hello, everybody, and welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king in washington. thank you for sharing a very busy news day with us here in washington. a big test for president biden. his covid relief package hangs in the balance as does the fate of a big cabinet pick. out of the gates, an alarming trend, efforts to roll back your right to vote. efforts sadly still based on the big trump lie about massive 2020 fraud. getting a vaccine and fighting

covid is something that should unite us all. vice president harris is running point for the white house effort now to overcome skepticism among black americans. you see her stopping at a d.c. pharmacy this morning. >> there have been many theories about populations that are experiencing vaccine hesitancy for legitimate reasons that are based on historical experiences that we could never forget. >> the pandemic warps the way we look at a lot of things. 70 million americans filed for unemployment benefits for the first time last week. in normal times this would shock us all. last week, though, it was an improvement. congress needs big covid relief and needs it fast. the house votes friday, that's tomorrow, on a nearly $2 trillion package that includes raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. whether that wage hike remains in the senate version hinges on

a moment that could come any moment now hearing from a woman you've never heard of, the senate parliamentarian. the lack of intelligence led to less preparedness the night of the insurrection. >> are you guys just there to make sure we take our coats off when we're on camera? >> back to the security challenges in a moment, but today and tomorrow will give us some clues about the new president's ability to keep his party together and keep his agenda enacted. team biden still waiting for senate confirmation. the two women on the right of your screen are in focus today. tanden omb is likely energy secretary this hour. she simply does not have the votes. we should know by tomorrow, if not today, whether the president

and his team can find votes to save tanden. there is also on the loose a $2 trillion relief bill. >> we have a strong argument and a big need in our country to pass the minimum wage. we will pass a minimum wage bill. >> with us to share their reporting and their insights, nia-malika henderson, our cnn "politico" reporter and melanie. melanie, the minimum wage has nothing to do with the covid relief package, yet this is a test to see if he can keep his party together. you hear the speaker talking about the passage tomorrow of the covid relief bill, but we are awaiting word from an obscure person in the senate, theparliamentarian, about

whether the minimum wage survives when the package gets there. >> this is a huge challenge for president biden on capitol hill, which is what he ran on. i know it's an end all, be all for biden here. it would be a huge setback. the big question is whether he can get this covid relief package through, and it will be ruled on the $15 an hour minimum wage. but it's a bit like a rubik's cube, because you have sinema who says she does not agree with the $15 minimum wage. some of them have drawn a red line saying we're not going to vote for this without it in there.

alexandria ocasio-cortez said she would be willing to vote for the minimum wage if the democrats wanted it. it's going to be a huge, huge test for democrats on capitol hill. >> melanie, that's where you see the biden leadership challenge. he'll have to bring democrats into the room and say, i need this. on the question of minimum wage, he understands he's got competing interests on both ends of his party, so he says, i'm going parliamentarian. i'm not getting involved in that unless i have to. >> he has already signaled that this $15 minimum wage could be a problem, that it might not be able to survive this process and actually qualify under reconciliation. in many ways that's probably the offramp he wants, that, you know, he would want the $15 minimum wage ideally, but guess what, it's not allowed under the rules, and then you can get this

thing through the house. as folks have signaled, they would be willing to go along with it, and in the senate you wouldn't have the problem of appeasing joe manchin, appeasing senator sinema. but listen, it is interesting. you had joe biden come in and say he is someone who can make deals, he is someone who can work across the aisle. the idea that he would have to wrestle to get his own caucus together, the democrats have stayed together with the slim majority they have, that wasn't necessarily in the calculus, and you see that now. this is something he's certainly going to have to do with both the moderate wing and also this progressive wing, which is dominant in the house. >> an odd way of winning makes it more complicated. they have the evenly divided senate, now the democrats have that majority. you would rather have that problem, but it's a complicated problem. if they collapse, it's not the end all, be all. almost every president loses somebody in the cabinet. however, the fact that the administration -- this is the press secretary, jen psaki.

the president is on the phone, the chief of staff on the phone, others on the phonem. she says we will fight this to the end. >> the president is pretty proud that he has nominated, and many of them are confirmed, some historic nominees who are also qualified, and he is hopeful that the senate will continue to consider nominees. >> and we're now hearing from gary peters, who is the chairman of the homeland security government affairs committee that this is going to be pushed off until next week, that there won't be votes until next week. it's not the end all, be all, but we were talking earlier, whether it's minimum wage, whether it's climate change, whether it's other things, democrats are watching this closely, and one thing they're watching, is joe biden willing to get his hands dirty, to fight for the people? >> that's why you don't see the white house backing down yet, but at some point biden is going to have to make a decision about

how much political capital he is willing to spend on a nomination that is likely doomed to fail. he has other nominees, like his health and service secretary nom nominee, they're on more solid ground than tanden, but not a slam-dunk. it's causing a lot of jitters on capitol hill among democrats, not to mention the covid relief package that we talked about earlier. he has a lot of things to do. this tanden nomination is sucking up a lot of oxygen on capitol hill. they're trying to show the progressives that they are willing to get their hands dirty and go to the mat for some of their priorities and some of the progressives' picks. >> it's interesting, at the beginning of every new administration, the rules change. tanden is guilty of mean tweets. she was guilty at a democratic think tank of sending mean

tweets about republicans, mean tweets about bernie sanders. okay. that hardly isolates her in washington in recent years. but more so among republicans, but even among some democrats who excused this in the trump years or simply walked away from it in the trump years, says this is a serious thing. is it hypocrisy? >> you have democrats saying this is an issue. it's sexism, it's racism. if you look at the people who have the most problems, tanden is on that list, deb holland is on that list as well, and you have in joe biden someone who wanted to come in and have the most diverse cabinet in history, the most women, the most people of color, and that could be a problem now if somebody like neera tanden ends up not being confirmed and these other folks who are also people of color also run into some problems. certainly you do see some hypocrisy among republicans who are outraged by somewhat mean tweets when they pretended

twitter didn't even exist when trump was in office. we'll see what happens here. tanden does seem to be probably not likely going to get this position. you've heard from the white house that she could maybe get some other position that doesn't require senate confirmation. but javier vicera, deb holland, we'll see what happens with them. look at these other folks who still have to go to the process. >> this is day 37. time to pick up the pace. up next for us, the acting capitol police chief said the office did not receive good orders as the insurrection unfolded. partly because the commanders who should have been directing the response instead were overwhelmed, trying to physically block the rioters from advancing. ♪ ♪ [keyboard typing]

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warning the night before the insurrection that some protesters were coming prepared to wage war. but the acting police chief said the advance in intelligence came nowhere close to what happened that day. >> although we knew the likelihood of violence by extremists, no credible threat indicated that tens of thousands would attack the u.s. capitol. nor did the intelligence receive from the fbi or any other law enforcement partner indicate such a threat. >> cnn crime and justice correspondent shimon prokupecz is standing by and tracking this. shimon, what's the most important thing we're learning? >> reporter: i think the most important thing and what is completely different from what we heard in that senate hearing from the former chief and the two sergeant-at-arms is the acting chief has actually taken a look inside, inward, to see what mistakes the capitol police made that day. a lot of blame has been put on

this intelligence. we're going to learn a lot more about that intelligence in the coming weeks. she is taking a very different position, looking at the police actions on that day, specifically when she talked about how the commanders who were supposed to be in charge of what was going on and the police response were on the ground in the middle of the riot fighting off the rioters because so many of the offers were so overwhelmed and it just led to more chaos, there was no command, there was no infrastructure. she said that they did not follow emergency protocol, and that to me seems to be one of the key things from this here today so far. the other thing, john, on this intelligence, so-called intelligence that the fbi shared with the capitol police the day before the insurrection, she kind of downplayed that. she said that that wouldn't have changed anything. the information that came to them was there was something of a threat about people wanting to wage war. she said they had already known that. the other thing she said was

they knew that white supremacists were coming, they knew militia members were coming, but still, knowing all that, they still didn't change their posture on the day of the insurrection, john. >> that is a question that is going to continue to linger as the hearing goes on today, and then future investigations. shimon prokupecz, grateful for the reporting. because of these questions, that's the reason you have calls for a bipartisan and 9/11 style commission to answer these questions. it started in a partisan fight of the scope of such panel. they said it should have a broad scope, including the right to check out federal buildings during racial demonstrations last summer. >> she wants to start a commission that is bipartisan by design. we can't start cherry-picking

which behavior does and which terrible behavior does not deserve scrutiny. >> i'm disappointed on what i heard the minority leader, mitch mcconnell, said yesterday on the floor of the senate. he said, we could do something narrow that looks at the capitol or we could potentially do something broader to end this fullscope of political violence problem in this country. >> "politico's" melanie zanona and nia-malika henderson still with us. nia- nia-malika, you want to have the bipartisan look at this, but they want this broad so they can focus on portland, things that happened last summer, so they don't focus on the big trump lie that led to the insurrection in the first place. >> in many ways this isn't surprising given what we've heard from republicans, anywhere

from someone like ron johnson saying this was really not even trump supporters who were to blame here, it was really antifa, and then you have mitch mcconnell somewhere in the middle saying, you know, let's look at this more broadly. this is dangerous because you do need something of an accounting of what actually happened to prevent it from happening again. we obviously saw that with the 9/11 commission. there have been other commissions throughout history. and you also need society to know what happened and to remember what happened, so there is no attempt to rewrite what happened. and we've seen that throughout, you know, periods in our history. people sort of forgot what the civil war is about and there was a rewriting of that, and so we'll see what happens here, but it does look like so much else in washington, even important matters that should be bipartisan, should be nonpartisan really devolve into partisanship, and i think this is the republican still being

behbe beho beholden to trump and trump conspiracy theorists. >> there was senator ron johnson who read into the record, quote, unquote, i witnessed this account. and he said some of the people who stormed the capitol were, quote, unquote, fake trump supporters. the republicans, maybe they won't believe a democrat who says that's conspiracy. this is anthony a gueroaguero. here's his take. >> it was not antifa and it was not blm. it was trump supporters who did that yesterday. i'm the first to admit it. being one myself. >> this is one of the issues, one of the problems at the moment is we can all -- if we

can all agree on a common set of facts, then we can have a political debate, we can all have our views and interpretation of those facts, but still you have to agree on common facts which, in today's washington, is somehow a problem. >> and in today's gop. look, this is at the root of why we're not seeing any agreement right now on this commission. it's very different than after 9/11 when we had this moment of unity and everyone came together, but in this case republicans are just so reluctant to revisit this issue, they don't want to have to be on the record or go into these hearings and talk about trump and his role. even yesterday at a press conference, kevin mccarthy and liz cheney were both asked about this, and kevin mccarthy refused to say if he thinks trump should be investigated as part of this commission, where liz cheney said she thinks former president trump should be looked at with his role, she doesn't think he should have a role in the party. so this is divisions between the democrats and republican party.

it will be on display at cpac this weekend, and especially going forward as we start to look at the midterms and these things are heating up. it's going to be tense and these divisions are going to be very, very real. >> you have some reporting on this, and i want to follow up on this because it also affects policy. it's not just cpac, but steven miller, the architect of most of the trump immigration policies, was asked to speak. and maria who beat a democrat in miami, florida. she showed up and said, sources say they are pushed for immigration policies that would broaden the gop tent while challenging miller on how republicans can attract latino voters given the ul ultraconservative policies he is advocating. this is a reminder that there are some in the republican party

who still believe the trump way is the right way. >> right, and that's what the gop is wrestling with right now, what is this identity in the post-trump world? and we're getting discrepancies among the leadership of what that should look like. they've been hauling in people like mike pompeo, former vice president mike pence earlier this week, and it just goes to show that not everyone agrees with that. melanie lazar came in and said, if we want to keep the suburban swing districts, if they want to keep seats like herself that she flipped in the november election. these are the types of things we're going to keep seeing going forward in the republican party. >> it's important we focus not just on the individual personalities but the policy debates they engender. up next for us, a mutation

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coronavirus vaccine manufacturers say they're already working out ways to increase their vaccine's effectiveness against the new covid-19 variants quietly spreading throughout the united states and throughout the world. we can note no new cases.

it saves lives, and i want to show you the map right now and you see a bit of a plateau. we've been talking about progress. 26 states, that's the beige holding steady. 21 states in green trending down, three states trending up. if we went back several months ago, this would be a map that would make us happy. however, if you look at one month ago, we were at 49 states trending down. we've begun the drop from the horrific winter peak. here he see it on the case timeline. the winter peak dropped throughout late december and through the month of january, and you see a bit of a plateau at the end right here, a leveling off right here, 11 ,57 new cases yesterday. that's the race for people to say, hey, get a vaccine if you can, but stay safe in the meantime. 9 million distributed, just

short of 6.5 million distributed. 12% of alaskans fully vaccinated. just shy of 10% in west virginia. 9% in south dakota. so the rush to get people fully vaccinated continues, but you see the numbers are still, percentagewise, pretty low across the country right now. one of the issues was the bad weather in recent days and last week. the administration was up to about 1.7, then it dropped down a little bit. 1.5 million vaccines, 1.4 million doses right now is the seven-day average. most public health experts say you need to get that to 3 million doses a day to get the desired effect here. 14 million americans have received a first dose. little more than 6 million are fully vaccinated. if you look at the variants so far, we're just shy of 2,000 cases. 1,932 cases of the covid variant in the united states.

researchers say there are south african variants. there is a new variant detected in new york making ilts way through the northeast. but in the race against these variants, check back in two or three weeks. >> it often takes four, six, even eight weeks of this virus circulating before it really takes off. going from kind of the small little brush pile fire to a large forest fire. so, you know, for me -- and the cdc modelling actually supports this, where i get concerned is in the second or third week in march. >> thlet's discuss now with epidemiologist and senior scholar at the johns hopkins hospital, kate rivers. when you hear dr. ostrom there saying essentially, check back to early or middle march to see if we are winning or at least competing well in the race g

against the variants, walk us through what that means. >> we know the case numbers are falling, so we need to push them down even further. in a few weeks we'll have a better understanding of how those variants are being established in the united states. i think florida is it the state to watch right now. they have more attractions attributable than the rest of the country. we may get a sense early from florida how these variants will interact with our outbreak here in the u.s. >> that's a great point. we'll keep our eye on florida. there is also a new variant in new york making its way through the southeast. two teams of researchers have said this week they found a worrying coronavirus variant in new york city and elsewhere in the northeast that helps evade the body's natural immune response, as well as antibody treatments. they have named the variant b.1526. what is the issue, the fact that

there are more and more of them? >> the south african variant and the u.k. variant are hot off the press. we really need more evidence to check in if those variants have any changes to public health, but i think regardless of whether those variants are determined to be problematic or not, it remains that this is an ongoing challenge we need to manage. it doesn't need to be an emergency. i think we can put in place the scientific infrastructure to find and cure those variants and find the vaccine to match. it's what we do with the flu and we can do that with this as well. >> number one, continue public health measures to slow transmission, develop a genomic surveillance strategy. it's depressing to see how far

behind the united states is in these variants. what is most important for anyone listening out there who hears about the variants? some people, for example, say, oh, why get a vaccine now? it might not be any good about these variants? how should america be processing this? >> it's really a scientific question of how we create the infrastructure to find and track these variants. as it relates to public health, all the tools and measures we've been taking all year still work. the variant still circulating in the u.s. is still perfectly good against the vaccines that we have, and even the other variants we're a little more worried about, they're circulating at such low levels that it doesn't need to be top of mind right now. if we continue to push down transmission with the masks and social distancing and avoiding gatherings, i think we can get to a better place and we can aim for a more normal summer.

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washington often speaks a very different language than the rest of america. the minimum wage debate is very much a here and now example of that. here in d.c. the biggest immediate question is about rules and process. will the senate parliamentarian say yes or no to the democrats' plan to include a federal minimum wage hike in a big covid relief package? where you live, the conversation is likely more about policy, meaning about jobs, about

dignity. many workers see an increase in the minimum wage as a path out of poverty. many business owners, though, warn that higher costs will translate to fewer jobs. vanessa, let's start with those who would benefit from this. those who say a $15 minimum wage or a higher minimum wage puts food on the table and maybe means more time with their family because they work one job instead of two or three? >> reporter: absolutely, and many workers across the country are still making that federal minimum wage which currently is that $7.25 an hour. but we spoke to one man here in washington, d.c. who said he was working two jobs from 8:00 a.m. in the morning to 8:00 p.m. at night six days a week in order to just scrape by. now he is making over $15 an hour and he says it has changed his life. >> i work only 35 to 40 hours a week and i'm making more than

two jobs that i wasn't making that much money, and now i can give some time to my family and my niece and nephew. i can cover my rent. i can -- i can save a little bit of money that i could not save before when i was working two jobs. >> reporter: it's important to note that folks who are making minimum wage are not just teenagers or people entering the work force for the first time, it's women, it's essential workers, it's those being affected most by this pandemic right now. that's why they are pushing so much for a living wage in order to support more than themselves. they have families to think about, and that is why it is so critical that many workers are reallyinr this $15 to get them to a place where they can do all of that, john. >> let's take a look. this is from the congressional budget office. the gentleman you just spoke with falls on the bottom part of this chart. the cbo says it would raise

income for 11 million workers, raise them out of poverty. that's the plus side. the cbo, though, said it would raise employment for .9% of workers. when you talk to businesses, especially small businesses, who in this pandemic are having a more horrific time than in normal circumstances, how do they strike a balance with saying, shuure, i would love to pay my workers more, but -- >> and for those who pay their workers a lower minimum wage except for tips, they'll have to scale up to that $15 an hour. but we spoke to one worker in wash washington, d.c. who said they were able to make the math work because they incorporated the $15 an hour into their business model. >> we knew this $15 an hour was coming so we put it in our business model.

but it worked for us and it was the right thing for us as a business. >> reporter: that is why president biden is asking to scale up to this $15 minimum wage over the course of five years in order to give small businesses that opportunity to change their business model. now, we know republicans are saying that's still too much. they're suggesting a $10 minimum wage scaled up over the next couple years, but for small businesses there is no doubt that this $15 minimum wage is going to be a hurdle for some, john. >> we'll know a lot more about where this is heading in the next 24 hours or so. the big house vote tomorrow. the senate parliamentarian rule could come at any minute. jessica, thank you for the real reporting not just those in the halls of congress. coming up for us, the manhattan district attorney now has ahold of the former president's tax returns, many pages long. and the gop leader says she doesn't know the senator's first

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topping our political radar today, just moments ago, jennifer granholm confirmed as

the new energy secretary. she is now the tenth biden pick to win senate confirmation. andrew cuomo denying sexual harrassment allegations from another adviser. lizzie borden alleges the governor kissed her on the lips following a one-on-one meeting in his office in 2017. he also allegedly suggested they play strip poker. four staffers who were on that flight dispute borlen's story. her stories are simply false. borlen is running for ambassador president. she first accused the president on twitter back in december. the manhattan's district attorney office says it now has former president trump's tax returns and related tax records. they got those records just hours after president trump denied the last-ditch effort to

keep those records private. south dakota's governor says attorney general ravnsborg should resign. >> that's why i think the attorney general should resign. >> ravnsborg is accused of hitting and killing a man. he said he thought he hit a deer but found the victim's body after returning to the scene of the collision the next morning. coming up for us, some state legislators making bills harder, trying to cut out absentee vo voting, mail-in voting and other restrictions. or it isn't.

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meow! nope. oh... what? i'm an emu! ah ha ha. no, buddy! buddy, it's a filter! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ your right to vote is under attack in state legislatures across america. the proposals vary from state to state, but most share two common threads. they are sponsored by republicans and they perpetuate the trump big lie that there was massive fraud in 2020. iowa now offers a fresh example. the iowa house last night giving final passage to a measure that, among other things, scales back early voting and mandates that the polls close an hour early. the iowa governor plans to sign that. the georgia governor we talked about sailed through a key committee yesterday. that limits who and can vote by

mail and it imposes new i.d. requirements. jessica, it's great to see you. it's fascinating to me, sad to me, when after an election and figuring out, how can we get more voters, states want to curtail the right to vote. >> yeah, it's really stunning. i think a lot of these bills have absolutely no chance of passing but the initial proposal of them is really what's troubling to me. most citizens aren't going to follow a piece of legislation from start foito finish. they really only hear about it when it makes the news when it's first established, and all this coverage is giving people the suspicion that perhaps they were right, right? if their legislators are taking this drastic of measures, then the election must have been flawed. >> that's the sad part. it perpetuates the big lie. if you want to make tweets and

changes, make your public case on them but make it based on facts and not a lie. georgia is next, we talked about the bill making progress. we'll see if it gets to the finish line in georgia. what proposes at the beginning may not get to the end, but i'll talk about former president trump's favorite secretary of state, brad raffensperger. he said, we are reviewing bills. once we see something that prioritizes the security and accessibility of elections, we'll throw in support. supporters perpetuating this lie about massive fraud. we're still seeing the impact of that as some republicans try to curtail the right to vote. >> absolutely. and i think that this really speaks to a split within the republican party. certainly there are folks like brad raffensperger, who i've spent a lot of time with, believes that these measures are overstated and said so publicly.

but then there is a wing of the republican party that is very dedicated to making sure that they satisfy trump's most angry base. and so i think that trump might have been thrown out of office in 2020, but his positions are certainly still in play. >> i understated the challenge. it's 43 state ledge lectures tha -- legislatures that have some voting bills in front of them, but most of them are a lie. here's a wrinkle. we talked about states res restricting early voting, cutting down voting hours, in iowa cutting down the amount of time you can vote on election day. then president trump was asking states to subvert to the will of the people and overrule the election results and pick different electors and send them to washington. the arizona bill is debating a new set of rules including one that would allow lawmakers to

review election results, quote, if needed and would grant the legislature the power to pick the state's presidential electors -- as republican lawmakers around the country work to change election laws in the wake of the 2020 election. what? >> political authority has moved down to the voters rather than state legislatures or electors as was commented in our earlier history. it's striking now to see a bill in the year 2021 that would roll back so much progress over so many decades. it's striking. and i don't think that we can underestimate how severe this really is, because we're not talking about, you know, a shift in american democracy, we're talking about a radical transformation in how americans see themselves and their own authority within our government,

and i just think that it's really appalling. i hope that that bill in arizona has no chance of passing, but who knows. >> we're grateful for your help. this is a giant challenge through the next year. thank you for joining us, folks. i'm grateful for you. brianna keilar starts right now. hi there, i'm brianna keilar, and i want to welcome viewers here in the united states and around the world. we begin with the pandemic, the nation on the verge of adding another vaccine to its arsenal in the fight against coronavirus, but new variants are threatening to derail progress. this hour president biden receives an oval office briefing on the coronavirus a day ahead of the fda's expected vote for a third vaccine. johnson & johnson's candidate will be the first single dose option in the u.s. the cdc will still need to sign off on giv