yamiche: disinformation, on voting and vaccines. >> we're facing the most significant test of our democracy since the civil war. yamiche: president biden blasts republicans for their efforts to restrict voting. >> have you no shame? yamiche: as democratic state lawmakers flee texas to stop the g.o.p. from pass manager voting bills. the state's governor threatening them. >> as soon as they come back in the state of texas they will be arrested. in. yamiche: and new details about top generals fearing former president trump would attempt to coup. plus, the coronavirus surges in areas with low vaccination rates. as the surgeon general issues stark warning about the danger of health misinformation. >> simply put, health information has cost us lives.

yamiche: next. >> this is "washington week." corporate funding is provided b. keiser permanente. additional funding is provided by the estate of arnold adams. and koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. and sandra and carl delay magnuson. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, from washington, moderator yamiche alvin sin dor. yamiche alcindor.

yamiche: it has been another week full of news. much of it focused on the state of our democracy. on tuesday, president biden delivered one of the most passionate speeches of his presidency and called out republicans for trying to restrict voting rights. president biden: with recount after recount after recount, court case after court case, the 2020 electn was the most scrutinized election ever in american history. the big lie is just that. a big lie. yamiche: this comes as republicans in dozens of states are pushing to limit how and when americans vote. democrats are vowing to fight back. but it's not exactly clear how they plan to do that effectively. this week a group of texas democrats fled the state. yes, fled the state. flew to washington. the move mept republicans didn't have a quorum to pass new, restrictive voting laws. meanwhile, we learn new details about top generals worrying that former president trump would try to hold on to power at all

costs. joining me, four reporters covering it all. peter baker of the "new york times." sahil kapur, national reporter for nbc news. abby livingston, washington bureau chief for the "texas tribune," and jasmine wright, reporter for cnn. jasmine, there was a passionate speech by president biden. he talked about this being jim row-like legislation. he talked about this being almost as bad as the civil war and the issues that led to it. that being said, civil rights leaders said i didn't hear the word filibuster and i want to see more urgency and action from democrats. what's the pn from the white house perspective? what are democrats going to do to change what republicans are doing? jasmine: i think that speech in philadelphia showed that president biden uses the top priority and wanted to use the bully pulpit that civil rights activists asked for him to do to push the issue of voting rights.

when he talked about strategy, that's the open question. because you know, he tasked vice president harris to lead voting rights efforts. when you asks soars in her office what they'll do, they talk about building coalition they talk about educating voters and they talk about that she will push congress but that last part, pushing congress that is where the difficulty comes in. because frankly, as we saw with the for the people act, they do not have the votes. so you see them trying to exert outside pressure, right. she twoapt detroit, talked about voting rights issues there. she met with texas democrats, talking about voting rights there. today she met with black women in the roosevelt room. when you see her building the coalition and all of them together, but they haven't exactly outlined exactly when it comes to congress, other than just pushing, what they want to do. really, eecially because you're right, he didn't talk about filibuster in that speech. he didn't mention tse words. he didn't lay out a strategy. so if the white house is not

going to endorse the filibuster which is what these civil rights ad vo cats have asked president biden and vice president harris, i spoke to melanie camp campbell, a civil rights advocate, today at the white house, she said the filibuster conversation did come up. but if they're not going to advocate for it, there's a shortage of things that they can do to actually get legislaon passed. yamiche: a shortage of things they can do is an eloquent way to put it. they done know what they're going to do, right? peter, what are you hearing from white house sporeses --s soars about a plan -- white houses soars about a plan. peter: the thing about the speech, not just that it was passionate, but it went so far so say it's the greatest threat to democracy since the civil war. that's an extraordinary claim to make, and one some might think is overheated. but it requires action. if you're saying this is such an

extraordinary challenge, an extraordinary problem in our society and you don't do anything to change it, to fix it, you're setting yourselves up. it may be they're trying to say to the left, yeah, we get it, we understand, we agree. this is horrible what the republicans are doing. trying to basically keep them, you know, happy, but it may be also that we're trying to set up the election issue for the mid terms in 2022. without a stronger majority in congress they won't get through what they'd like to get through. even with -- even they got rid of the filibuster, they don't necessarily have 51 votes much less 60 votes. this may be more about setting up the issue rather than legislation. yamiche: sahil, you talked to senator warnock from georgia. talk to us about what he told you and overall where does voting rights legislation stand right now? sahil: the landscape for voting rights advocates is a tough one. the only way to get something major done on voting rights on

capitol hill is to pierce through the filibusternd the reality is there are two democratic senators who are outspoken in defense of the filibuster that is west virginia's joe manchin and krirsen sinema. sinema is a co-sponsor of the for the people act she wants it to become law but doesn't believe it's worth getting rid of the 60 vote rule. i spoke to senator warnock, asked him what he told the president. he wouldn't say but he was emfa sittic that democrats can't give up. they need to try to get voting rights done. he said there's talk in congress about democrats doing a $4 trillion economic package, whether it's infa structure, the safety net families programs, in addition to the $1.9 trillion covid relief bill. a point to me is none of that would have happened if he didn't win in georgia. and in his view what the republicans are trying to do is prevent democrats from being able to win in georgia. so he said voting rights shut up

a priority for democrats. his path forward was a carveout for the filibuster. his suggestion, his proposal to democrats was a carveout for the filibuster, for voting rights issues and the john lewis voting rights advancement act is coming up this fall. it likely has a path to passage in the house. it will face the same problem in the senate, no path to 60 votes. his view is they should pair with the john lewis voting rights act some provisionses in the voting rights act such as a federal holiday for voting day. yamiche: abby, we're so luckilyy to explain -- to have a texas reporter to explain what's going on. what have these texas lawmakers accomplished here? what's the end game here as they are still in d.c. avoiding giving g.o.p. lawmakers the quorum. abby: what is the end game is the key question. i can probably assure you that a lot of those democrats who fled the state don't know. but the question is, they all got onto some private planes on

monday and flew to an airport in virginia and then they came to washington. back home in texas, the republicans are threatening them with everything but the kitchen sink to get them back into the tate and make quorum, including a threat of arrest. but wi regard to what the efficacy of this is, it remains unclear if they'll move legislators. the people they've met with with are mostly friendly audiences, senators who agree with them. the one senator they're targeting over and over is senator joe manchin of west virginia, the most powerful player in this debate. he has welcomed them into the office and they have felt good about their conversations with him and felt he's been receptive. but then at the end of the week, this is sort of the coe da of all ofhe friend si and excitement, we learn joe manchin atnded a fundraise for the houston, texas, where most co-hosts were republicans, who have given to the governor, the speaker, who are the arch nem cease ofhe democrats.

sahil: manchin will take all the meetings, listen to everyone but at the end of the day he refuses to budge on the filibuster. that's where the voting rights advocates have ahallenge. yamiche: i want to circle back, before we go to the coup news, because obviously we have to get there the vice president, you cover her closely. it's part of the reason we wanted you on tonight, you are sort of a kamala harris whisperer. tell me what's going on in her office. there's reports of dysfunction. how does that connect to her ability to get something done on voting rights. jasmine: there were reports of dysfunction and you saw a concerted effort on the part of the white house to shield them really and say we have support and tina fournoy, who is chief of staff, who a love of -- a lot of accusations were reported against, they say they have support for that office. and they view vice president harris is a real influential partner. now, a lot of times we talk

about these issues that come up with vice president harris, i talk to former staffers, former aides, folks who are close to her. they say this seems like deja vu. this came up in the primary campaign. this is something that they have had to deal with before. alsos soars tell me that, you know, it is also a facet of sexism and racism and that she's playing at this high level. folks don't know exactly how to ver her. so sometimes they do a bad job. as a black woman in the media, i would say yes there are double standards, there's merit to that argument. but there's also a trajectory of problems that we see sometimes coming out of vice president harris' office. i think one of the ways that they react to it, especially vice president harris, is she puts her head down and gets back to work. that's something if you talk to folks in the office they say that's what they are focused o so going forward, i think that there'll be, you know, we'll be looking to see what action comes out of this, if there is any

rejiggering in the office. but right now what they want to focus on is getting back to work. yamiche: gotcha. that's a story we'll have to keep watching, the vice president's office. meanwhile, there's shocking reporting in a new book called "i alone can fix quits, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff general mark melee feared president trump would launch a coup. millie reportedly told aides, quote, they're not going to f-ing succeed, we're they can't do it without the military. he saw paralls between the rise of hitler and the final months of the trump presidency, he feared president trump would have a, quote, reichstag moment, a reference to the burning of the german parliament. peter, tell me a little bit about how worried top officials were about president trump going, possibly having a coup and trying to stay in power and

using the military. peter: it was a serious issue and serious concern in the pentagon at the time. that the grea reporting from phil rucker and carolly nick. my wife and i are writing on this subject as well. they were concerned about two things, millie was, the chairman of the joint chiefs. one is the use of military in settling political issues here at home. settling the election in trump's favor. the second one was starting a war, the last days of this presidency, with iran that would get the country in the middle of a full-blown confrontation in the middle east, something he was trying to stop. he was very, very concerned. to the point where he told the joint chiefs, tole the senior military offices of -- officers of the government, not to take any illegal orders from the president without talking to him first. very much like what the defense secretary did when nixon was on his way out in the last days of watergate. the president has issued his -- the former president issued a statement this week saying, i didn't consider any c u -- coup

and if i did i wouldn't have done it with him which is curious response. yamiche: curious? it's incredible. peter: makes you wonder, well then who would you have done the coup with? in any case, what you see happening, even to this day, even as he puts out the statement that he didn't want to do a coup, he's arguing the election is invalid, trying to find a way to invalidate the will of the peopl he may not have used the military to do so. you still have a president out there, former president out there, trying to reverses the democratic election he lost. yamiche: sahil, i want to come to you. talk about how this might impact the january 6 select committee and are we seeing a swell og witness lists? could we see the general possibly called in to testify? sahil: it's plausible. the democrats on that committee and speaker pelosi who appointed them, i should say republican as well, liz cheney, they have held their cards close to the vestful

they have not had their first hearing yet, it could happen as early as next week. but the fact is, according to many democratics soars i have spoken, to president trump's actions and behavior leading up to the january 6 attack on the capitol is going to be part of this investigation. the fact that there were people around him, people advising him that are now speaking publicly about things they saw, thins they felt, it seems quite likely that earth behind closed doors or in a public setting that some of these individuals including potentially general millie will come up to testify. one other point i want to make about president trump's second statement on general millie, he called onillie to be punished and be tried in a military tribunal. this is part of a pattern with the former president. people who criticize him, he calls on them to be sued. he calls on them to be fired. sometime he is called on them to jailed, this goes back to lock her up, it's anwe authoritarian instinct he had.

yamiche: abby, the threat that general millie was concerned about, president trump is now not in office but the idea of conspiracy theories and people trying to take over the government and nazis on our own soil, that's not a threat that's going away. talk about how misinformation is spreading in red states like texas and other places. abby: absolutely. you see it on the vaccine front. you see it on the voting -- the entire premise of what we discussed previously, the voter suppression bills as the democrats describe them. the entire reason this is being debated, there's not a widespread problem of voter fraud but the premise is based on the belief that the election was overturned, or was thrown to the democrats illegally. so this is just infiltrating every sector of politics, every sector of american life. it is going to be difficult for us to get on the same page ever again. yamiche: meanwhile, covid-19 numbers on the rise again in america. things have not gotten as bad as they were in 2020.

but in the last two week, the u.s. saw an increase in new case, hospitalizations, and deaths are also slightly up. that's according to data compiled by the "new york times." los angeles county announced it will require masks again indoors even for vaccinated people. yet after facing pressure, g.o.p. lawmakers, officials in tennessee, abandoned all vaccine outreach to adolescents according to local reports and the surgeon general warned in personal and stark terms about the dangers of vaccine misinformation. >> it's painful for me to know that nearly every death we are seeing now from covid-19 could have been prevented. i say that as someone who has lost 10 family members who covid-19 and who wishes each and every day that they had had the opportunity to get vaccinated. yamiche: i want to come to you, jasmine. you talk to white house officials that they're getting more and more concerned. but that being said, what can

the whiteouse do? what are the president's options to really try to get more people vaccinated when politics are so intertwined in this as abby was talking about? jasmine: i think one thing you see the white house leaning into, especially the later half of this week, is the misinformation campaign, trying to combat misinformation. both people's personal responsibility and, you know, passing it around, and also social media's responsibily. we saw white house press secretary jen psaki calling out facebo, saying clearly the white house is unhappy, they were not doing enough to remove posts off their website in fast enough time. we see them coming out with an unprecedented advisory, trying to make the case that, with as much -- with the amount of misinformation around that is going to immediately dampen vaccination efforts. immediately turn people away from getting these vaccines. that's one of the things that we have seen them really lean into.

i think another thing they're battling is just the rise of cases around the country. weear them talking about sending a surge teamo nevada and missouri to try to combat the rise of cases. and to bring up vaccinations. but still, even with all their efforts, i think there's still a real question of, regardless of their strategy, how much can the federal government do to actually change the minds of this voting block, this block of americans that say they just don't want to get vaccinated? that is always going to be really unclear. yamiche: peter, i want to come to you. the press secretary was calling out facebook, the president said, the quote is, they're killing people, whensked about facebook and their responsibility for various misinformation. facebook did push out and say actually we're saving lives. that said, talk about the president -- the strategy here and the challenge here when it comes to vaccine misinformation and what can the president

really do? >> the problem -- peter: the problem is the person vaccine skeptics are looking to for validation and guidance is not president biden. he's not the person who has the sway with the people who are so reluctant. the people who are influential with that group either haven't chosen to speak out visibly or have but haven't made much of an impact. i think obviously president trump. not all these vaccine resisters are president trump voters but a lot are. even though he has every political reason in the world and legacy reason in the worrell to take ownership of the vaccine since it was developed on his watch and he'd want to go out and talk about it, he hasn't made a point of going out and saying, it is your -- not only your, for your benefit to get vaccinated it's your duty as an american citizen to get vaccinated because it'll help the country as a whole. he hasn't done that how effective that would be with a lot of his voters and people who are skeptical, i'm not sure. he hasn't try. the problem for the biden people

is the people who like biden, who are listening to biden, are the one who was already been vaccinated. yamiche: abby, we saw this development in tennessee where they're halting vaccine outreach to adolescents for all vaccines, not justhe covid vaccine. it's pretty stunning. talk about how you're seeing misinformation play out in red ste in places like texas, tennessee, and as that's going on is there anything to learn from these states and what they're tryin to do to get people more vaccinated? abby: we saw the first lady and second gentleman come to texas to promote getting vaccines because the rates were so much lower than the rest of the country. that's an alarming statistic for the state. but what i can tell you is, i have seen it in my personal life with folks i know back home. i think the vaccine has become yet another marker of which team you're on and i think what's extraordinary is you hear folks talking about, i don't believe the science. and you know, i think when we

look at it from a bigger picture we need to look at our education system and how biology is taught and registered with folks. because it is -- folks think they know this stuff better than public health officials. it's a major problem. yamiche: it's such a good point that this has become another football. what team are you going to be on? sahil, republicans, at least some of them, are weaponnizing vaccines including we'll say conservative media personalities. what do you make of that? is there an end game here for the g.o.p. when it comes to that? there are people now dying and the k.d.c. director is saying this pandemic is turning into an unvaccinated pandemic. sahil: this issue has become the latest casualty of the never of ending red vs. blue culture war. the constituency, the groups of americans that say they are most likely to reject the vaccine are self-identified republicans, rural americans and white evangelicals.

that's the heart of president trump's base. i think he could be very influential if he were out there encouraging these people to get vaccinated. it is right now a self-perpetuating cycle. voters tend to distrust -- these groups of voters distrust scientists. the politicians in their party, many of them, at least not all of them, are stoking that distrust. and the conservative media personalities that you talked about are reenforcing that as a way to present themselves as the only arbiters of truth for people looking for alternates soars of information. it's a self-perpetuating cycle. i can think of one person who would be good at that and he's not doing it. yamiche: president trump, of course. jasmine, most o the people who are dying, 99.5% or 99.9% of the people who are dying are unvaccinated. that said, there is still this various that has disproportionately impacted people of color. talk a bit about what's at stake in this country and who are the

people most vulnerable. jasmine: the people most vulnerable are those that the white house is not reaching. that includes black and brown communities and i think that you see vice president harris leaning in to target those communities. we saw her in detroit talking about vaccines. we've seen her in some of these smaller communities talking about vaccines. we've seen the white house setting up those mobile clinics all really trying to attack this demographic. but a lot is at stake here. a lot of times when you look at the vaccine rollout, something i've heard is, why do -- why are they pushing vaccines so hard in our communities but they are not coming and bringing economic incentives to our communities? i think it's something the white house has to balance. but you're right that this is a constituency that often feels ignored. yamiche: that's all the time we have tonight. a lot at stake. thank you to peter, sahil, abby and jasmine for sharing your

reporting. carol he nick and peter will be here to discuss their book "i alone can fix it," and tune in for an in depth look at the scorched earth on the ground as the western u.s. expernces extreme drought. join us for the white house extra. thank you for ginning us. good night. for joining us. good night. ♪ >> corporate funding for "washington week" is provided b-

>> for 25 years consumer cellular has been offering no contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-based customer service team can help find the plan that fits you. to learn more visit consumer cellular . tv. visit consumercellular . tv. >> keiser permanente. additional funding provided by the estate of arnold adams. koo and patricia yuen and the yuen foundation, committed to bridging culturalifferences in our communities. and sandra and carl delay magnuson. the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

-this program is made possible in part by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [ beethoven's "moonlight sonata" playing] ♪♪ ♪♪ -it's january 1933, and germany has a new chancellor. he refuses to engage in the boring day-to-day detail of running a country. he has no interest in the opinions of experts and refuses to read iefings.