this morning new york city mayor bill de blasio announced on nbc the city is implementing a sweeping set of vaccine mandates for all private sector employers as health officials try to limit the spread of the omicron variant. today marks the official start of sweeping new testing requirements for travelers. all air travelers are required to show proof of a negative test taken no more than one day before their flight. meanwhile, the spread of covid domestically is-esque mating. the 7-day average of daily new cases in the u.s. has jumped above 120,000. with more than 1300 deaths on average every single day. those numbers are a sober reminder that so much more work needs to be done to combat the current spread of delta. even as officials work to combat the future spread of omicron. and there are some potential signs of hopeful news on the omicron front with dr. fauci saying yesterday that there has been, quote, encouraging preliminary evidence that omicron infections aren't as severe as feared. but he cautioned that much more study needs to be done. >> thus far the signals are a bit encouraging regarding the severity. but again, you got to hold judgment until we get more experience. clearly, it's becoming the dominant variant in south africa. the question for us here in the united states now that it is clearly here in at least 15 or more states, and in about 40 countries, is what is it going to be as it competes with the very dominant variant, delta? >> and joining me now from the white house is shannon petty piece. antonia hilton is outside jfk airport where the administration's new international travel and testing requirements have just gone into effect. she's also covering the city's sweeping new vaccine requirements that were just announced a few hours ago. and also joining us is medical contributor, the founding director of boston university's center for infectious diseases policy and research. so shannon, starting with you over at the white house, the president is going to speak in about an hour or so on the build back better plan and prescription drug pricing. nothing on his schedule yet this week focussed explicitly on covid. do you see this as the white house trying to turn the page on the white house? what's going on behind the scenes? >> they want to get the focus back on the domestic agenda. we saw administration officials talking about the delta variant, talking about the omicron variant, and there's still a lot of questions the white house doesn't have answers to. so the administration officials cautioned l.a. week saying there's only so much we can say because there's only so much we know. but of course, they would like the focus now to be on the domestic agenda, getting this build back better legislation through if they can, in these final days. the president as you mentioned going to be talking about prescription drug prices. that's one of the most popular elements of this big massive domestic spending plan. so the white house wants to talk about how it would cap the price of insulin. cap the amount of money seniors would have to pay for the prescription drugs. and get to some of these initiatives that democrats have been pushing for for several decades now to try and lower prescription drugs. like having medicare be able to directly negotiate prices with drug makers to give them leverage over pricing and lowered drug prices that way. we're also anticipating the president to do more selling of his infrastructure bill. and try and continue to get some public credit for that, because so far we have yet to see the president's poll numbers turn around there. but of course, the administration is very well aware, so much of their domestic agenda and the president's approval rating is depending on covid. so that is always in the background here and something officials are always certainly aware of and that they will have to continue addressing. >> and the big omicron related step this administration has taken has been the travel bans. i'm curious, dr. fauci indicated yesterday the white house is reconsidering them now, and now the south african president is tweeting the travel bans aren't based on science at all and repeating the u.n. secretary general calling it, quote, travel apartheid. where does the administration stand on the travel ban front? do we still think with all the cases of omicron already showing up in the u.s. that we'll still have this pan in place in a few days or weeks? >> i was asking administration officials about that today. there is no change as of now. there's going to be a press briefing in just a few minutes now. we anticipate. so we might get some more clarity on any changes there. as you mentioned, dr. fauci saying they are constantly evaluating these travel bans. but as you indicated, the administration has gotten a lot of criticism from the very beginning, about these travel restrictions. saying they were unfairly punishing the south african government after it was transparent in sharing what it knows and has been really working closely with administration officials and government scientists to share information here, and that criticism now, of course, spreading from other world officials as you noted and certainly public health officials, too. who have come out and criticized the administration saying at this point, they're not going to do much good to slow the spread of this new variant in the united states at least. >> and antonia, today is the day the administration's new testing requirements are in place for international travelers. you're at jfk, tons of international travelers coming into the east coast there. what are you hearing from folks? how strictly are these testing requirements being enforced? >> they're already being strictly enforced. we met people this morning who have been scrambling since they arrived in the hours after this went into effect at 12:01:00 a.m. this is a one day requirement window to get a negative covid test back before you're able to fly back to and enter the united states. and that applies to everyone. if you're over two years old, whether you're vaccinated, unvaccinated, no matter what country you're coming from, this applies to everyone. and it used to be that 72 -hour window. while getting a test may not sound like a major deal, it really is a more tightened timeline, and people who are traveling to perhaps more remote countries or to places where they're not sure what the testing infrastructure looks like, they really need to start planning ahead. i met a woman earlier this week who was on her way to bangladesh who was already trying to strategize about how to get home. we had a conversation this morning with a family that ended up getting multiple tests as they were worried they weren't going to be able to get back in. listen to our conversation with them. >> it was very stressful, because we had to get the covid test 72 hours before. but the rules changed, so we decided to get the 24-hour test before just in case. so because it was before december 6th, they accepted the 72-hour pcr tests. but it was very stressful. and it wasn't cheap. it was very expensive. for the three of us, it cost almost $600 just to get another covid test. >> some travelers can also expect to see heightened bio surveillance at certain international hubs like jfk, newark or hartsfield, jackson and atlanta, there are going to be groups partnered with the cdc. one called express check c that's going to do a surveillance effort, which means taking pooled testing of travelers for free, coming back in to start tracking the omicron variant presence here and potential community spread and in the coming months, potentially other variants that could arrive. >> that's interesting. antonia, you're at the center of one of the new aggressive mandates in new york city. the city has been on the forefront of vaccine mandates since the word view. now a vaccine requirement putting in place over the next couple weeks. can you walk us through what's changing there and what we know about this program? >> yeah. this is a major announcement that took some folks by surprise this morning. so what this means is all private sector workers are going to be mandated to get vaccinated. and this is going to apply to about 184,000 businesses here in new york city. and the mayor says this is really about getting ahead of a potential winter surge. trying to get ahead of potential community spread with the omicron variant now posing this threat. regardless of the severity of the disease it poses but the high transmissible. if your kids are between the ages of 5 and 11, they need at least proof of one dose of vaccination to take part in sports teams or dancing or singing lessons they want to be part of. if you're 12 or older, you need to now have proof of two doses of the vaccine to enter venues, take part in entertainment events in new york city. the one that is most surprising to folks is the worker mandate and people should know that goes into effect on december 27th. right after christmas. we expect to get more information from the office in the coming days about potential exceptions. but for now people are grappling with that surprising news he made on msnbc. >> i am very curious to see if this new program ends up in court or whether any other big cities follow new york city's lead on this. antonia hilton, thank you. doctor, lots to discuss with you. i'm curious what you make of the preliminary data we've seen out of south africa showing cases going up, up, up, but not so much the sharp increase in hospitalizations and deaths. is that a best case scenario potentially with omicron? >> yeah. garrett, you know, when we talk about new variants, the three things we're concerned about are the transmissible, and disease severity. over the last week since we talked, there's clear signal there might be a more transmissible variant. you're seeing vaccinated people get mild infections. disease severity is actually the hardest of all the three of those metrics to figure out. it takes a huge number of clinical cases or cohort to be able to nail that down. we've known about delta for a long time. and we still can't say with complete certainty whether it's severity of disease is the same or slightly different than prior variants. the data from south africa, though, the reason it's -- it's potentially promising is that there's one province that shows they're showing hospitalizations that are shorter than before. fewer hospitalizations, shorter than before, and the people being admitted, fewer of them are requiring oxygen. but the reason i want to sort of stop and say even though that's promising, it's too early, is because it takes a while for people to get hospitalized. there's always a lag time for hospitalizations, and then there's a lag time for deaths, because people need to get sick enough to potentially then get hospitalized and then pass away. and so not only do you need to see it in more people, but you need to see it in different health care systems. so we need to see how omicron behaves in other countries adds well. we'll keep an eye on it. it is promising compared to what we might see in the opposite way. if we start seeing more severe disease. i would say it's a bit early. >> i'll take the good news where i can get it, especially as we're still doing everything we can to fight the delta variant in this country with new cases up 27 % over the last two weeks. doctor, i want to ask you about a mix in politics and covid about the analysis from npr. it looked at covid and voting stats in the u.s. thousands of u.s. counties. they found since may of 2021 people living in counties that voted heavily for donald trump during the last presidential election have been three times as likely to die from covid-19 as those who live in areas that went for now president biden. the data reveal a major contributing factor. the higher the vote share for trump, the lower the vaccination rate. we've been talking about this kind of thing for months now, but i'm curious if you have ever seen this much polarization among political lines with anything else you've treated or encountered in your career? >> there's always an element of depending on where you go. you and i have talked about prior outbreaks i've been part of. there is some distrust in people, but the level of both disinformation, misinformation and this straight down the political lines divide in terms of from the very beginning it was accepting how severe the covid is as a threat, and it was the vaccines. right? and now it's variants. everything seems to be plittized and breaking down the same division. and i would just say it's an example of the self-induced wound we put on ourselves on top of that to go through the pandemic. i really hope that as we go through more months of this, you know, you are seeing an improvement in vaccination rates, including in some of the counties heavily affected that weren't vaccinated predelta. so i hope we're seeing potentially some closure of the difference between trump counties and biden counties that didn't exist before. >> i'm going to be an optimist and say maybe people traveling home for the holidays will be one more impetus to get the shots if you haven't already. thank you all. and later this hour, we'll take a look at a new documentary that profiles those brutal first few months of the pandemic in new york city. when this country faced the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic. the oscar nominated director of the film and one of the front-line doctors he followed will join me ahead. up next, what we can expect from president biden's plan called with russia's vladimir putin tomorrow as concerns glow over russia's military presence on ukraine's border. you're watching "meet the press daily". ily" nucala is a once-monthly add-on injection for severe eosinophilic asthma. not for sudden breathing problems. allergic reactions can 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tomorrow when he speaks with vladimir putin. the call will be amid mounting tensions between the u.s. and russia which continues to amass troops along the border with ukraine. there was a warning of economic economic sanctions if russia invades ukraine. this comes as "the washington post" is reporting that u.s. intelligence has found that russia is planning a ukraine offensive for early as next month. a senior administration official says russia appears to be planning for some type of action in ukraine but the administration does not have indication the planning will lead to an offensive. joining me now from moscow is matt botner and michael mcfall who helped president biden prepare for his june meeting with putin. he's an international affairs analyst. we're glad to have his expertise. matt, what is the kremlin saying about tomorrow's conversation? >> garrett, thank you. we haven't heard so much about it. it's obvious the kremlin wanted to get to this point. but we've essentially got the mechanics of it. so the kremlin spokesman said today the meeting will start around 6:00 p.m., moscow time tomorrow, that's 10:00 a.m. eastern, and then it's basically going to be held entirely behind closed doors with very little public opportunity to see what's going on. there might be video of it from the beginning. he said it's going to be a long meeting. this is something we also heard from the u.s. side. so it's possible this goes late into the evening moscow time tomorrow night. but basically we're all just waiting for the statements on the other side of the meeting tomorrow. >> the long list of grievances from putin have become a hallmark of the meetings. matt, do we think russia's primary objective is the best way to think about this is they don't want to see ukraine become a part of nato? is that what a lot of this posturing is potentially about? >> that's what they said it's about in recent days. obviously we've been look agent this buildup for a few weeks. there was a buildup earlier this week as well. their demands crystallized in the past several days, last last week when we heard several russian officials basically say what they want is some kind of agreement that nato won't expand one inch east, and ukraine won't join nato. i just -- it's hard to imagine what's the actual structure of that agreement they're envisioning would look like. but i think that's a kashlgtization they're look after. >> forcing an agreement at the barrel of a gun is an interesting tactic. do we think this is really putin trying to flex in such a way that he can keep nato out of ukraine forever? >> well, i want to be honest. i don't know what putin's intentions are. i studied the guy and met him first in 1991. and participated in many meetings with him during my five years in the obama administration. i don't want to pretend i know his true objectives and nobody else. i don't think putin himself has decided what he wants to do. he's amassing the capabilities for a major invasion. much bigger than last spring. it doesn't mean he's decided to do so. with respect to the idea of a security guarantee, and no more nato expansion, i want to underscore two facts. number one, nobody in brussels at washington or kooef is talking about ukraine joining nato. this is completely fabricated by putin. it is not a crisis. he's the one that is making this a crisis. it's not an agenda item at all. and number two, i want to remind your viewers, you know, the united states and russia and ukraine and other countries adhere to many, many security agreements about ukrainian sovereignty, including the most famous one, the 1994 budapest memorandum, where russia agreed to not violate ukrainian territorial integrity. you wouldn't be surprised if people in kiev are suspicious asht signing a new agreement with russia today. >> i'm no russia expert, but i feel like when we see russian malfeasance pop up, putin always wants probable deniability. the russians didn't hack or do this. the previous things in ukraine were done by little green men that didn't have any affiliation with russia. this seems obvious for him. is that the point? does he want to be seen causing this kind of trouble on the international stage? how would you view the way that the russians are handling this tactically? >> great point. you're right. this is very visible. everybody knows what the buildup is. he wants to get people's attention. and he has. guess what. he has a summit tomorrow with president biden. that's precisely part of what he wants. he doesn't mean we know what his ultimate end goal is. that's the point i'll want to keep emphasizing. most certainly, this is very different. this is classic coercive diplomacy. trying to get diplomatically things as you just said, through the barrel of a gun. >> you helped prepare president biden for his last meeting with president putin. if you were preparing him this time, what would you warn him going into this meeting? >> number one, and i think they've already moved to this. if you go back to that meeting, recall the president biden used to say we want to a stable and predictable relationship with russia. i applauded the effort, but let's be honest. putin doesn't want a stable and predictable relationship with the united states. so i think you just have to set that aside. number two, i would like to see the biden administration be more explicit ahead of time. very explicit, what they will do should putin use military force against ukraine. you've heard about sanctions. you've heard about veiled threats behind closed doors. i think they're more credible if they're made public. and number three, i hope that president biden or somebody in his administration calls president zelensky after this meeting. i don't like that the united states and russia are deciding the fates of ukrainians without ukrainians being part of that process. >> i'm glad you brought up sanctions. we've heard from tony blinken, the secretary of state warning about harsh sanctions. are those the most powerful tools at our disposal? i have a hard time imagining the u.s. would intervene militarily in a conflict between ukraine and russia, but what are our other options? >> you're right. the united states is not going to go to war with russia over ukraine, and when the russians talk about that, if you look at the russian threats, they're talking about that all the time. that's complete nonsense. that is inventing a pretext for invasion. in addition to sanctions, by the way, there are many, many more sanctions that could be done. people think oh, we've sanctioned everybody in russia. that's not true. there are many more things that could be done on that front. but in addition, if we're not going to go to war with russia over ukraine, and i believe that we should not, we should give the ukrainians the full capabilities to defend themselves. and i think there's much more that could be done in terms of weapons from the united states from other nato allies to help ukrainians more adequately deter the russians from using military force. >> the senate is debating military policy this week on the ndaa. i will not be surprised to hear that coming up. ambassador, i have, like, less than a minute left. let me try to squeeze one more nugget of information out of you. if russia does invade ukraine, do you think it's only a matter of time before china looks over and says hey, taiwan, what are you guys seeing over here, and there's another war on that side of the plan snet. >> american commitments to taiwan are greater than we have to ukraine. and a bigger history there. but these things are interrelated. and i think part of the problem for the biden administration is they've been so focussed on china, rightfully so in my mind, that they're not thinking of the grander strategy of deterrents for autocratic allies. in that respect, they are interrelated. >> michael, while you were talking we got some news about china. matt and michael, thank you both. moments ago the white house confirmed the u.s. will stage a diplomatic boycott to the 2022 winter games. the press secretary said the u.s. would not be contributing to the fanfare of the game citing human rights concerns. she said the athletes will have the government's full support. new details on the investigation into the deadly high school shooting in detroit as questions mount over the events leading up to the attack and how so many warning signs were missed. we're on the ground with the latest after this. and we're expecting an announcement from attorney general merrick garland a few minutes from now about some kind of action the justice department is taking regarding voting rights. we'll bring that announcement to you live as soon as it begins. you're watching "meet the press" daily. y. if you're on medicare, remember, the annual enrollment period is here. the time to choose your coverage... begins october 15th... and ends december 7th. so call 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authorities say they're looking at what the school did or didn't do in response to what the prosecutor in charge of the case said were warning shines that the shooter allegedly exhibited in the leadup to the attack. the superintendent defended the school's actions and said he requested a third party review. and the shooter's parents were found holed up in a detroit artist's art studio. the artist hasn't been charged with a crime but is cooperating with authorities and is denying any wrong doing. alison barber has been following the story for us from pontiac, michigan. what are the latest updates? are we talking about the artist, or is it beyond that? >> it seems it could go beyond that. specifically when the prosecutor was asked about possibly charges for the school or school officials. she didn't give a direct yes or no. only saying the investigation is ongoing. a man hunt started on friday here in oakland county, and it ended saturday around 1:30 a.m. at a warehouse in detroit. police say jennifer and james crumbley, the parents of ethan crumbley withdrew $4,000 from an atm and essentially disappeared. their attorneys say they intended to turn themselves in at some point, because both of them are each charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. their attorneys say it was just a matter of logistics. police, prosecutors, even a judge, they were not buying that argument. a judge set their bail at half a million dollars each once they were captured and detained by police officers and were arraigned. they have pled not guilty to all the counts, but the judge agreeing with the prosecution said that the couple were a flight risk, and that's why the bail was set so high. police say that they found the couple at an art studio that belongs to an artist by the name of andre. his attorney says the artist knew the couple because they had some shared hobbies. he said they did not know each other particularly well. the attorney claims his client did not know that the couple were facing any charges. he says that they had asked to stay with his client because they said they'd faced death threats. here's more from the artist's attorney. >> i don't believe there's going to be evidence that shows that the artist knew or had reason to know charges were issued or that there were warrants out for their arrest. we are cooperating with them. what the sheriff here has said is obstruction of justice may be filed or aiding and abetting and involuntary manslaughter, but i get, i think knowing what i know, once the facts are panned out with the sheriff's department, i don't think there will be evidence to support the charges. >> meanwhile, the crumbley's father, mother, and son are all detained in this prison complex. they're all isolated according to the sheriff they have not spoken to each other, and he says there is not a scenario where that would happen. all three are isolated on their own and on suicide watch out of an abundance of caution as parents in this community look to what the school did and did not do leading up to this massacre. garrett? >> all right. ellison, thank you. and coming up, we'll take turn to the capitol where delays are adding up for the january 6th committee's investigation as the one-year anniversary of the insurrection approaches. hes. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ experience the power of sanctuary at the lincoln wish list event. 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guidance, i noted redistricting schemes are illegal and -- with those laws during this redistricting cycle. the department's career the voting law experts have assessed texas's new redistricting plans and determined that they include districts that violate the voting rights act. last month we filed a separate lawsuit against texas alleging that texas senate bill one improperly restricts the assistance voter who is have a disability or who are unable to read or write can receive in the voting booth. last week we filed a statement of interest in arizona litigation to explain the private plaintiffs had alleged certain new voting laws in that state were passed with a discriminatory purpose. we also filed a statement of interest in florida litigation explaining among other things, that private parties can bring claims to enforce the voting rights act. in all of these matters, we have carefully assessed the facts and the law before taking action. i am grateful to the dedicated staff of the voting section for their work today, and every day, to protect the right of all eligible citizens to vote. before i conclude, i want to again urge congress to restore the justice department's preclearance authority. were that preclearance tool still in place, we would likely not be here today announcing this complaint. i will now turn the podium over to associate attorney general gupta. thank you. >> thank you, attorney general garland. the right to vote is foundational to our democracy and the justice department is charged with protecting that right. today we are filing suit against the state of texas based on our determination that texas's 2021 redistricting plans violate section two of the voting rights act. the department reached that determination after a careful assessment to the facts and the law. i want to thank the career staff of the civil rights divisions voting section for their tremendous efforts on this investigation. our complaint today alleges that the redistricting plans approved by the texas state legislature and signed into law by the governor will deny black and latino voters an equal opportunity to participate in the voting process and to elect representatives of their choice in violation of the voting rights act. our complaint also alleges that several of those districts were drawn with discriminatory intent. texas's 2021 redistricting plans were enacted through a rushed process with minimal opportunity for public comment, without any expert testimony, and with an overall disregard for the massive minority population growth in texas over the last decade. texas's population grew by 4 million people from 2010 to 2020. and 95 % of that growth came from minority populations. despite the significant increase in the number and proportion of eligible latino and black voters in texas, the newly enacted redistricting plans will not allow minority voters an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. instead, our investigation determined that texas's redistricting plans will dilute the increased minority voting strength that should have developed from those significant demographic shifts. for example, texas will gain two new congressional seats because of its populous growth, almost all of which is due to the state's minority population. however, texas has designed both of the new seats to have white voting majorities. the congressional plan also deliberately reconfigured a west texas district to eliminate the opportunity for latino voters to elect a representative of their choice. this is the third time in three decades where texas has eliminated a latino electoral opportunity in this same district, despite previous court determinations that this violates the law. and the state house plan eliminated latino electoral opportunities by manipulaing or eliminating districts where -- these redistricting plans will diminish the opportunities for latino and black voters in texas to elect their preferred representatives. and that is prohibited by federal law. the complaint asks the court to prohibit texas from conducting elections under the challenged plans and asks the court to order texas to devise and implement new redistricting plans that comply with section two of the voting rights act. the complaint also asks the court to establish interim plans pending a lawful state redistricting. this is not the first time texas has acted to minimize the voting rights of its minority citizens. decade after decade courts have found that texas as enacted redistricting plans that deliberately dilute the voting strength of latino and black voters and that violate the voting rights act. the attorney general has made clear that the justice department will not stand idly by in the face of unlawful attempts to retrikt access to the ballot. the justice department stands ready to protect the constitutional guaranteed voting rights of americans in texas and throughout the country. thank you. >> reporter: attorney general, we've learned you're going to be later on today with emmett till's family. what will you tell them? >> i can confirm the assistant attorney general clark is in chicago now meeting with the family and will have more to say this afternoon after the meeting. >> reporter: attorney general, without section five, what challenge do you face in showing that these changes are intended to affect minority turnout rather than just to achieve partisan advantage? >> without section five, there are two problems. one, it means that we don't get a chance to look at these things before they go into effect. which is a very significant aspect of our tools. and instead, requires that we challenge every case individually. and second, it flips the burden of proof. so those are the two most significant changes caused by the shelby county case. >> reporter: mr. attorney general, i want to ask you about a special counsel john durham's investigation. in the last few weeks there have been two or months, two indictments that his office has released. do those indictments go through the same view and approval process in the justice department as ordinary indictments? >> so the regulations regarding special counsel are pretty clear about what mr. durham does, and i don't want to say anything more beyond what is in the regulations, but we're following the regulations. >> all right. thank you. >> thank you. >> reporter: what was your reaction to the law enforcement officer of the country to see the rise in crime? your home city of chicago more than 1,000 people killed? what's your reaction? what's the plan? >> well, it's a -- it is a terrible thing, and it's a rise in crime began last year, and it's continued into this year. as you know, or don't know, i visited my home city of chicago when we established gun violence trafficking task force there. i met with the chief of police. i met with all the federal law enforcement. and i met with the state and local law enforcement. last may of this year, we announced an anti-violent crime initiative which focuses very much on establishing these kind of joint task forces with state and local police agencies, combined with our federal law enforcement so all the tools available to the department are used to help our state and local partners. we also have reinvigorated the safe street task forces which have been in effect for quite some time. all of which is to say that this bothers me very much, and the violent crime increase is one that we must address and that we are putting all of our resources toward. thank you. all right. we've been listening to the attorney general discuss a new lawsuit here going after the state of texas for vote delusion. essentially saying that the new maps, the new maps signed into law for congressional and state house districts in the state of texas would underrepresent latino voters in the lone star state. i want to bring in jane tim, our justice correspondent pete williams you heard will join us in a moment. jane, we have both covered this extensively. a lot of folks in texas. a lot of democrats thought lawsuits against these maps would be inevitable, and there were some already filed. now the justice department is stepping in here. can you explain to people the issue here, why justice thinks that latino voters in particular in texas are having a raw deal on the maps? >> yeah. i mean, the numbers tell you a strong story. 95% of texas's huge population growth over the last ten years came from black and hispanic voters. but the districts are very much supporting republican voters, typically white voters with just zero of these opportunity districts or majority/minority districts that often boost and help voters of color elect the representatives of their choice. the fact that there are more white majority districts or white plurality districts in these maps is what the justice department is taking issue with. the fact that they have not drawn in new hispanic majority districts. that's pretty much at issue here. this is 4 million people in texas. pretty stunning numbers that sort of suggest there was as they allege, intent. intent to draw discriminatory maps. you see -- excuse me. they're going for discriminatory intent in this lawsuit. that's pretty indicative of how they're going to do it. section two was a little bit weakened by some of the recent supreme court rulings. this is a -- they clearly need to be proactive in how they police it. >> so in the state of texas, they're adding two congressional seats. they go up from 36 to 38. i was trying to read and listen at the same time. they hit across the state. they say minority voters for surgically excised from communities in the dallas fort worth area and a majority of latino districts should have been created in harris county, the county seat of houston, the big e county in the state. and when they get to the state house maps, they find even more problems about latino seats in san antonio. i mean, this is really a state-wide issue in texas. and i think the other thing that's interesting and you touched on this a little bit. the idea of discriminatory intent. you heard this from pete in his question. republicans in texas will tell you as they told me when i was down there recently, the maps weren't meant to be discriminatory. they were meant to give them partisan advantage which is allowed. there's nothing illegal about gerrymandering in and of itself. is that what this case is coming down to? what is just helping republicans why putting a district together that has more republican voters in it? and what is discrimination meant to weaken categorically a particular disadvantaged or minority group? >> yeah. that really is the central question. garrett. when i talk to experts, they say it's impossible to gerrymander in southern states without racially the voting behavior that voters currently exhibit. so it's going to come down to had a they were trying to do as well as what they effectively did. you can't really take it apart, when you have voting blocs that reliably behave in a certain way. you point out the suburbs. it's important that these fast-diversifying suburbs are critical here. and experts tell me it looked like a surgical attempt to neutralize the changing and fast-diversifying suburbs. when they looked at these plans, it looked like someone went in with an intent effort to do just that. >> i would commend anybody to go look at the before and after of these maps, if you look at austin, texas, for example, where you had a whole bunch of districts that were getting more competitive in favor of democrats all out in the suburbs. instead what this new map does is packs every democratic voter in the travis county area into one new congressional district. and it shores up republicans in the surrounding districts. jane, greg abbott will probably like this issue for his own political reasons, right? the republican governor of texas has made it his business to get into lawsuits with this administration. how do you see this playing out in texas and in the big election that's already going on down there right now where we're likely to see an abbott/beto o'rourke showdown next fall? >> voting rights has been a sort of constant issue in this race before this race was even declared, with beto o'rourke being a huge voting rights advocate. this is the second in under a month voting rights lawsuit from doj to texas. they're going to be love this, shoring up their vote and making sure their base feels confident in the election, even though we know there is very little evidence of voting fraud in america. but they want to say, look, it's safer to vote and we've restored trust while doing this. state republicans like to say that they were elected to enact these plans, they were elected to draw their maps and they're going to do what they think is right for their voters. >> it's going to be a fascinating case in a fascinating state political environment. thank you for breaking down that news for us. back to the story we started this broadcast with, the coronavirus. as the country and the rest of the world try to determine the threat posed bit omicron variant, a new documentary focuses on the fear and anxiety that gripped new york city during the first four months of this pandemic. we all probably remember it better than we want to. the first wave followed doctors and nurses at long island jewish medical center in queens as well as the patients they treated as the unprecedented public health threat worsened by the day. >> last week, there were like maybe one, two, three patients that we kind of heard about, like whispered about. they're telling me you're not needing as much oxygen as you did before. is this a covid patient, is this not a covid patient? the infection kind of went into his bones. and now i have a list where pretty much all of the patients have covid-19. >> matthew heineman is the oscar nominated filmmaker behind "the first wave" and the physician who is the focus of this documentary at long island jewish medical center in queens. i watched the documentary, it was heartbreaking, i got a half hour into it and didn't know if i would be able to finish it, but i'm so glad i did, a powerful piece of filmmaking. matthew, obviously nobody knew how this was going to go in those first early days. what were your thoughts on this project as you got started? did you have any idea what you and what we as a country were getting ourselves into? >> absolutely not. i mean, it was terrifying. i think as this tsunami was about to sweep across our country, and we were inundated with stats and headlines, we felt this enormous need to put a human face to it, to humanize it. we as an american public were so shielded from the realities of what was happening inside hospitals. so we want to try to put audiences inside the shoes of the doctors and patients we ended up following. >> doctor, you were one of the doctors we follow through this documentary. talk to me about what was going on through your head when this whole horror first began. >> thanks for having me. and in the beginning, there was so much uncertainty, there was fear. we didn't have enough ppe in the beginning. so we really had to tap into each other for additional help, resources, just to get on with our day to day. >> matthew, as i said, this film shows what the headlines and the stats really can't, and what frankly was hard for a lot of us to see. this pandemic, we weren't in the emergency rooms, we weren't able to watch patients, we weren't able to watch our family and friends battle this pandemic in the way we might have something else. i want to play one of the most agonizing moments of the documentary, a phone call that dr. douge had to make to the family of a covid patient who died. for folks watching at home, i understand this is pretty intense, but it's worth watching. >> i'm sorry to tell you this but we've tried multiple rounds of cpr. and we were unable to bring him back. [ crying ] >> as we're getting ready to start our third year of this, why do you think moments like that are important for people to see? >> for a lot of different reasons. i think it's really, really sad to me how polarizing this issue has become. there's world, there's alternate universe in which covid brought our country together. but because we were so shielded from the realities of the horrors as hospitals, it allowed misinformation to fester, it allowed this partisan division to happen. i hope that this film provides a vehicle through which we can reflect all that we've been through. we've all been changed forever by this. as we're potentially entering our third year, as you say, we can't forget, this is still going on. i think we as americans love to sort of move on and pretend like something didn't happen or, you know, not look back. i think it's really important to reflect on all that we've been through. and what have we learned as a society, what have we learned as individuals? how can we apply that to both the present and to the future? >> dr. douge, since we played a tough moment, i feel like i know everybody an opportunity to look at one of most uplifting moments of this, when we see a patient who nearly died and he pulls through, towards the end of the documentary. >> okay. if you go to the website and put in a meeting i.d. >> oh, here we go. maybe. >> happy birthday! >> oh, my god, i thought it was going to be -- >> you had no clue. >> thank you, thank you! oh, my gosh. ♪ happy birthday to you ♪ >> thank you so much. >> it's the wrong clip, but it's still a good one, it feels like something out of a time capsule here where you're discovering zoom, something that's a household term now, for your own birthday during the pandemic. i just wonder, doc, then, how you guys are doing now, how you're getting through this. doctors like you have never really gotten a break. do you still have that inspiration, do you take it from your patients as we get ready potentially to face another winter of this, another possible wave? >> honestly, as a health care worker, as a physician, we, myself included, are struggling. we didn't get that break that a lot of us are hoping for, because there's constantly sick people, aside from just covid. so what i really urge people is that, yes, we were considered health care heroes. but even heroes have sidekicks. so now we have measures where people can actually take part, and there's preventive measures to help us possibly end this pandemic. a lot of us health care workers are looking to the public to do their part as well. and as we tried to search for resilience and we keep pushing on, we do hold on to these uplifting moments and stories that the first wave definitely illustrates as well as some of the traumatic episodes. >> matthew heineman, the documentary is a credit to journalism. dr. douge, you're a credit to this country. thank you both for the work you're doing and continue to do. you can watch the documentary streaming now on hulu, i highly recommend it. here on "meet the press," we're all fans of the documentary genre and the deep reporting it can bring. today we're excited to announce an award-winning filmmaking its tv debut this week on msnbc. this friday, msnbc films presents "paper and glue" from oscar winning producer ron howard. it follows an artist as his work transcends rules and borders. watch the television premiere. tomorrow, chuck will be back with more "meet the press daily." president biden is set to begin at any moment. msnbc coverage continues with katy tur right now. good to be with you. i'm katy tur. as we come on the air this monday, there is alarming news about the covid pandemic. though it might not be what you think. let us start with the omicron variant. it is now confirmed in at least 45 countries and a third of u.s. states. but dr. anthony fauci says early reports from