Summary
The jury in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is now deliberating at this moment. Protesters gather as the Chauvin jury deliberates. Far-right Republicans scrap the America First Caucus after Kevin McCarthy`s tweet. The White House spent a good part of today`s press briefing trying to explain why President Biden seemed to break a campaign promise to admit more refugees. All U.S. adults are now eligible for coronavirus vaccine.
Transcript
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Murdoch family who are basically the royals from succession if you`ve never seen it. When their saying that these people are a danger to democracy, they`re saying, even though we align with them, they`re dangerous to the entire process that we have here. And that`s what I think people have to understand. And if it`s not Fox in America, it`s OAN, it`s what`s been happening at Sinclair.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Yes, it`s Newsmax. It`s the whole ecosystem. Jason Johnson, Stuart Stephens, thank you guys both much -- thank you guys both very much. That is the REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice over): Tonight on ALL IN.
STEVEN SCHLEICHER, PROSECUTOR: You can believe your own eyes. This case is exactly what you thought when you saw it.
HAYES: The prosecution closes its case.
SCHLEICHER: It`s exactly what you knew. It`s what you felt in your gut. It`s what you now know in your heart.
HAYES: And the defense makes one last stand.
ERIC NELSON, DEFENSE LAWYER: You have to be convinced that the defendant`s actions caused the death of Mr. Floyd.
HAYES: Tonight, the lawyers have all made their cases and now the whole world waits as a jury of Derek Chauvin`s peers will decide his fate.
Then, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on justice for George Floyd, the Biden refugee cap, and why Republicans are trying to distance themselves from the nativist America first caucus.
And as all American adults become eligible for a vaccine, why it`s no longer the lack of supply that will hurt us but the hesitancy.
ANDY SLAVITT, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISOR FOR COVID-19 RESPONSE: The lack of supply, the shortage of locations, the confusing rules are all in the past.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (0n camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. The jury in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is now deliberating at this moment. The city of Minneapolis, the country, are now awaiting a verdict with hundreds of people out protesting in the streets of Minneapolis tonight.
Today, the jury heard closing arguments from both the defense and the prosecution after three weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses. Derek Chauvin is of course accused of killing George Floyd. The jury now tasked with reaching a verdict on those three charges against him, second-degree unintentional murder which carries a maximum sentence of 40 years, third- degree murder which carries a sentence of up to 25 years, and second-degree manslaughter which carries a sentence of up to 10 years. But with sentencing guidelines for someone like Chauvin, a former police officer with no prior convictions, any sentence would likely be much less.
The jury started deliberations at around 4:00 p.m. Central time today. They`ve been going for three hours now. Now, here`s the thing about jury deliberations. We don`t know how long they will take. It could be anywhere from hours to days and days and days.
In 2018, you might remember it took a jury less than eight hours to convict a former Chicago Police officer of second-degree murder in the death of 17- year-old Laquan McDonald. That was that shooting video that was released belatedly by the city. So, now, we wait, reflect on what has been a very dramatic tense difficult day marking the beginning of the end of this trial.
This morning, the prosecution began their closing arguments with an appeal to members of the jury who may be reluctant to convict a police officer going out of their way to paint their case as pro-police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCHLEICHER: Imagining a police officer committing a crime might be the most difficult thing you have to set aside because that`s just not the way we think of police officers. We trust the police. We trust the police to help us. We believe the police are going to respond to our call for help. We believe they`re going to listen to us. This is not an anti-police prosecution. It`s a pro-police prosecution.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The prosecution`s core argument to the jury was what had happened to George Floyd last may, what Derek Chauvin did by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes was precisely what they saw play out on video.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCHLEICHER: This case is exactly what you thought when you saw it first when you saw that video. It is exactly that. You can believe your eyes. It`s exactly what you believed. It`s exactly what you saw with your eyes. It`s exactly what you knew. It`s what you felt in your gut. It`s what you now know in your heart. This wasn`t policing. This was murder.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: of course this case, that video, what we did all see was particularly sadistic and egregious. And there`s a reason that George Floyd`s death the video of it was the precipitating incident for massive protests, millions and millions of people across the United States moving out in ripples across the country and the world and around the world taking to the streets.
And it all that said, the contours of the justifications for Derek Chauvin`s action that came from his defense today we`re just so similar, so recognizable to what we`ve heard for honestly decades if not longer, in the wake of incidents in which police use deadly force, focusing on anything but what actually happened and blaming the victim.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NELSON: Sometimes people take -- reasonable police officers take someone into custody with no problem and suddenly they become a problem. It can change in an instant.
The nine minutes and 29 seconds ignores the previous 16 minutes and 59 seconds. It completely disregards it. It says in that moment, at that point, nothing else that happened before should be taken into consideration by a reasonable police officer. It is not uncommon for suspects to feign or pretend to have a medical emergency to avoid being arrested. Unfortunately, that is the reality.
Nobody likes to get arrested and reasonable police officers know that. How many times does someone -- oh my heart hurts or I`m having a medical emergency, insert whatever emergency, right, simply because they don`t want to go to jail.
HAYES: At the conclusion of the closing arguments this afternoon, the defense did what defense lawyers often do. They tried to get the judge to declare a mistrial. Now, it was on an interesting sort of pretext because one of their arguments centered around Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California and her comments over the weekend at a protest in Minnesota.
When asked what protesters should do, she said "We`ve got to stay on the street. We`ve got to get more active. We`ve got to get more confrontational. We`ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NELSON: Now that we have U.S. Representatives threatening acts of violence in relation to the specific case, it`s mind-boggling to me, Judge.
PETER CAHILL, JUDGE, HENNEPIN COUNTY COURTHOUSE FOURTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT: Well, I`ll give you the Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Excuse me? Strange, unusual statement from the judge who went on to call it abhorrent that elected officials were talking about the case, though he did deny the motion for mistrial.
Jelani Cobb is correspondent for PBS`s Front Line, a staff writer at the New Yorker. He`s been in Minneapolis covering the Chauvin trial, been there for a few weeks. His latest piece is titled the shooting of Daunte Wright and the meeting of George Floyd`s death. Katie Phang is a trial lawyer and a former prosecutor in Broward County and Miami-Dade in Florida. And they both join me now.
Katie, I want to just start on the -- on that exchange and the strangeness of it. And maybe it wasn`t that strange. Maybe those of us who aren`t in the courtroom all the time thought it was weirder than it seemed. I mean the judge`s opining about whether it was appropriate or right for elected officials to talk about trial seem to me itself a bit inappropriate. Like, it`s a free country. You can talk about whatever you want. That`s how we roll here. But what did you -- what do you think of that exchange there and did it strike you as odd?
KATIE PHANG, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: Well, it was odd because Judge Cahill throughout the entirety of this proceedings has been reserved like a jurist should be, and hasn`t offered any type of commentary about what`s going on like a jurist should do.
But you know what, listen, the context of that exchange is the fact that the defense has consistently been attempting to have this jury sequestered. It has asked repeatedly, it has been denied repeatedly by Judge Cahill.
We know that the jurors are now being sequestered today as they begin deliberations. However, it just is another reason, another ground for an appellate issue that perhaps Derek Chauvin is going to have to be counting on in the event he is found guilty of any one of the three offenses that he`s currently being charged with.
But it was a very kind of uh chilling dialogue to hear, grateful of course that it didn`t happen in front of the jury. It would never happen in front of the jury. The jury had already been excused and taken away by the deputy to start their deliberations. But again, it`s in the context of the idea that this jury should never have heard about the Daunte Wright shooting, never heard about the Adam Toledo shooting, never heard about you know the potential for further, you know, riots and protesting.
And so, I think that`s exactly what people need to realize was the context within which that dialogue occurred today.
HAYES: So Jelani, I know you`ve been in Minnesota. You`re back now but you`ve been covering this. And one thing that was so striking to me in watching arguments today was how -- and obviously in closing arguments, there`s the most kind of leeway legally, right? You can say the most things.
But just the context of outside the courtroom was so present inside the courtroom. And I thought that riff by the prosecutor, you know, this is not pro -- this is not anti-police. This is pro-police. He said it might be hard for you. We trust police. We trust them to do the right thing. And the whole time I`m thinking, that`s a very specific you`re using there, although maybe useful and effective for that jury.
JELANI COBB, CORRESPONDENT, PBS FRONTLINE: Yes. I mean, I think that some of this is a kind of political rhetoric and calculated. But it points to a bigger dynamic. I think it`s much more substantial. We have seen in this case the police come out against Derrick Chauvin in a way that you almost never see in previous cases.
And it`s been because the outrage that video generated, worldwide outrage where it became a national indictment on the global stage that the blowback from that was so significant that the system itself went into self- preservation mode.
The city council voted to disband the police department, something that would be inconceivable otherwise. And so what we`ve seen now is as opposed to the standard arguments to try to say that the person who`s accused is actually innocent and that we should side with the police officer. We have seen an effort to say that the system itself is innocent and therefore this police officer doesn`t represent some bigger systemic problem.
And i think that was the final statement from -- the closing statement from the prosecutor was right in line with the implications of that strategy.
HAYES: Let me follow up on that then I`m going to come back to you, Katie, on the charges here. But just on the defense`s approach to this. I mean, it was also striking to me that those arguments are arguments I`ve heard a hundred times, I mean, in covering the aftermath of police use of force, violent shooting against civilians that you don`t understand what it`s like to be in their shoes, that someone can be compliant and then turn non- compliant. People lie all the time. They say they have a heart condition they don`t. It was -- it was just the full battery of stuff that we`ve all heard dozens of times.
COBB: Yes, sure it is. And you know, it`s notable -- you mentioned Laquan McDonald and the conviction there. The other instance you have is the conviction of the officer in the death of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina. And you saw those arguments deployed in all of those instances.
What it says is that under certain circumstances, in the case of Walter Scott, you saw the person drop the taser near his body as if he was trying to frame it or set it up in a way that made it look like his life was in jeopardy. The jury didn`t buy that. And so, the difference between this case has always been not the fact that a police officer made a judgment call which the public, a large segment of the public at least are very hesitant to question, but the person did something over the course of nine minutes and 29 seconds excruciatingly long. And there`s just very little that you can say that would defend the idea that that entire time you had to maintain that posture on Mr. Floyd`s neck.
HAYES: And yet, I would -- I would say, Katie, obviously, we talked about this, you know, throughout these weeks that we don`t know what`s going to happen and we don`t know conclusion that jury`s going to reach. And in fact, there have been examples. I mean, the Rodney King trial being an iconic one, right, where we -- there was, you know, very obvious visual evidence, It did not lead to conviction.
Talk us through these three charges and what has to be found in terms of the jury in terms of cause, in terms of state of mind of Chauvin.
PHANG: Well, that`s a really important question, Chris. And the reason why is we`ve talked about the fact that the jury instructions that this jury has received about this causation, the idea was Derek Chauvin the cause legally of the death of George Floyd. And what`s important is the prosecution made it excruciatingly clear to the jury today that Derek Chauvin just has to be a substantial causal factor. He does not have to be the sole factor in the death of George Floyd.
And that is critical because you can look at other things like George Floyd`s heart condition, his drug usage, etcetera. You can actually consider that in the grand scheme of things but still find Derek Chauvin guilty of all three of the charges.
Now, the second-degree unintentional murder carries the idea that Derek Chauvin was committing a felony assault at the time that he killed George Floyd. And that is exactly why intent isn`t necessary, it`s the assault itself, the felony itself. Third-degree murder, the idea that there was an act that was imminently dangerous that would cause that death of George Floyd.
And then finally, the secondary manslaughter, exactly is the lowest of the three charges and that is the easiest one to get to. But, Chris, you know, the fact that the prosecution made it clear that this is not an indictment of an entire police department, it`s not the indictment of an entire police system, Derek Chauvin went criminally rogue. He deviated from the professional standards, the things he was taught, the policies he was supposed to adhere to. And instead of respecting the badge and all of the authority that comes with the ability to carry the badge and the gun, he went criminally rogue.\
And that is exactly what the state is trying to tell this jury to do, render a verdict that is consistent with the facts and the evidence and the law that is in this case, and you should not have a problem finding him guilty because again it`s Derek Chauvin on trial not the entire Minneapolis Police Department on trial.
HAYES: Right. They were very, very clear to try to draw that narrative distinction. Jelani, last thoughts.
COBB: Yes.. Just really quickly. One thing that I have to say about this is that it`s very difficult to say that Derek Chauvin went rogue. He was in a supervisory capacity that day.
HAYES: Right.
COBB: That Officer Potter in Brooklyn Center was in a supervisory capacity. So, while this may not be textbook policing, it may well be a reflection of how policing actually operated in that department.
HAYES: Jelani Cobb and Katie Phang, thank you both for your time tonight. I really appreciate it.
On Friday, we brought you a story of a new caucus that was getting shopped around by the likes of Marjory Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar. Gosar, you may have forgotten, he gave a speech at a white nationalist conference just over a month ago which I mentioned because the bold mission of this new America First Caucus was staking a claim to a vision of a Republican Party not afraid to say that out loud essentially that tens of millions of non- white people who`ve come to our shore since 1965 may have been a mistake. It turns out that might not have gone over so well. That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: You never noticed how white nationalists will be too white nationalists for the modern Republican Party. You can almost forgive folks like former GOP Congressman Steve King for thinking it`s all a little bit of a moving target.
In 2019, King told The New York Times, "White nationalist, white supremacist, western civilization, how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me up the merits of our history and our civilization?"
Those comments send a very lengthy history of similarly problematic statements. Steve King was stripped of his committee assignments and successfully primaried by a Republican challenger. He`s no longer in Congress. You would think that what happened to Congressman King would serve as a maybe deterrent to other Republicans when it comes to this sort of nakedly white nationalist politics, right, that our country is born of its heritage in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, yadda, yadda, yadda.
On Friday, Punchbowl News broke the story that a group of House Republicans including Georgia`s Marjory Taylor Greene, Arizona`s Paul Gosar were forming an America first caucus to protect so-called Anglo-Saxon political traditions, which is not wildly different from the ideology being pushed by Congressman Steve King or for that matter honestly, if you look at his history, Donald Trump`s right-hand man on immigration, Stephen Miller.
But it was apparently too much for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who passive-aggressively sent out a tweet saying the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln and the party of more opportunity for all Americans not nativist dog whistles. Oh, OK. That sent the America First Caucus scrambling to walk it all back.
Paul Gosar said in a Saturday statement, he did not author the document and that he became aware of it only after it was reported by the news media while Marjory Taylor-Greene released a statement saying the platform was a staff-level draft proposal from an outside group that I hadn`t read.
Jake Sherman was the one that broke the story of the new America First Caucus. He`s the founder of Punchbowl News and he joins me now. First of all, some clarity on this document. Like, what is this document and who wrote it?
JAKE SHERMAN, FOUNDER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: Chris, thanks for having me. That`s a good question. But when we went -- let me clarify a few things here. When we went to Marjory Taylor Greene`s office, their first comment, and they had the document at this point, was something along the lines of, you know, someone leaked this to you guys and we`ll let you know when we have a final version of this. So, they didn`t deny its authenticity at all in any way shape or form.
And Paul Gosar, I don`t know if it was the first time that he had seen it, but we had gone to his staff and we had contacted them, and they had this. And we posted it online. We certainly, Chris, weren`t trying to hide this document. So, you know, listen, they were creating this caucus. This was material that was linked to this caucus. We never reported that they were the ones that had drafted it.
HAYES: Right.
SHERMAN: But this is a pretty extensive document to have nothing to do with this organization as they seem to be claiming after as you said Kevin McCarthy came out against it.
HAYES: Yes, let`s also be clear here. I mean, Matt Gaetz, when he -- you know, he celebrated it. He tweeted. Like, I want to get in on that action, you know, and then that`s before the Kevin McCarthy tweet.
And also, the Paul Gosar history here, we should just be clear, I mean, it was really notable he was at this sort of alt-right version of CPAC, right, where he talked to a group -- actually uses the term America First, where the -- you know, the person -- the America First Political Action Conference, the guy that hosted that said, "If America ceases to retain that English cultural framework and the influence of European civilization, if it loses its white demographic core, if it loses its faith in Jesus Christ, then it is not America anymore." Like, this -- Paul Gosar is -- this is part of his belief system, apparently.
SHERMAN: Well, and also, Chris, to put a finer point on that. Marjorie Taylor Greene in a tweet I believe over the weekend, I`m not exactly sure of the timing, said that I had taken -- she called me fake Jake Sherman which is -- does have a nice kind of cadence to it. I will give her that. But she did indicate -- she said that I had taken her words out of context and misconstrued them as racist.
I -- we didn`t use the word racist. I didn`t take it out of context. The context was that -- she said I took -- sorry, she said I took Anglo-Saxon out of context and made it seem racist. We posted the entire document. That is the context. I don`t know where -- and she said, it was like her Jewish space laser story from a couple of months ago.
So, listen, I`m not going to try to make sense of what she`s saying. I will tell you this though. This is an important story because as you indicated in your opening, this is fundamental to an identity that is deep within the Republican Party on the House at this point. And you`re seeing people rally to Marjory Taylor Greene`s defense. So, you know, it`s very important stuff.
HAYES: Well, yes. And I actually was surprised by McCarthy`s reaction. That`s usually not the way he goes on this stuff. I mean, usually it`s like, I don`t know. You know, he just he -- kind of tends to be a passive and reactive dude. I would not have bet that he would have tried to do that. Were you surprised by that tweet?
SHERMAN: I wasn`t because I`ve been covering McCarthy for more than a decade and wrote a book in which he was a main character. So, McCarthy, the way he would think about this, Chris, is there a constituency big enough for me to defend this. And I don`t mean that in a glib way. I don`t -- he is not in my estimation a white nationalist. He`s never said anything of that nature, to me.
I believe he thinks this is wrong but I also believe that the way he views this is -- this is abhorrent to me, Kevin McCarthy, and it will be important to enough people that I need to come out and dump all over it. That is how I would assume, again, without having spoken to him about this how he would think about this.
HAYES: Yes, the political calculation here, we should say Steve Scalise is in leadership and one of his lieutenants who once described himself quite famously as David Duke without the baggage, although I don`t think he`s pending manifestos at that limb along these lines. But just an important point here. And this is something that I`ve covered the far right, and I`ve actually covered this line of thinking for 20 years, so this is all very familiar.
But the idea that like the 1965 immigration law reform, an important distinction between post-1965 immigrants and previous waves of settlers that previous cohorts were more educated, earned higher wages, did not have an expansive welfare state to fall back on when they could not make it in America, and thus did not stay in the country at the expense of the native- born.
It also talks about pauses of immigration which has been a great restrictionist cause celeb. These pauses have been absolutely essential in weeding out those who refuse to abandon their old loyalties and plunge head first into mainstream American society.
When you`re talking about that, you`re talking about a quarter of the American voting public. Like, post-1965 immigration is responsible for an enormous number of people, tens of millions of people, some of whom are, you know, conservative, vote Republican, probably like Kevin McCarthy, you know.
SHERMAN: By the way -- and by the way, many of whom are conservative and Republicans can thank them for having a couple seats in South Florida. Many Cuban immigrants in South Florida that have given them those two -- several seats in that part of the state and they`re trying to appeal to those people because they are conservative voters and they do represent a part of their constituency.
Another thing that they said is -- and I`m paraphrasing here, that they don`t want immigrants or they want to weed out people who are not willing to assimilate. I mean, if you think -- and Chris, you have been covering this for a long time, you think 20 years ago to the George Bush era when that kind of rhetoric even for the Republicans was way out of the mainstream and not even -- you wouldn`t even hear that kind of stuff.
HAYES: The weirdest thing is actually there`s a much more recent example which is the pivot that Donald Trump himself made down the stretch of the last two or three months of the campaign when he reduced how much he talked about immigration, had the big citizenship swearing-in ceremony in the White House and the RNC, ran Spanish language ads in South Florida, and actually did pretty decently along the Rio Grande and in South Florida.
So, you know, there`s some very recent precedent to point to here but this is not going away, I think, as you -- as your reporting shows those ideas. That impulse is very strong right now. Jake Sherman, thank you very much.
SHERMAN: Thanks, Chris.
HAYES: Don`t go anywhere. Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is here. There`s a lot to talk about from the trial Derek Chauvin, to her fight to raise the cap on refugees. Congresswoman Omar joins me next. Don`t go anywhere.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you explain where things stand right now when it comes to the refugee ban? First off, the White House said on Friday that actually the 15,000 cap that was set by the Trump administration was remain justified, but then later you said actually, no the number is going to go up by May 15th.
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I wouldn`t -- I would dispute that being our characterization on Friday. This was always meant to be just the beginning. In the announcement we made on Friday, we were clear in the emergency presidential determination that if 15,000 is reached, a subsequent presidential determination would be issued to increase admissions as appropriate. And that is certainly our expectation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The White House spent a good part of today`s press briefing trying to explain why President Biden seemed to break a campaign promise to admit more refugees. Then, after a collective backlash, changed his position. On Friday, President Biden announced he was keeping the Trump administration`s historically low cap on refugee admissions, just 15,000 compared to over 100,000 in Obama`s last year.
And then, a few hours later, we heard a backtrack saying he would set a new higher cap by the middle of next month. We still do not have a specified number on what that cap would be. There`s probably no single member of Congress who has a more personal connection all this than Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
When she was eight, her family fled Somalia`s civil war, went to Kenya where they lived in a refugee camp in Mombasa for four years. They were eventually sponsored for refugee resettlement in the United States and settled in Virginia before moving to Minneapolis.
And now, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a the Democrat representing the Minnesota fifth district, she`s been one of the most outspoken critics of the Biden administration`s announcement on refugee caps, and she joins me now.
Congresswoman, it`s good to have you. And I know obviously, this is a deeply personal issue for you as well as one that you believe in politically. Do you have clarity on what exactly resolution we`ve reached here? Like, what is your understanding of where the cap is and what the administration`s posture towards it is?
REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): There isn`t really clarity yet as you know that the original cap that was agreed upon by multiple state departments, by members of Congress who sit -- who chair committees of jurisdiction by those of us who have been advocating for the cap to be lifted since the Trump administration have all agreed upon there being a 65,000 or so refugees admitted this year, and then subsequently increased in next year.
And so, what we were appalled to learn was that that wasn`t going to happen. And you know, as you`ve alluded to, there`s been a backtracking that says that we will learn new information hopefully by the decision that will be made by the Biden administration on May 1st.
And so, we are all waiting and I`m going to make sure that we advocate as hard as we can to make sure that the number does not stay at 15,000.
HAYES: Something you said 65,000 which would still be far below the last year of the Obama administration, although there`s some withered capacity I think in the State Department to actually deal with refugees thanks to some of the changes of the Trump administration, something that might I think be worth noting for people just because your family went through this, is just the level of application, paperwork, vetting, difficulty, hoops that one jumps through to become an official refugee in the United States is really, really onerous.
This is not an easy process. It`s a very long-drawn-out process. And I wonder if you think people -- there`s I think some conflating of us people presenting for asylum at the southern border and folks like your family that had to apply from abroad.
OMAR: Right. And I think oftentimes we forget just how lengthy of a process it is. You know, for my family, I would say, it was one of the shortest processes, it was a couple of years for a lot of families. It could be five, six, you know, 10 years, some 20 years to go through the process of getting vetted, waiting for a state to be resettled in if you`re coming to the United States. And it`s a -- it`s a really long process.
And you know, as we even talk about capacity, you know, I want to remind people the kind of capacity challenges that we are talking about at the border really doesn`t apply to, you know, capacity challenges existing with the refugee resettlement program because there are resettlement agencies that partner with the United States government that do these this processing that that process a lot of the vetting that takes place and then help families when they get to the United States to get, you know, assimilated into society.
And so, those partners have come out and said we have the capacity. We are ready for you not to only bring the 65,000 we`ve all been having a conversation about since inauguration, but we can even do more than that. And what we want, what we are advocating for, is this administration, they keep its promise, what they campaigned on, what they have promised us since inauguration, and what we know to be uh true in regards to their policy and what they morally say they believe.
HAYES: This is a personal question, so if you don`t want to answer it, you don`t have to. But do you remember when your parents told you or your family told you in Mombasa that they`d gotten the green light, that they were that you actually were going to go to the United States?
OMAR: Yes. It wasn`t a conversation with me but I do remember my grandfather and father talking about us starting the process of relocating to the United States. And I remember there being a long interview process. I remember us waiting for nearly a year to know if we would get a second interview. I remember going through testing -- medical testing, other testing.
I remember us going to Nairobi to do more processing work. I remember the long process of orientation. And I remember the long process of waiting to hear if our flight had been scheduled. So, it is not an easy process and many of the people who are in these refugee camps who have already started the process long ago have been waiting and waiting for their papers to get processed.
We hear from so many people um in the United States who have family members that they themselves have sponsored, who are asking what is taking so long, when they will be reunited with their family members. This is, you know, something that people had high hopes for, something people fought so hard to make sure that this new administration was going to be able to do.
And it`s just, you know, with desperation and frustration that we are speaking out against the Biden administration in their backtracking on this. And you know, we do applaud them for changing course. And we just want to make sure that they follow through with clear communication on what those numbers are going to be so that we can feel comfortable where those numbers will land.
HAYES: Finally, I want to ask you about the mood in your city this evening. The jury is deliberating in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd. Of course, Daunte Wright`s death coming just in the last week and a half, I believe. Also I think in your district, what are your -- what are you hearing from your constituents about where folks are at right now as they`re in anticipation of this verdict?
OMAR: Yes, I mean, the mood is what you can hear from my voice is one of exhaustion. Our city is on edge. We have today all gathered to sort of hear the closing on the case from the prosecution and the defense side. We are all desperately awaiting for the jury to deliberate and for them to come to a resolution.
So many people are still out praying and demanding justice. And we just ask people keep our city and the family of George Floyd and others who have experienced tragedy in the hands of police in their prayers.
HAYES: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, thank you so much for making time tonight. I really appreciate it.
OMAR: Thank you so much for having me.
HAYES: Coming up, as of today, every adult in this country who wants a vaccine can get one as the world marks the worst week ever for new COVID infections. I`m going to talk to Dr. Peter Hotez about the now-urgent fight against vaccine misinformation ahead.
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HAYES: This may seem slightly surprising or even shocking depending on what your week has been like, how attuned to the news you are. But the world just had its worst week ever for new cases of coronavirus. You can see in this chart more than five million new cases last week alone. What makes it clear, how very badly we need to vaccinate the entire world especially as we see diverging paths for nations that have access to vaccines and those that do not.
Just look at the difference in a place like Israel which appears to be the most vaccinated country per capita in the whole world. This is a report from Reuters on how Israel is lifting its mask mandate.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the latest steps towards a return to relative normality, Israelis ditched the mandatory wearing of protective masks outdoors. Boosted by a successful mass vaccination campaign against the COVID-19 pandemic, the state is becoming the envy of many other countries still struggling to get infections under control. Dudy Kepler (PH) lives in Tel Aviv.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For me to get out without mask, it`s like a holiday. It`s like a future and I want this day will be good news for all the world and all the world will be -- go after Israel.
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HAYES: I mind you, this is not -- that`s not Israel pre-COVID, right? It just looks like pre-COVID but it`s just post-COVID. It`s like normal life, right? It`s a small glimpse of what life could be like if we could just get everyone vaccinated. People unmasked, going about their daily normal lives in a way we`ve not been really able to do more than a year. It`s the world we could have if we can get well, about half of the holdouts here in the U.S. to get vaccinated in the next few weeks.
Here in the United States, we are vaccinating millions of people a day, over half of all adults now have had at least one shot. And we`ve now hit the point where supply is not the constraint, it`s demand. So, who are the Americans who are not getting vaccinated?
Well, nearly half of Republicans say they do not want the vaccine. In contrast, two-thirds of Democrats say they already got at least one shot. So, we need to get those remaining unvaccinated Americans of all political stripes and ideologies and geographies to get their shots.
But is the closed-off informational ecosystem of tens of millions of our fellow Americans going to make that impossible? That`s next.
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SLAVITT: 50 percent of adults in the U.S. have had at least one shot, up from five percent. And we now have one thing on our mind, making sure that the other 50 percent know how easy it is to get a shot. Everyone who you`ve seen finally be able to safely hug a loved one, to visit each other without masks, to see old friends. That`s an opportunity that is now within reach for you if you make your appointment. If you`re 16 or over, it is your turn to get vaccinated.
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HAYES: Today is April 19th, the day President Joe Biden announced all U.S. adults are eligible to get their coronavirus vaccine. Hopefully, that`s going to make it easier for the remaining half of American adults to get their shots. And then we can devote all of our substantial national energy and resources to vaccinating the entire world as quickly as possible.
Here with me now, one of the people I trust the most on the topic of coronavirus vaccine both at home and abrouad, Dr. Peter Hotez. He`s dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, the co-director of Texas Children`s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. Dr. Hotez, great to have you.
So, let`s start -- you know, I was looking at the numbers, and we`ve been talking about this for a while. Everyone saw this coming. The Biden administration, public health experts, that you`re going to hit a point where supply is not the constraint, right? So, for the first few weeks and months, you know, people are desperately trying to get appointments. There`s not enough vaccine to go around. You hit a point where that`s not really the issue. It`s getting people who are hesitant or just maybe busy or not that invested into it. Is that where we are right now?
PETER HOTEZ, CO-DIRECTOR, TEXAS CHILDREN`S HOSPITAL CENTER FOR VACCINE DEVELOPMENT: Just about. i mean, remember where we have to go, Chris. We have to, based on the high transmissibility of these new variants, the B117 variant from the United Kingdom, the 1429 from coming out of California, they`re more transmissible. That means the stakes are higher. The percentage of Americans we have to vaccinate to halt transmission or certainly dramatically slow it goes up.
And now we`re about 80 percent. We need 80 percent of the U.S. population vaccinated. That essentially means just about all the adults and a high percentage of the adolescents. So, in theory, all the stars are aligning now in order to vaccinate our way out of this epidemic, at least in the United States, provided we can get everybody onboard.
HAYES: I saw this in the city of Houston where you`re located. The Houston Chronicle saying today COVID vaccine supply increase in Texas. Clinics now saying no appointment needed. I saw someone point -- tweeting out that a few of the clinics in Houston are now just walk up. And I think that`s going to be increasingly common, right, that when you`re getting to the point where you don`t have to regulate or ration supply, you can basically say, like, come on down.
HOTEZ: Yes. The whole idea is, to make this as easy-breezy as possible. Victory would be anybody who wakes up that morning and says, maybe I`ll get vaccinated today, should be able to do it without a lot of fuzzy sign up and rigid criteria. And we`re just about there and many states are already there.
The problem is now we`ve got a sizable chunk of the U.S. population that has said -- that said they would be defiant, just like they were defiant of masks and social distancing. They`ve adopted this very self-defeating view that they`re not going to get vaccinated as well.
And we know who those groups are. There are at least five polls now, we did one with Texas A&M, Monmouth University has done one, Kaiser Family Foundation has done one. Texas A&M was part of ours, the PBS News Hour, and the one you just mentioned all point to the same thing. It`s white republicans.
And I don`t know how to elegant -- more elegantly say it, but that is the reality. And this has been the growing trend since 2015, when the anti- vaccine movement first glommed on to the Republican Tea Party, but now it`s cut across. It`s now a mainstream component of the Republican Party.
HAYES: Yes. I guess the question is what is the -- what do we know from social science or even vaccinology and public health about you know, I don`t think shaming anyone is going to do any good. And certainly, they`re not going to -- you know, they`re not going to listen to me telling them that they`re doing it wrong.
So, the question of like, how do you reach people where they are in the -- in the information environment we`re in, what do you say to that?
HOTEZ: Well, you know, part of it is, you know, they`re very much focused on this concept of health freedom, medical freedom. And that was the basis for defying masks and social distancing. And that`s how the movement started in 2015. And now, we`re saying, you know what, if you can vaccinate, guess what, you can have everything you`ve asked for in terms of not requiring social distancing and masks, we can have an extraordinary quality of life.
And it`s been an enormous source of frustration for me. I`ve been trying to go on as many conservative news outlets as I can in order to appeal to these groups. And now it`s gotten more complicated unfortunately in the last two to three weeks. We`ve seen Fox News pile on in a big way. Not so much the daytime people. They`ve been fine. It`s the nighttime anchors have decided that they`re going to spectacularize this.
And we`ve seen this rants against vaccine and this one anchor has targeted me, and Tony -- and Tony Fauci, and Vivek, and it`s really destructive in how we -- how we rip out the anti-science out of the Republican Party because the truth this, this is new. The Republican Party has never been anti-science. It`s going to be one of the great challenges in the coming weeks.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, I think the climate trajectory was sort of the canary in the coal mine or even before that, tobacco. So, there some (INAUDIBLE). Let`s talk about the world because I think it is shocking to people to see that chart as they feel like oh, light at the end of the tunnel. 50 percent of adults are vaccinated. You know, that it`s really bad in India right now. Brazil looks like they`re past the peak and coming down.
But to me, it`s just like, I`ve been thinking about, you know, Afghanistan, the fact we`re probably going to pull our troops out. 20 years, it`s been $2 trillion and the level of resources we marshaled as a country in response to 9/11. It just seems like we`re a rich country and money is cheap right now, and we`re borrowing a ton of it. Like, it would be good for us, morally, strategically, diplomatically, and public health-wise to just really throw a lot of resources into vaccinating the world.
HOTEZ: That`s absolutely right. And remember, our economy can only go high up before it plateaus again because we can`t do business with Africa, we can`t do business with Latin America. And essentially, we`re going to be looking at six or seven countries that are going to be fully vaccinated leaving everybody else (INAUDIBLE) to vaccines.
And that`s why we`re trying to accelerate at Texas Children`s and Baylor a low-cost (INAUDIBLE) of protein COVID-19 vaccine that could be given to large populations at low cost. We`re partnering with a company Biological E based in India. We`re now making a billion doses, looking great in trials. The same technology used to make the (INAUDIBLE) Hepatitis B vaccine that`s been around for 40 years.
And there`s no end to where we can scale that up. So, what we need is the U.S. government to now help us. And Biological E in India will make about a billion doses. If we can get the U.S. government to make that other four billion, I think we can do this. And as I say, $1.50 a dose, you can`t beat that in terms of cost.
HAYES: Yes, we did a Why is this Happening podcast. Folks should listen to it. Dr. Peter Hotez, in which he talks about some of the complexities in that global distribution. Dr. Peter Hotez, author of the new book Preventing The Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science, always a pleasure, Doctor. Thank you.
That is ALL IN on this Monday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.