Summary
The Right-wing touts unproven COVID treatments rather than safe, free, preventative vaccines. The House January 6 Committee issued sweeping formal records request asking the Trump administration`s records of communications related to the assault on the Capitol and warning that failure to do so would be met with subpoenas. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court`s order that the Biden administration against its own wishes and policies must essentially restart a discontinued Trump administration immigration policy. The House passes the John Lewis Voting Act with not Republican voters.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice over): Tonight on ALL IN.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Going back to Ivermectin because you know this -- that is my message today that it is the cure for this --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You support Ivermectin, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course, you`re not confused about that right, senator?
HAYES: To new warnings over human use of livestock medicine to treat COVID.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He said, I`m taking Ivermectin. He has members of his family on Ivermectin. He`s disregarding FDA guidance and giving dewormer to our inmates at the jail.
HAYES: Tonight, why so many are being so misled as the pandemic grows around the country.
Then, the January 6 committee issues a raft of document requests. What we know about their massive demand for White House records.
Plus, never mind the big lie. How every single House Republican just voted against strengthening democracy, and what you need to know about what has been called a stunning radical and terrifying decision by the Supreme Court when ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. I`ve been haunted the last few days by a little bit of a mystery. How is it that the daily death numbers from COVID have topped 1000? And how are we seeing this level of devastation and death with the virus despite just over 60 percent of the eligible population fully vaccinated and 81 percent of seniors who are fully vaccinated, seniors, of course, being the most vulnerable of the virus, making up a huge portion of the deaths from COVID we`ve seen up until now. How are we in this situation?
Then I came across this New York Times article, which helped make sense of things from it. It says the U.S. has a far higher share of seniors without full vaccine protection than many other wealthy countries, a key risk factor driving serious COVID illness and death. And those seniors are concentrated in certain places such that national averages actually masked the high rate of older Americans in broad swaths of the country, like you see in the red there on the map, who remain deeply vulnerable.
So, why is that? Why are we an outlier compared to other wealthy countries that have the privilege of having lots of vaccine to distribute where we have big chunks of our seniors who are not vaccinated? And the reason for this, at least one main reason I suspect, is this. The American right here in the U.S. has been more hostile to public health measures across the board than pure countries almost since COVID first came ashore.
I mean, you saw it from the beginning of the pandemic, right, this kind of ultimate reality that`s been constructed. And the central ordering principle of that reality was that and is that COVID is actually not that big a deal. That`s it. That`s the central premise. That people are lying to you about its severity.And they`re lying to you about how to solve it. This has been their kind of guiding Northstar principle.
And all these different behaviors and beliefs, some of them bizarre, many of them downright dangerous, have gotten people sick and killed, frankly, they all flow from that. The stuff like I don`t want to wear a mask or I don`t want to, you know, avoid crowded indoor spaces, or I don`t want to get a vaccine. But the more bizarre manifestations of that have been this search, a really strange thing that`s been unfolding now for a year and a half, this search for some hidden miracle cure that the people in charge, the experts, the FDA, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who are trying to control you with their tyrannical public health orders, they won`t tell you about.
Because if you knew about this, this secret cure I have here in my back pocket, then you would realize it`s not that big of a deal. And hence, you would be free from their tyranny and mind control. And that has led to fringe enthusiasm for some untested and unproven treatments.
Now, granted sometimes that enthusiasm is based on some early promising data. I mean, this is all a complicated, fast, unspooling pandemic. People are figuring things out, scientists among them. But then it has been taken upon all sorts of rational calculus and turned into a kind of weird COVID cargo cult.
We saw this first with the anti-malarial drug. Remember that one? Hydroxychloroquine. Now, there were some really promising studies about hydroxychloroquine. But then Donald Trump and a lot of other consumers became obsessed with it, like in a Freudian neurotic, compulsive way obsessed. Fox News` Laura Ingraham would bring on her doctors that she dumped her medicine cabinet to talk about the drug.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Dr. Smith, you pointed out that not a single patient of yours, COVID patient, that has been on the hydroxy regimen has had to be intubated. It`s a game-changer, correct?
STEPHEN SMITH, FOUNDER, THE SMITH CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND URBAN HEALTH: It`s a game-changer. It`s absolutely a game-changer. Laura, I think this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic. I`m very serious.
[20:05:06]
INGRAHAM: Oh wow. This is unbelievable. Well, Dr. Smith, all the naysayers and the people dismissing this, just wait, OK. The good news is coming.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Well, that was April of 2020. Now, to her credit, Laura Ingram called that pronouncement unbelievable and she was correct. It was not to be believed. A couple days later, Laura Ingram met with Trump at the White House to personally pitch him on hydroxychloroquine and Trump was sold. So much so that a little over two weeks later, Dr. Rick Bright, a Health and Human Services official who helped oversee COVID vaccine development said he was ousted from his role after his objections to the anti-malaria drug as a treatment for COVID.
And then, in June of 2020, the FDA said they no longer had reason to believe the drug was effective against COVID. And after all that, I mean, that embarrassing episode -- I mean, imagine going on television night after night promoting this crank cure that turns out not to work, telling people that it`s right around the corner, the good news is coming, and then just being flatly horrifyingly wrong while people die by the 1000. Imagine that. After all that there was still this faith. There had to be a secret cure Where is it? And of course, this is what animated one of the most infamous moments of Trump`s presidency.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous -- whether it`s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said, that hasn`t been checked, but you`re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, in which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you`re going to test that too? It sounds interesting. Right.
And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That is still shocking a year later. I have to say yes, the famous shine a light in your orifices or inject bleach moment. And after that insane moment, Trump began looking for another silver bullet which he found it monoclonal antibodies or Regeneron. That`s the company that makes it. And which can be somewhat effective according to the data we have.
There`s some data to support this is actually an effective treatment. Now, Trump got it after he contracted COVID and called it "a cure." It`s not. He said that everyone would have free access to it. They of course did not. But Trump`s older and not necessarily sturdiest of friends, they got Regeneron when it came down -- when they came down with the virus.
And yet, despite the drugs own Web site saying that it`s an unproved investigational therapy and there are limited clinical data available, Regeneron has retained its good graces in the conservative movement to the point where Florida Governor Ron DeSantis whose state reported a record- breaking 26,203 COVID cases today, who instead of doing everything possible to try to get people vaccinated, which is one thing you could do if your governor, is out there setting up free monoclonal antibody treatment sites that require two injections in the stomach and one in each arm.
And now, despite having safe and effective vaccines that according to the data we have day by day, we`re getting more data every day, continue to provide tremendous protection against hospitalization, severe illness, and death, even if those vaccines have not shut down transmission in the way that we initially hoped, despite the fact we have that, we have now arrived at perhaps the most Gothic chapter of this story which is people taking livestock dewormer to treat COVID. Yes, the stuff used to treat parasites in animals.
Again, why? It flows from the same conviction, right, this guiding principle from the beginning. There has to be a miracle cure they are not telling you about. Everything works backwards off of that. I mean, Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was ahead of the curve on this one. I got to say, he hosted a COVID hearing this past December with two doctors pushing for the use of the dewormer drug Ivermectin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. PIERRE KORY, PULMONARY AND CRITICAL CARE SPECIALIST: It seems like a no-brainer that you should try it. And here`s the thing about Ivermectin. Going back to Ivermectin because you know this -- that is my message today that it is the cure for this --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wait, you support Ivermectin, right?
KORY: Of course, you`re not confused about that right, Senator? So, you have to understand something about Ivermectin. 3.7 billion doses have been administered since it was first developed in 1987, 3.7 billion. Something like over 60 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa takes it on a yearly basis. It has an unparalleled safety profile with almost no side effects.
The only side effects that have been attributed to it are those that are considered to be part of the diseases they treat which is the ridding of the parasites. And so, given the mountain of evidence that I`ve presented, as well as the safety profile on a risk-benefit therapeutic analysis, you cannot come up with a credible argument to not give it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:10:20]
HAYES: OK, well, let me just try. It`s not been proven safe and effective. It is true that there are people that take it around the world. It`s true that some -- there`s even a published study or two that shows it`s suggested might maybe do something for humans. But there`s a process to OK drugs for a reason. And more than eight months later, we`ve got farm supply stores that are running out of Ivermectin.
And this is happening in large parts of the country that are seeing a significant increase in COVID cases. In one county in Northwest Arkansas, the jail`s physician is giving it to inmates. Yesterday, it came up during a finance and budget committee hearing in that county.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I learned today that Dr. Charisse is giving Ivermectin, cow dewormer to inmates at the jail. He said I`m taking Ivermectin. He has members of his family on Ivermectin. He`s disregarding FDA guidance and giving dewormer to our inmates at the jail. And at a time when the world is laughing at us for people taking cow dewormer, I think we need to reevaluate who were using.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And Texas Poison Control says they`re seeing an increase in calls about exposure to the livestock dewormer Ivermectin. In Georgia, the director of their poison center has had enough.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. GAYLORD LOPEZ, DIRECTOR, GEORGIA POISON CENTER: When you see a picture of a cow or a horse or a sheep, it`s amazing to me that people would rather you know, trust what they might have read on the internet as opposed to, you know, learning more about, you know, just how effective vaccines are.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: This is where the madness has gotten us. People raiding the shelves of farm supply stores looking for livestock dewormer containing an anti- parasitic drug because they have been told it cures COVID. And the bad public health experts don`t want you to know it. They`re covering it up.
But that`s just the same -- that`s a different side of the same coin of the fact that we have millions of seniors in America who haven`t been vaccinated. And now thousands are dying from a disease they don`t have to die from because they have not been vaccinated. Because they have been told from the beginning by people like Laura Ingraham that there`s some miracle cure for COVID or it`s actually not that big a deal.
Dr. Gaylord Lopez is the director of the Georgia Poison Center, and he joins me now. Dr. Lopez, first just -- this is a deworming agent, parasitic deworming agent for livestock that has been used for years and around the world. What is it chemically?
LOPEZ: Yes. So you`re talking about an anti-infective that has been used for a number of conditions, everything from skin conditions, to parasitic conditions. But again, this is pharmaceutical grade, not livestock grade that`s being prescribed. And we really are starting to get these kinds of crazy calls where people are now playing doctor. And this is very dangerous.
HAYES: Have you -- have you seen an uptick? And did you know what was happening when you first started getting these calls?
LOPEZ: Yes. We`ve known for the last two or three weeks. I mean, in a given year, I might get a handful of these calls from parents who are using it for body lice and whatnot. In the month of August alone, we`re near 21 calls on this everything from people wanting to take it to people who are taking it and having symptoms. And even healthcare professionals calling us about what the proper dosage. So, it`s really shocking and it`s really alarming in a lot of us in the poison center world.
HAYES: Yes. And it strikes me that this is -- this is sort of paired, I think, and I don`t want to make assumptions, but it`s paired with sort of vaccine hesitancy. I don`t -- I mean, my sense is that this is not -- people are not getting worried about -- that people are not going out to get Ivermectin if they`re vaccinated, per se. And there`s kind of an obvious tension there between what people think is safe to consume based on clinical trial data when we`ve got probably more clinical trial data on these vaccines than just about any other -- any other recent medicine that can be offered, versus an off label use of a livestock dewormer.
LOPEZ: Yes. Keep in mind. These are products that are highly concentrated. People don`t even know what the proper dose can be. And of course, in a world where, you know, one dose is probably going to work, I think I`ll take five. This is where we run into problems.
HAYES: Right.
LOPEZ: Also, keep in mind, you`ve got people self-treating. And what if they have underlying medical conditions? What if they`re taking other medication that could interact? See, this is where we come into play to try to figure out, hey, this may be problematic. In fact, we`ve had people who are taking certain types of fluid and taking Ivermectin and guess what`s happening. The levels of Ivermectin are becoming higher in the body because what they`re drinking is preventing it from being broken down. So, it`s really scary, Chris.
[20:15:34]
HAYES: We should say the FDA had a -- had a sort of funny but also serious tweet saying you are not a horse, you`re not a cow. Seriously, y`all, stop it. What is the situation look like in Georgia right now, just from your perspective?
LOPEZ: Yes, we`ve had a couple of people actually send us photos of the sheep version of Ivermectin. And it just troubles us because here, they`ll trust livestock animal as opposed to the effect of vaccines are out there. It just blows our mind that they would play doctor, read a couple of posts and trust that, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands and millions of doses that we`ve been given of the vaccine, and they`re not trusting that data, but they`ll trust the internet, because they know that that magic word Ivermectin is out there, and this must be the new thing.
HAYES: Yes. Every question in American political life at the moment revolves around who you trust and who you listen to. Dr. Gaylord Lopez, thanks for making time tonight.
LOPEZ: Thanks for having me.
HAYES: Right now, I want to bring in Democratic governor of New Jersey Phil Murphy.
Governor Murphy, you`ve had some face-to-face meetings with folks heckling about whether it`s a vaccine or non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking and the like. How confident are you that the message has gone out to New Jerseyans about the safe and effective vaccines and to sort of steer clear of crank cures?
GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): It`s good to be back, Chris. I`d say reasonably confident. We just crossed 5.5 billion fully vaccinated individuals today. We have over six million who have at least one dose. But there`s still a small block of folks who believe this nonsense. And we`re chopping away as best we can every day that the folks who are not vaccinated in our state at least break into two categories, one is the folks that believe that, you know, you`ll look to Green Acres or some other crazy theory of curing, there`s another group though that`s legitimate.
They may work three jobs. They may think it`s expensive. They may not speak English, whatever it might be. So, we just grind away every day. We`re knocking on doors in dozens of communities doing our best. But it`s really hard. I mean, this disinformation stuff makes life hard. And frankly, it`s so funny and it`s tragic is the problem at the end of the day.
HAYES: Yes. And on top of that, there really -- I mean, Delta really does appear, and the data has been pretty clear on this in our experience. It is much more transmissible. It`s more insidious. And we have a lot of it going around this country, probably more than we`re catching based on our surveillance.
And I guess, you know, I`ve seen some data. Vermont had, you know, has seen cases go up, although still very low in the aggregate. Israel is still battling this thing, and they have a very high vaccinated population. I just wonder like, when you`re a governor, I think there`s an idea back in May, and maybe I subscribed to it of, we`re going to hit a threshold and not really have to deal with this anymore. And that doesn`t look like it`s the case. So, the question is now what?
MURPHY: Yes. It`s -- I`m at the National Governors Association meeting here in Denver. I`m honored to serve as Vice Chair. And we had a very good, sober, constructive meeting across the aisle with a handful of governors today. And one of the points I made is, it`s very humbling dealing with this pandemic. Every time you think you`ve figured it out, it takes a turn that you don`t expect.
But, and this is the big but, the miracle drug is in our midst, and that is the vaccine. And as much as you could still get the virus, you can still unlikely but you could still end up in the hospital, overwhelmingly, you are far more protected having been vaccinated than unvaccinated.
So, my plea with folks would be stopped looking for crazy non-approved on left field drugs and get vaccinated. It`s -- they`re safe. They work including against this Delta variant.
HAYES: But I think -- I mean, for expectation setting, and I think that in terms of the political communication of this, you know, I think there`s two ways to think about the future of COVID. One was, and I think I thought this and no longer do is a future like measles or chickenpox or polio, right? We`re going to get a vaccine, we`re going to stamp that thing out.
You`re not going to get chickenpox anymore. You`re not going to get polio anymore. We got a vaccine for that. The other is like the flu, which is we`ve got a flu vaccine, but people still get the flu. People still die from the flu. The flu is around, but it`s not the menace that pre-vaccine COVID was. And it seems to me like we`re headed and work towards the flu trajectory and like, what does that mean for how you talk to your citizens about what their expectations should be for this fall and winter in terms of living with COVID?
[20:20:36]
MURPHY: Yes, Chris, that`s exactly consistent with where we`ve been speaking and trying to direct where we believe this is headed. Again, I say that with humility, because every time you think, as I said, you figured it out, it surprises you. But listen, we`ve now got the booster shots effective beginning the week of September 20. I just got my flu shot appointment. I think it`s going to be much more.
If I had -- based on the conversations that I have with medical experts and scientists, which we do all the time, I think this lands very much closer to your flu model, where it`s going to be with us. At some interval, we`ll take a booster. I don`t think anyone knows what that interval looks like. Sadly, people will get sick and some will die. But we will have a -- we`ll be able to live a normal life.
It`ll be in our midst. But that does not mean we can`t go on with life. I think that`s where it lands if I had to predict.
HAYES: Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey there at the National Governors Association -- I`d love to be a fly on the wall off the record there. Thanks for making time tonight.
MURPHY: Come on out next time, Chris. Good to be with you.
HAYES: OK. Tonight, we have our first glimpse into the scope of the January 6 investigation after the House Select Committee issued a sweeping request for White House records including communications from the former president`s family members, his chief of staff, and a lot more. What it tells us about the direction of the investigation after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:25:00]
HAYES: The identity of the U.S. Capitol Police officer who shot and killed Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt on January 6 has remained concealed even as right-wing politicians have called for that person`s name to be released, including former President Donald Trump. Tomorrow night, my colleague Lester Holt will sit down with that officer for an exclusive interview.
At the same time, today, the House January 6 Committee issued a sweeping formal records request asking the Trump administration to turn over records of communications related to the assault on the Capitol and warning that failure to do so would be met with subpoenas.
Chairman Bennie Thompson demanded documents and communications related to more than 30 individuals including three of Trump`s children, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, and Roger Stone among others. Now, the requests were sent to eight federal agencies, most notably the National Archives, which maintains the White House records. The requests drive home the seriousness and scope of the investigation.
Betsy Woodruff Swan is a national political correspondent at Politico who`s been reporting on the January 6 insurrection and the aftermath and she joins me now. Betsy, I slightly misspoke there in the into. I said, the Trump administration which of course is no longer as a -- as a recipient of the request. So, who are these requests directed to? And can they produce - - do they have the documents that are being asked?
BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: The requests are directed to the current officials who head the different agencies. So, Lloyd Austin at DOD, Alejandro Mayorkas at DHS, and then to the head of the National Archives. That`s important because these are -- none of these people, obviously, are Trump apparatchiks.
Now, the step that Trump could take, and which a statement he put out tonight indicates he probably will, would be to sue to ask a judge to block those different components of the government from participating and from producing these records. And what Trump could do is he could say this is a violation of executive privilege because it`s an effort to get communications between myself and the White House Counsel, myself and my chief of staff.
He will be able to make a legal argument that serious people will take seriously on that front. And that`s something that could dramatically slow down the pace with which this investigation is moving. It`s particularly important, because congressional investigators are so close to getting an interview with Jeffrey Clark, one of the top DOJ officials who actually tried to get the department to tell state lawmakers that they had evidence of election fraud when they didn`t.
Up until now, Trump has said that he will not make an executive privilege claim to try to block Jeffrey Clark from testifying. That means that if Trump -- that if Clark didn`t want to testify, he wouldn`t be able to cite executive privilege as a reason not to do so. What just changed today is that now Trump is saying at least obliquely, hold your horses, I`m actually going to make an executive privilege complaint. And that might mean it could take us a lot longer to hear from Clark about those last weeks at DOJ.
HAYES: Right. And we know that he`s already given some testimony over in the Senate. I mean, two things to stress here I think are important. One is the scope of this, right? We`ve got the National Archives asking for anything from the sixth to the 20th related to the mental stability of Donald Trump or his fitness for office.
And then, the committee letter to DOJ asking for communications involving Mark Meadows, Kurt Olson, Rudolph Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Joseph DiGenova. These are some of the president`s lawyers, or Victoria Toensing or any other person from November 3 through the 20th relating to potential DOJ intervention litigation filed by the Trump campaign or states challenging election results or otherwise questioning the validity of the 2020 election results.
My suspicion is, that`s not a fishing expedition and they have a reasonable certainty there`s some documents on the other side of this. But to your point about the legal machinations here, this is not a congressional subpoena asking for a third party. This is asking a current administration to furnish this over a request, and Trump would have to sort of intervene in that.
SWAN: That`s right. Trump would have to ask a judge to issue an injunction blocking these different departments and entities within the U.S. government from turning over these materials to Capitol Hill. In addition, it`s possible that lawyers within Biden`s Justice Department and within Biden`s White House Counsel`s Office surprisingly might be sympathetic with Trump.
Because if they come down on the side of executive privilege does it protect the President`s one on one conversations with the White House Counsel, or with his chief of staff, then Democrats are always thinking a couple of years and a couple of administrations ahead. And for them, does that mean that down the road, when Jim Jordan has a congressional committee, he`ll be able to get Biden`s private conversations with Ron Klain?
[20:30:32]
HAYES: Right.
SWAN: That`s something that these government lawyers always worry about. So I think it`s going to be a complicated legal fight and the outcome won`t necessarily be predictable.
HAYES: Betsy Woodruff Swan, thank you so much. I appreciate that.
SWAN: Thank you.
HAYES: Ahead, last night, the United States Supreme Court took a radical turn that shocked a lot of people, pretty much anyone paying attention. We`ll explain what is happening at the High Court next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:35:00]
HAYES: The Supreme Court of the United States under Chief Justice John Roberts and stacked now at six-three with Trump appointees being three of them. So far, that Supreme Court in high profile cases has been at pains to not appear overly extreme. For instance, they did not get the Affordable Care Act on preposterous pretenses. They did not overturn the election. So, you know, good for them on that score.
And Roberts has definitely cultivated an image of the court that has wanted a surprising degree of approval from Democrats and liberals. In fact, a recent Marquette University Law School poll found that 59 percent of Democrats strongly or somewhat approved of how the court is doing, which is kind of nuts, actually. It`s two points higher than how Republicans view the court.
But I am here to tell you, this image of a moderate court is wildly deceiving. Because outside of the spotlight, the ACA case, the election, in a series of small paragraph-long borders with little justification, the court has issued a string of stunning extreme rulings upholding lower court extremists. And last night after the close of business, they did it again.
The Court upheld a lower court orders -- lower court`s order that the Biden administration against its own wishes and policies must essentially restart from scratch a discontinued Trump administration immigration policy that had caused widespread misery and harm for thousands of asylum seekers.
Legal observers called it unbelievable both procedurally and substantively, and stunning, radical, and terrifying. Ian Millhiser who writes on the court said, I`m genuinely shook by what the Supreme Court just did. I thought they were better than this. I thought Brett Kavanaugh was better than this. Yes, it is so bad. I now have a drastically lower opinion of Brett Kavanaugh.
Here to explain what happened is Melissa Murray, Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University, and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny Podcast that, in case of full disclosure, my wife Kate Shaw is also a co-host of.
Melissa, it was -- it was interesting to see the kind of like, alarms go off last night from court watchers about this order. And I think you explain it, maybe first we start with what category of order this is because it`s not like a big, fully reasoned decision. People sometimes referred to it as the shadow docket. But these are -- these are the ways the court intervene in lower court opinions where they don`t have to really give a reason. They`ve doing a lot of this and a lot of it`s been pretty alarming.
MELISSA MURRAY, PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: That`s exactly right, Chris. The shadow docket has received a lot of attention over the last couple of years. But again, that whole perception of a relatively moderate or non-partisan court really only holds if you exclude the shadow docket decisions. And in fact, there`s been a lot of shadow docket activity over the course of the last term.
So, these are emergency appeals that are made to the Supreme Court. And the court makes decisions often in unsigned, very short opinions, where they don`t elaborate on their restate. We really don`t even know who signed on to what parts of the opinion unless the justices publicly signal their disagreement, as was the case in last night`s opinion.
But again, these are not argued with full briefing and oral argument like regular cases on the merits docket. They truly are in the shadow and often escape our point of view, except when situations like this arise where the decisions are actually quite extreme.
HAYES: So, the Trump ministration had something called a Remain in Mexico Policy, MPP was the way it was referred to technically shorthand. And it essentially kind of got discontinued because of COVID, but basically, what it was doing was taking people that were showing up at the border seeking asylum and saying you have to stay in Mexico while this was all adjudicated. That was totally new. There was a huge humanitarian outcry because people were trapped in this horrible limbo. They`re in shelters in Juarez. They`re being preyed upon by kidnappers, yadda, yadda.
The Biden administration at a certain point says, we`re reversing this policy. We don`t want to do this anymore. They get sued I think by Texas, among other states, and what is a lower court district federal judge rule?
MURRAY: So, this is actually quite unusual. So, this was a Trump appointee in Texas. Matthew Kacsmaryk. And he not only said that the policy rescission had been under -- explained by the administration. He actually ordered the administration to reinstate the policy pending the appeal. So, the appeal is going on, but gave the administration exactly a week in order to reinstate the policy.
So, that prompted the emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. So, the lower court opinion by itself is actually quite unusual, requiring the administration to reinstate this policy and essentially negotiate with a foreign government over this policy.
HAYES: Right. That`s the part of it too. Like, there`s huge kind of implications here both for the folks that are in the border and also American foreign policy. Like, you -- it`s a lower court -- a lower District Judge saying you Joe Biden, go talk to the Mexican president and get this started up again to suite which itself is wild. And I think a lot of legal observers thought well, the Supreme Court is not going to go for this. This is so aberrant. This is so out of nowhere. This is so sort of poorly reasoned. Like, they`re not going OK this.
And then last night, six-three, the Supreme Court was like, yup, listen to a good man. Listen to the district court judge. Go start this Trump program you discontinued.
[20:40:24]
MURRAY: Yes. And the court was very clear here. They relied on an earlier decision that liberals had actually cheered, the Department of Homeland Security versus the University of California regions, which was the DACA decision from last term that says that the Trump administration could not rescind the DACA program lawfully unless it provided adequate reasons which the Trump administration had failed to do.
Liberals cheered that opinion, but the Supreme Court giveth and the Supreme Court taketh away. And so, in this particular decision, it said that the Biden administration had not provided adequate reasoning for why it wanted to end the remain in Mexico policy.
HAYES: But is that true? Like, it does seem to be like there`s a big difference here both in terms of the reliance interests, like who`s on the ground, the fact that the program is essentially discontinued, whereas DACA was functioning, and the lawyer in the Biden administration did versus the Trump administration.
MURRAY: There are a lot of differences here. So, all of the things that you suggested, the two programs were not in the same posture as they went up on appeal here. The other thing that`s really different was that DACA case was on the merits docket. So, there was full briefing, there was full oral argument in that case. It wasn`t a shadow docket decision. It wasn`t a decision where the court issued without giving any guidance.
And here, the court really provided no information, no guidance to the administration as to how to explain what was inadequate about its original explanation.
HAYES: Yes. Judicial activism is what liberals do. Judicial restraint is when a random district court judge tells a President of the United States to start negotiating with Mexico and restart a program that had been discontinued in a week. That`s what judicial restraint and originalism looks like. Melissa Murray, thank you very much.
On the show last night, we did a segment on the California recall election and the 46 candidates trying to unseat Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom. But then, after the show was over, there was something about that story I could not stop thinking about. I`ll explain next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:45:00]
HAYES: The rules of the game or more specifically, the rules by which elections happen matter a lot. Take as an example, the California recall process. We did a segment on this yesterday. And it just blew my mind. It continues to be. In the state of California, an elected official can be removed from his or her position for any reason through a recall vote. And it just takes a petition with a number of signatures equivalent to 12 percent of the votes in the last election, not the citizens votes.
The recall ballots then ask voters whether or not they want to remove the official, simply yes or no, up or down, right? If yes, who should replace them? And here`s where it gets really crazy. There`s no limits on how many candidates can run. And whoever gets the most votes, even a narrow plurality, wins, becomes the next governor in this case.
So, think of this. You can have a situation where 49 percent of voters in California say they want to keep the person currently in office, but that`s not good enough, so it`s a no vote. And then, that incumbent is replaced by someone who got, I don`t know, 15 or 20 percent of the vote. Like, you can get 49 percent of the vote and lose to a person who gets 20 percent of the vote. It is the most insane anti-democratic procedure I think I`ve ever seen. I can`t believe it exists, but it does. And it`s happening right now, as you may have heard.
Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is facing a recall election scheduled for September 14. There are 46 candidates running to replace him. Yes, you heard that correctly, 46. The person most likely to replace the governor of California if the recall successful, is a conservative radio host named Larry Elder who is against mass mandates, and the minimum wage, and abortion rights.
Now, this process is totally legal. It`s in the Constitution of the State of California, added with the approval of California voters back in 1911. There`s a lot of features in that state constitution which could use a second look, by the way. In fact, any state could change the rules of the game and totally alter the outcome of their elections. It`s something to think about right?
Think, for instance, about presidential elections. The states decide how to award their electoral votes. Now, conceivably, the state of say Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, Michigan, right, if they had a republican trifecta, could make a new rule, they`re going to give all of their votes to the candidate who wins the majority of counties in the States.
Now, that would still ostensibly be a democratic election, there`d be a campaign, people will go and vote, yadda, yadda, but it would essentially ensure Republican victory, one party rule, likely lead to minority rule. Over the years, we have seen all sorts of kinds of shady regulations rule changing, nothing quite that aggressive, but lots of stuff like it, that is aimed at subverting true full multiracial democracy in this country. It`s a story as old as the country is.
And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 aim to control a lot of that. And that`s before a key pillar of it was just knocked down recklessly by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2013 who sort of famously declared the South was racist anymore. And then further damage was done again this year in a big case out of Arizona. And that defenestration of the Voting Rights Act, it changed the rules of the game. It invalidated key parts of the Voting Rights Act, and it made it easier for states and localities to rig the rules.
So, yesterday, Democrats in the House of Representatives moved to bring back some of those protections. And guess what, not a single Republican supported them. Not one. And where that effort now stands is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:50:00]
HAYES: After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have gained reputations as the pro-democracy Republicans in Congress. And, you know, to their credit, they have become pariahs in their own party for refusing steadfastly to support Donald Trump`s big lie of election fraud. They`re now serving on the House Select Committee. In fact, Congresswoman Cheney lost her position in House Republican leadership over it. And again, that is to their credit.
But are those pro-democracy republicans helping to secure the right to vote and protect the very electoral process that Trump tried to run roughshod over? There are two major pieces of voting legislation that had been proposed in Congress. They`re sitting there, right? There`s the for the people act, which we`ve talked about, H.R.1
And you know, it is a democratic kind of full reform vision to strengthen our democracy and the right to vote end to end partisan gerrymandering and also to restore regulation around speech and money. It would be really transformational. It`s a -- it`s a bold vision. And for that reason, it`s quite an uphill battle to become law. In fact, Joe Manchin himself said he wasn`t on board until they made some changes. So, that`s one law.
[20:55:05]
The other one, though, is considerably more modest. It`s a bill named after the late great John Lewis. And that piece of legislation strengthens the Voting Rights Act after the sustained effort by the Supreme Court to essentially gut it. Now, this one, this is -- like I said, much more circumspect, limited in what it does. It should not be a controversial piece of legislation.
For years and years, Democrats and Republicans have come together to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. The last time they did it was 2006 when George W. Bush was president. Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority whip, help usher it through the Senate. Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner championed it and the House. Future MAGA guys, Louie Gohmert and Devin Nunez voted for it. And then President Bush, George W. Bush proudly signed into law.
But things are different in 2021. Yesterday, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act -- Advancement Act passed the House of Representatives and every single Republican, everyone voted against it, all of them. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted against it because right now, there is no such thing truly as a robust pro-democracy Republican in 2021. They`re unwilling to do what Republicans and Democrats have always done to just secure the basic right to vote for all Americans.
Joining me now by phone is Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat representing Texas`s 18th Congressional District. She was arrested last month at a demonstration rallying support for new federal voting legislation.
Congresswoman, first, I wonder if you could just describe what this bill does and compare it in its scope and boldness and potential controversial ness to the -- to the more aggressive H.R.1.
REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE (D-TX): Well, Chris, thank you for having me. And first of all, what I would say is, the John Robert Lewis Advancement Act was worth getting arrested for. Voting rights was worth getting arrested for.
Frankly, the bill that was voted on yesterday has enormous teeth. It strengthens the opportunity to fight against voter suppression. And it means that it clearly hold states accountable across the nation that may have a number of voting suppression actions. And so, it doesn`t let you get away with anything.
It has a retrogression provision under section two. So, if S.B.7 in the state of Texas, the state that is the most difficult to vote in passes, we have an opportunity to file suit and to win that suit, obviously, with those courts that would follow the law.
In addition, it has punitive measures to insist that the idea of various practices that are in place that will trigger a state being covered by this particular bill. S.1 and H.1, they are partners. The S.1 are the logistics, the tactics, the voting holiday, the early voting, the opportunity to protect 24 hour voting, the mail-in ballots, the reenfranchising felons. Yes, it has the teeth, but it is equal in strength to the John Robert Lewis. They must go together, absolutely.
HAYES: So -- OK, so this has been passed, I believe, by the House before. It was passed just now. Were you surprised it got zero Republican votes?
LEE: Absolutely. In fact, what words can I use, shameful, sinful? My question is, is there anyone that believes in a democratic republic among my friends who happened to be Republicans? When I spoke on the floor of the House yesterday, I said, does anyone have the courage to be able to move forward on ensuring that every American has a right to vote? I have been here in the United States Congress and participated in the reauthorization that drew 98 senators, Republicans and Democrats, and over 415 the House Republicans and Democrats, and signed with a gleeful faith by George W. Bush. I was at the White House signing.
And I`ve been with other reauthorizations or changes and modifications to improve voting rights, and it has been bipartisan. The climate today is a result of the big lie which I said on the floor of the House, the insurrection on January 6. And I don`t think anyone that happens to be a Republican should get an excuse for not voting to empower Americans to vote.
HAYES: Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, thank you so much for making some time for us tonight. I really appreciate it.
LEE: Thank you for having me.
HAYES: That is ALL IN for tonight. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Thank you, my friend. Much appreciated. And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. I`m very happy to have you here. This is one of those news days where I spent the whole day prepping for a completely different show than the one we`re going to end up doing tonight. A lot of just tearing stuff up and starting over today, which is --