thank you. as we look at these various strands of the investigation into january 6, and what may become of them, it s worth thinking about 18 months ago when joe biden s nomination of merrick garland to be attorney general was being wildly celebrated as a deeply gratifying move, the whole bringing seriousness and stability back to the justice department, if you re into that sort of thing, but also the political and even moral satisfaction that came with the garland nomination, that was palpable, this was the guy republicans had refused a hearing for when president obama nominated him to the supreme court. and the republicans, to steal a supreme court seat. and the republicans, democrats, rubbing it in, and bold move, classy, and some wonder if giving the job of attorney general as a kind of consolation prize to merrick garland wasn t the best move, when what the country needed was an a. g.
baseline for voting so that you have access to that basic american right no matter where you live. it s the most american thing we can do. it s the most important thing we can do this congress. and i think that as important as other issues are if we fail to do it we will have failed the people who sent us here in the first place to debate about all these issues. and i think that history will rightly judge us harshly if we fail to address voting rights in this defining moment. among the nine of you who worked on this, did you talk about procedural matters? if senate republicans don t come along, you make a great case on the merits, you make a great case in terms of the nonpartisan appeal of this, the all-american appeal of this. and i know senator manchin is working as hard as he possibly can to get republicans on board. but if they say full stop no, did you among the nine of you who work on this legislation talk about a procedural way to get there, by finding a way around the filibus
tonight, tonight, for example, here on this show, we re going to be talking to with a key election official from wisconsin where republicans in the legislature there have just started their own bizarre partisan review of the 2020 election, a sort of copycat audit of what republicans are doing with the presidential election results with all the voting equipment in arizona. wisconsin republicans just yesterday started sending out their demands to local officials who frankly have no idea to what they re supposed to do with their secure equipment and election records now that republican legislatures are telling them to hand those things over to republican activists and their crazy conspiracy theories. republicans are doing this in multiple states now. now, not months ago now. now. they started doing it yesterday in wisconsin. this upcoming weekend in washington, d.c. they re preparing for the trump rally in support of the january 6th rioters who attacked the u.s.