senate failed to stand up for our democracy as dangerous new republican laws plainly designed to suppress and subvert voting rights proliferate in states across the country. we will explore every measure and use every tool to stand up for democracy. also ahead, a supreme loss for the former president. the high court giving a green light for the january 6th committee to get more than 700 pages of documents from the trump white house and the president laying out a roadmap nor the second year of his presidency. reflecting on the pro and cons of his first during a wide-ranging news conference. >> tomorrow will mark one year since i took office. it's been a year of challenges, but it's also been a year of enormous progress. >> the president taking questions from the white house press corps for nearly two hours and there is a lot to talk about. i want to bring in now cnn political commentator bakari sellers and charlie dent. can't wait to have this conversation. bakari, president biden defending his first year in office despite coming up short on some big promises. does it feel like we are seeing biden grapple with a political climate that is changing -- look, quite frankly, do you think finally he is starting to realize, hey, man, they don't want to work with you? >> you know, it's -- i am hard pressed to believe that the vice president for barack obama, you know, was somewhat naive in taking office believing that he was going to have this new brand of republican work with him. the obstruction that barack obama saw was unlike anything we've seen in american history. that still exists today. especially when you are talking about things like voting rights and you have 16 or so republicans who voted to reauthorize the voting rights act but won't come out of the shadows to do it today. one of the things that this president has done and you have to give him credit for is the covid relief package that he did in a bipartisan fashion. infrastructure that he did in a bipartisan fashion. but you're right. those big issues of voting rights, of criminal justice reform, climate change, build back better, the crux of his agenda and the promises he made have stalled and i think it has a lot to do with the fact that he had faith in republicans and he should never had that faith. >> i want you to listen to what president biden said about mitch mcconnell. >> the idea that mitch has been very clear. he would do anything to prevent biden from being a success. and i get on with mitch. i actually like mitch mcconnell. we like one another. but he has one straightforward objective. make sure that there is nothing i do that makes me look good in the mind, in his mind, with the public at large. and that's okay. i'm a big boy. i've been here before. >> okay. i would not have that particular attitude. so i would have a different energy about it. but he acknowledges, charlie, that mitch mcconnell is doing everything to stop his agenda and he says, i like mitch. that's as biden as it gets. do you think his strategy is changing? >> to be fair, mitch mcconnell did support the bipartisan infrastructure bill for which house members voted for that same bill and they are being threatened with punishment for doing it. so he actually did work with the administration on that infrastructure bill, which i would argue is the biden administration's greatest bipartisan victory. but, yeah, mitch mcconnell is the opposition leader and he is going to oppose where he can. i seem to think that the biden administration certainly overreached on the first covid bill. i thought it was too big and i think, again, they misread a mandate. they tried to do too much with build back better. they have opportunities. i think to do some things, to clean up some. election problems through the electoral count act and marry that with the voting rights act reauthorization. i think there is a potential to get somewhere. but mitch mcconnell is a sharp, shrewd guy. he plays ball when he has to, and he fights when he feels he has to. and i think they still can get some things done on this voting rights and electoral count act. why they are not having conversations right now on that subject. >> charlie, he did acknowledge that he has never seen a time when political -- the political coverage, the choice of what voters watch has had such an impact on what they believe. we're in this siloed environment. i talked about it at the beginning of the 10:00 hour here. everything -- how does biden cut through? he said he is going to get out and -- you know, get out of the white house, but how does he cut through, charlie ? >> how does he cut through? look, he's right. it's tough to cut through because people get information from the sources that reinforce their existing opinions or biases. bottom line is he has to make his case to the american people out of across the country and get picked up in local news and be out there. that's probably the best thing he can do at this juncture. but you're right, don. you either voted on the side -- that doesn't make you george wallace or bull connor. if you did not vote for the voting rights act back then, you were voting with those who agreed with connor. those who agreed with -- and so -- and i think mitch is a real good job of making it sound like i was attacking them. >> so, i mean, this is -- this is what i have been saying. it's an important distinction. how will these -- how do you think these votes will be remembered? >> i actually think joe biden was very clear and nuanced in his speech in atlanta. i think a lot of people don't give him credit for his nuance. what he was doing was channeling what the -- the same thing that martin luther king jr. said in his letter from the birmingham jail in which he talked about the fact that the largest impediment to the negros success was the white moderate. he called that a larger impediment thank than the white citizens council or the klu klux klan. he wasn't saying that the white moderate was burning crosses or lynching people like those individuals he was comparing them to. what he was saying was that they were in favor of preserving order over justice, which is kyrsten sinema and joe manchin. so when you are talking about these individuals, look, we are not saying that they are using dogs or water hose on black folk and negros in the south. we are saying their mindset to preserve order over having justice for people who look like me and you, don, puts them on the same side of the historical coin as individuals like george wallace and lester maddox. the fact that we can't have this elevated conversation with nuance in today's media landscape, et cetera, is purely sad. but that is the fact. and if you are going to vote against these bills, then you have to be comfortable in making your bed that you will be in bed with those individuals in history. >> thank you both. i appreciate it. voting rights legislation going down in defeat to defeat in the senate tonight. now democratic senator jeff merkley of oregon. senator, thank you for joining. i appreciate it. i know that you are disappointed. you fought hard for this. is that why it was important to democrats to have this vote and let the chips fall where they may even if it was defeated just to have it go down in history and to mark it in history? >> you know, you never know for sure where someone will end up until they have to call out their vote. and so by setting a date and doing it in the context of this week in which we are celebrating martin luther king's birthday, we were saying we will take a vote. it intensified the conversations hundredfold. we hoped that those intense conversations would lead to success tonight. they did not. i'm feeling very much the sentiment that martin luther king expressed when he said every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle. we're in the middle of that tough phase. i hope that when we go home now and hear from our constituents and they say, you know, this is a moment like it was in 1891 when the senate filibustered voting rights and it led to 75 years in which black americans were denied the ability to vote. this is a moment like that. you have to stand up to preserve the vision of our republic. and we'll come back and, hopefully, have those 50 votes. so we are not giving up. >> you were on the floor tonight talking in favor of the talking filibuster. that failed, too. and there was a moment when senator manchin asked if there could be a talking filibuster without a rules change. i just want to play the end of your exchange with him. watch this. >> i understand the way this rule reads now, sir, during which all amendments, motions and points of order are not in order and any appeals shall be determined without debate. no amendments whatsoever? >> and the vision, the vision of this -- >> that's the way -- what we're voting on right now. >> excuse me. go ahead. >> i'm saying that's what we are voting on right now. >> what we are voting on right now is to go to final passage with continuous debate and the majority leader's team has crafted this to ensure continuous debate. >> no amendments? no amendments? >> that would be -- had we gotten to the bill -- >> no amendment -- we never had amendments on the bill. no motions. >> explain what manchin wants here. we saw you talking with him earlier today speaking on voting rights. >> yes. so when we had previously tried to bring the bill to the floor we had offered to the republicans unlimited germane amendments. germane meaning directly involved in the contents of the bill. and the republicans said, we have no interest in amendments. and to be able to consider even a single amendment takes republican cooperation. you have to get 60 votes to close debate on an amendment. and so with the republicans saying they had no interest and no willingness to engage, the majority leader said in that situation, when it's impossible to consider amendments, we are going to go to the question of final passage of this bill, because that's the only option open to us. so that was the point. and once you're on final passage, then you can invoke a conversation that can take weeks or months. if every senator can speak twice and they speak an average of five hours each and there is 100 of us, that's 1,000 hours. the longest debate in senate history was 400 hours, 1964 civil rights act. in no way does this diminish the leverage of the minority, but it does say that in some eventuality, if we never reach consensus, never reach an agreement, never reach a compromise, ultimately we will get to the vision of the original senate that after hearing everyone there will be a vote and the path laid out by the greater number will triumph over the path of the lesser number. >> senator merkley, come back late and often. we appreciate having you on the program. i want to bring in derrick johnson, a president and ceo of the naacp. good evening to you. thank you for appearing on the program. voting legislation is virtually on life support right now. senate republicans unanimously voting against this bill. you have fought so hard for this. you had strong words tonight about what happened on capitol hill. talk to me about that. >> understand the voting rights act took three times before passage. the exercise we have seen tonight is only a part of the process. it's not over. it cannot be over. we cannot allow the american public to be let down and have limited access to voting. so i would encourage all of the members of the senate, all 100, because this is not about one party. this is about upholding our constitution, protecting the right to vote. more importantly, for all the people who have the flowery words is about martin luther king's legacy. when they go on recess and come back, naacp, all of our partners, we will continue to push for voting rights protections. it's the right thing to do to protect our democracy, to protect our constitution. >> earlier president biden was asked about a key constituency of his, and that's black voters. watch this. >> what do you say to these black voters who say that you do not have their backs as you promised on the campaign trail? >> i have had their back, but part of the problem is, as well, i have not been out in the community nearly enough. i have been here an awful lot. i find myself in a situation where i don't get a chance to look people in the eye because of both covid and things that are happening in washington. to be able to go out and do the things that i have always been able to do pretty well. connect with people. let them take a measure of my sincerity, a take a measure of who i am. >> is the white house doing all they can? is the president living up to his promises to black voters? what did you think of that and what he said? >> well, you know, what i'm focusing on voting rights, for us, we're looking for the outcome. and first of all, the senate must do their job. we were hoping this president with all of his senatorial experience was able to muster up the type of momentum to get us across the finish line. but again the voting rights act took three times to get passed. this administration, they did a good job with the covid recovery. we needed that. reverse the white supremacist behavior coming out of the white house. that was important. made the commitment to have the most diverse cabinet. delivered on that. ensured we had a robust, the most robust infrastructure package in history. that was absolutely necessary. but police reform is still outstanding. voting rights protection is outstanding. we have student loan debt crisis. but we are only one year into this administration. so the judgment of what they could have, would have done, i am an advocate for what needs to happen tomorrow and we look for this administration, this senate to step up for not only the african american community, but for our democracy. >> derrick johnson, thank you. i appreciate the book you have over your right shoulder there. it is sitting on my coffee table as well. naacp 2022. >> yeah, 20 -- >> yeah. i love that. thank you very much. i love that book. thank you, sir. >> thank you. >> i appreciate having you on. so we may know what the former president was fighting to keep under wraps and why the supreme court clearing the way for the release of more than 700 of his white house documents. we will talk about that next. sm, . -nice! thanks? 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>> well, don, what makes these documents so potentially important and powerful is that they are contemporaneous documents. this shows what people were doing, saying, thinking, reacting on january 6th. this is before they had the talking points in place. this is before the spin kicked in. this is before people had to start going down to mar-a-lago to kiss the ring. this is the unvarnished reaction on the spot. these documents can be telling whether it's prosecutors or in this case congressional investigators. these documents could be really key. >> what does that decision mean from the supreme court for the future of executive privilege? >> yeah, so, one of the interesting things about executive privilege is we don't know that much about it. historically, really there has been two eras we have learned about it. one richard nixon and the other is now because presidents tend to invoke executive privilege more when scandals strike. the lesson of today is there could be some right by a former president to invoke the privilege. but the supreme court said we don't need to address that. even if donald trump was in office right now, he would still lose on executive privilege because he has nothing on the merits. if you listen to the argument, i listened to the supreme court argument, the justices kept asking donald trump's lawyer, if you invoke the privilege, what's so special about this case? what is your objection? and all they had was, we just don't like it. and the justices were very unimpressed by that answer and you see that in the ruling. >> only justice clarence thomas said publicly, you know, that he would have supported the former president's request to block the documents. what does that tell but the rest of the court? >> well, it tells me, first of all, donald trump got absolutely annihilate throughout this process. he lost in the district court. 3-0 lost in the court of appeals. lost 8-1 today in the supreme court. it's 12-1. of those 12 justices that ruled against donald trump, five of them are republican appointees, conservative justices, three of them of course are donald trump's own nominated justices. it tells me this is an issue so clear cut it transcends politics and ideology. sometimes right is just right in the law. >> could all these documents lead to even more requests from the committee and more subpoenas to witnesses? >> absolutely. that's the nature of any investigation. one lead leads to another. that's why they're called leads. you pull on one thread, sometimes you can unravel the whole sweater. if they have these documents at this moment -- if i was on the committee i would have sent somebody to the archives at 6:30 when the documents came out. they will be going through them in the hours and days and you always have to follow up. >> thank you, sir. appreciate it. >> thanks, don. president biden expects russia will move into ukraine and giving a frank assessment of how the u.s. would respond to what he calls a minor incursion. now the white house is trying to clean up his comments. adding lysol laundry sanitizer kills 99.9% of bacteria detergent alone, can't. on fanduel sportsbook, new customers can bet 30-to-1 odds on any team in the playoffs. so you can make every catch feel like the catch of a lifetime. bet 30-to-1 odds on any team to win their playoff game. bet $5 to win $150. only on fanduel, america's number one sportsbook. how did olay top expensive creams? 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how will americans see that? >> it's an interesting question. in the afghan case, most americans said, if you believe the polls, we should get out of afghanistan. we are not going to make much further progress, but getting out was messy, and the president said today you can't be in afghanistan for 20 years and leave neatly, as much as he regretted the deaths. now, of course, if you look at his polling numbers, that's about when they started falling off, right, because of the way that seemed to be handled. in the case of russia, it's a little more complex because if putin goes in, he is going in in defiance of president biden's demands. and so i think it would probably be pretty incumbent on president biden to do everything in response that he has promised. financial sanctions, technology sanctions, helping an insurgency come along. and so at that moment everybody's got their reputation on the line. putin does and biden does. >> david, thank you. always a pleasure, sir. president biden says there is a lot of frustration and fatigue over covid but he is defending his response and promising to step up testing. my sleep number 360 smart bed tracks my circadian rhythm, average heart rate, and breathing rate so i know how well i'm sleeping. it's also temperature balancing so i stay cool. and it senses my movement and automatically adjusts to help keep me comfortable all night. sleep number takes care of the science so i can focus on other things. the sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now. only from sleep number. do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? 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yeah, we could have. with everything else going on, i don't view that as a mark of incompetence. >> so this as the white house announced today that they will distribute 400 million n95 masks to the public for free. joining me now cnn medical analyst dr. jonathan reiner. thank you for joining. the president saying he is satisfied with how his white house handled the coronavirus pandemic, but acknowledges that they could have done better with testing. but it's not a mark of incompetence. it does seem like a pretty big failure, though, do you agree with that, or no? >> i think i have been saying for months this administration should have sent tests out to every household in the united states. but what i think the president should have said today in response to that question is he should have said that no one could have predicted that fully 25% of americans would refuse to get vaccinated. 70 million people. and that they would then -- they would not vaccinate their children. >> listen, we are going into year three. it's hard to believe. just today, almost two years into this pandemic. the biden white house announcing they will be distributing 400 million n95 masks to the public for free. i mean, they are going to be available at local pharmacies and community health centers by early february. the free covid test ordering site went live as well. i mean, this is all helpful, but, you know, what took so long? >> i don't know what took so long. look, this administration put all of their eggs in the vaccination basket. you know, hoping that we could vaccinate the vast majority of this country by the middle of the summer, and we would have if the population had gone along with that. but that didn't happen. we also needed to do the other things that we know work, including getting effective masks to people. we have known since the beginning of this pandemic this is a respiratory virus and the more effective mask you use, the better protected you are. we have had for almost a year now these very accurate, easy to use rapid home tests that should have been in all of our homes, you know, this summer. so these are, i think, unfortunate mistakes. i am glad now that the administration is really on this in a big way and getting better masks to everyone will be important, and if you notice, the president wears an n95 or a kn95 mask in public. he models that behavior. i'd like them to acknowledge that the president actually wears a more effective mask and i think everyone should do that. they are not hard to wear. i wear them literally eight hours a day in the hospital. >> soon after the supreme court shot down the president's vaccine mandate for private businesses, starbucks is saying they will no longer make them mandatory for employees. general electric is abandoning it as a requirement as well. will this be a setback in the push to get people vaccinated if more employers back down on these mandates? >> yeah, i certainly think so. i think employers should take united airlines' lead. look what they did. they were maybe the first major united states corporation to mandate vaccines. and although they have, you know, currently about 3,000 people out with covid, they have zero people in the hospital. you know, they were averaging a death a week of employee. they haven't had a death in months now. that's a pro-employee company. that's a company that cares about the lives of their employees. so when you are mandating masks, you are telling your employees that you care about them. you are also telling your investors that you care about business and keeping your business open. i don't understand why the chamber of commerce isn't, you know, massively behind this. a mask -- a vaccine mandate is a pro-business initiative. >> thank you, dr. reiner. see you soon. >> have a good night. we have seen fights over mask mandates, efforts to ban critical race theory. now florida governor ron desantis is pushing a bill to shield white people from feeling discomfort when being taught about discrimination. a bill making its way through florida's legislature would bar people from feeling discomfort or guilt when teaching about racial discrimination in america. steve, good to see you. this would prohibit public schools and private businesses from making white people from feeling discomfort when being taught about discrimination. what does this mean? >> let me read you what the actual language of the bill is. an individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any form of psychological distress on account of his or her race. republicans say this does not prevent schools or workplaces from teaching about darker moments of history, like the holocaust or slavery or apartheid. but what they can't do is teach kids that certain races should be blamed or feel guilty for events that happened in the past. democrats say the bill is far more ambiguous than that, it will have a chilling effect, teachers will feel afraid to talk about race and racism in the classroom, and to talk about these kinds of points of history. and will have the impact of lessening or further lessening the black experience and the teaching of black history in our country. >> see, this comes after the governor first introduced the anti-critical race theory stop woke act in december, where he invoked the words of dr. martin luther king jr. listen to this. >> you think about what mlk stood for. he said he didn't want people judged on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. you listen to some of these people nowadays, they don't talk about that. no taxpayer dollars should be used to teach our kids to hate our country or to hate each other. >> it's clear he's playing to his base with this legislation, but with what impact, do you think? >> if you think back to what we saw in the virginia governor's race a few months ago, critical race theory was a big part of youngkin's campaign down the stretch. and i think a lot of republicans across the country took notice. this is certainly something that has rallied governor desantis' supporters, republicans here have pushed this bill in fund-raising memos and literature like that. and it's something that he talks about when he's speaking to not just a florida audience, but also on the national stage. and governor desantis is someone who is widely considered a future presidential candidate for his party. >> what is next? i have about 15 seconds here. where does it go next, this bill? >> it's right now in a senate committee. and it still has to get approval of both the house and the senate. but they're both controlled by republicans. there is an interesting division. desantis wanted parents to be able to sue if they see critical race theory, but that's not in the current legislation. >> thank you, steve. and thank you for watching, everyone. our coverage continues. new year, new start. and now comcast business is making it easy to get going with the ready. set. save. sale. get started with fast and reliable internet and voice for $64.99 a month with a 2-year price guarantee. it's easy... with flexible installation and backing from an expert team, 24/7. and for even more value, ask how to get up to a $500 prepaid card. get a great deal for your business with the ready. set. save. sale today. comcast business. powering possibilities. hello and a very warm welcome to our viewers joining us in the united states and right around the world. i'm isa soares in london and just ahead right here on "cnn newsroom." >> president biden bluntly predicting that russia will invade ukraine at least to some degree. >> there is going to be some kind of incursion, but it doesn't mean it's an outright invasion. all of them are bad. >> all eyes are on that area around ukraine with those russian troops amassing. >> it is going to be a