Opening up america again. The plan, if you want to call it that, is 18 pages. It may have some states effectively reopening in a month. Here is the thing, the president does not want states to ease into this. He thinks we can make a full on return to normal. Theres not going to be a new normal where somebody has been having for 25 years 158 seats at a restaurant that now hes got 30 or hes got 60 because that wouldnt work. Thats not normal. No, normal will be if he has the 158 or 68 seats and thats going to happen and its going to happen relatively quickly, we hope, but thats our normal. Our normal is if you have 100,000 people in an alabama football game. 100,000 people at an alabama football game. That is the precoronavirus normal with no social distancing, but that seems like an unrealistic promise if you think that will happen this fall. On a call with governors, the president who insisted he had total authority told the governors to call your own shots. So we will see how his plan plays out state by state but the push to reopen is out of sync incredibly enough with what a vast majority of americans believe. A poll released yesterday i found fascinating. 81 of registered voters said we should keep social distancing for as long as necessary even if it means continued damage to the economy. 10 said we should stop. Americans are unified on this in a very divided country and they have good reason to be. Donald trump claims we have passed the socalled peak of infections, but that is far from clear unfortunately. There is reason to believe new cases in the u. S. Plateaued only because the country is at a ceiling in the Testing Capacity. So far the u. S. Has more than 665,000 confirmed cases, more than 34,000 deaths from the virus. That is almost certainly under count due to our lack of wide spread testing. The reason people dont want to stop social distancing is people continue to have a very rational fear of this virus because we do not know who has it, and if you have people go back to work, theyre going to get sick and some of them will die and nobody wants that. Look at smithfield foods. A pork processor. This is a case study when you stick to business as usual. A single plant in sioux falls is the largest coronavirus hot spot in the entire nation. 644 confirmed cases tied to just that facility. Thats what you get if you ignore the virus. If people are scared of infection, youre not going to have a functioning economy no matter how many elected officials tell people to get back out there. The only thing that could change that equation at least until we get a vaccine is widespread testing. I mean, think about it this way, lets say you had a big party planned for august or september, a wedding or fundraiser or a big Anniversary Party with 100 people youre going to invite, and you really want that party. Youve been planning for a while and lets say the government says go ahead and do it. Its legal. Are you going to be able to live with yourself if someone comes to the party and gets sick or if it starts a cluster of dozens of people get sick and god forbid someone dies . No, youre not. But what if we lived in a world in which all 100 people could be tested that day. You know everybody showing up is negative. Maybe then you could go ahead and have the wedding or the fundraiser. Just like if you knew your coworkers were tested and negative, youd feel better to go and sit in an office next to them. Thats the obvious reason we need testing on a massive scale and, amazingly, we have seen a slowdown at commercial labs with less testing that have done the majority of the nations coronavirus testing. Now, there is some testing being done by hospitals and communities, not part of this count, but it would have to have been scaled up dramatically to make significant progress and right now there is not evidence for that. At his News Conference today, new York Governor Andrew Cuomo articulated the problem clearly. The bottom line is, well, you need largescale testing. Lets do it. We cant do it yet. That is the unvarnished truth. That is what we need to open the country back up. The countries that have weathered this the best, like germany that is planning to lift some restrictions, have relied on widespread testing as has south korea, another relative Success Story that held a National Election in all this. We all know how desperate the president is to get the economy going because he very badly wants to get reelected but most people are not going to get back out there just because he wants them to. Most people do not agree with cartoonist scott adams that believes losing a few hundred thousand people is an acceptable price for reopening the economy. We cannot truly reopen the economy without widespread testing because most people understandably do not want to sacrifice themselves and yet, while the Trump Administration wants us to get back out there, it has offered no real concrete plan with the kind of capacity needed to do the kind of large scale testing that would make that possible. President trump announced his reopening guidelines earlier today on a Conference Call with the governors. One of those governors joins me for more on what this means, North Carolina governor roy cooper. Governor, i suspect if there is good news out of the president s quote unquote plan today its that it does seem to delegate the authority and call to governors such as yourself which i would imagine you would choose over some kind of instruction from the feds about when to open up. Well, chris, welcome to the North CarolinaEmergency Operations center. We have taken strong action here in our state to flatten the curve. We pulled together our Public Health team with our Emergency Response team, and we have treated this as an emergency and we have succeeded, but essentially, the plan today gave us some guidelines and thats positive, but it says essentially, governor, its your responsibility. We already knew that. We took action very early to try to thwart this virus and slow the spread in our respective states, and weve been successful at that. In fact, here in North Carolina i have already talked about a plan of trying to reopen our economy in a smart way, and ive said in order for us to do that, we have to rely on testing, tracing and trends. The trends need to be going in the right direction. We need to be able to trace after we test, and the biggest problem that we have right now is Testing Capacity. And what we need from the federal government right now is help on that Testing Capacity and with supplies and with personal protective equipment. In North Carolina we have lab corp headquarterd here. And they stepped up and created and a test and running a lot of tests but you have to have the people with the personal protective equipment to go out and take the sample, collect the sample from the person. And if were going to open up in a new normal, which i want to do, if there is one outbreak in a nursing home, i want to go in there and make sure we test everybody, but we need personal protective equipment and supplies in order to be able to do that. And we dont have enough personal protective equipment to do that. We need to supply that to be able to do the kind of testing we need to do. Youre identifying sort of a mismatch between sort of capacity and need that ive heard from a bunch of people which is that labs have capacity right now. The bottleneck on testing is not lab capacity. The bottleneck is the equipment, the swabs, the ppe for people and labor. Its actually there is a lot of people out of work. Would you agree thats what the big bottleneck is to get to the Testing Capacity you need . My state and every state because we do have the labs with the capacity to run the test, but we need people to help collect the samples and one of the biggest problems and shortages we have in our state and across the country is ppe, the personal protective equipment that you need in order to collect the samples. And weve appreciated the help weve gotten from the federal government. We had a good communication from the white house and task force and i talked to the president and Vice President on numerous occasions. Talked to dr. Fauci today, but i think the president doesnt want to believe that testing is a problem, and it is a problem particularly if we want to get the country going again. I want to do it. In North Carolina we are used to having 12,000 people a month file for unemployment. This past month, we had 619,000 people file for unemployment. No one wants to get the economy going more than i do, but i want to make sure we save lives. I want to make sure my hospitals are not overwhelmed with people who are sick coming into them, and i want to be able to make sure people are safe. In order to do that, we need to be able to do widespread testing. We need to do Contact Tracing. We do have to have a lot of boots on the ground making sure we can get that done to isolate, so that we can take precautions when we find out someone tests positive. This virus is going to be with us until we have a vaccine, and we are going to live in a new normal. I want to live in that new normal, but the new normal is going to rely on testing and right now we dont have the full capability to do it. Were working on it. If you notice the guidelines today, chris, it says that testing is the responsibility of the states. Weve figured that out, but we need significant help from the federal government right now. When you talk about normal, no one can predict the future, but the president was talking about normal being 100,000 at an alabama football game. That is what the precoronavirus normal is but the question about like this coming College Basketball season there are going to be 20,000 at the duke unc game . Do you envision that being a realistic reality . Were going to have to look at the trends. Were going to have to put the testing in place that we need and do the tracing in order to determine what kind of reopening that were doing, but like in your first phase, like theyre talking about, you know, the new normal would be going into a restaurant but realizing that it would have to be limited capacity. A lot of people Wearing Masks and probably watching that duke carolina basketball game on tv but without live inperson fans being there. Thats the kind of new normal that were going to have to live with for a while as to when we can get back to normal, its going to depend on putting all of this together with testing. Its going to depend on effective treatments. It mostly going to depend on whenever we get that vaccine discovered, manufactured and administered across the country. Governor cooper of North Carolina, thank you so much for making time tonight, sir. Thanks, chris. Appreciate it. Joining me now for more on how we get our testing where it needs to be, dr. Asheesh jha, director of Harvard GlobalHealth Institute and professor of global harvard medical school. First, the idea of a phased in distributed reopening of the economy plan, how does that strike you . Thats good. I looked at the plan, i said okay. I like that. It should be phased in. It should be done slowly and done with metrics. I think the conception sounded right. Then you get into details, which is where it gets more challenging. Thats the thing. The problem is its a little like my plan to dunk a basketball. You know, i can plan to do that. I can plan a lot. I can practice. But can i do it . Thats sort of the question here, right . I mean, the plan of like we have these metrics and phase it in and do testing but getting to Testing Capacity is the big bottleneck. Is that how you understand it . There are a couple bigger issues. One of them certainly is and maybe the single most important issue is the issue of testing. We fundamentally cannot we can open up whenever we want, chris. The question isnt that. The question is can we stay open . Can we not can we avoid massive outbreaks . We cant do that without substantial more testing. And the other thing i keep thinking about is, it should be the case, theres a weird thing in this discourse driven by protests and folks, some of the president s propagandists and a few kind of cranks on the right there is this tension between the Public Health concern and economy but if you open up and there is a huge outbreak in a city and a bunch of people get sick at an Office Building and a number of them die, the economy is going to shut down. People arent going to go to work. You havent succeeded in doing anything if that happens. I thought from day one this is a false choice for exactly the reasons you articulate. Imagine the hospital is overwhelmed, people are dying, nurses and doctors are getting sick and dying. Do you think people will want to go to restaurants and bars and get on a plane to go to disney world . No, thats not happening. We have to fix the problem. This was created by a Health Problem and the economy will take care of itself. The economy comes after dealing with the virus. We cant deal with the virus until we know who has the virus, and we dont know who has the virus unless we get more testing. Do you have a clear sense. There was a ramp up of testing. At one point it was appearing to plateau. The white house makes the argument thats the Lab Processing plateaued because there are more tests being run in hospitals. It true that is expanding. Not nearly enough. Do you have a clear sense of what the bottleneck here is, like how to go from 150,000 a day to 1. 5 million a day . Yeah, weve been trying to know how many we should be doing. Our best estimate is we should be doing 500,000, 600,000 a day to stay open. That the three to four times. Then the question is what is causing the bottleneck . Ive been talking to lab companies, states, anybody willing to talk to me to sort it out. The bottlenecks vary from state to state. Sometimes, there are still states stuck on number of swabs and im like were shut down because we dont have enough swabs . You find you mean like wait a second. Wait a second. Ive heard this, too. Swabs. You mean like literally the extended q tips, like not enough of the extended q tips . Correct. We cant test everybody we need to test because we dont have the right size q tips. And the Economic Cost of being shut down is so massive and there are like four or five Things Holding us back and you would think somebody in the federal government would say, were going to throw whatever we need to throw at fixing these four or five things. Some have more than enough swabs but not enough reagents. Some have more of one and not enough of the other. Seems like we could share. There is a blocking and tackling problem. Its not going to get solved by 50 states all going it alone and to me the biggest disappointment until the report is the president said to the states when it comes to testing, youre on your own. Its not going to work. Were not going to be able to stay open like this. All right. Dr. Jha, its always illuminating when we get to talk to you. Thank you for making time tonight. Thanks, chris. Weve talked about the vital role testing will play but Contact Tracing which Governor Cooper talked about will be just as crucial. What it is, how its done and who is already trying it out after this. [ ] think you need to buy expensive skincare products to see dramatic results . Try olay skin care. Just one jar of microsculpting cream has the hydrating power of 5 jars of a prestige cream, which helps plump skin cells and visibly smooth wrinkles. While new olay retinol24. Provides visibly smoother, brighter skin. For dramatic skincare results, try olay. And now receive 25 off your purchase at olay. Com brand power. Helping you buy better. Daddy, i found you good job. Now im gonna stay here and you go hide. Watch your favorites from anywhere in the house with the Xfinity Stream app. Free with your xfinity service. Now any room can be a tv room. Stream live tv, on demand shows and movies, even your dvr recordings. Download the Xfinity Stream app today to stream the entertainment you love. Take a look at this graph from the financial times. Its become something of a famous graph for coronavirus watchers. You can see that there are countries that have been successful in flattening the curve and turning the corner against the coronavirus, those ones down at the bottom, right like new zealand, australia, south korea, norway. They were all able to control the virus and one thing they have in common, they have a regime of testing and crucially Contact Tracing. The idea behind Contact Tracing you idson that test positive, right . Test, find out someone is positive and find people around that person and allows Health Officials to track the virus and slow the spread. Iceland is another country that had had success with widespread tracing and Contact Tracing, things weve not been successful at here. The things we used in iceland to test widely to bring about this kind of control, these are all things we learned from the americans. You taught us how to do this but havent been doing it yourself, and that is pretty sad. You hear what he just said, to sequence the virus from everyone infected and that we taught them, the americans, but havent done it. Can that be done here . My next guest is trying to do just that. Joining me now is chief medical officer at partners in health to run a new coronavirus Contact Tracing project in massachusetts. And doctor, maybe just can you just start by describing what a Contact TracingProgram Looks Like when its implemented . Yeah, so thanks so much for having me on, chris, and for talking about this important topic. As you pointed out, every time a new case is found, and this is true for any infectious disease, the best way to stop transmission is to talk to the person who has the infection and then enumerate the people they have been in contact with. In the case of coronavirus, its challenging because its anyone who has been within six feet or so for more than 15 minutes from the time they were symptomatic and even a few days before. But once you enumerate those contacts, standard Public Health demands that you go and talk to those people and you say youve been in contact with a person with coronavirus. First of all, how are you . Then second of all, these are the things you need to do to quarantine, and then third, trying to assess how able that person is to quarantine. So partners in health is a 35yearold medical nonprofit. Weve worked all over the world and fought epidemics from ebola to cholera to hiv and tb. And we have done this kind of basic Public Health work as well as care and treatment in much, much more difficult settings than the United States. So, as we were preparing our organization for and our partners around the world for coronavirus, one of our founding members, dr. Jim kim, who used to be president of the world bank and also founder said why arent we helping in massachusetts where were based . And so he talked to governor baker, and governor baker said yes, we should use all the tools to stop that. Instead of just focusing on hospitals, which is very important and ppe, which is very important, we also should be trying to chase down the virus, and so he engaged us to Work Together with the department of Public Health and let me just say departments of Public Health all over the world and certainly all over the country are doing this. They are trying to do pace investigation and Contact Tracing, but they have been massively outmatched by the tsunami of coronavirus cases. So our job is to help them scale up. Yeah, i mean, this is a tried and true method of epidemiology used for decades. Youre not inventing a new method. There seems to be two kind of obstacles. There is a labor issue. It requires a lot of people, right . I mean, we read something about a sort of army of virus trackers, thousands of workers needed for this. Whats the kind of whats the labor staffing that has to happen to make this actually a reality . Yeah, so, you know, again, partners in health has done this a million times and we have 17,000 people on our staff around the world all local to the communities they work in and 11,000 of them are Community Health workers and a lot of what they do is Contact Tracing. We know how to manage a very large staff. We know how to train people up who are lay people who just need to be really compassionate and talk to their fellows. They dont need to have a medical training so what we did first was kind of separate out the case investigator role from the contact tracer. The case investigator is more intense. They are talking to someone who has been diagnosed and get a sense of who that person has been with, but then they put that information into Call Center Software that goes out then to contact tracers who then call the contact. And so what were trying to scale is were adding some case investigators to help the department of Public Health and the local boards of health who are doing an exceptional job but then were really amplifying the workforce and using the call center and many, many lay people through the Contact Tracing. One more question that this has been controversial in some places in terms of using technology. South korea has an app i think that everyone has to download or can download. Israel has been using essentially access to data to without permission to basically find out where people are talking to each other. There are real privacy concerns about that. How do you feel about that . How should we be thinking about that . I mean, at partners in health we Love Technology and we have no problem with using technology, although, as you say, privacy issues are important and thats even true for contact tracers. They need to keep things confidential. There are laws on the books that are existing about Public Health and that is why were working so closely with the data source of record, which is the department of Public Health. But at the end of the day, i dont think any app, privacy or not, can replace a human and so we want to use whatever tools that we have, including apps, if they have good Privacy Protection but that a lot of people really just want to know and they want to talk to someone and they want to know, look, we have your back. This is really difficult and this is a person on the other end. And so, you know, we would favor any kind of technology to respect privacy but also to give jobs to thousands of people. All right. Doctor, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Up next, the president s obsession with scapegoating and shifting blame during this crisis. Ill talk to former secretary of state Madeleine Albright about the dangers of defunding the w. H. O. After this. Oh. Im scratching like crazy. Youve got some allergic itch with skin inflammation. Apoquel can work on that itch in as little as 4 hours, whether its a new or chronic problem. And apoquels treated over 7 million dogs. Nice. And. The talking dog thing . Is it bothering you . No. Itching like a dog is bothering me. Until dogs can speak for themselves, you have to. When allergic itch is a problem, ask for apoquel. Apoquel is for the control of itch associated with allergic dermatitis and the control of Atopic Dermatitis in dogs. Do not use apoquel in dogs less than 12 months old or those with serious infections. Apoquel may increase the chance of developing serious infections and may cause existing parasitic skin infestations or preexisting cancers to worsen. Do not use in breeding, pregnant, or lactating dogs. Most common side effects are vomiting and diarrhea. Feeling better . Im speechless. Thanks for the apoquel. Awww. Thats what friends are for. Ask your veterinarian for apoquel. Next to you, apoquel is a dogs best friend. This virus is testing all of us. And its testing the people on the front lines of this fight most of all. So abbott is getting new tests into their hands, delivering the critical results they need. And until this fight is over, we. Will. Never. Quit. Because they never quit. President announcing this week he is halting funding for the world health organization. It seems like a transparent way to shift blame. It is also true, in the early stages of the outbreak, the w. H. O. Did issue some guidance that looks bad and was overly differential to what chinese authorities were telling them. Like tweeting out in midjanuary, preliminary investigations conducted by the chinese authorities have found in clear evidence of human to human transmission of the novel coronavirus, which obviously later turned out was far from true. That said, it is also the case as the New York Times points out there is little evidence that the w. H. O. Is responsible for the disasters that unfolded in europe and United States. The virus doesnt care one way or the other about borders. Defunding the w. H. O. , the preeminent Global Health organization, would make it harder for dozens of countries to fight this pandemic. And that would not be better for the United States, obviously. Joining me to talk about more is Madeleine Albright. She has an oped and is the author of the brandnew memoir hell and other destinations. Madam secretary, lets start, i guess, on the criticisms of the w. H. O. , who do seem somewhat legitimate. That in the early stages of this, whether out of a desire to not sever ties with chinese authorities to gather more information or out of deference to them that they were not forthcoming enough about what was going on with the virus. Do you think thats a fair critique . Its important to know where they get their information. One of the issues about the w. H. O. Is it depends on information from a variety of countries. It doesnt have an Intelligence Service of its own. I dont think things were malign. There are issues that need to be looked into but the more important point is that we cant we the United States cant effect changes in the w. H. O. If were not at the table. I know having been at the u. N. That one has to be in the discussions and for us to sort of say were not going to pay, were not going to be part of it is counterproductive because we have no leverage. The w. H. O. Cannot do everything. They do actually work with partners like the ones that you talk to the doctor just awhile ago in terms of working with another organization to get information and then i have to say having looked at the charts that you have, that you were showing, we need to know whats going on in other countries and the bottom line is we havent even talked about whats going to happen in the developing world. So the w. H. O. Needs to have some reforms. We need it, and we need to be at the table. Yeah, that last the thing you mentioned i wanted to discuss with you, we had Samantha Power on last week that mentioned this and there is writing about this. The New York Times had an editorial, the country with four ventilators in there and places where the amount of Health Care Capacity is a tenth, orders of magnitude less than what the developed world has. The virus is going to arrive there sooner or later and it seems to me its in u. S. Selfinterest if nothing else and humanitarian interest to have a functioning w. H. O. And functioning u. S. Effort abroad to help them fight the virus. Absolutely. I think if you think about how, what happens in a lot of countries, were told to wash our stands constantly. In some of the developing countries, they dont have water or water is precious. They do all live together. Its hard to have social distancing, and as you said and ive said, the virus knows no borders. And if one wants to look at it only as a zero sum game, who will buy all the things we produce . So for humanitarian reasons, we need to care about what happens in those countries and for domestic security reasons. Its really, really short sighted to cut off our access or to have some influence on the w. H. O. So its one of those things i do teach by the way, and i keep telling my students they have to think about the unintended consequences of decisions, and i dont get that sense that the administration is thinking about the unintended consequences. One of the sort of subtexts sometimes explicit of the attack to the w. H. O. And china is there a growing voice on the right who clearly wants a more confrontational posture towards china and blame the virus on china and use it as a means of a fomenting a u. S. china cold war. People call it disentanglement. And say the xi government is prutal towards uighurs and bad in lots of ways. What do you make of this perilous moment between the relationship of the u. S. And china amidst this virus . First of aushlll, let me jusy that china will have a lot to answer for, no question. The issues raised, we need to look forward. I have not been in any Task Force Meeting or discussion where we have not talked about china as the rising power. There is no question about it and when we leave a vacuum, they step in. The art of diplomacy is being able to cooperate with countries when there are things you need to cooperate on and compete and stop them and tell it like it is when you have to do that. And whats happened is i think that we have been very confused about how we talk to the chinese. I mean, President Trump says xi is one of his best friends and all of a sudden, he starts attacking and so i do not want us to see a cold war with the chinese. I think we need to figure out where we can cooperate, for instance, on Climate Change and on trying to sort out now what to do, but i think there are areas we compete where we dont like what they do and especially their human rights and uighurs and what theyre doing in the south and East China Sea. And as a sophisticated country, the United States, we ought to be able to carry out that kind of diplomacy. Do you think this moment i mean, i worry a bit about this being a kind of altering the trajectory towards confrontation between the nations in a way that could get quite ugly in terms of the rhetoric weve seen. Weve seen some rhetoric from official state ministers of the Chinese Communist party who are saying the u. S. Crafted the virus. Youve seen american politicians really, really going hard at china. Do you see this as a kind of Inflection Point altering what the nature of that relationship is . Its possible. The other thing is there could be an accident of some kind. Especially in terms of ships in south and East China Sea hitting some fishing boat or various things like that or lack of communication between the militaries. I think that what we need to do is avoid any kind of a major confrontation with the chinese. I do think that we need to object in things that they are doing wrong. I think we can see their belt and Road Initiative is something where they are trying to seduce countries to be on their side. I keep saying the chinese must be getting fatter and fatter because the belt is getting larger. They are all over the place. They are a competitor. And we have to watch that. Theres no question. But we have to tell it like it is, find out what really did happen but now try to figure out how to do something about the supply chain, for instance. What i find so confusing is a couple of days ago we didnt have enough of anything and all of a sudden we have plenty of testing and masks and all that and i think things are totally confusing at the moment. I have listened to the president s press conferences every night. He changes his mind. As madeleine just a plain old citizen, i dont know what just happened. I do think the relationship with the chinese is probably the most important we have and we have to practice and use our National Security tools. Madeleine albright, thank you for making time tonight. Good to be with you, thank you. Still to come, the 350 billion rescue package for Small Businesses already out of money. Ill talk to congressman Hakim Jeffries about what happens to the businesses that still need help, just ahead. Ill need help, just ahead when i noticed my sister moving differently, i didnt know what was happening. She said it was like someone else was controlling her mouth. 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A nondrowsy antihistamine plus a powerful decongestant. So you can always say yes to putting your true colors on display. Say yes to allegrad. The death toll from the coronavirus is incomprehensible. Just impossible to get your head and heart around it but each number is of course, a person. Weve lost some incredible souls like hailey hererea, just 25 years old. She was studying to become a therapist. She was working towards a master degree especially dedicated with working with latino families. She had a wide network of friends and organized gatherings. One of those friends described how she brought a real vivaciousness with the way she approached the world. 25 years old. Augustine rodriguez is the first employee at the smithfield food plant to die of coronavirus. He was born in el salvador and moved to the United States. He was a happy, thoughtful humble man. He took care of his mother and was always willing to help the church. Augustine rodriguez was 64 years old. Stewart cone was 73 years old when he died earlier this month. A new york city cab driver for 25 years that loved to talk politics with passengers including former defense secretary rumsfeld he once picked up. The best read person he ever knew, loved to collect and donate used books and donate them. Ronald lewis had a colorful museum in his backyard in the lower ninth ward of new orleans called the house of dance and feathers celebrating the history of that neighborhood and mardi gras indians. Hes a retired street car repairman for more than 30 years. And last week, john prine. He was widely revered for folk country lyrics he first wrote on his mail route in his hometown of maywood, illinois. His fans including bob dylan and chris kristofferson. He survived cancer twice in 1998 and 2013, he was a twotime grammy winner and relieved a Lifetime Achievement award at the grammys earlier this year. When i get to heaven, im going to shake gods hand. Im going to thank him for more blessings than one man can stand. Then im going to get a guitar and start a rock n roll band. Check into a swell hotel, aint the afterlife grand . Then im going to get a coffee can and gingerale smoke a cigarette thats nine miles long im going to kiss that pretty girl im going to tell the world this old man goes into town these expect and way more. Internthats xfinity xfi. U get powerful wifi coverage that leaves no room behind with xfi pods. And now xfi advanced security is free with the xfi gateway, giving you an added layer of network protection, so every device thats connected is protected. Thats a 72 a year value. No one else offers this. Faster speed, coverage, and free advanced security at an unbeatable value with xfinity xfi. Can your internet do that . Denny owns a barbershop in harlem. His application has not been approved. If i dont get the loan, i can probably last till may. I really dont even want to think about that. Stephanie ruhle on tonights nightly news reporting on how the 350 billion Paycheck Protection Program is now frozen because all the money has been spoken for. Businesses around the country are in dire straits. A new working paper on Small Businesses at the National Bureau of Economic Research found that a median firm with expenses over 10,000 per month, not that much, has only enough cash on hand to last two weeks. Congress is deadlocked on what to do next. Mitch mcconnell and republicans just want to add more money to the Small Business program. Democrats want to also fund the hospitals, and governments and reform programs along the way. And the impasse could get ugly since people need the money now. Now one of the democratic lawmakers looking to get into the next coronavirus rescue package, the chair of the House Democratic caucus. Congressman, i want to make the argument to you that Mitch Mcconnell and republicans have made and get your response, which is look, this was a bipartisan bill. Theres not a policy objection here, do democrats like this program, republicans like this program, now its out of money. People need the money, just sign off on it and then we will deal with whatever we have to deal with next, but why the delay . Theres not a policy objection to the framework of the program, but the real concern here is that we want to make sure, if were going to allocate a substantial amount of taxpayer dollars, an additional 250 billion, that it actually gets to the people who need it the most. So what weve simply said is that at least 125 billion of that dollar that has been proposed to be added to the program should go through Community DevelopmentFinancial Institutions that work closely with entities like womenowned businesses, familyowned businesses, mom and pop shops, veteranowned businesses, minorityowned businesses. And entities that really need the support. So do you have, i mean obviously, what youve described there are a lot of businesses like that in your district, in brooklyn. Do you have evidence from your constituents that that money is not getting to those folks . Is that the concern here . Thats absolutely the concern. What weve seen in terms of the initial rounds connected to the Paycheck Protection Program is that many of the more established Financial Institutions were allocating and processing these loans, giving priority to businesses which were closer to mediumsized businesses than smallersized businesses that have preexisting financial or banking relationships with the particular bank. And as a result, youve had sort of the smaller businesses within the spectrum of whos eligible be left out in the cold. And all weve simply said is that we want to make sure that if were going to allocate a substantial amount of funding, that it gets to the people who need it the most. We also indicated that we want to make sure our First Responders, our police officers, our firefighters, our teachers, our ems workers, our transit workers, essential employees, those who will be important to us restarting the economy, in a meaningful way, have the capacity to be able to continue to do their job, and thats why we said, state and local budgets, which are being hit incredibly hard, and are going to need the resources, in order to continue to deliver services, should begin to receive Additional Support from the federal government. So all right, so those are the two, those sort of pillars, right, some stipulations about the way that money flows in a new tranche of it and state and local aid, which both seem to me to be good policy, but theres a speed issue here where i just feel like ive talked to the speaker this week, talking to you now, if mcconnell says fine, green light on both of those, can you guys do this tomorrow . Can you do it the next day . There just seems like the clock is ticking a bit here. To move expeditiously, in fact, we had a conversation earlier today of more than 200 members of the House Democratic caucus led by speaker pelosi. Were ready to move by unanimous consent when we can arrive at a bipartisan, bicameral agreement. We expect to be able to do that sooner rather than later. If were not able to move through unanimous consistent because some one on the republican side chooses to object, the members are prepared to travel back to washington, d. C. , to get this done for the Small Businesses throughout the nation, the heart and soul of our economy. I want to translate that a little bit out of politician speak. Thats the most bullish ive heard anyone on a deal here. That sounds to me like theres negotiations happening and things are moving forward. Is that a fair characterization . Well, its absolutely correct. The negotiations are ongoing. And our objective is to get to yes and to get to yes as soon as possible. But to do it in a way that is the most effective and efficient for this program moving forward. Last time i had you on, we talked about the possibilities of working remotely. Congress, its obviously, not envisioned in the constitution. The speaker was on and just said we cant have zoom on congress. Its more complicated than that. You mentioned the rules committee was going to be issuing guidelines on that in which he anticipates doing some work remotely, at least provisionally. Where are you and the caucus on that right now . Look, jim mcgovern, chair of the rules committee, presented today along with zoe lofgren, the chair of the House Administration committee, both have been working hard, in this current context, to try to make sure that we can adapt, but do it in a secure way that brings to life our democracy, and so what jim mcgovern has proposed and i think it has strong support within the caucus, is remote voting via proxy, so that those who can make it to washington can make it and vote the traditional way and those who cant will be able to allocate their proxy and indicate how they want to vote. All right. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of new york, thanks for taking time tonight. Thank you, chris. Im not sure if that counts definitely was the most bullish ive heard those two sides on this today. Theres been some heated rhetoric over the last 48 hours. Thats very interesting. That is all in for this evening. Thank you, lawrence. The 11th hour with Brian Williams starts now. Our iconic home in normal times, the place where we keep the rink out back. 30 rockefeller plaza, mostly vacant, bathed in blue tonight in honor of First Responders in new york. And with that, good evening once again. Day 1,183 of this Trump Administration. 201 days to go now until our president ial election. And at todays White House Briefing about the coronavirus, our president said today, quote, people should have told us about