as chris was just reporting last hour, we think we're just hours away from the republicans trying again for another vote on another version of their legislation that will result in more than 20 million americans who now have health insurance losing all of their health insurance coverage. this is why the senate hasn't gone on vacation. this is why protests to try to hold on to the affordable care act have not been letting up around the country. as recently as today and into tonight, senators apparently have no idea what they're going to be asked to vote on tomorrow but they are going to be asked to vote tomorrow. so really all eyes on that tonight. we're going to be talking with a key senator tonight who is in the middle of the fight, one whose town halls have been looking like this since the health care fight started. so that's ahead tonight. here's something else to

keep an eye on that has not been making headlines. but it should. i mentioned that the health care thing is the reason that the senate is not going on their usual epic vacation that they typically take about this time of the year. that matters this year, not just for senators' vacation schedules and whether they get to spend time with their families, going to the beach and blah blah blah, it also doesn't matter just for the not inconsiderable question of whether they're going to use their extra time in washington to try to take health insurance away from over 20 million people. there's an additional reason their vacation schedule really matters this year. and that's because the president today spent yet another day taking skin off of the hide of his attorney general, jeff sessions. the president told the "the new york times" last week that he wishes he hadn't hired jeff sessions to be his attorney general. he told them that sessions should not have recused himself from overseeing the russian investigations at the justice department.

the president even suggested to reporters last week that jeff sessions might have lied to the senate under oath about his own contacts with russian officials. and that matters not just because being attorney general is a big deal, not just because the president and his attorney general are thought to be so close so there's some human drama here. this really matters for all of us in the country because of the gigantic scandal looming over this administration. as we've been reporting if the president somehow gets rid of jeff sessions as attorney general, the president would be in a position to replace him with somebody else who was not recused from overseeing the russia investigations at the justice department, and that trump choice to replace jeff sessions could then be in a position to get rid of bob mueller. to fire or otherwise block the trump-russia investigation that's being conducted by the special counsel, robert mueller. so whether or not jeff sessions

stays is really important. and that factor is why it's now way more important than it usually is to know when and if the senate is going on vacation. the shortest, easiest, most direct most unstoppable way that president trump could get rid of jeff sessions in order to replace him with somebody else who could fire bob mueller. the shortest, most direct, most unstoppable way for him to do that is for him to wait until the senate is in recess and then fire jeff sessions and make a recess appointment of a new one. make a recess appointment of a replacement attorney general and that would allow that person to serve as attorney general without senate confirmation until, i think, 2019. plenty of time to kill off the bob mueller investigation in any case. now, this top republican in the

senate. the senate majority leader, mitch mcconnell, he could stop something like that if he really wanted to by technically never letting the senate go into recess. he did that during the last administration to stop president obama from making any recess appointments. i have no idea whether he would do the same thing here to stop president trump from kiboshing the investigation through that kind of a maneuver. but the washington postulate tonight are reporting that the white house is having discussions about this prospect now. quote, president trump and his advisers are privately discussing the possibility of replacing attorney general jeff sessions and some confidants are floating prospects of who could take his place were he to resign or be fired. members of trump's circle including white house officials have increasingly raised the question among themselves in recent days as the president has continued to vent his frustration with attorney general. replacing sessions is seen as potentially being part of a strategy to fire special counsel bob mueller and end his investigation into whether the

trump campaign coordinated with the kremlin to influence the 2016 election. vacation is always interesting. but this is why we right now really are nationwide on vacation watch for the u.s. senate. with a renewed intensity. the senate going on recess really could be the opportunity that the president is looking for to push jeff sessions out, to bypass senate confirmation and to get somebody in there to fire bob mueller. so, head's up. speaking of jeff sessions, the top democrat on the you dish nair committee, diane feinstein issued a letter demanding that the attorney general come in and testify in the senate to clear up whether or not he lied to them previously about his communications with russian officials. "the washington post" reported friday night that u.s. intelligence agencies intercepted communications from the russian ambassador communicating back home to moscow to his superiors. they intercepted communications

that said that the russian ambassador has been discussing the trump campaign and u.s. policies toward russia with jeff sessions when he spoke with him during the presidential campaign. sessions himself told the senate in writing that that never happened. he told the senate in writing, back in march, that he didn't recall any discussions with any representative of the russian government regarding the political campaign. now, it's possible the russian ambassador was lying about his meetings with jeff sessions. it's possible jeff sessions was lying about his meetings with the russian ambassador. but at least the top democrat on the committee that oversees the justice department would like to figure out who was lying because one of them was. so far the republicans on the committee don't seem as excited as the democrats do at the prospect of having the attorney general come back and get sworn in again. we'll see.

more than that in just a second. today was the first day that a serving senior white house official spoke to the congressional committees that are investigating the russian attack on our election last year and the possibility that the trump campaign was in on. white house senior adviser and presidential son-in-law jared kushner was named in may by the washington post as a person of interest in the special krunl investigation into the trump-russia affair. after multiple bouts of him not disclosing his various meetings during the campaign and transition, we're not sure why today was different. but today jared kushner decided that he would disclose a new one. he waited until today, until his interview with the senate intelligence committee was scheduled today to disclose yet another meeting that he took with a russian official that neither he nor the white house nor the campaign had previously disclosed. we'll be talking with a senator on the intelligence committee

about that tonight, as well as mr. kushner's confirmation today that he did talk with the russian ambassador about setting up a classified means for him to communicate directly with the russian. government. during the transition. today jared kushner met with the senate intelligence committee. tomorrow he meets with the house intelligence committee. both of those meetings are behind closed doors. for some reason today's was not under oath but tomorrow's is under oath, which i don't get at all. but honestly congress can be a little hard to follow when it comes to closed hearings and classified material. but there are two other things to watch for that are about to happen that i think are worth sticking at the top of the show tonight. right before the election you might remember that slate.com made a splash with a long densely-reported piece about unexplained extensive data transfers maybe? at least extensive electronic

communication between a computer server associated with the trump campaign and one associated with alpha bank. alpha sbang large russian closely linked to vladimir putin. alpha bank maintains that the transfers between its server and the server connected to the trump organization, the alpha bank maintains that those electronic communications were totally innocuous. the trump campaign said at the time, quote, the trump organization has no communication or relationship with this entity or with any russian entity. sos the alfa bank and the trump organization servers thing denied in terms of it being nefarious as both parties involved. the alfa bank thing has remained a loose thread for people trying to get to the bottom of the connections of lack thereof between russia and the trump campaign while russia was attacking our election campaign last year.

whether or not yew ever cared about that before, tomorrow in the senate president trump's nominee to lead the criminal division of the justice department, he's going to get his confirmation hearing. tonight "the new york times" reports that hey, it turns out he worked for alfa bank. in fact he supervised a review of those mysterious communications between the alfa bank server and the trump organization server. he supervised one of the reviews of those suspect communications that ultimately pushed back on the suggestion that there was anything weird at all in those data transfers or electronic communications between the trump campaign and his client, this russian bank. so that confirmation hearing will be tomorrow. i should mention that this isn't just any nominee. right? running the criminal division of the justice department is a really big hairy deal. among the people who once held

that job is robert mueller, who is now the special counsel on the trump-russia investigation. the even more high-profile past job that robert mueller is even better known for is having been the director of the fbi. and that is the other thing that has popped up today that you really should keep an eye on. last week you might remember, if you watched the show last week, you might remember that we rousted nbc presidential historian michael beschloss from his vacation to give us a historian's perspective on the other, i think, legitimately shocking thing that the president said last week in the same interview where he started threatening and publicly regretting his choice of the attorney general. i say you might remember that moment from this show last week because michael beschloss's response when i asked him about the president's comments, it was not the kind of thing i was expecting and it was not the kind of thing you typically here

from a historian. >> he said that the fbi director should report directly to him as president, that immediately thereafter he said i think we're going to have a very good new fbi director. he was citing what he described as historical example in terms of explaining why the fbi director should report directly to him. was he correct in that? >> no, he was not. i found his suggestion of the fbi director working directly for the president reporting to him, that is absolutely blood chilling. >> blood chilling. coming from michael beschloss, that's a the kind of thing that sticks with you. what michael beschloss found blood chilling was this short argument from the president in his "new york times" interview last week. i'll quote you what he said. be i have noted before that the president does not usually speak in a way that transcribes well. i do not mean that as an insult. it's not a sin.

i also do not speak in a way that transcribes well. i get it. but you can clearly get his meaning here. quote, when nixon came along inaudible -- when nixon came on -- was pretty brutal and out of courtesy the fbi started reporting to the department of justice. but there was nothing official. nothing from congress. there was nothing anything. but the fbi person really reports directly to the president of the united states. which is interesting. you know, which is interesting. and i think we're going to have a great new fbi director. even the "times" reporter maggie haberman says chris wray and the president says he's highly thought of by everybody. chris wray, the president's nominee to head up the fbi, he mostly everybody, if not everybody. but if he is being nominated to run the fbi by a president who is arguing overtly that the

director of the fbi works for him directly and reports to him directly, a president who is now arguing that the fbi should basically be the president's agency and should no longer seen as part of the justice department, that is kind of blood chilling. i mean, did christopher wray accept this nomination from the president on those terms? when he accepted this nomination from the president, was it with the understanding that this is the way the president sees the fbi, because the president is now saying publicly that as far as he's concerned the fbi reports direct to him. the fbi director personally reports direct to him. did wray agree to that when he accepted the nomination? surely the senate would want to know that before they voted on whether or not to confirm him, right? apparently not. the day after the president made

those remarks to the "new york times," the judiciary committee in the senate voted to approve the nomination of chris wray to lead the fbi. it was a vote of everybody to nobody. it was a unanimous vote to approve him. in the committee. he still needs his full vote in the senate and that is expected to come up quickly. but now wnyc, reporter matt cats who made a national name for himself on his reporting of the chris christie bridge gate scandal, now he has new news about christopher wray and his last big gig before being nominated by president trump to lead the fbi. during the bridgegate scandal where the christie administration in new jersey was accused of shutting down the access to the biggest bridge in the country, three appointees or staffers pled guilty or were convicted. during that scandal governor christie retained christopher wray to be his personal attorney

representing the governor in that scandal with the legal fees all billed to the citizens of new jersey. through a public records request wnyc found that there's something a little weird about that agreement. namely, it appears that the taxpayers of new jersey started paying christopher wray to represent chris christie in the bridgegate scandal all the way back in 2014. but that fact was never publicly disclosed. well, at least it wasn't publicly disclosed for a long time. they never filed the paperwork to make it official until christopher wray had been on the job doing the job for 11 months. almost a year billing the taxpayers for his work. all the while, chris christie was gearing up for his presidential campaign without having to answer any pesky questions about his legal fees being picked upped by the taxpayers of his state because nobody had any way of knowing that was happening for almost a year. which politically was great for

chris christie at the time. it was not necessarily great for all of the taxpayers who were paying those millions of dollars in legal bills all of that time to christopher wray and his firm with no way to know they were doing it and, therefore, no way to question it. wnyc is also reporting that christopher wray stayed on the public payroll in new jersey. he and his firm kept working for chris christie on bridgegate even after the trial was over, after the trial ended and christie's staffers were convicted and sent to prison. we're not sure christopher where a stayed on. we're not sure why chris christie needed private legal representation at taxpayer expense at that point after the trial but he kept getting it and the taxpayers kept paying. then not long thereafter chris christie recommended christopher wray to president trump as a good choice to go run the fbi. he's already passed through. his nomination has already

passed through the committee. one vote left sometime soon in the senate. joining us is matt cats. he's the reporter who broke this story earlier. thanks for being here. >> you got it, rachel. thank you. >> how is this supposed to have worked? what is the distance between the two? >> normally you hire attorneys. government entities hire attorneys all the time and you have a contract. retention agreements. and then you figure out how much you'll be billing and you go ahead and the representation begins. in some circumstances if there's some sort of emergency, if your legal representation is needed immediately, then it might take a couple of weeks between the time the lawyer starts working and the government signs a retention agreement with the attorney. i spoke to as many lawyers as i know and as a reporter i know a lot of lawyers and nobody has ever heard of this lag time.

it took 11 months before any sort of retention agreement was signed. and chris wray was billing the whole time. he didn't officially send the bills into the state of new jersey so they could be paid for by the treasury. but he was billing, in fact, from september 2014 until christmas of 2014, him and his colleagues worked every single day except for three days. they were doing a ton of work. >> through the weekends and everything? >> through the weekends and everything. they were doing a ton of work for chris christie. we don't know what that work was because chris christie was never charged. we do know one thing -- the only thing we know that he did was hold on to chris christie's cell phone. chris christie's cell phone became a topic of interest in the bridgegate scenario because he had texted an aide during a key legislative hearing in which the whole scheme started to unravel. and they had a series of text messages that went back and forth during very important

times of this hearing where new details were arising. and that's a cell phone, perhaps that cell phone is one that chris wray was holding on to chris christie -- well holding on to for chris christie. >> that was of investigative interest. wasn't that cell phone the subject of a subpoena? >> the defense, the former christie aides who ended up getting indicted and convicted for the crime, they sought the cell phone and the judge ended up quashing that. that became an issue in the summer of 2016 right before the trial after chris christie's presidential run flamed out. that's the first time the public ever knew the name chris wray. we had no idea christopher wray was representing the governor. and while he was representing the governor on the public's dime, if i had filed a public information request for christopher wray's bills, nothing would have come back because there was no documentation. >> wait. so when we heard about the chris

christie's lawyer had his cell phone thing in the summer of 2016 as you say, that was the first time we knew that christopher wray was working for chris christie even though he had started doing that work in 2014? >> correct. we knew of another attorney representing the governor's office who billed in excess of $11 million and they wrote this investigative report that basically cleared the governor of wrongdoing. we thought that was the lawyer. we also knew there was a chief counsel also doing work on this case. we assumed that was it. but there was another guy doing work almost every day and that was christopher wray and we had no idea. >> billing millions of dollars for it. >> correct, including flights and meals. >> did any of christopher wray's work on bridgegate, any issues about disclosure, potentially ethical issues of holding on to the cell phone, the timing of

when hit work for christie was disclosed, did any of it come up in his confirmation hearing? to the fbi director? >> bridgegate was not mentioned once. and it's of interest because he was dealing with an important person and it was on the onus of the firm, i'm told, to sign that agreement. and if he yelled to chris christie -- >> very publicly convenient for christie that it had not been signed. >> that is all i can say it >> it begs the question of whether he'll yield to another powerful person, the president, when the time comes. >> nailing down this details of this has led to an important revelation. thanks for helping us understand it. a lot to get to this busy monday night. stay with us. steve was born to move. over the course of 9 days he walks 26.2 miles, that's a marathon.

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today for the first time a sitting senior white house adviser spoke with congressional investigators looking into the trump-russia issue. jared kushner spoke to senate intelligence committee investigators behind closed doors today but he did make a public statement on camera and he released his prepared testimony to the committee in writing. and because of that we now know a bunch of new stuff that we didn't know before. for example, jared kushner has waited until today for some reason to disclose that there was yet another meeting between him and a russian government official during the campaign that he had never previously disclosed. it was a meeting last april at the mayflower hotel in washington on the sidelines of then-candidate trump giving a

foreign policy speech. so there's that. we also today got the third new different public explanation for why jared kushner met with a guy named sergey gorkov. the head of v.e.b. that's been sanctioned by the u.s. government. veb put out a statement saying they met with jared kushner during the presidential transition because he is the head of the kushner companies. it is a very important real estate firm. of course that's why they wanted to meet with him. the white house explained, no no no, that was not. it. the white house statement was that the reason jared kushner met with sergey gorkov -- from the sanctioned bank was as part of his responsibilities as a transition official. he was doing diplomacy with a bank. today we had a third reason. explanation for why that meeting took place. jared kushner himself said he took the meeting to be nice to the russian ambassador and

because he really did want to set up a direct line of communication with vladimir putin. and this guy said he was friendly with vladimir putin. i don't know if that's supposed to make us feel better or worse about that meeting. senator ron widen of oregon , to his credit, tends to be one of the pushier members of the senate intelligence committee. which is the committee that hosted jared kushner today. senator wyden i can tell you right now will not tell us what happened behind closed doors today with jared kushner. but senator wyden did make a public statement today saying that jared kushner's statement, quote, raises far more questions than it answers. why is he saying that? >> we'll find out next. you tot. nobody's hurt, but there will still be pain. it comes when your insurance company says they'll only pay three-quarters of what it takes to replace it. what are you supposed to do? drive three-quarters of a car?

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joining us now live for the interview is senator ron wyden, democrat of oregon. he's been a key voice on the health care fight coming to a head right now in the u.s. senate and he sits on the intelligence committee. they interviewed jared kushner today. senator wyden thanks for you time sir. >> thanks for having me again. >> after jared kushner put out his written statement that he was submitting to your committee today, you put out your own statement saying that what he had said, what he had told you raised more questions than

answers. can i just ask you what made you say that, what new questions you have? >> rachel, as you know, i have focused in this investigation on the follow the money issues. and he made some very careful, very lawyerly-like comments. for example, he said he didn't rely on russian financing for his businesses. he didn't say i have no business dealings with the russians. he didn't say i have never received russian investments. and the lawyering obviously was very clever but his responses were incomplete. and as far as i'm concerned, this is just the beginning of the questioning. we've got to have him in the open so that the american people can see him questioned by senators of both parties. >> we have seen a counter argument or at least complaining from the white house and the president himself.

basically saying that past business dealings, past financial transactions by the president or by members of his family, senior people on his campaign, that there's no way that that could be related to the issue of colluding with the russian attack, that going back that far, going into business interests that weren't related to the campaign is irrelevant, should be seen as outside the bounds of the investigation. how do you respond to that. >> first of all, we have the most recent meeting in june where we still have to talk to donald trump jr. and the various parties. my own view is that was an attempt to collude. and if you look at his e-mails, if you look at his own admissions, clearly there is much explaining to do. and my own view is that the president has almost gone from saying there is no collusion to saying so what.

>> we've seen some -- i don't want to call them unprecedented because it's very hard for things to be unprecedented because we're an old country and things have happened. we've seen unusual dynamics emerge within the administration. the president several times now publicly criticizing, calling out, expressing no confidence in his attorney general. i have posited on this show. other people have started to realize, the white house, some of its advisers have started to admit that they may be gearing up to try to push attorney general jeff sessions out of his role with the idea being that if somebody else were in the role of attorney general, that person might be able to fire robert mueller and end the russia investigation that way. have you worried about that prospect and do you feel that the senate or the congress might have any recourse if that's where the president is heading? >> my own view is if the president fires bob mueller without cause, that is going to trigger a constitutional crisis

and i think all options would have to be on the table. second, with respect to jeff sessions, it just speaks volumes that the president would so personally attack someone who is such a loyal supporter. >> when you say that all options would have to be on the table and that would be a constitutional crisis, what kind of escalation are you talking about? what else would be on the table in that circumstance that's not there now? >> i would rule nothing out, rachel. as you know, the house has already begun a number of members to have discussions about impeachment. >> senator wyden, i want to ask you about what's going on with health care right now in washington. do you mind sticking with us just for a moment? we've got a little bit of breaking news about health care voting in the senate and i'd love to get your response about it right after break if you can stay. >> i will.

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version which only takes away health insurance from 21 million people, not 23 million. not knowing what the plan is does make it awkward to talk about when you're asked about it on the tv. >> as the number three republican in the senate, do you know what you're going to be voting on next week? is it repeal or is it repeal and replace? >> it's voting to get on the bill, chris. it's voting to open the debate. >> is that repeal or repeal and replace? >> i think ultimately that's a judgment senator mcconnell will make at some point this week before the vote, depending on how these discussions go. >> senator mcconnell at some point will make that call. in the meantime we are just going to vote. okay? it's not just that they don't know what's in the bill. they don't necessarily know what they want to be in the bill. cnn reporter today asked john

cornyn who leadership wants the bill to be. his answer, quote, we're not quite there yesterday. dude, vote is tomorrow. not quite there yet now? how is everybody supposed to know that they're -- nbc has spoken to three top republican potential holdouts on the bill tonight, all three told nbc some version of i don't know what i'm supposed to be voting on tomorrow, so i can't tell you how i'll vote. now, in terms of the math, the republicans lose those three votes or any three votes and they're toast. but we do have some breaking news to report tomorrow about that vote that's expected tomorrow. senator john mccain's office just announced that senator mccain will return to work in the senate tomorrow. this is almost unbelievable. he just announced last week that he's been diagnosed with brain cancer. but senator mccain expects to be back in the senate in time for the vote on obamacare repeal tomorrow.

he's expected to vote to open debate on the republican plan which will be an act forward furtherance of passing it. thanks for staying with us. let me get your reaction to this news about senator mccain, your colleague in the senate. who has had significant health challenges. seems like he'll be back. >> i'm glad my friend is feeling better. look, they are pulling out all the stops, and so are we. i'm so glad to be able to tell your viewers this is urgent, urgent business. what mitch mcconnell wants to do in either of these two approaches is turn back the clock. he wants to go back to the days when health care was for the healthy and wealthy, the insurance companies could discriminate against people who had preexisting conditions and deny coverage. what i want to say tonight to your viewers is we need you tomorrow calling and texting and tweeting. we've been able to hold them off so far because we've had a grass

roots juggernaut. be you cannot underestimate mitch mcconnell. we need everybody pulling out all of the stops tomorrow. >> what types of republican senators do you think are susceptible to their constituents' pressure on this. members of the leadership, some republicans are saying they're going to vote yes tomorrow even not knowing what the bill is. some of them are in no matter what. what do you think is susceptible? >> i never heard of people talking about a sixth of the american economy, having absolutely no information about it. people as of now are just in the dark. the people that i would be watching, first of all, there are a number of senators who understand that these medicaid cuts would really be punitive. they hurt older people who need nursing home care, kids with special needs, disabled folks. i'd watch that group of senators who have going on the trouble explaining the cuts in med a cade. also there are some conservatives who are going to be procedural concerns that in

effect this bill isn't quite mean enough for them. those are the two blocks of republican senators. >> and senator, we have been -- we watched this through the spring in the house. we've been watching it through the summer in the senate. and this effort to repeal the affordable care act, it comes up, it gets smacked down, it comes up, gets smacked down. it happened a few times in the house and we thought it was over. it's now come up to the line and be knocked back a few times in the senate. do you think that your republican colleagues are just going to keep doing this again and again and again until they find a way to pass it or at some point will this effort really be did she do? dead? >> they are going to stay at it and we have to stay at it as well until it is dead. for example, the real agenda here, rachel, is to provide hundreds of billions of tax cuts to the fortunate few. that's what they want more than anything. that and rolling back the lifeline, the medicaid safety net. these are two ideological trophies and that are in this fight as aggressively as they

could be. >> really appreciate your time tonight, senator. thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. blamsz more delicious crab than ever. classic favorites like crab lover's dream. and new dishes like southern king crab and dueling crab legs with delicious dungeness and sweet snow crab. it's all happening at crabfest. and crabfest is only happening at red lobster. now this is seafood. if you could book a flight, then add a hotel, or car, or activity in one place and save, where would you go? ♪ expedia.

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i don't speak any language other than english, which i find very embarrassing. i went to school for a long time in a lot of different places. you would think i would be able to learn other languages. i learned nothing. i can barely speak english most days and i have nothing else to fall back on. every once in a while, though, i pick up a word here and there.

today i learned a new word in polish. i learned it in print at least. when i try to say it, i have trouble. i would like some audio help, please. >> ogonek. >> ogonek. i think i'm saying it right. can i hear it one more time? >> ogonek. >> ogonek. it means tail in polish. it's also an accent mark. see the little tail hanging off the end of the "a" there. that is the new polish word that i learned today in order to understand one of the most interesting and honestly kind of inspiring stories in the world in today's news because, check this out. this was poland over the weekend. a bunch of people with signs with tails hanging off the a's, and those signs all say, free courts, free people, in polish. thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. hundreds of thousands of people

poured into the streets this weekend in hundreds of cities all across poland. part of nationwide protests against a new law that was sitting on that country's president's desk, waiting for his signature. the bill would let the polish president fire every single justice on their supreme court except for the ones that were hand-picked by his own justice minister. think about that. that would be like if when donald trump became president, one of the powers that he got as president was the ability to fire the entire slate of supreme court justices. then he could tell jeff sessions to have at it and just fill up the bench with all his personal picks. poland isn't the united states, and the united states is not poland, but there are some democratic norms that are shared across democratic countries, and one of them is supposed to be an independent judiciary, a judiciary that is not entirely controlled by the political party in power. this is a really radical change in that country, and it's been in the works for a while.

it was delayed, as least it was perceived to be delayed because donald trump came to town the weekend they had initially wanted to pass it. usually an american president coming to visit would mean that you would sort of hold off, you'd hit pause in taking major leaps backward in terms of your democratic norms. with this new president we've got, though, no need. our new president visited poland earlier this month while they're in the middle of this anti-democratic increasingly authoritarian crackdown, and he took the opportunity of being there to attack the free press in the united states. from that podium he was standing at in poland, standing next to the polish president, who really was right in the middle of radically clamping down on the right to a free press in his country. that was nice, right? a big boost of american encouragement for that country sledgehammering a cornerstone of democracy. america is with you. i think it's all fake news too. so then after donald trump left, they decided they would take the

next big step, to squash their independent judiciary. the parliament sent that bill to the president this weekend for his signature or his veto. and inside the parameters of electoral politics in poland, it should have been a done deal, and that country should have taken a giant leap backwards toward being much less democratic than it is now. but the people did not let it happen. the people did not wait patiently for their president's answer on that bill. hundreds of thousands of people turned out demonstrating against that thing every day for over a week in anticipation of the president's decision, saying if it passed, it would be the beginning of the end of democracy in poland and in that part of europe. and the crowds have been loud. they have been persistent. they have been relentless in their numbers. last night they had a candlelight vigil. the president was set to make his decision today. everybody expected him to sign it, and then he didn't. this thing was like a freight

train steaming down a straightaway on the tracks. there was nothing inside polish politics that made it seem like this thing was going to stop. the president controlling the presidency, his party controlling the parliament. they knew what they wanted to do. they've hit every other cornerstone of democracy that they can along the way to trying to dismantle it all. and with those people in the streets, he didn't sign it. he vetoed it. and the shock of that whole country reverberated around the world today. for the record, there is one controversial bill that he didn't veto, he signed into law. a different version that applies to the lower courts, letting his government strip away justices they don't like and replace them in the lower courts. but for now at least the supreme court stays untouched in poland thanks to this. day after day after day all over the country in staggering numbers, people fighting to preserve the independence of their highest court. pressure works. it always does, all over the world.

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new home loan or refinance. receive up to five free offers and choose the loan that's right for you. our average customer could lower their monthly bills by over three hundred dollars. go to lendingtree.com right now. at the lexus golden opportunity sales event before it ends. choose from the is turbo, es 350 or nx turbo for $299 a month for 36 months if you lease now. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. okay. check this out. this is people running for congress. blue for democrats. red for republicans. these are not incumbents. people who are running for a seat in congress who doesn't already have a seat in congress. there's actually a threshold you have to pass to get onto this chart. these are serious candidates.

this shows people who have filed formal campaign papers with the fec and people who have raised more than $5,000 by june 30th the year before whatever election they were going for. so this is people who are in it, who are running a serious campaign from jump. and sort of read it from right to left here. 2003, that's june 30th, 2003, so that's people running ahead of the 2004 elections. the next one is june 30th, 2005, so that's people running for the 2006 elections. you get it. you see there's a big spike in 2009, where the number of republican candidates jumps. that was ahead of the big tea party wave election for 2010, when republicans took back the house, right? remember they had that huge year in 2010. that election began with an early outsized presence of republican challengers, republicans running for congress. it really did prove to be a case of chart imitates life, right? you look back at those numbers. in hindsight you could see it coming, how huge that year was going to be for the republicans in 2010.

now we are the same distance out from the next election. we are a year and a half out from the midterm elections that are coming up, the 2018 elections. brookings has updated its chart. you want to see what it looks like now? you want to see how the count of house challengers is going for this next election? put up this year. oh, 209 democratic challengers have filed with the fec and have at least $5,000 in fund-raising. way more than double the previous high on the republican side ahead of that epic nationwide tea party election. we don't know if that will result in anything in particular in the midterm elections. we don't know if it means anything at all. but when you see a statistical jump like that, it's probably going to mean something. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel.

as we've become accustomed, "the washington post" broke a big story tonight. robert costa is going to be our first guest about this scoop that the president is really thinking about getting rid of his attorney general, bringing in a new one. appointment during the august recess, which skips the entire confirmation process and gives him an attorney general in a day. >> yeah, and they're admitting at the white house -- white house sources are admitting to "the washington post" now that the reason they want to do that is basically so it could start the process of getting rid of bob mueller. i mean recess appointment isn't the only way to do it. it's definitely the easiest way to do it. boy does that put a spotlight on whether or not the senate is going into recess. >> yeah, and of course the president has been saying up to now anyway, they shouldn't go into recess. they should stay here and work on health care. he might have a completely different idea about recess now. >> yes