experiment. new reporting about a conservative lawyer working for former president trump and his six-point plan to undo the 2020 election. up first though for us days of consequence here in the nation's capital. a government shutdown looms in nine days. the united states collides with its borrowing limit in a month. democrats are trying to address those big issues while in the middle of an unruly school-yard fight over a giant spending plan that is a make-or-break moment for the biden agenda. in that fight there are some big democratic family divides over the $3.5 trillion price tag and over the policies all that money pays for. house speaker nancy pelosi telling lawmakers in a closed-door meeting this morning they need to work things out and they need to do it by next week. one of her top lieutenants says that will happen. >> we're going to get this done. we always do. >> we're a coalition, not a cult, and so we embrace the fact that people have different ideas and perspectives, but at the end of the day we always land at the highest common denominator, and we will do that in this case and we're going to pass the infrastructure agreement and we're going to pass the build back better act. >> let's get straight up to cnn's manu raju up on capitol hill. is jeffries' optimism justified? >> very optimistic and very uncertain right now, the biden agenda hanging by a thread. it could all collapse and could all come together quickly, but if it does it will require significant agreement between the various wings of the democratic party, namely the moderates and the house and the senate and the progressives in the house. now, one key thing is that this morning the house majority leader steny hoyer made clear that on september 27th, next monday, they do plan to move forward and have a vote on that bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the senate last month. that's $1.2 trillion for roads, for bridges, for broadband, but why that is significant is because the progressives in the house have threatened to tank that bill. they said dozens, roughly three, maybe four dozen progressives will vote against that unless that larger democratic-only bill, that economic package to expand the social safety net, deal with climate change, deal with health care, that is passed in both chambers by that point. they want it passed by next monday. john, there's virtually no chance that can actually happen by that next monday because negotiations are still hang behind the scenes, including with one key voice, senator joe manchin of west virginia who wants to pear back the bill, limit its scope, particularly in dealing wish use of climate change. this morning when i caught up with him he made clear those talks are still ongoing. >> i think everyone respects each other working hard, looking at everything, trying to make sense out of a lot of this stuff. >> now, he also wouldn't say whether or not they have actually addressed any of the key issues. one of the things he did push back on, john, is the issue of climate change, key in his state, coal-producing state. concerned about the direction that democrats are going. can can they get a resolution on that and a resolution on the rest of the matters and separately they are staring at the prospects of a potential economic catastrophe. if there's no agreement to extend the government funding beyond the shutdown deadline of september 30th or to raise the national borrowing limit, the debt ceiling by mid-thookt would allow the government to pay its bills. otherwise they will risk a debt default. there's a significant partisan disagreement on those matters as well so, john, the next few weeks so critical to the democratic agenda averting a potential financial catastrophe. can they get through all of it? highly uncertain at this moment. john. >> highly u.n. ernt. even that sounds like an understatement. keep us post. a day of consequence amidst days of consequences. with me cnn's lauren fox, npr's ausma holly and this from emanuel cleaver. nobody in this town has done this, has tried to put so much into one piece of legislation. plus, you have the other moves around it. if any member of congress is not concerned that this could fall apart they need treatment. well put, but it's true, is it not, that this is the entire biden agenda? this is the democratic party's broader agenda? in two or three pieces of legislation they will have to move roughly together and they are dug in and far apart. >> let's talk about that $3.5 trillion bill. the house committees have done their work, yes, but there are still remaining issues that are dividing democrats in the house when it comes to what goes inside of that bill. you have democrats in disarray over the prescription drug lowering price provision. that's something that three democrats voted against in committee. that, of course, is the number of votes that pelosi cannot lose. she can't lose more than three at this point, so they haven't really gotten to a place where all the democrats are understanding exactly what's going into the bill and they have not gotten to the place in which all the democrats are united about what goes in that bill, and that's one piece of this entire agenda. >> that's what makes it fascinating. what makes it, as manu said, so uncertain, the democrats are fighting over the what. how much do we spread and how do you spread it among a whole number of programs that democrats would argue are critical, elder care, climate protections, child care, the list goes on and on and they are arguing over how to try to work it out. you heard joe manchin saying we all respect each other and we are working on it. that's one way and the speaker speaking out against i think things like this. this is alexandria ocasio-cortez. you have a very small destructive group of members who want to hold the entire country's agenda host am for an arbitrary date and this is not -- it's not representative of the caucus. it's not representing the agenda of the president so you have some democrats who are mad at the centrist, mad at the moderates and they are being much more personal in airing their differences. >> that's right. i think when joe biden first came into office, one wouldn't have expected a-okay and the president to be so much in line. she is pushing for the president's agenda in that quote, and i think when you talk to the white house what they have said is they thought this was going to be a unifying agenda. they always point to broad bipartisan polling that shows, you know, people support it broadly, but when you look at the details of it, this is something that an ideologically diverse party, so many disagreements from climate change, to taxes, it's a huge package, and if the president pulls this off, he gets, you know, most of his agenda through in his first year, but if he doesn't all of these things that he campaigned on are at stake. >> but you can understand, i was going to the say from the white house's perspective why this is such a large pack and and why they are trying to get so many pieces through in one go. i mean, look, we're almost, how many months in, nine months into his administration, and you're already beginning to see polling numbers that suggest, you know, republicans could take control of possibly one chamber or the other. he doesn't have a lot of time to get through large pieces of his economic agenda, so, i mean, from the white house's perspective the only strategy is really to essentially put together a $3.5 trillion package, shove it all through in one go. >> and yet joe biden was in the senate for 37 years, eight years as vice president. never done anything like that. nancy pelosi has never done anything like this. this is peter defazio, one of her deputies in the house, been in congress since 1987. i've been here for cliffs, crises and war and this will be the biggest mash-up we've ever had and i have no idea how it works out, no idea. that's it. >> they took a lot of pieces that have -- that don't have total unity, but they have got oh, this is 48% of our caucus -- 48% of congress will support this, 47%, and they tried to build them all together giving somebody something. you get infrastructure, roads and bridges. you get stuff on climate change, you get stuff on taxes, but if you start pulling those pieces out because people just say, well, look, i'm not going to vote prescription hits because i have a lot of big pharma in my districts all of a sudden the whole thing collapses. it becomes a jenga set in which you pull two pieces out and the whole thing goes under. >> quick pause. we'll go up to the united nations. the president of the united states is having a bilateral meeting with the prime minister of australia. >> this will be a good in-person meeting. the united states has no closer or more reliable ally than australia. our nations have stood together for a long, long time, and -- and you can -- you can rely on one another and that's really a reassuring thing. we're grateful that our partnership has accomplished what we've accomplished over the several years. we have a big agenda to discuss today starting with our partnership to advance our idea of a free and open indo-pacific and this conversation that we're going to continue with japan, india and india on friday and -- and the first in-person quad leaders meeting, it's an historic event and i think we're all looking forward to it. the united states and australia working in lock step on the challenges that i laid out today in my speech to the united nations, ending covid, addressing the climate crisis, defending democracy and shaping the rules of the road for the 21st century because i meant what i said. we're at an infliction point. things are changing. we have to grasp the change and deal with it or we'll be left behind, all of us, and so i want to thank you again, scott, it's great to see you. look forward to working with you on all your team and -- and the floor is yours. >> well, thank you, mr. president. thank you for your warm welcome and for the entire delegation. i think it's very important that we're meeting here in new york. this month we mark the 70th anniversary of the anders alliance. there have been 14 australian prime ministers since sir robert menzie and 14 u.s. presidents that have stewarded that great partnership. the one time the alliance was invoked is when the towers came down here in new york and were attacked and that invited the anders alliance for the first and only time and so to both to mark that event and to remember all of those who were lost on that day we reflect on frankly more than 100 years of our partnership where we've stood together through the most difficult of times and the most prosperous of times, and the united states and australia have always shared a partnership that is about a world order that favors freedom, and that's why we've always stood together, and in pursuing that freedom it, of course, goes our security interest but more than that it goes to global prosperity. it goes to global freedom, the freedom of our region, it goes to the great global challenges of climate change, a new energy economy and a very, very challenging future, but one that our partnership i have no doubt will be able to address. but it's not just about our partnership because our partnership reaches out to so many others, whether it be our friends in the asean nations or europe or elsewhere where we share so many like-minded interests and so the issues we discuss in our partnership today really do reach out to so many others in terms of how we address the global challenges, so, mr. president, i want to thank you for your leadership and your focus on the indo-pacific region. there's no doubt that you get it. >> i think the last point you made is important. it goes well beyond just our partnership. our partnership is in line with all the other democracies in the world, and we've got a lot of work to do so thank you all very much. >> mr. president! >> come on, guys. thank you. >> all right. we're listening to the president of the united states with the australian prime minister scott morrison. reporters at the end trying to sneak in a question. cameras get shaky when they are being knuckleballed out of the room. cnn's jeff zeleny is standing by for us tracking the president as he visits new york. the president talking with a friend there, talking about unity and about an alliance but just the fact that he's with the prime minister of australia on the one hand that's a friendship and on the other hand it reminds us good relations with one friend causing testing relations with others. >> reporter: john, it absolutely does, and i cannot recall a time where a bilateral meeting with the u.s. president and the australian prime minister had so much attention on it, not because of what we saw just there, but because what have happened last week. the surprise announcement that australia and the u.s. and the uk have formed this new alliance and it undercut france, so this is something that is lingering here at the united nations in new york, that relationship between the u.s. and its oldest ally, france. emmanuel macron, the french president not in new york and not sending a representative here and the president, president biden is still awaiting a phone call with president mark ron because he believes that, you know, essentially they were not treated very well by the biden administration but that will work itself out. most european allies believe but the meetings that president biden is having today, the ones you're seeing right now happening behind closed doors with the australian prime minister scott morrison is going to be followed this evening when president biden returns back to the white house to have a one-on-one meeting with british prime minister bores johnson so clearly not exactly the als that we necessarily thought -- that we would be focusing on. john, the bigger picture from this speech is president biden clearly trying to re-reassert a new order on the world stable, turning the page from the trump administration which he's been doing steadily for the last eight months, saying america is back. well, now, of course, he has to prove the rhetoric behind that, so clearly one of the top head lyons of the speech was, you k know, bringing a note to the end of the war in afghanistan. 20 years after. this is the first time a u.s. president has addressed the u.n. in 20 years and there is not a war going on that the u.s. is involved in. john, that's not the headline of the speech. that's something already that we're largely looking beyond. it's the fight against covid-19. it's the global shift going on, but president biden also making clear not mentioning china one time by name, but he did say he's not seeking a cold war. he are's looking for competition, yes, but not conflict. his speech will be bookended later today when chinese president xi jinping is speaking at the u.n. by video. john. >> jeff zeleny in new york. thank you. the president has some complicated global challenges at a time when he has very challenging domestic challenges as well. his first address to the united nations general assembly. joe biden wants to tell the world i'm not drew. i'm not unpredictable. i'm your partner, america is back and yet there are these dustups and the president in some ways is reminding the people who are mad at him by having a public meeting with the prime minister of prime minister of australia. the french are mad over this deal. the united states with the uk negotiating to get australia nuclear-powered submarines which blows up a deal that the u.s. has with france about diesel-powered subs. one of our neighbor -- one of our member states has been treated in a way not acceptable so we want to know what happened and why, there. first of all, you clarify that before you keep going with business as usual, so essentially the european union is saying, sure, we want to work with you post-afghanistan and work with you on covid and on climate, but you have a credibility problem, mr. biden. >> yeah, and i think if you listen to what the president had to say at the u.n., to me there were kind of two main points he was trying to address. one is this idea that the united states is back, that multilateralism is back, and if you compare what president trump said a year ago, i was doing a quick comparison analysis and essentially, you know, the president today did not mention china once by name. president trump has never been shy to point out china and former president trump spoke about the idea of peace through strength, of military power. president biden today was very clear to say that military power should be a last resort, not a first resort and while he never mentioned china by name what he was very clear talking about democracy and authoritarianism, this iron hand, the need to focus on human rights what country he was speaking about. i think, you know, allies being upset, they will be upset because they had higher expectations from president biden than they ever had from former president trump. there's a sense that they can be more embolduened to speak about their gripes and complaints than they could in the last four years and that's what you hear from the white house this, idea that they are trying to smooth over relations but also many of these relationships were not really cultivated in the last four years. >> the question is are they right? is the white house right saying six months from now if the global covid rollout is accelerated, the united states will get credit and will be forgiven and six months from now conditions in afghanistan are not horrible, joe biden can say i'm the first president in 20 years to say the united states is not at war. >> i think they are looking ahead and part of the way they are doing that is by prioritizing the indo-pacific. we saw that in the speech and now that he's meeting and having this bilateral with the australian prime minister and the quad meeting he's having later this week. they are looking ahead and trying to counter china and building relations with the indo-pacific as a way to do that, and, yes, they still care about their relationships with the eu but it's real the indo-pacific they have been focused on. several members of the administration have been traveling to asia. i was with with the vice president last month when she went it singapore and vietnam. they are constantly putting this message out that they are not seeking conflict but they are going to be competing with china and part of that is by building these alliances. >> a lot of fascinating questions coming to a head domestically and internationally all at once. that's why he said he wanted the job. we'll see. the next few weeks will be more than interesting. the covid death toll in the united states now surpasses the 1918 flu pandemic, plus 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the all-electric cadillac lyric. today we mark another numbing, simply numbing, covid milestone. coronavirus has now killed more than 676,000 americans. that surpasses the estimated death toll from the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century, the 1918 flu t.surpasses it by more than 1,000. 676,000 americans. that's more than the entire population of vermont. you see a memorial there on the national mall with those flags there. let's take a closer look at the numbers. again, this is the cumulative death total of covid. it is numbing. it is sad. it's even somewhat infuriating when you think about from here essentially on vaccines were widely on, january, february, march. when you see all these numbers in-makers juppe, july, august and september, that's where you can get infuriated by them in the sense that many of those deaths were unnecessary. that was the cumulative look. this is where we are today. monday, 2,302 of our fellow americans died from covid. now the seven-day moving average of death, you see it perhaps trickling down a little bit, a little bit. is there finally some hope that this number is come down? possibly when you look at daily case count. september 1st, 166,000 cases a day, new cases. monday it was 139,000. we've lived through this the last 15-plus months. deaths are a lagging indicator. by that i mean cases come down, hospitalizations come down and then hopefully deaths come down in a week or two after that. at that point let's bring into our conversation dr. leana wen, the former baltimore health commission. i want to come back to this. the total death number. we go through them. some of them just make you stop. i'm not wrong, am i, in the sense that when you look from late january, at least february or march on when vaccines are widely available and you see the cumulative rise you just have to ask yourself why. >> that's right, and that is the big difference between now and 1918 because at that time with the flu pandemic there was no vaccine and yet somehow even with a vaccine we're continuing to have escalating numbers. you mention that had we just passed the count compared to the flu pandemic. well, we're still seeing more than 2,000 deaths a day and, yes, most of the deaths sadly are among the unvaccinated, but we have to remember that some of the deaths are also among the vaccinated and that's because there's such a high level of infection spilling over to the vaccine itself. >> if you look at the here and now. the case count does seem to have plateaued and maybe even has dropped a little bit. you have to watch to see if the trend continues over the week but that's at least the beginning of a downward slope wand it the hospitalizations have also come down a bit. 4,000 americans hospitalized on september 1 and now 93,000 so a downwand trend. how do you keep the trend going when more people are going back to the office and everybody is back in school? i want you to listen to the new york city mayor. different jurisdictions are handling this differently but the new york city mayor will have a new testing plan to keep our schools open. >> starting on the 27th. first of all, we will now go to weekly testing. we'll testing in elementary, middle and high school. each school every week when there is a positive test in a classroom. the unvaccinated students in the classroom will not have to quarantine if they have masked and three feet distanced. >> walk through two points and tell me if you think the mayor has it right. number one, weekly testing. number two, if you are more than three feet apart and there's a positive test the mayor is saying that nobody everybody has to quarantine like we were going through the last school year. does that make sense? >> the first one definitely makes sense. the second one we need a bit more information. so the first one about the importance of weekly testing, that's what the cdc has said, what l.a. unified, the second largest district in the school district in the country is doing. we definitely know that regular testing just like indoor masking, just like vaccination, it's an important layer of protection, and i wish that all schools were doing this. when it comes to testing as a replacement for quarantine, there are some data that this is a strategy that could be effective. i think this is a weighing the risks and benefits. there's a substantial benefit to making sure that kids stay in person in school and i do think it's worth it, especially in areas that have regular testing to also say, hey, let's try to do testing for everyone. maybe even daily if you're exposed but let's keep you in school in the meantime, and i think that could also be an incentive for schools to require masks because this only works if the kids who are exposed wear masks. >> as the school year starts to extend we'll get more and more data on it and will come back to you. want to ask you more vaccine news. this news from johnson & johnson saying it's done tests where the johnson & johnson vaccine with one dose, it's done tests where if you get a second dose, call it a booster shot or second dose that its efficacy comes right up with pfizer and moderna. if you look at vaccines in the united states so far, j&j is the purple. only 8% of americans fully vaccinated are fully vaccinated with the j&j% vaccine. do you think it's wise? should the government approve a second j&j dose as a booster, second dose, whatever you want to dal? should sun who received that vaccine be waiting for that to get another shot? >> well, i am in this group as one of the 14 million who got the one-dose johnson & johnson vaccine. i was a volunteer in that particular clinical trial. i don't think it's surprising that a second dose of the johnson & johnson vaccine will increase antibody levels and will increase protection. i think it's good that we're finding boosters do increase protection but i also think when the fda looks at the application and to be clear we've not seen the data, only heard a press release, but when the fda looks at those data, maybe they should -- if the data are strong they should approve that second dose but also we really need mix-and-match studies that are currently being done by the nih. these are individuals who got the j&j vaccine and got a second dose of pfizer or moderna. younger women, we know there's an association that's very rare but that association exists between getting the j&j vaccine and having this very rare but very serious blood clotting disorder. for those individuals, women under the age of 50, they should be getting the option of having a booster dose that's not the johnson & johnson. if they got the j&j a second dose of pfizer or moderna should be available to them. >> they should wait for the government to tell them that and i'm not going to go and say give knee a pfizer doze or moderna doze in which you would have to essentially lie and say i'm not vaccinated? >> i think that at this point our federal health officials should follow the lead of san francisco, for example, that's already allowing people who got the one-dose johnson & johnson vaccine to get a booster dose of something else. a lot of physicians have recommended to their patients who are particularly at high risk, older individuals, chronic medical conditions or high-risk exposure for those people who got the one-dose j&j vaccine to get a second dose of pfizer because that has full approval and, therefore, could be given off label. people should be allowed to measure their own risk and do what's best for them in consultation with their physician. >> appreciate your insights. we'll continue that conversation. obviously those studies are pending with the government. a lot of people are saying the government is not moving quickly enough in this terrain. we'll continue that conversation because there's so many questions about booster shots and the like. up next, mike pence and a big lie. a new leaked memo shows how donald trump wanted the vice president to overturn the 2020 election. subway® has so much new it didn't fit in our last ad. like the new app with customization, curbside pickup and delivery. there's so much new, we don't even have time to show you who's holding this phone. bet you don't treat brady this way. come on, man! you clearly haven't seen the other ads. it's the eat fresh refresh™ at subway®. baaam. internet that doesn't miss a beat. that's cute, but my internet streams to my ride. adorable, but does yours block malware? nope. -it crushes it. pshh, mine's so fast, no one can catch me. big whoop! mine gives me a 4k streaming box. -for free! that's because you all have the same internet. xfinity xfi. so powerful, it keeps one-upping itself. can your internet do that? there's a two-page memo marked privileged and confidential, january 6th scenario is the title. the goal outlined in six steps to have then vice president mike pence throw chaos into the electoral college certification process and find a way to ignore the 2020 election results. the memo, this is a cope of it right here, from a trump lawyer that was first reported in the new book "peril." authors also detail how trump allies were at the same time pressing republican members of congress to join their efforts to claim fraud and to keep trump in power. pence and key republicans in congress were skeptical there was such a path, yet some kept telling trump and his legal team they were going to look for ways to help. >> it's politics and they are riding both horses, and -- and pence is the model of this. pence is really working hard to see if he can do something to stay on the good side of trump. >> it's just scary, scary because of the threat and it's also lunacy as you read through it in the sense that, you know, here's this memo from john eastman, a conservative lawyer saying there's a way to do this. the vice president controls the process. and -- and came pretty close. >> look, there is a part of that memo also outlines the scenario in which if they could have just sort of invalidated pennsylvania and a couple other states biden wouldn't have had 270 which is the minimum threshold at which point you -- you throw it to the house of representatives and they vote in a strange way. they vote state by state, so california would count the same as montana and republicans had a majority in that scenario in which they could have voted to -- to name him president for a second term. >> you're dead right. the six steps tells you how serious they were which is why when this played out, mike pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done. that's what the president, then president trump wanted him to do because if you go through this, paul, you're exactly right. first, just try say there were seven states with dueling electors. seven states in which trump clown cars said they have you're own electors, never certified, not official, but tried to do it without 270 and if there's an objection say you need 20 and then just try to throw it into chaos. the vice president, according to the book and, you know, like trying to figure out can i do this? in the end he decided no but this got pretty far down the path. >> it also just reminds you how significant that letter that the vice president sent outlining that he was not going to do this, that he did not think it was legitimate to challenge the results of the election, how significant that was. i mean, it's dated, i looked at it this morning, january 6th. >> yeah. >> i mean, that is late in the game to make it official. now, you know, he may have come to that conclusion a little sooper, but it shows you just down to the wire how close we came. >> i was struck in the book where there's an excerpt of mike pence, a fellow reaching out to former vice president dan quayle seeking advice and if you look at that exchange interest does seem like the former vice president mike pence was really toiling with what to do and he was not necessarily as convinced in the early stages that there might not be a path out and he said to dan quayle you don't understand the predicament that i'm in and he said i ups. there's really no other option and you do see in the book. i was like covering this election, specifically covering joe biden for the democrats. reading excerpts of what is described in "peril" you understand how conflicted mike pence was and how really uncertain it felt from republicans that they potentially really thought there was a viable path which from the democrat side which sounded completely out of the realm of possibility, like it was not real legal path forward, you know. it's what most i would say americans thought. >> most americans thought the math was the math and the math was settled and the trump campaign had every right and every chance to go to court, to go to state election officials, they lost, they lost, they lost. they thought by this day that it was done and we learned from this memo and the book they went to the last hours and part of the effort detailed in the book is not having the vice president ready to follow these steps and throw the election into chaos and get allies in congress to keep raising allegations of fraud and to say there was fraud if you had to push come to shove and among those they reached out, mike lee, lindsey gram, in the end a trump ally, but not in the end. looked at the results and referring them to their own lawyers and then they come to the conclusion there's nothing here. this is mike least. you might as well make your case to queen elizabeth. congress can't do this, meaning there's no legal way to overturn the election or lindsey graham. this is his analysis of the fraud allegation, third grade. i can get an affidavit tomorrow saying the world is flat, but it's also clear, you know, they are saying, you know, bs, i'm being polite, that all of the analysis, all the way you tried to prove there was fraud, if you dig deep into it, there's no there there and yet trump believed it and the people around him either believed it or just convinced themselves they believed it. >> the fact that it went down so far and they tried so hard to get so many republicans on board actually, you know, we're going to see now in future elections if that has a impact. they have talked so much about fraud. what this does to the democracy and the people's belief in the election system and whether it's valid or not, you could see this potentially even hurting republicans, you know, if their base sits at home in future elections given how much they have talked about fraud and widespread allegations of fraud. >> that actually came up before the election. republican senators, you would ask them, should trump stop talking about how not secure the u.s. voting system is because republican voters might just stay home and republican leadership folks i was talking to were saying absolutely. this is not helping us turn out vote. >> the two georgia race, the two georgia races believed that rafael warnock and jon ossoff convinced enough republicans that my vote doesn't count and that's looking backwards. the key point. laurence tribe is the harvard scholar whose work is quoted in some of this memo. he says it is bastardized and cherry picked and taken out of context and said ludicrous and scare as hell. think 2024. he says this memo spins a totally fake web of law that no half decent lawyer, no wonder it couldn't fool mike pence, taking a shot at mike pence which is gratuitous. think 2024. that's why it's important that we dig as deeply as recan repeatedly when we learn new information about this because trump wants to come back. the same people continue to raise questions of the big lie. just the other day he sent a letter to georgia again saying, you know, you didn't count the votes right. >> the scenario on january 6th it is supposed to be an honorific day and it's hoity-toity. they get this thing done within 45 minutes usually and there's a script and the vice president is supposed to read from it. the doomsday scenario when i talked to democrats about that day as they were preparing for it is they didn't know what would happen if mike pence went off script. there's no role that day for the speaker of the house or the senate majority leader. they are just like any other member, and so if you look ahead four years from now, six years, eight years, what happens if somebody do what mike pence did. what happens if somebody bangs the gavel and declares so and so the winner, and there's not a lot of scenarios which congress has dealt with this to sort of set up a new process to make sure this doesn't happen again. >> it's a key point because pence ultimately, he seemed tormented about it but pence ultimately got to the right place. the main thing sheer pence should do this without asking for permission, that he should just try to take control of the process and go rogue, full. it's fascinating reporting. up next for us, the vice president's first reaction to this disturbing video. you see it right there. border patrol agents using aggressive tactics at the border. we're carvana, the company who invented car vending machines and buying a car 100% online. now we've created a brand-new way for you to sell your car. whether it's a year old or a few years old. we wanna buy your car. so go to carvana and enter your license plate answer a few questions. and our techno wizardry calculates your car's value and gives you a real offer in seconds. when you're ready, we'll come to you, pay you on the spot and pick up your car, that's it. so ditch the old way of selling your car, and say hello to the new way at carvana. 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what is it outside of policy for those agents on horseback to be so close to the my grants? >> homeland security alejandro mayorkas has repeatedly said he's going to let the investigation run its course and in the interim the custom and borders office of responsibility is looking into this and they are also on site to make sure that the behavior in check with border patrol policies but as you know, john, this is an evolving situation and this is also happening as we're learning that there are up to 30,000 haitians in colombia who may seek to come north. the hope is by ramping up repatriation flights, it will send a signal that the u.s. is not allowing haitians into the united states. in fact, one homeland security official tells me that haitians are returning to mexico, starting to go back to mexico which may help dwindth numbers under the bridge but a challenging and evolving situation nonetheless. >> when you say some are going back, that's i assume when they get word their option is go back or we'll put you on a flight to haiti where many of them have not lived for a decade. you look at these pictures here. you see on the side of the screen, so you have this homeland security secretary four repatriation flights scheduled today and 4,000-plus migrants have been used so far but you're subtracting 4,000 so far and you say there may be more coming, what's the longer term solution? >> that's the question the administration hasn't answered yet. what we have seen over the course of the last months is addressing the crisis after crisis, a number of migrants coming to the u.s.-mexico bothered and overwhelming the resources that the administration has to address them, so for now the answer is that they will send these haitian migrants back to hate despite them in large part not living there for many years and send a signal to those who may consider coming will not be released in the u.s. it's a politically fraught issue and senate majority leader chuck schumer said the administration should not be sending removal flights to haiti so the administration getting pushback from democrats. >> 26 governors say they want to meet with the president on what they believe to be a border crisis to talk about the issues. you say there are more come, and yet secretary mayorkas on capitol hill today was asked a question by the ranking republican member on homeland security and he said in his view the border is not open, that the border is closed. you look at the pictures and your eyes tell you something different. >> the message that they have been sending that it's closed and the reason why is because they have been relying on a trump-era policy known as title 42 that allows them to kick back migrants who come to the u.s. typically migrant families and adults, unaccompanied children are exempt from this so by using this authority they say the border is closed but what numbers show is a lot of migrant families are coming into the u.s. and being released and that's the mixed messaging being released on top of the mixed message willing. >> the vice president has a piece of this p.you heard her comments about the agents on horseback. she has a piece of this portfolio. she would argue it's not the border itself but she is supposed to be working on a better relationship with guatemala and other countries in the region to stop that migration. any evidence as yet that she's on the phone trying to help? >> the administration is sending resources to the central american countries, but, john what, this shows us it goes bell beyond that. these are haitians coming from south america, too. >> that is as complicated as it gets. grateful for the new reporting. this quick programming note. what would you do if at ten years old you were told you were kidnapped from the hospital as a baby. that's what happened to paul and the discovery sent him on a lifelong discovery of the truth. a new cnn film "the lost sons" explores this. up next, the january 6th insurrection is about to issue subpoenas for wednesday so who is on that list? thanks for coming. now when it comes to a financial plan this broker is your man. let's open your binders to page 188... uh carl, are there different planning options in here? options? plans we can build on our own, or with help from a financial consultant? like schwab does. uhhh... could we adjust our plan... ...yeah, like if we buy a new house? mmmm... and our son just started working. oh! do you offer a complimentary retirement plan for him? 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