After he lost georgia in the president ial election in 2020. This is what all the critics of georgia republicans have been claiming about where this voting restriction bill came from in georgia. Georgia republicans as of today are admitting that criticism is true. That these new voting restrictions they passed into law is all based on trumps lies from the last election. This is really the fallout from the ten weeks of misinformation that flew in from mr. Donald trump. I went back over the weekend to look where this really started to Gain Momentum in the legislature. It is when Rudy Giuliani showed up in a couple Committee Rooms and spent howard spreading misinformation and sowing doubt across hours of testimony. That is the republican Lieutenant Governor of georgia admitting today that, yes, republicans in georgia just passed into law all of these new voting restrictions in that state because of the lies spread by President Trump and Rudy Giuliani alleging that somehow trump didnt really lose georgia in the election. If georgia republicans are now admitting thats the impetus for what they have done to roll back Voting Rights in their state, then perhaps corporations and entities Like Major League baseball could be forgiven for levying that criticism. Now that the Republican Party admits that, yes, this whole thing is based on a lie. In a related matter today, the prosecutor, state prosecutor in fulton county, georgia, announced park cannon will not face felony charges for knocking on the door of georgia governor brian kemps office while he was holding a private signing statement for the voting restrictions bill. We all saw that astonishing footage of representative cannon being forcibly handcuffed and then dragged through the Georgia State capitol that night by state troopers. All for the crime of knocking on the door of the room where the governor was holding the signing ceremony on that voting bill. She was on the outside getting arrested while the governor was on the inside of that door with six other white male republicans signing the Voting Rights rollback while seated in front of a painting in front of a slave plantation. Representative park cannon really was not just handcuffed and hauled off. She was taken to jail that night. We played footage on the show of Raphael Warnock visiting her in jail that night after she was arrested. She was charged with two felony counts. Looking potentially at years in prison if convicted on those counts. But the state prosecutor in fulton county, georgia, released a statement saying that after a thorough investigation, representative cannon will not be charged. After reviewing all of the evidence, i have decided to close this matter. It will not be presented to a grand jury for consideration of indictment, and it is now closed. While some of representative cannons colleagues and the Police Officers involved may have found her behavior annoying, such sentiment does not justify a presentment to a grand jury of the allegations in the arrest warrants or any other felony charges. So the georgia Voting Rights restrictions law is still law. The biggest employers in the state gaffe of georgia are still reporting to be repulsed by the law. Major League Baseball will not host the allstar game. Atlanta is figuring out how to avoid enforcing that law in atlanta. But this one atlantabased state representative, ms. Park cannon, at least shell not be going to jail for years because of this law, of knocking on the governors door to see it get signed. Representative cannon put out a Statement Today after the di announced no charges brought against her. You see it at the top there. Keepknocking. As in keep knocking on that door. Beyond the ongoing fiasco in georgia and the other states where republicans are moving to restrict Voting Rights, republican politics also went through a remarkable gyration today when it comes to what youd think would be a sensitive issue about the partys Comfort Level with fleecing its own supporters with just downright defrauding its own supporters and basically stealing from them. A couple of nights ago we highlighted reporting from the New York Times who had this scoop about how the Trump Campaign and Republican Party took in literally tens of millions of dollars around the 2020 election that their donors apparently really didnt intend to give them. And part of the stunning evidence in that story was anecdotal evidence. A 78yearold california man who made a trump donation in september of 990. Unbeknownst to him, the Trump Campaign then took that same amount, another 990 seven more times from him. Without him knowing. They took nearly 8,000 from him when he was trying to donate less than 1,000. He told the times, bandits. Im retired. I cant afford to pay all that damn money. 78yearold in california also an 87yearold in illinois who made a, quote, series of small contributions to trump last fall that he thought would add up to 200. The trump fundraising operation had actually withdrawn more than 70 separate donations from the mans bank account totalling roughly 2,300. That man told the times it was, quote, predatory. There was a bunch of anecdotes like this. Beyond the anecdotal evidence, just the shocking cumulative data. Trumps campaign and the republican fundraising operation that he ran around the election ended up having to refund more than 120 million that a snookered their own donors out of. And thats just from the people who caught it and complained. Who knows about the people who didnt notice they got fleeced or who did but didnt have the wherewithal to try to get the money back. Theres just a shocking story, right . Not only humiliating but damaging for the Republican Party. How do you ever ask people to ever trust you enough again to donate money to you once youve ripped off thousands of people like that . Apparently with no repentance whatsoever. The times in that reporting, they documented these little yellow check boxes that the republicans used on all their fundraising pitches around this scam to basically unwittingly rope people into giving more money than intended. Lets break a fundraising record on President Trumps birthday. Join now. And then below in lighter print, this additional donation will process on june 14th. That box comes prechecked. As does the monthly recurring donation box above it. But that bottom one, even though it doesnt say it in plain language, if you dont uncheck that box, what theyll do is theyll double the amount of money they take from you. Whatever your donation was, theyll take that amount a second time on that date. Thats in the fine print. Unless you uncheck that box. So if your sweet little trump supporting great aunt thought she was giving 200, unless she read to the bottom and figured out what those checked boxes meant and manually unchecked them, she was actually going to give 200 a month, maybe, and potentially a whole extra 200 randomly taken out of her account or off her credit card on june 14th. She had to notice what those were, understand what those were and physically go out of her way to uncheck them in order for that to not happen. Or theres this one. Join the president s executive club. For true patriots only. In lighter type below, make this a weekly recurring donation until election day. Unless you didnt want to be in President Trumps executive club, unless you found all those things and unchecked that box, your 200 intended donation would become 200 every week until november until you figured out they were ripping you off and canceled your credit card. Just a humiliating scam the Republican Party and Trump Administration got caught for. They got caught for that just this past weekend in the New York Times. Now we know how they reacted. Today a new fundraising pitch from the Republican Party itself, specifically the nrcc, part of the Republican Party that supports republicans in the house of representatives, theyve put this out today. This box prechecked for their donors. We need to know we havent lost you to the radical left. If you uncheck this box, we will have to tell trump youre a defector and sided with the dems. Check this box and we can win back the house and get trump to run in 2024. But to be clear, the box starts off already checked. And then in lighter text below. Make this a monthly recurring donation. Doesnt even look like its related to the text about whether you want to be a defector. This is what the national Republican Party is doing today to its marks. I mean its donors. If youre a defector and you want to be reported as such to our former president who is notoriously ruthless and relentless against defectors, ruins peoples lives, sics his followers on them. Youve seen the way he goes after people who arent loyal to him. You want to be one of them . If youre one of them, then uncheck this box you traitor. But unchecking the box is the only way you can keep them from taking you intended onetime donation over and over and over and over and over again until your bank account is, what, trained . Theres also this one today from the Republican Party. If you want trump to run for president in 2024, check this box. If we flip five seats in the house red, trump says hell run. Thats not actually true. Uncheck this box, we lose. And what does unchecking that box do . Well, you have to skip down a line and then look at the finer print. It would make it so that they dont keep taking more money from you in the future beyond what youre donating today. They dont double your donation. This was just exposed this week as having driven more than 100 million in fraud claims by Republican Trump supporters. Theyre not only still doing it, days later, theyre going hog wild with it. I mean, theyre upping the predatory nature and the sort of bamboozling nature of these things to try to trick as many people as they can into falling for one of these schemes where they donate more than intended and their bank account is left open to the Republican Party to keep coming back and taking money out of it without get anything further permission. Becoming a donor to the Republican Party in this era is like replying to one of the nigerian prince emails with your actual bank account information. Loaning your credit card to the local meth dealer. Just for a few hours. He said hed give it back. What could possibly go wrong. Like i say, the latest news on the republican side of things is a little bit like a threering circus with the circus tent falling down. The saddest third ring is the ongoing and expanding scandal around the most visible, most enthusiastically protrump republican of them all, Florida Republican matt gaetz. The gaetz scandals has developed today in a way that does not look good for mr. Gaetz. Part of that broken by politico. Com. Part of that broken by cbs news tonight. Ill hold on those details for now. We have one of the reporters who broke those additional developments coming up in a few minutes to break that down for us. But the republican side of things today was a little helterskelter. Democratic side of things today was sort of a supercharged day. And it marked what may be a new tone, a new tenor from President Biden and the democrats. Theres reason for them to be making a little bit of a pivot right now because of something structural that just changed in politics this week. This week the democrats learned that they will be allowed, if they want, to use the senate rules in such a way that they can pass legislation in the senate with just a simple majority of votes. With votes from the 50 Democratic Senators, only if thats what they have to do plus a tiebreaking vote cast by kamala harris. Thats a really, really big deal. They thought they may be able to do that one more time this year. Turns out they can sort of do that when they want to. That ruling from the Senate Parliamentarian this week, thats a huge deal. If the democrats had to hit a 60vote margin in the senate to pass anything, which is whats true with filibuster rule in place, if they had to hit that 60vote threshold we could expect precisely zero new legislation. Nothing else on the Biden Administrations agenda to pass into law. Republicans have said and shown theyll not allow any republican senators to cast any votes with democrats on anything of substance. Even a bill as widely popular as the covid relief bill which had huge support among the population as a whole, including among a majority of republican voters. Still not a single republican senator voted for it. Republican leader Mitch Mcconnell now says that not a single republican senator will vote for the infrastructure bill. No matter whats in it. And again, like with the covid relief bill, its not because voters are against it or its an unpopular measure. New polling today from politico and Morning Consult shows broad majority support for every single element of the infrastructure bill. From modernizing va hospitals to roads and bridges and streets to improving caregiving facilities for Older Americans and disabled americans to replacing all the lead pipes in our water systems, to building and improving public schools, to increasing highspeed broadband to improving Public Transit and amtrak, to airports, to electric vehicle fleets and electric vehicle chargers. Capping and cleaning up abandoned wells and mines. They pulled on all of those elements of it separately. And every one of those elements has at least 50 support among registered voters. Most of those considerably more than 50 support. But nothing has less than a majority of the country supporting it. And look at that one highlighted proposal weve got there. The one highlighted there in yellow. Thats just the proposal about improving caregiving facilities for Older Americans and disabled americans. Thats the part of the biden infrastructure bill that republicans keep picking on in particular. Thats the part of it they really hate and really think that if they keep talking about that, that will turn the public against the infrastructure bill. Turns out that has 76 support among american registered voters . 86 among democrats. 64 among republican voters. Overall, only 13 of the country says theyre in opposition to that. The rest say they dont know. But that thing with 76 overall support and 64 among republican voters. Thats the thing that republicans have chosen to pick on the most. They think if they keep talking about that, oh, boy, theyll win on this one. Its wildly popular. Thats more popular than like kittens. But still they say not a single republican senator will vote for this bill. Even from the outside. Even before they start formally debating it, they promise there will be zero republicans. Well, thats your prerogative, okay, for something this popular for you all to stand against it when its going to pass anyway. Feel free. Because democrats do have an option to pass this without any republican votes. And today President Biden made the case that he would love for republicans to support this bill, and he thinks they should. But if they dont, they dont. Their call. Its going ahead anyway. Debate is welcome. Compromise is inevitable. Changes are certain. In the next few weeks, the Vice President and i will be meeting with republicans and democrats to hear from everyone. And well be listening. Well be open to good ideas and goodfaith negotiations. But heres what we wont be open to. We will not be open to doing nothing. Inaction simply is not an option. Now since i announced this plan, ive heard from my republican friends say that its many of them say its too big. They say why not focus on traditional infrastructure. Fix what weve already got, the roads and the highways that exist and the bridges. Im happy to have that debate, but let me tell you my view. We are america. We dont just fix for today. We build for tomorrow. 200 years ago, trains werent traditional infrastructure either. Until america made a choice to lay down tracks across the country. Highways werent traditional infrastructure, until we allowed ourselves to imagine that roads could connect our nation across state lines. The idea of infrastructure has always evolved to meet the aspirations of the American People and their needs. And its evolving again today. We need to start seeing infrastructure through its effect on the lives of working people in america. What is the foundation today that they need to carve out their place in the middle class to make it, to live, to go to work, to raise their families with dignity, to ensure that good jobs will be there for their kids no matter who they are or what zip code they live in. Thats what infrastructure means in the 21st century. It still depends on roads and bridges, ports and airports, rail and mass transit. But also depends on having reliable highspeed internet in every home because todays highspeed internet is infrastructure. It depends on the electric grid. A grid that wont collapse in a winter storm or be compromised by hackers at home or abroad. Ask a teacher or Child Care Worker if having clean