointed to the Oversight Panel who was just profiled and doesnt have a verified twitter account. Do you and congress have the capacity to actually make sure that is not incompetently or corruptly distributed . Well, we have to. In addition to the panel that you referenced, and that will be in place, yeah, i have named a select committee on the corona, the challenge of the coronavirus, and my colleague, the democratic whip mr. Cochran is chair of that. That is predicated on the Truman Community that then senator truman substituted at the start of world war ii. He said at the time 116 Investigative Committees were formed to investigate the defense spending on world war i. He said how much better it would be in world war ii to have an Investigative Committee at the time. Right. And so it would be to fight waste, fraud, abuse, price gouging, profiteering, and the rest. This committee is modeled off of that, and it will have investigative authority, subpoena power and i dont know why the republicans take offense at it. Why wouldnt they want to fight waste, fraud, abuse, price gouging and profiteering off the taxpayer dollar which is destined to fight the coronavirus as it attacks the lives, the livelihood of the American People. Final question for you is just about the urgency and time line here. I mean, someone raised the idea of remote voting, right, i mean, youve got congress. Youve got 435 people, they come into a room. Theres all kinds of staff around each other. Everybody is physically distancing. Its very hard to make congress work. People raise the idea of virtual voting with you. You said that was not going to happen, and then steny hoyer said this, members are advised that absent an emergency, the house is not expected to meet prior to monday, may 4th, 2020, which is a long time away, and also i think a lot of people read that and said what do you call this now if not an emergency . Well, it is an emergency, but the distinguished leader was referencing in terms of urgency of passing a bill. We do think there is that urgency. We have to get some agreement on the part of the republicans, something the president will sign. We need that signature after all. But heres the thing because you raised it and what i said is were giving tasks to the chairman of the rules committee and the chairwoman, that would be jim mcgovern of the House Administration committee the two committees of jurisdiction to present options to us, what is allowed under the constitution, under the rules of the house, what is possible technologically, but we havent gotten to that. But on this thursday, jim mcgovern will be making a report on what he sees as some of the options. People think we can do congress by zoom. Zoom is a chinese entity that we have been told not to trust the security of. There are challenges. Its not as easy as you would think. Are there other options, proxy voting and the rest, which other people tell me have constitutional problems, so this is not as easy as you might think, and when we do it, were going to do it right. But in the meantime, we hope that we will have testing, end this, and be able to come at least in the numbers necessary of a. Im proud of our members working hard, 24 7. Meetings with community folks, smaller telemeetings and the rest so that every single day we have hours of feedback from them as to what is happening out there, how the initiatives that are out there so far are working or not working. But all of them committed to saving lives, insisting on the truth to do so, and again, opening up too our economy when folks tell us the time is right. Congratulations on your new show. Oh, thank you. My new show from the remote location. Thank you very much, its great to have you, speaker. Thank you, my pleasure. The speakers home state of california was one of the earliest hit by the coronavirus, including the emergence of Community Spread in the early days, some of the earliest days. San francisco, a city that could have seen the numbers, the outbreak has been much less severe. That city has under one thousand confirmed cases with 15 deaths, and there is probably a lot of reasons for that, but one big reason for that is the mayor. Im joined by someone who took some of the earliest actions in the country to fight the virus. San francisco mayor, london breed, she declared a state of emergency in february and ordered residents to shelter in place on march 16th. Mayor, tell me about how San Franciscos doing and what your understanding for why the trajectory of this virus in your city has been so much less severe and less deadly than it has been in others. I think part of it is we focused on this issue early on, even as early as conversations about what was happening in wuhan, china, in november of last careyear, and we operated Emergency Operations center in january of this year. We kept a sharp eye on what was going on. We knew that the possibility of a pandemic could exist in our city and so we wanted to be prepared, and this is not unfamiliar territory for San Francisco where we have had to lead the charge on our own in the absence of support from the federal government. In fact, the aids crisis is a clear example in the 1980s when San Francisco was ignored by the federal government and wasnt provided with the support that we needed to lead our city out of at that time something that no one else wanted to touch and in fact, the Public Health experts and our department of Public Health, they stayed on it, they kept at it, and now we are known as a place that people look to as it relates to research and science and facts and data for all sorts of Public Health challenges that exist. We were paying close attention to this and using facts and data to guide our decisions. Because you have success policywise in your city, and it seems to me that San Francisco is one of those places, california perhaps more broadly where there is going to be pressure to open back up. And that pressure, i think, is felt by everyone all the time. People want to get back to their lives. How are you thinking through that decision and those calculations and those balancing the various imperatives. Well, i do think its important that we also remind people of history. The spanish flu in San Francisco in 1918 when the city had a big party and threw away their masks and celebrated and then a few days later, 2,000 people died. We cant let up. We have to stay focused on doing whats necessary to get through this, and just because San Francisco is being praised for flattening the curve, were not there yet. We still have people who are being diagnosed every single day, and they have the ability to transition that to other people. So we want to be very careful about, you know, what we see as a success because as we can see at any given moment, an outbreak can occur in one of our shelters like it just did. It can happen in one of our congregate living settings. We cannot let up just because for some reason we believe that were in a better place. We need to get through this, and we need to be even more diligent than ever. But what does this mean. You say we cannot let up. There was something published today by researchers at harvard who talk about social distancing intermittently through 2021, 2022. There is a breaking point, right. The city of San Francisco cant be indoors for the next nine months, right. Lets hope not. Theres some point at which right. I guess how are you thinking that through . I get youre saying, look, lets not take our foot off the gas right now. Its important we vanquish this thing. There is something after that, right . Of course theres something after that. I started a task force to talk specifically about the recovery from our Economic Health here in San Francisco. Were estimated to have a budget deficit of anywhere between 1. 1 and 1. 7 billion. Instantly when we open the city back up, people arent just going to start visiting. We know financially we need to start recovery now. We are working with ucsf on Contact Tracing so that we can start to figure out the people who have been infected, who have they been in contact with, getting more people tested and trying to diffuse this sooner rather than later, looking at various approaches because we know that we want to open up as soon as we possibly can, but we need to do it responsibly. We need to prepare. We need to look at as our governor talked about gavin newsom today, the regulations around restaurants and what that might mean in terms of changing the configuration, changing the capacity at different places. We definitely sometime timultan managing this Public Health crisis, we need to prepare for what will happen after this is over as we gradually reopen and as we gradually try to get back to some level of normal as we knew it before it. How much are you in contact with other mayors, with other leaders on this . How much sort of collaborative i know that when you have the shelter in place order, it was large in San Francisco, it was a number of surrounding counties, how much of those conversations are happening . I talked to on a regular basis a couple of days per week to the big city mayors here in california, the largest populations. We are on phone calls regularly where we are discussing these challenges. Where were helping one another. Mayor sam lacarta was first to issue a moratorium against evictions of residential evictions and we did that in San Francisco, and it spread all overthe state of california. There are other mayors doing incredible work and we are continuing to work with one another, payors from all over the country, they have reached out to me. I have reached out to them. They are regular conversations, we are sharing our ordinances on the cap that we put on Delivery Services for food. We have shared that ordinance with other mayors in the country. We have been working really together because in the absence of what we feel is a more coordinated federal response, we are on the front lines every single day doing what we can to protect the public and i think thats really where the fight is happening. But we definitely need more resources. We definitely need more support and we shouldnt be fighting with other cities who should be our partners in our effort to get things like testing and ppe. We all need all of those things, and the federal government should be working collaboratively to make sure that everyone is getting what they need when they need it because people are in different stages of this situation, of this pandemic at different times. Thats why, again, you know, sending ventilators to new york or receiving n95 masks from other places, this is so critical to the success of making sure that we combat this pandemic together. Mayors and governors are on the front lines of protecting the people of this country, and it is very challenging because of the issues that continue to persist in the federal government. I know you just talked to our Speaker Nancy Pelosi who is really an incredible leader in fighting the good fight, and it is continuing to be a battle, but one that we will not back down from. Mayor london breed of the great city of San Francisco, thank you so much for being with me. Thank you. Coming up, what the expedited time line for a Covid Vaccine is looking like. What we know about whats in the works and why it takes as long as it does. After this. Works and why it takes as long as it does after this when i noticed my sister moving differently, i didnt know what was happening. She said it was like someone else was controlling her mouth. Her doctor said she has tardive dyskinesia, which may be related to important medication she takes for her depression. 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Were increasing internet speeds for low income families in our internet essentials program. And delivering selfinstall kits to your door. Nos comprometemos a mantenerte conectado. Were committed to keeping you connected. For more information on how you can stay connected, visit xfinity. Com prepare. In a weird way it kind of feels like the 2020 general election started today, and thats because after Bernie Sanders left the race and endorsed joe biden yesterday, the most Popular Democratic politician in the country came out with his endorsement today. If theres one thing weve learned as a country from moments of great crisis, its that the spirit of looking out for one another cant be restricted to our homes or our workplaces or our neighborhoods or our houses of worship. It also has to be reflected in our national government. The kind of leadership thats guided by knowledge and experience. Honesty and humility, empathy and grace. That kind of leadership doesnt just belong in our state capitols and mayors offices. It belongs in the white house. And thats why im so proud to endorse joe biden for president of the united states. In a 12minute message, it was really strike to go hear from the president , president barack obama this morning. One of the most gifted political communicators of our time, maybe of all time, just cogently making the case for his Vice President joe biden, and to praise Bernie Sanders and embrace his supporters as well, and to really condemn the modern Republican Partys nihilism. Bernies an american original, a man who has devoted his life to giving voice to working peoples hopes, dreams and frustrations and the ideas hes championed, the energy and enthusiasm he inspired, especially in young people will be critical in moving america in a direction of progress and hope because one thing everybody has learned by now is that the republicans occupying the white house and running the u. S. Senate are not interested in progress. Theyre interested in power. So our countrys future hangs on this election, and it wont be easy. The other side has a massive war chest. The other side has a Propaganda Network with little regard for the truth. On the other hand, pandemics have a way of cutting through a lot of noise and spin to remind us of what is real and what is important. This crisis has reminded us that government matters. That having leaders who are informed and honest and seek to bring people together rather than drive them apart. Those kind of leaders matter. Yesterday, we got results from our first mid pandemic election in wisconsin. It was a Public Health disaster, but it also delivered an absolutely terrifying political message to the Republican Party, to donald trump in the white housement were goi housement white house. Were going to talk about that and how it happened, next. T that and how it happened, next. So one week ago, as we reported here, the Republican Controlled Legislature in wisconsin backed up by both the state and the federal Supreme Courts insisted on holding their statewide election in the middle of the pandemic with really no special or extraordinary dispensations for folks, and predictably, it was a crazy scene. In milwaukee, only five polling places were open out of the usual 180 because there werent enough available poll workers. We saw huge lines of people waiting to vote in masks, some expressing their frustration with signs like this one that went viral saying appropriately, this is ridiculous. The Republican State Assembly speaker wore a mask, gown, and told everyone it was incredibly safe to go out. Basically the whole thing was a tr travesty for Public Health and a shockingly cynical move by state republicans. They thought that holding this race amidst a pandemic would suppress turnout and help their chances in the hotly contested battle for a state Supreme Court seat with a conservative incumbent endorsed by the president. They basically tried to say to the voters of milwaukee and wisconsin, your vote or your life and it backfired. The liberal challenger for that Supreme Court seat, won by 10 percentage points, ousted the conservative incumbent, overall turnout was down from 2016, and 80 of votes were cast or absentee. Democrats won the seat. A state that is as tightly contested as any in the nation. Wisconsin is widely viewed by election watchers as the Tipping Point state. One state whose outcome will reflect and determine who wins the National President ial election in november. Donald trump won that state by just under 23,000 votes in 2016. Jill karofski, the Supreme Court candidate won her seat by over 160,000 votes. This has to be a very very scary result for donald trump and the Republican Party. Joining me now is ben wickler, the chair of the Democratic Party of wisconsin which put a lot of work into this. How did this result happen, ben . This result came from three big things, the first is that donald trump personalized this race. He kept urging people to go out and vote for dan kelly. He endorsed him in person in hit rally in milwaukee in january. He made it about himself and wisconsin repudiated trump. The second thing is this was a backlash against voter suppression. People hate having their votes suppressed and republicans were willing to push people into a lethal pandemic because they thought Republican Voters would understand less clearly the dangers of this pandemic than democratic voters. This is a win for organizing. Democrats, progressive groups, grass roots organizations across the state, groups led by people of color, africanamerican and latino leaders across wisconsin, Rural Leaders and Democratic Party of wisconsin volunteers made millions of phone calls, text messages, outreach on social media, talked voters through how to request an absentee ballot for the first time in their lives, and we could see the fruits of that, in an election where we more than quadrupled the record for number of absentee ballots, about 250,000 in 2016 in a president ial election, this was a state Supreme Court race and it was over a million. You know, i feel so mixed about whats happened in wisconsin just because it really was such a travesty that this election took place. And i have seen now, you know, the Supreme Court justices themselves are, you know, theyre meeting. They voted absentee, all of the folks in the state assembly are practicing physical distancing. Has there been fallout locally in the after math of this undertaking like a lets not do that again . I wish that i could tell you that after seeing what voters were willing to do to cast their ballots that republicans realized the error of their ways and run in the other direction. But the Republican Party is insisting on doing this again and again this year. Theres a special election for congress, trisha zunker, an extraordinary candidate, she is running for congress in northern wisconsin. Their election was on may 12th. Because republicans are so intent on following Donald Trumps personal orders that people not be allowed to vote absentee, theyre going to force this vast Rural Community in northern wisconsin where a vote by mail would make sense to vote on may 12th. Were going to organize for that again. Wait, hold up, theyre not going to allow vote by mail absentee voting for a may 12th special Congressional Election . I should be clear. We have no excuse absentee voting but you have to upload a photo of your voter id and get a witness to sign your ballot envelope to cast your ballot. We sued in court. Democrats sued in court to change those rules, and ultimately to try to postpone the election and switch to a vote by mail election where everyone receives a ballot in the mail and republicans said no, and they sued to our state Supreme Court and the national Supreme Court to stop people from getting a little extra time and a little extra relief to vote safely and theyre doing it again right now. It is hard to believe. Let me ask you this, a final question, i mean, you know, taking the political temperature of the country, you know, we have polling. Weve got approval ratings, and things like that. And then youve got these special elections and i think it was last year or two years, a conservative won by 3 points and it was a bummer for democrats there and for progressive activists, what does this say about the political temperature of your hotly contested state, this result . What i see across the state, what we hear in the gigantic number of calls that we make and the calls that flow into our Voter Protection hot line is a level of intensity of feeling, of conviction that we have got to change, that we have never seen at this point in a an election year. Last year, democrats actually bumped up their turnout and republicans jumped theirs by 30 , and won by 5,000 votes a tiny margin. This year, republicans jumped their turnout to get out the vote for trump but we overtopped them with a massive surge. This is going to be the most hard fought election you can imagine. Were organizing around the clock. If you want to support it go to wisdems. Volunteer, were going to try to get an absentee ballot to every personnel eligib eligi because this battle going to the last second. Ben wickler, chair of the wisconsin Democratic Party. Thank you so much. Thank you. Coming up, the only way to get back to normal, normal, normal, is a vaccine. When will it be ready . Well talk to a researcher working on one potential vaccine next. O a researcher working on one potential vaccine next this virus is testing all of us. And its testing the people on the front lines of this fight most of all. So abbott is getting new tests into their hands, delivering the critical results they need. And until this fight is over, we. Will. Never. Quit. Because they never quit. Today two of the biggest vaccine producers in the world, sanofi are collaborating to produce a vaccine for coronavirus. The drug makers plan to start human trials in the second half of this year with a goal of having a vaccine available by the second half of 2021 if the studies are successful. Based on that time line it will take just over a year, and that can sound very frustrating because all of the experts seem to agree that life cannot go back to the precoronavirus normal as we know it until we have a vaccine. What do we make of this race to find a vaccine, and why do vaccines take so long . Joining me now to get some clarity on the subject is dr. Mark paznanski, directs the vaccine and immunotherapy, and leads a team working on developing a coronavirus vaccine, and they hope to begin animal testing sometime next month. I understand, doctor, of course this is difficult stuff, but why does it why are we talking 18 months here when were talking about the time line for this vaccine given how urgently its needed . Well, its a great question, and obviously on the, you know, a lot of people want to know the answer to that who arent in Vaccine Development but the truth is one of the key aspects of vaccines are that theyve got to be safe. These are agents that youre giving to potentially millions of people and therefore, any signal that indicates that theres a safety issue is going to be, you know, is going to be a problem. So part of the time that it takes to develop vaccines is because you have to make sure that theyre safe first, that theyre effective, and that you can administer them safely to millions of people. And that takes time. Thats such an obvious point, i suppose, that i hadnt quite clicked into my head. Of course, what a vaccine is youre introducing this Foreign Agent into someone so they produce antibodies and if you screw that up, you do not want to be infecting millions of people, so the sort of safety parameter is very high for this undertaking is what youre saying . Exactly. And history has shown that vaccines can go all the way to safety testing and then fail at that point. So. Wow. Given the most important hurdle, weve got to get these properly scientifically data driven over that hurdle and then introduced for efficacy studies in humans. So when someone i saw this in blood work 2, Sarah Gilbert is professor of vaksnology, says shes 80 confident the vaccine could work by november. Krour sayi youre saying thats not a realistic time line given the safety issues involved . Thats not true. If she thinks that from a safety point of view it could be ready, and she may know stuff about the safety profile of that vaccine or the vaccines in that type of design, then, you know, we could be hopeful and optimistic about that. I mean, one of the great points of optimism in covid19 vaccines is the fact that lots of people are going after this particular target in multiple different ways. Thats a good thing. Thats one of the strengths that we have against this virus. Right. Which is the diversity of the way that we think about combatting it and beating it. So final thing is, so what im hearing from you is the time line here is getting something that you can Start Testing isnt the long part of this. Its the making sure the thing actually works over iterations of clinical trials, thats the really tough part. Thats the really tough part, and thats also why we have to partner early with industry, and in our case, we have partnered with a couple of companies to do it because when you start thinking about a vaccine and scaling it up to millions and scaling it up to safety and efficacy, youve got to have industry along the way with you in order to achieve that. All right. Doctor, Mark Poznansky who took time away from working on the vaccine, which we will let him get back to right now. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, indeed. Thank you. That is all in for this evening. The 11th hour with Brian Williams starts right now. Well, good evening once again, day 1181 of the Trump Administration, 203 days remaining until our next president ial election, and the take away from todays White House Coronavirus briefing was this, putting aside the death toll where donald trump is concerned, things are looking pretty good out there. All of his statements today adhered to his hard and fast rules of phraseology, when feeling victimized, he says nobody thought it was possible. Virtually very short period of time. And when he wants credit for something, its something the likes of which nobodys ever seen. There was a lot of that today, and along the way he pretty much blamed the World Health Organization for whats happened to us after, of course, praising their work early on in this crisis before it became his crisis. Today was mostly about this grand reopening hes planning. He says its going to happen in some places very, very shortly. And he did that one better, promising it almost immediately. He says hes going to authorize each governor to open their individual states. Of course, thats not a thing. Theyre already governors. The president said our country is like a puzzle made up of