>> this is the biden american rescue plan. it will be followed by the american recovery plan. >> this is bipartisan legislation. it may not satisfy the partisans on both sides of the capitol. >> we could have had a bill that was, you know, a fraction of the cost of this one. it could have gotten bipartisan approval and support. >> it's not focused on covid relief. it's focus zblienktda. people recognize that speaker pelosi's socialist agenda is bad for america. >> as a great man once said, and so it goes. the bill headed to final passage, the white house was announcing an increase in the number of vaccines shipped out. 600,000 additional doses from both pfizer and moderna being sent to states this week. the white house also says the seven-day average now for shots administered is over 2 million a day. there was a development on another front as well. the fbi released new video that shows that suspect planting pipe bombs that were found at the republican national committee and the democratic national committee headquarters. on the eve of the january 6th capitol riot. the suspect is seen walking with a backpack on a sidewalk in areas outside the dnc and rnc. the feds say the identical devices were planted between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. on the 5th of january. one member of congress says this new video suggests the investigation into the insurrection needs to go beyond federal law enforcement. >> i am a little surprised that it took us two months to see video. frankly, this area probably has more video cameras pointed at it than most places in the country. just highlights the need for a 9/11-style commission. indeed tonight, the pentagon approved the capitol police request for continued national guard presence at the capitol. some 2,300 members of the guard will remain there on post through may 23rd now. attorney general nominee merrick garland, who has vowed to make the capitol riot his priority, is a step closer to getting the job. the senate today agreed to move forward with his nomination. the final vote on garland is at long last expected tomorrow. senators also voted to advance the nomination of democratic congresswoman marcia fudge as secretary of housing and urban development. her confirmation vote is scheduled for tomorrow as well. amid all of this, the white house continues to face a huge test of what it describes as a more humane immigration policy in our country. nbc news reporting that despite promises and plans to end family detention the policy is still in place, still being carried out. this follows those reports that a number -- a record number of unaccompanied migrant children are being held in border patrol custody. today the white house said it was aware there would be an increase in migration. >> we are continuing to work to convey to people in the region that this is not the time to come, that the majority of people who come to the border will be turned away. we have a different policy than the last administration. we're not turning kids away at the border. unaccompanied children. we're also of course not ripping them from the arms of their parents. we are not trying to close our borders. we are trying to create an effective, moral, humane system. >> axios is reporting tonight that house minority leader kevin mccarthy plans to travel to texas on monday with about a dozen republican members of congress, get a firsthand look as they're calling it of the situation at the border. a photo op by any other name. texas governor greg abbott beat him to it. he was on the scene today and making predictions. >> this is just the beginning. the month of march is when it typically begins to increase. the influx will continue to grow because the signal has been sent to central america, to other countries across the world that people can come across the border now under the biden administration. >> we are also following the trial of derek chauvin, the ex-minneapolis police officer charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of george floyd last may. three jurors were seated today. three weeks have been set aside to choose the rest of the jury. there's now intense security around the courthouse. streets are lined with fencing. concrete blocks, armored trucks, barbed wire. the national guard and other law enforcement officers have been stationed there throughout the city until further notice. with that let's bring in our lead-off guests on this tuesday night. ashley parker, pulitzer prize-winning white house bureau chief for the "washington post." a.b. stoddard, veteran washington journalist, associate editor and columnist over at real clear politics. and michael osterholm, professor and the director of the aforementioned group the center for infectious disease research and policy at the university of minnesota. he was also a covid adviser to the biden transition team. good evening and welcome to you all. ashley, i'd like to begin with you. this covid bill has been cast depending on where you read in terms of the new deal, in terms of the great society. but to localize it a bit, is this to biden what aca was to obama? >> in terms of the republican opposition, there is a lot of it. it doesn't seem, though, as of now at least that republicans will be able to successfully message against this bill the way they were able to in certain ways successfully message against obamacare. if this bill does what president biden wants it to do, and that's what the biden administration is counting on, their thought is that yes, this bill is big. it's 1.9 trillion. they say it needs to be that big because of the mag queued of the crisis the country is facing. and they say that, again, if it gets shots into arms of americans, checks into their pockets, into their banks, it helps jumpstart the economy, offers some immediate relief americans are not going to care that it passed through a budgetary process known as reconciliation, that it didn't have any republican votes, that it is going to be popular. it is popular right now in huge swaths of the country, and it is going to be something that republicans are going to have a hard time arguing against. that is the belief at least from the administration. >> a.b., indeed, remember the reaction to aca. went across the country like a prairie fire. my favorite protest sign during that time was "federal government get your hands off my medicare." let that one sink in for a bit. but the tea party gave us those 37 freshman members of the house. it was a genuine prairie fire. to ashley's point, there probably won't be that kind of resistance to this. but let me ask you a theoretical, knowing the republican caucuses as you do. what if there were a ton of stuff that the republicans wanted in this? would there be crossover voters? would it be truly bipartisan? or would they opt to stay on brand? >> you know, i just don't think we know what could have been offered by the white house or the senate majority to the republicans that would have been accepted. and whether or not they are determined -- most of them. not all of them. to be in lock-step against this. they don't really have to message against this right now. i mean, as ashley correctly points out, they don't know how to. because even polls are showing that trump voters are looking for these checks and are in support of returning to schools and getting most of the population vaccinated. but you can sense within the white house team and the democrats on the hill a real fear from 2009 that they have to present this, you know, repeatedly in detail as a benefit, that voters they hope will feel and that negative polarization won't take over and you won't have republicans next fall saying see? the schools didn't really open on time, we're still having mutations, they didn't have a great organizational capacity for vaccine distribution, they overshot some of their promises, things aren't that great, and look, we're really in debt. don't even be surprised if some of them say you got more under the trump check than the biden checks. anything goes at this point. there is a lot of ptsd, as you can sense. they keep talking about 2009. among democrats they really have to travel the country and make sure biden is explicit in what is being delivered and hope that voters feel it and they feel it before the midterms in 2022. and as one house democratic non-progressive adviser put it today, they know these suburban republican voters that they won in 2018 and 2020 might flee if schools are not open by the midterms -- i mean successfully this fall and that that will be a resident issue that stays in voters' minds from fall of 2021 to fall of 2022. >> agreed. and to your point, a.b., speaking to the nation on thursday. and then he's going to put some miles on air force one over the ensuing days to go out to the country to do some proof testing of what's in the bill and how people will benefit. michael, you used some vivid imagery on sunday, and we repeated your comments on this broadcast on monday comparing where we are to the eye of a hurricane. having covered many of those, i've seen many hurricane eyes, and you can see how ancient folks celebrated that the storm was over only to learn that it was fixing to storm again. it's a long way of asking you again, where are we in this in your view? >> well, as i said on sunday, we're still in the eye of this hurricane. s we've obviously been through a rough, rough last year. that's the first wall. and now while we have vaccines coming and there surely is a bright day ahead there's also this variant, the what we call b.1.1.7. and that particular variant is one that is of grave concern to us in terms of the spread in the united states. we're beginning to see it pick up in a number of different states in terms of the number of infection that's are occurring. right here in our own state of minnesota we have a large outbreak of it occurring now. largely in kids, with it then spilling over into adults. and i think that within the next six to twelve weeks we're going to see a substantial increase in cases here in the united states just like we've seen in europe. >> ashley parker, back to politics. here now a sampling of lindsey graham tonight on fox news. we'll discuss on the other side. >> they're children today but they could easily be terrorists tomorrow. as embarrassing and as painful as it would be for the biden administration, they need to understand that what trump did on the border worked. >> yes, but will they be terrorists as effective as the ones we saw on 1-6 when they took our capitol? ashley, all kidding aside, when fox news tonight was not eviscerating meghan markle they were going after the border. is there an awareness that you've been able to sense inside the biden white house of how ugly this could get, how quickly when weaponized? >> they're quite aware. and it's one thing when they're taking into account what biden's governing agenda is going to be. and it's worth noting we don't know how much he will accomplish but in terms his ambitions it's quite ambitious. it's quite bold. it's very much a lot of progressive priorities. and one of those of course is immigration. and immigration more so than others, more so than infrastructure, more so even than perhaps some climate is an incredibly difficult issue that going back to the george w. bush years presidents of both parties have tried to solve this problem. bush couldn't do it. obama couldn't do it. trump didn't really want to do it and couldn't do it. and it's one of those issues where they're aware that the activists and the progressive community is going to be pushing them to do something on it. it's something that biden has laid out a plan, has laid out a very clear blueprint of what he wants to do. but it is one of those issues where if he brings it in the form of legislation he's going to be asking democrats to take an incredibly difficult vote. and you are already seeing from that clip you're seeing of lindsey graham, who by the way was part of the gang of eight under obama pushing for immigration reform, of just how much this will be weaponized and just how toxic this will become. >> a.b., tomorrow is day 50 for the biden presidency. that puts us exactly halfway to that mythical mark of 100 days that journalists have been insisting tore decades is an important benchmark for all americans to take an instant assessment of any new presidency. i'm convinced it was invented by henry luce to sell magazines back in the day. but where would your report card be as we're minutes away officially from day 50? >> well, i think the biden administration came in with one distichk focus, which was to crush the virus, stand up the vaccine program, 100 million in 100 days. they're exceeding that. and to try to stabilize the economy. this quick passage before the deadlines of all these programs expiring on march 14th of the covid relief package, it meets a promise. and as i said, they will end up delivering but i think it's impressive they avoided a lot of infighting among themselves and were able to get this done and get it into the pipeline. and then of course the hard work comes with selling it. but this was never going to be 100 days of legislative blitzing in the middle of a 100-year health crisis and another economic downturn. i think in that sense he wasn't expected to come up with all the bells and whistles that previous new presidents have. >> michael, i think a.b. put it correctly. this is a 100-year health crisis. so i've saved the toughest question for last and the toughest question for you. everyone's been pushing forward to the idea of a vaccine. i need you to be able to tell our viewers how they should live once they are fully vaccinated. the folks who want to take that vaccine freedom out for a spin, do they need a mask on a walk through their city or town, on a bike ride, going about their day? why can't they travel? especially since airlines and on-board ventilation has gotten so good at preventing spread. what should the guide to life be for those who have been fully vaccinated? >> well, being fully vaccinated should offer some real personal and you might say infectious disease benefits. and in that case you're going to see over the course of the next weeks the cdc continue to update its guidance allowing for more of that being in the public and feeling protected. the one caveat we have to add, which is what no one wants to hear, is that we do have new variants of this virus which actually may seriously challenge the effectiveness of these vaccines we have now. we're seeing the spread of that virus particularly in brazil right now. and should that become part of the picture here in the united states, then unfortunately we're going to have a whole different game we're going to have to deal with. and that's the challenge we have right now. but in the meantime we need to allow people to find the benefit of being vaccinated in the ability to be able to do many of the things that they haven't been able to do for the last year. >> can't thank our big three enough for coming on and taking our questions tonight. ashley parker, a.b. stoddard, michael osterholm. much obliged. coming up for us, how do you pay tribute to the people who are famous really only to their friends and family and co-workers? the everyday americans who have left us in such painfully high numbers over this past year. our next guest knows exactly how. nicolle wallace is with us with a look at her "lives well lived" special. and later, a former president blasts republican efforts to stop people from voting in this country. two of our favorite experts on politics and human nature are standing by to weigh in as well. all of it as "the 11th hour" on this tuesday night is just getting under way. getting under way. give you a sort of white smile. try new crest whitening emulsions for 100% whiter teeth. its highly active peroxide 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(soft music) ♪ hello, colonial penn? for weeks now we've started our broadcast with numbers. how many people are infected. and sadly how many people have died. but those numbers, those numbers are grandparents. they're moms and dads, sons and daughters, cousins, teachers, mentors, bosses, neighbors, friends. so to honor them we'll endeavor to tell you about a few of them each day. >> that is just what my friend and colleague nicolle wallace did and has done at the end of every broadcast for over 200 workdays. when nicolle started her daily remembrance of the victims, people she did not know and would never meet, the death toll stood at an unfathomable 5,800 people back then. as of tonight, confirmed cases in our country are now over 29 million. we've lost over 529,000 of our fellow citizens in this pandemic. we are so pleased to have back with us our friend nicolle wallace, host of the 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. eastern time hours on this network. she is part of two nights of special programming this week as we mark one year since the beginning of all this. her "lives well lived" special broadcast airs tomorrow night in our 8:00 p.m. eastern time hour, followed on thursday night by a special broadcast hosted by chris hayes about the year we meet again. nicolle, welcome to you. it would be inartful to say that i've grown to look forward to these segments. it's more appropriate that i wait for them often with a knot in the pit of my stomach because they are so personal. they're touchstones. they are milestones. because i know you and we do the same thing for a living, i see you struggle with it. i'm self-aware enough to know that i could never make it through. i can't make it through a single bagpipe. what have you learned from their lives? >> well, that first day that we did them i remember asking will o'donnell on my team to take this on. and the first few were actually people that people i knew had lost, had known. and i had this feeling that we just weren't up and running yet in terms of having a national ritual for honoring those who had been lost to this horrific global pandemic that was still new, still scary. but i think in the beginning we had this sense that it was not going to last as long as it has, that it wasn't going to take from us as many people as it has, that it wasn't going to hit every generation, every gender, every age, every kind of person that has been lost. and i think there was this feeling that after 9/11 maybe the one thing that was never politicized was honoring the men and women on flight 93, was reading the names at ground zero, was the pilgrimage to shanksville. and i just kept thinking soon somebody important will take this over and there will be a place to have some sort of abbreviat