same way a cocktail party for billionaires endangers everyone if they are careless how they deal with each other and the covid-19 virus spreads. the same thing can happen here. we'll have the luxury of looking back later and saying did that turn out to be okay, to have these much reduced jail populations? but that's no what we're up to right now. wa we're doing right now, simply put, simply trying to save lives and that's part of the mission of prosecutors, to preserve public safety. >> district attorney of philadelphia, thank you so much. that is "all in" for this evening. the rachel maddow show starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, chris. thank you, my friend. much appreciated. thanks to you at home for joining thus hour. happy to have you with us. in massachusetts, there were 1838 confirmed coronavirus cases yesterday. 1838. that number rose today, to more than 2400 cases. nearly 600 new cases in one 24-hour period. and that same kind of story is being told all over the united

states today. where the coronavirus has extended its reach to every state in the country, where we're starting to see these rapid increasing, in some cases exponential increases, in the number of cases, and the number of hospitalizations, and the number of icu beds, occupied, and ultimately, in the number of americans dead. now, massachusetts is like other states in the country dealing with a rapidly-expanding, rapidly-increasing epidemic. massachusetts is also known worldwide for its gold standard health facilities, particularly in and around greater boston. the front page of the boston globe tonight zeros in on a particularly unnerving aspect of this epidemic, specifically in massachusetts. more than 150 boston hospital workers test positive for coronavirus. in a disturbing rise, hospitals in greater boston are seeing a disturbing rise in the number of infected workers from just a handful last week, to more than

150 now. massachusetts is a pretty deep blue state. but like deep blue vermont, and deep blue maryland, massachusetts is one of these blue states that happens to have a republican governor. and massachusetts' case, it is a fairly moderate republican governor named charlie baker. and charlie baker does not have a particularly high national profile. if you have ever seen him speak, as massachusetts governor, you might not remember it. and i do not mean this in a bad way at all. it's just descriptive. he is what you would call mild mannered. when he speaks, he is, you know, he's a big tall in command handsome-looking governor guy, but when he speaks, he's, you know, mr. monotone. nothing wrong with that. he's just very understated in his affect to an almost painful degree. except when he's not. except for example today. when he erupted in anger and got

close to swearing over what is honestly this insane phenomenon our country is coping can right now, which is that states are being left to fend for themselves, and compete against each other in the open market, and against the federal government, when they're trying to source life-saving equipment to handle the pandemic and specifically to keep our health workers alive. so that they can continue to treat the sick and dying. here is massachusetts governor, mild-mannered monotone massachusetts governor charlie baker today, talking about the fact that his state is regularly being outbid, including by federal agencies, by our own federal government, when the state is trying to buy critical medical equipment to keep health care providers alive in the state of massachusetts. >> the biggest thing i would say is that we are doing everything we can through an incredibly

messy thicket that is enormously frustrating for all of us to try to get them the gear that they deserve and they need. and i spoke in my opening remarks about compassion and bravery, okay? there are a lot of very compassionate and very brave people here in the commonwealth who are doing what they can to serve people, recognizing and understanding that in this particular area, the entire country is struggling to deliver, and you know, i at that time stand here as someone, i stand here as someone who has confirmed orders for millions of pieces of gear, evaporate in front of us, and i can't tell you how frustrating it is. you know, we now have other orders that are outstanding, that are probably quote-unquote confirmed, but we've literally gotten to the point that our basic position until the thing shows up in here in the commonwealth of mass, it doesn't exist. but i'm telling you, people are spending hours and hours and hours trying to get this stuff here. for exactly that reason.

our first responders, our health care workers, everybody deserves to have that gear. and i'm telling you, we're killing ourselves trying to make it happen. >> it was never go can to be, going to be easy. states were always going to be killing themselves trying to make sure they can continue to operate their hospitals and ambulances and keep health workers alive to treat the sick and dying during this pandemic but there is no reason there is no rational reason, one part of the reinstates are killing themselves to get the equipment is because every state in the country is competing against every other state in the country for the same finite supply of equipment in the market. and not only is the federal government not playing a role in nationally coordinating the supply lines and mandating the manufacture of this material, and coordinating the distribution of this equipment so it gets to where it needs to go most urgently first, not only

is the federal government not playing that kind of a coordinating role, they themselves are competing with the individual states to get this equipment as well. and so therefore, it is bidding wars for one thing. therefore, it's orders evaporating, in big states like massachusetts, with thousands of cases, and some of the best hospitals in the country, and 150 health workers already tested positive, it's those orders, for millions of pieces of equipment that are evaporating. because they're competing against the other states. they're literally competing against the federal government. and they're getting outbid and it is all because the federal government cannot or will not get it together. >> this is not the way to do it. this is ad hoc, i am competing with other states, i'm bidding up other states on the prices. you have manufacturers who sit there, and california offers them $4, and they say, well

california offered $4, i offer $5, and another state calls in and offers $6, it's not the way to do it. i was speaking to governor jb pritzker yesterday about this, why are we competing? let the federal government put in place the federal defense production act. it does not nationalize any industry. all it does is say to a factory, you must produce this quantity. that's all. >> when i call these ventilator manufacturer, in one case, they told me i was competing with fema to acquire ventilators so i'm competing against the federal government to get ventilators for the state of illinois. and the federal government is not distributing ventilators to the state of illinois. so i'm literally working against, you know, a competitor. now, here, i'm competing with my own federal government. >> right now, we're facing two big problems.

first, it is that we have a critical shortage of medical supplies. masks, ventilators, coronavirus tests, and more. but the second and potentially even bigger problem is that all 50 states and thousands of hospitals are being forced to fight against each other, in a bidding war, for these scarce supplies. and in some cases, as governors and hospitals are desperately trying to find suppliers, they're spending precious time trying to figure out which ones are legitimate and which ones are scam artists. this lord of the flies scenario encourages hoarding and price gouging that make it even harder to get these supplies where they need to go. this isn't just inefficient, it's costing us time and lives. we need bold federal action to take over the supply chain and direct the distribution of these critical resources, identify private sector capacity to produce millions more units of ppe and critical medical equipment. coordinate the distribution of these supplies.

ending the unnecessary competition between states and health care institutions, for these scarce resources. drastic measures are required. and that's why we need to federalize the manufacturing and distribution of critical medical supplies. >> it may be that we just got unlucky with having the wrong president at the wrong time, right? it may that a better president, a better-run federal government, could do this thing that we need right now. bringing the power of the federal government to bear to assure critical supplies of life-saving medical equipment, gowns and masks and other protective equipment to keep doctors and nurses alive, ventilators and other complex medical equipment to keep patients alive, testing kits and lab capacity to process those kits to get our hands around the size of this epidemic and trace the contacts of infected people, find out who is infectious and who must be ice lateed so they stop making, isolated so they stop making the epidemic even

bigger. we need all of those things, right? we need the power of the federal government to be brought to bear to assure critical supplies along with those things. because it doesn't just happen naturally in the market in the context of a pandemic. for whatever reason, this particular administration, the federal government under this particular leadership just cannot do it. or will not do it. and so you see governor baker there, republican governor of massachusetts, you see governor cuomo in new york, you see governor pritzker in illinois, and connecticut, lamenting that every state for themselves and literally the states are competing with one another and the federal government for masks and hand sanitizer and driving up the prices and leaving some supplies stockpiled even now, and some supplies stockpiled waiting for better bids and leaving doctors and nurses in the most hard-hit hospitals already using the same masks day after day, shift after shift, patient after patient, and this

is only the first hospital influx. this is only the initial hospital influx. and already, the hardest-hit hospitals are out of protective equipment for doctors and nurses. which is not because there isn't enough protective equipment in the world. it's that it is not in the right places because nobody is running the supply chain to make sure it is. and with the united states now leading the world in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, according to statistics from johns hopkins tonight, the united states is now the largest epidemic worldwide, more cases than china, more cases than italy, more cases than anyone, u.s.a., we're number one, in that context, this lack of federal coordination, the fact that we do not have a national response to this crisis, is revealing its mortal consequences by the day. on ventilators specifically, right now, we've got the engineering labs at m.i.t., running open source experiments to try to invent new lower tech

ones that could be manufactured cheaply, we've got major automakers saying they think within a few months they may be able to pair themselves up with other better-suited manufacturers to maybe have something a few months down the road, we've got veterinary schools, donating ventilators used for large animals to hospitals for humans. because large animal ventilators can be converted to human use, we'll try, it at least, hospitals are now rating the stash offence, raiding the stash of anesthesia machines from operating rooms because those machines can maybe be used as ventilators for some of the patients who are crashing from coronavirus? as of today one of the premiere hospitals in new york, one of the premiere hospitals in the world, new york presbyterian is, starting to split ventilators between multiple patients and you're sick enough when you need a ventilator and i don't mean they're taking turns between patients, i mean they've literally got the same machine pumping oxygen through the usual machinery and tubes but they're

splitting the tubes and instead of the machines pumping into the lungs of one patient, that one machine is pumping into the lungs of two patients simultaneously. this is something that has been innovated before. it was done for example in las vegas on an emergency ad hoc basis on the night of the mandalay bay massacre when a gunman shot and wounded hundreds of patients at a country music show in 2017. and they tried it in the trauma centers in las vegas, when the las vegas hospitals had hundreds of people with gunshot wounds, to try to keep alive, all at once, all in one night. they split the air tubes on ventilators then. as the very last gasp. as the last thing they could do in that incredibly, incredibly just unimaginable surprise shock situation. splitting ventilators between multiple patients, it's a technique that has been explored

by critical care physicians in some other places as well. just in case. just in case there is ever such an apocalyptic scenario in terms of health care that you might have to try something that risky, that extreme. this for example is a critical care doctor in detroit, michigan, who helped try to develop this technique, as just as an experimental protocol for the most dire situations. >> i always hoped that we would never need to use it in this way, but you can never predict what's going to happen in a disaster, and if it was me, and i had four patients, and they all needed intubation, and i only had one ventilator, i would simply get a shared discussion meeting with all four families and say i can pick one to live and try to have all four live because it is clearly only to be used in dire circumstances. >> only in a dire circumstance. would you ever try something like this. that's where we are. with even premiere new york city hospitals now resorting to this, even though it's dangerous.

even though these machines are not designed to be used this way. even though, even the non-doctors among us can understand if one machine is pumping oxygen into the lungs of two patients, that can't be calibrated to the needs of each patient individually. each patient is going to get what the other one is getting because the machine can't do two different things at once. not if it's one machine designed for one set of lungs and you're just splitting the air tube. and so by doing this, by having to do this already, american hospitals already are turning the sophisticated life-saving machine for the sickest patients into this blunt instrument that can maybe do this job but maybe not. but what are you going to do? what are you going to do? one new york doctor telling "the new york times" tonight, quote, nobody believes this is the best way to ventilate somebody. this is for the doomsday scenario. it is sub optimal. but the other option is death.

the shortage of ventilators is real. but it does not need to be this dire on the front lines this fast. i mean not every ventilate nert united states is in use so why are they having to split them experimentally at new york presbyterian, they are having to do that because not even every ventilate ser not in use, the ones that need them can't get them, there is no national coordination of how to use them and we're not maximizing the use of the ones we've got. >> frank kendall who served as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and logistics in the obama administration tells "the new york times" tonight quote, this is a national crisis, in a time of scarcity, you can't leave it up to companies and governors to manage it themselves. the times says quote what is really needed, a number of public health experts and former government officials say, is for washington to take control of the nation's existing ventilator

supply. because peak coronavirus infections will hit cities and regions at different times in the coming months, and a centralized federal effort could send unused machines to hospitals that need them the most. could. could. we could do that. if we had a national response to what's happening in our country. we could be doing it that way. if there was a federally-led national response to this crisis. but instead, it's every state for themselves. it is everybody who wants to help for themselves. and so okay, veterinary hospitals, do what you can, see if that might help. the "washington post" reporting tonight that on a conference call between the president and the nation's governors the president once again says that as far as he was concerned, the role of the federal government is to be quote backup for the states. washington state governor jay inslee reportedly told the president in response, quote, we don't need a backup. we need a tom brady.

meaning we need a quarterback. we need the federal government itself to be using its unparalleled sole power to mandate the production of critical medical supplies and to coordinate their distribution, to get them distributed where they need to be, without the states doing it themselves, all 50 of them, all at the same time. fighting it out, among themselves, and even fighting it out with the federal government, in competition over who will pay the highest price. the post reports that the president responded to governor inslee by being quote defensive of his efforts. at least he's defending someone. meanwhile, it really is a free for all in the united states of america. the stiu, big service employees union, they took it upon themselves to source masks for california health workers and they think they found 39 million n95 masks inexplicably parked at

one supply ner pennsylvania. what were they doing there? thank you for finding them, sciu. if that fishing expedition pans out, well that's how california health workers will get some masks. and you know, the national cathedral in washington, d.c., they found 5,000 masks stored in a crypt. ten-year-old masks, stashed in a crypt in the national cathedral. sure. that's how dc area hospitals will get some masks. i mean this is national crisis governing by tag sale. this is northerly crisis governing by dumpster diving. but this is the federal leadership that we happen to have when this crisis arrived and so this is how we are doing it. "usa today" leads tonight with a story about florida, and florida frankly looms right now in terms of serious worries about what may be coming for that big frankly poorly governed state, with millions of elderly residents.

florida knows that it has over 2,000 coronavirus cases right now but as allen gomez reports for "usa today" this evening, the state of florida has next to no testing, so who knows what the real number is in florida. here is "usa today" this evening, in naple, a city in southwest florida, where the median age is 66, a hospital abruptly stopped the drive-through testing site this week because they ran out of testing kits. doctors in winterhaven, a city in central florida, where a quarter of the population is 65 or older, they're waiting up to ten days to get results on coronavirus tests. in south miami, a neighborhood surrounded by retirement home, the president of one community hospital took out a $380,000 loan on his own house to secure the delivery of 1,000 test kits per week for the next two months. he just did it himself. with his own money. a loan against his house. florida officials have completed

27,000 tests so far in the entire state. total. cumulatively. for the duration. 27,000 tests total. new york is doing more than 18,000 tests a day now. because, sure, every state for itself. and in florida, god bless its 20 million residents, the governor there so far doesn't even think they need a stay-at-home order. why bother? it seems like there is only a couple thousand cases. if you don't text anyone, maybe that number won't shift too fast and maybe the number won't do anything and see how it goes. in new jersey, they are testing. in new jersey, the number of cases rose by 2,500 overnight. and louisiana, their number of cases went up by over 500 cases in 24 hours. which is bad on its own terms but it is particularly bad when you realize that in the new orleans area, which seems to be the heart of louisiana's

fast-growing outbreak, they've only got 500-something icu beds in the whole region, and as of today, they're getting more than 500 new cases a day. this is the grand lobby of one of new york's fancy hospital, mount sinai in manhattan, they're fitting out in that lobby, what they call patient pods, and the public access area, the public library of mount sinai. the lobby. there's word today, welcome word, that the first hospital beds are about to go into operation at the cavernous convention interest center in manhattan, jarits center, the partnership with the army corps of engineers, the first 250 or so beds in the convention center, should be operational by monday. amidst a federal government response that has been absent in the most important ways, the military is starting to move.

the military has not been fully tapped by the federal government to join this response yet. but it is starting up. and the army corps of engineers is moving. yesterday, you might have seen the army put out this request for veteran retired soldier army health officers to please return to service to their country. it's interesting to see it. the date, wednesday, march 25, 2020. subject, army announces voluntary recall of retired soldiers for covid-19 response. quote, the u.s. army is reaching out to gauge the interest of our retired officers, noncommissioned officers, and soldiers, who would be willing to assist with the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic response effort. if interested, and you remain qualified to serve in any of the following health care specialties, 60 f, critical care officers, 60 n anesthesiologists, 66 f, nurse aness they 'tises. 66 s, critical care nurse. 66 p, nurse practitioner. 66 t, e.r. nurse.

if you remain qualified to serve in any of these health care specialties, quote, we need to hear from you, stat. quote, if you are working in a civilian hospital or medical facility, please let us know, we do not want to detract from the current care and treatment that you are providing in the nation. the army sent out that request after 5:00 p.m. yesterday, the army says today, that they have heard from more than 9,000 retired soldiers, who raised their hands, and said yes, in less than 24 hours. more than 9,000. the army corps of engineers as i mentioned is moving. they have been building field hospitals and converting other facilities, to hospitals and hospital overflow in new york and washington state and around the country at a time when the federal response has been importantly lacking. seeing the military come online, seeing the army corps of engineers come online, has been an important thing.

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lastly, how do you convert a room to negative pressure? >> i'm going to get super simple. it is actually a little tiny unit like hotel rooms, almost every hotel room has a little tiny unit back in the corner, self contained for that particular room and we want to bring the pressure down two or three psi and adjust that unit to be able to suck more air out down through the bathroom vent to be able to have a negative pressure. on the door, you put up a big piece of plastic with a dipper on it, a zipper on. >> it and it is a relatively simple process and if we can't use the existing unit we will rip it out and put another one in that is higher pressure. we want to suck the air down so we have a negative pressure. >> the army corps of engineers deploys in a national crisis, tailoring what they do with the crisis at hand, 9/11 required a

different response from say a hurricane, and in this moment, what this national crisis requires is, a, speed, and b, building, and that is something that the army corps of engineers can provide in both counts. what they are building now is hospitals, lots of them, in different parts of the country, in federal partnerships, and state partnerships, where they're most in demand. lieutenant john todd semini is the chief of engineer, the commanding general of the u.s. army corps of engineers, in normal times we civilians do not hear from him directly all that much, but just watch him here watch the lech tern in this next clip and notice how the general starts speaking and gets down to business even before he puts his papers down. >> can we get a quick update on new york. >> sure. >> so barbara, before i talk about a specific state, i think it is important to lay out our concept here because you've not heard this and we will talk

about this a lot probably in the next couple of weeks. this is an unbelievably complicated problem and there is no way we will be able to do this with a complicated solution. we need something simple. we want to use new york as a standard center. and in my talks with governor cuomo, he said what can you do, and the biggest thing you can do is start identifying facilities and how fast do you need them and i need one tonight. i need three by tomorrow night. the bottom line is, we got to do something very, very quick. most of the governors are saying that their peak is somewhere around the middle of april. so this is not take all the time in the world to do it. this is what is just barely the most important things we have to do in order to be able to come up with a good enough solution. >> when a reporter asked about states beyond new york, that have asked the general, the u.s. army corps of engineers for help, he responds, by saying, quote, it's too long a list right now. in other words, i don't have time to reel that off to you. joining us now for the interview tonight, is the lieutenant general, chief of engineers and commanding john of the u.s. army

corps of engineers, general, an honor to have you with us tonight, thank you for taking time, i know you're incredibly busy. >> and thanks for having us on and our department of defense, our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those families affected by this terrible virus and we in the army corps of engineers are doing whatever we can do to help mitigate this bed shortage, we certainly want to be able to do that. >> tell our audience in general terms what the army corps of engineers does, and what you have been asked to do so far, as part of this pandemic response. >> so we primarily do all of the construction for the army and we do a lot of other construction for the navy, the air force and other key elements in the department of defense and we have been asked to step up for the inner-agency and help out, and specifically tonight, i'm really here talking about what we do on behalf of fema, and so it is almost a national capability, to be able to step up and provide options. and this is where you heard in that clip, where a lot of governors said, we've got to be

able to build hospitals in a couple of weeks. you can't build a hospital in a couple of weeks. and the whole goal of what we're trying to do is to go into an existing facility, something that is already built, and therefore modify it, to be able to take care of that shortage. just think if you've got a hotel, or a sports arena, it's already built to code, it's already got water and it's got electricity and got fire and safety, and then to be able to go into that facility, and modify it just enough. we can talk about the javi it. s center but that's exactly what, this great team is doing across the street here tonight by converting a convention center, into a potential hospital, that can hold up to 2900 people. >> about how many different facility conversions of the type you're describing is the army corps of engineers right now involved in around the country? >> so i'm going to break it down. there is really four different standard designs and that's the real beauty of what we're trying to offer to states here. we don't have time to site adapt

every single one and we design every single facility, so we're really going into a college dorm or a hotel, or we're going to into a large sports arena or a convention center, and those are the type of facilities that are going to be covid-19 or non-covid-19. it's up to the state and then the local mayors to decide what they want. it's very, very hard to take an arena capability, like the ja javits center and maybe it covid-19 compliant. it is relatively easy to go into a confined room, like a college dorm or a hotel, and then be able to modify that just enough to be able to put in a patient in there, to be able to put a covid-19 patient in. you asked about how many. tonight, we've got 103 different assessments, we're doing in 50 different states, and eight different territories. and i think we have about 78 done right now. and the main thing is, writing contracts, tonight, tomorrow, to be able to make sure that contractors can get boots on the ground to be able to make something happen.

it goes back to this whole point. this is not where i ask our guys how long do you need to do it. this is where you got to tell them, you got two and a half weeks. you got three weeks. every single governor knows exactly when his peak is, and if we can't get these projects completed, then we've missed this very, very valuable window, to be able to step up and to be able to take care of that shortage. >> if you had, and i know every situation is a little bit different, you're talking about standardized facilities, if you had say a college dorm type facility, and you were going to try to turn those into covid-19 beds in the college dorm, what kind of time frame, what range of time would you need with the army corps, in terms of the contracts you're doing to get that up and running from the first day you were called until they were actually admitting patients. >> that's the great thing about going into an existing facility that is already operational. and so they are all to code. you do a couple of conversions, i talked on the clip about the pressure piece, you do need to put some other modifications back in, and the other thing is, don't forget, these college

dorms are relatively empty. and these hotels are relatively empty. and you know, president trump said it a couple of days ago. he said this is the time when we need the entire nation to rally to step up. and we're seeing it. we're seeing contractors calling us and saying what can we do to help. the hotel industry, is calling us, saying, i'm willing to give you some of our hotels, how can we work that, working with fema, where we have provided a kind of a standard lease, we will go give it to the state and say here is what you can do with a local hotel. we have standard designs but the unique thing is we have to site adapt these, and in the corps, we delegate this down to the lowest level, to our colonels and senior civilians can site adapt and put it on the ground and even to the point you don't need the corps of engineers, we can give our designs to any state of the united states, and they can go to their contractors and get some, they got to do paperwork with fema on it but the bottom line is, we don't have time to do all of this, with a very, vef strict governance, we've got to be able to trust our engineers and be

very, very aggressive to try to find ways that you can take facilities that are pretty close, and then modify them accordingly. >> let me just ask you one very practical question and this is a weird thing to sort of litigate on national tv, but i know from the feedback we get from our audience every night that some of the people i'm about to describe are watching here. if there are local officials, if there are big city governors, or if there are county executives or even state officials right now, who are concerned about what's going on in their state, who are seeing the numbers rise, who believe that a local disused con vent, or a local college dorm, or a local hotel that might be able to be purchased publicly needs to be the kind of facility that you're describing, what's the chain of command that they need to activate in order to get the army corps of engineers on-site locally doing that work soon? >> vice president pence has said this very briefly and we're going to use normal fema processes, so they've got to nominate those facilities, back

into their states, our engineers are imbedded in each of the states, the emergency management capabilities, and then the governor gives us a list. we've got to figure out those sites. that's a governor's call to figure those sites out and then once those calls come back in, we're able to do it. the seattle seahawks stadium is the next big one we're looking to design. to be able to put hospitals back in there around the underneath part of the stadium. call your state and get it on the list and our engineers will pull that off. we will advise the state, here is, one it can be covid-19, can it be non-covid and up through fema and hopefully get approved and come back down to us and either the state can build it or we can build it. >> thank you for speaking about this with such clarity. thank you for speaking and moving quickly. it inspires confidence, sir. good luck with your work. >> well you got to come out and see what the teams are doing. and that's the big thing, this

is not the army corps of engineers. this is fema. this is hhs. this is state. i was with the mayor of new york city, an hour and a half ago, this is leadership getting involved. by trying to figure out don't wait to ask, don't try to wait until the phone rings. get ahead of it, and predict what's going to go wrong and have the good enough solution on time. >> general seonite head of the army corps of engineer, god speed, thank you. we'll be right back .

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. what you see here on this chart is a troubled time. it is not, shy mention, the troubled time that we are in right now. this shows the number of americans putting in claims for unemployment benefits going back to 2007. at the apex of the job losses from the financial collapse, from the great recession, look how bad the great recession was. in march 2009, look at that peak. 665,000 job losses, in one week. but again, that's not the crisis

that we are in now. to see what is happening now in this new troubled time, you need a whole other chart, you need a whole other scale, which shows that that little bump that we saw in the great recession, that peak that seems so terrible at the time is nothing compared to right now. over on the very far right side of that chart, not in the hundreds of thousands, but in the millions, that's where we are right now today, at nearly 3.3 million people asking for unemployment benefits last week alone. we have never seen anything like this before in history. and it is actually even worse than it looks because those job loss numbers don't include people who lost their jobs just this week, they don't include self employed people who resident eligible for unemployment benefits and they don't include people around the country who tried to reach their state unemployment offices but failed to do so because all of the state unemployment offices were overwhelmed by the numbers of people who were calling in to apply. this week's jobless numbers were just a wholly different order of

magnitude than everything we've ever experienced as a country since we started keeping records. you can actually see what "the new york times" is doing with their report on this, tomorrow morning, they are blowing out their usual layout of the front page, to make this new scale of economic disaster physically fit on to that front page. that's not an ad, some sort of wrap-around ad, that's the chart, but this is our new reality now. and now, a new $2 trillion bill to try to hold the economy together, is due to be voted on by the house tomorrow somehow, literally the logistics of how they're trying to, going to try to get together, to cast their votes on this, don't even make sense at this point, but again, that's our unimaginable reality now, we've got that story next. stay with us.

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no matter where we call home, how we worship, or who we love. and the 2020 census is how that great promise is kept. because this is the count that informs where hundreds of billions in funding will go each year for things like education, healthcare, and programs that touch us all. complete the census online, by phone, or by mail. shape your future. start here at 2020census.gov the $2 trillion economic relief bill that was approved 96-0, was approved unanimously

by the senate last night, it tends to get short-handed as a stimulus package, but obviously that is kind of a misnomer, a stimulus package would be designed to stimulate the economy, to get people spending money, and boosting business, in order to put back to work at those businesses. this is not that. this is a different kind of government action that is designed simply to keep people alive and basically freeze the economy in place explicitly without people going back to work because it's not safe for people to go back to work. what this is something that's design d basically to artificially mimic economic activity until real economic activity come back without millions of americans dying as a consequence. we expect this $2 trillion replacement for a real economy bill will be approved by the house tomorrow but exactly how it's doing to happen is hard to say. a bunch of members of congress are at home far from washington. it's not easy to get to

washington because travel is not recommended now. several members of congress can't be there to vote. two members of congress tested positive for covid-19 including ben mcadams who remains hospitalized and receiving oxygen. more than a dozen other members are self-quarantining because of contact with known positive folks including known positive members of congress. how exactly is this going to work tomorrow? are members of congress going to have to show up and get in the same room and be together in each other's company to get this passed? that's what the senate did. there is more members of the house. are they going to do that, too? joining us now is congressman jamie who sits on the rules committee looking at possible changes to the voting procedures during the pandemic. congressman, great to see you. thanks for taking time tonight. i want to start by asking you how you are, how you're doing, how is your family doing? >> hanging tough, rachel. i've been working hard to get a lot of our people out of

different countries abroad, whether it's morocco or uruguay or peru, people are still stuck all over the world so we're trying to get them back and help the hospitals get, you know, the person protective equipment they need for the nurses and for the health care providers and we're tryings to work on this legislation from our living rooms and dining rooms and going on t"the rachel maddow show" gae me the occasion to shave for the first time in five days, so that was good. >> well, you haven't forgotten how to do it. you look fantastic. congressm congressman, well done. let me ask you in terms of the content of this bill tomorrow, seeing it pass the senate 96-0 gave me two feels. number bone, unity on something like this and a crisis look this is good for the country, good for the country to see that, that all partisan divides have

been set aside but tmostly elderly senate, 96 of them in the same place doesn't seem wie wise. i know your colleagues are facing the same concerns about the logistics of voting tomorrow. >> everybody is in a different position because everybody is in different places in the country, and people's families are in different places and so on. but everybody is committed to getting the work of the country done and we see what the health care providers are doing and first responders are doing so we understand we got an obligation to conduct legislative business of the country but we want to do it in a responsible way. so because the bill was passed unanimously in the senate, we're hoping that we can get unanimous consent to pass it in the house. and the way we actually work, rachel, when we start off a session, that's when we have the first call and we don't have one until the end of the session. what we do is we operate by unanimous consent.

now somebody could try to block unanimous consent and demand a quram call which would be a heavy thing to do in this environment given we have sick colleagues and people self-quarantined, really everybody is on a continuing of quarantine and social distancing, and the bill is going to passover whemi overwhed not because everybody loves every part. there are parts of the bill i really love and there are parts i'm not fond of. it's a compromise. if we felt we beyond, behind the back of the senate republicans and pass something and given in, we would have passed the universal criminal background check on gun purchases more than a year ago or the $15 minimum wage. we have to deal with them. they have to deal with us. we have very muscular sponge p o provisions. unemployment insurance, hundreds

of billions of dollars. we'll basically make everybody whole on unemployment insurance by adding $600 a week to what the states are putting in. so people will be getting 100% of their salary up until the points their benefits would end in the state and extend it another 13 weeks, pay the people what they would have gotten from the state. that the a really robust protection for workers in a dangerous moment for millions of people across the country. the republicans didn't like it. they tried to slice it and dice it in a bunch of different ways. we didn't, you know, they want this $500 billion aid fund, some call it a slush fund to handout to different businesses. we were able to attach restrictions to that. for example, money cannot go to executive bonuses during that time. money cannot be spent on

buybacks of stock and corporate dividends during the period of loan extended to businesses. so we were able to improve it somewhat. we also, the democrats were able to get a provision in there saying that money could not be given to the president's businesses, businesses owned by the president or businesses owned by members of congress. so we were able to legislate around the edges. still, a lot of people feel that's a huge amount of money, half a trillion dollars to give to the department of treasury to distranscribe bui distribute to businesses in the country. we don't love that part of it but we're willing to go along with it. we put in an inspector general to oversee it as well as congressly appointed oversight panel. we'll do what we can to make sure there are democratic values and constraints put on it. there is a lot of stuff we've done that's great. hundreds of billions of dollars to the hospitals and health care

providers to get the personal protective equipment into the hands of the people who need it. that's terrific. housing assistance to people who would be evicted from their homes. there are things we can be really proud of. it a compromise and we need to pass it for the good of the country because our people are you are thing and it's a desperate circumstance for tens of millions of people across the country. >> congressman of maryland, it will be fascinating to watch tomorrow logistically along with everybody else. thanks for being with us tonight, sir. >> thanks for having me, rachel. hang tough. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. you know, new customers save over $1,000 on average when they bundle home and auto with progressive. wow, that's... and now the progressive commercial halftime show, featuring smash mouth. ♪ hey now, you're an all star ♪ get your game on, go play thank you! goodnight! [ cheers and applause ] now enjoy the second half of the commercial! even renters can bundle and save!

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you know, people in new york city have been saying over the course of the crisis they have been hearing a lot of sirens and feeling that they are much more ominous than they might be in normal circumstances. the ominousness not with standing. tonight we have data that would appear to back up the section "the washington post" tweeting tonight quote new york city ems is 6,406 medical 911 calls yesterday. that's the highest volume recorded in new york city ever. it surpasses the record that had been previously set on september 11th, 2001. that is going to do it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. now it's time for t"the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. >> good evening. i have to tell you listening to the general was a pleasure. having worked in government and

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