manchin s team just to understand just how easy it is to vote in west virginia and how hard it is to vote in texas, at some point i said you know what? we ll take the west virginia standard because it is a lot easier to vote in west virginia than in texas. but as it relates to the national conversation, i mean, clearly, anything that can be done to make voting easier would be an improvement in texas. anything that can be done to have an almost no excuse absentee voting program would be good. expanding voter i.d. to provide more provisions and documents you could use to prove you are who you are. there are a number of things in the federal proposal that would really open up voting in the state of texas and be refreshing but we recognize that when it comes to voting rights in america we should only have one standard and that is the american standard. when you look at the it is hard to describe it as successful because it is so malevolent but the republican backed voter nullification
even bring some republicans to the table. democrats say they expect a deal within days that could setup another vote before the summer recess next week. meanwhile more than 100 state legislatures from across the country are in the nation s capitol. they re joining texas democrats who spent the last three weeks in d.c. pushing members of congress to pass federal voting rights would stay out of texas until the end of the special legislative session there to block republicans from passing texas s restrictive voting bill. that session ends tomorrow. today texas governor abbott called a second special session with new agenda items starting the very next day. joining us now is texas state representative trey martinez fisher. thank you so much for spending time with us tonight. first, i want to get to the u.s. senate and the legislation there. it seems like you have really helped focus and narrow that. i want to ask you what is
today the number of coronavirus cases thin u.s. reached a six-month high. the average daily cases are now nearly five times what they were just one month ago. half of all new covid cases and hospitalizations this past week come from seven states, florida, texas, missouri, arkansas, louisiana, alabama and mississippi. those seven states also happen to be the seven states with the lowest vaccination rate. see a pattern, folks? meanwhile the biden administration st. reportedly developing a plan to require proof of vaccination for all foreign visitors traveling into the u.s. and just tonight the washington post is reporting that the administration is considering withholding federal funding from certain institutions in an effort to spur more vaccinations. as vaccine mandates become a reality of daily life in places where vaccination rates are already high, what can be done to slow the spread of the deadly virus in the rest of places in our country? to help us answer that question one of o
most wildly successful state by state legislative pushes in my career. i mean, they have proposed i think almost 400 voter suppression laws in 49 states. 22 of them have been passed into law. do you feel like at the national level the democrats are on their high game to meet that lethal threat to voting rights? you know, i think it is becoming increasingly clear the republicans want to hijack elections right? we saw it with the big lie and now we re seeing states moving to change the way you vote in your state. this is a tremendous set up for the 2022 elections where you can effectively lose an election yet have some rigged process through republican lawmaking that might nullify and overturn results. so, yes, i think democrats are waking up. here in texas we saw this coming when we saw the voices being silenced in georgia and in
thing because it is that important to our country. what awaits you in texas? do you fear retribution or charges? do you know? i mean, for me i hope it is a beautiful wife and two lovel daughters is what i m looking forward to. yes, of course, there is this fear of arrest and retribution. we take it serious. i also take this job very seriously. the governor can call as many suppression sessions as he wants. we ll stay here and defend democracy and i think at this juncture everybody knows we ll put all of our tools on the table. we know how to use them. we ve used them effectively and republicans know we mean what we say. we are not going to just bow down when it comes to taking voting rights away from our fellow texans. so, you know, come what may, we are here to defend the country and voting rights and won t be intimidated by a threat of arrest. texas state representative trey martinez fischer we really appreciate you taking time to