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Transcript: All In with Chris Hayes, 9/20/21

Guests: Alex Wagner, Richard Besser, Sarah Wire, Hakeem Jeffries

Summary

Republican governors are undermining public health that the Biden administration put forth at the cost of American lives. This morning, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their vaccine is safe and effective for children ages 5 to 11. The number of threats against members of Congress are soaring. There are thousands of Haitian migrants fleeing to Texas Border.

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.

GOV. TATE REEVES(R-MS): The question here is not about what we do in Mississippi, it`s what this President is trying to impose upon the American worker.

HAYES: As the COVID death rate grows, Republican governors of the worst hotspots continue to play politics. Tonight, the real reasons behind their resistance.

Then, the big news from Pfizer on a vaccine for kids, what it means for school-aged children and their parents. Plus --

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): Some fear your own base, which in and of itself is an incredible and sad thought.

HAYES: The rising threat of violence against members of Congress in an absolutely appalling scene on the southern border.

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I`ve also seen the video. I can`t imagine what the scenario is where that would be appropriate.

HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. There was good news on the COVID vaccines today, something we don`t get to say every day on this program. This morning, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their vaccine is safe and effective for children ages 5 to 11.

The company has planned to apply for authorization from the Food and Drug Administration by the end of this month. Now, obviously, as a parent of two kids who would be eligible for that vaccine, if the FDA approves, I`m very invested in this. I know a lot of you are too.

So, we`re going to talk to the former acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about this and what it means in just a bit. Of course, throughout this whole year, calendar year since January, basically, we`ve had this weird, jarring, good news, bad news situation on vaccines.

I mean, the news about the vaccines themselves from a scientific standpoint and their efficacy rates has been really good. Now, it`s true. the efficacy of some of the vaccines in terms of preventing infection have taken a bit of a hit with the Delta variant but they have held up incredibly well in protecting against serious illness and death.

Places that are highly vaccinated like Vermont, which has been a model for battling COVID with a Republican governor in charge, I will add, Vermont has already seen that protection in action. More than 87 percent of the eligible population, Vermont has received at least one dose. And as a result, they did not see a huge new ways -- wave of cases, hospitalizations and deaths from Delta. So far, they have been spared the misery the waves of death we`ve seen in states like Florida and Mississippi.

Mississippi, in fact, now has the highest rate of COVID deaths per capita in the country, surpassing the state`s hardest-hit at the very beginning this pandemic last spring, states like New Jersey and New York. And you`ll remember those northeastern states, they had the most intense completely unchecked outbreaks last spring when the virus first came over from Europe and there was practically no testing available, right, hardly any preventative measures like masks or social distancing, certainly no vaccine.

I mean, New York City alone recorded more than 18,000 deaths from early March to early May of 2020. Over time, other states that suffered serious outbreaks moved up in those rankings, if you can call it that. States like Louisiana and Arizona. But the Delta wave this summer put Mississippi over the top. And a huge part of that, it`s a lot of complicated factors. Mississippi is a place that`s quite poor relative to other states, high levels of comorbidities. But a big part is vaccine resistance.

Just 58 percent of those eligible in Mississippi have released -- received at least one dose. This weekend, the Republican governor Tate Reeves went on Jake Tapper show to defend his record. And he had to admit, first of all, the truth about vaccines and the protection they offer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REEVES: The best thing that Americans can do, number one, is to talk to their doctor about potentially getting the vaccine because in our state, some 89 percent of those hospitalized, and some 87 percent of those who are of the deaths are actually coming from those who are unvaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: OK, so like many Republican governors, though, Tate Reeves also in the same interview took the opportunity to rail against the Biden administration`s requirement that employers with more than 100 employees either regularly test their staff once a week, or require them to get vaccinated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REEVES: This is an attack by the President on hardworking Americans and hardworking Mississippians who he wants to choose between getting a jab in their arm and their ability to feed their families.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: OK, just once again, I know I keep banging on this. It`s not a choice between getting a jab in the arm or feeding their families. They could get tested once a week. That`s in the policy. But anyway, the point here, right, from Reeves is the vaccine is good. It saves people`s lives. It protects them from severe illness, but also the people that we hate, like Joe Biden like it, and they want you to take it. And therefore the vaccine might actually be bad and don`t fall for their tricks, or don`t let them make you take it.

[20:05:04]

HAYES: That cognitive dissonance has likely cost untold thousands of Americans their lives. It`s what political scientists called negative partisanship at its most extreme. It is a driving factor in the pandemic right now. If you look at the vaccination rates in the G7, seven of the world`s wealthiest democracies, our vaccination rate was one of the highest earlier this year. We were the hare in the Tortoise versus the Hare, and we`re now the lowest.

And it`s not because we don`t have the vaccines. We have multiple kinds. They`re cheap and plentiful. I mean, free, plentiful, readily available, approved by the FDA. It`s a very rich country. But while other G7 countries have caught up with us and surpassed us, we have been dealing with this intense resistance that was actually perfectly articulated in a random piece from a right-wing Web site that got a lot of attention this week.

And in it, the author actually accuses liberals in the media, and Joe Biden and Dr. Fauci of deliberately looking to manipulate Trump supporters into not getting vaccinated. Because, "In a country where elections are decided on razor-thin margins, does it not benefit one side of their opponents simply dropped dead? No one wants to cave to them, so we don`t. And what`s the result? They`re all vaccinated, and we`re not. And when you look at the numbers, the only numbers that matter, which is who`s dying is overwhelmingly the unvaccinated who are dying. and they have just manipulated millions of their political enemies into the unvaccinated camp."

OK, that`s really the argument. The argument is that liberals want conservatives dead. So, they`re telling them to get vaccinated, knowing that in so doing, they will make conservatives less likely to get the vaccine and thus more in danger. As a liberal myself, I will speak for myself, I would go to a MAGA rally and sit in a dunk tank tomorrow if it meant that every American got vaccinated in the next week.

You could -- you could watch me go into the tank, you could hurl all kinds of insights, I don`t care. I don`t care, whatever. I truly, genuinely just want everyone to be safe. It`s collective safely but individual safety. That`s really -- I know that there`s a kind of thinking that like the people we hate politically must hate us or must have some ulterior motive, honestly no.

The crazy bank shot thinking though on display and that piece, the idea I can`t do the thing you want me to do, it defines a lot of our politics. To be fair, it defines a lot of our politics for liberals at times too. It`s a tendency we all have as humans. It`s also the way that very oppositional toddlers tend to function. But it is so pervasive the gravity of it acts on even the more sophisticated political actors like Republicans in Florida.

I mean, Florida is thank goodness, finally coming out of its very brutal Delta wave where more than 13,000 people died just since the beginning of July. Cases and hospitalizations are both trending down now. Deaths are flattening out, so there is some really good news there, although it`s still bad.

Of course, Florida`s policies around COVID have not been great. I mean, they open back up very early. The Republican governor Ron DeSantis is on the record supporting vaccines. But he very notably did not get vaccinated publicly and he has not been persistently consistently urging residents to get vaccinated.

In fact, he`s taken a lot of actions that could curtail vaccinations like banning companies from requiring customers to provide proof of vaccination, including cruise ship companies. Think about that. And then, of course, Governor DeSantis had a very serious outbreak on his hands this summer in this state. And so, the way that he tried to kind of thread this needle, this weird ideological needle, was to go all in on what`s called monoclonal antibodies.

Now, you`ve heard about these before. The monoclonal antibodies are a promising treatment. Data has shown they really help people. It`s not like crystal clear yet, but it`s suggestive. And obviously, if someone has COVID, it is great to get them effective treatments as fast as possible, certainly as early as possible. But there is something just bizarre about the ideological affiliation of these monoclonal antibodies, which don`t have any inherent political valence, right. Like, oh, conservative, monoclonal antibodies, no.

But the same people who say vaccines are suspect are all in on the antibodies. This this is a treatment, just to be clear here, that`s administered either by injection or intravenously. It is authorized under an emergency use authorization from the FDA, not full authorization. It is new, just two year old, and it costs about $2,000 per dose. All of the arguments that anti-vaxxers make against the vaccine are true of this treatment.

And yet, because it`s not the vaccine, and probably because Donald Trump used it and promoted it and Donald Trump`s friends all got access to it, because it means I guess at some abstract level COVID is treatable, so not that big a deal, the monoclonal antibodies have become an ideological safe space for conservatives. So what you get is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pushing it like crazy. In a two-week period last month at the height of the Delta wave in his state, the governor tweeted 11 times about monoclonal antibody treatments and zero times about vaccines. He has done multiple photo ops and treatment sites, some offering the monoclonal antibodies for free. And as far as we can tell, he has not attended a single event promoting vaccinations in months.

[20:10:28]

And now, the treatment is facing supply issues. The New York Times reporting that orders have exploded so quickly this summer, the Biden administration warned states this week of a dwindling national supply. So, now there`s a fight over this scarce resource when again, the vaccine is plentiful, you can get it in any drugstore, it`s free, and it provides a way better protection against hospitalization and death.

But a lot of people don`t want to take it because that`s what the libs want. All this has been thinking about a great book by my friend, frequent guest of the program, Heather McGhee. It`s called The Sum Of Us. It just got long-listed for the National Book Award very big deal. It tells this story about American politics in a nutshell. After desegregation, a southern town has to desegregate its pool.

And faced with that prospect, instead of desegregating the pool, everyone gets to swim in the pool, they just drain the pool, because they`d rather have no one have it. And that reminds me in a weird way the politics we`re seeing around COVID. There`s a lot of cutting off noses, despite the faces going on.

Mehdi Hasan is the host of the "MEHDI HASAN SHOW" on MSNBC and Peacock where he`s extensively covered the Republican Party`s turn towards nihilism. Alex Wagner is the co-host and executive producer of Showtime`s The Circus, where she has been covering the vaccine culture war on the ground.

Alex, let me start with you. You did a really fascinating interview with a Florida politician named Anthony Sabatini, if I`m not mistaken, in the latest episode of The Circus. And I want to show a little clip of that and just get you to talk about it because it is a perfect example of what I`m identifying. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY SABATINI, MEMBER, FLORIDA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: I represent free citizens who are completely informed on the healthcare. They probably know a lot more about COVID than you do, to be honest.

ALEX WAGNER, CO-HOST, THE CIRCUS: You probably do and you probably should because it`s your job --

SABATINI: Yes, it is my job.

WAGNER: -- to protect my public and make -- you`re introducing bills about it, I`m not.

SABATINI: It`s -- as a government official, it`s my job to protect their rights, protect your freedoms. I`m not here to micromanage every aspect of their life. So, maybe you don`t understand that because you work in journalism, but that`s the role of the government. It`s actually the founding principle of government is to protect rights. Let decisions be made by individuals concerned their own public health,

WAGNER: But there is another side to this, OK. And there are people that say if the federal government`s doesn`t step in in the event of mass death in America, a widely transmissible virus that is laying waste to the economy, that is shuttering schools and businesses --

SABATINI: What world are you living in?

WAGNER: That is putting hospitals in capacity.

SABATINI: What world are you living in?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: So, Alex, I found that exchange weirdly bracing and refreshing insofar as it was honest. I mean, I think the thing that`s driving this is just this idea of freedom of the grave. Like, I don`t care. We don`t care how many people die. We don`t want you telling us what to do and that`s it.

And I guess if that`s your position, like, I guess that`s your position. You can say it. He`s comes very close to saying it very clearly.

WAGNER: Well, and right after that, I say, you know, what do you say to the people who just don`t understand your position? He says, they`re just stupid. They`re just stupid. It`s these twin poles of no individual liberty and complete disdain for the other half of the country. And that is a dangerous thing that we`re seeing playing out now, right?

It`s I want my freedom, and I also want to own the libs because they`re the worst people in the world. And we`re -- they`re not real Americans, we are. And so, it`s incredibly combustible. And now you have politicians like Mr. Sabatini introducing bills into the Florida State Legislature to ban mandatory vaccines, to ban masks in public places.

And, you know, up until the end of August, Florida was leading the country in deaths. 325 Floridians were dying a day. And when I asked him about that, he said, I don`t know about those numbers. As a percentage of the population, what are you talking about? There`s this willful denialism about all facts and figures and that`s where we are.

HAYES: Yes, you know, Mehdi, I was -- I was listening to a podcast I enjoyed called Too Beautiful To Live. And the host, Luke Burbank, made this point that I thought was very funny. He said, you know, it`d be like if hip replacements suddenly got very polarized. It was like, you told someone you got a hip replacement, and they were like, oh, I guess you love liberal. Like, it just -- it makes no sense that this specific medical procedure.

Like, in this case, monoclonal antibodies, like monoclonal antibodies came out in the grand American polarization machine on the side of MAGA world who knows why vaccines are coming out on the other side. Like, it`s so irrational the way that these things are being pinged through the machinery of our polarization machine.

[20:15:03]

MEHDI HASAN, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. And you know, it`s not just a monoclonal antibody, which as you point out is under an emergency use authorization is, you know, brought in intravenously, et cetera, et cetera. You have the hydroxychloroquine first. You have the Ivermectin virus. And not that -- you know, they`re almost worse than the COVID deniers.

They accept the COVID as a threat, but they just don`t want to use the one treatment that all scientists globally agree is the one way to avoid getting COVID. And this is the problem we have now. It`s completely irrational as you pointed out, as Alex pointed out in that interview with that, you know, Sabatini. It`s just mad.

This is a party, as you pointed out with that Breitbart piece you quoted in your introduction. You know, until now, we were joking that Republicans, conservatives want to die to own the libs. And now they put it in writing, and they say, yes, that`s what we think this is all about.

And you have a situation now where one in 500 Americans is dead from COVID, one in 400 in Florida. In Alabama, for the first time in recorded history, they had more deaths last year than births. The population literally shrank. Mississippi, second biggest. If it was a country, it would be number two in the world in deaths per capita.

I mean, the Republican Party is no longer a party of just low taxes or more police, it is a party of mass death. How do you deal with that in a democracy? We can`t just go on about the bipartisan spending bill, budget reconciliation. It is a penalty of mass death.

HAYES: There`s also -- I mean, the other thing that we`ve encountered, I think, because of this wall that has been hit, and I should be -- again, I keep noting this, there are Republican governors who have done a very good job of COVID. You know, in Vermont, they`ve done a pretty decent job in in Maryland and Massachusetts, you know, complicated all of them, but they`re not in the same category.

But I saw this interesting piece the other day, Alex, because it was about vaccine incentives, right? So the idea throughout is, OK, we`re going to work through this, we`re going to incentivize, and this was a preprint study, so it hasn`t been peer-reviewed, but it just looked at vaccine incentive programs. And it basically found that none of them from the small guaranteed rewards to lotteries led to an increase in COVID-19 vaccination rates. That all the tools and all that have been thrown at this fortress, this wall built by our politics have not really worked.

WAGNER: Well, I mean, the biggest incentive is it could save your life, right? And if you`re willing to forego that, a million dollars doesn`t look that -- it`s not that incentivizing, right? And the fact of the matter is, people don`t believe that they made the wrong choice till they`re in the ER. And by then, it`s probably too late.

I mean, it is -- think the problem with this moment is we keep saying, at what point, at what point, at what point, at what one point? Well, we know -- we know what point it is. The party has reached the apex, I guess. I know, they have asked for the ultimate sacrifice of their adherence, which is their lives. And their adherence are willing to go those lengths.

I mean, I have never before in my life conceived of a political party, that would put its believers and its constituents lives on the line in order to prove fealty. And that`s where we are in modern-day Republican politics. I will tell you, the new Republican Party is -- the viciousness of it and the cruelty of it is unlike anything we have seen in modern politics.

HAYES: And I think in some ways, the reality of that, Mehdi -- and again, you know, this is -- this is a fairly intense rump caucus, although it`s controlling the party as part of the problem. But I think part -- that is part of the reason we`ve seen some early data from United Airlines that put in a vaccine requirement. We`ve seen some data from the U.S. armed forces that have put a vaccine requirement.

Just essentially the sort of more coercive approach to it, I think, ends up being more humane because it doesn`t end up in the morass of all this. It`s just like, well, you got to do it the same way you got to do it to go to school. Like I think there`s a level which it takes it out of the culture war as opposed -- as opposed to supercharging it.

HASAN: Yes. Incentives don`t work. Mandates work. And you know, you mentioned going to school. It`s like dealing with children. These people are behaving like irrational children. And therefore what do you do with children. You have to do what`s best for children.

Now, a right-winger watching this will say, look at that paternalistic, tyrannical person on MSNBC. But that is the reality in a public health crisis going all the way back to George Washington. And by the way, you mentioned Republican governors doing well. You`re right. Vermont`s governor is doing well. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is doing well.

But guess what, Chris, they`re not front runners for the 2024 presidential nomination for the Republican Party. The guy presiding over mass death in Florida, he`s the front runner for that nomination, which tells you everything you need to know about the Republican Party right now.

HAYES: In fact, I think that they`re handling COVID well is probably just qualifying even more grimly. Mehdi Hasan and Alex Wagner, thank you both. That was great.

Coming up, how it`s becoming more and more dangerous to be a member of Congress. The chilling news story in the L.A. Times on the dramatic rise in the number of threats of violence against Congress members. The reporter on that story, Sarah Wire, who spent six months trying to coax just a handful of representatives to share the terrifying details of their stories joins me ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:20:00]

HAYES: Big news today that millions of parents have been waiting to hear. Pfizer and BioNTech just announced that early trial results show its vaccine is safe and highly effective for young kids between the ages of five and 11 years old. The company says the kids in the trial had a strong immune response with just a third of the dose given to older children and adults.

They will now be applying for emergency authorization for the child-size doses from the FDA by the end of the month. And if the FDA approves the application as quickly as they did with the adult vaccine, then kids could be getting vaccinated as early as Halloween.

Parents will no doubt have all sorts of questions about this news and what comes next. I and other parents who work on this show certainly do. So, I want to bring in Dr. Richard Besser, he`s a pediatrician, former Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Besser, first, let`s just start with the data. We don`t have all of it I think. We get the sort of first summary version from Pfizer. But what is your reaction to what we know so far about safety and efficacy?

DR. RICHARD BESSER, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CDC: Yes, you know, Chris, I would say I`m cautiously optimistic. And the reason I say cautious is that I never like to make a judgment on a company press release. What the company`s shared is really encouraging. They found that young children, so five to 11-year-old children mounted a strong immune response with 1/3 of the dose that adults were getting.

[20:25:08]

It`s not surprising. Young children tend to respond better, more effectively to vaccines than older people. And they found that at that low dose, the number of children who had side effects was quite low, and those side effects were mild. It`s going to be really important to let the FDA do their thing, let their Advisory Committee do their thing. Because while the severity of this infection, when you`re really old, when you have medical conditions is quite high. The severity when you`re young is quite low.

And so, you want to make sure that if you`re recommending this to kids, and as a pediatrician or a parent, this is really important to me. I want to make sure they`ve done due diligence and that it truly is safe and effective.

HAYES: Yes, I mean, that`s an important point. And I think it connects to something that we`ve seen in terms of vaccine uptake. Your point being that look, there`s the risk, right, the risk of severe illness, hospitalization on one hand, and then there`s the, you know, the risk -- whatever risk might be inherent in the vaccine, which is, we think, minimal but not zero, zero, zero.

And the connection between those two is going to be part of the calculation the FDA is making. And in this case, we know that 5 to 12 year olds have a lower risk -- or five to 11-year-olds have a lower risk from COVID than older age cohorts. And it`s interesting, because we`ve seen not great uptake in adolescent so far.

So, 42.4 percent of those 12 to 17 years have received a dose, only 32 percent have completed the vaccination series. Now, granted, that happened later. But I wonder if you -- how you think about vaccine uptake in this context. There`s the authorization, then there`s going to be the messaging about getting kids vaccinated.

BESSER: That`s right. You know, I would expect that, you know, if the FDA does an emergency use authorization on this, that the uptake will be lower than what we`ve seen for adolescence. I think there are a lot of parents -- the data that Pfizer`s sending forward is on fewer than 3000 children. And I think there`s going to be a line of parents who say, let my child have it. I want them to go to school protected. I`m really concerned about this. We`re seeing 300 children hospitalized each week. We`ve seen nearly 500 children die from this. We`ve seen 1000s of children who have developed an unusual inflammatory syndrome.

So, there will be parents who want their children to be first in line to get this. I think there`s going to be a big group of parents who say, you know, I want to see how this is tolerated when it`s been given to hundreds of thousands of children where you might see less common side effects appear. And you know, as a -- as a pediatrician, I`m going to want to listen and really address people`s questions and concerns with respect.

And when you look at the impact in children, we`ve seen the same disparate impact in children in terms of Black and Brown children being hit harder than White children. And it`s really important that you treat parents with respect. You let people make an informed decision. You recognize that people will be on a different timeline around that.

If we can do a better job of removing politics for around young children, children`s immunization, I don`t know if we can, that would -- that would be a terrific thing.

HAYES: It was striking to me also that just the dosing here, and also the way this has developed -- I mean, I think we think of vaccination as a thing that you do as a kid except for the seasonal flu shot. That`s normally how it works. It`s how we`ve implemented it. Here. You`ve got you know, vaccination that goes to adults, and now being moved down to kids. And we have a third of the dose I guess here. Is that -- is that a common - - is that ratio fairly common in the world of immunology the way this works?

BESSER: Yes, I mean, the ratio is going to be different. But the idea that at different ages, you`re going to see a different amount of material that`s needed to get an immune response, that`s not unusual. You may recall that over the past couple of years, for elderly people, the flu shot, they developed a higher-dose flu shot, that was a recognition that the older you get, the less reactive your immune system will be.

And what you want to do is give as little as you need to get the kind of immune response that you want. Unlike the trials in adults where they did trials to look at prevention of disease and hospitalization and death, these aren`t doing that. What they`re doing is looking to see if we get the same level of antibodies. And they`re saying, well, if you get that level of antibodies, it should give you that protection.

We won`t know until this is used in real-world whether that concept holds true. It should because it holds true for so many different vaccines.

HAYES: Oh, I see what you`re saying. The dependent variable here is the antibody level as opposed to illness hospitalization or fatality.

BESSER: Exactly, exactly.

HAYES: That`s the thing they`re measuring. That`s the thing that they`re going to go to the FDA on. That`s the thing that the data set is going to talk about.

[20:30:02]

BESSER: That`s right. What they`re -- what they`re saying is, you know, this level of antibody was seen in adults. Adults were protected that level of antibody. With this amount of -- with is 1/3 of a dose of vaccine, we get the same level of antibodies. That should protect children. And it should give parents some comfort that their children are getting as little of this material as is needed to give them a level that should be protected.

HAYES: All right, Dr. Richard Besser, that was very informative. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

BESSER: My pleasure.

HAYES: Still to come, the skyrocketing number of threats against members of Congress including a video of a man stalking a Congresswoman while armed with a gun. Why threats are on pace to double from last year after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Over the weekend, you might have seen this, Washington D.C. braced for that rally in support of the January 6 insurrectionists. There was a heavy police presence. That fence went back up around the Capitol. And it turned out to be nothing, just a couple of 100 protesters according to one local NBC News report.

[20:35:05]

And thankfully, while no one was hurt, there were a handful of people arrested. Some of whom had a weapons. The whole ordeal I think speaks to how on edge Washington has been since the 2020 election. And it comes at a time when threats against members of Congress are escalating dramatically. More than 4000 were reported in the first three months of this year alone.

Just last week, Republican Anthony Gonzales announced he would be retiring at the end of this term, just two terms in, in part due to the threats against him and his family over his support of Donald Trump`s second impeachment. There`s a harrowing story in the Los Angeles Times today recounting an anonymous video sent to Democratic Congresswoman Norma Torres showing someone following her car. The video then pans down to a nine- millimeter handgun in the passenger seat. As the voice behind the camera says, "I see you. I got something for you."

Sarah Wire reported that story out for the Los Angeles Times. And she joins me now. First of all, let me say it`s a very well-reported piece, Sarah. Thanks for making time. And I want to start on that Norma Torres story just because it is so, so unnerving and chilling. Just tell us a little bit about the context of this and how the congressperson received it and what happened?

SARAH WIRE, STAFF WRITER, LOS ANGELES TIMES: Well, the Congresswoman is not known for being soft-spoken. She`s very outspoken on her beliefs. And she got into an argument with the president of El Salvador this spring. And he really encouraged his supporters to go after her and, and to criticize her. And that`s when -- what the video showed up.

And you know, that wasn`t the only incident. There`s not -- there`s recounted inside the article of, you know, two men approached her home and she had to scare them off with a gun. And so, it`s -- the video itself, when she called me about that, I was just shocked because it`s not something she had really ever told another reporter.

HAYES: Yes, this is the first time this has been disclosed as my understanding. I guess, what do you -- what are the -- what can you do if you`re a member of congress and something like this happens? I mean, my -- when I worked on the Hill, when I was a reporter on the Hill, you know, a decade ago, you know, most members walked around without security. You know, they`re just like -- you see him in a restaurant, you see him on the Capitol Hill subway. Does that persist or have there been changes to that?

WIRE: That`s still the same. I mean, and that was kind of the crux of the story was, you know, there`s not nearly enough Capitol Police to give every member of Congress a security detail. And so, when they`re not in Washington, when they`re not in the Capitol Complex, how do they feel safe?

And so, when she received this video, she reached out to Capitol Police and they probably contacted the FBI, contacted her local police. But there`s not an immediate easy answer for investigation that goes into it.

HAYES: Right. And you also don`t want -- I mean, if you`re members of Congress, you know, you want them out talking to people and interacting with the public and go into, you know, county fairs and things like that. I mean, you don`t want members of Congress barricaded by heightened security.

But some of the -- you know, the numbers here, you talk about the surgeon threats you say it`s grown exponentially in recent years. In 2016, Capitol Police investigated 902 threats. By 2018, it was 5206. By 2020, it rose to 8613. I mean, that`s just a shocking increase.

I guess, one question I have for you is, you know, is that partly a function of the ease of social media and how people can just say really nasty, gnarly things, and sort of be done with it anonymously? And how much of this are these really qualitatively upsetting threats like the one that Representative Torres told you about?

WIRE: It`s definitely a mix. I think, you know, they were hearing a lot of threats that might have just been guys blowing some steam off at the bar in the past. But now it`s a lot easier to reach a member of Congress, to find their phone number or their Twitter handle. And bad things are often, as I was looking at the various court cases, have been brought in the last decade over and over, people would say in their defense, well, I didn`t really mean that. I was just letting go of steam.

But you know, harassing a federal official, threatening a federal official is a felony charge -- punishable by up to six years imprisonment.

HAYES: We should also note, there`s the context here. Obviously, the attack on Gabby Giffords that happened when she was doing an event in her district, with gunmen who attacked the Republican softball team you know, intent -- gravely injuring Steve Scalise who took a year, I think, of rehab. And he was hospitalized and he was shot multiple times, other members as well.

So, you know, there`s the crowd overrunning January 6. I mean, the context here is this is not some, you know, preposterously remote scenario for these members.

[20:40:08]

WIRE: No. I mean, some of the stories are detailed in the article of, you know, Tom Reed finding a rat with a noose around his neck on his front porch or a member of congress being told that the person was going to slit his throat and asking him a lie in front of his children. I mean, you can`t take those as unrealistic threats. They`re not just seeing blown.

And we`ve got people like Maxine Waters where there are at least five men currently serving prison terms for threatening her life.

HAYES: Five men currently serving prison terms for threatening just one member of Congress, Maxine Waters.

WIRE: And the thing that really stood out to me in reporting the story is how little members of Congress know about the threats to their colleagues. The sheer number was shocking. But just hearing the story, you could really seem bothered for some of the numbers.

HAYES: Yes, as I`ve said before, this kind of thing is like a real cancer in a liberal democracy in a free and open society and really unnerving that it has grown the way it has. And Sarah Wire, you did great reporting on it. Thank you for making time for us.

WIRE: Thanks for having me.

HAYES: Coming up, the horrifying image of border patrol agent on horseback grabbing a migrant at the southern border. The crisis that led to this moment next.

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[20:45:00]

HAYES: Some incredibly disturbing and frankly enraging images emerged from the Southern Border today, photos of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing down, intimidating migrants as they try to enter the country. Pictures are horrifying. Most of the people you see there and that footage are fleeing from Haiti, a country which is as you probably know, in a crisis right now.

Haiti`s president, you remember, was attacked by gunmen, assassinated in his own home back in July. That sent the country into a kind of political crisis. Just last week, the country`s chief prosecutor said there is evidence linking the prime minister to the killing. Then amidst all that, in the middle of August, the country suffered a large earthquake that killed over 2000 people and destroyed more than 53,000 homes.

And in this chaos, Haiti`s government has managed to vaccinate less than one percent of the country`s 11.5 million people. So, now more than 14,000 Haitians are desperately seeking asylum at the Southern Border. They crossed over from Mexico, they waited through the Rio Grande. They`ve been stuck in this limbo sheltering under a bridge. It`s like the international bridge right there in Del Rio, Texas there on the U.S. side.

Now, keep in mind, the asylum process was essentially shut down under Donald Trump using COVID as chiefly a pretext. And crucially, the Biden administration has largely continued that policy. In fact, the Biden administration is actually appealing a court ruling this week that halted a Trump-era public health policy that use the coronavirus pandemic to justify turning back unauthorized migrants at the border.

Yesterday, the Biden administration began deportation flights to start taking people back to Haiti, even as hundreds more made the dangerous crossing into the U.S. wading through the Rio Grande, only to be confronted by border agents chasing them down on horseback. Footage the White House itself called horrific.

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JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I have seen some of the footage. I don`t have the full context. I can`t imagine what context would make that appropriate. But I don`t have additional details. And certainly, I don`t have additional context, April. I don`t think anyone seen that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate.

Of course, they should never be able to do it again. I don`t know what the circumstances would be. It`s obviously horrific, the footage. I don`t have any more information on it, so let me venture to do that. And we`ll see if there`s more to convey.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: When he was running for president, Joe Biden campaign on a break with Donald Trump on immigration, both on enforcement and comprehensive immigration reform. There`s a big development this weekend on Democrat`s ability to deliver on that promise. We`ll talk to a senior member of the Democratic House leadership about that after this.

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[20:50:00]

HAYES: It`s a tradition that some say stretches back over 100 years to the beginning of last century. It`s called The Waiters Race. Dozens of talented servers gathered in Paris wearing their uniforms to run through the streets while on one hand, carrying a tray with a full bottle and a few empty glasses. If they tip over the bottle, or if they drop a glass, they are out of the race.

This is what I keep thinking of when I think of Democratic leaders in Congress right now trying to race to the finish line with the entire Biden domestic-led legislative agenda balanced on one bill. The Democrats along with President Joe Biden have a very ambitious domestic policy agenda. And because they don`t, at this point, have 50 votes to overcome the filibuster in the Senate, they have to run the whole process through reconciliation which is a complicated process but essentially, it`s a way to use one massive bill with a simple majority vote to bypass the filibuster and pass Democratic priority priorities and get them on Biden`s desk.

But it does have its limitations, certain conditions on what they can and cannot pass. We saw that yesterday when the Senate Parliamentarian dealt a blow to Democrats and ruled that immigration reform that is providing a pathway to legal status for 10 -- 11 million folks who are here without documentation, that cannot be included in the reconciliation package because it`s -- well, it`s a little unclear. Its budgetary impact isn`t big enough, even though it`s got a big budgetary impact.

While Democrats contend with that, they still have to keep the government open. That`s got to pass. They got to figure out what they`re doing with the debt ceiling. Remember that one, and they have to make sure they get a win on Biden`s infrastructure bill. So, with Democrats trying to juggle multiple tasks with little or no room for error, we figured it`d be a good idea to talk to someone in leadership.

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York is the chair of the House Democratic Caucus. And he joins me now. First, let me start on the -- on the senate parliamentarian ruling yesterday, which makes a pathway to citizenship -- it can`t go into the reconciliation bill. Lots of folks, Chuck Schumer expressed frustration, anger disappointment. Does this mean it`s done, it`s not happening?

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Well, we have a broken immigration system. It needs to be fixed. The preference will be able to do in the bipartisan way but the Republicans have turned into a xenophobic party that continues to bend the knee to Donald Trump and his hate-filled rhetoric. So, that`s an avenue that`s not available to us at this particular moment, which means that we`re hopeful that the Senate Democrats will revise the proposal and present another potential option to the Senate parliamentarian which they have the capacity to do over the next week or two.

The Senate parliamentarian essentially concluded that the public policy changes that were in our initial proposal outweighed the budgetary proposals that they acknowledge did exist. And so, it`s possible while still maintaining the core of a pathway toward legalization for DREAMers, as well as foreign workers and temporary protected status recipients, that a revised proposal might pass the Senate Parliamentarian`s test in terms of budgetary impact.

[20:55:33]

HAYES: And just to respond to what you said. I don`t disagree with you about how the Republican Party has gone on immigration, but I`ve been covering this issue for 15 years. There still is no comprehensive bill. And you`ve got, you know, a Democratic administration overseeing the Border Patrol on horseback with whatever implement they were using in their hands in the face of cowering and terrified folks fleeing crisis in the Rio Grande waters.

I mean, that was not Donald Trump`s Customs and Border Patrol. That was Joe Biden`s. What do you think of those images? And what do you think about this administration continuing a policy in which those folks are not eligible for asylum?

JEFFRIES: Well, the Border Patrol agents are totally out of control. And I think it`s the White House themselves acknowledge those images are horrific. And those Border Patrol agents need to stand down in terms of the manner in which they are conducted themselves. And hopefully, that message is being communicated by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

I think the Biden administration is going to be committed to a more humanitarian policy with respect to immigration reform generally and specifically, as it relates to asylum seekers. We also have to continue to provide direct assistance to the people of Haiti on the ground, so we can turn the situation around there. And that`s something I know the House Democratic caucus remains strongly committed to a great leadership from the Congressional Black Caucus led by Congresswoman Joyce Beatty

HAYES: Final question on this. I don`t want to belabor it. But just to be clear, do you support the extension of the use of that public health invocation to essentially make asylum not possible for these folks or any others the Biden administration is extended?

JEFFRIES: Well, I disagree with the extension of any policy related to the excuse that was put forward by President Trump, inspired by Stephen Miller designed to just keep people out of America. And so, I`m hopeful that that policy is going to be reevaluated.

HAYES: In terms of that, there is a lot going on right now. So, there`s a debt -- there`s a government shutdown. Well, let`s divide them. There`s a reconciliation stuff having you there. But then now there`s a bill from the government and to pass the debt ceiling. I have to say, I`m a little confused on where we ended up on that. When is that going to be passing? And do you need -- you don`t need Republican votes on it, I guess. You`re just going to pass it and see what happens in the Senate.

JEFFRIES: We don`t need Republican votes in the House. And we expect that they`re going to be irresponsible in the House, even though the Republicans in this chamber and the Republicans across the Capitol three times during the Trump administration voted to extend the debt ceiling in dramatically high numbers, but all of a sudden, they`re back to being so-called fiscally responsible. It`s ridiculous. The debt ceiling relates to bills that the country has already incurred.

Now, we`re going to pass the legislation with respect to making sure that government continues to be funded. And we avoid a dramatic default, which will tank our economy. And then we`re going to put it on the United States Senate. We know that Democrats are going to do the right thing. And hopefully, a handful of Republicans will vote to protect the full faith and credit of the United States of America.

HAYES: But just to be clear, this is that -- this is what`s being set up right now. You`re going to pass it in the house where there`s, you know, there`s no filibuster, majority control. Obviously, leadership wants to keep the government funded, avoid a shutdown, and raise the debt ceiling. It`ll go over to the Senate where that has to, as of the current rules, passed by a filibuster-proof majority 60 votes. You got to find 10 Republican votes. And Mitch McConnell is saying, absolutely not. We`re all going to vote against it.

JEFFRIES: That`s what Mr. McConnell is saying. But I think that his friends on Wall Street and the wealthy and the well-off across the country do not want to see a default in the Stock Market and the economy crashing. And so, I`m not convinced that Mitch McConnell is doing anything but bluffing. And we`ll see what they do when the bill gets to the floor of the United States Senate and they`ll have an opportunity to do the right thing or to crash the economy.

HAYES: But I mean, that`s -- you know, here`s a little slogan about like, don`t take a hostage you don`t want to shoot, I mean, this does seem like playing with fire here. Am I missing something?

JEFFRIES: Well, listen, this is a high-stakes situation, which is why we shouldn`t be infusing politics into the debt ceiling. So, in the House led by Speaker Pelosi, we`re going to do our job. Unfortunately, we can do it without Republican support. But we are calling upon businesses throughout America corporations, people on Wall Street to prevail upon their friends in the Senate Republican caucus to do that.

HAYES: All right. We will keep monitoring that. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, as always, thanks for making time tonight.

JEFFRIES: Thank you, Chris.

HAYES: That is ALL IN on this Monday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.