Transcripts For MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show

drive-thru mass vaccination clinic for more than 11,000 people, and they did it at the new hampshire motor speedway, the nascar track, which is a place that my brother-in-law, paul, is intimately familiar with. my brother-in-law loves nascar! loves it. he loves all kinds of car racing, everything from formula 1 to drag racing and morris stuff and yrnsion but mostly, he loves nascar, and i am absolutely convinced that that is why my brother-in-law, paul, is now vaccinated against covid-19. he heard that they were doing this mass vaccination thing at the racetrack and he was like, oh, at the racetrack? and so, yeah! the answer from him was, yes, please, i will get up early and go get my vaccine there. and the big news in our family is because paul decided that he was going -- drum roll, please -- susan's mom agreed that she would go, too, she would go with paul. susan's mom is in her 90s. she has a bull's eye on her in terms of vulnerability to this virus, if she ever got it. we have been calling and calling and calling and calling, and we were seriously stressed about the fact that she did not have an appointment to get vaccinated until well into april, but then she got the call that she could come this weekend instead because of the johnson & johnson shipment to new hampshire. and so, susan's mom and my brother-in-law, they went together. she and paul both stuck their arms out the car window, and now they're done! one shot, done and dusted. 11,000-plus new hampshire residents fully vaccinated in one weekend at the nascar track, all with the one-dose vaccine. they're all done. and that is just one little snapshot of one little corner of the country that happened to intersect with my family and some of my gravest family covid concerns. but something has clearly ticked over for us as a country. i mean, you'll remember last week on this show, we reported that the u.s. had finally hit a really big benchmark. the u.s. had finally hit 2 million vaccine shots administered in a single day. we talked about that in the show last week. we hit that 2 million shots in a day record for the first time last week, but then this weekend, on saturday, we as a country shattered that record. we just hit 2 million last week. saturday we hit 2.9 million shots in one day. absolutely fantastic. and that was on the day the senate passed the covid relief bill as well. so, we get this $1.9 trillion covid relief bill and we get 2.9 million vaccine doses all administered that day. that's a great day! that is more where we need to be. and you know, numbers can be alienating, particularly big numbers can be alienating. but man, does think a personal effect on people. if you have been vaccinated -- i haven't yet been vaccinated. i will as soon as it's my turn. but if you have been vaccinated, if the people in your family who you are most worried about have been vaccinated, you know how it feels when they finally got their shots, right? i mean, it's like, you didn't even know what that stress had been doing to you until it's lifted. for me and susan, i know that susan's mom is the one who got the vaccine this weekend, but susan and i were so happy and so elated by it, we felt like we were the ones who were on drugs. i mean, it's just, it's such a relief when somebody who you're very worried about, somebody who you love and you know is in danger gets that protection. it is such a relief. it is just this very unfamiliar feeling of hope. and one thing that's nice is that you can also see the effects of that in the health care workers, in the doctors and nurses who are signing up for vaccination duty to give people their shots, whether it is just the hours that they're doing shots at a particular health care facility, or it is one of these mass vaccination clinics. they're psyched! they're so happy to be able to do it. i mean, after a year of catastrophe for health workers, and you know, irresolvable retractible illness and menace to themselves and so much death, here's something that they are now doing that is just unequivocally good that people cry happily about when they finally get to their place in the front of the line. today, the centers for disease control put out guidelines. we had expected these maybe late last week, but they came out today, advising people who have been fully vaccinated what they can do now that they couldn't do before. among other things, if you can get vaccinated and the people you want to hang out with can also get vaccinated, you really can hang out with them together at home, without masks and without social distance. small groups of fully vaccinated people can be together in the home without taking covid precautions. that means without taking masks. i mean, if everybody is fully vaccinated, that means yes to the poker foursome, mom and dad. that means yes to a hug. i mean, still, they're saying no, in terms of unnecessary travel. so, getting vaccinated doesn't mean you can hop onto the next flight to the place that you most miss visiting. cdc also says no change, as well, for vaccinated people in terms of still needing to wear a mask and do social distancing when you are out in public. but some things in your life will start to open up. and let's talk about that. let's talk about that and much more with the director of the centers for disease control and prevention, cdc director dr. rochelle walensky. she's here tonight for the interview. dr. walensky, it's a privilege to have you here. thank you so much for taking the time. >> thank for having me. always great to be with you. >> so, roughly 20%ish of the country has at least one dose of the vaccine, just under 10% of the country is fully vaccinated now. tell me about the bottom-line import of cdc's new guidelines about how life can change for people who are fully vaccinated. >> first, i just want to indicate the stories that you just told are the inspiring stories we're hearing every day. we're up to nearly 3 million people vaccinated a day, and we have more and more supply of vaccine coming, and we really just want to encourage people to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated when it's your turn. as you indicated, we're nearly 10% of the population vaccinated, but that also means that we have 90% of people who are not currently protected. and so, we intend to take baby steps to make sure that people have hope, people who are vaccinated can be back with their loved ones in their homes, in the privacy of their homes, while still being cautious, because, in fact, 90% of the population is not quite there yet. >> in terms of the, sort of how far the guidance went today for people who are vaccinated can do and what ways they still need to be cautious, talk to me a little bit about the travel decision, because it seems to me, if fully vaccinated people are protected from becoming seriously ill, themselves, they are protected to a very large extent from getting sick enough that they potentially could die from covid, but there's still a slight chance that they could get infected with mild or asymptomatic infection. there's a slight chance that maybe they could pass it on to somebody else. that understanding of what vaccines do, how does that map on to the guidance that people shouldn't travel? i think i expected today when the guidance came out that vaccinated people would be told it's okay to fly. >> so, this is the first initial step of our guidance, and we do need to -- we will need to and will update the guidance as more and more people get vaccinated. we'll update it as we have information about how the dynamics of this disease are changing through the country over time. and as we have more emerging evidence, here's what we know about travel. we know that right now there are a lot of variants here in this country. some have been brought in from travel. others have emanated from inside the country. we know that after mass travel, after vacations, after holidays, we tend to see a surge in cases. and so, we really want to make sure, again, with just 10% of people vaccinated, that we are limiting travel, we're avoiding the upcoming surge, just as we're trying to get more and more people vaccinated. >> when you said that this, today at the white house, when you said that this was initial guidance and that you did expect that this may evolve, this may change over time, what you just reiterated here, what is the data that we're waiting for, in terms of how advice to, again, vaccinate people may change? is it that we don't necessarily know how the variants will behave in various populations? is it that we don't know enough yet about whether or not vaccines protect people from actually getting the virus and being able to transmit it to others, even if it doesn't make you, yourself, sick? >> that's exactly right. so, we know from the clinical trials that people who are vaccinated do not get severe disease, they don't get hospitalized, they don't die. we don't know that they don't actually get disease at all, these breakthrough infections. and in fact, when we've seen data from other countries, emerging data from israel, we see that people can get infected once they've been vaccinated. and when they do, they tend often to a lower amount of virus. so, breakthrough infections, you tend to have a lower amount of virus than people who are unvaccinated. even so, those asymptomatic vaccinated people with a low amount of virus might still be able to give disease to somebody else, and that's really what we want to be able to see is, is that possible? can they still transmit disease? because that does have implications for who they might be unmasked with and whether they are at high risk for disease. and then the other point is exactly as you said. the more virus that's circulating, the more variants that are possible, and those variants can emerge and diminish the effect of the vaccine. so, while we're vaccinating people, we really do want to make sure that there's less and less virus circulating that doesn't put our vaccine efficacy at risk. >> and so, i feel like when, especially those of us who aren't health care professionals, those of us who aren't doctors, talk about the vaccine and the variants, a lot of what we talk about is whether or not the variant strains of the virus are susceptible to the vaccine or whether or not they're going to defeat the vaccine in some way, but it sounds like we should also be thinking about it the other way, too, that we need to vaccinate as many people as fast as possible, really as suddenly as possible. we need a mass vaccination rate in part to prevent the emergence and circulation of the variants. is that fair? >> you are exactly right. so, we know that rna viruses mutate, and they mutate the more virus you have. so the more virus that is out there and replicating, in an individual person and in all over the society, the more likely that variants are going to emerge, which is why we really want to keep the case numbers down, we really want to keep the amount of virus down. that will keep the amount of mutations down. and as we do that, those mutations won't emerge that put the risk of efficacy of our vaccines. >> so, that makes clear that what we are in is a race, that it's the virus, and specifically, the mutating virus, that we are racing against with our vaccination efforts. that makes me happy that we are speeding up our vaccination efforts, that we hit 2 million and then 2.9 million and hoping we're still going to increase that is pace. dr. ashish jha from brown university last hour said he's hoping we can get up to 4 million doses a day. how fast do we need to go in our side of the race in order to outpace the mutation, the mutating virus? dr. michael osterholm has a terrifying interview out with "new york" magazine right now in which he says we're losing the race and is predicting another big surge over the next few months, saying the variants are transmitting fast enough that our pace of vaccination right now isn't enough to stave off another big surge. how fast do we need to be going? what are you aiming at in terms of how fast our vaccination efforts need to get? >> i think we need to understand that march and april are critical periods here. we have variants in this country. those variants are increasingly transmissible. we know that they're more transmissible than the wile-type virus. we also have more and more vaccine coming. and this is really why we have said, for the next couple of months, while we are scaling up vaccination as much as we can, as fast as we can, as much vaccine as we can, please, wear your mask, continue with the mitigation strategies, and give us a fighting chance of making sure that we can get vaccine into people as soon as possible. and as individuals, when that vaccine is available to you, roll up your sleeve and get it so that we can really be sure that we are winning this race. >> i will say, just at a psychological level, something uncomfortable and annoying, like mask-wearing, is easier, at least for me, to do, it's easier for me to take as a public health imperative and as a sort of good citizen request, if i know i don't have to do it forever. being told, like listen, these next couple months are critical, we can get there, the end is at least reasonably in sight, provided that we can push through and finish strong. i feel like that's actually quite motivating, that people who may be tired of it ought to at least feel like we're doing it for a reason and we can get to a place where a lot of these measures can be relaxed safely because we've got a low enough amount of virus circulating and a high enough level of immunity that we're okay. >> i think you're exactly right. and i would say, you know, today to me was a really hopeful day. yes, it was baby steps, but people can finally start seeing what a life without a mask might look like. people -- i can't tell you how many people texted me on my cell phone while i was giving a press conference to say, you mean i can go see my mom again? those baby steps matter a lot. we can spend time with our loved ones again. >> now, at the same time, last week, cdc released an mmwr that said, among other things, that mask mandates are associated with decreased transmission and discretioned deaths from covid. it was essentially a fairly definitive result. and then we got the news out of texas and out of mississippi and out of now wyoming. they're all dropping their mask mandates anyway, just at the time that you're saying is sort of the crucial finish strong last couple of months. they're dropping not only mask mandates, but also, almost all in some cases, in texas, almost all of the business restrictions designed to limit the transmission. did these states consult with cdc at all before they made these decisions? >> i was not aware of any consulting that they did with us specifically on those decisions. what i will say is, every state, every governor has to make these decisions. i think our guidance has been pretty clear. i think our science has been pretty clear. we are asking people. i do not wear a mask because my governor tells me to wear a mask. i wear a mask because it protects me, protects my loved ones, it protects my community, and because i want to be out of this. >> mm-hmm. let me ask you about a policy thing that i can sort of see something or am anticipating is coming that is going to potentially be an interesting either point of conflict or opportunity here, depending how you look at it. if osha, which was sleepwalking -- forgive me -- for much of the trump administration, on covid in particular -- if osha comes out with rules that say workplaces need to protect their employees by requiring masks from everybody on the premises, i don't know that osha's going to do that. i can definitely anticipate that is a possibility from this iteration of osha at this time in the pandemic. if that happened, would that effectively create a sort of federal mask mandate at all workplaces, i mean, regardless of what's happening in individual states? if osha's requiring that for all workplaces, that would mean all restaurants, all bars, anywhere anyone works, wouldn't it? >> yeah, i mean, i think we're going to have to take this based on where we are at a given period of time. i think we need to be wearing masks right now. i think it's the right thing to do to protect the public, to protect one another. as we have more and more people vaccinated, as vaccinations become -- you know, vaccines become available all around the country for anybody who wants it, i think the calculus in all of this and who should be wearing masks and when will change. and i really look forward to the day that we get to make those decisions because so many people are vaccinated. >> the last time you were here, dr. walensky, we talked about teachers and cdc guidance about reopening schools safely, concerns among people, adults who work at schools, whether it's teachers, school staffers, janitors, counselors, you know, school bus drivers, that whatever the cdc's guidance is about how to safely reopen schools, they were concerned about not being vaccinated before that happened. so, dr. kessler -- dr. david kessler was here on the show last week and said that starting this week, march 8th, teachers and school staffers and school bus drivers and janitors and child care workers would all be eligible for vaccines, no matter their co-morbidities. and we saw this directive go out from hhs, telling all the states, whatever else is going on in terms of your eligibility rules in the states, by the end of march, we expect everybody who works in a school to have at least one dose of a vaccine. i just wanted to ask you if this is live and active, if you think it is plausible that everybody who works in a school can get at least one dose by the end of march? are you on track to make that happen? >> i'm really enthusiastic about this. the advisory committee on immunization practices said since before i came into the administration that teachers and educators and child care workers, as frontline workers, should be vaccinated in 1b. that is with people who are over the age of 75. there are now 9,000 pharmacies in the federal pharmacy program that are distributing around 2 million doses of vaccine a week. yes, i believe that we can do this. we have about 5 to 7 million educators that we need to vaccinate and about 36 states, we're already doing this before this program. so, yes, i believe this is doable. >> so, newly -- in states where teachers and school staffers -- and again, i stress, this includes school bus drivers and people who work in the cafeteria, everybody who's a school staffer in any way. if you're talking to people right now who are in states where they weren't previously eligible, they are now, regardless of age or any co-morbidities. do they need to go through the cdc's federal pharmacy program explainer in order to do this? do they still contact their state normally, as if they're just a newly eligible group in their state, even if they weren't before this month? >> you know, that's going to be a state-by-state situation, so i can't speak on generalities. what i can say is that through the federal pharmacy programs, teachers and educators should be able to access vaccine at every state. it's a high bar. we're trying to reach a lot of people in 28 days or 22 days, but we are motivated. we have, you know, all hands on deck. we have toolkits to try and ensure that teachers can have access. we have stakeholders, everybody involved to go full court press to try and make this happen by the end of the month. >> because the trump administration didn't publish reliable covid data, other people tried to pick up the slack, groups like the covid tracking project, which did phenomenal public-facing work throughout the pandemic. they closed up shop yesterday, i think in part in the expectation that you're going to be able to pick up the slack and that, once again, cdc will become the authoritative, definitive source of data about the epidemic, not just for practitioners and experts, but also for the general public, because so many of us want to track these things day to day. to be frank, as of now, none of that information -- hospital numbers, new case numbers, death numbers, vaccination numbers, none of that information is easy to find or well presented on the cdc's website right now, even as other people who are good in this space are leaving so that you can take up that room. what are the plans that you've got to improve that so the general public can go to cdc again to get the best data on this pandemic? >> you know, data monitorization has been a huge effort with the cdc. this is something we are actively working on. we are relying on data from all states and territories and tribes to compile all of those data. the infrastructure and data was really thin, has really been pretty frail for the last many years, not just because of -- not just during covid. and so, we are actively working to ensure that we have more electronic case reporting, more laboratory reporting, and more reporting from all of these states. it's an active area of work, and i really am looking forward to resources from the american rescue plan to help facilitate that. >> interesting. are there other things that are going to be newly possible for cdc because of the covid relief bill, because of the american rescue plan, that haven't been possible until now? obviously, there's a big chunk of this plan, of this bill, that is targeted to try to improve the covid response, not just rolling out vaccine, but everything else. what's in that bill that's going to make your job easier and make the cdc more capable? >> there are so many components of that bill, from vaccine rollout, vaccine education, engagement, testing. there are many things that are components of the american rescue plan that we will deeply rely on in the months and year ahead. i will say that the public health infrastructure of this country has really suffered over the last decade. 56,000 jobs have been lost in public health in the last decade. 180,000 in this last year alone. if we are going to build a public health infrastructure that is able to tackle issues, such as h1n1 influenza, ebola, zika, we've all seen them in the last year as the public health infrastructure has been frail, and covid-19, we need a public health infrastructure, we need resources to pay for the workforce, we need laboratories, we need epidemiologists, and all of that is, i'm looking forward to -- and data monitorization, as you noted -- all that i'm looking forward to in the years ahead. >> one last question for you, dr. walensky. for all the progress that we have made, we are still up nearly 60,000 new infections per day. interesting to see dr. fauci briefed today at the white house on progress in antivirals, experimental antivirals. how close do you think we are to effective antiviral treatment so that people who do get infected -- again, still tens of thousands of americans getting infected still every day now -- how close are we to something that will effectively be a cure for people who do get infected, who do get sick? >> i think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we've made extraordinary progress in 14 months with this disease. we have three vaccines that are safe, effective. they've been proven in clinical trials. we have more work to do in therapeutics, new investigational drugs that dr. fauci talked about today. this virus is going to be with us for some period of time, and i think we're going to have some period of time to start working on further antivirals. we have them for in-patients. we have them that are iv. we need more potent therapies. >> dr. rochelle walensky, director of our nation's cdc. dr. walensky, it is really an honor to have you here tonight. thank you very much for making the time. i know you don't have to do it, and we're really appreciative that you do it when you can. >> thank you so much for having me. >> all right. good luck. much more to get to here tonight. stay with us. much more to get to here tonight. stay with us so, i just spoke with dr. rochelle walensky, director of the cdc, to talk about, among other things, these new guidelines for americans who have been fully vaccinated, including the rules for travel for anybody who's had the vaccine. as of right now, travel restrictions are not changing for people who are fully vaccinated, which is interesting. dr. walensky talking about the expectation that guidance will evolve as we come to understand not only the effect of the vaccines, whether or not the vaccines protect us from being able to transmit the virus, in addition to protecting us from getting sick from it, but also as we get more information about the behavior of the variants of the virus, the mutated virus that's sweeping the country. dr. walensky just told me that the variants are, quote, increasingly transmissible. they are more transmissible than the original wild coronavirus. she also sort of offered a call to action for americans of every age and every risk level. she said, wear your mask, give us a fighting chance to beat this thing, and when it is your turn, roll up your sleeve and get the vaccine. dr. walensky calling this a hopeful day, and that means that a lot of people within the foreseeable future are going to, say, get to see their mom and dad again or their grandkids or their elderly pals who they've been apart from. over the weekend, of course, the senate also passed the $1.9 trillion covid relief bill, critical funding for vaccine distribution, schools safely reopening, state and local governments' rental assistance and boosted unemployment, so people who are out of work because of the pandemic don't have to end up on the street because of it. dr. walensky also told me, which was a surprise -- i guess i should have known this -- but the covid relief bill also will apparently result in the cdc having not garbage data on covid as well. maybe. we're soe used to the cdc being the gold standard in terms of public health data, their public-facing data on the coronavirus from the very beginning has been garbage. she says that is part of what the covid relief bill will fix. that's fantastic. when the senate finally passed the covid relief bill on saturday, you might have seen democratic senator sherrod brown told reporters, quote, this is the best day of my senate life. it really is. there's a lot going on right now and a lot of it is good. and i don't even know how to deal with that. i don't even know how to process that anymore. i don't have the right neurons. joining us now to help is my dear friend, chris hayes, the host of "all in with chris hayes" and the best all-arounder general knowledge focused guy on covid and where we are as a country. you are! you read more widely and have more of an interesting take on where we are in covid than anybody else that i know, chris. >> thank you. >> because of that, i want to ask you how we deal with good news, because i realize there's still a lot of bad news, and i'm kind of clinging to that, because that makes sense to me. but it seems like what's just happened over the past few days, 2.9 million doses in a day, $1.9 trillion covid relief bill on its way to passing, like, i can't even process it. >> yeah, it is hard to process. just to separate them out. on the covid side, i think you saw in the cdc director how hard it is to message this moment for precisely the reasons that you talked about and that she spoke about in the interview, which is that we really are -- we're -- i mean, we're world-beaters right now in vaccination, okay? we're near the top. we're probably the second best country in the world after israel. we're certainly, as ashish jha said, certainly the best big country in terms of vaccination. 2.9 million a day, if we can get to 3 rolling average, like, we're doing a good job. there is really competency on display here in a way we haven't seen. and at the same time, it's spring and people are restless and there's this thaw feeling people have, and the cdc doesn't want behavior getting out ahead of the virus because we've seen what that does before, and it's a really, really fraught and difficult moment, but i keep holing onto the fact that, like when you run the math -- 30 million covid cases, right? probably the real number's like 3x, so 90 million? we do 2.5 million a day, we're doing, you know, 15 million a week? like, pretty soon -- you know, there's 230 million adults in america. like, pretty soon, you just start getting to a point where, like, the math starts to look good for the first time! the math looking good has not happened yet. the math always looks bad. the math has been crushing and implacable and remorseless for an entire year. and yes, we are at a point in which there are a lot of ways that the math is looking better and better. >> so, chris, given that and given we are trying to live up to the challenge of keeping both of those things alive and in our heads and active at the same time, how do we think about this next couple of months as we steam toward the mass vaccination numbers that we think are going to make a difference in terms of immunity and transmission, getting into a good, a positive space? if we're going to see big spikes in new transmission, as states let up, as individual people get hopeful that we're starting to get towards the end of this, how much can we shoot ourselves in the foot now? >> a lot, unfortunately. i mean, one thing to think about, right, is that it's always been the case from a fatality perspective that massively disproportionate amount of fatalities have come from seniors and from long-term care facilities. as you've done better reporting on this than anyone, okay? and so, your viewers know this. but it's also the case that those are the places where we are having the highest vaccination rates. so, i think even if we got an outbreak, right, i have some hope that the vaccine should already be doing some of its protective job in keeping people protected and alive in a way that we wouldn't see the kind of death spikes. that said, i'm not a public health expert. i don't run the cdc. but the one thing i keep thinking about is, the outside-inside distinction still has not sunk into people. and when you think about spring and think about spring break, think about people down -- like, don't -- if you're a college student and you're listening to me right now and you're going to go to spring break, you're going to drink beers with someone outside, do it outside. don't go into a nightclub, for the love of god. like, there is an enormous difference between ventilated and nonventilated spaces, between outdoors and indoors. and if there's one thing i hope that we could hammer home to people, in this spring period, as the country warms up, and particularly parts of the country are getting quite warm and quite beautiful and lovely out is, take it outside, take it outside, take it outside. >> mm-hmm. chris, on the covid relief bill, we keep saying $1.9 trillion, $1.9 trillion, like that's the title of it or like that's some easy moniker to understand. how big a legislative accomplishment do you think this is? i'm asking in part because i feel like you and steve benin "the rachel maddow show" staff who writes "maddow block" are the two people i go to first in terms of assessing particularly democratic policy and its impact. and steve, like, hasn't stopped ka cavilling since like saturday, because of what a big deal he thinks this bill is. are you also on the sort of maximum side of the acrossenedo here in terms of how excited you have? >> i am. i think, look, the largest democratic legislative domestic policy, you know, bill of our life is the aca, because of its sort of -- the way it restructured markets, the fact that it's survived all these attempts at repeal. but in terms of, like, direct aid to americans, expansion of the welfare state in this very direct way through the child tax credit, like, there's never been anything on this scale in my time covering politics, and more than that, i think the people, the reason that you see steve so excited and paul krugman who was just on my show, is that it feels like we drove a stake through a certain kind of antiwelfare austerity politics that was incredibly powerful for four to five decades, you know, from reagan's welfare queen to this bill, that the good guys, for lack of a better word, won the intellectual, ideological and political fight about what government can do when we are underutilizing our resources. and in some ways, it's both the details of this bill, fact that it's going to cut child poverty in half, the fact that adult dependents will be able to get checks, which is massively helpful for people. there's help for pension funds that were going to be in trouble and state and local vaccination, all that stuff. but the kind of marking of an era of transition to the politics of government support and investment to me is as significant as anything that i've seen in the time of current politics. >> government actually being expected to help and doing so in a way that is meaningful and targeted to the people who most need the help, and the help getting there in a timely way. >> exactly. and the fact that they didn't -- they had no messaging. i mean, the idea that, like, there was a period of time where they were like, well, you just send people $1,400 checks? is that what you're going to do? and that would have worked as an argument! like, have those people earned those checks? those politics have been blown out of the water. they've got to tell you that dzhokhar tsarnaev is going to get a check, that's the argument and how desperate they are to find an argument against this. >> not knowing that prisoners also received support from the trump-era relief bills that tom cotton supported as well. chris maye hayes, thank you for staying late to help me with this. >> great pleasure, thanks. >> much more ahead. stay with us. asure, thanks. >> much more ahead stay with us introducing the new sleep number 360 smart bed. it's the most comfortable, dually-adjustable foot-warming, temperature-balancing, proven quality night's sleep we've ever made. and now, save up to $500 on select sleep number 360 smart beds. plus, free premiumdelivery when you add a base. ends monday. these folks, they don't have time to go to the post office they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps.com print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the services of the post office plus ups only cheaper get our special tv offer a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again. 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(announcer) find out more at aerotrainer.com. that's aerotrainer.com. in selma, alabama, yesterday, people gathered for the 56th commemoration of bloody sunday, the day in 1965 when hundreds of civil rights protesters on a voting rights march were beaten by alabama state troopers while they were trying to cross the edmund pettus bridge. civil and voting rights groups across the country solemnly commemorated that anniversary for the first time in 56 years without congressman john lewis not in the lead. congressman lewis passed away within the past year. as the commemoration was under way, yesterday republican lawmakers in georgia, the state john lewis represented in congress, were gearing up to pass a sweeping voter suppression bill that's being called the most restrictive voter law since jim crow. today, the republican-controlled senate in georgia passed a series of voter suppression bills. the bills target everything. they restrict early voting and voting on election day and voting by mail. any way you want to vote, they have a way to take it away from you or make it harder. one limits weekend voting ahead of an election which disproportionately affects black churches, which traditionally holds souls to the polls events on sundays in advance of an election. they want to ban volunteers from handing out food and water when voters are stuck in long lines on election day. yeah, because heaven forbid people have food and water while they stand on line for hours. can't have that. the voter restriction bills that are moving quickly toward passage in georgia are so onerous and so obsess in their intent that even some republicans in georgia can't support them. georgia's lieutenant governor actually refused to preside over the passage of the senate bill rolling back absentee voting today. despite that, these bills are currently on track to pass out of both houses of the georgia legislature in some form, but the fight isn't just happening at the georgia statehouse. businesses are increasingly starting to speak out about what's happening in georgia with this massive rollback of voter rights, and a collection of black artists and athletes from around the country released this ad during the nba all-star game this weekend, targeting georgia residents. the voice you will hear in this is nba legend lebron james. >> look what we did. ♪♪ look what we made happen. with our voices made possible. and now look what they're trying to do to silence us. using every trick in the book and attacking democracy, itself. because they saw what we're capable of and they fear it. so, this isn't the time to put your feet up or to think posts in hashtags and squares is enough, because for us, this was never about one election. it's always been more than a vote. it's a fight and it's just getting started. and we've been ready. you with us? >> joining us now is stanley dunlap. he's a reporter who covers state government for "the georgia recorder." he's been following this effort to roll back georgia voting rights. thank you for making time to be here. >> thank you for inviting me, rachel. >> is this a foregone conclusion in georgia at this point, or are enough republicans potentially getting cold feet here that, despite their control of state government, some of these things may not survive to final passage? >> yeah, that's the million-dollar question. so, today was crossover day, and it was the last chance for bills from one chamber to pass over to the other. what we saw today in the senate was the sweeping bill that would eliminate the no-excuse ballot law that's been in place since 2005. last year, 1.3 million georgians used that to vote. and that moves over to the house. whether that will gain any traction will kind of depend. the house speaker, who is also a republican, has spoken out against that, and we've also seen that the sweeping bill that's moved through the house, and now is over to the senate, it includes some restrictions, but it does not go as far as eliminating no-excuse absentee law. and so, it will be interesting to see how this plays out once it gets into the house committees pretty soon. >> should we read anything into that somewhat dramatic decision today when the lieutenant governor basically handed off the gavel and said that he wouldn't preside over passing this legislation, in particular, to rescind absentee voting access? should we read anything into that, or was that a personal more than political matter? >> no, i think this is something that the lieutenant governor has been one of the first republicans who spoke out against the widespread fraud claims shortly after the election and said it's time to move past that, that it's been a secure election. and they called for some changes that have had some controversy from democrats as far as an absentee i.d. requirement that would kind of replace a signature verification. but i don't think that was a political game, necessarily, from duckett. i think this is something he's pretty -- he's spoken out against and it was kind of a show of it, i'm not going to be here and have my name attached to this bill, if it gets through. >> hmm. we are seeing black athletes and black artists, and seems like increasingly the business community, specifically in atlanta, but also, perhaps more broadly in georgia, starting to take an interest here and starting to make this a point of national discussion, trying to ally themselves with the forces that are fighting against these voter rights rollbacks. is that having any effect? or how do you expect that to evolve as this all comes to head? >> yeah, i think any time you have business communities, and sometimes people will, you know, call up celebrities for trying to, you know, push their weight around to have influence, but that's definitely -- we saw major dollars that helped improve voter registration, helped get people out there, encouraging them to vote. so, i do think it does have significance. when we saw the atlanta chamber put out a statement today that called for repealing voting to folks to make the process more secure and does so at great risk to participation. and so, i think when you have the georgia chamber, the atlanta chamber, big-time companies, celebrities, all that weighing in, people who have influence and can make political donations and kind of will great power, i think they can have an impact moving down the line. >> stanley dunlap, reporter for "the georgia recorder," it's a pleasure to have you here tonight. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> all right, we'll be right back. stay with us. >> all right, we'll be right back stay with us a lot of people think dealing with copd is a walk in the park. if i have something to help me breathe better, everything will be fun and nice. but i still have bad days flare-ups (coughs), which can permanently damage my lungs. my lungs need protection against flare-ups. so it's time to get real. because in the real world our lungs deserves the real protection of breztri. breztri gives you better breathing symptom improvement, and flare-up protection. it's the first and only copd medicine proven to reduce flare-ups by 52% breztri won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. it is not for asthma. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. don't take breztri more than prescribed. breztri may increase your risk of thrush, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. call your doctor if worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain occur. for real protection ask your doctor about breztri. expensive dental procedures can really put a hurting on your wallet. but paying for the dentist doesn't have to be painful. that's where healthmarkets can help. answer just a few questions and their fitscore can instantly match you with the plan that fits your insurance needs and your budget, so you know you've got the right plan at the guaranteed best price. healthmarkets has plans for as little as under a dollar a day. you can save money every time you go to the dentist with coverage options that include exams, cleanings, and x-rays at 100%. plus healthmarkets has plans to cover fillings, crowns, dentures, and even root canals. now that's something to smile about. listen, we all know shopping for insurance can be more painful than the procedure itself. what if you didn't have to shop for insurance again? 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"this investigation includes but is not limited to potential violations of georgia law slit tasion of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election's administration." racketeering, did you say? of all those potential crimes the prosecutor said she was investigating when it comes to former president trump, racketeering really kind of stood out as sort of unexpected, right? when we think racketeering, we tend to think of the mafia. and while former president trump has often been accused by his detractors of acting like a mob boss, is this state prosecutor in georgia really thinking about prosecuting him like a mob boss? well, now that prosecutor has hired a racketeering expert to help with this case. reuters was first to report, and the d.a.'s office has non confirmed, that fulton county district attorney fani willis has enlisted the help of atlanta lawyer john floyd, who wrote a national guide on prosecuting racketeering cases under state law. reuters sums up the legal landscape this way -- "if she pursues racketeering charges, willis will need to prove a pattern of corruption by trump alone or with his allies aimed at overturning the election results to stay in power. while racketeering is typically pursued by prosecutors in cases involving such crimes as murder, kidnapping, and bribery, the georgia statute defines racketeering more broadly to include things like false statements made to state officials." i should tell you that a racketeering conviction in the state of georgia can carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. i will also tell you that we're going to have much more on this tomorrow night with a former georgia d.a. who knows both fani willis and the racketeering expert she just hired for her trump case who knows exactly how a case like this will work. i'm looking forward to that. you do not want to miss it. stay with us. to that. you do not want to miss it stay with us these folks, they don't have time to go to the post office they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps.com print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the services of the post office plus ups only cheaper get our special tv offer a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again. that is going to do it for us for tonight. i want to say thank you again to the cdc director, dr. rochelle walensky, for being on the show tonight. joe biden has not been president for very long, but already we have twice had the cdc director on this show and once had anthony fauci here. we're hoping to have dr. fauci back with us soon. what a difference a president makes. all right, we'll see you again tomorrow. "way too early with kasie hunt" is up next. a major announcement in the fight against coronavirus. the cdc releases long-awaited guidelines that loosen restrictions for fully vaccinated americans who can now safely hug their family members. the question, is this the first glimpse of a new normal? plus, republican roy blunt becomes the fifth gop senator to announce he won't be seeking re-election in 2022. the question is, what is the wave of republican retirements mean for the future of the party? and a surge in unaccompanied migrant children in custody at the southern border. according to "the new york times," the number's tripled i

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