maddow show out into 90 minutes instead of an hour on a friday night. who are you going to complain to? the boss? the boss at this point is just lick any of us. the boss is just another inch and a half tall head in a tiny zoom box that sometimes cuts out in the middle of the meeting, especially when he's talking. it's anarchy at this point. so thanks for being here tonight for this hour and a half. let's do this thing. all right. we start tonight in beautiful wright county, minnesota. wright. wright quan county. sort of on the way between minneapolis and saint cloud. beautiful part of the country. beautiful part of the state. you know they call minnesota the land of 10,000 lakes. wright county is one of the places that makes that make sense. the towns in wright county are like smith lake and howard lake, and french lake, and maple lake, and in between, maple lake, minnesota, and the next town over, which is called annandale, there are two catholic churches between those two towns, saint ignatius and saint timothy's. these are two pretty small towns. they're less than ten miles apart. two or 3,000 people in both maple lake and in annandale. and while that, you know, five or ten miles between saint ignatius and saint timothy's is enough distance to justify having two separate catholic churches for those two towns, it's apparently not enough to justify having two different sets of clergy serving those two churches. so between annandale and maple lake, minnesota, between saint ignatius and saint tim ny's, the same three priests oversee the services for both churches in both towns. they split themselves between the two churches. there's father mier, father andrew, and monsignor callahan. and between the three of them, they take care of services at both those churches and both of those towns. now, you might have seen some of the national headlines this week that were generated by the catholic bishops in minnesota. kind of pounded their chests this week, and proclaimed that they would defy the state public health orders in minnesota. they declared that catholic churches in minnesota would break the state rules, designed to limit the spread of coronavirus, the bishops declared that catholic churches in minnesota will open up and celebrate mass in person with their congregations this weekend, regardless of what minnesota public health officials and the minnesota governor have said is necessary to deal with the epidemic there. so you might have seen these headlines, whether or not you live in minnesota, because the bishops got national attention, for their letter announcing that they would defy the law. quote, how can reason require us any longer to keep our faithful from coming to mass, to receive communion, to receive the eucharist? that's what is happening broadly in minnesota. but in maple lake, minnesota, and nearby annandale, minnesota, in little wright county, at saint ignatius and saint timothy's churches, that battle cry from the bishops statewide is landing sort of awkwardly in those communities. here's the letter from father meyer to his congregation at saint timothy's this week. quote, i'm sharing this in light of masses in the days ahead. while you may have read that the archbishop has allowed for churches to open and have public masses again, we will need to see how things transpire for the clergy here at saint timothy's and saint ignatius before proceeding. i know you are all understandably eager to have the sacraments again as soon as possible. i am eager to celebrate mass with all of you. obviously, however, we do not want to spread the virus, and want to make sure that the clergy have either tested negative, or overcome the symptoms of the virus for a number of days before celebrating mass with you. quote, yesterday, afternoon, we learned that some parishioners of saint ignatius, with whom father andrew and i have been in contact tested positive for the covid-19 virus. father andrew has just now tested positive as well. monsignor callahan and i have recently developed symptoms, and are awaiting our own test results. the parishioners of saint ignatius should also be aware that at least one of the volunteers who helped with the distribution of flowers for mother's day has been feeling unwell and was exposed to others with the virus. i wanted to share this so that you are aware and could be especially atent toiv any symptoms that might develop if you have recently interacted with even the clergy. i wanted to share this now so w why, so you are aware that why we may not come back to public masses as soon as other churches. with all three clergy potentially infected, it may be nearly impossible it do in the near future. with all three churches, clergy down with the virus, we may not be able to open up in defiance of the health orders as the bishops are saying across the state. that's happening in wright county, minnesota. this is texas. this is the holy ghost catholic church in bellaire, texas, which is part of the sprawling houston metropolitan area. at holy ghost, they reopened and started doing mass for their parishioners again at the beginning of this month because texas's republican governor greg abbott told churches across the state of texas that it was fine and they needed to reopen. well, last week, one of the priests from holy ghost died. five of the other priests at the religious order where he lived have also now tested positive. the archdiocese in houston has now sent out a warning to everybody in the parish, quote, if you have attended masses in person at holy ghost church since the reopening on may 2nd, you are strongly encouraged to monitor your health for any symptoms and be tested for covid-19. this is according to the archdiocese. not your typical archdiocese communication. but again, the governor of texas told all of the churches in the state to reopen. and they did. but now, with one priest dead, five others down from the virus, holy ghost has reclosed its doors. despite governor abbott's order that they ought to reopen. and you know, this is not a new phenomenon in this american epidemic. it has been this way from the very beginning. contact tracing has told us so. well, viola horton, attended a rural church service at a baptist congregation in rural marion county west virginia at march 15th. her sister was the reverend at the church and celebrating her anniversary as the leader of that church. that gathering at that one church in west virginia, that one day, is estimated to have infected 30% of the people who were in attendance. five people who attended that church celebration that one day were hospitalized by the end of the first week after that service. ms. horton was dead within two weeks of that service, and she was the first person in west virginia who is known to have died from coronavirus. last month in kentucky, health officials traced more than 30 coronavirus cases and three deaths, and community spread of the disease across multiple counties, including into a kentucky meat packing plant, they traced all of those cases back to a single church revival meeting, in hopkins county, kentucky. in california, right now, a single church service on mother's day is being blamed for new clusters of the virus in lake county and mendocino county, california. in butte county, california, right now, they are trying to track down 180 people who attended a congregate church service in person in defiance of the public health order in that states, that prohibited such gatherings. public health officials are trying to find everybody who went to that church service, because they learned that at least one person at that service tested positive the day after that service, and so they're now trying to contact trace the whole congregation, because at that event, it seems like they were all exposed. last month, one of the first cdc formal reports, first report tracing a large cluster of cases in chicago, identified one church service on one day, as one of the places where documented new infections took place. the new one that came out from cdc this week traces another cluster to a church in rural arkansas, where the pastor and his wife did not know that they were infected but they were, and over the course of one week, they infected 38% of their congregation, and so far, three people have died. i was also surprised to learn this today about what now counts as the worst outbreak in the country, the outbreak at the navajo nation, which stans parts of three different states, a little bit of utah, also new mexico, and arizona, and the arizona republic did great work today teasing out of the data geographiccally specific information about that outbreak on the navajo nation to try to figure out how bad it is there, but how bad it is compared with other parts of the country and what the arizona republic was able to find is that in the northern, particularly isolated part, of the navajo nation, the number of cases per population in specific regions there is higher than even in the worst-hit zip codes in new york city. and navajo health officials also say that that worst-hit region within navajo nation is where they think the navajo nation outbreak began, and they have traced the beginning of the navajo nation outbreak, which again is the worst one in the country, they have traced it back to a specific church revival meeting, on a specific day, in early march, in the navajo nation. that's where they believe it took hold. and now again, that is the worst outbreak in america, worst per capita, than the hardest-hit zip codes in new york city. so when the president today pounded his chest a little bit and announced that he will insist, as president, that all church services be held in person, this weekend, all over the country, and he will somehow magically override any state rule, that would seek to prohibit that kind of a gathering, i mean the president, you know, knows what he's playing with in doing that. this has been an outloud documented up front part of our experience in this epidemic from the very beginning. and no, the president does not have the power to overrule state public health rules and demand that all churches hold in person services but him trying to create the impression that he has that power will have some of that effect anyway. and so, you know, we will see what the president has wrought for this weekend in america, in the middle of the worst epidemic on earth. and then in, what, three weeks or so, in some places, if we're lucky, we will be able to do the contact tracing for what happens this weekend. and once they've done the contact tracing, presumably we will be able to give him all the credit he deserves for what will happen this weekend because we know what will happen at church services held in the open in congregate this weekend, we know what will happen because we're already living through it at a smaller scale from earlier on in this epidemic in america, when the total number of cases in the community was smaller than it is right now. we already know what church services have done, in terms of creating what turn into large clusters. in one case, which turns, into what is now the largest outbreak in the country. the worst outbreak in the country. i mentioned new york as a point of comparison for the navajo nation. i should tell you this, this to me is still the big picture tail of where we are at as a country. it's one very simple graph. that we've been updating day by day and it shows cases of coronavirus over time. new york is the blue line there. you can see how they have squashed their curve down and gone flat in terms of adding new cases in new york. the other line is the rest of the country, minus new york. so really, it's new york that is coming down. the rest of the country just keeps going up, up, up, ain't no stopping us now. you keep hearing this news about how the united states is really, is flattening out in terms of our new cases, in terms of the shape of our epidemic, the shape of the epidemic in this country is not flattening out. new york is doing better and the rest of the country is, and that has consequences, as we head into this fine memorial day weekend and the states are opening up with abandon. the great state of arkansas just logged its largest daily increase in cases yet. since the beginning of the epidemic, they've never had a larger daily increase in cases, than they have just had. in the same breath that he announced that, the governor of arkansas asa hutchison also announced that in addition to having more new cases today than any other day thus far, we're also announcing that sports events are back on. congregate sports events. play ball. in florida, nice beach weather coming this weekend. yesterday, florida announced its highest daily case numbers since mid april. so, you know, open everything up. there's going to be a 70-team youth baseball tournament held in brevard county this weekend. 70 teams. they're expecting 1500 people all together, for that baseball tournament this weekend. just had their largest case numbers in more than a month. in alabama, their numbers have been rising all month long in terms of new daily cases. last night we had the mayor of montgomery alabama here on the show. montgomery of course is alabama's capital city. the mayor was here, because he is raising the alarm that his city's hospital capacity in alabama is in his words maxed out. as of today, icu beds in montgomery, alabama, are at 97% occupancy. heading into the holiday weekend. and the case numbers in montgomery just continue to rise. the governor of alabama actually took questions on the situation in montgomery today and then in the same breath announced a further loosening of the rules statewide. the rules designed to keep people from further spreading the virus in that state. good luck, montgomery hospitals. good luck, doctors and nurses. good luck. let's see what you can do with what you've got. it is not just a phenomenalen in in the south. in omaha, nebraska, today, the medical director at one medical center, announced they are at 80% capacity now and seeing steady growth upwards, which is the lead in the omaha world herald, and hospitalizations in the omaha metro area are in a worrisome upward climb. and just a little further down in the same article, quote, nebraska governor pete ricketts says he feels comfortable loosening restrictions in the state. the director of that medical center was actually at a coronavirus town hall event with the governor last night. it was like they were broadcasting from two different planets. he is saying i feel great. everything seems good. let's loosen up and she said, i run this medical center in the largest city in the state and we are filling up, steadily and it is very worrying. she said last night, quote, now is the time to be wearing a mask. did you see this week, these haven't been circulated widely, i think they should be, they are amazing, did you see the wear a mask psas that new york showed off this week. they're not official. as i understand it, new york asked people to submit their own public service announcements about why you should wear a mask and what they circulated this week which is what i believe are the finalists, the best one, according to the state, and they're really good. they're also really, really, really new york. watch this. >> i love new york. we love new york. we're stuck inside our homes. every day heroes have been working overtime. new york, to reopen. and stay open. we all need to do our part. and show that we care. look, man. i wear a mask to protect you. we wear a mask to protect me. let's all wear a mask. to stop the spread of coronavirus. and save lives. when we show up in a mask, we're showing up for each other. show your love for new york. as new york loves you. >> the test book says politicians lead. no. sometimes the people lead. and the politicians follow. follow the american people. they will do the right thing. there's still a right thing. maybe right thing is a new york expression. ♪ >> new york tough. they're really good, right? aren't they good? but they are also the most new york thing in the world. i mean sometimes in new york, you feel like there's america, and there's new york. other times you feel like new york is kind of the capital of america. the nongovernment capital of america. and then you see stuff like this and you think that's very new york specific. the reason you've got masks like that, that is so new york specific, is because new york is taking the mask thing really seriously. even as new york's curve is coming down, and the rest of the country is going up, new york is taking additional mitigation measures very seriously. meanwhile, in the rest of the country, where things are heading that the memorial day weekend, all of these states are opening back up. all of these states on this list here have no recommendation or requirement for people to wear masks. when they are out and about. we think at least three of these states have no recommendation or requirement for anybody to wear masks either as a resident, or at any place of business. i mean the cdc actually does have an overt recommendation for the whole country that people wear masks. but there's no national effort to promote it. like new york city, and new york, are trying to develop their own new york-specific promotions of this idea. they're doing it because nobody else is. there's no national effort. there's a national recommendation, no national effort to promote it, lots of state where they're not even requiring it or recommending it, the president and the vice president undermine the mask recommendation personally whenever they can. you know, at the start of this epidemic, the cdc used to give their own briefings about what the american people should know and should do to protect themselves. the kinds of briefings where you might expect them to underscore the need to make, the need to wear a mask. the cdc doesn't do those briefings anymore. they haven't done them since early march. the "washington post" editorial page making a good case this week that just that one change, having the cdc return to briefing the american people directly, would be a big leap forward toward us starting to rationally deal with this crisis. but we don't have that, instead we still have these white house circuses. today dr. deborah birx stood up in front of a graph, apparently designed to make it look like things were getting much better, a nice downward sloping graph. always soothes the eyes in the grips of an epidemic. what it was that she was showing is just a graph showing the amount of testing being done in each state and they stacked the drafts and the ones doing the most testing are on the left side and the ones on the right are those who are doing less testing, and it gives you a soothing look, that they're declining, and it is set up that way, at a glance. that is just misleading, organized by which states are doing less testing and that's not testing getting better or states getting better at a time. and at a glance, it looks awesome. look how small, over there on the right, by oregon. the president's boosting of that malaria drug saying he's taking it, all the doctors are taking it, all of the front line health providers are taking. it they're not taking it. the president is saying it is a preventive to keep you from getting coronavirus. it's not a preventive to keep you from getting coronavirus. that moved on from absurd and sort of insane to a potentially deadly threat today. when the lancet published the results of a new study on 100,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients on multiple cooperates, those given the drug suffered a significantly higher risk of death compared to patients who did not take that drug. i mean we're still here. we're still at the bottom of the morass with the government getting worse and not better over time. and so for us civilians, for us citizens, knowing this is our time on earth and we'll have to answer for our behavior, too on what we tried to do for our country, how can we get good public health understanding among american citizens? how can we get good public health understanding, good buy-in, to necessary public health behaviors to keep ourselves safe, how do we get people to both understand, and embrace self protective behavior? how do we empower americans to make smart real science-based decisions, that will protect themselves and their families. how can we do that, when instead of credible public health authorities, to tell us what's what. we have this terrible government, that lies to us constantly about this stuff. and in the person of the president, it gives us, you know, made up, on the spot advice that might literally kill you. how do we get any better at this, when this is the government that we've got? well, we do what we can. we make our own psas about wearing masks. and send them into the state government in new york, and see if they're going to use them as an official state psa. came across another really cool thing this week in arizona, a group of arizona medical students designed, look how cool this is, designed these excellent and effective and beautiful covid information posters in spanish. the state of arizona was doing something posters in spanish that proved to be way too ignorable to be much good, and so a group of medical students in arizona designed really cooler ones that are way more resonant. look. aren't these awesome? you might remember, a couple of months ago, we interviewed a young medical student, who was, had made the decision to graduate early, and upend all of her plans for her start of her medical career, so she could instead go work on the front lines at the height of the epidemic, at bellevue public hospital in new york city. that young doctor just finished her tour there at bellevue, we are going to talk to her about how that went tonight, on this show. and we have a terrible government right now. i am very sorry to say. it is a terrible time to have a terrible government. but that does in the mean we're not a great country. our country is more than just our government. and you are seeing innovation and dedication among people to do the best, and to try to innovate our way out of this, even though we have to do so around a government that is mostly just making it worse. we're honestly having to make it up without help, a lot of the way. and that's kind of a theme right now in the news, as we head into this memorial day weekend. with the president pledging that everything must be ripped open, regardless of how poorly things are going in places that ought to be protecting themselves. so, we got a bunch ahead tonight. a bunch of good guests. a bunch stories you haven't heard anywhere else about where this thing is worse, and where americans are doing the most themselves, to make it better, and we have a big night tonight. stay with us. d we have a big ni. stay with us for people living with h-i-v, keep being you. and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including 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"the retur"drafting"ing" "the return of the slide job" "ripping the wall" "gas-n-go" "bump-n-run" "the return of loud" "nascar is back, and xfinity is bringing you the best seat in the house." this is unsettling. this is not the way it is supposed to go. on april 11th, safety regulators inside the iowa state government got a complaint. saying that workers at a tyson meat packing plant in perry, iowa, were being exposed to the risk of infection. not because of crowded working conditions inside that plant, the complaint says the employees were working elbow to elbow, that social distancing was not happening at all in the production areas inside that plant. and at the time that complaint was filed with the state, meat processing plants around the country were reporting outbreaks and a bunch of plants were getting closed down, just days before the complaint, another tyson plant also in the state of iowa had been forced to shut down, after hundreds of workers there got infected. but despite all that going on at the time, despite the known risks and the known dangers, despite that detailed complaint about what was happening inside that one plant in perry, iowa, these safety regulators inside, in the iowa state government, they did nothing. the associated press obtained records about the way they handled that complaint. what those records revealed is that it took the state nine days to even ask the plant for a response to those allegations in the complaint, to even ask the plant what was going on in terms of the situation in perry. the state regulators never visited the plant for an inspection at all. instead, after waiting nine days and asking tyson for a response, they said that tyson's response was quote satisfactory and then more than two weeks after that, state regulators just closed the case, without taking any action. again, they never even bothered to pop by and take a look. and that might have been the end of the story, were it not for the fact that one week later, 730 of the workers at that plant in perry, iowa, tested positive for coronavirus. 58% of its work force. state regulators had been notified weeks earlier about what was going on there. they said we're sure it's fine, we're not even going to go by, close the event. the des moines register reports this week that a similar complaint was filed against the jbs meat processing plant in marshalltown, iowa, and it is unclear whether regulators ever did anything about that complaint either. but at that jbs plant in marshalltown, iowa, at least dozens of employees there have also now reportedly tested positive for coronavirus as well. not that you'd know from talking to the plant or talking to the state of iowa, which is trying to keep this information as closely held as possible. the state has been of no help, even as hundreds, thousands, of meat processing workers in the state have been infected on the job. and so we've been covering this for a while, right? it's clear that the problem in meat processing plants isn't going away. the president ordering them all to be open, didn't turn out to be a panacea for keeping people from getting infected there. but beyond the situation in meat processing plants, we are now seeing more and more all over the country that other congregate work environments, other places where people work, together, for hours on end, particularly in manufacturing, or processing plants, those places are also now starting to see large outbreaks. in workplaces of all different kinds. this seems to be like the next phase. you look at local news around the country and you see these reports everywhere. you start to aggregate them and you realize this is more than just a blip here and there, this appears to be sort of the next wave of the way people are getting, the way americans are getting infected, when they go to work. with more and more states opening up workplaces, this is what we are starting to see. more and more. today, the denver department of public health ordered the closure of a u.s. postal service facility, and it's not just any postal service facility, it's not like a local post office, this is a sorting facility that handles all of the mail for the entire state of colorado and the entire state of wyoming. the denver public health department ordered that facility shut down, after workers at that facility tested positive for coronavirus and inspectors couldn't get in to see what working conditions were like. that usps shutdown in colorado, i would could have very large consequences, that comes one day after we learned about an outbreak at a u.p.s. facility in tucson, arizona. union officials say at least 36 workers at that u.p.s. facility have tested positive and three of them are sick enough to have been admitted to intensive care units. there have been lots of cases at amazon warehouse facilities across the country. already eight employees all working in different amazon warehouses across the country have died from coronavirus. in georgia, we've been keeping our eyes on a major outbreak on a nuclear power plant of all places. more than 230 workers have been infected in a nuclear power plant. officials in north dakota have been grappling with a surge in cases at a wind turbine plant. nothing about wind turbines specifically that put you more at risk for getting the virus but if you work in a manufacturing environment that's elbow to elbow, where you're closely confined with your other workers day after day, it is just as good as anywhere, more than 140 employees at the wind tubbine plant have already been affected. a beauty supply factory outside chicago was recently forced to shut down after one of its workers died from coronavirus. more than 100 cases reported at a rhode island facility that packages salads. halfway across the country in colorado, there was a cheese processing plant that was forced to shut down after a large outbreak there. you're seeing this in state after state. in all different kinds of processing and manufacturing facilities. any place where people are working in congregate. a mushroom plant in tennessee. a crawfish farm in louisiana. any of a dozen or so seasonal farms across southern new jersey. and it is reaching a boiling point for americans who work in these environments. for the past few weeks, hundreds of fruit packing workers in yakima valley, washington, have gone on strike, demanding higher wages, but also safer work conditions, in terms of exposure to the virus. more than 350 agriculture workers in that area have already become infected with the virus. yakima county, washington. and we're seeing stories like this all across the country, day after day after day. we're starting to realize as a country there is a problem in meat processing plants but now with the country beginning to reopen, workplaces beginning to reopen, we've got get our heads around the fact that we're seeing outbreaks in all sorts of facilities where workers work, travel, or live together, in congregate. how do we begin to deal with this problem and learn to keep ourselves safe? joining us now is jessica martinez, she is co-executive director of the national council for occupational safety and health. ms. martinez, it is a pleasure to have you with us. thanks for taking time. >> thank you so much, rachel for having me. i appreciate this time. >> let me ask you first, in terms of the way that i have explained this so far, if that comports with your understanding, if you and your organization are looking at this, through a different lens, or if i've gotten anything wrong. >> yeah, so i am here representing national cause, federation, promoting health and safety organizations, we're getting calls from workers every day scared to go to work. for good reason. essential workers are dying all over the u.s. and that has not been only meat processing workers but health care workers, grocery workers, and we have hundreds of deaths on our web site and it is a fraction. it isn't just a problem for essential workers. infectious disease doesn't stay contained in the workplace. we know as soon as that worker steps out, potentially infected, it is impacting communities, its neighborhood, the public spaces. so this is an issue for all of us to take into our hands, and take action. as a result, our organization released a return to work report, after receiving calls from workers and we are knowing workers are feeling more empowering to take matters into their own hands. we are seeing over 200-plus walkouts this week, big companies, like an amazon, insta-cart and we know last week ford workers in michigan walked out as soon as they found out that a worker tested positive for covid-19. so with that said, we know that workers have the power to be able to make these demands, both to the employer, government agencies, we know the federal agencies at this moment, osha in particular, the occupational safety and health administration, who has responsibilities to ensure health and safety working conditions for all workers across the country, has minimized enforcement. covid-19 has killed more workers in one, in this short period, of this pandemic, yet not one citation has been given to an employer because of covid-19. that is a huge problem. now is the time to have more enforcement for our government agencies, former chief of osha, mr. david michaels, had assured us that osha has the key to be able to have the authority to put emergency standards in place. we're seeing less of this. cdc guidelines are too weak. we're more and more seeing voluntary programs as the states are starting to reopen. voluntary programs are not the language we need to hear right now, mandatory programs, as we're seeing more and more workers are impacted. >> let's me just underscore, make sure i understood something you just said. in terms of the federal, there is a part of the federal government that is responsible for making sure that people work in a safe environment, osha, the occupational safety and health administration. out of all of the people who have been infected on the job and all of the people who have been infected on the job who have died, osha has yet to issue a single citation to any workplace in the entire country for covid-19 safety issues? >> that's right. that's right. and as you can see, it's astonishing, and again, it is a problem with enforcement. we know that particularly this pandemic has revealed long standing inequities in our country. we're also, for far too long, we know the low pay and dangerous conditions faced by millions of workers have particularly impacted black and brown communities. black and brown communities have the highest mortality rates around covid-19. we know that latino workers make up 18% of the working population. and 35% of slaughterhouse workers are latinos. african-americans are 12% but 34% of those are correctional officers. these are essential workers. these are the folks that are having to go to work on a daily basis, to protect their livelihoods. we are putting, workers essentially, if they're staying home, they're not making enough of a living wage. they can't provide for the family, to pay rent. if they go home, there's not enough protection and we're not ensuring the safety protocols to ensure that they do not get infected. it's really, really amplified, a problem that we've had across this country, in terms of the inequities, there is no law that says black and brown workers have to get the most dangerous jobs. that's discrimination pure and simple. and it has to end. >> jessica martinez, co-executive director of the national council for occupational safety and health, thanks for your time this evening. what you're talking about in terms of there having been more than 200 walkouts around the country and workers all over the place standing up for themselves to try to get safer standards that's something we're interested in covering in an ongoing way so please stay in touch with us. good to have you here. >> thank you. thank you, rachel. >> much more to get to tonight. stay with us. much more to get t stay with us so here's the thing. i'm actually closer to my retirement days than i am my college days. i just want to know, am i gonna be okay? i know people who specialize in "am i going to be okay." you may need glasses though. guidance to help you stay on track. ♪ tide cleaners is offeringe free laundry services you. to the family of frontline responders. visit hope.tidecleaners.com to learn more. you're having one more bite! no! one more bite! ♪ kraft. for the win win. on this theme in the news right now of how americans are trying to fix stuff ourselves, despite a government that is more a part of the problem than it is even anywhere near the solution, look at this. this was yesterday. in a whole bunch of places across new york state. where nurses and front line nursing homeworkers stood outside their workplaces, to protest the lack of protective gear to keep themselves safe, and to protest short staffing at nursing homes. signs like, you know, we are essential. we are essential, too. get me ppe. nursing homeworkers basically saying, hey, we are just as much on the front lines here in terms of working with coronavirus patients, as other health workers are, and we need some help. this holiday weekend, there's going to be candlelight vigils outside hard-hit nursing homes to honor lives lost, to coronavirus, to demand more support to help the staff, and the residents at nursing homes who even now, even still, it is no better. they are still the americans most at risk of getting this thing and most at risk of dying from it. the vigils around the country outside nursing homes to show support. nearly one-third of all coronavirus deaths in the united states are from nursing homes. in more than a dozen states, a majority of deaths are in nursing homes. but this week, we got an important new study that i think if it is widely read and widely understood, importantly, it could help stop some of these security theater dumb stuff that's being done for nursing homes despite it actually isn't working to make these places any more safe. if we could stop that and focus on what actually works maybe we would get more efficient in terms of minimizing the harm in the worst part of the epidemic that is persisting week after week and now month after month. the good news about this new data is that the idea of what you need to do is sort of refreshing and simpler than you think, if we could start doing that and not the dumb stuff, maybe we would make some progress on this hardest part of our response. but we've got one of the authors of that study joining us next. you are going to want to see that. g us next. you are going to want to see that how do your teeth get a dentist-clean feeling? start with a round brush head. add power. and you've got oral-b oral-b's round brush head surrounds each tooth to remove more plaque. for a superior clean, round cleans better. oral-b. some companies still have hr stuck between employeesentering data.a. changing data. more and more sensitive, personal data. and it doesn't just drag hr down. it drags the entire business down -- with inefficiency, errors and waste. it's ridiculous. so ridiculous. with paycom, employees enter and manage their own data in a single, easy to use software. visit paycom.com, and schedule your demo today. researchers at the university of washington published a new study this week in the journal of the american medical association which finally put in cold black and white that just screening people for symptoms isn't a real strategy for trying to keep a place free of coronavirus. just looking for people who have a fever or who are otherwise feeling sick is not enough to stop an outbreak at, say, an assisted living facility. on one hand, you know, yeah, duh, we all know already that people without symptoms can have it and can be infectious and so screening for symptoms is going to allow through a lot of people who are going to pose a problem when they get on the other side of your symptom screening gate. but despite the fact that i think we all know that now, the number of places including risky workplaces like big processing plants and really risky health environments like nursing homes and assisted living facilities, they have been doing symptom screening instead of testing. which in technical terms is called dumb. in this study they found that broad testing, testing everyone combined with strict hygiene and social distancing measures is successful at preventing an outbreak where coronavirus has already been found even in these risky health environments like in long-term care facilities. it's in plain black and white. does it mean that we could be inside of a plant, some kind of strategy that could be reproduced all over the country to finally start making practical progress toward protecting americans in these settings where more americans have been getting this thing and more americans have been dying than in any other single environment? joinings now is dr. alison roxby. she's one of the arthurs of this study. i apologize for having put in such terms of the bottom lines of findings of you and your colleagues, i hope i did not misconstrue it. >> thank you. no, those were our relates. >> thank you. i didn't mean to use the word dumb. go ahead. >> this is a classic outbreak investigation. we went into a local facility after two residents were hospitalized at one of our hospitals to try and determine whether we would be seeing other cases and frankly, at the time we did this study, we were very concerned that we would be over run with cases as has happened at so many other facilities. we were really pleased to only find four residents infected but surprise that none of the residents exhibited any symptoms. this is very -- makes it very challenging for workers at the facilities to protect themselves and residents to protect themselves. >> there is -- there continues to be in some, you know, guidelines from various agencies and certainly in practice in a lot of different workplaces and even in some health care environments where people are using symptom screening as if that is a gate keeping procedure that will keep covid-19 out of a facility using that kind of a screen. i feel like i don't totally understand the disconnect between us understanding the prospect of asymptomatic infection and the persistence of that as a public health tool, a public health tool that seems to give you a false sense of security while inviting the virus inside. >> it can act as a minimum floor of what people should be doing to protect against coronavirus, but it is definitely infective if you want to get ahead of the disease and a handle on the disease. testing is the bedrock principle of management of communeble diseases for decades and in this outbreak, testing will be our keystone strategy. >> do you have faith that the kinds of hygiene and social isolation and testing strategies necessary to tackle this thing and these types of facilities is within the ability of the united states that we as a country and culture can get these things done or is this stuff too high a bar? >> no, i think this is definitely achievable, and that is why we were so interested in publishing the results of this study because this facility recognized early on the need to keep residents apart in the beginning stages of the pandemic here in seattle where we were hit so hard in this very environment. they were able to do that and implement simple environmental cleaning strategies, more hand washing and with the testing, we didn't see any further cases in this facility. so i think it can work. and we really want to get the message out there that it's not hopeless in congresettings for adults. >> just clear as a bell. thank you for helping us understand this and thanks for making it so understandable. i really appreciate it. >> thank you. even though we are closing in on the end of the hour, i'm not leaving. much more to come tonight. it's a supersized rachel maddow show and we'll talk with adam schiff when we come back. stay with us. ll talk with adam schiff when we come back stay with us virtually any place. so, when you get a check... you can deposit it from here. and you can see your transactions and check your balance from here. you can detect suspicious activity on your account from here. and you can pay your friends back from here. so when someone asks you, "where's your bank?" you can tell them: here's my bank. or here's my bank. or, here's my bank. because if you download and use the chase mobile app, your bank is virtually any place. so visit chase.com/mobile. introducing tide power pods with cat & nat. that is such a large load, don't the stains sneak through? new tide power pods can clean that... whole situation. it's like two regular tide pods and then 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"yes" to putting your true colors on display. say "yes" to allegra-d. to putting your true colors i geh. common bird.e. ooh look! over here! something much better. there it is. peacock, included with xfinity x1. remarkable. fascinating. -very. it streams tons of your favorite shows and movies, plus the latest in sports news and... huh - run! the newest streaming app has landed on xfinity x1. now that's... simple. easy. awesome. xfinity x1 just got even better with peacock premium included at no additional cost. no strings attached. just say "peacock" into your voice remote to start watching today. welcome back to the up late version of ""the rachel maddow show." we're going an extra half hour tonight because anarchy. because we can. because time has no meaning. i want to begin the multiball bonus time with a look what is going on in the increasingly strange saga of mike flynn. between the election of donald trump as president and the time that trump was sworn in as president, we know that incoming advisor mike flynn spoke with the russian government and we know flynn and the russian ambassador discuessed sanctions being inpoing imposed by the ob administration with the kremlin attacking the 2016 election. flynn during the transition talked to the russian government about how the russians shouldn't respond in a way to those sanctions in part because the trump administration might get rid of them. we know mike flynn later lied about those discussions he had with the russian government when the fbi questioned him about them. that led to him loosing his job as national security advisor after just 24 days on the job. that's a record. it also led to him pleading guilty to felony charges in december 2017. but despite the release of the mueller report, which dealt with this to a certain degree, despite the declassification of mike flynn's fbi interview notes, despite thousands of pages of filings and the recent legal wrangling of his case, we do not know what specific words mike flynn exchanged with the russian ambassador on the calls when he was apparently telling them don't worry about the sanctions, we'll take care of it. now it seems like we may be one step closer to finding out what exactly happened in that conversation. mike flynn's immediate legal fate remains tied up in the court after the justice department decided that month they were going to drop the prosecution of him, never mind that he pled guilty twice, the justice department in an unheard of move decided they would stop prosecuting him despite the fact that he had already pled guilty. the trump justice department moved to drop the case as the president and his allies have started escalating accusations that it was the obama administration illegally targeting mike flynn and the real criminals are president obama and vice president biden and lots of people from the obama administration. in response, the top democrats on the intelligence committees in the house and senate have called on the acting director of national intelligence richard granel to release the chantran t transcripts to clear up the matter and react to such alarm with what flynn said to the russians and you're saying it's bad they were so alarmed, let us see what they were so alarmed about. we can judge for ourselves. in a letter today, the house intelligence chairman adam schiff said that releasing the flynn transcripts would quote ensure a transparent and complete public record free of political manipulation. congressman schiff sent that letter this morning to the acting intelligence director richard granell and in a move i don't think many people saw coming, he said okay. he announced he was in the processi process. quote, i already started the declassification for the few we received. they should be released in full. the public deserves to see it. if the administration will publish those transcripts, that remains to be seen why they would want to remains to be seen and mike flynn's lawyer and doing so would exonerate her client. okay. it's worth noting that today the director of the fbi christopher wray ordered an internal review how the fbi handled the flynn investigation even though the justice department's inspector general already looked into that and found that the fbi had a properly predicated investigation when they trippoo up to the white house to talk to flynn. the move came after the president started sending him nasty grams through recent media interviews. president said quote let's see what happens with him, look the jury is still out. days later christopher wray announces a review how the fbi handled the mike flynn prosecution. joining us now is congressman adam schiff california congressman, the chairman of the house intelligence committee, chairman schiff, thank you for making time to talk to us. appreciate you being here. >> good to be with you. >> i uncovered the flynn case from anybody else in the national media from the beginning. being sort of baffled are those s the same? i am not even understanding the political points that general flynn's supporters and the president are trying to make about him. do you have a broad picture sense of what they are trying to do here with the dropping of this prosecution? >> i think i do, and in the broadest outline, i would say it's this, 90,000 americans have died from the virus. our economy has gone into a downward spiral to great depression era levels of unemployment. they don't know what to do and they don't want to focus on that so they need to focus on something else, so this is the something else but it also gets rachel to something bill barr said in a revealing when he said what do you think he'll say about the case and you could add to that the intervening in roger stone's prosecution, the initiation of multiple counter investigations of the investigators and his very arrogant smug answer was well, the winners get to write history. they're trying to write history, and it's very difficult for them to write because it's so convun and to look at the flynn case, they need to make a hero out of a guy that admitted and pled guilty to lying twice in conversations with the russians designed to undermine u.s. policy at the time, very hard to make that person a hero to do it you have to concoct a massive conspiracy, something that they're calling obama gate but they can't articulate what it is but they have, you know, willful players like rick grenell three years after the fact are selectively in a politicized way releasing some information but concealing the rest. this is why we're calling on him, hey, if you start these partisan declassifications, you ought to be fully transparent and just release it all instead of being selective. i don't have much confidence he'll do that but we will keep pressing for that kind of transparency and bear in mind one last point, rachel, while grenell is wanting transparency, just this week the trump justice department was continuing to argue before the supreme court that the grand jury materials in the investigation should not be provided to congress and should not under any circumstances be made public so they're going all the way to the supreme court to fight transparency tells you how much confidence they have in under lying materials. >> what do you make of this public statement in response to your request from rick grenell which he seemed to indicate maybe the transcripts will be released or something will be released? i mean, i remember sally yates who was acting attorney general at the time, one of the people who went up to capitol hill to tell the white house by the way, your national security advisor is in a position to be blackmailed by the government. he's lying about his contact with them and the russians know about it and that's a bad position to be in. you should do something about it. what she said about that warning to the white house was that flynn's underlying conduct was problematic. it was not just that he was lying about it but what he was lying about, what he was actually doing with the russians was of a concern seemingly in a counter intelligence sense. and so i -- that makes me want to know what mike flynn was doing in terms of his underlying context and makes me want to know what he was saying to the russian government. do you have the sense from rick grene ler grenell or administration the actual transcript of what flynn said might ultimately come out. >> it might come out if they feel compelled do so. i think you're absolutely right about the concern that sally yates articulated. here you have the incoming national security advisor for the united states lying to the vice president about a conversation he had with the russian ambassador. the vice president misleading the american people and the russians because they're on the other side of the phone call, they know that he's lied and they can compromise him. that is classic counter intelligence nightmare material. so yes, there was a profound reason to interview flynn, which is why the justice department arguing for the dismissal of the case is disingenuous but where rick grenell is coming from, here is the problem with what he's trying to do. he declassifies these unmasking requests and there is an unpublished report flynn's name may never have been masked to begin with. that really blows a big hole in what grenell is trying to do which is establish some theory they were trying to unmask flynn so they could, i don't know, persecute flynn and now there are public reports he wasn't even masked to begin with in that call with the russians. so this is the problem i think when you're trying to weave an alternate history. facts keep getting in the way. at the end of the day what rick grenell is trying to do trying to run any partisan agency in my lifetime, what he's trying to do is the steve bannon model of just l flooding the zone. that's essentially what rick grenell is trying to do and bill barr is trying to do and the counter narrative is trying to do and that is so muddy the waters that people can't bury out the truth anymore and there is nothing more december sprusta democracy as there is no such thing as truth anymore. >> congressman adam schiff of the great state of california, chairman of the house intelligence committee, sir, thanks very much for being with us tonight. i apologize for just sort of dumping on you my sense that this is just really weird and i don't get it. that the not usually the way i conduct an interview. in this case, i am bamboozled by their behavior but they made sense of it. >> you're so right. it has that alice in wonderland quality of going down the rabbit hole. it's hard to wrap your head around. >> exactly. exactly. flooding the zone with excrement. as we proceed through extra time, multi ball "rachel maddow show." i got somebody coming back to the show i'm excited to talk to. this is a doctor we talked to as she was graduating early on purpose to medical school, setting out early into the start of her medical care specifically so she can work on the front lines of her fight of covid-19 in a public hospital in new york city. imagine that as a brant new minted doctor that just graduated early. she'll join us next to tell us how it's been going. stay with us. tell us how it's been going. stay with us and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take 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do i say now? that was 50 or so students from the ny school of medicine taking the hypocratic oath over video chat in early april as they were all graduating months ahead of schedule and in the middle of a global pandemic. just a week before that at the end of march, new york city was really heading into the worst of it, the peak of their curve with thousands of new cases and over 1,000 new hospitalizations every day and it started to become apparent that the city's hospitals didn't have enough staff to handle the absolute flood of coronavirus patients they were getting and the state asked for help and the medical school at nyu become the first school in the country to make a huge ask of their fourth year students. would they please consider graduating early and becoming doctors now? swearing that oath now? so they could start working in the hospitals with the most covid patients right away. these are the students who said yes and we spoke with one of those students, gabrielle mayor in march when she had just volunteered. she had just made that decision. today gabriel mayor is a doctor. she just finished a five-week deployment in a covid ward and joins us live now. dr. mayor, congratulations. thank you for checking back in with us. you said at the time you would come check back in and you have been good to your word. >> thank you so much for having me. it a pleasure to be back on the show. >> i looked into it. and on your first day in the hospital, april 13th, new york city reported 1200 covid-19 hospitalizations that day by your last day, which was this past sunday, it wasn't 1200 anymore, it was a little bit under 70. so you were there for the fall. what was it like? was it like at the start and what was it like to see that transition over time? >> it was remarkable. the first week that i was in the hospital, i noticed that there were frequent codes being hauled overhead, most if not all the patients in the hospital were there for covid related complications and at a certain point a lull hit and fewer and fewer were coming with covid chief complaints and slowly but surely people with non-covid related issues started coming to the hospital at a lower more manageable rate. >> when you started, when you jumped in there at the deep end, again, more than 1,000 new hospital sanctions at that point in a public hospital in new york right there on the front lines, how overwhelmed were you? how did you feel once you started working about your decision to graduate early, to jump in right away and to start doing this kind of work? >> the moment i showed up only the first day, i knew that it was going to be aban n experien unforgettable would be supported and not overwhelming because the mentors and teachers looking out for new graduates and residents and front line health care workers. i felt incredibly supported throughout the whole experience. >> i understand that the surge team, you were part of the extra doctors added to bellevue to handle the influx. it wasn't just your med school close but a diverse group that came on board to surge support into that facility. can you tell us about that at all, the other people part of this surge? >> it was a wonderful mix of people in the work rooms or call rooms for the doctors would congregate and write notes. we had different health care providers coming in from as far as north carolina. we had individuals who were treating in other non-medical or non-general internal medicine substantialities like dermatologists and radiologists coming back and joining us in the medicine call rooms to support this increased capacity in the hospital and that was truly inspiring to see that kind of community rally for new york city at large. >> treating all the patients you treated and being part of that process and cohort, did it change how you thought about the disease at all? we talked about it a little before you started doing this, we've all gone through in education living through this as a country. did your understanding of it change fundamentally? is there something we didn't understand about it that we ought to understand from you now? >> i think that what i had read before going in mimicked what i saw in the hospitals but i think the part that you can't under state is the importance of the human connection, which is hard to find in these moments of isolation and i want to give a particular nod to the entire community at bellevue who called patients' families and made sure that the loved ones were aware of what was happening every day from medical students to fellow resident physicians to attending physicians. everybody was making sure that those human connections were kept alive despite the fact that contact precautions made it a little more challenging. >> dr. gabrielle mayor, who volunteered to graduate early from med school and get on the front lines at bellevue hospital in new york city. thank you for being with us. i know you are isolating now, having finished that deployment and you will be going back to work when you are through this quarantine period. i hope you can enjoy it as some down time. thanks for what you do. >> thanks so much. take care. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. >> all right wel 'lbe right back. stay with us who serve our best pricing ever. $30 per line for all nurses, teachers, first responders, military and their families. plus up to $700 off the motorola edge plus. because the people we rely on, deserve a network they can rely on. ♪[ siren ] & doug give me your hand! i can save you... lots of money with liberty mutual! we customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ so here's to the strong, who trust in our performance and comfortable, long-lasting protection. because your strength is supported by ours. depend. the only thing stronger than us, is you. because your strength is supported by ours. if you have a garden you know, weeds are 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can't just disappear these people. on tuesday, the first day back from the long weekend, christi grimm is going to testify live at the house oversight committee, that will be worth seeing and worth looking forward to. that will do it for us tonight and since we're calling it normal for me to be on for an hour and a half, i'll play it off as normal that after me, tonight, it's time for the "11th hour" with brian williams. sure, why not? and good evening as rachel works late and we come on early, while we will still air a full live broadcast