Virginias joe manchin, and new hampshires jean shaheen. Fewer people will get Stimulus Checks because of the intervention of Democratic Senators. Now, the absurd asymmetries of American Politics is in stark relief at the moment. This is joe bidens approval rating. 53 approval. Donald trump never got close to that. In fact, he never broke 50 approval. A new Morning Consult poll the rescue bill is still unbelievably popular. 77 of all voters and 59 of republicans said they supported the measure. In fact, when provided the partisan framing for the details of the proposal, 71 of voters including 53 of republicans still supported it. People like this bill. They love it. And they dont care who is responsible for it. One study shows bidens Rescue Package might be the most popular president ial action since 2017. There it is all by itself all the way over there on the right side of that chart. A big part of the reason joe biden was elected, of course, was to finally crush covid. And thanks to his administration, a lot of the covid outlook, especially vaccinations, is looking good. Its moving in the right direction. Of course, there is the issue of whether governors are going to mess it up by, say, opening all the businesses and removing the mask mandate way too early, something President Biden took issue with today. I hope everybody has realized by now these masks make a difference. We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way in which were able to get vaccines in peoples arms. Weve been able to move that all the way up to the earned of may to have enough for every american to get every adult american to get a shot. And the last thing the last thing we need is neanderthal thinking that in the meantime everything is fine, take off your mask. Forget it. It still matters. As President Biden pointed out, the public is on his side even the importance of masks, okay. Theyre on his side with covid. Often his side with masks. He has a good approval rating. He has a bill thats really, really popular. Its the kind of bill you live for if youre a politician. It fun to do good stuff when youre in the business of being a politician. Fox news programming is going allin on the culture wars instead of the biden agenda. Who gets appalled at a furry little doll . Cancel tornado is always looking for its next victim, and now its the muppets. It is outrageous and appalling. Do you think well have a Muppets Commission to look at this, will it be bipartisan . I love the muppets. I dont care if they told it in front of a confederate flag. Was it crossed wires or Major Corporate uturn when news broke the Company Hasbro was losing the mr. From m money. The box is going to say potato head . How am i going to know which one im getting it me . Why mr. And mrs. Potato head . Because its the end of an era. It is the end of freedom in america. The hits just keep coming. More cancellations may be ahead for dr. Seuss. It follows last weeks debacle when mr. And mrs. Potato head going gender neutral. I havent gotten past the assassination of mr. Potato head. That one i still havent gotten past, and now theyre trying to take out dr. Seuss. Come on, john. These are the icons i grew up with. Cancelling dr. Seuss isnt stupid. Its intentional. Theyre banning dr. Seuss, not because he was a racist, but precisely because he wasnt. I was going to go to the gym after this hit, but i dont have to now. Im already fired up. That is absurd. Youre telling me the actual priorities of the democrats is renaming a post office and now cancelling dr. Seuss . This week alone they canceled mr. Potato head. You know, this week alone they canceled the muppets. You know, theyre cancelling dr. Seuss from reading programs. I mean, these are books i literally know the cat and the hat without the book because i read it so many times to my children. These things are not racist. You have oreo cookie you guys keep talking about the nonexistent genitals of a potato. The president can go about his business and pass a bill without the flack of the right media. The poll will understand who needs it. Why on earth would you take steps to make it effective unless popular . Yet today that is exactly what some Senate Democrats were insisting on. The Washington Post described it this way. Under the plan for Stimulus Checks passed by the house, individuals earning up to 75,000 per year and couples making up to 150,000 per year would qualify for the full 1,400 payment. The size of the payments would then begin to scale down before zeroing out for individuals making 100,000 per year and couples making 200,000. Under the changes agreed to by the biden and Senate Democratic leadership, individuals earning 75,000 per year and couples making up to 150,000 a year would still receive the full 1,400 payment. However, the benefit would disappear for individuals earning more than 80,000 annually and couples earning more than 160,000. Around 12 million fewer adults and 5 million fewer kids would get the Stimulus Payments under the new biden Senate Compromise according to preliminary estimates. A lot of those adults are voters who will now get less in direct Cash Assistance from President Biden than they did from donald trump. Why would Democratic Senators like joe manchin, jean shaheen push for this to happen . Honestly, like cut joe manchin a ton of slack. The guy got reelected in West Virginia. A trumpian state of the union. Theyre going to frustrate and infuriate progressives. Explain this to me. Its not there is an obvious lobbying reason. Big donors dont want this to happen. There is no political reason. Its not a fraught issue like abortion or guns. Theres no group single mindedly making sure people who make 85,000 a year dont get a check during the pandemic. Who cares, who is opposing that . And on top of that, on top of all of this, keep in mind the big gains the Democratic Party made with College Educated voters, particularly suburbs, a lot of those people are the people making the amount that are now going to get shut out of Stimulus Checks. There is nothing more than a reflexive, almost neurotic compulsive to signal moderation by making things worse, both substantively and politically. I have personally watched this neurosis the 20 years or politics much of it has been banished and wrung out. But what on earth are you thinking . Adam mcghee is the board of color of change. What racism costs everyone and how we can prosper together. A staff writer at the atlantic has written extensively on the posttrump Administration Republican party. Both join me now. Heather, i want to reiterate my point about manchin. His calculus for West Virginia is different than safe seat member of the house, right . But this one, like the politics of this that someone somewhere is going to get some check they dont deserve, it just i dont get it. Its really baffling. I think what it comes down to, well probably hear more about this in the next 24 hours, is that there is something that needs to be done here in order to get this through the caps per committee for the absolutely arcane, totally counterproductive senate rules that we have. Right. And thats where it becomes clear that this Governing Majority is really hostile to the senate rules. Now, this is bad politics. Its not great stimulus. What we really need is cash out the door, as much as possible. You cant tell me people making that amount of money arent going to spend it right away or it wont go to pay down debt. This is not an Economic Policy justification. It is exactly as you said, knee jerk moderation, the desire to get something out of it. And the fact that, for whatever reason, joe manchin, maybe shaheen, maybe well hear who else might have been behind this, want to feel like they are exacting some kind of concessions. Right, right. For what is a bill thats popular with republicans. And americans are worried about the size of it . Im worried that its too small. Yeah, weve had polling on this. This is going to save maybe tens of billions of dollars off 1. 9 trillion bill. I am fascinated by the right now, and the way in which cancelling dr. Seuss and potato head and whoever has become a kind of heat sink for a rage that would otherwise be channel in far more destructive direction . Its like from my perspective, you know, they could be railing against the socialist stimulus all day or they could be railing like the people that want its like have at it with the dr. Seuss and mr. Potato head. What do you make that of . What do you make of the detachment from politics weve seen here . Well, i think a few Different Things are happening in the Republican Party right now. One is that the trump era left the Republican Party so kind of ideologically confused that the only thing that unites conservatives any more are these kind of Culture War Grievance issues, right. These kind of made for cable news, made for twitter skirmishes that dont have really anything about the big debates about size of government and deficit spending. Thats one thing thats happening. The second thing thats happening, as mentioned, the covid relief bill is very popular. You know, people are hurting. The crisis is ongoing. I think republican politicians in general understand that it would not be popular to kind of Go Out On A Limb to try to attack it. But the third is the thing i think is most interesting. I dont want to make any predictions here, i just want to keep an eye on it. The kind of shift away from paul ryanism to this small government deficit obsessed austerity politics. I think a lot of people, including myself, thought that that might just be an aberration. That might have been something that only existed during the trump era, right, because they wanted to let their president spend all the money he wented to. Im starting to wonder if that shift might be more permanent than we think. Thats something i want to keep an eye on. Thats a great point. Heather, what do you want to say . I do think these two things are more connected than they seem. In my book i make the link between the culture wars that are about racism, right, because thats what the dr. Seuss is. Its about this question of a move away from white male dominance of american culture, politics, power and the economy, signalling a threat for the zerosum world view that makes white voters reflexively become more conservative. Thats the only play they have left. It seems silly, but what theyre doing is saying, theyre coming for you. Theyre coming for your culture. The they in this is democrats, even though the democrats had nothing to do with the Seuss Estate Desire to stop selling these books that have racist imagery in them. Thats not the point. Theyve got the power now and theyre coming for you and your way of life. And what they know is that reflexively makes more white voters conservative and more conservative on fiscal, so i dont think youve seen the last of the fiscal scare mongering. I totally agree. But to followup on thats correct i thought your book, too, one of the things were seeing, right, is they cant get the blood up in their people about joe biden the way they could about barack obama, like were seeing that and the question is, why do you think that is . Why is it harder to get their bloods up, like why do you have to go i think, you know, i think race has a lot to do with it. I think we are seeing in some ways the fact that they are not attacking joe biden in the same way because it is not generating the level of visceral angst in their audience that everything barack obama did to their audience. You know, one of my favorite details that came out of the reporting on cpac this past week was the Washington Post where he was interviewing one of the people who sold kind of this merch to conservative cpac goers and said all the obama and clinton stuff was still selling well, but the biden stuff, they just couldnt move. There you go. They couldnt get the antibiden tshirts and pens to sell because my colleague adam serwer wrote at the atlantic, the republicans never really figured out how to make their message resonate when they were going up against a white man. That was kind of that was joe bidens super power in a lot of ways. And for better or worse, it worked. But i do think these broader issues that were talking about are still at play. There is also, heather, on this, sort of core questions in political economy. I agree people getting reflexively worried someone is getting something im not. It strikes me to mckays point, ron johnson, how you stack up a trillion dollars how tall it is. There is this reflexive austerity politics. What do you think about that . One, for a long time white Republican Voters have been more progressive on many economic issues, bread and butter economic issues, than the party that racial politics keeps forcing them to throw into power. So thats a tangible cost of racism to white voters who would actually like a higher minimum wage, would like stronger unions, would like higher taxes on the wealthy. But when faced with the choice of race in their mind theyve chosen race ever since the civil rights movement. Thats one piece of it. I think the other piece of it, though, is it is very clear to the american people, now 50 years into the inequality era, black, white and brown, the formula is not working. Right. And the broadly shared economic pain means that people want more from their government. Drained pool is no longer working for anybody. People should read your book which is excellent on this. The degree to which, mckay, you said the degree to which republicans are wrong footed on central questions of political economy is fascinating to me. I mean, here marco rubio speaks up not to attack the deficit but to attack them for cutting the checks, right . Yeah. Like, its not anywhere near rich in most american cities. They need to free up money in the fake covid bill, phasing out 1,400 checks. Your money is going somewhere else. The key here is people watching fox and the people voting for marco rubio are going to get the checks. And whomp the checks. Thats the core thing. That is what i found so interesting about the marco rubio tweet. Also when you watch conservative tv, conservative media these past couple weeks, the only republican criticism thats gaining traction on the right this minute right right now is the blue state bailout. The money is being unfairly directed toward blue states because theyre, you know, whatever, they have this whole argument we can set aside. Basically what i find so interesting about it is republicans are basically saying, we want that money. Theyre not even saying this money shouldnt be allotted. Were not saying that this money shouldnt be spent. If this was 2010, that would be where the argument was. Instead theyre saying give the money to our voters. Give them to our states. Yes. Mckay and heather, The Sum Of Us is a Rosetta Stone for our political moment. Should you check it out. Thank you both. One of the biggest questions still unanswered about the january 6th attack is why it took so long for reinforcements to show up. Well, today we heard damning new testimony from the chief of the d. C. National guard in which he said he was blocked from sending troops in, even as rioters were storming the capitol and assaulting police officers. His testimony is next. His testimony is next. Why choose proven quality sleep from sleep number . Because a good nights rest is where muscles recover, and our minds are restored. Introducing the new sleep number 360 smart bed. The only bed that effortlessly adjusts to both of you. Proven quality sleep, is lifechanging sleep. [ ] think you need to buy expensive skincare products to see dramatic results . Try olay skin care. Just one jar of microsculpting cream has the Hydrating Power of 5 jars of a prestige cream, which helps plump skin cells and visibly smooth wrinkles. While new olay retinol24. Provides visibly smoother, brighter skin. 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Hearing is continued in the senate today into the events surrounding the january 6 insurrection, and the stunning revolution of just how long it took to Deploy National Guard troops to help secure the capitol. According to the Major General William Walker who is the commanding general of the d. C. National guard, he first got an urgent request for help from Capitol Police at 1 49 p. M. That would have been while protesters were swarming the grounds, but before the capitol had been breached. General walker says he immediately notified the army and had the guard all ready to go, but but, but the army didnt actually approve sending in the guard until 5 08 p. M. , over three hours later. I thought the delay was unusual. Yes. And so we were already in support of the metropolitan Police Department. And when the metropolitan Police Department left the Traffic Control points, what i wanted to do was take those guards men and move them to the capitol immediately. Once the guard finally got approval, took them less than 20 minutes to reach the capitol and to help push the mosh out of the building. One of the senators who conducted that hearing today, senator Jacquie Rosen of nevada joins me now. Senator, do you feel like you have clarity now on the time line and or the source of the delay . Well, i want to thank you for having me on today, and i will tell you i do not feel like we have clarity. What i really feel that we have is a break down in communication and collaboration between so many agencies. Fbi, d. H. S. , of course, metropolitan Police Department, our National Guard and our Capitol Police. We knew there were threats. This wasnt the first time these groups have come to washington. And there seemed to be maybe not a break down of information, but a break down of how they communicated to each other, and how they let us know about the events and we surely were not prepared. We cant let this happen again. We have to do an investigation because lives were lost. One other thing. So, general walker, there is two points of general walkers testimony that stood out to me. One is the delay that he says he got in moving the National Guard. The other was that he said that often it will be the case that in a planned demonstration in this sort of part of d. C. , there will be a Quick Reaction force that will be ready to come in if there is civil unrest. You dont want to intimidate people expressing their First Amendment rights, but you want to keep that Quick Reaction force there in case things go sideways. He says that was blocked ahead he asked for such a force, and that was blocked ahead of this protest on january 6. Is that your understanding, and do we understand why . Well, i think thats why they are still doing the investigation, because we have to understand exactly what happened, exactly the time line, why and how, because this shouldnt be political. I dont want to go back and litigate what happened in the last administration. But we have to learn from it and we have to plan and prepare for the future. Like i said, lives were lost. There are lives forever changed here. The Capitol Police, they protect us. Those men and women every day. Some with permanent scars, physical scars, one lost an eye. Others have all kinds of things that have happened to them and, of course, the scars you dont see when they come back theyre suffering from the p. T. S. D. They called for help and no one came. No one came. The rest of us barricaded in our offices. The vicepresident barricaded in an office. No one came. We cant let this happen again. Okay. But not letting it happen again is connected to finding out what happened. I mean yes. I guess the answer is we dont know the answer why no one came, right . Correct. That is still not established i guess is what im hearing from you. Its not established. Were going to continue to press them and press them until we get the complete time line of events leading up to the 6th and on the 6th. And then when we have all of that, we can move forward, figuring out what we have to do to take care of problems that happened before, and certainly never letting them repeat again. In terms of repeating again, there has been some reporting about threats and communication of threats from march 4 which, of course is tomorrow. And its always hard to know how seriously we should take these. Of course, theres lots of chatter in lots of different places, but that said, Capitol Police is now increasing security upon the threat. It is aware and prepare of any threats towards the capitol members, capitol complex. There is a plot to breach the capitol by an unidentified Militia Group on march 4. The house sped up their voting process this evening to get out of that building. What do you make of all this . Well, i can tell you that im glad were being proactive. And what we have to realize, that theres always chatter on the internet, and the threat assessments must be complete. They must be robust. And im glad that we are moving forward on this one. But with that being said, we also cant live in fear. So we have to come to work tomorrow. Im going to come to work. We have a covid bill to pass. I have families in need of relief at home. We have vaccines to get out. I have schools to open. We have so many things, those direct stimulus payment, people call my office. They are in distress every day. I know people think of nevada as the las vegas strip. But honestly 99 of our businesses are Small Businesses supported by our tourism and hospitality industry. So im going to come to work tomorrow. I feel safe that the Capitol Police, the National Guard are still here. Theyre taking this seriously and im going to do the job everybody sent me here to do to take care of folks back at home who are hurting and they need the relief till we get covid in the rearview mirror. We put that beginning to put that behind us and move forward. Particularly important for the economic engine of the state you represent. Senator jackie rosen of nevada. Thank you for your time tonight. Thank you so much for having me. Coming up, what does it say about our Health Care System as Vaccination Rights go up, its fallen to the military to administer and even distribute the shots. Well talk about that next. That emulsions for 100 whiter teeth. Its highly active Peroxide Droplets swipe on in seconds. Better. Faster. 100 whiter teeth. Crestwhitesmile. Com these folks, they dont have time to go to the post office they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps. Com print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the services of the Post Office Plus ups only cheaper get our special tv offer a 4week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps. Com tv and never go to the post office again. Weapons down weapons down, dam it weapons down get those god darn weapons down. That was a moment in 2005 memorialize the spike lee special when lieutenant honore arrived in the aftermath of hurricane katrina. It felt like someone was in charge and things were going to work out. Now 16 years later, the longest period of sustained war in our nations history, here we are once again calling on the military to execute the masked mobilization to make things better. Thats because in a way the Biden Administration is treating the pandemic like a natural disaster. After signing Executive Order giving statements money and Operational Support for National Guard deployments, there are now over 400 federally supported Vaccination Centers across 40 states and u. S. Territories. The solution here is in some ways part of the problem, meaning, why do we have to depend on american troops to put shots in arms . Alex preen argues, the military is State Building in the u. S. After the nation gradually over a generation toppled its own government. Alex preen, a staff writer at The New Republic joins me now. Alex, i dont know if youve heard from people who have gone through these centers. I have talked to a bunch of them, but theyre sort of in awe, marveling at the logistical precision and how great these centers are that are run by active duty National Guard. It does seem to be working. Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah. And, you know, my piece is a critique of how we got to this point and not a critique of how the military is doing its job. And i know here in brooklyn, new york, where i am at Medgar Evers College which is a block from me, they are operating fantastically. I would compare it to the difficulty that we had, there would be long slow lines to get coronavirus tests early in the pandemic. And compared to that, im hearing nothing but rave reviews about how efficient things are going over here at medgar evers. Ive heard the same. It points to what you talk about in the piece. Why is american State Capacity in areas other than the military not that good, but is good in the military . We have not theres been no comparable disinvestment in the capacity of the military to carry out missions of operations of all kinds than there has been all these other elements of our government, right . There was, you know, the Reagan Administration did not go after military spending. No administration really does. We have always believed the government especially has always believed, well, we want the military to be capable of doing anything so we need to spend a lot of money on it. We havent applied that same thinking to our Health Care Infrastructure or our transportation or all these other things. In some ways, i mean, the first year of the pandemic revealed how under prepared and under funded the American Public Health Infrastructure was because there were other countries im thinking of south korea particularly that had a sort of Public Health system that was waiting to be mobilized for just this kind of outcome. And we just never really did. Absolutely. And i make this point in the piece i wrote, but the National Guard is and i think active duty, nonNational Guard active duty forces are helping with vaccines at Vaccination Sites elsewhere in the country. We are having a fairly good Vaccination Campaign thanks to the military. Other countries that are having great Vaccination Campaigns didnt need the military to do it. They had the Health Care Infrastructure to do it. Israel has been lauded for their Vaccination Effort for israeli citizens. They had their Health Care System do it. The same thing is true in the u. K. Which has outdone the rest of europe. They had the national Health System do it. Its really here in the u. S. Where basically joe biden came in and said, this is a big problem. Whats the arm of the government we have that can solve big problems . And he sort of you look at the laundry list. Its like, military, all right, National Guard, armed forces, where else are you going to look . Theres other aspect to this, too, which is weve got a weird thing between what the federal government can do and how it can spend money in times of distress and crisis, and what states can do. And we saw this during the last big crisis and we may see it now, which is that states have to balance their budget by law. They tend to during periods of Crisis Disinvest and cut. They cut firefighters. They cut teachers. They cut Public Health workers, sanitation, all those things. The federal government can borrow at essentially almost zero interest and run huge deficits so you sort of you rely on this federal capacity in these times of crisis because thats the place that you can escape the logic of austerity politics. Absolutely. You make an important point about federal spending. I also think i remember and i note this in the piece. I remember and you probably do, too, months and months ago when andrew cuomo was complaining about how dirty new york was getting and he said it seemed like a joke, but he said, ill send the National Guard in to clean up new york city. Like no one is picking up the trash. Ill send in the National Guard. I thought, well, if we just had department of Sanitation Cuts here in the city because of austerity, like Austerity Hitting immediately when the coronavirus hit the tax revenue of new york city, why not . If you have an army at your disposal that is not that does not have to follow the same budgetary rules as the department of sanitation, then sure, it doesnt really make sense to have them pickup the trash. But youre absolutely right. And there actually is the case, too, that the there have been efforts to get a sort of emergency Public Health force in action, that was in the original Affordable Care act. But Congress Just didnt really fund it correctly. So there have been ideas along these lines. It seems like an obvious especially after this past year, it seems like a nobrainer. Yeah, i think one of the big lessons here is like we dont think about broadscale social mobilization is a thing to think about or plan for or have, you know, a facility to do. But this year has taught us anything, its just how important that is. It can change everything whether you have that. Alex pareen, who wrote that piece in The New Republic. Thank you so much for your time. Of course, thank you. Coming up, remember Ronny Jackson trumps former doctor turned congressman . There is a scathing new report detailing what he was doing while working in the white house. Thats next. He white house. Thats next. The now departed 45th president of the United States is not exactly a model of healthy living. A notorious fast food aficionado. He didnt a book by two Washington Post reporters. The human body was like a battery. I fully love it. That is extremely not true, of course, for the record. Trump never released his full medical records in office and he was so eager to keep his medical history private that you might remember his former doctor, harold born stein, who declared donald trump would be the healthiest president of the United States. History said later trumps goons raided his office and took his medical records. When he got into office we were treated to surreal proclamations by trumps First White House doctor Ronny Jackson who in 2019 wanted us to believe trump was in incredible health. Wed get these 15, 16 hour days. The staff was spent. Out of everybody there, the president had more stamina and more energy than just about everybody there. Can you explain how a guy who eats mcdonalds and kentucky fried chicken, diet coke is as good a shape as you say hes in me . Its called genetics. I dont know. Some people have great genes. I told the president if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old. I dont know. He has incredible he has incredible genes, i just assume. If i didnt watch what i eat, i wouldnt have the cardiac and Overall Health that he has. Maybe his stamina comes from the fact he doesnt deplete his Natural Energy battery by exercising. Thought of that . Not long after that suspiciously glowing assessment, he nominated him to lead department of affairs. He withdrew, he handed out Prescription Pain Medication like candy and wrecked a Government Vehicle after getting drunk at a secret Service Going away party. Jackson denied those claims. Ronny jackson then ran for congress out of texas tying himself tightly to trump and winning a seat last year to serve in the u. S. House of representatives. After jacksons failed v. A. Nomination, the pentagon Inspector General initiated an investigation into his conduct in the white house. Today that i. G. Released that report, and its just absolutely scathing citing interviews with staff. Jackson drank alcohol, made sexual comments to subordinates and took ambien while working as white house physician. The watch dog found he mistreated subordinates and belittled them and humiliated them. He said it is a plot to tarnish him because he refused to turn his back on president trump. He was elected to congress out of a safe republican district. They have an incentive to go as farright to win the primary. There are those who can cheap the jacksons of the world out of office. They are being voted on in the house tonight. Thats next. Ats next. announcer back pain hurts, and its frustrating. You can spend thousands on drugs, doctors, devices, and mattresses, and still not get relief. Now theres aerotrainer by golo, the ergonomically correct Exercise Breakthrough that cradles your body so you can stretch and strengthen your core, relieve back pain, and tone your entire body. Since ive been using the aerotrainer, my back pain is gone. When youre stretching your lower back on there, there is no better feeling. announcer do pelvic tilts for perfect abs and to strengthen your back. Do planks for maximum core and total body conditioning. woman aerotrainer makes me want to work out. Look at me, it works 100 . announcer think itll break on you . 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You might think, well, that spells political doom for republicans. But they actually have a much easier route back to the majority than pursuing popular policies and winning over voters, just with the state governments in control, they can gerrymander themselves into power. Heres what i mean. Nbc news contributor Dave Wasserman who is a massive gerrymandering nerd, posted some maps explaining the situation in florida. Example, this is the current map of congressional districts in the state. 16 are held by republicans, 11 by democrats, right. Now, based on the census results, florida is poised to gain two new safe republican seats. But the republicancontrolled State Legislature which draws the new lines could be far more aggressive than that. Likely with the support of the rightleaning state supreme court, they could attempt to redraw those districts, gerrymandering them to net themselves eight seats. See that, costing democrats their entirety majority of the house in florida. There are multiple other states where they can do the same thing. In that case, why worry about democratic accountability or being popular . So what can be done about this . Well, there is a piece of legislation that is expected to pass the house tonight called the for the people act. It would require states to create nonpartisan independent commissions to decide how to redraw district lines every ten years, which is why it is one of the most urgent legislations in recent memory to essentially prevent republicans from bootstrapping their way to minority rule. Democratic congressman adam schiff of california joins me now. Congressman, i believe this vote is going to happen tonight. I hear a lot of democratic politicians talking about this in extremely urgent tones. Why . Well, i share that sense of urgency because if we dont address this effort to disenfranchise people by the enactment of various laws at the state level and now there are over 150 new proposals by republican legislatures to cut people off, particularly people of color, and you combine that with gerrymandered maps, youre looking at potentially another ten years of republican rule until demographics catch up with the gerrymander. That has been a pattern weve seen before where, after the gerrymander, republicans seize control, improvement control, and it takes years for demographics to overcome that or you need an election to overcome that. Chris, this is the very last moment we need to get this passed to reenfranchise people but to do away with politicians essentially choosing their voters instead of the other way around. We should say gerrymandering is a very old practice that we havent always had the level of ruthless Partisan Polarization we have now so it changes it. Nor have we had the sophistication with computers to finally grain the whole thing. Its on another level now. I wonder, i made a causal argument in the intro that being able to gerrymander yourself in the majority takes away the incentive to respond to the median voter on Something Like the covid package. As someone who works on that body in the house, does that scan to you . Absolutely, no question about it. I think this has been Mitch Mcconnells strategy really for the last two decades, which is the Republican Party is increasingly a Minority Party reflecting a smaller slice of america. So their only hope of maintaining power is to disenfranchise people or draw the lines in such a craven way that it doesnt allow for competition. They dont have to change their policies. They can continue to have backward regressive policies. They dont have to appeal to what their constituents want as long as they can essentially prohibit people from voting who wont vote for them and redraw districts or draw them such that one party really cant compete there. And this is exactly what theyre trying to do. I mean, the irony here, just to slightly push back on that, right, is that we just had the highest turnout election in american history. We saw states across the political spectrum due to covid expanding access to voting. We had more votes cast than ever and the republicans did just fine in the house. Its not like it was some death knell. They picked up a bunch much seats. I think they actually overstate theyre more worried of the voters than they almost need to be in a weird way. Well, im not sure that thats right. I understand the point that youre making, but, you know, they lost the senate. They lost the president ial election. And, look, we overcame those hurdles. Its not because they didnt try. They have been enacting voter restriction, you know, new voter i. D. Laws. They have been doing away with Polling Places in urban centers, a whole range of things. We overcame it and now theyre responding to the wins in places like georgia. The whole new raft of efforts to deter people from voting, make it harder for people to vote. They clearly feel that we overcame what theyve done, so theyre going to have to double down on those restrictive regressive backwardlooking policies. So heres the problem with all of these conversations. I always end up in the same terminus, annoyingly, and its a procedural one. Theres a 51 50 majority in the senate with vicepresident Kamala Harris presiding. This bill has to do with the budget. Not going to do with reconciliation, not going to get rid of the filibuster because there absolutely will not be ten republican votes. You and i both know that. So then what . Well, look, i would hope that we can make it a case that if its going to be one or two bills a year where they will not permit a filibuster because it would be so disabling to the country they would make an exception. Those that are holding out against doing away with the filibuster. But if not, then we need to find another way to use the leverage that we have with the majority of both houses and with the oval office to make sure this gets done, such that things the other party wants, theyre going to need to put an end to this kind of gerrymandering and this kind of disenfranchisement. Use the leverage we have, use the power that we have to perfect our democracy because at the end of the day, voting is the foundational right. Its the right on which Everything Else hinges. Our democracy took a heck of a body blow the last four years, but not just because of donald trump. Also because of these efforts to systematically disenfranchise people and make it impossible for them to vote. When i talk to democratic members of congress, particularly in the house, there is a sense a lot of them have, a lot of you have that there is this narrow window. Like the way the Partisan Polarization are functioning and this antidemocratic trends of the Republican Party thats radicalizing against democracy, and the institutions of the constitution that give them an advantage even if theyre getting 45 of the vote, mean that youve got this like two years to kind of like save american democracy. Do you think of it in that way . Well, i do think of it that way right now because if we dont address this gerrymander problem, then two years from now we will be dealing with Gerrymander Districts for the next decade. They could very well seal in republican rule for a decade. Minority republican rule with policies nonreflective of the country, unpopular with the country if theyre allowed to get away with it. So i do feel and its not even a twoyear window, its a oneyear window. Its got to get done in time for the new lines to be drawn, the new rules to be in effect for that midterm for that next election, midterm election. Yeah, i wonder how much there is unity of purpose among democrats across the ideological spectrum on that. What would you say . I would say its 100 support. Its why our bill hr1 because its so foundational. Its not the end of the story. In fact, i have a package of democracy reforms that address other abuses we saw over the last four years. But there is enormously strong support for ending the gerrymander, ending these efforts at voter supression. That is the all in for tonight. The Rachel Maddow show starts now. Im late. Ive never been all time in my life. All the more time for me to panic. I will never begrudge at you. Thank you, my friend. And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Where to begin tonight, seriously. This is like the bad old days again. Planning our coverage, planning what stories we were going to be covering, Booking Reporters and guests, getting things set up and kab lew y, tear it down, we had a whole new plan, we had to tear that one up, too. We havent had a night like this in a long time. This is turning out to be one of those nights. Theres lots of different places we could start. Lets start here. If you were a second grader, say, and you were trying to show for a class project that you had mastered a second gradelevel understanding of what corruption is, of what it means to be a crooked corrupt public official. What are the things you might conjure up graders level understanding of that concept is that, like, hypothetically, you might have a person in the government whose job in the government was that they were in charge of roadbuilding projects, right . That person could not also own part of a company that was the countrys biggest supplier of roadbuilding materials, right . If you were a second grader trying to show that you understood what corruption is, that would be like an almost oversimplified example of what it would mean to be corrupt. Being in charge of roadbuilding while also holding a personal financial stake in a company that does roadbuilding. That stands to