increasing across the country, use our website, c-span.org/coronavirus, to follow the trends, track the spread with interactive maps, and watch updates on demand anytime at c-span.org/coronavirus. house did not release a weekly address this weekend, however, senator tom udall of new mexico gave the address, andatic talked about the coronavirus effect on tribes and native communities. sen. udall: hello, tom udall here. i represent new mexico in the united states senate, and i'm the vice chairman of the senate committee on indian affairs. this is my final term here in the senate and i am certainly not retiring and i intend to continue my public service. but i will be saying goodbye to

the halls of congress. it has been my honor and the honor of my lifetime to serve the people of new mexico, fighting to protect our land and water, stand up for our communities, work with indian country and reform our democracy so it answers to the people. right now, the republican senate just isn't answering to the needs of the people. takenvid-19 pandemic has the lives of more than 270,000 americans. it has left millions of americans out of work, struggling to put food on the table, businesses are shutting down, and hospitals are overflowing. right now, americans are living through the worst stretch of this crisis, that for months, senate republican leaders have refused to come to the table to negotiate the urgent emergency relief that is so desperately needed. that must change.

on the indian affairs committee, i have the privilege of working with tribes and native communities from across the country on their very important priorities. they are on the front lines battling this pandemic. it has been worsened by historic underfunding from the federal government, which has led to devastating health disparities. tribes and native communities have weathered this crisis with strength and resilience, but the federal government must redouble its efforts to meet our trust and treaty obligations. i worked closely with senate democrats to secure historic levels of funding for tribes in the cares act, but that funding will expire in just a few short weeks if we don't ask. -- act. we must provide fresh resources to the indian health services, support tribal governments's

emergency relief efforts as the pandemic surges across the country, and we must fully support ihs vaccine distribution, management and monitoring throughout indian country. i am encouraged that bipartisan work is happening and the spirit of compromise is alive. with good faith negotiations, we can come to an agreement, but we needed to do much more to make sure tribes and native communities have the resources they need to beat covid-19. our shared trust and treaty obligations demand nothing less. thank you so much. cheers, take care. c-span, yourtching unfiltered view of government. created by america's cable television companies as a public service and brought to you today your television provider. week on thes this

communicators is amy peikoff, chief officer for social media site called parler. what is parler? amy: thank you for having me on. parler is a social media website. we envision ourselves as rebooting social media to make it what it was originally intended, which is to provide a free and open platform, a public square, for free speech. we also have a substantial focus on privacy, protecting individual privacy. host: as many people do when they are trying to research a new place or thing, i went to wikipedia. i want to get your reaction to what is on your wikipedia page. it says parler markets itself as free speech and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks such as twitter and facebook. however, journalists and users have criticized the service for

content policies that are more restrictive than the company portrays. amy: we have heard some of those criticisms, but i have not seen evidence that really backs it up. if you read our community guidelines, you will see we permit the widest possible amount of speech consistent with law, because of course we will not allow our platform to be used for crime or anything else. within that, we are in the spirit of the first amendment, we are neutral. to the extent there are human beings involved in the process, we have a community jury. sometimes the jury is fallible. even with the quorum system. we are viewpoint neutral, we train our jurors to be neutral. we have probably the most permissive platform.

host: when and why was parler founded? amy: it was founded in 2018 a couple years ago. rebecca mercer was involved in the beginning providing funding. they all observed there were two big problems with social media. they were becoming speech restrictive. the dominant platforms. at the same time, they were not respecting the privacy of individuals. there was a lot of data mining or as we heard in the hearings yesterday in the senate, data stripmining, a new phrase i heard. data mining to a huge extent. none of them were satisfied with that and decided instead of complaining about it like others do, they would go out and start their own platform and try to compete, which is the american approach to problems like this. host: ms. peikoff, is parler a conservative site? is it an alternative for conservatives?

amy: parler has provided a platform that is an alternative for many conservatives who feel mistreated on other platforms, but it is not intended as a conservative platform. we are viewpoint neutral. many in parler do not consider themselves either liberal or conservative. what we believe in is free speech and allowing that alternative for people has been of use to conservatives of late because they have felt they have not been treated with transparent and consistently applied policies on the other platform. they trust us because they know we are allowing the widest amount of speech possible, consistent with the law. host: how many followers at this point? amy: in terms of the counts, i