tv Velshi MSNBC June 27, 2020 5:00am-6:00am PDT
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second surge. the united states reporting new spikes of coronavirus cases in the south and the west. what it means for reopening plans nationwide. this is basically -- say this is tinder waiting to explode. >> 20 million americans could lose their health coverage as the trump administration looks to cancel the affordable care act. >> i think it's cruel. it's heartless. it's callous. it's all because, in my view, he can't abide the thought of letting stand one of president obama's greatest achievements, the affordable care act. and more than 120 companies, including some of the world's
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biggest, are suspending their facebook advertising to boycott the social network for allowing racist, violence and false content to run on its platform. velshi starts now. good morning. i'm ali velshi. it is saturday, june 27th. this morning, a large part of the united states facing spikes in coronavirus cases. the new surge bringing an urgency and concern in southern and western states that were mostly unaffected during the early stages of the outbreak. overnight headlines showing new coronavirus cases topped 45,000. that is the largest one-day increase of the entire pandemic. data indicating the virus is now targeting a younger segment of the population. overall, there are now 2.5 million people who have contracted coronavirus in the united states, and more than 125
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deaths. this week, cdc director robert redfield saying the actual number of people infected in the united states may be 10 times higher than what's being reported. meanwhile, upward of 25 million people, based on antibody tests, may have the infection. reopening efforts in texas and florida have come to a screeching halt. governors in both states are now shutting down bars, and texas is reducing the number of people allowed at indoor restaurants. yesterday the coronavirus task force held its first press conference in nearly two months. according to vice president mike pence, it came at the urging of president trump. dr. anthony fauci saying, in part, current measures are not working and there may be a need to shift strategy going forward. >> this resurgence of cases, i don't think there's time enough all day to try to analyze and figure out the multifaceted
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elements that went into that, you know, everything from maybe opening a little too early on some to opening at the right time, but not actually following the steps in an orderly fashion. you have an individual responsibility to yourself, but you have a societal responsibility. because if we want to end this outbreak, this is part of a process that we can be either part of the solution or part of the problem. >> this, as trump, who is completely over the pandemic, continues to offer mixed mess e messaging on the relevance of ongoing testing in the face of national health disaster. >> we have more cases because we do the greatest testing. if we didn't do testing, we would have no cases. if you do 30 million, you have a kid with the sniffles, they'll say it's coronavirus whatever you want to call it. i could name 19 names, there are so many names to this.
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>> that's not really true. presumm presumptive democratic nominee offering a different view. >> testing unequivocally saves lives, and widespread testing is the key to opening our economy again. he thinks that finding out that more americans are sick will make him look bad. well, donald trump needs to stop caring about how he looks. start caring about what americans, what's happening in the rest of america. >> trio of national polls show trump trailing biden by roughly 10 points across the board as the november election approaches, due in part to his ineffective response to the coronavirus pandemic. make no mistake about it. as we've said time and time again on this program, we are very much still in the thick of this public health crisis, and we need to remain vigilant.
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florida yesterday registered a record one-day total of just under 9,000 new cases of covid-19. overnight, miami-dade county mayor carlos jimenez announced he would sign an emergency order shutting down all county beaches during the fourth of july holiday weekend. joining me now is mayor carlos jimenez. thank you for joining us today. this is a tough one. it was spring break when florida didn't make the right decision to close down, and that's because lots of people go to florida during spring break. it's the same thing now. this weekend coming up is going to be one in which a lot of people like to come to florida. it is a hard decision for the economy of your county to shut down those beaches. why have you made that decision? >> we've noticed that in certain holiday weekends or after a holiday weekend, say mother's day, memorial day, two weeks later we see a spike.
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so we are experiencing a spike and a number of positive -- the percentage of positive cases here in miami-dade. we've seen a rise in the number of people going to the hospital, i think it's a prudent step to make sure we don't -- we get on top of that spike. we want to tamp down this virus here. we will be targeting those activities that young people do. apparently some young people think they're invincible and they're going to go about their business the way they did in the past, they can't. that's one of the reasons we did that we'll be limiting the number of people in any kind of parades. we'll shut down parades, fireworks displays, you can see it from your car but you can't get out and see fireworks displays. it will be a different fourth of july here in miami-dade county. it's unfortunate because we have an increase in the rate of positive. again, i'm not so worried about the number. we know here in miami-dade we
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had at least 200,000 people that have had the coronavirus, even though our official tally is somewhere around 30,000. it's way more than that. but the percentage of positives has risen from about 8 to 14. >> yeah. so you're actually worried about the right thing. you're worried about the thing the public health officials say you need to be worried about. yesterday you had 8,942 new positive cases. that's a one-day record. the prior one-day record was set on wednesday, and it was by comparison a paltry 5,511. so this is not a -- this isn't a small jump. this is a significant jump. to what do you attest to that? i will speak to the mayor of miami shortly, his concern is not just the people of your county but the people who come through your county, fly into your county, come from other
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parts of the country to your county. >> the governor put a 14-day self isolation quarantine for anyone coming out of the tri-state area. we basically have no international travel coming into miami. miami international airport is controlled by the county, not by the city. so the -- the procedures that we have at miami international airport, we screened all the people coming in from those areas, those hot spots, they are given information. those that come from the tri-state area are told it should be quarantined for 14 days. the number of people coming through m.i.a. has gone from 120,000 people a day to about 20,000 people a day. very little business travel. that's not the concern. the concern for me was that there were businesses -- and frankly young people, that are not doing the things they should be doing. we've seen a tremendous rise in
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the infection rate of people from 18 to 34. when we look at the infection rate of those above 665, it's steady but nothing like those 18 to 34-year-olds, 44-year-olds to 54-year-old people. that's a concern. we need to start -- we have for a week and a half concentrated on enforcement of the rules that we have. and so we're also looking now like i said for july 4th. we did not want to see places where people will be congregating. we're sure they'll be congregating on the beach, in parks. we'll be limiting that. i will be signing the order to shut down the beaches this holiday weekend in miami-dade county. >> mayor, good to see you. mayor carlos jimenez is the
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mayor of miami-dade county. thank you, sir. we'll stay in close contact with you during the course of the next few days. a little over a month ago governor ron desantis had this to say about his state's reopening efforts. >> you have a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetly f poetically for weeks and weeks, wait two weeks, florida will be next. we're eight weeks away from that, it hasn't happened. we have succeeded and i don't think people want to recognize it because it challenges their m narrative, it challenges their assumption. >> well, that didn't age so well. this is a highly fluid and dangerous situation that needs to be approached with the greatest of care and caution. this past week our next guest instituted a mandatory mask policy for outdoor activities in his florida city punishable by fine, a guideline that not
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everyone believes in. joining us is miami mayor frances suarez. it's been a bit of sport this week for americans to watch people going to testify in front of florida's local commissions and councils talking about conspiracy theories on wearing masks and doing things like this. i wonder what it is about protections from getting a commucom americans find so hard to understand. i think we're having trouble with the mayor's audio. we'll come back to you in a moment. i will come back to him shortly. i want to bring in an internal medicine physician and an msnbc medical contributor.
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dr. roy, good to see you again. thank you for joining us. things have changed. we had seen some of these upticks in some places in the south, and the west. something that chanhas changed dramatically in the last few weeks where we're seeing record numbers of coronavirus cases. we're talking about records that were bigger than the ones that we had when new york was a hot spot and when washington state was a hot spot. what's going on? >> good morning. so good to see you as well. the news is not good. it's pretty grim. you remember very well the hellish period that we went through in new york, and i wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy. and the mayor of new york city, the governor, governor cuomo telling the american public every single day that, look, this is what we're going through. look out. look out in your own communities. this virus is not a new york virus, it's widespread amongst
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the community. dr. fauci talked about this multiple times including at yesterday's almost inexplicable briefing. he again said there's widespread community spread of this virus. it's clearly rampaging throughout the country and we pretty much know why. we never really shut down, we never contained the virus. people are still going out. again, it depends on where, but in the places where people have followed strict, stringent social control, like we have here in new york, you see the numbers coming down nicely. unfortunately we're seeing the exact opposite happening all over the country. it's alarming. >> dr. roy, hang on one second. i have mayor suarez back from miami. i want to bring him into the conversation with you. mayor, you do have a phenomenon down there that we weren't
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really having a lot of it in new york, we had some of it, but it's become this idea that i'm an american, i'm free not to have authorities including public health authorities, mayors, sheriffs, governors impose rules on my behavior to become this libertarian cry. but you have a problem to control down there. >> exactly. and it's no different than saying you have to wear a seat belt. it's like saying i don't have to wear a seat belt, i have the freedom not to wear it and risk my life. it's mandatory that you wear a seat belt. and if you don't wear a seat belt while driving, you could be ticketed for it. it's no different. so what we're doing, we are imposing something. we're imposing it for a temporary period of time for your own protection and for the protection of others. i see it no different than imposing a satellite requirement. we're saying it's too dangerous right now to be out in public without a mask. and if you are in public without
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a mask, you will first get a warning. second, you'll get a $50 fine, then a $100 fine, then a $150 fine. i see it no different than wearing a seat belt for your own protection. >> let me ask you, mayor, you and i have been talking throughout the entire crisis. your message has been the same, unlike some people in the state who have changed their message, you have been conscious of it. part of it is miami is a hub that's in some ways different from other parts of florida. you have three counties there where you get a lot of people from the tri-state area, a lot of tourists, a lot of people from south america, but you have for a long time thought you're not out of the woods. what is the issue between people like you, who are following public health rules and so many in mrflorida who are in governmt and refuse to do so?
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>> for me, we look at the statistics. every monday and friday we have a a memeeting with the departmef health, with statisticians, with our epidemiologists, with our emergency manager, our city manager. we all get together, we do it with other cities. we do it with miami beach, high le hialeah and 34 cities in miami county. we look at the data, analyze it, make decisions and announce those decisions. for us it's not political. we're not trying to win -- i'm not trying to win an election. i don't even have an election this year. for me it's about doing what is best not only for the economy of the city but also for its residents who are the people that i represent, the people i have to answer to, the people that depend on me to be their voice and to speak for them. for me it simplifies the
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decisionmaking process when i don't have to do it in a political context. >> dr. roy, let me ask you, the mayor was one of the first people in florida, i think he was number two or number one to actually get coronavirus. i don't know whether that informs his opinion, but i get it. i get the people who want to get out. i get the people who want to -- i don't get the people who want to get a hair cut, but i get people want to exist out there. what can we offer them in terms of timelines or measures that will allow this to end? i get that they're frustrated and they want to go out. >> i get that they're frustrated, too. i'm no different. i want to go out to restaurants and see my hockey games, i want to do all that. but i realize that my personal interest and hobbies need to take a back seat to public health. look, areas like new york where they are now in a position to safely open up in phases, it's
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okay. i actually did get a hair cut, but in other parts of the country it's not safe to do so. now, if they had done that two months ago when we still had a pandemic, if they had shut down, if people wore masks, if people practiced the physical distancing we wouldn't be in this situation. for that to happen, you have to have our leaders lead. like mayor suarez said, he is following the guidance of health officials, he's following data and making recommendations. it can't be recommendations, it needs to be mandates. he accurately points out seat belts. there's other things we do. childhood vaccinations, mike helmets. many successful public health campaigns keep us alive and safe. this is another one. at the highest levels of global safety. >> mayor, i just want to put up your tweet from friday where you actually are talking about what you just told me. the verbal warnings of $50 fine,
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$150 fine, $500 fine. mayor, you're a republican, your position is not a partisan position generally speaking. what discussions do you have with fellow republicans who are invoking this idea of smaller government, they don't want government making rules for them? how do you explain to them this is not really meant to be an imposition on their basic freedoms as americans? >> sometimes it's tough. i get a lot of messages from people who are upset that we are doing what we're doing, they feel it is an infringement on their civil liberties. i understand their perspective. by the way, when i was elected mayor, i never thought i would be shutting down a business. i never thought that i would be imposing anything on someone that they didn't want. for my perspective it's simply about looking at the issue and coming up with the best solution, understanding that, you know, miami has the most number of cases in the entire state of florida. and that's not what we want to
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be known for. we want to be known for our beaches, all the things we've been known for, being one of the safest large cities in america. those are the things we want to be known for. we want to hit this problem head on so that we can move on hopefully quickly and get our economy started up again. >> mayor, i have to say, bringing up hockey and the leafs in this conversation gets you points in this conversation and opening up for canadians is an important group that comes to the region. we hope miami gets to open up in a safe way as soon as possible. good to see you. thanks to both of you. facebook is feeling the pressure finally.
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some of the world's biggest advertisers, some of the biggest companies in the world are boycotting either facebook itself or social media in general over their inaction on misinformation and hate speech. plus a bit of good news for migrant children in the united states. we'll have those stories when velshi continues on msnbc. branc. ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor is for postmenopausal women or for men with hr+/her2- metastatic breast cancer, as the first hormonal based therapy. ibrance plus letrozole significantly delayed disease progression versus letrozole, and shrank tumors in over half of patients. patients taking ibrance can develop low white blood cell counts, which may cause serious infections that can lead to death. ibrance may cause severe inflammation of the lungs that can lead to death. tell your doctor right away
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federal judge ruled that migrant children held in immigration and customs enforcement family detention centers must be released because of coronavirus. according to the ruling from the district judge in central california, the centers are on fire and there is no more time for half measures. she ordered those children who have been in detention centers for more than 20 days be released by july 17th. her ruling cites that earlier this month there were 124 children in i.c.e. custody. this comes as more than 750 i.c.e. detainees have tested positive for coronavirus out of nearly 9,000 who have been tested so far. there's growing concern among many immigration attorneys that i.c.e. will now release children without their parents, triggering something that would look like family separation all over again. for too long the american political system focused on
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partisanship and horse race with little governing being done. that's a situation that is worsening substantially in the last four years. donald trump, the reality tv president, has been known for his penchant for dramatics and showmanship with catchy slogans like you're fired or lock her up. he bestows demeaning nicknames on political rivals and defaults to theatrics like prime time specials to name supreme court justices or talking about big military parades in the streets of d.c. for a while these were easy for some americans to discount as rhetoric because the economy continued to strengthen and businesses were doing well. but ignoring trump's theatrics didn't prevent damage along the way. that damage is evident now that america is not doing so great. in a bid to continue playing to the lowest common denominators trump created a reality in which a deadly pandemic, one that killed more americans yesterday than on any previous day, is
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something to laugh and make scene phobfoebzone no xenophobic jokes about. >> i could give you 19, 20 names for that. all different names. wuhan. wuhan was catching on. coronavirus, right? kung-flu, yes. >> the president balks at simple concepts that would keep us all safer. he refuses to wear a mask. he offers snake oil treatments, and his denials of science may have caused many americans to doubt medical professionals. though only 0.0062% of the 1 million people the president boasted tried to get tickets to his tulsa rally actually showed up, donald trump insisted on
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that spectacle to demonstrate the threat of the virus passed. what is new and different now, is that the deadly reality we're facing can't be set aside by catchy slogans and nonsense talking points. this pandemic is far from over and there are indications that it's worsening. people continue to get sick. people continue to die. and the numbers are surging in the very places where trump has real influence to put it out but chooses not to do that. the election is 129 days away. a little more than three months. things are not looking good for trump. americans have rated his handling of the pandemic poorly. the economy is suffering more than it needed to because he delayed taking action because he didn't want the numbers to double. he said that on march 6th, almost four months ago when america had fewer than 200 known cases of coronavirus. people are restless, they're angry, they're desperate, trump desperately wants to win a
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second term but he can't govern. america is telling him that. he could have chosen to lead, just do what the public health officials told him do, shut things down early, increase testing, but he chose to deny. he chose to delay. he chose to deflect. 125,000 americans are now dead. make america great again is a joke given what trump didn't do when he had a chance. keep america great again is a slogan that america is not going to give donald trump a chance to prove that he can't live up to. i've been taking prevagen on a regular basis for at least eight years. for me, the greatest benefit over the years has been that prevagen seems to help me recall things and also think more clearly. and i enthusiastically recommend prevagen. it has helped me an awful lot. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.
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president trump. the move came after a successful boycott movement from the stop hate for profit campaign. they were pushing companies to cut ties with the social media giant. unilever, coca-cola and verizon, some of the largest advertisers on the platform, halted advertising on facebook this week. unilever, which owns hundreds of brands including dove and axe, accounted for at least $42 million of ad revenue on facebook in 2019. facebook makes 99% of its profit from advertising. some critics say the move doesn't go far enough. mark zuckerberg has been facing public pressure since twitter made news last month announcing that it would crack down on hate speech. earlier this week twitter flagged a tweet due to abusive behavior from president trump after he wrote there will never be an autonomous zone in
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washington, d.c. as long as i'm your president. if they try they will be met with serious force. behind the scenes, facebook is trying to assure advertising partners it cares about fighting hate and misinformation and points to efforts to use software to detect hate speech and circulate verified information to users. with me now is rashad robinson, the president of color of change. you and i talk about so many things that it's interesting to talk to you about something very specific your group has been part of and remarkably influential in getting major corporations to take a stand on. what changed? facebook and social media platforms have been exhibiting irresponsible behavior for years. what has suddenly happened? >> i think what suddenly happened is that it's -- that corporations are joining us. many corporations who have put #blacklive#blacklivesmatter
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media are being given an opportunity to stand with us and recognize their corporate brands are being put next to hateful, violent and racist content and they're not told about it by facebook. so advertisers are sort of now given warnings when they're being given sort of outreach from facebook, when they are told -- when ads are being pulled down that actually have violated the policies. that we actually forced facebook to submit to a third party validator that actually looks at whether or not the content on their site is being pulled down. facebook for five years has dealt with color of change. for the back and forth engagement we have been pushing them on changing their policies. over and over again we get this lip service about what they can do and can't do. a couple weeks ago i was in a
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meeting over zoom with mark zuckerberg and sheryl sandberg where they talked about all the things they wouldn't do. now advertisers start leaving and they're having press conferences, putting out press releases about things they may or may not change. the fact of the matter is time and time again the incentive structures of this platform are off. the algorithms allow for sort of an incentive that allows for content that is hateful, violent, and racist to travel in very sort of deep ways and proliferate across the country. we need users and advertisers to be protected in a new way. >> so, i guess i want to ask you about this. we've talked for months about how to regulate social media. a lot of people point to europe where there's actual regulation. a lot of it has do with privacy as opposed to hate speech or political speech. but what is the -- what's the right answer here?
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is it for the corporate world, advertisers and advertising companies to say this is looking bad for us, to have our ads adjacent to nonsense, garbage and hateful stuff on social media than to do it through legislation? >> legislation is the best way to go because it's the only way we can actually have a floor on what's acceptable. we can have you'lls to ov rules. in the absence of folks at 1600 pennsylvania avenue without having the energy in the senate to move strong regulations, the laws that social media platforms have to follow now were written before we had social media platforms. i remember back in 2016 when we were talking to facebook and trying to push them not to sponsor the republican convention because of so many things that were being talked
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about by donald trump, the conversations about the kkk, conversations about potential violence on the floor if he was not the nominee. corporations had every right to decide whether they wanted to join our campaign. what facebook told us, which was really interesting is that they had to go to the rnc convention because they were a media platform. they had to cover both sides, sort of like you all. then we fast track and we end up watching mark zuckerberg in front of congress saying that facebook is not a media platform and they shouldn't be dealing with regulations of the government in terms of media platforms. so the challenge of not having real laws is whatever the argument that best suits them in any moment to keep up hateful, violent and dangerous content on their platform and allow it to travel, they will use that argument. >> so, real quick, i'm not
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asking you to deliver an opinion if you don't want to. i'm of the opinion after listening to mark zuckerberg that he doesn't really believe in this stuff. he wants the stuff that's going to be most engaging and that tends to be the stuff we don't like. and most engaging tends to be most profitable. philosophically he doesn't share your view on this. >> no. he wants to -- he wants growth and profit and time and time again meeting after meeting someone that keeps themselves as both chair person and ceo controls 60% of the shares. facebook has 2.6 billion users. that's more followers than christianity. a private person should not control a square that big and that has that many folks. the fact of the matter is his incentive structure time and time again is focused on growth and profit at the expense of so many folkses. the fact that white nationalist groups are sent invitations to
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set up facebook pages, the fact they don't take responsibility that the content and information on their platform and coming from the platform violates the most basic set of rules they talked about, if it comes from donald trump, because they're afraid to pull down donald trump content because they're afraid of regulation from donald trump. this is why we need real rules and why we can no longer trust facebook to police themselves and why we need corporations to stand with us. >> rashad, congratulations on the great work you have done. it's an important conversation. i'm curious as to why you're not wearing a hat today. >> next time. when i get the corona hair done. >> maybe that's what it is. a problem i don't face. thank you, rashad. sweeping police reform legislation has passed in the house of representatives, but there's one provision that republicans in the senate are already rejecting. i'll explain what qualified immunity for police is next.
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click or call for a quote today. i think george floyd's murder would have been prevented if our bill now would have been the law of the land. we're talking about something that is an incident that everybody saw the martyrdom. everybody saw 8 minutes and 46 seconds of a knee on the neck. policy has an impact. we can prevent future deaths if we ban the chokeholds. i'm fully committed to that. >> this week house democrats approved a sweeping police reform package that would ban chokeholds and so-called no-knock warrants. but republicans are already rejects one provision in the bill that would make it easier
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to sue police departments. the doctrine of qualified immunity gives police officials broad if not elementless protections from personal liability even when they break the law. it was developed in a series of opinions involving the main u.s. civil rights law which says any state actor like police which violates someone's constitutional rights shall be liable to the party injured. the court effectively rewrote this statute to say public officials including law enforcement can't be sued unless they violated clearly established law. now here's the problem with that. judges are now disposing of cases on qualified immunity grounds without ruling on whether anyone's rights were violated by an established law. law enforcement officers who behave badly are rarely prosecuted, to lawsuits brought by victims of misconduct are often the only way to hold them
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accountable and in the absence of the precedent that shows the action of illegality, victims of police violence rarely if ever see justice. but after years of extensively documented police brutality, should this continue as a necessary protection for government officials and should they now be held to the same, some argue a higher legal standard of conduct than everyone else is? joining me now is one of the co-sponsors of the house democratic bill, wisconsin congressman gwen moore. talk to me about this for a second. it seems logical that police should be held to as high if not a higher law than i would be held to, yet that's not the case when it comes to this issue of qualified immunity. >> thanks for having me this morning. your set up was actually very beautiful explaining it to the
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public. so the notion -- the argument, the fell largument i heard yest was that somehow we'll not be able to recruit good police officers if they, in fact, are held accountable. one thing that the justice and policing act attempts to do is to change the culture of policing. steer is back to what americans envision as that protect and serve stewardship. what we recall from history is that after african-americans were freed in 1865 officially, police departments started killing black men willy-nilly. so the 14th amendment to the constitution was adopted to address the violence, it was the equal protection clause that we
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use widely in commerce but it was designed specifically to stop white policemen from killing black men. so we're trying to realize that in this bill. change the culture of policing. yes, you -- we'll change not only the qualified immunity clause so that people can recover damages when you violate their civil rights, but we'll change the misconduct statutes as well so we don't have this high bar of trying to prove that it was the -- that you premeditated the murder before you did it. you know, in the case in my old community, where deandre hamilton was shot 14 times after lying asleep on a public park bench, that officer is now in florida living off 75% of his income fishing every day.
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>> let me ask you about the idea that it becomes hard to re krcr police. do you believe that to be true? >> that's ridiculous and thanks for raising that question. we need to do better in the recruitment process. one of the pieces that i contribute to -- contributed to in this was deescalation. but many people have pointed out to me that deescalation doesn't help unless you recruit the right people in the first place. i think of my colleague, al demings, who was recruited from being a social worker. it's hard to imagine her violating someone's civil rights, killing them when she -- when she brought to the job was that kind of spirit. we need to recruit better cops in the first place. it's the same thing with just
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recently we changed our -- our liability laws so that if members of congress sexually harass folks that it won't be a liability of taxpayers but it will taxpayers, but it will be on that member of congress. >> yeah. >> people are still running. people still want to serve. maybe it will incentivize them to not sexually what race their employee harass their employees. maybe we'll get good cops applying for jobs. >> you brought up your colleague val demings. you think she should be the vice president of the united states? >> oh, my god. oh, my god. she could be so great. and vice president biden has lots of excellent choices. i am just so looking forward to him making his choice. and whoever he chooses has my
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entuesday afte enthusiastic support. >> congresswoman gwen moore of wisconsin. coming up next, we're seeing a reading rainbow with shades of black and brown. books by black authors have become best sellers. business is booming for black-owned book stores. my next zbeft one guests is one owners. we'll talk about what's flying off the shelves. ut what's flyig off the shelves. when the murray's started using gain ultra flings... ...they fell head over heels in love with its irresistible scent. looks like their dog michelangelo did too.
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protests across the united states for racial equality have opened people's eyes to the struggles of black americans. and. it "new york times" nonfiction best seller's list is any indication, the country is listening. look at this. dr. says buying these books with a radical act. >> the first step is to admit, to acknowledge one's own racist ideas, to acknowledge those
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times in which we're being racist so that we can then begin transforming ourselves and transforming this country. >> now, for black-owned book stores, the rush on these types of reads has meant booping business. but are these skyrocketing book sales a sign of real transformation in america? joining me now, the owner of fulton street books and cav tay in tulsa, oklahoma, a center of black history in america. thank you for joining me. talk to me about what's happening. are you seeing a meaningful change either in black and brown customers or white customers seeking out books on african american history, african-american culture, or privilege and things like ibram kendi's books on how not to be a racist? >> thank you so much for having me. think here in tulsa at fulton books and coffee we are asking
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the same question that people across the country who are seeing these book sales are asking, which is is this a moment or is it a movement? i think that books are necessary, but not sufficient. so while book sales are up, what we are pushing for is for folks who do the actual work, go beyond just the theoretical in reading books and make sure that folks are making action where they can every single day. whether it's where your work, where you live, where you play or where you play. we don't know yet what the impact of people reading nor books and books flying off the shelf will be. what our hope is that we can be propellers of some of the learning that people take away from getting those books. >> one of the things that -- one of the words that has come up these days is ally, right? allyship, how to be an ally to black and brown people, to people of color in this thing. you've actually created something called an ally box subscription. what is that?
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>> so our mission is twofold. we're about intergenerational literacy and building community. what we found ourselves in is a moment where folks are reaching out, mostly white folks asking, okay, i've seen this list of books that says if you want to learn about racism read these books. if you want to learn about the history of the country, read these books. where do i start? how do i begin this journey? so we responded with the ally box, which is a curated limited subscription. each month our subscribers get two books, and they also get curated resources, suggested action steps and access to an online learning collaborative where they're able to go on this journey with folks who are on a similar path and have discussion and just continue their learning and a supportive environment online. >> that is amazing. thank you for doing that. the owner of fulton books and cafe in tulsa, oklahoma. still to come, minneapolis takes a major step towards
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dismantling its police department. i'm going to speak to two city council members about the decision. velshi continues right after this. decision. velshi continues right after this. let's be honest. quitting smoking is hard. like, quitting every monday hard. quitting feels so big. so try making it smaller, and you'll be surprised at how easily starting small can lead to something big. start stopping with nicorette. it combines powerful vacuum suction and spray mopping. to lock away debris and absorb wet messes.
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