you that. >> and how the signature policy achievement for democrats is yielding unbelievably good results. when all in starts, right now. >> good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. after 27 years on the supreme court, today we learned that justice stephen breyer, 83 years old, is retiring. justice breyer is one of the three remaining liberal justices in the sits in the supreme court. it is a huge announcement. this morning, when nbc news broke the story, it was that rare push alert on my phone that actually gave me kind of a sense of relief. because usually when something pops up, these days, it's like, oh god, what now? the broader announcement is still not official, in fact, the white house is expected to make a formal announcement about his retirement tomorrow. we expect the president and prior to appear together. for his part, today, biden declined to appear today until justice breyer makes it official. [inaudible] >> every justice has the right to decide what he is going to do and not say -- there has been no announcement from justice breyer. he will make whatever announcement he will make and i will be happy to talk about it later. thank you so much. [inaudible] >> thank you, mr. president, it is an honor to be here. [inaudible] >> right now, justice breyer is the oldest member of the court. he was nominated by president bill clinton back in 1994. and in fact, the senator whose chair the judiciary committee at the time and ran that nomination, was then senator joe biden. breyer was confirmed by an overwhelming vote of 87 to 9. but it's basically impossible to imagine a supreme court justice now being confirmed with such a large margin with the way that the court has gone and judicial battles have gone. and so, with this news, senate majority leader chuck schumer and -- both said they planned to move quickly to confirm whoever biden picks because there is no time to waste. now, there have been a lot of understandable concern in many democratic circles about the possibility of history repeating itself, hence my relief this morning. replacing justice breyer is something that people have been very focused on since the moment joe biden was sworn in for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the traumatic experience of justice ruth bader ginsburg. who, of course, chose not to retire back when barack obama was president. particularly, when democrats had the senate, despite being over 80 and a cancer survivor. and then, she passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2020, right before the election, allowing donald trump and mitch mcconnell to give the court its current extreme conservative majority. the senate voted to confirm her replacement, amy coney barrett, just eight days before the election. they had a big party and a whole bunch of people had covid. she followed brett kavanaugh who was confirmed in 2019 despite accusations sexual misconduct -- and neil gorsuch, who was confirmed back in 2017. the only reason trump got to nominate -- was when scalia died in february 2016, with almost a year left on barack obama's final term, then senate majority leader mitch mcconnell took the absolutely unprecedented decision to block whoever president barack obama nominated. not even the nominee, just the nomination. in this case, they nominated garland and he did not get a hearing and they blocked him for an entire year. and -- had never happened before in the history of the republic. and then, after they had taken that unprecedented step, the first thing that mcconnell does when he gets in power in 2017 is almost immediately abolish the filibuster for supreme court justices. so that he could push through an extreme justice without the support of the super majority. and mcconnell was very clear on what his priorities are. he later said, blocking that nomination was the most consequential thing he had ever done. i would say, facilitating donald trump's election is up there too. that history puts what i'm about to play for you in context. last summer, mcconnell strongly implied that republicans will retake the senate in the midterms, which is very possible if not likely. then, that is maybe it for any biden supreme court nominees. >> if you are -- as the senate republican -- and i hope you are, and a democrat retires at the end of 2023 and -- that would be the anthony kennedy president. would they get a fair shot at a hearing? not a radical, but a normal, mainstream liberal. >> well, we would have to wait and see. >> yeah. we should believe mcconnell when he says this, wait and see. democrats should also -- at this moment they do not have to worry about mcconnell's threat. marie is a professor of constitutional law -- she has worked for a judge sonia sotomayor who was a judge at the u.s. court of appeals. she is a cohost of -- and brian fallon is the executive director of the -- demand justice, former aide to senator chuck schumer, a former director of public affairs in the doj under president obama. it is great to have you both. melissa, let me start with you. do you feel -- i feel like the relief was palpable across many circles, precisely because of the trauma of what happened with the last democratically nominated justice to exit the bench. >> i think that is exactly right, chris. i think lots of people have been watching justin breyer. a lot of people have been hoping he will retire for some time now. but he has always claimed that he is not interested in doing so in this climate, would be to appear quite political. he was always that great pains to avoid that. to some degree, that course was already out of the barn. and ironically, what's this potential nomination offers is something of a political gift to joe biden. he has an opportunity to name at the first black woman to the united states supreme court at a time when his administration has really been battered and bruised. so, ironically enough, stephen breyer has managed to not be a political, but rather perhaps deliver the president the greatest political gift of all. >> it is a good point. the timing here is -- in that regard. and one of the background stories that i think has not gotten a lot of attention, brian, is just how successful the biden administration and senate democrats have been in judicial confirmations. biden's 42 first year appointees are going to outnumber all of president kennedy's. it is already a record setting pace. and also, they've been very intentional about diversifying the federal bench that the last president was doing the opposite with. his nominees were sort of, i think, remarkably on diverse. and here you have 80% of biden 's confirm nominee so far have been women. 65% of confirmed nominees are people of color. there has been a lot of stable work -- what is the setup for this big nomination? >> this has been one of the untold six estuaries of the biden administration. it is understandably been a lot of focus on the unfortunate derailment of the build back better package and of course, significantly, the voting rights package a couple weeks ago. for year one, biden was saying all kinds of historical markers. not just in terms of the sheer number of judges that they were confirming. you mentioned kennedy -- more appellant judges in the first year than trump. but also, setting a new sort of paradigm for the types of people that democrats and vision as judges. this process has historically taken place in back rooms, it has been -- to the benefit of politically connected people who tend to -- or have backgrounds as prosecutors, which are viewed as sort of more moderate, less likely to draw republican opposition. biden has broken that mold. i think about 27 of the 42 judges nominated -- >> i think we are losing him. >> -- labor lawyers and the people that he is considering for the supreme court that you can see position now, we have a lot of people who are public defenders and civil rights lawyers. this gives me the opportunity to tell that story. -- candace trucks in from the seventh circuit, confirmed last year. also potentially in the running for this position, former public defender. i hope that the biden administration takes a wide look at not just people that are currently on the bench, i think my fellow guest here would be a great pick for the supreme court, in the future. -- at the naacp. this is the approach they have taken that lower court nominations. i hope they take it when it comes to the supreme court to. >> i only laugh because i think it is a great idea as well. i would love to be friends with the supreme court justice. if that were to come about. you have my endorsement, melissa, as well. it does seem like the smart money is on ketanji brown jackson. and there are a lot of reasons for that. can you just tell us a little bit about who she is and why, i think, at least on paper, as a person and judge, there is a very obvious case for her. >> you are not going to get rid of me that easily, chris. i think you are exactly right. she is the front runner here and she is the front runner for a lot of reasons. she clerk for justice breyer. so, there is nice symmetry there. we saw the same come of symmetry when kavanaugh was -- she has been a public defender, she is currently sitting on the d. c. circuit. she was recently elevated to the d. c. circuit. and she got all of the votes of the democratic senators and even managed to pull some republican senators. and that was very, very recently. and that has to weigh in her future -- this is an administration that likely wants an easy time of this and she would be smooth sailing. another potential nominee is justice leondra -- from the california supreme court. she is a former clerk to justin paul stevens. and she too, i think, would bring a lot of this particular pick. we have not had a state court justice to join the court since justice souter. that would be a different kind of diversity. but diversity nonetheless. and of course there is sherrilyn eiffel and she is currently the president and director of council -- also and and why you alumna. we have not had a civil rights lawyer on the high court since justice ginsburg and of course, justin marshall, the first african american to join the court. he also served as the president and -- naacp legal defense -- >> i would go as far as to say -- my favorite lawyer working today. there is this question. the -- case here. you there is a bunch of things. will this person be a good justice? are they qualified? there is also the political confirmation battle. and brian, you know, we saw this with amy coney barrett -- they elevated her to the circuit court, they came back within a very short period of time, having gone through the process, having gotten the votes to put her on federal court and said, hey, here she is again. and it is very hard to defeat someone under those circumstances because you kind of know they have the votes. the person has really changed. they have the votes the first time. that is the precisely -- she was confirmed, 53 votes, she got three republican votes, all democratic votes. there is a certain political logic there that seems pretty compelling. >> absolutely. not only have they proven that they have gotten the votes, in amy coney barrett's case, tim kaine voted for her for the supreme court. and similarly, as melissa was saying, with -- did draw support from three republicans and even lindsey graham was signaling and pretty moderate terms today about how elections have consequences and reminding quotes that he tends -- when it comes to picking judges. and that has been true about the lower court judges in the biden era so far. i think -- i've been talking to folks on capitol hill today. they are pretty =bullish aboutn whoever biden picks they are definitely committed to this hastened timetable. kris cain, who is my cofounder and worked on judicial nominations in the obama white house, reminds us that it is quite doable for the senate to consider, hold hearings, have a floor vote and confirm her while be -- finishing out the term. so, you may have a situation where, in april or may, this thing is all wrapped up and done and she is ready to take over and the term has not yet happened. which i think would be good, because that would then clear the decks for a moment in june when i think, unfortunately, this court is going to hand down a spate of awful rulings. and let us not confuse these two issues let's let the public scrutiny on what this court intends to do on abortion and its ability to regulate greenhouse gases and gun safety let's let the public be awoken to what's happening on this court. >> that's a very interesting point there. melissa murray and brian fallon, that was great, thank you both. >> thanks, chris. >> coming up, nikole hannah-jones on the book banning obsession unfolding in school districts around the country. the amazing scene in texas where a group of student said enough is enough. that's next. >> i'm here today to talk about the books under attacks in our school libraries. i want to start this out simple. the job of the school board is to protect the students in this district and make them feel like they have a place in this community. but from what i've seen so far, you are failing. ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the inevitable book burning, purge list portion of the right-wing education backlash, began last year, when bad faith activists whipped up a moral panic about critical race theory. of course, it has not stopped there. now we are seeing a very familiar kind of conservative wave of suppression, cloaked in concern about the children. this is happening all across the country but it is not going unchecked. late last year in texas, governor greg abbott last year ordered education officials to develop statewide standards to prevent the presence of pornography and obscene content in texas public schools, including school libraries. some texas districts have taken this directive and used it as license to remove all sorts of books, especially those focusing on lgbtq+ topics, racism and even sex education. the granbury independent school district, outside fort worth, put together a list of more than 100 books to consider removing from their libraries. this is a list including titles like "being jazz: my life as a (transgender) teen". "safe sex 101: an overview for teens". and "separate is never equal: sylvia mendez and her family's fight for desegregation." they have removed five novels by a new york times bestselling young adult author. earlier this week, the superintendent attacked those concerned about this purge. and if i did not tell you this happened just the other day in the 2022, you could be fooled into thinking that the speech was from another era. >> let's not misrepresent things. we are not taking shakespeare or hemingway off the shelves. we are not going and grabbing every socially, culturally, or religiously diverse book and pulling them. that is absurd. people saying that are gaslighters and it's designed to incite division. the books i removed were vulgar. sexually explicit and in my opinion pornographic books have no place in the hands of 13 or 14 or 15-year-old kids. our school owes our community an apology for ever allowing it in our schools. we will conduct a full investigation and put processes in place to make sure this never happens again. >> even in texas, a solidly conservative state, where the governor is encouraging educators to pull books from shelves, people are fighting back. i want to play some of what granbury high school students said at that board meeting. they stood uto the adults in the room. like superintendant jeremy glenn and they called the purge what it is. >> this constant need to control youth development shows a systematic problem with the school system. so many histories, such as those of lgbtq+ people, indigenous people and that of the true history of our country will be erased if this book ban follows through. what is the board hoping to achieve by bringing this into fruition? why must anyone decide the acceptable level of comfort before a book is removed from a shelf? >> i am queer, i am brown and i am very proud of that. and i am well aware of the censorship that has happened to my people over the centuries. i am well aware of this and i think it is horrible. and i don't think that little children should be shocked or disgusted by our identities. and that books and even people who don't identify with those identities there are books there was one called, "i am pregnant: what do i do? " this is sexual education we don't have at the high school level. >> because we are in a conservative climate, these are conversations we have not had. i walk through the highschool every day. i hear nothing but slurs when i walk through high school every day, slurs against minority groups in this list. it's plain and simple. if you don't like it, put the book down. no one is forcing you to read it. stop the censorship in our district and wake up to the reality that we are all different and we should all embrace each other with love, not blatant hate. >> these texas students organized a kind of backlash to the backlash, reasserting their right to open inquiry. this sort of thing is happening all over the country. in virginia, newly elected governor glenn youngkin has established a tip line, some calling it a snitch line, for parents to report inherently divisive practices in schools. this comes in the wake of youngkin's first executive order on ending the use of inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory, and restoring excellence in k-12 public education in the commonwealth. now some virginians are fighting back by spamming that tip line with prank messages like, "my teenage son came home from school and told me his teachers are attempting to teach him. i'm outraged and find this unacceptable! " and harry potter fans saying that, albus dumbledore is teaching that full-blooded wizards discriminated against mudbloods. fire him immediately. nikole hannah-jones, the creator of the 16 19 project, which many lawmakers are trying to ban from schools, joins me next. i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 54, what's my price? you can get coverage for $9.95 a month. i'm 65 and take medications. what's my price? also $9.95 a month. i just turned 80, what's my price? $9.95 a month for you too. if you're age 50 to 85, call now about the #1 most popular whole life insurance plan available through the colonial penn program. it has an affordable rate starting at $9.95 a month. no medical exam, no health questions. your acceptance is guaranteed. and this plan has a guaranteed lifetime rate lock so your rate can never go up for any reason. so call now for free information and you'll also get this free beneficiary planner. and it's yours free just for calling. so call now for free information. the reactionary backlash to racial justice movements in this country continues to be one of the main organizing principles motivating republican voters and politicians. take, for example, osceola county in florida. last summer, the state banned the teaching of so-called critical race theory, which exists as a proxy in the conservative mind for any discussion of structural racism that may make white students feel uncomfortable. now we are getting a look at how that ban will come into practice. according to guidelines for educators in the county, instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective and may not suppress or distort significant historical events. examples of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with state board approved standards include the denial or minimization of the holocaust and the teaching of critical race theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice but that racism is embedded into american society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons. the document goes on, saying, instruction may not utilize material from the 1619 project. nikole hannah-jones is the pulitzer prize-winning correspondent for new york times magazine. her book examines the centrality of racism to the american story. she joins me now. nicole, we have seen these moves now and i think it started with the 1619 project as a focal point and critical race theory. but i am curious to hear your response to watching it bloom to, as it were, tony morrison and "the bluest eye" and books about teen pregnancy and pornographic materials and so on. >> thank you for having me on and thank you for discussing this important topic. because what we are seeing is not a sign of a healthy democracy at all. but it is inevitable. it's easy for people to look away when republicans were only targeting the 1619 project because maybe they didn't agree with the 1619 project or they were uncomfortable with it. but if you are targeting any one work, it is never simply going to be about this one thing. it was never simply going to be about race. so those of us who study these types of things knew that they were also going to eventually start coming for historical texts. that they were going to start coming for texts about other marginalized groups. that is exactly what we are seeing happening. it was inevitable. these laws are anti-democratic, as tim snyder says. what we are seeing now is that a war on history, is a war on democracy. you brought up the osceola law, which i have read quite a bit. the guidance from the osceola in reference to the florida law. it bans the 1619 project and then it says that history has to be factual and objective. and then it mandates that you can only teach the story of america that says we were a country founded on universal rights. so we see that these two things are antithetical to each other, but what these laws are really about is indoctrination. they are about nationalism and patriotism. a healthy society does not ban ideas and it does not ban books. >> yeah, i mean, you quoted this and i want to read from it, because i think it's actually quite revealing. this is again from the osceola guidance that is sort of under the state law. it says, instruction may not utilize material from the 1619 project and may not define american history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles, stated in the declaration of independence. but what i find fascinating is that it is sort of refreshingly forthright and honest. i grew up in the catholic church and we recited a creed at every mass. it declared what we believe. and osceola is now saying, this is the creed of osceola education. this is what we believe. what i find maddening is this idea that there is no ideology behind this. this is just neutral and factual, when in fact, this is what it is. it is a fight about these very contested, high stakes ideas about what the nature of the country is. >> well, this is how propaganda works. it turns terminology on its head so that nothing actually means anything. these laws are being passed because they said that -- american school children are being indoctrinated. and so we had to pass these laws to ensure american children were getting an actual rendering of history. and of course these laws are seeking indoctination. because what they are saying is that there is only one way to talk about american history and if you aren't going to talk about american history in that way, then you can't talk about american history at all. they are also very intentionally vague. what does that mean that american history can only be taught if it is saying that we were founded on these fundamental ideals? well, american history is not just about the period of the american revolution. what we are seeing of course, in florida, is a professor of civil rights had his training canceled because he believed that it was coming in contact with the critical race theory law. we are seeing books, like the story -- of which was one of the first school desegregation suits in the country being pulled. we're seeing books about children who are gay being banned. so, they are so vague that they can be used to challenge anything. and now we are creating laws that are encouraging parents to report their teachers, to spy on teachers, to try to lure teachers into teaching something that can be used against them and encouraging students to do this to their teachers. this is an environment that is not conducive for learning. i have children, i have a daughter, i send my daughter to school to get an education that doesn't simply confirm her worldview, but that challenges her, that makes her think differently about the world, that brings different perspectives. and when we hear these laws are for parents. it is very clear which parents. they are not talking about black and brown parents and not talking about progressive, white parents. they are not talking the parents of children who are queer. they are talking about one particular type of parent who they are putting on top and favoring over every other parent. this is not the sign of a healthy democracy. timothy snyder, in the piece that he wrote for the new york times magazine, cites these laws as memory laws. and he said that you see these types of laws being passed in countries that are very towards authoritarianism. and so, when you put that hand in hand with all the anti voting laws that are being passed right now, the laws against women's reproductive rights. you see that this is part of a larger strategy that turns americans against each other, that uses the original wedge issue of race in order to justify policies that are becoming increasingly anti democratic. >> we should note that one of the most striking examples of this, which came through today, is a county in tennessee that is banning maus in schools. that is of course the pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about the holocaust, which had a profound effect on me as a kid. i know many many people for whom that book was seminal, mind-blowing, one of the most effective masterpieces of historical education for kids. and, again, it comes down to the question of who will get a veto over the sensibilities of a curriculum, which again, i want to be very clear and i think you would agree. that stuff is always going to be contested. part of the point of the 1619 project is that there is no settled question here. it is going to be contested. but the question of who controls what, what is allowed in the parameters of discussion ends up being what we're seeing on display here now. >> absolutely. trust me, there are books that i read when i was a student that we were assigned that i was not comfortable with. there are texts that parents don't agree with. and parents have a say. parents have always had a say. people have always contested what students are learning. but what we are seeing now is quite different. to see state legislature actually prohibiting ideas that they don't like. to say, you can't even talk about how this country as fundamentally racist. what if you, what if the teachers doesn't believe that is fundementally true? it's just saying, this is a school of thought that other americans believe in. there is an entire area of study that you could no longer introduce students to. that is not the type of education that we should be wanting for our children. and chris, these laws are not only about k-12. for instance, in wisconsin, the legislature there is considering one of these anti-crt laws that would also prohibit the 1619 project and critical race theory from being thought at the college level. that is obscene. but that is where we are in this country. we are not just seeing this in southern states. i know people like to write off the south as somehow uniquely backwards. that is not the case. we are seeing this all across the country. this is a moral panic and moral panics are always very dangerous. i find it perplexing, but i will say, what i so appreciated it about your opening was i think parents and students are waking up. the opposition, who have pushed for these laws, has been extremely well organized. but i think now, communities are fighting back. >> profoundly inspired by those students. they are incredibly astute in what they said and righteous and correct. thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> still ahead as republicans -- it is their followers who are continuing to pay the price for their lives. a clear partisan divide in the pandemic of the unvaccinated, after this. after this nearly two years into the coronavirus pandemic and we are still losing over 2000 of our fellow countrymen and women a day. the vast majority of those 2000 deaths a day are completely preventable deaths that would not be happening if we could get everyone, at the very least, vaccinated and ideally, boosted. just over 67% of the total eligible u.s. population is fully vaccinated right now. and the number one thing driving our low vaccination rate is the right-wing movement to stop people from getting vaccinated. look at this chart. health care policy analyst charles gaba looked at every county in the country and found a direct correlation between levels of support for trump in 2020 and coronavirus deaths. this is what that looked like in the delta wave. the redder the county, the higher the coronavirus deaths. something similar is playing out now in the current omicron wave and a lot of these people are unvaccinated. right now, unvaccinated americans are dying of coronavirus at a rate of 20 times higher than the vaccinated. and yet, fox news, rupert murdoch's company, night after night pedals these incredibly dangerous, poisonous lies about the literally life saving coronavirus vaccine. >> in these highly vaccinated and highly boosted countries, rates of infection are incredibly high and rates of serious disease and death are also rising. the mrna covid vaccines need to be withdrawn from the market now. no one should get them. no one should get boosted. no one should get double boosted. they are a dangerous and ineffective product at this point against omicron. we are in a dangerous moment and these products need to be withdrawn. >> so, you say they're ineffective and that is demonstrable to anyone who lives in this country. everyone you know whose had covid and most of them are fine. >> yeah awesome. what about the ones who aren't fine? lies like that are broadcast to millions of people every night, as journalist eric levitz points out. fox news is literally killing its viewers. just commiting negligent homicide at national scale on a nightly basis. he just wrote a piece for "new york magazine" saying how places like fox news have made the omicron wave so much worse. and eric levits joins me now. eric, what is your basic argument here about what we are seeing? particularly, during this omicron wave? >> yeah, well, i think that one analogy here, as you just showed, tucker carlson is on a nightly basis, propagating an ideology that is getting thousands of americans killed per day. i think it's a bit like if you are broadcasting a pro-al-qaeda propaganda on september 11th. i mean, you had thousands of people who are dying as a result of the ideas that this network is platforming. and there is some question about, do we see this kind of hostility towards vaccines on fox news just because it's what it's audience already believes and it's playing to its base? to some extent, we see that that is true. we see that donald trump has endorsed the efficacy of the vaccines. and that hasn't been sufficient to change the views of these minority of republicans, who have dug in on this anti-vax, conspiracist ideology. there is some extent to which this is bottom up. and it's not rupert murdoch looking at the federal deficit projections and actuarial tables and deciding that we need to save money on social security is for me to herd my viewers. it's not really quite that sinister. but at the same time, you have people who are not converted, who just happen to be watching this network and happen to be infected with this ideological illness. we have suggested evidence for this, as far as a study done by researchers in switzerland last year. they took advantage of this odd quirk, where the channel number that gets assigned to a given market influences marginally how much it is watched. the lower the channel number, the more it is watched. you have a situation where you can look at two markets with similar demographics and similar partisanship, and control for other variables, but on one of them, fox news is channel 35 and on the other fox news is channel 68. and you see in the markets where it is lower down, it is getting watched a little bit more and we see this lower rate of vaccination, and it appears to be having a direct, causal impact on how people are behaving. >> yes. and that's a good point. when you look at the data of what they are broadcasting it is profoundly, obsessively vaccine skeptical or anti-vax, and you see in the markets where it is lower down, it is getting watched a little bit more and we see this lower rate of vaccination, and it appears to be having a direct, causal impact on how people are behaving. >> yes. and that's a good point. when you look at the data of what they are broadcasting it is profoundly, obsessively vaccine skeptical or anti-vax, like what we just played. there is also just a stark partisan divide in the country, to your point about the cause for that, it's up for debate. but when you look at u.s. adults receiving at least one dose of the vaccine, it's very stark. you've got 81% of dems in the youngest category, 82, 89, 94 at very high levels. and then just considerably, significantly lower levels among the population. and when you look at that, again, look at that 65+ demographic. that is the fox base in some ways. that 14 point difference is massively, massively significant. the difference between 80% vaccination rate for people 65 plus and 94%, that's massively, massively different because of how deadly this can be for people who are over 65 and unvaccinated. >> absolutely. and maybe as concerning is the 50 to 64 group, where there is an enormous gap. what was it? 23 points or something. men 50 to 64, especially if they have any comorbidities, they have really serious risk. and they are not getting vaccinated. to your point, in that pew research poll, the gap between all democrats and republicans overall is larger than any other gap. it larger than the gap between the old and the young, in whom we see an expected gap. because older is so much more vulnerable. partisanship is more powerful than anything else. and you can't explain that without the irresponsibility of republican and conservative elites in broadcasting this message that endangers the people who trust them. >> yes, and one other theory we can raise and dispose of is the sincerely held view from rupert murdoch on down. we know that's not true. rupert murdoch was one of the first people on earth to get vaccinated. fox news has a preregimental protocol around vaccination, they have a vaccination passport, essentially. they have been working in remote studios. and everyone there, it's like a 95% vax rate. this is a network when it clearly matters in how they act, they believe in vaccination. but that's not the message you get on tv. and the only thing i think you can divine is that it's an almost incomprehensible level of cynicism that is going to get people killed, people who love their program. and that is sick. eric levitz, thank you. >> thank you. >> still to come, cold hard evidence that a particular policy works beyond your wildest dreams. we will tell you about it. ou about it. does sinus congestion and pressure make breathing feel impossible especially at night? try vicks sinex. unlike most sinus treatments, it provides instant relief that lasts up to 12 hours. its powerful decongestant targets congestion at the source, with a dual action formula that relieves nasal congestion and soothes sinus pressure by reducing swelling in the sinuses. for instant relief that lasts up to 12 hours, try vicks sinex. from vicks - trusted relief for over 125 years. governments take on projects to [sfx: voice relief] improve social welfare all the time. the degree to which they are effective is contested and it's difficult to study, lots of variables. it's clear when you get a crystal clear answer. a large signpost when a policy works. but it happened with one of the democrat social spending plans. last year, the democrats passed an expanded child tax credit, delivering direct payments of up to $300 per kid every month to parents. supporters argue that the plan was on track to cut child poverty in half. a new study demonstrates how beneficial this intervention can be. as "the new york times" puts it, a study that provided poor mothers with cash stipends for the first year of their children's lives appears to have changed brain activity in ways associated with stronger cognitive development. there are caveats, as the changes were modest and it remains to be seen whether these changes in brain activity lead to better cognitive skills. but this is pretty cut and dry. giving families direct payments helps families and stops those from struggling needlessly, but it also appears to assist in the brain development of those impacted. our next guest is dr. kimberly noble, a lead neuroscientist in this study and she joins me now. kimberly, i wonder if you could explain how this study worked? >> back in the summer of 2018, we contact 1000 mothers with low incomes, shortly after they gave birth. we recruited them there in the wards of the hospital. the mothers were told that they would receive a monthly, unconditional cash gift that they would be free to spend, however they would like, no strings attached. and they would receive this gift every single month. critically, the women were put into two groups. the high cash gift group and the low cash gift group, the low cash gift receiving $20 a month. by studying the differential impact, we can actually say something about the extent to which poverty reduction causes differences in children's outcomes. >> and so what you looked at, as a dependent variable here, the outcome measurement, was the actual brainwaves of the children? of the infants? >> that's right, that's right. this first finding reports the results after just one year of the unconditional cash gift. and we travel to the families homes and recorded brain activity using a technique called electroencephalography, or eeg. there are discs called electrodes that look a little bit like microphones, and they enable us to record the electoral brain signals. of course, we are not mind readers, we don't know what children are reading. but we look at how quickly the brain is sending signals. >> and you found a significant difference in the control group and the high cash group? in the brain waves of these children, suggesting there was a causal relationship between this extra $300 a month and some kind of actual, physical brain development? >> that's right. after one year of monthly unconditional cash support, we found the moms in the high cash group were already showing more high fast paced brain activity, in key regions of the brain that key to thinking and learning. >> obviously, there is some attenuated chain of cause here, right? because the money is going to the household, not the brain of the kids. so something is happening that is connecting these. what is your understanding or theory of how these cash payments are leading to this result? >> we are working very hard to try to understand that pathway. and you are right, there are likely many different, potential pathways. perhaps different pathways in different families. we are working hard to try to understand how the money changes expenditures in the household. did parents use it to buy food? did they use it to buy books and toys? did they use it to be able to afford more time with their children? so we are working hard to understand those kinds of mechanistic pathways. >> there are a few things that come to mind here. and one here, i am editorializing for myself -- even if you found no finding -- i think it's a general social welfare improvement for these households, so i would support it even if the finding came back nil. that's my own editorializing on this. and we should say, there's been lots of studies on the effectiveness of pre-k, universal pre-k, for instance. studies come out and sometimes the data get confounding as more studies come out. it's possible that there are studies that would find different findings here. but one thing i think this speaks to is that there is a fear that if you give these people money, they are going to do bad stuff with it. it's going to go to waste or it will be used on bad stuff. and i feel like, at the very least, there is something pretty demonstrative here. and there is clearly not some negative effect happening to households from an unconditional cash payments. >> exactly. we hear that question all the time, are you worried that families will squander the money? and i will take a step back to answer that. literature previous to our study does not support that. families who get a windfall tend to spend it in much the same way that higher income families do. so it's no surprise that we are not seeing differences in spending on adult vices, like tobacco. >> we should say that there is a battle politically over this. how much do we know about how how plastic the infants'brains are in this moment of development? the spectrum of development that could happen that early on? >> sure. well, as a nurse and as a pediatrician i can speak to the fact that early childhood is a heightened period of sensitivity to the environment. we already know that children's brains are extremely malleable and sensitive in that period. and the fact that we can already see differences after just one year of unconditional support really speaks to the remarkable malleability and plasticity of children's brains. >> really promising and important research. thank you. that is "all in" on this wednesday night. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. the rachel mad dow show starts right now. thanks for joining us. ronald reagan was governor of california for two full terms, eight full years. over the course of those eight years as governor he nominated zero women to any position in cabinet. in either of his terms as governor. he also over those two terms nominated hundreds of judges to the california state courts. roughly 98% of his nominees were men. wow. that's even like hard to do. he made three state supreme nominations. while he was governor. all three were dudes. these dudes. and this