next item - corner offices for everyone. just have to make more corners in this building. chad? your wireless your rules. only with xfinity mobile. now that's simple easy awesome. switch and save up to $400 a year on your wireless bill. plus get $200 off a new samsung galaxy s20 ultra. good day, i am andrea mitchell in washington with alarming news about covid-19.

the u.s. has broken the record for new cases in a single day. 45,500 new diagnoses regarded wednesday with dangerous spikes in the south and the west. here are the facts at this hour. more than a dozen states from north carolina to california driving the record-setting number of new cases, the highest total since april, the surge putting new pressure on doctors and nurses as hospitals become overwhelmed, leading to a shortage of icu beds in florida, arizona, and texas, where governor greg abbott just announced his state is pausing any further phases of reopening after weeks of rising cases and pleas from local leaders. the economic pain from the virus continuing to inflict damage with today's report that another 1.5 million americans filed for unemployment benefits this week. in addition to more than 19 million people still collecting jobless benefits from earlier in the year. and this hour, i'll speak with nbc historian jon meacham as we preview tomorrow's big

vote on d.c.'s statehood and the growing debate on removing confederate monuments clugt inc the andrew jackson statue just across from the white house. joining me now, sam brock and joe fryer. sam, you've seen the virus spreading from florida and now you've been assigned to texas, it's following you, unfortunately. the governor there, greg abbott there, just taking action after weeks and weeks of protests from mayors. >> reporter: andrea, good afternoon. it's been a flurry of activity from the texas governor today. the reopenings are now paused, he says. the latest phase. what's interesting about that, andrea, is that everything around here is generally open anyway. bars, restaurants, amusement parks as of earlier this month. as of june 12, restaurants can have up to 75% capacity inside their venues. so they've been unrolling things for the last several weeks, months, really. now he's saying he's going to

push pause on that. the other big development of that, the suspension of elective surgeries in hospitals for four counties impacted by rising covid-19 cases. the numbers are alarming, 5,500 new covid-19 cases in texas. we're still waiting for the updates today. that was a record. 97% icu bed capacity, full right now, according to the texas medical center which is where i am right now. of those numbers, you talk to doctors, they say it may actually be a little lower than that because they have added capacity. really interesting this afternoon to see as well, andrea, ceos from four of the biggest providers in the houston area held a zoom call and basically downplayed the severity of the capacity crisis right now, saying that they can ramp things up, the ceo of texas children's hospital said he had 40 plus icu beds available right now and he's taking adult referrals. sort of a reversal in the messaging from what we've heard from them. dr. neal gandhi who runs the emergency department at houston

methodist, 15 different facilities, about why he thinks cases in houston and in texas in general are going up. >> we've unfortunately noticed a troubling pattern of relaxing, i think, in some of the health care guidance we're using. we started to see a little less masking, less social distancing. probably less responsiveness to hand hygiene. all those things i think collectively within our community has just caused us to get a little bit more sick. and now we're seeing more individuals who are infected. >> reporter: now, an interesting note is that of all the patients right now that are in icu beds in houston, 70% are non-covid. 27%, according to the texas medical center, are covid. but that's a number to keep an eye on because as we know, andrea, it has been rising dramatically. back to you. >> thank you, thanks to you, sam, and joe fryer in scottsdale, arizona, where the death toll is a new major concern. and governor ducey continues to

face criticism. >> reporter: yeah, that's right, and andrea, we should tell you, just within the past hour we got arizona's newest numbers. a little more than 3,000 cases reported in the last day. that's another day above 3,000. it is not a record day. we saw a record day just couple of days ago with 3,500 new cases. but still, it is a concerning number. more than two-thirds of the cases are here in maricopa county. that's not terribly surprising. the county says that in the past week, it has seen over a third of all the cases it's seen in this entire pandemic. that shows things are really ramping up. about half of the cases are people under the age of 45. also perhaps not a surprise as businesses reopen including restaurants and bars, it was younger people who are more likely to venture out. we spoke with younger people who say, especially in the early days of reopening, they didn't see a lot of social distancing. a lot of people were not wearing masks. but a week ago, the governor did

give cities and counties permission to have mask mandates. so here in maricopa county and other municipalities, they decided to start enforcing masks. but there is still no statewide mask mandate and no word that the state is going to take any restrictions or put any pauses on or take any steps to change the way the reopening has happened in order to try to slow the spread here, andrea. >> thanks so much, joe fryer. now to austin, texas, mayor steve adler joins us, mr. mayor, thank you for being with us. your governor is finally taking some action by pausing the reopening. but as we just heard, so much has already reopened that those steps won't make much difference. also elective surgeries being put on hold. is that going to be enough? >> you know, what we're seeing right now is pretty dramatic, a geometric rise in our numbers. hospitalizations, new cases, infectivity rate. that's happening under the

policies that existed a week ago, two weeks ago, or even three weeks ago for hospitalizations, because these are all lagging indicators. so preserving where we are right now, with what people have been doing, will not do anything but have us continue on the trajectory we're on right now. you know, last week, the governor gave cities and counties back the power to be able to require people to wear masks. we have to do it by requiring businesses to require people to wear masks. and we're seeing more of it now. our hope is that that's going to change the trajectory. but people are confused. the messaging coming out of washington is real confused. the fact that my state won't make it mandatory to wear masks is a confused message. but i am concerned that just stopping where we are will not be good enough. if we're not able to change the current trajectory, it's looking like our hospitals will be overwhelmed in mid-july.

>> and when you talk about the fact that people are confused, we certainly see this in the people we are interviewing, especially when we were in indiana and arizona, you know, nbc and msnbc correspondents, about the people who are maga supporters, trump supporters, going to the rallies anyway. how did this messaging, do you think, from washington, the downplaying of the cdc and their guidance, and the fact that the president doesn't wear a mask, the vice president doesn't wear a mask, how did wearing a mask, a public health necessity, become politicized? >> i don't know that i can answer the "how" question. i can tell you it's had a devastating impact in our community. back in march, we were one of the first communities to start stopping things. we closed south by southwest, a huge hit to our city, very early in the positive. we had people that were wearing masks. but then the competing messages

came out. and we were stopped from being able to support that in our city. our governor right now is saying every chance he has that people should be wearing masks. he urges people to do it. he says it's the most important thing people can be doing. but it is a confused message right now, especially with what's happening with washington and the fact that it's not mandatory in our state. it is the biggest challenge that we've at this point. >> i saw the governor saying yesterday people should just stay home, that's the safest thing you can do. but as you point out, if it's not mandatory, are people going to stay home? >> you know, i think that people need to stay home, and i appreciate that the governor is asking people to do it. i'm asking people to do that too. and we're going to have to do something to stop this trajectory that we're on. but i think people are tired of being at home. and i think people -- you can't

sustain a lockdown situation for an indefinite period of time. what we should have done and what we need to do if we do this a second time, is open up parts of the economy more slowly, but with the understanding that we're only going to open it up to the degree that people show the discipline to social distance, they show the discipline to wear face coverings. the community -- those two things should be tied, and they were not tied. and that's why we're in the situation we're in right now. >> good luck to you there, thanks for everything you're doing, thanks for being with us today, mayor steve adler in austin. dr. vin gupta at the university of washington's department of health metrics sciences, you just heard the mayor, you've got

governor of like minds, governor abbott in texas and governor ducey of arizona, and the president leading the way. >> good morning, andrea. the time for measured leadership is long past us. i appreciate mayor adler encouraging his citizens to essentially wear a mask in public. but andrea, you and i have been having this conversation for months. i'm seeing the lived reality in the icu, as are my colleagues. the time for feckless leadership is over. we need to mandate masks in every geo across the country. every single zip code, you need to wear a mask, otherwise you're going to get fined. that's what we did with indoor smoking. we thought, we'll encourage people not to smoke indoors. it turns out we didn't make headway on that issue until we said, you're going to get fined if you don't obey the law. surge capacity in houston, in

seattle we have an outbreak in yakima, it's not just beds, it's the nurses, the respiratory therapists, the docs, to staff these facilities. in new york they didn't have enough dialysis, and covid impacts the kidneys as much as it impacts the lungs. we need to have a level 5 emergency mindset when it comes to masks. no more encouraging. we've got to mandate it. >> let me ask you about california. leadership there did all the right things and now they're seeing another spread. what do you think is happening in california? >> in think in california, ther was a lot of people opening up. in southern california you had seven local county health officials essentially resign because they were getting threatened because of pushback

to policies they were encouraging such as masks, until governor newsom stepped in. there's been a lot of places, a lot of mobility in california as things opened up. in addition to mandating masks, we need to get honest about indoor dining. we're seeing evidence coming out of china again that indoor dining in restaurants is just -- it's a super spreader type event. we just can't do it safely. yes, i want to eat out as much as anybody else but we need to do it outdoors for the time being until we get a handle on this. yesterday the federal government said they would pull funding for community testing sites in underserved areas in seven states. that needs to change. we can't have that. we need the opposite of it. it's too evocative of what the president said in tulsa, he's following it up with actual policy to slow down testing. we can't have that. those three policies, mandating masks, being honest about

outdoor dining only, and we have to increase testing especially in underserved areas. those are key. >> dr. vin gupta, we always love talking to you and getting straight facts. thank you very much. coming up, biden leading trump in key battleground states, according to fresh polling, as the president heads to wisconsin this hour. next, more on the state of the race. and still later. you've been in congress for 17 terms. what does it feel like to never be able to vote on final passage for one of your bills? >> it feels like my city is not fully respected. >> eleanor holmes norton, d.c.'s non-voting delegate, on why the district should become a state, ahead of an historic vote on that matter tomorrow. stay with us. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. your hom, from inspiration to installation. like way more vanities perfect for you. nice.

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president trump on his way to wisconsin at this hour, a critical battleground state. those are live pictures of air force one going down the runway, taking off, in fact, lifting off from joint base andrews. new polling showing president trump's reelection bid is in trouble, trailing joe biden in wisconsin and five other battleground states. the deepest polling deficit for an incumbent since george h.w. bush. and you know what happened to him. joining me now, nbc news white house correspondent geoff

bennett. pbs news hour correspondent yamiche alcindor. and carharlie sykes, editor at large from the bulwark. geoff bennett, first to you, how is the white house reacting? is the president reportedly grumpy, angry at brad parscale, annoyed about these numbers? he's got to be taking these polls seriously. >> reporter: and the campaign in just the last couple of hours or so, andrea, put out a statement, they said the polls were deeply flawed. you had the "new york times" poll showing trump trailing biden by 11%. another poll yet by marquette law school showed biden up by 8 points among registered votes. when you dig deep into the numbers, they show president trump is apparently losing his edge among white voters. it was that constituency that allowed him to cobble together that razor-thin electoral college victory back in 2016.

but the president is headed to wisconsin today in an official capacity. but you can bet he's going to try to shore up his support there among wisconsin voters. he's going to speak at a shipyard that got a lucrative billion dollar navy contract. that shipyard is an in a deeply conservative, mostly rural part of the state. he's then going to go to green bay and give a taped town haul with sean hannity at fox news. you even have senate republicans acknowledging the obvious. senator john thune, the republican whip on the senate, said that the president, obviously, he said, has a problem with independent voters. thune suggested that president trump should think about shifting his messaging, thinking about his tone. but the president clearly has not shown a capacity or a willingness to do any of that so far, andrea. >> and as all of us, charlie, yamiche, geoff, all of us who lived through 2016 are very cautious about the polls,

especially national polls. but now you've had three national polls, fox, cnn, and now "the new york times," showing the president with either 12 or 14% deficit nationally among registered voters, and then today the battleground state polls as well, the 11-point lead by joe biden in both wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania. charlie sykes, what about wisconsin, where the president is heading as we speak? >> he's in a deep hole here. it's not just the "new york times"/siena poll. other polls have him down 8 points. a lot of warning signs there. his support among republicans has been eroding. he's getting hammered by independen independents. it looks like his lead in the key milwaukee suburbs is actually weakening. so the president, you know, may complain about these polls, but

it's consistent. i also remind people that in 2018, in the u.s. senate election which was pretty much a referendum on donald trump, the democratic incumbent tammy baldwin won by double digits here in wisconsin. so even though wisconsin is obviously a battleground state, it's clearly shifting away from donald trump right now. >> and yamiche, as the white house becomes more and more concerned about this, the president is going into battleground states either for political events or political events vaguely masked as regular events, as did he did the other, as we pointed out, in arizona. how do they develop a message to catch up? he's behind on leadership. he's only ahead on the economy. but behind on leadership, certainly the pandemic, and of course on race relations. >> what you see is the white house and president trump kind of trying to circle the wagons, trying to dig in, saying the

president overall will still be in a strong position overall in november. he still is the incumbent president. but these polls, as charlie and geoff noted, are pretty damning. the "times" poll, the cnn policpolicl, the fox news poll, all have him down double digits. the president was lashing out at fox news, his favorite network. he's calling that poll phony. the issue here, of course, is that as the president employs all these people, communications director for the campaign, a campaign manager, the white house press secretary, all of those people are trying to get on the same message to help the president out. but the president is still a main person that's making the messaging and he's continuing to double down on the idea that the pandemic is behind us, that wearing masks is somehow something that is un-american and that people shouldn't be doing. he's also talking about the fact that this movement that is really a lot of americans, including americans in ruby red states, taking to the streets to demand police reform, he's

saying these are anarchists and domestic terrorists, when we don't see the vast majority of these people being that, the vast majority are everyday americans asking for their country to do better. this is really about president trump and whether or not he wants to and has the ability to change his messaging, which at least for the last three to four years what we've seen is a president who is continually relying on his instincts and continually going for bombastic language that's helped him in the past but now is seemingly hurting him among white voters. >> and charlie, when you look at milwaukee, the biden folks announced it's going to be a largely virtual convention, he'll accept the nomination in milwaukee, but it will be delegates joining from around the country in their own home states virtually. it will be four days of convention activities, but not a democratic convention that anyone would have recognized, all because of the pandemic. how does that play? because you have the president

going to these big rallies but now, as we've been reporting, secret service agents are going to have to self-quarantine because they were exposed, among other people, to covid-19 at one of his recent rallies. >> i'm a little bit personally disappointed because i was hoping to rent out a spare bedroom here, but that's not going to happen. look, the conventions have become these large scale televised kabuki dances, this will be no different. it actually probably reduces the possibility that the democratic convention will, you know, become a circus. it will reduce the possibility of disruption a little bit, i think. but i still haven't got a complete sense of how they're going to be able to put this together. on the other hand, i think that the president has been calculating that he can go ahead with a no-social-distance convention as usual in jacksonville and that's turning out to be a very risky bet for

him. >> indeed, especially with the spike in florida. thanks so much, charlie sykes, yamiche alcindor and geoff bennett. coming up, dead wrong. $1.4 billion, that's $1.4 billion in stimulus checks, were sent to more than a million dead americans, deceased people. more on the major stimulus check slip-up, next. plus, ahead of an historic vote tomorrow on d.c. statehood, the white house says it's a nonstarter. we'll have details. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. nly on mc you can't predict the future.

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a startling new report out today that more than 1 million dead americans got those pandemic stimulus checks, totaling $1.4 billion, according to the authoritative government accountability office, the nonpartisan watchdog agency. we're learning an additional 30 to 35 million people are still waiting for their checks. joining me is chris lu, now a senior fellow at the university of virginia miller center. chris, thanks for being with us. first of all, this is so shocking. we thought that there was oversight, we were told there was oversight. how do a million americans, $1.4 billion in a time of such shortages and pain, get those checks? >> andrea, you're right, it is shocking. today, for instance, we learned that another 1.5 million americans applied for unemployment. a total of 30 million americans are collecting some kind of unemployment checks.

people are struggling and need help right now. and so when you hear that a million checks went to dead people, that's troubling. but as troubling is the fact that 35 million americans still haven't gotten their check. these are people who are trying to figure out how to make ends meet, who are trying to figure out how to buy groceries and pay rent. it raises the larger question about competence and experience in government. these are things we take for granted until we don't have them anymore. and unfortunately, right now we have a president who frankly spent a lot more time figuring out how to get his name on the stimulus check instead of who was getting the check and who wasn't getting the check. it also raises the broader question about why oversight is so important. and gao, in their report, also flagged, they weren't getting the information they needed to do oversight, not just of the stimulus program but also of the small business program well. and we've already talked a lot about how the small business administration is undercutting

the power of inspector generals to do that oversight as well. >> and i just want to point out, a personal point of privilege here, that people in d.c. only got half the amount of the stimulus check because of course d.c. is not a state, more on that coming up in a bit on the show. but the federal prisoners who did get these payments, you could argue their families need that money. >> that's exactly right. look, let's also stipulate that this was a program that probably was not designed as well as it should have been. that was understandable in the sense that we were trying to get money out the door as quickly as possible. this raises larger questions about government databases and how updated they are in terms of death records and people incarcerated. but this broader issue of prisoners is 100% correct. many of these people are men of color, they have households, they have children who would have needed the money. it does raise a question about whether the government should pull back some of this money or

let some of it happen. right now we don't even have a good sense of how much of this money has gone out the door to prisoners. >> they did manage, in sending out the money, to insert a letter saying that this money is coming to you courtesy of president donald j. trump. so there was that wonderful little personal note included in every check. you flagged us on something you wanted to talk about, i'm going to raise it now, something we've been covering, the racist remarks the president has made about the origins of the virus, as he puts it, most recently again in his arizona speech, in a megachurch, after doing it for the first time at a large rally in indiana. your take on that? >> what was so chilling about the remarks he did in phoenix, this was to a group of young people. he seemed to be deliberately trying to rile them up. when you heard those young people cheering him, saying "kung flu," i thought about all of the asian-american kids who

are going to hear that taunt from every schoolyard bully that they meet. it echoes the kinds of racist taunts that were directed at hispanic children to, you know, go back to mexico. look, words matter, and they especially matter when they come from the president. and when he utters the words, he might think it is a joke. it is not a joke to me as an asian-american who has heard these taunts because i know the effect this will have not just people like me but more importantly on children who are going to begin to hear this at school. >> and it became a big issue at the white house briefing this week as well, with an asian-american cbs correspondent leading the way, and just no comprehension by the white house press secretary or anyone else speaking to the press about this and how painful it is and what it does lead to, which is bully

i ing. talking about being best. thank you, chris lu. coming up next, should d.c. become our nation's 51st state? the house of representatives will hold an historic vote tomorrow. what's at stake for the district, coming up next. and later, coronavirus cases are on the rise in arkansas too. we're live at a poultry plant were workers, even those without symptoms, are testing positive. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." stay with us. this is msnbc. the course structure the university of phoenix offers-

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the house is going to vote tomorrow on whether washington, d.c. should become the 51st state. the measure has 226 house co-sponsors. that's more than enough for it to pass. but senate majority leader mitch mcconnell says it will not even come up for a vote in the senate. the white house says the president would veto it if it did, if it ever reached his desk. this as murals supporting statehood are popping up all over the city. it's the city where federal forces cleared protesters across the from the white house with chemical gas so the president could cross the park to a photo op, while a military helicopter swooped down over city streets to chase urban demonstrators. a combat zone maneuver more suitable for fallujah than downtown d.c. the city's mayor could not stop any of that, or troops being stationed at sacred monuments, because unlike 50 states and the u.s. territories, washington is

the only jurisdiction where the national guard answers to the president instead of to a governor. >> we have two senators that vote for us and speak for and you say a voting representative in congress. but we also needed to make sure our borders aren't breached by the federal government. >> the capital city has 702,000 residents, more than vermont or wyoming. and people here pay more total federal taxes than 22 states. what the district does not have is a vote in congress. not since a law passed in 1801 which thomas jefferson was president. you've been in congress for 17 terms. what does it feel like to never be able to vote on final passage for one of your bills? >> it feels like my city is not fully respected, despite paying the highest federal income taxes per capita in the united states. >> eleanor holmes norton was born in d.c. 83 years ago.

the great granddaughter of richard holmes who escaped from a virginia slave master to find work in the nation's capital. >> richard holmes made it to freedom but he did not make it to equality, nor have those in his lineage yet made it to equality. that's why we need statehood, at least personally, why i need statehood. >> with no senator, d.c. residents have no say on confirming supreme court justices or cabinet members or other officials. congress hasn't even debated statehood since 1993 when it lost. >> this deprivation of statehood is unjust. >> despite strong support now in the house, most senate republicans are still opposed. >> i don't think you're going to have many in the republican conference for that. >> i think our founding fathers were correct in the first place. >> still, friday's debate will give washington a chance to protest against taxation without representation, a principle that was supposed to be settled by those founders more than 200 years ago.

joining me now is pulitzer prize-winning presidential historian and biography jon meacham, the author of "american lion: andrew jackson in the white house," among many other books. as you know better than anyone, the capital city was created by taking land from maryland and virginia in 1801 and that was the last time we had any representation in congress. >> it's ten miles square, that's the phrase in the constitution. the original thinking was that the federal government needed a sovereign space. it was about independence, really. that's the irony of this. they didn't want to be in pennsylvania, with all respect to you, or new york, because the governors of new york or pennsylvania might try to force them to do things. and so the idea was that it would be this kind of like

krypton, the planet, and the federal government would therefore be totally sovereign. i think we've outrun that logic a long way back. and i doubt this passes. but the statistics you marshalled there, as well as the intellectual argument from ms. norton, is to me pretty compelling. >> i mean, what really brought this to the forefor a lot forf us here, is when the president was threatening to use the insurrection act of 1807 and only washington would have been unable to object because every other state or territory have governors who can say no thank you, and only in a dire circumstance can the president supersede that. in this case the mayor objected to what was happening in lafayette spark and surrounding areas, to no avail, because she

doesn't even control the national guard here. >> no, it's a question of sovereignty. and i think what americans around the country have to decide is how would they feel if their governor -- a, they don't really have one, but if their governors and mayors weren't able to exercise basic powers. i think the question, obviously creating what would be two democratic seats in the senate, is the political reality that will make this incredibly difficult. >> of course. >> but as a matter of prima facie justice and equality, there's no issue. >> the president called on the interior secretary and u.s. marshals to restore monuments, including a monument to general

pike that was taken down here, and he's fiercely protective of the andrew jackson monument right across from the white house which has been defaced and breached and it's now got a fence around it. you're the andrew jackson expert. let's share the reasons why andrew jackson is so controversial. not just slave-holding, it's the trail of tears. >> if i may, i think we know why he's controversial. i think we know why people want to bring it down. let me just take a second and say, this is why he's there. he's there because in 1832, '33, he put down a possible insurrection in south carolina, fighting against nullification, which was a step towards secession. you don't have to take my word for it, take lincoln's word for it. lincoln said that the question of secession had been settled in jackson's time. he's there because he won the battle of new orleans in 1815

which is in many ways lost to history but was the last great domestic struggle when in fact britain was trying to recapture certainly the united states. we see the american revolution as really from lexington, concord, through yorktown, the treaty of paris. it's really a 50-year war, because if you're great britain and you lose an entire continent, you're probably going to think, you know what, i'm going to go try that again, i'll try to get that back. and jackson's military heroism at that time, yes, the treaty of ghent had been signed, but that doesn't change what the soldiers did on the ground. jackson is an immensely problematic figure, he represents the best of us and the worst of us. i live in the south, i live in tennessee. huge swaths of this country were brought into the prevailing regime by andrew jackson from

native americans. he was a perpetuator and defender of african-american slavery, therefore he is complicit in the two original sins of american life. my argument about jackson is, if we try to remove him from our national conversation, if we try to say he was responsible for these things, that lets the rest of us off the hook. he was on the extreme edge of the mainstream. but the painful reality of american history is that he was within the mainstream of his time. and i'm not saying therefore, by god, that monument has to stay there forever. but i do think we need to take a breath about this and say, let's figure out why these monument were put up. i'm against confederate monuments on public land because i think that anyone who took up arms against the constitution, tried to stop the journey toward a more perfect union, should not

be commemorated on public land. jackson, jefferson, madison, others, were in fact devoted to the constitutional experiment that gave us the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to a government that gave us the civil rights and voting rights act and god willing will give us more legislation, more movement toward a more perfect union going forward. >> and washington as well. and that's exactly why i wanted to talk to you today for the context surrounding this national debate. jon meacham, thank you as always. keep an eye out for jon's forthcoming book, "his truth is marching on," his biography of john lewis, a personal hero of ours as well, that's due out in october. coming up next, coronavirus concerns at food processing plants persisting. we'll be live at a tyson facility in arkansas where workers are sounding the alarm. did you know diarrhea is often caused by bad bacteria in food?

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now to arkansas where coronavirus cases and deaths have risen dramatically over the last month. the spike is linked in part to major food processing plants in the state, including tyson's food where nearly 13% of workers tested positive for covid-19. the majority were asymptomatic. nbc news correspondent ellison barber joins us from the tyson plant in springdale, arkansas. hispanics have been particularly hard hit there. you have spoken to two employees. what are they telling you? >> they say they feel safer on some days when they come into work than they do on others. they say they feel safer on the production line than they do in other gathering break areas like locker rooms and just kind of the general areas where they may kong congregate. it's in benton and washington county. together those two counties have over 1700 active cases of

covid-19 right now. 95% of the cases tyson found at their facilities in northwest arkansas were asymptomatic. because of that, the workers we've spoken to say they really don't feel safe going into work right now. they want the poultry processing plants in this area, particularly the ones they work at which are run by tyson foods to temporarily close down. >> translator: it hurt me these companies know that it's us, hispanics, working in mass at these processing plants and it's where we earn our living every day. >> translator: it's difficult. i'm afraid to hug my kids. i'm afraid to hug my wife because i don't know if i'm infected. the situation is bad in this factory. many of the people who tested positive came back to work after ten days because they were required to. >> that ten-day window actually does comply with cdc guidelines

for nonhealth care workers returning to work. according to the cdc if someone tests positive for covid-19 and they don't exhibit any symptoms, they can return to work after ten days at home. workers we've spoken to say they feel like that is not enough. and that's when a lot of people who have tested positive are returning back to work at these plants. andrea? >> ellison, i know that tyson's is an enormously important employer and political force down there. i know exactly where you are. if this has a lot of political weight, what about what the governor is doing? >> yeah, so i asked the governor during his press conference yesterday if, you know, these cases that tyson has reported if it makes him think at all that some of these workers should temporarily close these plants and close them. the governor said, no, he thinks they are doing enough. that they should stay open.

and he feels like tyson, compared to the other large companies that have plants in this area, he said he feels like they are doing enough to keep their workers safe. andrea? >> ellison barber in springdaeshlgs arkansas, thank you. that does it for "andrea mitchell reports." and remember to follow the smoe online, on facebook and on twitter @mitchell reports. and listen to our program and all your favorite msnbc hosts by listening to msnbc live on tune in. go to tunein.com/msnbc2020 to listen commercial-free with tune in premium. right now stay tuned for chuck todd and katy tur after a short break. they'll be speaking with house majority whip, congressman james clyburn. uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card. n-n-n-no-no

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good afternoon in the east. good morning to our watchers out west. i'm chuck todd. there are more than 2.4 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the united states since the start of the pandemic. on nearly 123,000 americans have died. the u.s. reported an astonishing 45,000 new cases yesterday alone. it is our highest number yet, period. topping the previous high from back in april by over 9,000. however, the seven-day rolling average of deaths from