optimizing for content that gets engage men, a reaction. what its own research is showing that could be tent that is hateful, divisive, that is polarizing, it's easier to transpire people to anger than it is the other emotions. >> misinformation, angry content is enticing to people. >> very enticing. >> and keeps them on the platform? >> yes. facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer people will send less time on the site, they will click on less ads and make less money. >> haguen says facebook understood the danger to the 2020 election so it turned on safety systems to reduce misinformation. but many of those changes, she says, were temporary. >> as soon as the election was over, they turned them back off, or they changed the settings back to what they were before to prioritize growth over safety. and that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me. >> facebook responded saying every day our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. we continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. to suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true. but haguen's allegations -- she didn't allege they collectly encourage bad content. neither did she say they do nothing. facebook sounds like a first grader responding to an insult not actually levelled at it. is it facebook when faced with choices between getting more eyeballs on its platform, more time spent on the platform or protecting society always chooses the eyeballs and the money. haguen appears to have rattled the social media giant which put out a memo over the weekend to try to get ahead of the accusations, specifically as they pertain to january 6th. it receipts in part, soeshl social media has had a big impact on society in recent years. facebook is often a place where much this debate plays out. but what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that facebook or social media more generally is the primary cause of polarization. again, haguen doesn't allege that facebook is the sole or even the primary source of polarization. in fact, the power of her testimony is in its specificity and in her good will to facebook, specifically to mark zuckerberg, who she calls mark. >> i have a lot of empathy for mark. mark has never set out to make a hateful platform. but he has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are that hateful polarizing content gets more distribution, more reach. >> specifically calls them side effects. now things could get really dicey for facebook this week on capitol hill where she's exempted to testify tomorrow. and detail in sworn testimony the role facebook played in amplifying the disinformation that led to the january 6th insurrection. her testimony, set to flesh out the picture that took shape on facebook ahead of the january 6th event. of course, that's also being examined by the house select committee, which is continuing its push forward. a new report in politico describes the committee's preparations for a standoff with trump ahead of a critical subpoena deadline this thursday for sfl of trump'sed a advisors. they report, each as it dig into what exactly happened and at whose bequest the select committee is prepared to slam into a wall of -- in the next days. for a panel that has worked briskly but methodically to gather records, the expected fight from trump is likely to be the first test of its legal and political muscle. pete aguilar warns, i think it would be a mistake to say that we aren't prepared for all of these eventualities. and bennie thompson stresses those who choose to defy their subpoenas can likely expect the face criminal referrals. the relentless push to get to the bottom of the january 6th attack is where we start today with some of our reporters and friends. claire mccaskill is here. also joining us from the department of homeland security miles taylor is here and currently msnbc's national security analysis, frank figluzzi is here. frank, let me start with you. i believe some of the court documents themselves list facebook places where people gathered and connected and sought information. why not just say we built frankenstein, we're sorry. we'll take it down and make sure it doesn't lead to an insurrection whose mission statement is to hang the sitting vice president? >> first, you are right. if you review the charging documents written by prosecutors in the january 6th cases over and over and over again you see references to social media either posting plans beforehand posting activity during or bragging about it afterwards. and there is a role there that has been played. it is significant. you are going the see it come forward in the trials of these people charged for january 6th. now, why isn't facebook completely owning up to it? look, first, it's ugly stuff if they say we helped do this really bad thing. they better have a way to fix it. and i don't believe they do yet, because it's highly complicated, and of course the bottom line comes into play. it's about profit. one of the solutions would have to be somehow decoupling the profit incentive from these algorithms that keep people driving down into these rabbit holes. it is as if you booked an exoccurring to climb a rock. a rock climbing excursion with a experienced guide and you fell down and almost had disaster with injury. and the next time you book that excursion they say you know what, the last time you were here you fell down and you got hurt. i think you might really like. so we are going to get you another excursion and make sure you fall down and get hurt. that's what happens on the algorithms. you went here, we are going to give you more of that. it is not enough to say it is dangerous, vie lenltd, a debunked conspiracy theory and it leads to really bad things happening. they haven't figured out how to do that and still make money. >> i believe they have figured it out. they just choose curtain number two. that's a personal opinion. i will read their statement on this topic. they might regret that i do this. this is from facebook. the growth of people or advertisers using facebook means nothing if our services aren't being used in ways that bring people closer to together. that's why we are investing so much in security that impacts our bottom line. protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits. to say we turn a blindside to paidback -- feedback ignores these investments. they brought them so close together that hundreds of them seeking to hang mike pence descended on the u.s. capitol. this is a personal opinion. i think facebook is the most maligned force in this country, other than crimes, criminal enterprises, drug dealers, gangs, are obviously more maligned than facebook. but of the things that aren't illegal or criminal, i think facebook is the most damaging influence in this country. to say we balanced, you know, the bottom line with keeping our people together is absolute hog wash. do you think they will be eaten up on capitol hill? or do you think this is still a blind spot? >> first, let's back the truck up a little bit. congress, when the internet began, decided they were going to make it the wild west. there was going to be literally no regulation. in fact went so far as to give all of these sites immunity from anything bad that is posted on their sites. now, fast forward. the internet has been an amazing economic engine in this country. but what all of these sites figured out is if they track you, they know what you want to buy. that monetizes it. for facebook and other sites if you are afraid or you are angry, you are going to hang out more. and there are no editors. this isn't like traditional media where things are fact checked by editors, and when you pick up the daily paper, the "washington post" or the st. louis post dispatch, you know somebody is checking to make sure the information is correct. it will be the wild west until congress steps up. because facebook going away, nicole, you don't think there is going to be another one that fills that space in a nanosecond? there will be another company that will come right behind it doing the same thing because that's the environment we have created on the internet, to reward fear and anger. so i say to the members of congress, quit stalling. get busy and regulate these companies. >> miles taylor, i want to play more from the whistle-blower on this specific point of they are -- they know how good they are at disseminating hate. i'm going to read it, actually. from facebook's internal research, haguen secretly copied a study this year that said in part, according to 60 minutes, we estimate that we may action as little as 3 to 5% of hate and about .6% of violence and incitement on facebook despite being the best in the world at it. what an alarming claim to fame. i wonder from your sort of existence at the department of homeland security and sort of having part of that responsibility of monitoring extremism here at home how prevalent you think facebook is. >> well, i will tell you not just that, nicole. but after i left dhs i went to work in big tech. i worked at google. it was fun. it was adult disneyland. you get free snacks. the tech sector is a great place to work. but what i saw in the broader industry is that there was a willful blindness to the damage that a lot of platforms were doing out there to our democracy. and facebook was front and center on that. i mean, i thought as facebook as the nightmare fuel of social division and of public safety concerns and of national security threats. so when i was at dhs, we flew out to the west coast probably once a quarter to go meet with these tech companies to talk about abuse of their platforms by terrorists, by nation states like russia that were engaging in foreign interference. it's not that they didn't want to do anything about it. it's just that they were exceptionally excruciatingly slow in doing anything because as you noted these were platforms built to make connections between people not to keep them from connecting. that's great when it is you recorrecting with nieces and aunts and uncles it is not great when you are helping child predators connector worse or equally as bad insurrectionist at the u.s. capitol. i think what is clear, there is damning evidence. the whistle-blower brought the receipts. she shows that facebook really tries to cover up these mistakes. i can tell you mark zuckerberg has more to worry about because i think there is going to be a waterfall of whistle-blowers following this one. there are others out there who feel the same way. i suspect we will hear from them in the days to come. >> are you working with some of them? how do you know that, miles? >> i can't answer that directly. but i knew a lot of folks that worked and currently work in that company. i think zuckerberg should be sweating it. this is not something that just one person at facebook felt. there were other people who felt the same way who may be looking to be out there as well. >> let me pick this guy one more time. if you can't answer, i understand. was the insurrection and facebook's role housing some of the content that is now mentioned in some. court filings making their way through the justice department criminal investigation, was that a factor as far as you understand of people reaching a point where they may want to speak out? >> yeah, look, i think so. i think there are going all the way as far back as before the 2016 election. i think in that time period you really started to see more facebookers expressing concerns about how the platform was being manipulated for political purposes. i certainly had that worry in government coming into 2016. i had seen how facebook let its algorithms about hijacked by foreign nation states to influence the outcome of an election. people forget brad par skou who later became trump's campaign manager went out and gave a public hat tip to facebook. i think he said something like they are one of the key reasons we won this election. that's because they allowed the campaign to do questionable things to target voters. of course as we know they allowed foreign nation states to manipulate their platform, which affected our democracy. i think there is more going to come out about that. i think there are a lot of disaffected facebookers who left the company for those reasons. >> frank, from a law enforcement perspective -- look, i think there are multiple reasons why facebook runs free, as claire said it is treated like the wild west. one is with all due respect to claire and i would carve her out of this sweeping generalization, there is not a lot of savvy sort of tech folks in the senate or in the house. but the other is that tech companies can screen out content. i think google took down terrorist instruction manuals. i believe multiple platforms have taken down -- they have a screen for child pornography. they know exactly how do remove offensive content. i don't think this is a tech problem. i think this is a problem of will. i think because it was one of the two political parties in this country associated with domestic violence extremism that they stood back. i wonder if you think that's changed now that you have christopher wright testifying almost a year straight that right wing domestic violence extremism is the singest greatest threat to this country. do you think that calculation shifts. >> i do know, as bad as all this sounds, to reference something that claire said earlier, it could be a whole lot worse if someone else were to come in behind facebook. so they have got anywhere between 20,000 and 40,000 employeesco who come to work every day at facebook under the rubric of safety and security. they report the low hanging facility, the easy child exploitation filter, the violent talk, i'm going to hurt this person. the plans to kidnap somebody. that goes right to law enforcement. they have got a neat way of doing that. they could do a whole lot more. i keep coming down to profit. they haven't figured out how to do it. journalism 101, if it bleeds, it leads. the adage about headlines on titles of newspapers and tv shows. it is the modern day version of that. people want negativity. they want to be panicked. afraid. they are coming after my kids. they are coming after christmas. right? and they keep going down those rabbit holes and we have got to kinds of decouple that from getting ad revenue. they haven't done that yet. i want to say a couple of things about bringing people together at facebook. i have got stories -- these have become public stories by the way. al qaeda people coming together because they simply got caught in an algorithm on facebook where they were watching the same beheading videos and violent surmons and the facebook algorithm said you guys are watching the same stuff, would you like to be friends? you are essentially creating terrorist cells on facebook. they have gotten much better at that. but it is nowhere near where it needs to be. if we are going to start stamp be down on the violence that's coming from people going down the rabbit hole of misinformation and disinformation and propaganda. at one point during the 2016 presidential election a quarter of a million people were following fake facebook accounts established by the russian government. >> claire, frank said something so important. i think it is a great place to turn this. if it bleeds, it leads. it is a tenet of local news. tragically people probably feel that it has some relevance on cable news. that's fair but we can't put anything on the air that isn't true or we are subject to litigation. newspaper reporters have to live by lie bell laws, we live by slander laws. why shouldn't facebook live by the same laws? >> that's a really good question. you know the interesting thing is because you referenced it earlier, there was a famous hearing, nicole, where the republicans -- where the chairman of the committee that had jurisdiction over the internet actually talked about the internet as a series of tubes. i remember famously a chairman of the same committee that i served on at one point saying to a witness who had a screen shot up on a projector saying, would you faction that to me? so we have a real problem with the ability of congress to keep up with the rapidity of the development of the internet and the tech that goes with it. i don't know how many members of congress really understand the algorithms that if my nephew starts looking at joe rogan all of a sudden he is sucked into this void, this black space with all that misinformation. i don't know if they know how to do it but they need to get busy and do it. libel and slander need to apply. they needed to remove 230 or change it significantly so there is not that blanket immunity which would never go into effect now if it had to start from scratch for blanket immunity from anything that goes on on their sites. >> the frustrating thing is now we know. at the beginning we thought grandparents would share pictures of grandchildren or their walks. now we know they disseminate dangerous information about politics. now we know they disseminate dangerous information about masks. now we know. why can't we, as a country, fix things than turn out differently than we had hoped because we are different than we thought? >> yeah, i think it's a bill challenge you face with these companies. i mean we know the problem's real. there is a lot of reticence to address it. i also want to address something that the senator just said about section 230. the companies will come back at those arguments for reform, and they will say, well, if the responsibility is on the people who use the platform, we create a place for them to communicate. we have to hold individuals accountable if they, you know, push for violence or engage. and to an extent that that's true, you know, i agree. but one of the problems with that is that these companies also go egregiously slow in providing that information to law enforcement. i mean, there are local police departments -- frank knows this -- all around the country who put in subpoenas, civil subpoenas forqs for instagram accounts or facebook accounts associated with individuals who are holding people hostage with nude photos or committing other criminal acts. and they are incredibly slow in getting that information out there. if those companies are going to say it is not on us, it is on the people using our platforms to do bad things then it is on them to get information to law enforcement more quickly. cases languish for months because the tech companies are too damn slow to say who the bad guys are. they need to devote resources to that if they are going to make a difference. >> frank, last word on the topic of bad guys. >> last word on what? >> miles was talking about where i think this hopefully will go, that there is an opportunity for facebook to help get the bad guys. talking about how bure accuratic and slow and frankly unhelpful they are. the platform might do itself some good if it finds itself in political hot water if they cooperate more with law enforcement. do you agree with that? >> no, i don't. this is going to come down to regulation. >> yeah. >> i don't. they are doing everything they can. they are cooperating to the best of their ability right now. 20,000 to 40,000 people who are coming to work every day doing security there. it is not a media organization. it is a public utility that cries out for regulation. if we could rate the safety and maintenance records of airlines in the government, we can certainly rate the maintenance and safety and accuracy and police cooperation levels of facebook. we need to do that. >> i am grateful that this was all sort of brought out and brought to the forefront. it's an incredible interview on 60 minutes. i encourage everybody to watch the whole thing. it is remarkable. miles taylor, thank you. claire sticks around. when we come back, more on the facebook whistle-blower's allegations. and what is expected to come out in her testimony tomorrow. congressman eric swalwell will be our guest. president biden today called out his former republican colleagues in the senate for playing russian roulette with the u.s. economy and implores them to get out of the way before he says they destroy the country any further. fighting words from the president. plus later in the show, it is being called a monumental upcoming session for the highly conservative united states supreme court. what's at stake after a weekend of warning cries from protesters, a lot of them women, all across this country. all those stories and more when "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. we are just getting started. ted. columbia, missouri. we do consulting, but we also write. [szasz] we take care of ourselves constantly; it's important. we walk three to five times a week, a couple miles at a time. - we've both been taking prevagen for a little more than 11 years now. after about 30 days of taking it, we noticed clarity that we didn't notice before. - it's still helping me. i still notice a difference. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. ♪darling, i, i can't get enough of your love babe♪ ♪girl, i don't know, i don't know,♪ ♪i don't know why i can't get enough of your love babe♪ ♪oh no, babe girl, if i could only make you see♪ ♪and make you understand♪ get a dozen double crunch shrimp for $1 with any steak entrée. only at applebee's. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. growing up in a little red house, on the edge of a forest. onlin norway,bee's. there were three things my family encouraged: kindness, honesty and hard work. over time, i've come to add a fourth: be curious. be curious about the world around us, and then go. go with an open heart, and you will find inspiration anew. viking. exploring the world in comfort. every day in business brings something new. so get the flexibility of the new mobile service designed for your small business. introducing comcast business mobile. you get the most reliable network with nationwide 5g included. and you can get unlimited data for just $30 per line per month when you get four lines or mix and match data options. available now for comcast business internet customers with no line-activation fees or term contract required. see if you can save by switching today. comcast business. powering possibilities. facebook has demonstrated they cannot act independently. facebook over and over again has shown it chooses profit over safety. it is subsidizing, paying for its profits with our safety. i am hoping that this will have had a big enough impact on the world that they get the fortitude and the motivation to actually go put those regulations into place. >> remember her name. that was frances haguen, a product manager at facebook turned whistle-blower urning the federal government to regulate facebook in light of repeated failures by the company to stem the tied of misinformation on its platforms and the harm it causes. she will be testifying in front of congress tomorrow in a hearing sure to spark a conversation about what if anything lawmakers are going to do about it. are they willing to regulate social media? a task made harder because one of -- eric swalwell joins us. claire is still with us. congressman, i thought of you when i read this. i thought years ago you could have put most of this vladimir putin in 2016 for spreading disinformation. now we seem to do it all by ourselves and i am wondering if you have new questions, a new view on facebook in light this whistle-blower testimony? >> yes, nicole. it's like the lincoln quote that essentially america will never be defeated by an enemy from abroad. but we can only be defeated from within. and the fact that we continue to see hate speech and misinformation across social media platforms that are tearing families and tearing fellow citizens apart shows we are not doing enough. it couldn't agree with the senator more that if we were to go after solely facebook that is not going to solve the problem. we need something larger. i would call it a digital convention to rewrite and reexamine privacy, data security, algorithm laws to make sure that we can protect consumers and they can still be connected in that new digital environment. >> i want to play something that this whistle-blower said about the company's knowledge of the harm it does n this case to teen girls who use instagram. >> one of the facebook internal studies that you found talks about how instagram harms teenage girls. >> oh, yeah. >> one study says 13.5% of teen girls say instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse. 17% of teen girls say instagram makes eating disorders worse. >> what is super traj sick facebook's own research says -- tragic is facebook's own research says as these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content they get more and more depressed and it make them use the app more. so they end up in the foreheadback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more. facebook's own research says it is not just that instagram is dangerous for teenagers, that it harms teenagers. it's that it is distinctly worse than other forms of social media. >> every other regulatory body -- there were i think half a dozen cases of this side effect with the vaccine, and there were months and months of further examinations. this is 13.5% of teen girls who say this product that you guys don't regulate make thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls say this product makes eating disorders worse. why is it still up and running? i don't understand why this threat that we all know about is allowed to carry on doing the harm that it does. help me understand that. >> it needs to be regulated. as the father of a 2-year-old little princess, i do fear that if we don't get this right, that number is going to go dramatically up. and it's very hard for parents to keep their kids away from social media once, you know, this effect of everyone else around them is on it and on the platforms. then you put your kid in a position where they are alienated. but if you allow them to go into the shark tank, so to speak, then you can have the effect of what was just described in that interview. so we have to get this right. what i am encouraged by, nicole is that in the 2018 mid terms where we flipped the house we elected 29 new members of congress this their 40s and under. >> yeah. >> we have a body now. that's just on the democratic side who understands how the algorithms work, who are parents of young children and understand the effects of social media. it's really on us, i think as the next generation in congress to step up and lead as we see the harmful effects. >> could you see a scenario, congressman, where facebook and other platforms are treated like big tobacco, with warnings, more regulation, other measures? >> well, i see a scenario where, again -- have a digital convention. have regular reporting requirements. have better awareness to the parents and the consumers. so, yes, more warnings about the risks if you do follow these algorithms or if you do not opt out of a lot of what you are automatically opted into. i think more transparency and more information is always better. right now we are in the midst of a pandemic where 700,000 americans have died and the misinformation across these platform is making it worse. i would like to see leaders condemn the hate speech, the misinformation. every second that mccarthy is quiet and doesn't condemn it he gives the posters a permissive operating environment. it is on all of us to condemn hate speech and misinformation. not just on the platforms itself. >> claire, there was reporting from new york magazine about peter thiel. in 2019 while on a trip to washington to answer questions from congress about his digital currency, teal joined mark zuckerberg, jared kushner, donald trump, and their spouses at the white house. thiel later told a confidante that zuckerberg came to an understanding with kushner during the meal. facebook, he promised would continue to avoid fact checking political speech thus allowing the trump campaign to claim whatever it wanted. if the expect followed through on that promise the trump administration would layoff on any heavy-handed regulations. after the din e zuckerberg took an offhand approach to conservative sites. should congress lurn learn more from all these people to find out if there was some sort of deal struck that -- knowing now what happened, the deadly insurrection, should we understand what this deal was about, if it's the real thing? >> well, is it likely that we ever would? probably not. because this is going to be a private conversation among these folks ask. they are all going to characterize it differently. and i think it would be hard. i am looking at this just from a pure, is there legally something here that either congress or law enforcement could get their hands around? i don't think there is. make no mistake. if you want to look where a lot of the dark money comes from in some extreme campaigns i know peter thiel was a josh hawley sporter, jd vance supporter in ohio and writing checks that most americans could only dream of having to move extreme folks into political positions. but what i wanted to make one comment on, nicole, as we talk about the harm of instagram. i'm older than dirt. but i am trying to remember what it would have felt like, you know, in junior high, when it was so hard as a young girl, where popularity became a suffocating thing that you wanted so badly. and to be accepted. and to be liked. can you imagine that when i was a kid if everybody showed up to school every day with a sign around their neck how many people liked them? you know, one girl would have a sign that said, you know, 2,000 people like me. and then there would be a poor girl that has a sign that says 12 people like me. that's what instagram does. it gives this ability of people to judge themselves based on how they appear many times not right, not accurately, on this platform. and to have that be so prevalent at such a formative time when young girls are so -- it's so hard anyway. it just is heart breaking to me that they have not figured out at instagram how to address this and how to make sure that these young girls are not being driven into isolation and to suicidal thoughts. >> i mean, claire, let me just follow up. i mean, for a lot of women that goes on well beyond these ages. to have something that you know does harm and continue to sell ads on it -- to not take it off the market. i am sure you could make a four barrel cigarette. i have seen people with multiple cigarettes in their mouths they don't sell them because you would get lung cancer faster. why is it all based on the bottom line. why can't facebook say instagram does more harm than good for girls under 18. we are going to cut it? >> i believe this would happen. i am not trying to carry water for instagram but if they went away another one would pop up behind them. and they would immediately try to use whatever platforms they could because this is such a money maker. and we are in a capitalistic country. until you regulate it like a utility, until you put warnings on, until you hold people accountable for lies and slander and libel, i think you are going to have a real problem preventing this kind of thing going forward regardless of what peter thiel and jarrod kushner talked about at the white house. >> i want to give you a question on the intersection. the select committee investigating the insurrection and the testimony which i only heard from the basketballer in the 60 minutes interview. it is extraordinary. do you think she should testify before january 6th committee? do you think facebook understanding what was discussed on their platform is relevant? >> from the chairman's perspective, it seems there is an interest into what role social media played. she sounds like a relevant witness. i will leave to it the chairman. but we know that donald trump send over 50 million dollars 5-0, $50 million from ms.-december until january 5th on stop the steal ads just on social media. so it was a call to action for a violent mob to be aimed at the capitol. to me, yes, it sounds like we need to know what the role was. because otherwise going into future big political events or if donald trump loses another political election, the same circumstances exist if we do nothing to allow an even more deadly and perhaps effective coup of our government. >> congressman eric swalwell, thank you for spending time with us today on this. claire is sticking around. president biden is warning all americans today that if the economy craters, the blame should fall squarely into the lap of one mitch mcconnell and his republican caucus. the very latest on gone inaction and obstruction is next. thinkorswim trading equips you with customizable tools, dedicated trade desk pros, and a passionate trader community sharing strategies right on the platform. because we take trading as seriously as you do. thinkorswim trading™ from td ameritrade. alright. y'all know when they say your home because we take trading as seriously as you do. is a reflection of you? 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[woof] i'm telling y'all there's no place like wayfair to make your home totally you. ooh! i want that. i've always dreamed of seeing the world. but i'm not chasing my dream anymore. i made a financial plan to live it every day. ♪ ♪ find a northwestern mutual advisor at nm.com let's be clear, not only are republicans refusing to do their job, they are threatening to use their power to prevent us from doing our job, saving the economy from a catastrophic event. i think, quite frankly, it's hypocritical, dangerous and disgraceful. the immediate end is a crash of our economy. democrats are attempting to do all the work stopping it. republicans have to let us do our job. just get out of the way. if you don't want to help save the country, get out of the way so you don't destroy it. >> it's becoming a theme. in other words the president to republicans, knock it off, president biden pleading with the obstructionist gop today to do the bear minimum, come to the table, help congress address the debt ceiling before it is too late. if that moment when the debt ceiling, the meteor crashes into our country is just a week away. what do you think happened? today majority leader chuck schumer said his goal is to get his bill a solution to the problem, on the president's desk by the end of the week. the response from his republican counterpart, mitch mcconnell, essentially, to democrats, go it alone. we are not helping. hmm. joining us, bass ill smikal, democratic strategist and director the public policy room at the roosevelt house. claire is with us as well. not surprising but still destabilizing and frightening. >> absolutely right. i tell you, i like the joe biden that we are seeing that's a bit more on offense. i like the fact that he's taking it right to republicans and that he is making trips not just to capitol hill last week, but michigan and hopefully across the country to sell, you know, the democrats' agenda. it's really important because, you know, as we get caught up in numbers and process, you know, the voters don't want us to -- want to hear us keep saying, you know, we want republicans to come back to the table. they just want us to go do what we have to do. that's why we were elected, why we have the majorities. because they want the democrats, while we are in power, to be able to put our agenda on the table and not get caught up in process. >> yeah. >> you know, you had reverend sharpton on the show last week talking about, you know, talking about what the agenda is, and what americans can get from it. it's true. the political brain is an emotional brain. and we have to come into this fight with a lot more emotion than i think we have been seeing from the administration. but i hope it comes in the next few weeks. >> i mean, basil, i want to get at something that you are edging toward. i just want to go there. i think that the voters don't want to see the table, they don't want to go to the table with you. they just want to know that folks are at the table and stuff is getting done. i think there is something so deplorable about mitch mcconnell's willingness to make everything political, everything, including defacing credit in this country. that's who he is. i think at some point when people show you who they are again and again and again voters, especially democratic voters want you to believe them and want you to play a tough game right back. do you think that is what you saw from the president? do you think it signals a sort of hard ball approach to this republican party? >> i think we are getting there. i think the signs of joe biden being that person, being that president, are there. i think he just needs to execute it of that's what the voters are waiting for. look, i understand the progressive versus moderate conversation. i understand, perhaps, joe biden wants to maintain a friendship or a relationship with manchin because of the slim majority that is there in the senate. but ultimately, you cannot go back to voters in another year or in less than year and say, hey, we saved you a little money, we didn't spend what we thought we would but we actually don't have anything to show for it. that is a worse scenario for us. so i hope that he does -- i hope that this is ana sign of an increased amount of emotion and passion from this administration and from our surrogates, frankly, across the country to push this agenda? claire, i also -- i don't think it is a clear-cut political win for republicans to be on the side of shutting down the government. how do you see this? >> first of all, it is much worse than shutting down the government. it is -- shutting down the government is something that's kind of inside washington baseball where who is going get laid off, who is not going to get paid, how long will it be before they get their back pay. this is different. and here's what mitch mcconnell is beth on. he's betting that most americans will never understand that this is about paying the bills for money that's already been spent. he's counting on them not understanding -- because it sounds like you are raising the limit on your credit card so you can spend more. he's counting on americans to not know who to blame and not really understand that this is just about being good to our word. this is about america not being a deadbeat. so what has to happen here is joe biden has to talk about this around the clock. chuck schumer has to talk about it. all the democratic senators have to talk about it. what mitch mcconnell is doing is, in fact, politically crazy if americans know what he's actually doing. he's counting on the fact that they won't understand it. >> it's an amazingly important pointe-claire mccasse sill. we will put you on the higher court coming back. i think he is also counting on it being an inside conversation happening along with this other messy stuff. you make perfect points, both of you. basil thank you for being part this conversation. claire comes back at the beginning of the next hour. after the break, talk about time for choosing of a handful of nba superstars. golden state's wiggins was publicly skeptical about the covid vaccine. but faced with the prospect of not playing home games without the vaccine he changed his mind. he wants to get paid. and good news on the covid front for a change. the covid front for a change what the world needs now... is people. people who see energy a little bit differently. where a switch to cleaner power means a more resilient grid... ...with renewables and gas power providing energy whenever it's needed. because seeing a more sustainable world isn't far in the future. we're building it... now. ge. building a world that works. ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ there are beautiful ideas that remain in the dark. but with our new multi-cloud experience, you have the flexibility you need to unveil them to the world. ♪ ♪ i'm a reporter for the new york times. if you just hold it like this. yeah. ♪ i love finding out things that other people don't want me to know. mm-hmm. [beep] i just wanted to say... ♪ find yourself in these situations and see who you are. and that's just part of the bargain. ♪ (vo) at t-mobile for business, unconventional thinking means we see st part things differently, so you can focus on what matters most. whether it's ensuring food arrives as fresh as when it departs. being first on the scene, when every second counts. or teaching biology without a lab. we are the leader in 5g. #1 in customer satisfaction. and a partner who includes 5g in every plan, so you get it all. without trade-offs. unconventional thinking. it's better for business. you're driving innovation. you're racing to the cloud. you need to do it securely. that's why palo alto networks developed prisma cloud - an integrated platform that secures your cloud environment end to end. used by the world's largest organizations, prisma cloud provides the cyber security you need from code to cloud. so you can get cloud security right, the first time around. we've got next. andrew got vaccinated. he just told me today that he was fine with us acknowledging it, and that'll be the end of it. >> that was golden state warriors coach steve kerr telling reporters there yesterday that hesitant nba star andrew wiggins has been vaccinated against covid and now he meets california's vaccine mandate for large indoor events that would have barred him from playing home games if he hadn't. adding to the league's impressive 95% player vaccination rate. it comes as "the new york times's" david writes about the virus in retreat, citing vaccinations, cases, hospitalizations, deaths all down for weeks. even natural immunity, for better or worse. all of it, he says, puts the worst of the pandemic right behind us. he writes, eventually immunity will become widespread enough that another wave as large and damaging as the delta wave will not happen. joining our conversation, msnbc medical contributor dr. vin gupta, a pul pulmonologist and global health policy expert. do you agree? are we done? >> good afternoon, nicole. i think we're over certainly past the worst of the fourth surge. do i think we're done when it comes to losing 1,500 americans day over day for the next several weeks? no. so i think it depends on what our definition of done is. we're still expecting an additional 100,000 americans did by the beginning of the new year. that number could be worse, based on what plays out over the course of the next few months. we're entering cold and flu season so there's many threats over the next four to five months. we have to be vigilant regarding flu, respiratory virus, so there's a lot of things here we need to still remain vigilant on. >> i want to put up the vaccine data. we spent a lot of time on the vaccine hesitant and the straight-up anti-vaxxers, but this feels like a number worth celebrating. 77.6% of all eligible adults in the u.s. have received at least one dose. is the number still 85% that folks feel like we need to reach, or have the infections been so vast and so tragic and so sweeping that we may be inching towards something that 77% is a good number? >> you know, i think 77% is a good number in every zip code, nicole. the problem here is that in parts of florida, you still have 20% of the most vulnerable not vaccinated, which is why florida icus are full. i was just in tennessee, shipping patients that were critically ill over 65 to cleveland for advanced icu care. so it depends on the demographics of the zip code, so that number is great, but it would be great if it was in every single zip code. 75% or higher. >> tell me where folks like yourself who have sort of seen around some of the corners think we're heading into the rest of this year and the beginning of next. >> you know, there was data that came out a couple weeks ago that suggests more than we thought it was back when trump first heard about it. if you have covid, you release a lot of large mucus balls, large droplets and small ones, airborne droplets that travel small distances. if you're unvaccinated and even for the vaccinated who are high-risk, we should be talking about better masking. number one. especially now as we're thinking about mandating vaccines for large employers. if those employers choose not to implement the vaccine, or a vaccine mandate, what do we do with the unvaccinated? we test them weekly but maybe they should be wearing better masks. that's number one. but to your point directly, nicole, all the threats that are out there, as a pulmonologist, i'm worried about our health system not only dealing with a high plateau of covid daily deaths, 1,000 to 1,500 well into january, that's a lot. in addition we're dealing with all the other things out there, elective procedures, flu, all the other threats so that's what concerns us. >> is there a real sense of burnout? >> there is. and i'll just say, just to leave your viewers with this. 40% of docs by the end of 2030 were expected to leave the workforce. a million nurses, one-third of the nursing workforce is going to leave by 2030. we don't have enough replacement in the pipeline. in part because there's burnout, people want to do different things. we don't have a plan here. we have to think big. >> that seems like an important conversation to have, even as our cases continue to decline. dr. vin gupta, thank you so much for spending time with us. the next hour of "deadline white house" starts after a quick break. don't go anywhere. use" starts a quick break. don't go anywhere. do you take aspirin? plain aspirin could be hurting your stomach. new vazalore is the first liquid-filled aspirin capsule clinically shown to cause fewer ulcers than plain aspirin. vazalore is designed to help protect... releasing aspirin after it leaves your stomach... where it is absorbed to give you the benefits of life saving aspirin... to help prevent another heart attack or stroke. heart protection with your stomach in mind. try new liquid-filled vazalore. aspirin made amazing! growing up in a little red house, try new liquid-filled on the edge of a forest in norway, there were three things my family encouraged: kindness, honesty and hard work. over time, i've come to add a fourth: be curious. be curious about the world around us, and then go. go with an open heart, and you will find inspiration anew. viking. exploring the world in comfort. there is not a single state in the union where banning abortion is popular. our humanity and our dignity is not up for debate. every time they overreach, we fight back. as dr. king said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. and sometimes, we need to jump up and hang on that arc and bend it ourselves and that's exactly what we are going to do until we are all free. >> hi again, everyone, it's 5:00 in new york. donald trump may be out of the white house, long gone, but his impact is still being felt as threats to women's reproductive rights have not abated. in fact, they've grown more severe, like we saw the other day after the former president's inauguration, sorry, four years ago, as well as in the years that followed. this weekend, tens of thousands of women, again, took to the streets, protesting the brazen attacks on a woman's right to an abortion, a constitutional right that's in danger of being overturned as the u.s. supreme court begins a new term today, one with a highly consequential docket. justices returned to the courtroom for the very first time since march of 2020. justice brett kavanagh participated remotely. the dawn of this new term marks a significant moment for the court and all of us. a transformed supreme court returns to the bench on monday to start a momentous term in which it will consider eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, vastly expanding gun rights, and further chipping away at the walls separating church and state. the abortion case, a challenge to a mississippi law that bars most abortions after 15 weeks, has attracted the most attention. the court, now dominated by six republican appointees, seems poised to use it to undermine and perhaps overturn roe vs. wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. and barred states from banning the procedure before fetal viability. tom goldstein, a lawyer who argues frequently before the court, and publishes the website scotus blog tells nbc news we're at an inflection point. "i think we're going to look back at this as the year in which conservatives really did fully take over the supreme court and american constitutional law, where they got what they were really looking for on the big hot button issues that affect all of americans' lives." this is what abortion rights advocates, civil rights advocates, gun control advocates, the list goes on and on, warned about. with the ex-president's appointments of three very conservative justices to the u.s. supreme court. it's under these circumstances that the supreme court now holds its lowest approval rating, according to gallup, since the pollster began asking the question. just 40% of americans approve of the job the highest court in the land is doing. very critical decisions ahead of a very conservative supreme court is where we start this hour. kimberly atkins store is here. she's a columnist for the "boston globe" and msnbc political analyst and the co-host of the #sistersinlaw podcast. also back with us, former democratic senator, claire mccaskill. and "washington post" senior political reporter, aaron blake is here. kim, i want to start with you. and i -- i take that analysis, that this is the year they do their right-wing conservative thing, but why are they all freaking out in speeches? i'm going to put up headlines. from the hill, barrett, supreme court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks. "washington post," alito defends letting texas abortion law take effect, said supreme court critics won't intimidate justices. associated press, clarence thomas criticizes judges for veering into politics. i think that's problematic. "business insider," i mean, it goes on and on. so, if they're so happy to finally have their day to overturn roe vs. wade, to, i don't know, do their right-wing thing, why are they freaking out so publicly? >> i think this is perhaps a case of thou doth protest too much. they realize that the public sees what is going on. in the case of justice barrett, she was giving this speech, saying that the justices are not partisan hacks, as she was introduced by mitch mcconnell at the mcconnell center in kentucky. of course, mitch mcconnell is the reason why she is on the bench. justice alito pushed back at this idea that the court is doing something secretive when it allowed a law in texas that clearly violates roe to go into effect when, in fact, that law went into effect through an order issued late at night with one paragraph of explanation. we still don't know exactly why the court thinks that it squares with roe. that leads us to no other conclusion than that they believe that roe should no longer be the law of the land. and each of these situations, the facts belie what these justices are claiming, and so, i mean, it's pretty clear what is happening, given the line-up, how the court has taken up this case, how the court has stacked the odds in this term, exactly what we're in store for, and the justices can make as many speeches as they want to. that doesn't change those facts. >> yeah, i mean, aaron blake, you've got some great analysis about alito's political broadside which we covered last week, suggesting that press is trying to intimidate the justices. we literally read from justice kagan's dissent and this is what you write about the -- alito's broadside. the court had a decision to make, one way or another, on halting the law. the fact that it allowed a law to move forward that is significantly more restrictive than the standard it set out in roe in 1973 is why this is a valid topic of conversation. it would be par for the course to halt a law that rolled back the 24-week viability standard set forth by roe and courts have done so repeatedly. but the court in this case went in the other direction, leading to suggestions this is a precursor to dismantling roe. now, again, elections have consequences. but the fact that alito comes out and gives this speech, trying to turn this on the media, seems to me that this is a court that doesn't want examination and i don't understand why we as a press don't move in the other direction, demand cameras, demand more transparency. >> when you look at what justice alito said, and it really echoed in a lot of ways what republicans were saying at the hearing last week that was focused on this idea of the supposed abuse of the supreme court's shadow docket, these are things that the court generally does without explanation, might not even tell you which justices voted in which way on a given case and increasingly, what's happened is a lot of these things that have been done using the shadow docket have been very significant and i think the texas abortion law is of course the most significant there. but when republicans talk about this, the pushback on this is basically that the supreme court has always had a shadow docket. there are things that it needs to do without holding full hearings, without writing lengthy opinions, and that's true, but it ignores, really, what has been a ramping up of emergency petitions, particularly from the trump administration. it ignores the substance of what the texas abortion decision did, which was very much not in line with how lower courts and the supreme court itself generally handle these kinds of injunctions in the past, and so i think that you're seeing a defense mounted of what the supreme court is doing what the shadow docket, but it's very much a question that's valid to raise whether this is out of line with what the supreme court generally does. >> claire, i want to ask you about chief justice roberts. i mean, i want to read some reporting from the "new york times" and the associated press. the highly charged docket will test the leadership of chief justice john roberts who lost his position as the court's ideological center with the arrival last fall of justice amy coney barrett. he's now outflanked by five justices to his right, limiting his ability to guide the court toward the consensus and incrementalism he has said he prefers and i put this out from november of 2018. this is chief justice roberts saying, quote, we do not have obama judges or trump judges, bush judges or clinton judges. what we have is an extraordinary group of judges doing their level best. on the day before thanksgiving, he said the independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for, and i want to put one more piece of data up there. only 40% of all americans approve of this court. only 40% think it's living up to that standard the chief justice set for it. what do you think, claire? >> yeah, there is going to be political consequences if this court goes as far right as they appear to be ready to do. and give me a break, alito. give me a break. >> right? >> i mean, saying that this was no big deal, that this is what we do all the time, is like saying, you're going to light an m-80 and throw it in your dining room and it's just the same as the kids having sparklers on the back patio. i mean, this was a big deal, and he knew it. the court knew it. they were letting this law go into effect, this bizarre vigilante law that wasn't about fetal viability. it wasn't about mississippi's law at 15 weekends. weeks. it was six weeks. and by the way, there are many states that are ready to take it back to fertilization. in terms of when a woman can be regulated and i got to tell you, my favorite sign over the weekends, since they're going to have a gun case too, there were so many many good signs. my favorite sign over the weekend was, if my uterus could shoot bullets, they wouldn't regulate it. >> that's the truth. claire, i go back to that day after trump's inauguration because i think the women's marches were precursor to democrats' success in the midterms and i think it's what president joe biden's chain built on for his success in the general. but i think the court is such -- it is so out of whack and i wonder where you think the politics come down today. >> well, i think that there is a battle right now in the suburbs. i mean, i'm not going to argue that rural america, rural missouri, very, very red. the urban centers, pretty darn blue. but the suburbs is really where the fight is, and women in the suburbs don't want everybody to carry a concealed weapon on every corner. and women in the suburbs don't want iuds to be illegal and invee troe fertilization to be outlawed in their states. they really don't want that so what you're saying to all those women is, you know, show up and vote. make sure the democrats keep the majority. make sure that you keep a democrat in the white house. >> kim, i just have to keep it real. i heard from friends who said, we're so tired. why do we have to keep going to the streets? we're so tired. i guess we can't get tired. >> well, i mean, yes, that is true, but we saw fewer numbers this past saturday than we saw that day after the inauguration. of donald trump. you know, as we said before, i want to believe that there will be this big charge come election time by women led by the suburban women that senator mccaskill was talking about in order to punish those who are taking rights away from women, but i don't know that that is going to happen. first of all, we're in the middle of a pandemic. there have been a host of urgent issues that have been put to president biden and this congress that have yet to see action on. and the attack on abortion rights has been going on for quite some time. i mean, even in senator mccaskill's home state, the only place where a woman can obtain an abortion is in st. louis. if you're in jefferson city or kansas city, you have to travel to get it, today, and it's been that way for a while. and we didn't see a political price being exacted for that. so, i worry that this is happening when people are exhausted of the onslaught of a host of different urgencies. i worry that this happens when we are spending a lot of time talking about budget reconciliation, when people don't even understand what that means. and i'm not sure it's going to be that same uprising of women that we saw a few years back when the threat seems so much newer and so much more shocking. i'm afraid that we are becoming fatigued. >> i'm going to let claire respond to that but i want to bring aaron blake back in and i want to put up the cases that the supreme court will hear this term because we've spent a lot of time, especially here, talking about the mississippi case and the shadow docket, but just to remind folks, they're going to also look at a challenge to an old new york law that puts restrictions on who can get a concealed carry handgun license. gun rights advocates argue -- are going to argue in front of them that it violates the second amendment. there's a rule in maine barring the use of a student aid program for schools that teach religious content. that case could totally change, alter the line of separation between church and state. there's a battle over alleged discrimination against hiv patients, which looks at how much protection the affordable care act gives people with disabilities. a case that claims that the fbi had an inform ant infiltrate a california mosque in the 2000s on the basis of their religion and the court might take up a review of affirmative action in university admissions. what does this picture look like to you, aaron blake? >> well, if this term was just -- if the only major case we had in this term was the mississippi abortion law, this would be one of the biggest terms that we have had in recent years, if not recent decades. i think you layer all those other things on top of it, you layer the questions about justice breyer's future on top of it and it's kind of a powder keg. i also think that when we talk about the criticisms that justice alito and other justices have lodged against critics of the court, that comes, maybe, you know, i think the argument is maybe this comes from a place of thin skin, but it also perhaps comes from a place of being able to see what the polls show here. gallup polling shows confidence in the court has hit a new low of late. there was a poll released just this morning from the university of pennsylvania showing a new high in the number of people who would entertain the idea of abolishing the supreme court or restricting its mandate. these are things that very much loom over the court and when that's the picture going into this kind of a term, when there are so many hot button issues the court is going to take up, i think these justices recognize that the decisions that they're about to make are going to be very big ones, not just for the immediate future of the country but also for the future of the court, and this is something that justices will often guard very, very extensively when it comes to the independence of the judiciary. >> i mean, claire, i want to give you the last word and just to both kim and aaron's points, i mean, i hear kim on this sort of overload. i hear it all the time in my real life. but to aaron's point, this is everything, just about everything that divides us as a country. where do you come down on sort of political dynamite or just more in this onslaught of difficult headlines? >> well, first of all, if it was just one thing, like just guns or just religion in school, but if they run the table here, and they fundamentally change precedent in this country as it relates to guns and separation of church and state, and then the big one, roe v. wade, and kim is right. it's never been easy in missouri to get a legal abortion, but the keyword is, it was legal. and make no mistake about it, if roe v. wade goes away, abortion will not be legal in missouri if the missouri legislature has anything to say about it. so, they've already passed the law to make fertilization the moment that life begins. so, they're ready. it's there. it's on the books. the minute roe v. wade goes away, that would kick in. that would be a whole new level of motivation for women in my state, and i think across the country. >> claire mccaskill, kimberly atkins stohr and aaron blake, thank you so much for starting us off. when we come back, as we mentioned at the top of the hour, tens of thousands of people took part in rallies all across the country over the weekend in support of reproductive freedom. we'll ask one rally organizer and texas state representative how activists plan to keep the momentum going. plus, republicans are already pushing the big lie and suppressing the vote. now they're doing everything they can to make sure they stay in power. we'll find out what democrats can do to fight back. and the conservative lawyer behind the memo that laid out the disgraced ex-president's coup plot in six simple steps. i'll have that extraordinary new reporting later in the hour. 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back out on the streets and we have to march and we have to organize and we have to fight. and if these legislators are going to pass these draconian laws, we need to change the lawmakers. >> just a little bit of sound from participants in the austin women's march this saturday, urging direct action in response to texas's near total ban on abortions. tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets this weekend in more than 600 rallies across this country to stand up for a woman's right to choose. planned parenthood ceo alexis miguel johnson addressed a d.c. march, reminding the crowd this is not just a threat to texans but to all americans. >> this year alone, we have seen nearly 600 restrictions introduced in 47 states. so, no matter where you live, no matter where you are, this fight is at your doorstep right now. >> joining our conversation is one of the leaders behind the rally in austin, former nurse, current democratic texas state representative donna howard. and we watched and covered your testimony before congress. i want to ask you where the activism is being directed. obviously, the supreme court is listening. they're responding quite sensitively to the criticism of the shadow docket but i wonder if it's also directed at congress and specifically to the senate. >> well, thank you for having me, and i'm just -- i'm kind of taken aback by what you just showed too, the video. i mean, women are so angry right now, and some of the women you showed, i am also -- i came of age before roe v. wade and i am angry that we are here marching again and having to defend our constitutional rights. certainly, when i was speaking before, testifying before the department of justice -- not the department of justice. i wish that was the case. that it was justice. before the judiciary committee, you know, there was clearly a political partisan divide here with the lack of being any understanding of what women are going through now and the fact that here in texas, the door has already been closed, protecting our constitutional rights. abortion is still legal. that's an important thing for people to understand. but the fact is that the time runs out before many people even know they're pregnant so absolutely we're trying to convince congress that they need to pass legislation that will codify roe v. wade. certainly we want to see the supreme court do the right thing but the fact that they remain silent and let this continue to progress and not halt this unconstitutional law is pretty chilling. >> yeah, i mean, chilling is the right word, because these laws are so extreme. i spent my career in republican politics where it was a third rail to be too extreme, to ban all abortions, to ban abortions in cases of rape and incest and i wonder what you think it says that the republicans are wrapping both arms what used to be a third rail. policies that are so unpopular, even among pro-life republicans. >> what i have also found interesting is that a lot of the so-called mainline republicans are kind of not saying anything right now. >> right. >> and in fact, we had a legislator here in texas who is a moderate republican, who was proposing legislation to make sure that we had an exemption here for rape and incest victims. we tried that during session. they would not accept that. in fact, the same -- this same legislator actually voted for the bill, knowing that that was still in there. i do not understand the extreme nature of this, because as i think some of the people mentioned that you saw in the video, and i'm hearing it from my friends who are republicans and independents, this is a bridge too far. they have gone too far. and to deprive women of their constitutional right, their autonomy over their own body with what it has allowed us to do over the past half century in terms of educational and employment opportunities, we're not going back. >> i wonder if you can speak to something that you have said just now and i think you mentioned it last time we talked and i played some of the sound. women who fought for this right to be considered, you know, privacy to be constitutionally protected, i think privately are appalled that all women can't join arms and say this is too extreme. and i wonder what you think the obligation is for women. and obviously, you can't get pregnant without a man, but all the polls suggest that this is particularly powerful among women. and i wonder your personal feelings about what all women should do to make sure that these most extreme laws do not become the law of the land. >> first thing i would have to say is, vote. we have got to make sure that we have people in positions of making these bills, passing this legislation, creating these laws, that we have the right people in place who will not try to take away our rights and control our own bodies. and to your point, you know, we hear a lot of this from male legislators, and in texas here, white male legislators. they are still the predominant representation of our state, despite what our demographics show, and until we have more women in elected office, until we make sure that there is some responsibility that is felt by those who are not forced to carry the pregnancy, because as you say, you do not get pregnant by yourself. 50% of the responsibility, at least, is the part of a male sperm donor and they oftentimes only have zero percent of the consequences. so, you know, women, i think, we absolutely have to unite. i did talk with women at the austin rally who are from families of republicans, who have been leaning republican, but they came because they are ready to lock arms and march against this. >> i hope it's a conversation that we can continue, texas state representative donna howard, thank you so much for spending time with us again today. when we come back, amid their cries of a stolen election, lies, all of them, republicans are well on their way to rigging the game for themselves in 2022 and 2024. what democrats can do to fight back. that's next. to fight back that's next. ♪darling, i, i can't get enough of your love babe♪ ♪girl, i don't know, i don't know,♪ ♪i don't know why i can't get enough of your love babe♪ ♪oh no, babe girl, if i could only make you see♪ ♪and make you understand♪ get a dozen double crunch shrimp for $1 with any steak entrée. only at applebee's. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. one of my favorite supplements is qunol turmeric. turmeric helps with healthy joints with any steak entrée. only at applebee's. and inflammation support. unlike regular turmeric supplements qunol's superior absorption helps me get the full benefits of turmeric. the brand i trust is qunol. let me get this straight. you've got an a.i. strategy to deliver a better customer experience, that will help us retain our customers and even grow our business? how much is this going to cost? here's the figure. 59. 59 million? no, five9. as in five9 intelligent cloud contact center. they won't just power our transformation. they'll fund our transformation. yes, yes! exactly! what are you waiting for? ♪ ♪ the republican party was shocked that it lost because they never thought that they would lose by such narrow margins, and we know, accurately and legitimately, in places like georgia or arizona. so what are they going to do now? now they're not only going to try to suppress votes on steroids, they're going to try to give legislatures the power to basically throw out elections if they don't go their way. we are in the middle of a constitutional crisis. it's like the frog dropped into the water. it's boiling. you know, people are still arguing about stuff that is important but not as fundamental as whether or not our democracy will be broken and then taken over. >> not listening to her has come at a great cost for the country. there she is warning us again, hillary clinton, the woman who witnessed firsthand the transformation of the republican party into a cult of trump, top to bottom. signs of the gop's war on democracy are everywhere. there's a wave of those voter suppression laws hillary clinton referenced being passed in republican-run states. according to the brennan center's latest count of voting restrictions, 19 states enacted 33 laws that make it harder for americans to vote. there's also the crop of 2022 gop candidates effectively running on the platform of enabling the disgraced twice impeached ex-president and his lie about fraud. and then there's the effort to redraw the congressional map to give republicans an edge in the next election. "mother jones" reports on the texas gop's push to gerrymander districts there. they write, texas republicans are building a seawall against demographic change, an early indicator of how the republican party nationally is responding to momentous population changes, not by reaching out to minority communities but by diluting their voting power. at a time when texas is becoming more diverse and democratic, the new maps drawn by republicans for congress in the state legislature would make the state's political representation far whiter and more republican. joining our conversation, "mother jones" senior reporter, ari berman and editor at large of the bulwark and msnbc contributor, charlie sykes. ari, take me through what redistricting looks like, and its consequences, likely consequences. >> well, it's really amazing, nicole. right now, what republicans are doing is they are gerrymandering their way back to control of the u.s. house into one-party control of places like texas. and the texas congressional map is so shocking because it completely nullifies demographic change and it completely nullifies competition in a state that's becoming very diverse and increasingly competitive, so 95% of all demographic change in texas came from communities of color but in the texas congressional maps, white republicans gained seats and black and latino democrats would lose seats under the texas congressional map, the number of competitive districts would go from 12 to just 1. and so, everyone talks about how the country's trending more diverse and democratic, and that's true. but the maps that are being drawn by republicans are making the country much whiter and more conservative and less competitive as the country moves in the opposite direction. >> i mean, charlie, it is a legitimate political critique of what ari just described to call it cheating, to describe it as rigging the electorate. i wonder what you make of the fact that cheating and rigging the electorate still garners enthusiasm on the right. >> well, there's no question about it, that the stop the steal, the big lie has become a litmus test among republicans, and it fires up the base. but i would point out a couple of things about redistricting, and i'm not taking anything away from the critique you just heard. but you know, dave wasserman is looking at the numbers nationally and says, look, it is likely to end up being a wash because whatever republicans are doing in texas, the reality is that democrats are likely to do in new york. in fact, in new york, they are likely to eliminate five republican seats. so that you would go from, you know, 19 to 8 to 23 to 3. one other caution here, and i'm going to get to my point. yes, there's no question about it. republicans are trying to suppress some of the minority votes, but democrats also ought to recognize that they have another issue in places like texas, which is, their loss of the hispanic vote. joe biden's approval rating is down in the 30s among hispanics. his rating is about -- his approval rating is down to 26% among texas hispanics for his handling of the border. so, yes, all of these are concerns, but i don't think -- i hope that democrats don't take their eye off the ball, that they need to make a persuasive case to win these elections, and to hillary clinton's point, the heart of the constitutional crisis remains this electoral vote count and i know we're focusing on the voting and the redistricting, but this is where all of the action is, who counts those electoral votes, if there is a coup in 2024, it will be the manipulation by legislatures or by folks in congress of the electoral vote count. >> ari, i'm going to give you a chance to respond to anything charlie said but i want to just add a question to you on that. i mean, "the new york times" out with some new reporting, we're going to get to it next, about this guy who had some, i don't want to say, credibility, but i guess enough credibility to find his way into the oval office, advising donald trump on january 4th, and laying out sort of the architecture for the coup. i mean, any sense that this was some spontaneous heat of the moment thing was absolute horse hockey. this was white papered. this was the code red was called from inside the oval office and a meeting with john eastman, and the document exists. adam kinzinger called it a blueprint for a coup. hillary clinton is talking about the part of the suppression laws that we don't talk about enough and that's the arbiters of the vote, the vote nullification aspects, and i wonder where you think the disconnect is with efforts to pass federal voting rights legislation and the alarm that people should feel about what hillary describes as the voter nullification stuff. >> well, i think this is all connected, nicole, because really, they're running down the checklist of different ways to try to undermine democracy. so the first thing that republicans did in 2021, following the insurrection, was to pass all of these laws to make it harder to vote. then, they are trying to gerrymander to entrench their own power so you can't vote them out of power for all the unpopular things they have done. then they are trying to elect new people who are going to nullify the votes or not count them if the elections don't turn out their way and in offices like secretaries of state and offices like governor, electing people to congress who won't certify the election results. i don't think these are all disparate things. i think these are all connected. the voter suppression, the gerrymandering, the election nullification is all part of a strategy to try to create a democracy that only works for one party, which no longer becomes a democracy so rather than viewing them as separate things, i think they're all connected in terms of how democracy is being undermined but ultimately, i agree with charlie. throwing out votes is the worst thing that you can do in a democracy. not counting votes is the worst thing that you can do in a democracy and that seems to be absolutely where the gop is heading. >> to pick up ari's thread now, charlie, this is some coverage from over the weekend about just that kind of individual. trump's candidate for arizona governor says she would not have certified the 2020 election results there. arizona governor -- gubernatorial candidate, the republican who received an endorsement from donald trump, said she would not have certified the 2020 election results in the state. trump lost arizona by more than 10,000 votes. despite the audit results, lake said last week that the election was fraudulent and corrupted. important to remind viewers that was a republican governor who certified it there. there's been some reporting about his cell phone ringing. a big trump guy, certified the result. but you know, ari's point, what's coming in behind trumpy republicans are election deniers. >> that's absolutely true and all of this is taking place in broad daylight. look, i think we've seen over the last few weeks, almost on a daily basis, we've learned more about how serious the attempt to overthrow the election was in early january. you had that memo from john eastman that was the centerpiece of a meeting in the oval office with the president and the vice president, laying out how they would overthrow the election. and now you have candidates around the country, republican candidates who are running explicitly on a platform of overthrowing an election. donald trump is definitely going to be running in 2024. anyone that thinks that what happened on january 6th was a one-time event has not been paying attention. so, this is why i do think that congress needs to take this very, very seriously. you know, there are people out there who will say, well, okay, he was too incompetent, it didn't happen. there was no actual coup. well, that was last time. there were crucial republicans, there were crucial state officials all around the country that did the right thing. there's no guarantee that those people will be in place in 2024. >> in fact, they're being systematically targeted by trump's political operation. >> yes. >> primaried and run out of office. ari berman, charlie sykes, thank you so much for spending time with us. we are always paying attention. as we've been discussing, one of the key components to the ex-president's attempt to overturn the 2020 election result was that six-point memo written by a conservative lawyer named john eastman. we have some brand-new reporting on who he is and how he got inside the oval office. after a quick break. after a quick break. 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[woof] i'm telling y'all there's no place like wayfair to make your home totally you. ooh! i want that. this is... ♪♪ this is iowa. we just haven't been properly introduced. say hello to the place where rolling hills meets low bills. where our fields, inside and out, are always growing. and where the fun is just getting started. this is iowa. so, when are you coming to see us? ♪♪ this is wealth. so, when are you coming ♪ ♪see us? this is worth. that takes wealth. but this is worth. and that - that's actually worth more than you think. don't open that. wealth is important, and we can help you build it. but it's what you do with it, that makes life worth living. principal. for all it's worth. since the release of "peril," folks have been digging in to try to learn more about a memo, a memo outlined a six-point plan for vice president mike pence to overturn the result of the 2020 election before congress. thankfully for the country, mike pence did not take the advice of said memo, but we're learning a whole lot more about who wrote it. the man is named john eastman. he's a conservative lawyer, and he's the subject of some brand-new reporting in "the new york times" that describes his quick ascent to power within the trump white house. what's most alarming about this new reporting is how the president in his final weeks elevated voices from the far right, the kinds of people who would only tell him what he wanted to hear and who he hoped could help him stay in power. joining our conversation is mike schmidt, "the new york times" washington correspondent who wrote that new reporting. he's also an nbc national security contributor. mike schmidt, this story starts with what is a familiar but should still be sort of appalling anecdote about how trump found the author of this memo, republican congressman adam kinzinger describes as an outline for a coup plot. explain. >> so, it all started on fox news in the aftermath of the mueller report where john eastman goes on the show of mark levin, a weekend show, and rails against the mueller investigation, complaining about the mueller investigation, talking about how the president could not have obstructed justice and the firings of jim comey or the attempted firings of mueller and such, and donald trump sees this. and he, within two months, john eastman is in the oval office meeting with donald trump to begin a relationship with him which ends -- not ends. it continues on for a year and a half where on january 4th, as trump is trying to pressure pence, the only aide to trump in the room is john eastman. so, it was from fox news to in the president's ear at one of the most crucial junctures of, i mean, his presidency, maybe even in american history. >> i want to ask about what you think that portends for mr. eastman as there's a select committee looking into all of the things that led to the insurrection. but i want to read some more from your story. as you were just saying, eastman was the only advisor to the president in the room on january 4th. it started with the president talking about how some of the legal scholarship that had been done saying under the 12th amendment the vice president has the ultimate authority to reject invalid electoral votes and he asked me what i some of the leg scholarship that had been done, saying under the 12th amendment, the vice president has the ultimate authority to reject invalid electoral votes and he asked me what i thought about it. mr. eastman said that mr. pence then turned to him and asked do you think i have such power? mr. eastman said he told mr. pence that he might have the power, but that it would be foolish for him to exercise it. mr. pence, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the oval office conversation, said that mr. eastman acknowledged that the vice president most likely did not have that power, at which point mr. pence turned to mr. trump -- eastman went on with that, did he not? >> mr. eastman went on the ellipse that the president was at and called for the delay and called for pence to issue the delay. that is what that mob ended up doing when they stormed the capitol, they delayed it, delayed it, albeit, for several hours, not any longer than that, but there was success for a short period of time in delaying it. and i think what is so shocking about this is the success that this person had in penetrating the president's orbit, his inner circle and being a person who was helping him in his attempts to remain in power. >> it's an incredible piece of reporting. i'm sure we'll be hearing more about mr. eastman. thank you for spending some time with us to talk about it. a quick break for us. we'll be right back. k break fors we'll be right back. necessity. we can explore uncharted waters, and not only make new discoveries, but get there faster, with better outcomes. with app, cloud and anywhere workspace solutions, vmware helps companies navigate change-- meeting them where they are, and getting them where they want to be. faster. vmware. welcome change. people everywhere living with type 2 diabetes are waking up to what's possible with rybelsus®. ♪ you are my sunshine ♪ ♪ my only sunshine... ♪ rybelsus® works differently than any other diabetes pill to lower blood sugar in all 3 of these ways... increases insulin when you need it... decreases sugar... and slows food. the majority of people taking rybelsus® lowered their blood sugar and reached an a1c of less than 7. people taking rybelsus® lost up to 8 pounds. rybelsus® isn't for peopl with type 1 diabetes. don't take rybelsus® if you or your family ever had medullary thyroid cancer, or have multiple endocrin neoplasia syndrome type 2 or if allergic to it. stop rybelsus® and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or an allergic reaction. serious side effects may include pancreatitis. tell your provider about vision problems or changes taking rybelsus® with a sulfonylurea or insulin increases low blood sugar risk. side effects like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may lead to dehydration, which may worsen kidney problems. wake up to what's possibl with rybelsus®. ♪ please don't take my sunshine away ♪ you may pay as little as $10 per prescription. ask your healthcare provider about rybelsus® today. ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ tomorrow we join -- today is almost over, can't you tell? tomorrow we'll be joined by a guest who spent a long time covering on this program. former trump policy advisor fiona hill will be with us. she served as a policy advisor on the national security council. most notably and most publicly she was a witness in the ex-president's impeachment trial. her new book is called "there's nothing for you here." she traces her journey from a depressed mining town to the white house where she served three u.s. presidents, including the last one whom she describes as extremely vulnerable to russian manipulation. that's not scary. we look forward to talking to her about that and her remarkable new book when she joins us tomorrow. finally this hour, "saturday night live" rolled out a new president joe biden. the actor playing him is a brand new cast member, james austin johnson. on the season premiere this weekend, he led the cold open. here's joe biden trying to unite democrats. >> right now america needs me, democrats need me. we have an infrastructure bill and a social bill that need to get passed. fundamentally they're robots. we need roads. everybody like roads? 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[ laughs ] ♪♪ [ humming ] [ door creaks ] oh. [ soft music playing ] what are you all doing in my daydream? it's better than that presentation. a lot better. you know, whether it's a fraction or a decimal, it's still fun, you know? thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. we're grateful. "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. hi, ari. >> thank you, nicolle. i am "the beat." house liberals hold the line and actually adjust their power. as a political matter, that means the president must deal with his left flank, which as we come on the air, we know that biden is meeting with house progressives who made speaker pelosi delay that bill on the biden infrastructure bill. but let's be clear and objective. that political leverage, however real, does not ensure any automatic success, it just ensures a seat at the table of the biden is now at that table and he's telling his p