Postthanksgiving surge here and desperation grows in a country abandoned byes it president. My 12yearold son is at home by himself right now. There are protesters banging outside the door. Donald trump strong arms republicans to join the last desperate push to join the election loss. Michigans attorney general is fighting back and she is with us live and adding states to the union. All in starts right now. Good evening from new york, i am chris hayes. I am go to start with a confession. As the coronavirus devastates this country, i am finding it hard to hold my rage and my anguish together. We are watching a lack of action by the federal leadership in this country that feels almost criminal. It is depraved indifference at a level that i cannot quite articulate. Do you remember where you were on 9 11 . I do. I think we all do. I would say take a moment now to commit to memory where you are right now. We lost more americans today than we lost in 9 11, an event that transformed our country and the government and the world. Today was just a wednesday. We are now at a point where the nations Covid Response descended into chaos. Chaos. Catastrophe. Calamity. Everyone is mad at everyone else. People are mad at each other and texting each other about the jerk at the store and instagram. What a big party at thanksgiving. The people mobilizing in this town or that. The hypocritical local leaders and the governors who will not act and closing schools and playgrounds but not bars and schools. More than 3,000 deaths were recorded today for the first time ever. That is a record here and a record for the world. We have, without question the worst response of any rich country in the world and you can make the case it is just the worst in the world period. There are many points of failure. Do not lose sight of the fact that it starts from the top. There is no country on earth that has successfully suppressed the coronavirus in a privatized, federalized way. Nowhere on earth in fact it is the opposite. Look at australia. Yes, it does not share a boarder with another country. They also adopted really strict measures. Australia stopped people traveling between provinces. Imagine if you could not travel between states. A few times teenagers in australia broke quarantine and travelled between provinces. No joke, it was National News there. The country undertook a fully nationalized effort to suppress the virus. It was strict and hard and it worked. They are having outdoor concerts. This is what success looks like. If the u. S. Did australias per capita more than 70 of allamericans that died of covid would still be here. You say that australia is a weird case. It is an island with a relatively small parking lt. German, it does not stop. It does not go, way. The numbers started to spike again in the fall. Like other eu countries they had to take fairly drastic measures to suppress the virus and get it under control. Germany, there is a lot of regional autonomy in their government, but this was a National Government led by a National Leader who spoke to her nation like a grown up. Chancellor merkel was explaining why the Christmas Markets couldnt stay open saying the current death rate in germany is just too high. She said i am really sorry, from the bottom of my heart. But if the price we pay is 590 deaths per day, that is unacceptable. 590 deaths which is what merkel will not abide. The equivalent to 2,300 People Per Day here. Less than the number dying here every day. Now donald trump has never come out, surrounded by members of the party and given a passionate public speech which he says from the bottom of my heart to americans, 2,300 americans dying per day is a completely fine price to pay. It is fine if you all die of that number and get applause from the people that support it. But just because he hasnt given the speech does not mean that is not the policy. That is the policy. The policy is, you guys all figure it out. Everyone is left on their own with no white house leadership on anything. No Health Care Policy or a relief deal to offset the effects of the pandemic. It is a mess. None of this works. Lack of a rescue bill made it more difficult for states to follow guidance. Shutting down high risk businesses in order to curb outbreaks and make it safer to keep schools open. Our nbc news policy editor joins me now. Benji, you have been doing comparative reporting by approaches. I want to start with a National Response and where we stack up comparatively. Well, as i was reporting the story i talked to economists here and abroad about what distinguished their approach from the u. S. And why we are hitting so many roadblocks and hurdles. And one thing that surprised me that came up repeatedly is that when other countries pass new Economic Relief measures, one of the reasons it is easier to make happen is that they have a National Plan they fit into. In germany, merkel, when she said we are going to have a month of new restrictions to control the virus, we are going to have a new round of aid. It will be going to help businesses. It will help independent workers that cant work, because we know they will have less work. We can plan around it. This is our goal. This is the timetable. If it does not work, we will announce new steps. This has been the case in country after country. In france, they have had very strict lockdowns, but they announced specific support to businesses to help them get through this. In the u. S. Nobody knows what the plan is. One of the reason bipartisan negotiations are so difficult. Is our plan to do as dr. Fauci said and called for Economic Relief for that. Kind of getting out of his lane a little bit. Wait it out until we have a vaccine. Or force as many people back into normal life as possible and accept the deaths. That is how the president has talked. Nobody is sure. It makes it harder to crack a relief plan when we dont have that basic structure. One of the things that came across in your reporting is that in the absence of relief, there has been a strategy to push the decisions down to local leaders. What you are seeing from local leaders, you know, across the partisan spectrum in california and new york is increasing anger and frustration directed to the citizenry. You guys are screwing this up, right. I get that. Take a listen. Trump and biden agree on the advice. Well, some elected officials in Staten Island said we are not go to follow it. 25 of all of the fatalities in new york city come from Staten Island. Staten island is only 5 of the new york city population. That is what happened on Staten Island. He is 100 right about the data. It is true. It is all in the absence of any National Relief or strategy. It was very even as they were keeping schools closed people are saying that is not the order that experts recommend. Governors and mayors were saying that we are not crazy about doing this, but there is no aid money to keep the businesses open. We have to take the risk otherwise they are going to go out of business. That is an example how leaders are forced to the choices. There is less aid now. Loans for businesses expired. No longer added unemployment benefits. That is entiring at the end of the month. People have fewer options. Forces people to turn on each other. There are no good options. States and cities cant raise that money or print money or deficit spend the way the federal government can. The turning on each other part. One of the lawmakers out front in the fight is Bernie Sanders. He joins me now. Here is my first question to you, senator. There has been so much spinning and gas lighting about the relief negotiations which have been going on for months now. I am going to ask you frankly, who is responsible for us not having relief. Name them. Well, clearly the Republican Leadership rejected what the house did. The house passed several important pieces of legislation which was comprehensive. Mitch mcconnell made it clear he did not want to spend more than 500 billion. I think the ultimate responsibility lies on a do nothing u. S. Senate led by mcconnell who is more interested in protecting corporate interests in terms of liability for their irresponsible activity. The thing that drives me crazy about the negotiations, the channel of pelosi and mnuchin. Mcconnell sends people on recess. Brings you back to confirm judges. Mcconnell will float something. There is a Bipartisan Group floating something. Then mnuchin. Can we get everyone in the same room. It is driving me insane you have these parallel negotiations. Well, i can understand that it is enormously confusing. Here is the bottom line. I think the democrats in recent weeks have given too much. You recall, we were talking about several trillion. You will recall that mnuchin agreed to 1. 8 trillion representing the trump administration. Now the truth is, and people have to hear it. It is 900 billion in the bipartisan agreement is not 900 billion new dollars. 550 old from the cares package. The democrats have gone down by 85 to 90 . That is not good negotiation. The bottom line, we cannot and must not leave for the Christmas Holidays unless we protect working people. There must be a 1,200 check, 500 for the kids and supplement unemployment we have a horrible economic crisis on top of a pandemic. We have to act and act aggressively. Here is an example. My understanding of what happened today. You had a package, bipartisan consensus that was using a counting fiction with the cares act. There was no checks for people in that package. Right. Mnuchin says okay, you want checks, how about 600 but we are taking away the unemployment benefits. Right. It is like lucy with the football. They take with one hand what they put out with the other. These guys are very tough negotiators. Mcconnell wants 500 billion, no help for unemployed workers and little help for the unemployed. At the end of the day after all of the gamesmanship, what must happen in my view is that the democrats need to remain firm. They cant go home. The narrative is that Mitch Mcconnell doesnt want to give us more than 900 billion. The heck of Mitch Mcconnell. The American People are hurting. It is not you he will give the money to. You know, it is going to go to people who are struggling. It will go to people that are democrats and republicans, i dont care. Everybody is struggling right now. Honestly, to me the Georgia Election should be a referendum on relief. I think both of the Democratic Candidates in georgia would be in agreement. I know they are both talking about the need for the senate to go forward and provide the direct payment to working families all over the country. There is massive pain. Record levels of hunger in america. Tens of millions of families facing eviction. 90 Million People have no health insurance. People are desperate. A government and a Civilized Society means anything, we have to act and act right now. As benji mentioned in the earlier segment, we are so far behind European Countries it is pathetic. This is a manifestation of the kwon tempt they have for the working people of the country. Senator Bernie Sanders who is continuing to work with his colleagues to try to get a deal and i hope we have one. Thank you for making time for us. Thank you, chris. The new lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to throw out the vote in four states that did not vote for trump. Michigans attorney general calls it a publicity stunt and joins me next. Dont go anywhere. 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Republican mike johnson from louisiana also emailed every one of his republican colleagues with the subject heading time sensitive request from President Trump asking them to sign on to an amicus brief too. This suit has no chance in hell of winning. But it is as brazen an assault on the very nature of our union by elected officials as i have ever seen in my life. George conway, an extremely prominent legal conservative considered for solicitor general described it as crazy. This is the most insane thing yet. This is an embarrassment. An republican official or any point to bring the lawsuit is atrocious. All four states targeted by the absurd lawsuit are swing states that narrowly went for biden. Those states have to file the opposition to the suit to the Supreme Court tomorrow afternoon and the attorney general of the state of michigan joins me now. First, attorney general, explain to us what is the suit and how seriously we should take it. I dont know how to describe whatever the lawsuit is because it is so insane and it is insulting quite honestly to have the state of texas come in to michigan and try to overturn the results where nearly 155,000 michigan voters voted for president elect biden over President Trump and now to say that you want to come in here and intervene in our states elections. It is outrageous. I dont believe it will be granted. The mere effort is beneath the dignity of the department of attorney general in texas. I feel bad for the taxpayers who are financing this and all of the ags that signed on to the effort. I was going through the filing and i couldnt help but to notice they dont like the way that you ran your elections. They really dont like the outcome. One couldnt help but to notice the state of North Carolina is not being sued even though they made changes to how they were dealing with voting in the pandemic. The state of texas made changes to how they were voting in the pandemic. It seems pretty clear what it is about. I dont care for the way that texas ran their elections. I thought it was outrageous they only allowed one drop box per county. Travis county, 1. 27 Million People. You didnt see michigan suing the state of texas. I cant imagine what precedent it would set for states to sue other states. What is more outrageous is that for instance our state house remained in republican hands. Why are they not suing about that situation. Why is it only the top of the ticket. If there were fraud at the top, how come it did not extend to the other offices that were voted on with the same ballots. It was striking to watch the two sitting senators from georgia who are in runoffs because of the actions of the voters in the same election, endorse an effort by other states to throw their constituents votes out. Do you have michigan republicans supporting the effort of other states to throw out your states votes . If they have i have not yet seen that. But i would caution, of course anybody in my state to be caref careful. Next time why doesnt california sue us if we happen to vote for a republican. Our state regulates time, place, manner for our elections. These claims have been heard over and over and over. The Trump Campaign lost every time. I am trying to communicate to people that there is original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court for contests between states. States have disputes. There was a famous case between new york and new jersey over who owned ellis island. That is the kind of thing. Is there any precedent for this type of suit that is now being undertaken by 17 states and joined by the president . No there is not. Sometimes there are border disputes. There are water right disputes, although those are rare. I have never seen anything like this. I do not know that i talked to anyone that has seen anything like this before. It is so incredibly outrageous. I will say this. Directly to general paxton if he is watching. You know who voted for you in michigan, general paxton. No one. Literally no one. Stay in your lane. Stick to trying to disenfranchise voters in your own state and dont come to mine. Part of the team there filing the briefings. I dont think the court will take it but we should see. Ahead from Death Threats to tracking down Health Officials in their home, the new Dangerous Levels of the maga frenzy after this. F the maga frenzy after this you work hard for your money. Stretched days for it. Juggled life for it. Took charge for it. So care for it. Look after it. Invest with the expertise of j. P. Morgan, either with an advisor or online, through chase. After all, its yours. Chase. Make more of whats yours. Honey honey . New nyquil severe honey is maximum strength cold and flu medicine with soothing honeylicious taste. Nyquil honey. The nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever best sleep with a cold medicine. The only thing a disaster cant destroy is hope. 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Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer was a part of a kidnapping plot. Wayne county board of canvassers meeting was interrupted by a zoom user before adding trump 2020. Democratic state representative says that he and his parents received more than 20 Death Threats including be prepared to taking your last meal and we are looking forward to bringing back firing squads. In georgia Gabriel Sterling and brad wra and sexualized violent threats on the cell phone. You guys are effing dead. In arizona where police had to escort election workers past a screaming mob last month, Trump Supporters gathered outside the home of katie hobbs tweeting we are watching you. She and her family faced ongoing and escalating threats of violence. In wisconsin, anne jacobs said she alerted her neighbors and police to the threats she faced. This is the scene in idaho last night. My 12yearold son is home by himself and there are protesters banging outside the door. 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I want. Its the easiest because its the cheesiest. Kraft. For the win win. A terrifying situation unfolded in idaho when public Health Officials gathered online to discuss a potential mask mandate. Hundreds of antimask protesters showed up outside the Health Department building. Fair enough. Exercise rights to peacefully assemble but protesters went to the homes of at least three Board Members and one commissioner who was attending the meeting from a different location and left her kids with her mom. Her mom was out walking the dog when the protesters showed up. Im sorry. I got a text from my neighborhood that there are protesters at my house. I am going to step off to call the police because my kids are there. Thank you. I also have protesters outside my house as well. We are going to take care of you. Can i interrupt you for just a moment. My 12yearold son is home by himself right now and there are protesters banging outside the door. I am going to go home and make sure he is okay. I will reconnect with you when i get there. A short time after that boises mayor and police chief requested the meeting be ended for safety reasons before they could even vote on the mask mandate. Haley harding covers local government in boise and joins me tonight. Haley, thank you so much. Set us up with what the context of the pandemic looks like in idaho right now. The pandemic is not good anywhere, but it has been pretty rough in idaho. Just under 100,000 people in idaho are believed to have been infected, about 1,000 have died and the number rises every day. It is rough. I know there has been Hospital Capacity issues as well. It is a pretty rural state. We have seen it in a bunch of states where there is a who were the people in the meeting and what was the meeting . In idaho we dont have in a lot of places they will have city health commissioners. We have instead District Health boards, seven of them. This is a meeting of representatives of the four counties and central District Health which is where boise is in the district. These representatives were meeting to discuss, among other things, instituting a mask mandate indoors and outdoors for when you cannot socially distance in all four counties. This was consideration of mitigation policy as the pandemic is very bad there. These were local health commissioners. These are not are these full time Health People or like members of the community or a school board . The majority of the people are local nurses or elected officials representing their county in some other way. My sense of this, and i read your reporting. This is not like people show up outside the new york mayors Gracie Mansion to protest. Not people that are super in the public eye or have expectation or anticipation they will be having protests outside the homes. Generally speaking in idaho most elected officials do not have protests outside their homes. Who were the protesters . I cant speak for all of them but in general they are people that disagree with the mask mandates and disagree more broadly with the shutdowns that have come with the coronavirus pandemic and disagree specifically with the idea people would put a mask mandate in place. This is something that happened in a lot of places. I feel there is a distinction between a protest and a protest where you have guns. Were protesters armed as far as your reporting indicates . I do not believe so. But i guess there is always the opportunity. And there was a real worry i think for personal safety that resulted in basically the meeting being called off as one of the commissioners ran home to attend to her 12yearold. That is correct. So, there was another interruption from the mayor of boise had called one of the Board Members. I believe the director of central District Health and asked for the safety of the Police Officers involved, want Central DistrictHealth Officials. For the safety of everyone at the homes, the mayor and the Police Chiefs asked that. They cut the meeting short. Rescheduled it for another time. I just want to read the commissioners facebook post. And then today, which is interesting to me. My understanding is that police had three arrest warrants issued and others may follow after protests at boise homes. There was some activity that wasnt just run of the mill peaceable assembly. Yes. There was one person that was arrested. A citizens arrest and they were later taken to jail by the police department. My understanding is that three arrest warrants were issued for people that were disturbing the peace outside the home of the commissioner and that there are more warrants on the way from other people who have been disturbing the peace a similar way. The agenda meeting was the possibility of a mask mandate. It adjourned before they could vote on it in that sense the protests did their job, right . There is no mask mandate as of today. I mean you could i guess make that argument. But protests are not unusual, specifically at the meetings. At this point they are not unusual at the homes of the officials. Some of this has been happening all summer long. The more interesting part is that this is the first time we saw a meeting interrupted out of concerns for safety. That was the bigger concern. So i guess you can make the argument they delayed it, but the meeting is rescheduled. It will be held at another time. The mask mandate will still be heard and voted on. So it is just a temporary stop, i suppose. Haley harding, thank you for your excellent reporting and thank you for making time to tell us your story. I appreciate that you are there doing this work. Subscribe to the Idaho Statesman if you are there. Coming up, fixing the system that allows minority rule in the United States senate and how more could restore balance to american democracy next. Restor american democracy next. Before we talk about taxsmart investing, whats new . Audreys expecting. Twins wed be closer to the twins. Change in plans. At fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan. Youre still the one that i love to touch still the one and i cant get enough were still having fun, and youre still the one applebees 2 for 20. Now thats eating good in the neighborhood. Dreya hey how are you so good at this . Relax. Get into it aw, yeah ive got it rated everyone. One of the longest lasting legacies of dwrump will likely be his judicial appointees filling the bench with conservative judges and justices including, of course, three Lifetime Appointments to the Supreme Court. Now, the reason hes been able to do that is the senate, where all those nominees are confirmed or not confirmed as in the case of merrick garland, and where the will of the majority of country is not really represented. I mean over time, as the country has grown and americans have clustered around population centers, the senate has drifted further and further away from the median voter. So were now stuck in a situation where nearly 40 million californians have the same amount of representation in the senate has the less than 600,000 residents of wyoming and the less than 800,000 north dakotans and 1 million montanans. So short of getting rid of the senate i dont think thats going to happen what to do about this really crazy structural undemocratic imbalance . Well, we could just do what weve done in the past in this country and add some new states to our union. Nearly 4 million americans live in puerto rico and washington, d. C. They have zero representation in the senate right now. If we gave that Diverse Group of americans four new votes in the senate, that would go a long way towards creating something more truly representative out of that body. Im joined by historian jon meacham, author of his truth is marching on. Hes an unofficial adviser to president elect biden. And Megan Hatcher maze is dir. T she wrote a piece entitled the senate is broken. Washington, d. C. Statehood can save it. Theres an argument for representation just from a like the people of d. C. Deserve to have representation. Theres sort of a broader argument you make in the piece about balancing some of the structural problems of the senate. Whats the argument . Yeah. I mean the argument is, yes, as a d. C. Resident all i want for, you know, my life is to have voting representation in congress. That would be great. But it also starts to address some of the structural inequities built into our democracy itself. I mean the way the senate was designed was to give a lot of power to a little group of people, mostly, you know, landowning white gentlemen, and to deny enfranchisement, equal representation to black people and people of color, which was largely the population of d. C. At the time and continues to be true to this day. So to give statehood to d. C. Would be a huge win for d. C. Residents, but it would be a huge win for everybody who wants to, you know, solve Climate Change or get health care or, you know, have a better Supreme Court because d. C. Right now doesnt have a say in any of that because the senate is designed to give a lot of power to a very small group of people and to deny power to us. So that starts to sort of balance out yeah. The numbers problem in the senate. You know, jon, i think that first of all, 100 is a nice, round number in terms of the u. S. Senate, which i think always ends up working on people in d. C. More than it should. But theres the sense that like, you know, adding states, you cant do that. But of course, weve done it a ton. And every time its been partly a political process. Like weve added states for frankly political reasons. Its always been political. Its always been political and about power. In fact, from the very beginning, in fact it was the disputes over the powers of the states versus the Central Government and the articles of confederation that led to the constitutional convention. For what its worth, James Madison had two ideas that would have been good. One was he wanted proportional representation in the senate as well as the house, and he lost that. He also wanted a federal veto over state laws. Hmm. Which was a nonstarter, but an interesting nationalist view at that point. The battles over the civil war, the battles that led to the civil war obviously were about statehood and what would be allowed in those states. So the various compromises that ultimately proved unsatisfactory and led to the cataclysm of the war and blessedly to emancipation. The last time we did this, it was kind of a cold war experiment in the late 1950s with alaska and hawaii. Complicated stories. Very political. Hawaii was seen as an attempt to bring a state in that would be of a different race, ethnicity, for those issues to kind of soften our image around the world because literally because we were still under jim crow, we were still a segregated country, and part of the thinking was, hey, were not racist. Look, we just let a state in. Wow. And so thats an important part of that political dynamic. And alaska is a state not least because of its geographic, strategic importance in the cold war. So weve done lots of things involving admitting states for lots of different reasons. Yeah, thats a great point about the sort of you know, the kind of pragmatic calculations of the time as the things out of which sort of what we now think of as essential structures of the nation are made, right . Youre not going to go back, right, and lop off alaska or get rid of hawaii. But of course there was just some decision at some point that these people should be part of the union. And i think part of the problem too, megan, is that were seeing this kind of structural problem grow up. When people talk about the Electoral College where theres a 4 1 2 point swing between what joe biden won the popular vote and, you know, his Electoral College victory, which was by 40,000, 50,000 votes, thats even bigger in the senate. Calculations are the democrats have to win the senate by seven points nationally. In a polarized country, thats very hard. Youve locked in this minority rule problem. Yeah. I mean it shouldnt be the case that, you know, one party wins tens of millions more votes in the president ial election or in the Senate Elects overall, and like the best we can do is at best, best case scenario, is a 5050 split in the senate. That speaks to a bad design. And the way that you sort of like fix that problem is to, just like you said, bring in new states. And the fact that were talking about bringing inity stas of people who are wholly disenfranchised makes the cate a little bit sweeter. This should not be the case, and i think democrats need to start thinking big about some of the various ways we can start to address this problem because it cant just be every two to four years that we have an election and were scraping and, you know, tooth and nail for a majority of one in the senate even though democrats are very clearly, you know, the Majority Party in this country. There has been a durable National Majority somewhat improbably through seven of eight elections. Jon, the hawaii experience, i think matches the closest to what puerto rico would be, right . This is a place that was fundamentally colonized by the u. S. , where the history of colonization was quite ugly. That was the case in hawaii. Its been the case often in puerto rico, where there was resistance, i think, on the ground to even the giving up sort of selfdetermination, sovereignty. But there was just a vote in puerto rico. There does seem like theres some Movement Towards that. It seems like thats the closest analog in terms of our history. Theres a rich literature on this which goes to many of the essential questions about color and ethnicity and race that we continue to grapple with, which was and there are scholars who have argued that having people who were asian immigrants essentially not immigrants, but of asian descent to become part of the United States, that that was a more virtuous kind of immigrant. And puerto rico would not be. Hmm. So the role of race in this, which fundamentally obviously is part of the current conversation, was a part of the conversation then. The idea of americanism and who were the desirable people. Right. And its a very uncomfortable american conversation, but its one its one weve had. Its one we need to continue to have. And the great thing about the constitution, as hard as it is to amend, it was built to amend. Thats also true. Great discussion from both of you. I really enjoyed that. Thank you both for that. Thank you. That is all in on this wednesday evening. The Rachel Maddow show starts right now. Good evening, rachel. Good evening, chris. Thanks, my friend. You bet. Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Before i forget, i want to tell you that im going to be on the late show with Stephen Colbert tonight if you want to watch. Ill shall tabe talking with mrt about the new book i just wrote that came out yesterday. Its called bag man. Ill also talk with him, i imagine, about, you know, the long, slow end of our president ial electi