rhetoric, the conversation, the plitization would transfer to violence in real life and now they re looking at his death at an example of their greatest fears. we expect there will be vigils for him later this weekend and people are waiting minute by minute for more updates by authorities as they search for the suspect. what a horrific and senseless loss. thank you. now to that escalating battle between president biden and alabama s senior senator and what it has to do with space command. mike memoli is live from delaware. so what s happening? well, chris, as the white house announced its decision yesterday that they were going to keep space command where it s been in colorado springs, colorado, you would expect the kind of swift and severe condemnation from alabama republicans like senator tuberville who called this a blatantly political decision. of course, the white house sparring already with him over
how does the doj deal with it all? i think it s a really difficult thing from the perspective of the doj, from merrick garland s perspective and the special counsel s. that s because there are so many issues and interests to balance here. there s a legitimate interest congress has in oversight, but there s also concern both about the integrity of the underlying investigation and about potential plitization that comes from congress. so we ve been so, we ve had our eye on this question of to what extent does the white house try to control what s going on in the department of justice, but congress also has some levers and power as we were discussing. i think there s legitimate concern and even going back to the russia investigation, there were allegations there were leaks and they were motivated by political interests of partisans involved and so here, you see congress acting as it should be as a branch in its institutional interest, but there are individuals there who may not
got. how do you reflect on this moment? this is one of the people you look at and say this is somebody who s been around for 40 plus years. starting in the 80s, being adviser for presidents. looking at hiv, aids, being one of the front-runners in that area and pushing for these medicines and research that s being done in there. ebola, swine flu and now covid. seeing him do this year after year. for 37 of those 40 years where he headed the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases, it was behind the curtain, then he got pushed into the limelight, became the world expert on covid. he also became a target for a lot of people and started to understand the plitization of these different things. so hats off to him. he s done a great job over these last 40 years and he s moving on to something else and fantastic he s been there for us and really helped us out.
attorney general, richard donahue, who is jeffrey rosen s deputy, became the acting deputy attorney general. isn t official that most white houses or administrations wouldn t even have interactions with the president. they might be in a meeting sometime and sat along the back row, but certainly wouldn t have one-on-one conversations with the president or taking phone calls from the president the way that he was. the scheme that the president was trying to perpetrate with the department i think exceeds anything that happened under richard nixon. it certainly exceeds the plitization under the bush administration and i think we ll hear evidence of that today. of course, john mitchell did go to jail in watergate, but aside from that, even with bill barr, before his reincarnated, retooled bill barr, let s say in the book and his testimony here, he was also dealing with the
president biden says he will announce his replacement for justice breyer s seat on the supreme court one month from today. the white house is hoping to pick up some republican votes, in fact. have a bipartisan vote. that used to be exactly what would happen. and a handful of republican senators have supported the judicial nominee so far. including one of his likely candidates to replace justice breyer. and joining us is former white house press secretary, gibbs. the plitization of court house nominees historically new. mitch romney saying it reminded me of what senate used to be. to expect party line votes here,