you're interested in a vaccine, how about this weekend instead? in one weekend they did a drive through mass vaccination clinic for more than 11,000 people. they did at the new hampshire motor speedway. nascar track, which is a place my brother-in-law paul is intimately familiar with. my brother-in-law loves nascar. loves it. he loves all kinds of car racing from formula one to drag racing. motorcycle stuff, everything. mostly he loves nascar. i'm convinced that's why my brother-in-law paul is vaccinated against covid-19. he heard they were doing this at the racetrack and he was like at the racetrack. yeah. the answer from him was yes please. i will get up early and get my vaccine there. the big news in our family is because paul decided he was going, susan's mom agreed she would go too. she would go with paul. susan's mom is in her 90s. she has a bull's eye on her in terms of vulnerability to this virus if she ever got it. we've been calling and calling and seriously stressed about the fact she did not have an appointment to get vaccinated into well into april. she got the call she could come this weekend instead because of the johnson & johnson shipment to new hampshire. susan's mom and my brother-in-law went together, stuck their arms out the car window and they're all done. 11,000-plus new hampshire residents fully vaccinated in one weekend at the nascar track. all with one-dose vaccine. all done. that is just one little snapshot of one little corner of the country that happened to intersect with my family and some of my greatest family covid concerns. something has clearly ticked over for us as a country. you'll remember last week on the show we reported the u.s. had finally hit a really big benchmark. the u.s. had finally hit 2 million vaccine shots administered in a single day. we talked about that last week. hit that record first time last week. on saturday, we shattered the record. we just hit 2 million last week, then saturday, we just hit 2.9 million shots in one day. absolutely fantastic. that was on the day the senate passed the covid relief bill as well. so we get this $1.9 trillion relief bill and 2.9 million vaccines administered that day. it's great day. that is more where we need to be. numbers can be alienating. particularly big numbers. man, does this have a personal effect on people. if you have been vaccinated, i haven't been vaccinated. i will as soon as it's my turn. if you have been vaccinated, if the people you are most worried about have been vaccinated, you know how it feels when they finally get their shots, right? it's like you didn't know what that stress had been doing to you until it's lifted. for me and susan, i know her mom is one that got the vaccine this weekend but susan and i were so happy and so elated by it. we felt like we were the ones on drugs. it's such a relief when somebody who you're very worried about, somebody who you love and know is in danger gets that protection, it's such a relief. it's just this very unfamiliar feeling of hope. one thing that's nice is that you can also see the effects of that in health care workers, in the doctors and nurses who are signing up for vaccination duty to give people their shots whether it is just the hours that they are doing shots at particular health care facility or a mass vaccination clinic, they are psyched. so happy to be able to do it. after a year of catastrophe for health workers and irresolvable, intractable illness and menace to themselves and so much death. here is something that they are now doing that just unequivocally good that people cry happily about when they finally get to their place in front of the line. today, the centers for disease control put out guidelines. we expected these late last week but they came out today. advising people who have been fully vaccinated what they can do now that they couldn't do before. among other things, if you can get vaccinated and the people you want to hang out with can also get vaccinated, you really can hang out with them together. at home without masks and without social distance. small groups of fully vaccinated people can be together in the home without taking precautions. that means without masks. if everybody is fully vaccinated that means yes to the poker foursome, mom and dad, that means yes to a hug. they're saying no in terms of unnecessary travel. getting vaccinated doesn't mean you can hop onto next flight to the place you most missed visiting. cdc says no change as well for vaccinated people in terms of still needs to wear mask and do social distancing when out in public. some things in your life will start to open up. let's talk about that. let's talk about that and much more with the director of the centers for disease control and prevention. cdc director dr. rochelle walensky here for interview. it's real privilege to have you here. thank you so much for taking the time. >> thanks for having me. always great to be with you. >> roughly 20% ish, of the country has one dose of the vaccine just under 10% of the country is fully vaccinated now. tell me about the bottom line of import of cdc guidelines about how life can change for people who are fully vaccinated. >> first, i just want to indicate the stories that you just told are the inspiring stories we're hearing every day. we're up to nearly 3 million people vaccinated a day and we have more and more supply of vaccine coming and we really just want to encourage people to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated when it's your turn. as you indicated, we're nearly 10% of the population vaccinated but that also means we have 90% of people not yet protected and we intend to take baby steps to make sure that people have hope, people who are vaccinated can be back with their loved ones in their homes and the privacy of their homes. while still being cautious because 90% of the the population is not quite there yet. >> in terms of the sort of how far the guidance went today for what people are vaccinated can do and what ways they still need to be cautious. talk to me a bit about the travel decision because it seems to me if fully vaccinated people are protected from becoming seriously ill themselves, they are protected getting sick enough they could die from covid. but still a slight chance they could infected with mild or asymptomatic infection, slight chance to maybe pass it on to somebody else. that understanding about what vaccines do. how does that map on the the guidance that people shouldn't travel? i think i expected that vaccinated people would be told it's okay to fly. >> this is the first initial step of our guidance. we do need to -- we will need to and will update the guidance as more as more people get vaccinated. we'll update it as we have information about how the dynamics are changing through the country over time. as we have more emerging evidence, here is what we know about travel. we know there's a lot of variants here in this country. some have brought in from travel. others have emanated from inside the country. we know after mass travel, after vacation, holidays, we see a surge in cases. we really want to make sure with 10% of people vaccinated that we're limiting travel. we're avoiding the upcoming surge just as we're trying to get more and more people vaccinated. >> when you said that this today at the white house when you said this was initial guidance and that you did expect that this may evolve, this may change over time. what you just reiterated here. what is the data that we're waiting for in terms of how this -- how advice to vaccinated people may change? is it that we don't necessarily know how the variants will be behave in various populations? is it we don't know enough yet about whether or not vaccines protect people from actually getting the virus and being able to transmit to others even if it doesn't make you, yourself, sick? >> that's right. we know from clinical trials that people who are vaccinated don't get severe disease. they don't hospitalized or die. we don't know they don't get disease at all, the breakthrough infections. when we have seen data from other countries, emerging data from israel, we have seen people can get infected once they get vaccinated. they tend to have a lower amount of virus. breakthrough infections, you tend to have a lower amount of virus than people who are unvaccinated. even so, those asymptomatic vaccinated people with a low amount of virus might still be able to give disease to somebody else. that's what we want to be able to see is that possible. can they still transmit disease because that does have implications for who they might be unmasked with and whether they are at high risk for disease. the other point is as you said. the more virus circulating, the more variants possible. those variants can emernl and diminish the effects of the vaccine. while we're vaccinating people, we really want to make sure there's less and less virus circulating that doesn't put our vaccine efficacy at risk. >> i feel like when those of us who aren't health care professionals talk about the vaccine and the variants, a lot of what we talk about is whether or not the variant strains of the virus are susceptible to the vaccine or whether or not they will defeat the vaccine in some way. it sounds like we should be thinking about it the other way too. we need to vaccinate as many people as fast as possible as really as suddenly as possible. we need a mass vaccination rate in part to prevent the emergence and circulation of the variants, is that fair? >> you are exactly right. we know that mutation -- the rna viruses mutate, and they mutate the more virus you have. the more virus out there and replicating in an individual person and in all of the society, the more likely that variants will emerge which is why we want to keep the case numbers down. we really want the keep the amount of virus down. that will keep the amount of mutations down. as we do that, those mutations won't emerge that put the risk of efficacy of our vaccines. >> that makes clear what we're in is race. it's the virus, specifically the mutating virus that we're racing against with our vaccination efforts. makes me happy we're speeding up efforts, it's 2.9 million and hoping we're going to increase that pace. dr. asheesh dr. ashish ja said he was hoping we could get up to 4 million doses a day. how fast do we need to go on our side of the race in order to out pace the mutating virus. dr. michael olsterholm said we're losing the race. he's predicting another big surge. saying that variants are transmitting fast enough our pace of vaccination isn't enough to stave off another big surge. how fast do we need to be going? what are you aiming at in terms of how fast the vaccination efforts need to get? >> i think we need to understand that march and april are critical periods here. we know they are more transmissible than the wild type virus. we have more and more vaccine coming. this is why we have said for the next couple of months, while we are scaling up vaccination as much as we can, as fast as we can, as much vaccine as we can, please, wear your mask. continue with the strategies and give us fighting chance of making sure we can get vaccine into people as soon as possible. and as individuals, when that vaccine is available to you, roll up your sleeve and get it so we can really be sure we are winning this race. >> just at psychological level, i will say something uncomfortable and annoying like mask wearing is easier, at least for me, to do. it's easier for me to take as a public health imperative and good citizen request if i know that i don't have to do it forever. being told, like, these next couple of months are critical. we can get there. the end is, at least, reasonably in sight. provided we push through and finish strong. i feel like that's motivating. people who are tired of it ought to feel like we're doing it for a reason and we get to a place where a lot of the measures can be relaxed safely because we have a low enough amount of virus circulating and high enough level of immunity that we're okay. >> i think you're exactly right. i would say, today to me was a really hopeful day. yes, it was baby steps. people can finally start seeing what a life without mask might look like. i can't tell you how many people texted me on my cell phone while i was giving the press conference to say you mean i can go see my mom again. those baby steps matter a lot. we can spend time with our loved ones again. >> now, at the same time, last week cdc released an mmwr that said, among other things, that mask mandates are associated with decreased transmission and decreased deaths from covid. it was fairly definitive result. then get news out of texas and mississippi, now wyoming, they are dropping mask mandates just as time you're saying are crucial finish strong last couple of months, they are dropping not only mask mandates but almost all, in texas, all the business restrictions designed to limit the transmission. do these states consult with cdc before they made these decisions? >> i was not aware of any consulting they did with us on these decisions. what i will say is every state, every governor has to make these decisions. i think our guidance has been pretty clear. i think science has been pretty clear. we are asking people to wear masks and i have said before and i'll say again, i do not wear mask because my governor tells me i need to. i wear mask because it protects me, my loved onces and my community. and because i want to be out of this. >> let me ask you about a policy thing that i can sort of see coming or anticipating is coming that is going to potentially be an interesting either point of conflict or opportunity here depending on how you look at it. if osha, which was sleepwalking, forgive me, for much of the trump administration on covid, in particular. if osha comes out with rules that say workplaces need to protect their employees by requiring masks from everybody on the premises. i don't know that osha will do that. i can definitely anticipate that as a possibility from this iteration of osha at this time in the pandemic. if that did happen, would that effectively create a federal mask mandate at all workplaces regardless of what's happening in individual states. if osha is requiring that for all workplaces, that would mean all restaurants, bars, anywhere anyone works, wouldn't it? >> yeah. i think we're going to have to take this based on where we are at a given period of time. i think we need to be wearing masks. i think it's the right thing to do to protect the public, to protect one another as we have more and more people vaccinated, as vaccinations become, vaccines become available all around the country for anybody who wants it. i think the calculus in that is all of this in who should be wearing masks and when will change. i look forward to the day we get to make those decisions because so many people are vaccinated. >> the last time you were here, we talked about teachers and cdc guidance about reopening schools safely, concerns among people, adults who work at schools, whether it's teachers, school bus drivers, janitors, counsellors, that whatever the cdc guidance is about how to safely reopen schools, they were concerned about not being vaccinated before that happened. dr. david kessler was here last week and said starting this week, march 8th, teachers and school staffers and school bus drivers and janitors and child care workers would be eligible for vaccines no matter their comorbidity. we saw this directive go out from hhs telling all states whatever is going on in terms of eligibility rules, by end of march we expect everybody who works in a school to have one dose of a vaccine. just wanted to ask you if this is live and active, if you think it's plausible everybody who works in school can get at least one dose by end of march? are you on track to make that happen? >> i'm really enthusiastic about this. advisory committee has said since before i came into the administration that teachers and educators and child care workers and front line workers should be vaccinated in 1b. that's with people over the age of 75. they're now 9,000 pharmacies in the federal pharmacy program that are distributing around 2 million doses of vaccine a week. yes, i believe that we can do this. we have about 5 million to 7 million educators that we need to vaccinate and about 36 states were already doing this before this program. yes, i believe this is doable. >> newly in states where teachers and school staffers and i stress this includes school bus drivers and people working the cafeteria. everybody who is a school staffer in any way. you're talking to people right now who are in states where they weren't previously eligible. they are now regardless of age or any comorbidities. do they need to go through this cdc's federal pharmacy program explainer in order to do this. do they still contact the state normally as if they are a newly eligible group even if they weren't before this month? >> that's going to be state by state situation. i can't speak on generalities. what i can say is that these -- through the federal pharmacy programs, teachers and educators should be able to access vaccine at every state. it's a high bar, we're trying to reach a lot of people in 28 days or 22 days. we're motivated. we have all hands on deck. we have tool kits to try to ensure that teachers can have access. we have stake holders. everybody involved to go full court press to try to make this happen by the end of the month. >> because the trump administration didn't publish reliable covid data, other people tried to pick up the slack. groups like the covid tracking project which did phenomenal public facing work. throughout the pandemic. they closed up shop due to expectation you'll be able to pick up the slack and cdc will become the authoritative source of data about the epidemic. not just for practitioners and experts but also for the general public because so many of us want to be tracking these things day-to-day. to be frank, as of right now, none of that information, hospitalization numbers, new case numbers, death numbers, vaccination numbers, none of that information is easy to find or well presented on the cdc's website right now, even as other people who are good in that space are leaving you can take up that room. what are the plans that you've got to improve that so the general public can go to cdc to get the best data on this pandemic again? >> data monitorization has been a huge effort with the cdc. this is something we are actively working on. we are relying on data from all states and territories and tribes to compile those data. the infrastructure and data was really thin, has been pretty frail for the last many years. not just because of -- not just during covid and we're actively working to ensure that we have more electronic case reporting, more laboratory reporting, and more reporting from all of these states. it's an active area of work. i really am looking forward to resources from the american rescue plan to help facilitate that. >> interesting. are there other things that are going to be newly possible for cdc because of the covid relief bill, because of the american rescue plan that haven't been possible until now? obviously, there's a big chunk of this plan that is -- of this bill that's targeted to improve the covid response. not just rolling out vaccine but everything else. what's in that bill that will make your job easier and the cdc more capable? >> there's so many component of that bill from vaccine rollout, vaccine education, engagement, testing. there are many things that are components of the american rescue plan that we will deeply rely on in the months and year ahead. i will say that the public health infrastructure of this country has really suffered over the last decade. 56,000 jobs have been lost in public health in the last decade. 180 in this last year alone. if we are going to build a public health infrastructure that is able to tackle issues such as h1n1. influenza, ebola, zika, we have all seen them in the last year as the public health infrastructure as been frail. and covid-19. we need a public health infrastructure. we need resources to pay for the work force. we need laboratories. we need epidemiologists. all of that is -- i'm looking forward to and data monitorization as you noted. all of that i'm looking forward to in the years ahead. >> one last question for you. for all the progress that we have made, we are still up nearly 60,000 new infections per day. i was interested to see dr. fauci briefed today on the white house on progress in experimental antivirals. how close do you think we are to effective anti-viral treatment so people who do get infected, tens of thousands of americans getting infected every day now. how close are we to something that will effectively be a cure for people who do get infected who do get sick? >> i think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact we made extraordinary progress in 14 months with this disease. we have three vaccines that are safe, effective. they have been proven in clinical trials. we have more work to do in therapeutics. new investigational drugs that dr. fauci talked about today. this virus will be with us for some period of time and i think we'll have some period of time to start working on further antivirals. we have them for inpatients. we have them at our iv. we need more potent therapies. >> dr. rochelle walensky, director of our nation's cdc, it is really an honor to have you here tonight. thank you very much for making the time. i don't know you don't have to do it. we're appreciative you do it when you can. >> thank you so much for having me. much more to get to. stay with us. ith us it was a life changing moment for me. i had no idea that my grandfather was a federal judge in guatemala. he was an advocate for the people... a voice for the voiceless. bring your family history to life like never before. get started for free at ancestry.com [ heavy breathing ] allergies with nasal congestion overwhelming you? 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protect us from being able to transmit the virus in addition to protecting us from getting sick but also as we get more information about the behavior of the variants of the virus, the mutated virus that sweeping the country. dr. walensky just told me the variants are quote increasingly transmissible, they are more transmissible than the original wild coronavirus. call to action for americans every age and risk level, wear your mask. give us a fighting chance to beat this thing an when it's your turn, roll up your sleeve and get the vaccine. calling this a hopeful day. in the foreseeable future, a lot of people will get to see their mom and dad or their grand kids or their elderly pals who they have been apart from. over the weekend of course the senate also passed the $1.9 trillion covid relief bill. critical funding for vaccine distribution. schools safely rope, state and local governments rental assistance and boosted unemployment so people who are out of work because of the pandemic don't end up on the street because of it. dr. walensky also told me, which is a surprise but i should have known this, will finally result in the cdc not having garbage data on covid as well. we're so used to cdc being the gold standard in terms of public health safety. their public facing data on the coronavirus from the beginning has been garbage. she said that's part of what the covid relief bill will fix. that's fantastic. when the senate finally passed the covid relief bill on saturday, you might have seen democratic senator brown told reporters this is the best day of my senate life. it really is. there's a lot going on and a lot of it is good. i don't even know how to deal with that. i don't know how to process that anymore. i don't have the right neurons. joining us to help is my friend chris hayes, the host of "all in" with chris hayes, and best all arounder general knowledge focused guy on where we are with covid and where we are as a country. you read more widely and have more of an interesting take on where we are in covid than anybody else that i know. >> thank you. >> because of that, i want to ask you how we deal with good news because i realize there's still a lot of bad news and i am clinging to that because that makes sense to me. it seems like what's happened over the past few day, 2.9 million doses in a day, $1.9 trillion covid relief bill on its way to passing. i can't process it. >> it is hard. to separate them out, on the covid side, i think you saw in the cdc director how hard it is to message this moment for precisely the reasons you talked about and she spoke about in the interview, which is that we really are -- we're world beaters right now in vaccination. we're near the top. we're probably the second best country in the world after israel. ashish jha said this, we're the best big country right now in vaccinations. the 2.9 million a day. we can get to 3 rolling average, we're doing a good job. there's really competency on display in way we haven't seen and at the same time it's spring, people are restless and there's this thaw feeling people have and the cdc doesn't want behavior getting out ahead of the virus. we've seen that happen before. it's a really fraught and difficult moment. i keep holding onto the fact like when you run the math, 30 million covid cases, probably the real number is like 3x of 90 million. we do 2.5 million a day, we're doing 15 million a week. pretty soon there's 230 million adults in america. pretty soon you just start getting to a point where like the math looks good for the first time. the math looking good has not happened yet. the math always looks bad. the math has been crushing for an entire year. we are at a point where there's a lot of ways in which the math is looking better and better. >> chris, given that, given we can try to live up to the challenge of keeping both of those things alive and in our heads and active at the same time, how do we think about this next couple of months as we steam toward the mass vaccination numbers that we think will make difference in terms of immunity and transmission getting into a good, positive stasis. if we're going to see big spikes in new transmission as states let up, as individual people get hopeful as we're starting to get towards the end of this, how much can we shoot ourselves in the foot now? >> a lot, unfortunately. one thing to think about is it's always been a case from the fatality perspective that massively disproportionate amounts have come from seniors and long term care facilities. you've done better reporting on this than anyone. your viewers know this. it's also the case those are the places where we're having the highest vaccination rates. i think, even if we got an outbreak, i have some hope that the vaccine should already be doing some of its protective job in keeping people protected and alive in way we wouldn't see the kind of death spikes. that said, i'm not a public health expert. i don't run the cdc. the one thing i keep thinking about is the outside/inside distinction still has not sunk into people. when you think about spring and spring break and people down -- don't, if you're a college student and you're listening and going to go on spring break and drink beers with someone outside, do it outside. don't go into a nightclub, for the love of god. there's an enormous difference between ventilated and nonventilated. outdoors and indoors. if there's one thing i hope to hammer home to people, in this spring period, as the country warms up and particularly parts of the country are getting quite warm and quite beautiful out, take it outside, take it outside, take it outside. >> chris, on the covid relief bill, we keep saying $1.9 trillion like that's title of it or like that's some easy moniker to understand. how big -- how big a legislative accomplishment do you think this is? i'm asking in part because i feel like you and steve benin on the "the rachel maddow show" staff are the two people who i go to first in terms of assessing democratic policy and its impact. and steve like hasn't stopped cavelliing. he thinks this bill is a big deal. are you on the that side in terms of assignment? >> the largest democratic legislative domestic policy bill of our life is the aca because of it sort of way it restructured markets and the fact it's survived attempts at repeal. in terms of direct aid to americans, expansion of the welfare state in this direct way, expansion of the child tax credit, there's never been anything on this scale in my time covering politics and more than that, i think the people, the reason you see steve so excited and paul on my show is it feels like we drove a stake through a certain kind of antiwelfare austerity politics that was incredibly powerful for four to five decades. from reagan's welfare queen to this bill, the good guys, for lack of a better word, won the ideological and political fight about what government can do when we're underutilizing our resources. in some ways it's the details of this bill and the fact it will cut child poverty in half, fact that adult dependents will get checks which is helpful for people. there's help for pension funds that were going to be in trouble, state and local vaccination. the kind of marketing of an era of transition to the politics of government support and investment to me is as significant as anything that i've seen in the time of covering politics. >> government actually being expected to help and doing so in a way that the meaningful and targeted to people who most need the help and the help getting there in a timely way. >> exactly. the fact they had no messaging. the idea there was a period of time they say just send people $1,400 checks, is that what you're going to do. that would have worked as an argument. have those people earned those checks? those politics have been blown out of the water. they got to tell you that joe is going to get a check. that's the top argument, that's how desperate they are to find an argument against this. >> that's right. not noting that prisoners received support from -- >> last time around. >> the trump bill that tom cotton supported. chris hayes, thank you for staying late to talk to me about this stuff tonight. i was hoping that you could. >> great pleasure. thanks. >> much more ahead tonight. stay with us. marie could only e enjoying freshly squeezed orange juice. now no fruit is forbidden. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? when i'm shaving down there not just any razor will do new venus for pubic hair and skin with a patented irritation defense bar for a smooth shave with blades that barely touch skin ♪ i'm my venus ♪♪ feel the clarity of non-drowsy claritin. and 24-hour relief from symptoms caused by over 200 indoor and outdoor allergens. try claritin cool mint chewabls for powerful allergy relief plus a cooling 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(doorbell) rock on. tonight i'll be eating lobster thermidor au gratin. really? sh-yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt. make it two calzones! this is a no-nonsense message from three. small business insurance usually forces you to piece together multiple policies. that's why three was created. it's one policy that covers everything you need... leaving those old policies in the dust. three. no nonsense. just common sense. small business insurance is usually so complicated, you need to be a lawyer to understand it. that's why three was created. if you own it, three covers it. got a cheese slice for “spokesperson?" that's me. i don't even need to see what's happening behind me to know it's covered. three. no nonsense. just common sense. in selma, alabama, yesterday people gathered for the 56th commemoration of bloody sunday, the day in 1965 when i know hens hundreds of civil rights protesters will -- they were trying to cross the edmond pettus bridge. they solemnly commemorated the anniversary for the first time in 56 years without congressman john lewis. not in the lead, congressman lewis passed away within the past year. as commemoration was under way, republican lawmakers in georgia were gearing up to pass a sweeping voter suppression bill that's called the most restrictive voter law since jim crow. today the republican controlled senate in georgia passed a series of voter suppression bills. the bills target everything. they restrict early voting and voting on election day and voting by mail. any way you want to vote, they have a way to take it away from you or make it harder. one of the new plan limits weekend voting in advance of an election which disproportionately affects black churches that hold souls to the polls. they want to ban volunteers from handing out food and water when voters are stuck in long lines on election day because heaven forbid people have food and water while they p stand on line for hours. can't have that. the voter restriction bills are so onerous and so obvious that even some republicans in georgia can't bring themselves to support them. georgia's lieutenant governor refused to preside over the passage. the bills are on track to pass out of both houses of the georgia legislature in some form. the fight isn't just happening at the georgia state house. businesses are increasingly starting to speak out about what's happening in georgia with this massive roll back of voter rights. a collection of black artists an athletes from around the country released this ad during the nba all-star weekend targeting georgia residents. the voice is lebron james. >> look what we did. look what we made happen. what our voices made possible. now look what they're trying to do to silence us. using every trick in the book in attacking democracy itself. they saw what we're capable of. they fear it. this isn't the time to put your feet up or to think hashtags and black squares is enough. for us, this was never about one election. it's always been more than a vote. it's a fight and it's just getting started. we've been ready. you with us? >> joining us now is stanley dunlap. reporter who covers state government for the georgia recorder. he's been following this effort to roll back georgia voting rights. thank you for making time to be here. >> thank you for inviting me. >> is this a foregone conclusion in georgia at this part or are enough republicans potentially getting cold feet here that despite their control of state government some of these things may not survive to final passage? >> that's the million dollar question. today was cross over day. it was the last chance for bills from one chamber to pass over to the other. in the senate what we saw today was sweeping bill that would eliminate the no excuse ballot law that's been in place since 2005. last year 1.3 million georgians used that to vote. that moves over the house. whether that will gain traction, will depend. house speaker, also a republican, has spoken out against that. we have seen the sweeping bill that moved through the house is over to the senate, it includes restrictions but does not go as far as eliminating no excuse absentee law. it will be interesting to see how this plays out once it gets into the house committees pretty soon. >> shall we read anything into that somewhat dramatic decision today when the lieutenant governor handed off the gavel and said he wouldn't preside over passing this legislation to rescind absentee voting access. should we read anything into that or was that a personal more than political matter? >> i think this is something that lieutenant governor has been one of the first republicans who spoke about against the widespread fraud claims after the election and said it's time to move past that. it's been a secure election. they called for changes that had some controversy from democrats as far as absentee id requirement that would replace the signature verification. i don't think it was a political game necessarily from duncan. i think this is something that's pretty well spoken out against. it's a show of it i'm not going to be here and have my name attached to this bill if it gets through. >> we are seeing black athletes and black artists and the business community, specifically in atlanta but perhaps more broadly in georgia starting to take an interest here, starting to make this a point of national discussion, trying to align themselves with the forces that are fighting against these voter rights rollbacks. is that having any effect, or how do you expect that to evolve as this all comes to a head? >> yeah, i think any time you have business communities, and sometimes people will call out celebrities who are trying to push their weight around to have influence, but that's definitely -- we saw major dollars that helped improve voter registration, helped get people out there, encouraging them to vote, so it does have significance. we saw the atlanta chamber put out a statement today saying repealing the no excuse serves make the process more secure and does so at great risk of participation. so i think when you have the georgia chamber, the atlanta chamber, big time company celebrities, all that weighing in, people who have influence that can make political donations and kind of wield great power, i do think they can have an impact down the line. >> stanley dunlap, reporter for the georgia recorder. it's a real pleasure having you here tonight, mr. dunlap. thank you very much. >> thank you. we'll be right back. stay with us. ay with us rrito from boca burritos right here in aurora. 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