Summary:
Interview with Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California. Interview with Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington.
Transcript:
HEATHER MCGHEE, AUTHOR, "SUM OF US": You know, I truly believe that this whole right-wing playbook is the rigged rules of our government, right? I mean, we could have $15 minimum wage which is popular across the country --
(CROSSTALK)
MCGHEE: -- of the filibuster, right?
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST, "ALL IN": Restore majority rule. Heather McGhee, whose book is called "The Sum of Us", thank you for making time tonight. It`s a great book. Please go check it out.
That is "ALL IN" on this Friday night.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts right now with Ali Velshi, in for Rachel.
Good evening, Ali.
ALI VELSHI, MSNBC HOST: Those are great conversations, Chris, thank you. And have yourself an excellent weekend.
And thank you to you at home for joining us. Rachael has the night off.
We are at this hour waiting for the United States House of Representatives to vote on President Biden`s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. We don`t know exactly when this vote is going to happen, but when the bill finally does get a vote, we know two things.
One is it is going to pass with overwhelming support from Democrats and possibly no support from Republicans despite it being incredibly popular with American voters of both parties.
Number two, the House bill is going to include an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour even though we know that a COVID relief bill with the $15 minimum wage cannot pass the Senate.
So how is this all going to work?
We will ask the chair of the congressional progressive caucus, Representative Pramila Jayapal, about that later this hour.
Also, a government scientific panel this evening recommended the Johnson and Johnson one-shot COVID vaccine be approved by the FDA. Meaning that the new vaccine could be approved for use in the United States as soon as tomorrow. We`re going to have more on that exciting development in just a few minutes.
But I should mention that the news broke this evening in the "New York Times" that the FBI had singled out a potential suspect in the death of the Capitol police officer linked to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed shortly after fighting with rioters at the Capitol and he later died from his injuries. But the nature of the injuries and the cause of death have been a mystery.
Investigators think his death may have been related to an irritant like mace or bear spray deployed during the attack. According to the "New York Times" investigators have pinpointed a person seen on video of the riot who attacked several officers with bear spray including Officer Sicknick.
Now, they haven`t yet identified this attacker by name to us, but this appears to be the first major breakthrough in this particular part of the case. More than 300 people have now been charged in connection with the Capitol riot, but no one, no one has yet been charged in Officer Sicknick`s death.
There`s a lot going on tonight. We`re going to get to all of it, but, first, do you remember the orb? It was this iconic moment early in the Trump presidency that like so many things in the Trump presidency appeared simultaneously funny, creepy, possibly sinister and totally inexplicable.
I mean, I can tell you that President Trump was in Saudi Arabia in that photo. He was attending the opening of some type of center, essentially for combating extremism. He was there with the president of Egypt who`s on the left and the king of Saudi Arabia in the middle and I can tell you that the orb is, in fact, a globe.
But none of that really explains why there was a glowing globe in the middle of the room or why the three world leaders were required to place their hands on it, nor why they then stood there with their hands on it for two whole minutes while soaring music played.
The other thing that made it so weird is it was Donald Trump`s first foreign trip as president. He went to Saudi Arabia. That was his very first trip. No other U.S. president has ever made said Saudi Arabia the first foreign trip.
President Trump was not the only person in the White House making Saudi Arabia a priority. His son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, made at least three trips to Saudi Arabia during Trump`s first year in office, including when Kushner flew there secretly. We learned about it later.
And that trip reportedly included several nights where Kushner and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, MBS, reportedly stayed up until 4:00 a.m., quote, swapping stories and planning strategy, end quote.
Shortly after Kushner got back from that trip, the crown prince, MBS, enacted a brazen and brutal power play in which he rounded up literally hundreds of members of the royal family and other members of the rich Saudis and jailed them, torturing some of them in Riyadh`s Ritz Carlton Hotel until lots of them were forced to give up billions of dollars and any claims to power they may have.
In doing this, MBS, did not just have tacit support for the Trump White House for this crackdown. President Trump actually tweeted approval of it.
But for all of that fawning and enabling behavior from Donald Trump and his White House, nothing could compare to the embarrassing and horrifying way that Trump bent over backward to protect the crown prince after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was a "Washington Post" journalist, a legal U.S. permanent resident, a frequent critic of the Saudi regime.
He disappeared inside of a Saudi consulate in Turkey in October of 2018. First, the Saudi said nothing happened to him. Then they claimed he had died during an interrogation gone wrong. Then they suggested it was the work of some rogue group of Saudi operatives acting on their own.
But it was clear almost immediately that the suspects in the killing and the dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi were directly tied to Crown Prince MBS and given how completely MBS had taken control of the levers of power in Saudi Arabia, there was no way such an operation could have been carried out without his say so.
For President Trump, though, the problem seemed to not be that the de facto leader of an American ally may have ordered the murder of a U.S. journalist, but that the Saudis had done such a bad job of it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They had a very bad original concept. It was carried out poorly and the cover up was one of the worst in the history of cover ups. It`s very simple. A bad deal. Should have never been thought of. Some really messed up, and they had the worst cover up ever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: Why did they cover it up so poorly? Now I have to deal with it.
After it was reported that the CIA had concluded that MBS had indeed ordered Khashoggi`s killing Trump put out a statement saying maybe he did and maybe he didn`t! Trump added, quote, the world is a very dangerous place!
Trump later told journalist Bob Woodward about MBS, quote, I saved his ass. I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.
One of the ways President Trump able to get Congress to leave Saudi Arabia`s crown prince alone was by simply ignoring a law that Congress passed, requiring the director of national intelligence to send Congress an unclassified report identifying those responsible for Khashoggi`s death. Trump simply ignored the deadline. He never turned the report over.
So, under the Trump administration, the United States just never publicly acknowledged the crown prince`s responsibilities for Khashoggi`s murder.
Well, today, under a new president, that changed. President Biden`s director of national intelligence publicly released the U.S. intelligence community`s assessment of the Saudi government`s role in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and it is unambiguous.
Quote: We assess that Saudi Arabia`s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The evidence included in that assessment, by the way, includes the fact that seven members of the team responsible for the murder were members of MBS`s personal protective detail that answers only to him and also that, quote, the crown prince had control of the kingdom`s security and intelligence organizations making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the crown prince`s authorization, end quote.
For the record, the Saudi government today said it completely rejects the assessment, calling it false and unacceptable. In the wake of this assessment, this intelligence assessment, the State Department has enacted visa bans on 76 Saudis, the Treasury Department has issued sanctions on a former Saudi intelligences chief, as well as on MBS`s personal protective detail whose members were involved in Khashoggi`s murder.
But, of course, the person conspicuously missing from any of these punitive measures is the guy that ordered the killing, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself. Senior administration officials telling the "New York Times" tonight that Biden decided the diplomatic cost of penalizing MBS is just too high.
Quote: The decision by Mr. Biden`s decision came after weeks of debate when his newly formed national security team advised him that there was no way to formally bar the heir to the Saudi crown from entering the United States or to weigh criminal charges against him without breaching the relationship with one of America`s key Arab allies.
It continues: Officials said a consensus developed inside the White House that the cost of that breach in Saudi cooperation in counterterrorism and in confronting Iran was simply too high.
I would like to show you new tape we just got in this evening of President Biden talking about this.
He`s speaking with our colleague Ilia Calderon at Univision tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ILIA CALDERON, UNIVISION: How far are you willing to go to press Prince bin Salman and Saudi Arabia to comply with human rights?
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I spoke yesterday with the king, not the prince, made it clear to him that the rules are changing, and we`re going to be announcing significant changes today and on Monday. We are going to hold them accountable for human rights abuses and we`re going to make sure that they in fact -- and if they want to deal with us they have to deal with it in a way that human rights abuses are dealt with, and we`re trying to do that across the world, but particularly here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: All right. So it`s worth noticing there President Biden stressed that he spoke with the king not the prince. The Saudi Arabia`s king is technically in charge. MBS, Mohammed bin Salman is his heir, bin means "son of", son of Salman. King Salman is 85 years old and he`s been ill for some time.
Biden administration officials tell "The Times" tonight it was, quote, unclear how much he absorbed, meaning Salman, King Salman, of the conversation that President Biden had with him yesterday.
MBS is clearly the one running Saudi Arabia and he may be for a very long time. The president and may be future presidents too are going to have to figure out how to deal with him.
Joining us now, Congressman Adam Schiff, Democrat from California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Congressman, good to see you again. Thank you for being with us tonight.
How do you evaluate this? There seems to be evidence all over the place about Mohammed bin Salman`s involvement in this thing. It`s what the intelligence community concluded. How do we get around this? Lots of people have been put on lists and sanctioned but not Mohammed bin Salman.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): I don`t think we can get around it and you`re right, this is a powerful statement of attribution by the intelligence community. They didn`t withhold anything. They said the crown prince basically has blood on his hands for ordering this capture or kill operation, and it`s very hard to hold accountable the people who did the deed and let the person who ordered the deed be done off the hook.
So, I`ve been urging the administration to go further, to make sure there are repercussions that are personal to the crown prince. I think he should be shunned. I think he should be -- I don`t think the president should talk with him. I don`t think the president should see him.
I think they -- the administration should go after assets of his in the Saudi investment fund that may be linked to the murder of Khashoggi.
And look, the Saudis have every interest in pushing back against Iran. They`re going to want to do that regardless of the action we take against the crown prince. So, I think we can do more without having a complete rupture of relations and I think we need to hold this man accountable.
VELSHI: I think you bring up an interesting point if we`d been having this conversation 15 years ago about American relationships with Saudi Arabia, the number one concern would have been energy supply. We`ve come a long way from that, but Saudi Arabia does work with America and other countries on counterterrorism and with respect to Iran.
But we`re -- this administration seems to be trying to reset that table too to sort of let the powers in the region, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran know we`re going to -- things are going to look a little different moving forward.
SCHIFF: Absolutely. It`s going to be unquestionably a very different relationship than it has been for the last four years where Donald Trump gave the crown prince carte blanche and as you point out, was even willing to help cover up for the murder of an American resident. Khashoggi was an American resident and journalist.
So, the relationship`s going to be already is very different it needs to be different though even for the administrations that preceded the last one. All of the interactions we`ve had with the Saudis in the last decade or decades have been entirely mixed. If you look at countering Iran, for example, the debacle of the war in Yemen has strengthened Iran`s hand. If you look at the counterterrorism fight the degree in which Saudi Arabia has supported these madrassas that that preach this virulent -- and I think bastardized form of Islam, this radicalized form, has created uh the climate for the proliferation of terrorism.
So, it`s a very mixed relationship. I don`t think it ought to cause us to in any way cater to the crown prince, particularly in light of the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi.
VELSHI: For those who would accuse the administration of being soft on Iran, in fact, this airstrike uh in Syria was in fact aimed at Iranian uh militants in Syria who are propping up the uh the Syrian government. You said earlier, it`s quoted from a CNN article in which you called the airstrike, the warnings, the consultation you got, the notification, inadequate and that you were looking into further legal justification behind the military action. Where do you stand on that tonight?
SCHIFF: From what I`ve seen so far, and what I`ve seen frankly is very preliminary, the strike was justified and proportionate and necessary to deter Iran from further attacks on U.S. forces.
But I do think that the consultation was very much inadequate, the notification was notification inform only, it wasn`t effective notification. And so, we are raising these issues with the administration.
And I want to explore in more depth the legal justification given this was an attack on the soil of the sovereign state that being Syria.
All that being said though, from what I`ve seen so far, this was a proportionate response and I think it was very important for the Biden administration to signal to Iran right out of the gate that it will not tolerate attacks on U.S. forces, and I think that message has been delivered.
VELSHI: Congressman, good to see you. Thank you for joining us tonight. Congressman Adam Schiff is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, we appreciate your time tonight.
Well, seven years ago on the dot 150,000 little green men much marched across the Russian border. They were not wearing Russian insignia. Look closely, their uniforms unmarked, their weapons however unmistakably Russian made.
On February 26, 2014, Vladimir Putin sent thousands of armed troops into Ukraine, into Crimea. They took over the airport, their military bases, the parliament building. By March, they had taken everything. Vladimir Putin illegally annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. He just stole it, full stop.
Seven years later, despite international condemnation and sanctions for what it did, Russia is still in Ukraine. They have not given Crimea back.
So, today, on the anniversary of Russia`s illegal seizure of Crimea, President Biden issued this statement. Quote: The United States does not and will never recognize Russia`s purported annexation of the peninsula and we will stand with Ukraine against Russia`s aggressive acts.
The United States continues to stand with Ukraine and its allies and partners today as it has from the beginning of this conflict. On this somber anniversary, we reaffirm a simple truth, Crimea is Ukraine.
President Biden ran on the promise of realigning America`s moral compass on the international stage. Take the president`s strong unwavering statement on Ukraine, as well as last night`s airstrikes against Iranian-backed militias and hold that up to the president`s decision not to retaliate against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The president has a difficult needle to thread here. What`s his report card so far?
Joining us now, Rami Khouri. He`s the director of global engagement at the American University of Beirut. He`s the kind of big brain that I need to talk to on nights like this to help me make sense of this stuff.
Professor, good to see you again. Thank you for being here.
What do you make -- you just heard my conversation with congressman, Chairman Schiff? What do you make of this? The -- on one hand, we got the evidence that most of us knew about anyway, we didn`t find any big news in this. But we understand the acknowledgment that Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for the death of Jamal Khashoggi and tonight, he faces nothing as a result.
RAMI KHOURI, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT, DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT: He faced symbolic actions the travel ban and things like that, and strong words and we saw that in the Ukraine and Crimea and in Syria we saw these attacks against various targets that are said to be used by Iranian or pro- Iranian forces.
The trouble with this policy or these actions is that they reflect about three decades of American policy in the Middle East and Ukraine recently, but policy that is based mostly on military strikes, sanctions and tough words. And if you look at the last three decades, the terrorist forces of al-Qaeda and ISIS and Shabab and others have continued to expand around the world, that the people who`ve been sanctioned, the Iranians the Russians don`t give a hoot. They haven`t changed any of their policies really, and people who`ve been attacked repeatedly like Hamas, like groups in Syria and Iran continue to operate.
So there`s something wrong with the basic methodology of American foreign policy that relies predominantly on strong words, military action and sanctions, but doesn`t address any of the underlying issues that gave rise to these problems and can help resolve them with the exception of the Iranian nuclear agreement.
So, I think this is a regimentarian (ph) problem.
(CROSSTALK)
VELSHI: The Iranian nuclear deal took 10 years of effort and negotiation and two very solid years of American direct involvement in the whole thing, but that`s the point really, right? If you`re looking at Israel`s activities in the Middle East, if you`re looking at Saudi Arabia`s activities in the Middle East, and you`re looking at Iran`s activities in the Middle East, they have not -- they have moved forward without the active engagement of the United States.
So, what does the re-engagement look like because everybody in the region needs to pull back a little bit and be more cooperative?
KHOURI: Well, we don`t know what the re-engagement really is yet. It`s very early days and we`ll have to give it sometimes. There`s been some positive indications in terms of the U.S. sending signals that it wants to open the talks again with Iran and some negative signals like focusing on military strikes and more sanctions.
The problem in the Middle East now is that it`s not the Middle East of eight, and 10 and 20 years ago that Biden remembers. The Russians are a major player in the region. The Turks have huge interactions all across the regions. The Iranians are much more widely dispersed.
Public opinion in the Arab world is very different, very critical of the United States and Israel more than before, and three quarters of the Arab people are poor and vulnerable and marginalized and powerless and are up -- rising up to overthrow their total government.
So you need a much more sophisticated, realistic and pragmatic American policy and it has to start with the idea that the well-being of ordinary Arab people and the well-being of Israelis and Turks and Iranians and Americans must be the bottom common denominator that we all work for. That attempt has never been made to address the bottom -- the needs -- equal needs of all these people.
And by the way, if annexation in Ukraine is bad, it should also be bad in Palestine and the Israelis do it with American support. So there has to be more consistency and a little bit more focus on the well-being and rights of ordinary human beings as long as those rights are equally applied across the board.
And that`s the American way according to the constitutional Declaration of Independence and many other real parts of American life, to treat people equally and decently.
VELSHI: Well, we haven`t fully mastered that here, but we continue to try.
Rami, good to see you as always. Thank you for being with us. Rami Khouri is the director of global engagement at the American University of Beirut - - always appreciate your time, friend.
All right. When we come back, big new developments on the availability of COVID vaccines. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Earlier today, President Biden and first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, visited a new FEMA vaccination center at NRG Park in Texas. They tour the facility which opened just a few days ago and to address America`s vaccination effort.
The opening of that new site where Biden spoke is a feat. Despite the massive winter storm that shook Texas and upended the power grid, the new site is up and running and capable of giving thousands of doses a day. It`s a drive thru center.
Take a look at that, it`s amazing. Made it hopes of targeting the most vulnerable communities in the area.
And one of the goals of the new facility is to increase vaccine equity in the state. Despite efforts across the nation to improve equitable distribution of the two vaccines currently on the market, most states have fallen short. Even the limited data available has shown that white people are getting vaccinated at higher rates than black and Latino people.
And then there are stories like this one out of California where vaccine access meant exclusively for people in hard-hit black and Latino communities have been improperly used by wealthy white people instead.
Still, there is hope that a third vaccine on the horizon will expand access for everyone.
An FDA panel voted today 22-0 to recommend the emergency use authorization for Johnson and Johnson vaccine, calling the shot a crucial third option to get Americans vaccinated.
Today`s vote cues up a final vote for FDA approval and the CDC authorization could come as soon as Sunday. That potentially means Johnson & Johnson would be able to ship out nearly four million doses on Monday.
Let me tell you about this vaccine. It`s 86 percent effective at preventing extreme illness and offers complete protection against hospitalization and death in the United States. It is 72 percent effective at preventing illness. That`s less than Pfizer`s 95 percent efficacy or Moderna`s 94 percent.
But the White House is encouraging people to get the Johnson and Johnson shot, despite the technically lower efficacy. According to NBC, quote, the strategy is to blunt concern that the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is slightly less effective than vaccines produced by Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna, and because of that, it might be used in underserved communities, official said.
With Johnson and Johnson almost green lit and Pfizer and Moderna continuing to bolster their production, the rate of vaccination could ramp very quickly, going from about 1.5 million a day right now to 4 million a day by the end of March. And that pace could mean the whole ball game.
Joining me now, Laurie Garrett, a health policy analyst and Pulitzer prize winning science writer who has been covering the coronavirus crisis since day one. Laurie and I started speaking more than a year ago, and she`s still on the case.
Laurie, thank you for being with us.
Now, answer this simple question, given the difference in the efficacy of these two vaccines, even though this new Johnson & Johnson one is pretty effective, why would anybody choose to have it?
LAURIE GARRETT, HEALTH POLICY ANALYST: Well, Ali, I think there`s a bunch of different issues going on here in terms of making choices about which vaccine to get. First of all, as an individual you probably don`t have a choice. It will be an issue of what center you go to and what vaccine is available to the center. I didn`t get to choose to have Moderna. It`s what was at the vaccine center when I walked in the door.
But as far as comparing the three vaccines, I think everybody needs to keep in mind that what we`ve been testing for in this rapid rush to come up with vaccines is not whether or not vaccines keep you from getting infected, but whether or not vaccines keep you from getting seriously ill and dying of the disease if you do get infected. What we still don`t know and we`re awaiting more and more data to come in on the vaccines that are already in use is whether or not they`re very good at stopping an epidemic and actually preventing transmission from person to person.
So you may make a choice based on the data that`s already out but that might not actually be the relevant data that matters about whether or not you get infected if somebody standing next to you is coughing out COVID-19. So I think at this point it`s premature to really say one is better than the other. Certainly from the point of view of being able to get it around the country, get it to rural areas get it to the middle of nowhere America, this is a much easier vaccine to ship around, far less likely to go bad sitting on a shelf and far more likely to be active the moments it`s injected into your body.
VELSHI: And then there`s another vaccine on the horizon called from a company called CureVac which says the company expects its vaccine to be approved in the European Union by June.
You know, when you and I were talking several months ago, we knew that there were sort of five to seven vaccines that were on the horizon. The Russians have a different one. So, at this point, we`re starting to see the fruition of all of those efforts. We`re now going to be in a few months, we`ll have -- we`ll have a number of choices or a number of options.
GARRETT: Yeah, I mean, the really big problem now is number one can the companies produce supplies that meet demand? And they`re all struggling to get their supplies out. Keep in mind, they don`t just have a contract to produce for America, they have contracts for the whole world and they have obligations to the whole world and they`re trying to crank out supply as fast as they can.
Just today, the CEO of Moderna said, he thought that they could crank out a billion doses before the end of 2021. That`s an ambitious target to be sure. And, of course, you want to crank all these doses out without making mistakes, no contamination events, no substandard formulations.
But what we`re really coming up against now already very, very serious, is supply shortages on everything associated with vaccination, syringes, those special boxes called sharpie boxes that you put the used syringe into and pop off the needle safely, the -- just the alcohol swabs that go on your arms, all the syringes themselves. These things are now in very short supply.
I heard just yesterday from a CEO of a major medical supply company that one fire in one factory, he wouldn`t say in what part of the world, had resulted in a complete shutdown of the supply chain for the sharpie boxes. So that`s --
VELSHI: Wow.
GARRETT: -- that shows you how vulnerable this supply chain is and how fragile it is.
VELSHI: I didn`t know when we talked a year ago, Laurie, that we`d still be talking about this right now. But let`s hope we`re not talking about it in another year from now. I`m hopeful that we won`t be.
Always good to see you. Thank you for supporting us and --
GARRETT: Ali, I love you but I don`t want to still be here talking to you in a year.
VELSHI: Yes, life will be better when we don`t have to meet on TV all the time or we`ll talk about other things. Laurie, thank you for being with us. Laurie Garrett is a health policy analyst. She`s a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist and she`s been with us since the beginning.
One battle for raising the federal minimum wage to dollars an hour might be over but the war is just beginning. One of the major figures in that fight joins me after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: It could be a late night tonight on Capitol Hill. At this hour, we`re still awaiting a vote in the House on President Biden`s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. Democrats are rushing to try to get that bill through both houses of Congress as soon as possible because there`s a deadline, about the middle of March, for some of the benefits running out. They want to get as much needed relief to struggling Americans as possible.
They`re also staring down that deadline on March 14th. The bill as it stands now would provide direct relief for many Americans, including $1,400 relief checks for millions of households. It would provide long overdue relief to state and local governments which was withheld from previously relief packages by congressional Republicans, and it would also authorize hundreds of billions more dollars for vaccine distribution and other efforts to end the pandemic.
In other words, to paraphrase one former American vice president, this bill is a big F-ing deal.
Still, the process to get it passed has not been without its share of setbacks. Yesterday, the Senate parliamentarian dealt a major blow to Democrats` relief plans when she ruled that the planned increase to the minimum wage could not be included in the legislation if it is going to be pass through the budget reconciliation process, which means passing with a simple majority in the Senate. Now, this has led to Senate Democrats to get creative with new proposals to try to get around that Senate rule.
And one proposal that is now reportedly being considered by Senate Majority Leader Schumer is an idea first put forward by Senators Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden just after the parliamentarian issued her ruling. That plan would try and create a back door increase in the minimum wage by taking away tax breaks from big corporations that don`t pay their workers at least $15 an hour. Experts believe that kind of proposal would almost certainly be allowed under the Senate parliamentarian`s interpretation of the rules, but the extent to which it would raise wages would depend considerably on how it was structured, with some economists expressing concern it could leave a lot of workers out who`d otherwise benefit from a flat increase in the minimum wage.
Now, other progressives have taken a more aggressive stance, saying that the parliamentarians should either be fired, which is something Republicans did back in 2001, or overruled, something Republicans did back in 1975.
House Progressive Caucus leader Pramila Jayapal tweeted, what are we supposed to tell voters in two years before the midterms? Sorry, we couldn`t pass the fifteen-dollar minimum wage that we promised you because the Senate parliamentarian advised against it? Two-thirds of voters want this done. Time to deliver.
Joining us now, Washington state Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Congresswoman Jayapal, thank you for being with us this evening.
Let me ask you about this. You make a good point. Americans want a minimum wage increase. Many Americans deserve it if you just take the minimum wage from 40 or 50 years ago and you adjusted for inflation, we`d be somewhere close to an hour right now. A lot of states are passing minimum wage increases. What are the options if this doesn`t get into the Senate bill or doesn`t pass the Senate bill as the parliamentarian says it won`t?
REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): Well, Ali, first of all, I still think it can be included in the bill because as you said, it is not unprecedented at all for the parliamentarian`s opinion, and that is what it is, it`s an opinion, an advisory opinion to be, you know, not listened to. Hubert Humphrey, Vice President Hubert Humphrey overruled the parliamentarian twice in 1967 and 1969, and then Vice President Rockefeller overruled the parliamentarian in 1975.
This is an urgent moment and this is a minimum wage increase that will lift 27 million Americans out of poverty, many -- excuse me -- 27 -- lift the wages of 27 million people and lift a million people out of poverty, this is an issue that has resonated across the country and particularly during COVID when many of these workers are on the front lines.
So I haven`t given up on the fight yet. I believe that it can still be included in the bill. If it isn`t included in the bill, I just think Democrats have a crossroads in front of us. We have to recognize that we made a promise to voters -- black, brown, indigenous, poor, working-class voters in Georgia and across the country that we were going to make a significant difference in lifting the floor for people across the country, and we have to decide if we`re going to use every tool in our toolbox. That is including it now in the relief bill or it is reforming the filibuster, because unfortunately, Republicans are intransigent when it comes to many of these policies and they`re not looking like they`re going to listen to the people including Republicans who want a minimum wage increase.
And so, we can`t go back as I said to voters and say sorry, the arcane Senate rules told us we couldn`t do what we promised. They gave us majorities in the House --
VELSHI: Yeah, folks -- yeah, folks earning nine bucks an hour, eight bucks an hour, they`re not really going to make sense of that, that argument.
Kind of weird though because there aren`t that many broad policies that have this much support. It`s across the board and in fact in many states where they`ve elected Republicans across the board or statewide, they`ve also enacted higher minimum wage increases. So at some point, this becomes impossible for some people to reconcile. Why Republicans won`t support a minimum wage increase.
The federal minimum wage in this country is seven dollars and 25 cents an hour, it`s about $15,000 year if you work full time.
JAYAPAL: That`s right. It`s $15,000 a year and that`s if you`re lucky enough to even get that. I mean, I just talked to a home care worker in West Virginia who is looking after people with autism. And Ali, he`s earning twelve thousand dollars, okay, twelve thousand dollars. He can`t buy a new car. He can`t take care of himself and I think this is the struggle that so many people across the country are facing and that`s why a state like Florida that went for Donald Trump in November also passed with a super majority of voters a $15 minimum wage.
And this is long overdue. It`s been 12 years since the federal minimum wage has been raised as you said. It was 2012 when fast food workers first went on strike with the fight for $15. It was when my city Seattle became the first major city in the country to pass a minimum wage.
And here we are almost 10 years later, talking about a phased-in minimum wage to over the next five years. So this is urgent and we just have to deliver on this promise.
VELSHI: Yeah, they said Seattle was going to be wiped off the face of the Earth for that, all the jobs would leave and Seattle would collapse. It didn`t quite happen that way.
Congresswoman, good to see you as always. Thank you for taking time to join us tonight.
Pramila Jayapal is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
So, the 2020 election did not go the way Republicans wanted, but instead of changing the policies they ran on, Republican-controlled state legislatures are now trying to change how voting works. I`ll have more on that just ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: It was just a couple weeks ago that the Republican-controlled Arizona state Senate tried to have the elected leaders of Arizona`s biggest county arrested. Republican state senators failed by just one vote to approve a measure to lock up all five Maricopa County supervisors because those supervisors had the nerve to declare that Joe Biden won their county fair and square in the 2020 presidential election, because the board of supervisors would not hand over the county`s voting machines and all of the county`s ballots so that state Senate Republicans could personally dig in and find all the fraud that must have caused Donald Trump to lose in Arizona.
Okay, so now the results are in from two new audits of the presidential vote in Maricopa County. Guess what? Both of the independent outside auditors determined that the votes were counted correctly, the voting machines worked correctly, nothing was hacked, the election was sound.
Arizona Republicans are not handling this well. Today, they got a judge to order Maricopa County officials to turn over all the ballots and voting machines to the state Senate so they can do their own audit. But also get these Arizona Republican lawmakers this week discussed a bill that would just let the state legislature overturn any election result it doesn`t like. Under this bill, the legislature could just send its own slate of presidential electors to Congress regardless of which candidate won the popular vote in Arizona.
That bill may not survive but Arizona Republicans are moving forward with a bill that would kick a whole bunch of voters off the early voting rolls and shorten the early voting period and make it a felony for any Arizona official to move any deadlines to make it any easier for people to vote. That`s Arizona.
In Georgia, Republican lawmakers have introduced sweeping election bills that would drastically reduce early voting and absentee voting. I mean they saw what happened when all those people actually voted in this year`s election. Georgia went for the Democratic presidential candidate and elected two Democratic senators. Got to fix that.
Over in Iowa, the Republican legislature actually passed, and the Republican governor is expected to sign a bill that cuts more than a week off the state`s early voting period and closes polling places on Election Day an hour earlier. It also bans the state from sending absentee ballot applications to voters unless they explicitly request one. Iowa very successfully got huge turnout last year by just sending an absentee ballot to every eligible voter. Can`t let that happen again.
This is what Republicans are working on in state legislatures across the country. This is the plan.
We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: If you`ve seen the movie "Hidden Figures", you know a little bit about Mary Winston Jackson. She was portrayed by Janelle Monae in a film about a team of black female mathematicians at NASA.
In 1951, Jackson joined NACA, NASA`s predecessor, as a computer as they were called back then. These women were mathematicians who ran equations and calculations for aerospace and aeronautical research at the Langley research lab.
Even though discrimination in the defense industry was a federal offense, Virginia state law still enforced segregation, so Jackson worked in the segregated west area computing section and was forced to use separate bathroom facilities than her white counterparts.
After two years in the computing pool, she got an opportunity to work with the four foot by four-foot supersonic pressure tunnels. It was a 60,000- horsepower tunnel that generated winds so fast that they were twice the speed of sound.
Mary Jackson was still a computer but taking part in hands-on experimental work. It was during that period that an engineer encouraged her to take a training course from the University of Virginia and become an engineer herself.
This course involved graduate level math and physics, which was no sweat for Jackson. The only problem were the classes were administered by Hampton School, which was a segregated school. Mary had to petition the courts and get special permission from the city to attend. She was successful and in 1958 she became NASA`s first black female engineer.
Mary Jackson did this at a time when female engineers of any race were a rarity. For the next two decades, she had a productive career and coauthored nearly a dozen research reports largely focused on the behavior of the boundary layer of air around airplanes.
1979, after years of trying to break into the ranks of management, Jackson made the decision to leave engineering and take a position as NASA`s federal women`s program manager. That position allowed her to influence the hiring and promotion of a new generation of female scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.
In addition to her research, Jackson also volunteered with a science club teaching kids thousand build their own miniature wind tunnels. She told her local paper why she felt compelled to make science and math approachable to minority children. Quote, sometimes they are not aware of the number of black scientists and they don`t even know the career opportunities until it`s too late.
So it`s only fitting that today as the White House and others recognize Black History Month, NASA honored Mary Winston Johnson with a ceremony to officially rename its Washington, D.C., headquarters building after her, a tribute to a woman who not only broke barriers in science, but worked to make it easier for those to enter the spaces that tried to keep her out. How fitting to have to pass by her name on the way in the door.
That does it for me tonight. You can watch me tomorrow morning on "VELSHI" with the former president set to give his first public remarks since flaming out as president after setting a violent mob on the Capitol. I`ll be bracing for what`s to come with perhaps the world`s topmost expert on what Donald Trump is capable of, his former personal fixer and confidant, Michael Cohen. That`s tomorrow morning on my show "VELSHI" from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. Eastern.
Time now for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL."
Lawrence, good evening, my friend.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END