and good afternoon, i'm steve kornacki. here's what we're watching at this hour. any minute now a press briefing at the white house. we are going to monitor that and bring you any developments as we get them. now, this briefing comes as democrats slam president trump for orders he issued that circumvent congress which was not able to reach an agreement on coronavirus relief with the white house. president trump claims house speaker nancy pelosi and senate minority leader chuck schumer want to meet to discuss an aid package and the president has not been actively involved in negotiations. the nation has now surpassed 5 million confirmed cases of coronavirus. globally there are now about 20 million confirmed cases. meanwhile, schools across the

country are grappling with how and when to reopen. in georgia, a school that briefly suspended a student for taking a picture of a crowded hallway is now closed for deep cleaning. today and tomorrow. this after nine people tested positive for the virus there. it will alert parents tuesday night about whether it is safe for students to return in person to that school. we are going to speak to a medical expert about the ongoing school debate that is ahead. but, first, we begin in washington where the trump administration is defending its decision to bypass congress and to impose executive action when it comes to coronavirus relief. the president signed four orders over the weekend, including an extension of unemployment benefits. his move coming as negotiations on the hill have been anything but successful in recent weeks. and now top democratic leaders are pleading with their republican colleagues to meet them halfway.

>> i hope voices in the republican party will prevail and say, sit down with pelosi. sit down with schumer and meet them in the middle for god sakes. that's what we're willing to do. >> and joining me now are nbc's carol lee at the white house and garrett haake on capitol hill. thanks to both of you for joining us. carol, let me start with you. look, the president's executive orders here, all sorts of dispute about whether this is legal what he's doing here. i think the question here is, number one, just practically speaking. what do we know about he signed these. are they being implemented right now? are these executive actions actually being implemented into practical action on the ground and, two, how does that affect the answer to that first question. how does that affect how the white house looks at the further noexation atio noex negotiateiations with democrats. >> since the president signed the orders over the weekend and

trying to make the case that this will make a difference for the millions of americans who need this relief. the president has said himself that this relief will come, quote, very soon. but they haven't said exactly what that means and when. there's going to be a lot of pressure on the white house today to answer that question. when, if you're an american sitting at home wondering when you're going to get this direct payment. this money that the white house has promised. you know, when is that coming? they haven't said that so far. now, the president is under pressure to get and there's an acknowledgment here at the white house that real relief will come through legislation and only so much they can do. legal questions about this and practical questions about this in terms of the president's executive actions and the president saying that chuck schumer and nancy pelosi want to negotiate. but as you mentioned, he's largely been on the sidelines in these negotiations and hasn't really gotten deeply involved. so, there's a question there about whether or not he steps off the sidelines and does try to broker some sort of deal. we haven't seen that from him

yet. meanwhile, you have millions of americans who are waiting to see whether or not they're going to benefit from what the president has done. and you hear democrats and republicans saying that the president really doesn't have the authority to take some of these steps, particularly that comes to a holiday for the pay roll tax and now they're going to have to say exactly when and how much money is coming to americans and when and if they can get to some sort of agreement. but the two sides are not nearly close in terms of being able to do some sort of legislation, which as i said, is what everyone acknowledges is where the real relief is going to come. >> let's go to that question on capitol hill. from the standpoint of democrats, they're talking about good eting t getting the administration back to the table to negotiate a bipartisan deal on this. are they confident they will get the white house there? and have the president's executive actions here. have they changed it all on how they're approaching negotiations

and what they might be negotiating for. >> you ask about the question of whether these executive orders were legal. i think democratic perspective and the context of these negotiations is will they be effective? what you have here is essentially administration negotiators walking away from the table late last week feeling like democrats weren't coming down enough or coming close enough to their position and feeling like perhaps they could shake things up by implementing these executive orders and see if that alone could either provide enough relief on their own or force democrats to feel like they, too, needed to act in some way perhaps by compromising. what i think you're seeing now is democrats essentially saying we're going to wait and see if these executive orders have any effect or whether the white house looks around in a couple days perhaps and says, you know what, the trick. we need to resume negotiations. as recently as ten minutes ago a senior democratic aid told me still no contact whatsoever between the administration and speaker pelosi's office. so, despite the president's tweets and despite his comments to reporters saying that

democrats are reaching out to him eager to resume negotiations and democrats are eager to resume negotiations and not coming to the white house with a new offer. they very much believe that the white house fundamentally misunderstands the scale of the problem that we are in right now and the scale that will be needed to address it. and that means the democratic position at this moment. >> all right, garrett haake on capitol hill. carol lee at the white house. thanks to both of you for being with us. and all this week, nbc news and msnbc are talking about coronavirus and the classroom. this as students head back to school or potentially head back to school. today students in baker county, florida, are back in theirclassrooms for the first day of in-person lessons there. students and staff are not required to wear face masks but masks are recommended when prolonged social distancing is not possible. the latest figures show the positivity rate across baker county stands at nearly 30%. joining me now from outside

maclainy elementary school in florida is msnbc correspondent sam brock. thanks for being with us. so, we gave some of the stats for the area where you are. the rules here, take us through how this is being implemented. they're saying masks not required, recommended in some circumstances. how are they dealing with this? >> that's the question right now, steve. the million dollar question. why isn't there a requirement on masks since it shows it prevents the transmission of the virus. we reached out to the superintendent and they responded to our questions via e-mail and declined an on-camera inert vi interview but just said they're optional and if you're closer than six feet away and prolonged contact, 15 minutes or longer, they would recommend you do it. it's not a requirement and talking to parent out here some are befuddled by it and others believe it should be a personal choice. a hot topic of conversation for weeks leading into the reopening of the school here. we do know a number of changes

that baker county is taking to keep students safe. and take temperatures of all their kids before they come to school and if it is over 100, don't bring them. additionally on school buses, assigned seating and hand sanitizing and a number of precautions they are taking. but as it pertains to masks and a fine balance right now between getting children socialized among their peers and dealing with the risks of coronavirus, that's what all these parents are going through. we talked to a mother of seven who just dropped off her youngest son six years old. here's what she said about trying to strike that balance. >> i mean, he's a kid. he wants to be around other kids. it was an option in my household, but,ioakn you know, chose it. i know, we're pulling right out. home is where you will be. >> now, steve, an important point to be made right now.

2.8 million public students here in florida roughly give or take. most of them are not going back to class right now. mostly the smaller counties. i'm in baker county right now. 30 minutes outside of jacksonville that have actually started that process and all of this with the legal battle under way and the largest teachers union in the state right now suing the state of florida for requiring schools to at least keep an option of in-person instruction. that is playing out as we speak and it also speaks to a larger debate going on in this country right now. steve? >> all right, sam brock down there in baker county, iffal if florida, thank you for that. the co-founder of get us ppe. doctor, thank you for joining us. we're talking about the subject here of school, school reopenings and hearing in florida some of the issues they're dealing with. i feel like reading the headlines and the news that comes out when it comes to this question of childhood and children and tranmission of coronavirus. the news is all over the place. i feel like i have read articles

that say very little risk of transmission from children and articles that say a great deal of risk and what do you know in terms of the science of this when it comes to children and coronavirus transmission? how confident are we that we know something meaningful there right now? >> steve, so anyone who tells you they know with certainty anything about the transmission of covid with children is lying to you. this virus has only been around for a little over seven months now and new knowledge is accumulating every day. early on we thought kids were unlikely to get covid and kids may be getting infected just as fre frequently as adults but more asymptomatic. kids can less likely to die but we do know that kids can get really, really sick and end up in the hospital and even die from covid-19. we also have some really important new evidence telling us that as kids get older, as they hit those adolescent years,

they may be as likely to pass it on to other people as adults. kids 10 and up can spread covid. the most recent evidence shows just as efficiently as adults do. if we're sending the preteens and teenagers to school, they're going to bring it back home and they could be the source of community spread in hot spots. >> an issue getting a lot of discussion right now certainly relates to the question about schools. about indoor air. indoor air being the next coronavirus frontline. they have joseph allen from healthy building business program the front of our disease control strategies when it comes to coronavirus. we talk about this when it comes to restaurants and indoor spaces. but certainly this applies to schools, as well. indoor space. lots of people, close quarters and shared ventilation. what can be done when it comes to an indoor space like that to protect the air and keep it safe? >> so, the very most important thing that we can do for kids,

for teachers, for school nurses is to mandate masks in the school setting. there have been study after study showing that if both people or all people in an indoor setting are wearing a mask, we decrease transmission by well over 75%. so, that is the one biggest thing. in addition to that, ideally we would have open windows or we would have ventilation that takes air from the inside and pulls it outside. we would have kids outside whenever they can be. but i recognize that in many of these southern states, it's awfully hot. i know that many school buildings have windows that don't open and public schools, in particular, are underfunded. to tell a public school to go retrofit their ventilation system is virtually impossible. the best thing we can do is masks. the other thing i will high llit you talked about bars and estare raunts. i'm a parent of two and far rather send my kids to school than go to an indoor restaurant

right now. sending my kids to school will do them good and me good, too. a choice we have to make around what we choose to allow people to do indoors right now. >> you talk about balancing all these concerns. our friends at cnbc a few weeks ago asked you about the prospect of sending your kids to school this fall. you said back then that under the right circumstances. if there are protocols in place like proper ventilation, masks. you would be open to that. couple weeks later, what you've learned in the weeks in between and what you're seeing on the ground. how do you feel about that question right now. would you feel comfortable sending your kids to school right now? >> as of today, i'm still planning on sending my two school-aged children back to my local public schools. here in rhode island and particularly in my community our rates of covid-19 are relatively low compared to the national stats. they're below the level that we worry about from a public health perspective and my schools are mandating masking and they're keeping the kids in small, stable group. if one kid gets sick, they're not going to spread it to 100

kids but 15 to 20 kids. additionally, i am personally not super high risk and neither is my husband. we're making that risk/benefit calculation but it is a personal family decision and one that we shouldn't be in. we don't have to be here right now. if we have had a good national strategy, we would have stopped this months ago. >> dr. megan ranney in providence, thank you for the time. appreciate that. a reminder all this week nbc news and msnbc are talking about coronavirus and the classroom. you get all the facts, possible solutions and expert advice like you were just hearing right there every day this week. coronavirus and the classroom. as we await the announcement of joe biden's running mate, that should be coming soon, some activists who say they believe sexist attacks will be coming. plus an exclusive look inside the wuhan china lab at the center of conspiracy

theories and speckulesulations e coronavirus pandemic. a major gas explosion outside of baltimore to cause three homes to collapse. a search and rescue operation is still under way. the city's fire officials say one woman was killed and one person remains trapped a at least three others are critically injured. we'll keep you updated on that as we learn more. you're watching msnbc. all day strong. sixty-two thousand seven hundred and ten dollars and thirty-one cents. sofi allowed me to refinance all of my loans to one low interest rate and an affordable monthly payment. and i just feel like there's an end in sight now and that my debt doesn't define me anymore. ♪ sofi is helping me get my money right.

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nominee joe biden is expected to announce his pick for a running mate. gretchen met with the vice president in person last week. the other top choices are believed to be kamala harris, former national security adviser susan rice and senator elizabeth warren and congressman karen bass and val demings among others. a number of advocacy groups say they're preparing for racist attacks against the women ultimately selected as biden's running mate and alley vatali joins me now. i see a different headline every hour. whoever it is going to be they are worried about potential attacks. what are you hearing from them? >> exactly, steve. it doesn't matter who it is going to be because these women's groups say that they've seen this movie before for female politicians.

and, so, this is a new attempt to fix an old problem because even just consider the way that this vp stakes in the last weeks of it has shaken out. you've seen conversations about people being too ambitious or in the case of kamala harris she ran for president before but also wants to be considered for vice president makes that almost a negative. her ambition is a negative there. you even think about how in recent days a story out that likened joe biden choosing from this pool of potential female vps to an episode of "the bachelor" asking who is going to get the rose. that's the kind of commentary that you just don't hear about male politicians when they vie for power. so all of these women's groups are banding together and saying regardless of who the vp choice is, we're going to have her back. and they're doing in a variety of different ways. one thing they did was talk about a letter that they wrote to news outlets basically saying that news organizations should be pretty deliberate in the way that they talk about these

female contenders. focus on the substance. don't repeat these gendered or sexist attacks and instead put them in context. but some of the groups are even going a step further. times up, for example, is a war room of sorts. five or so staffers that are going to be tasked with tracking this kind of commentary in realtime attempting to call out these narratives and disrupt them before they can take place. but a really important caveat here and i want to read you to you something that one of the women from my articles said to me. we're not saying any attack on a woman is sexist. we're not saying that any criticism of a woman is unfair. what we're saying is that there are ways we make women seem different and seem like they don't beraulong here. particularly women of color. we want to call it out so people look for it and don't accept it as the facts. the thinking here being that it's easy to overlook this stuff if you're not already primed to be looking for it. so much of the sexism and racism

comes in ways that are not necessarily overt. it is a little more hidden. if you're primed and educated to look for it in the media and as a voter, this group says it's harder to establish itself in a narrative in the last 80 or so days of the election. >> ali, thank you for that. meanwhile, a little set change here. this is the big board, of course. this is where we check election results and election night and between now and the election polls and that's what we want to talk to you about right now. a couple of new polls in the last 24 hours from some of the most important states in the battleground. let me show you them. three polls, in particular. i think you'll see what these three states have in common. i'm about to show you. the first one from the state of pennsylvania. this poll came out just yesterday. joe biden 49, trump 43. a six-point advantage there for joe biden. remember, born in scranton, pennsylvania. this is one of those states his campaign has talked about flipping back that donald trump

had been able to pull off in 2016. a six-point advantage in this cbs poll for biden over trump. and also a cbs poll from wisconsin. wisconsin like pennsylvania, one of the states that voted democratic for three decades and donald trump flipped in 2016. here you go, biden now leading, again, you saw six in pennsylvania and six here. 48, 42. biden over trump, according to the cbs/ugov. it's a michigan poll, if that's not a little confusing. but the newest poll out of michigan and, again, michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin. those three states trump flipped in the midwest in 2016. now four-point advantage here biden over trump. this is actually a little tighter, at least in this pole than we've seen in some of the other michigan polling. again, biden leading in all three of these states. four, six or three points. just to show you the electoral college significance of this. let's go back here and show you where things landed in 2016.

trump, of course, won with 306. if biden flipped pennsylvania. this is the most direct path to the white house for the democrat. flip pennsylvania. the last time before 2016 a republican had won that was back in '88. you saw the pole there if biden was able to flip pennsylvania and flip michigan and flip wisconsin. just win back those three states that had been democratic for decades until trump came along. you flipped those back if you're biden. if nothing else changes, that alone is enough to get biden the presidency. if biden flips those three states, trump's got to pick off some surprise here on the map from a state that we're really not currently talking about. if you're the biden campaign, that's your most direct path. just win back those three states. very tight in 2016. if you're the trump campaign, look, you've got trouble. we've seen trouble for trump in arizona, florida, north carolina. we've seen trouble a bunch of states but the basic thing for trump, he has to find a way to win one of these states. his campaign talks more about wisconsin than the others. he has to find a way to win wisconsin and then just hold on

to all these other states on the map where he's in trouble right now, according to polling. again, we've seen those polls with biden ahead nationally. when you're ahead nationally the way biden is this is the way the electoral map looks. as the pbiden campaign makes ad buys the trump campaign is pulling back in some of them. michigan. spending steadily declined from $500,000 a week to less than 20,000 at the end of july. pro biden ads more than tripled and several trump allies acknowledged if the election was held today, trump would lose. joining me now politico white house reporter nancy cook. thank you for joining us. that is your article we're talking about. going through some of the new polling and what the electoral map kind of looks like here. you say behind the scenes the bottom line is they think trump would lose today. what kind of things do you hear from folks around trump right now when they talk about the

prospects for this election? >> i think there's a real sense of doom and gloom about the prospects. they really thought the economy would be the best message for him and so much confidence about that as they, you know, he escaped impeachment and the economy was great and basically the economy is still in the tank. you know, over 10% unemployment rate and i feel like unless the white house is able to put forward some sort of strategy to get the coronavirus under control and trump can prove that he's a leader on that, there will still be a major economic downturn in the country and that deprives trump of his best message to voters, particularly in the states that you highlighted earlier like wisconsin and pennsylvania. these are states that he really needs to win and that's where they are going to make the economic message and they can't really do that at this point because the coronavirus is dampening the economy. >> the mood is pessimistic right now. in terms of how they stand right now. you're talking about the kinds of things they think need to

happen here to turn it around. do they think those kind of things will happen whether it comes to the coronavirus and whether it comes to the economy. what is their optimism level when it comes to the sort of circumstances of the campaign changing here? >> well, i think that they feel if they can come out and defy biden and really going after him very aggressively in a way they haven't been able to do so far, i do think they think their fortunes can change. but so much of that depends on basically settling on a message that sticks with biden and then hoping that biden screws up in some way either on the campaign trail or during the debates. but that really also puts the onus on and the control on the biden campaign sort of waiting for them to screw up rather than having a proactive message. that's what a bunch of trump allies told me when i was reporting that story last week. and they don't feel super comfortable with that message. you know, it's just been so hard for the trump campaign to really get wins. they haven't gotten wins on the coronavirus. they haven't been able to define

biden. we've seen his poll numbers sipgisip sinking in battleground states and a real sense and when you talk to trump political advisors and allies, they feel like they are aware the clock is ticking and they really need to get it together over the next few months and they're aware that every day is going to be a slog and fight in a way that they didn't think they would have to six months ago. >> you say the clock is ticking here. if it continues to tick and the numbers we're talking about here don't change, how does the rest of the republican party, i'm talking about republicans running for the senate in competitive races trying to hang on to seats in a lot of cases and same thing on the house side. same thing in some gubernatorial elections around the country. how do they react then? do they stick with trump to the end? is there a point when republicans might look at these polls and say, well, he might be doomed. i've got to do something different. what are you hearing on that front? >> that's a great question, steve.

i think that we're already seeing republicans try to put some distance between themselves and the white house for that very reason. we've seen republican governors around the country are not necessarily following trump's lead on coronavirus. they really have had to go it alone. we're starting to see i'm hearing from donors and people that run major conservative groups. people on the ground in states. they are starting to turn their attention to the senate. and i know that there are a bunch of staffers and senators that are deeply worried about the republican ability to hold on to the senate and i think there's a feeling that if trump continues to be undisciplined and can't stay on mesage and the white house can't put forward a strategy on the coronavirus, republicans are going to peel off and really start to try to save themselves and save the senate because their nightmare would be both losing the white house and the senate and having democrats control, you know, the house, senate and white house by november. >> all right, nancy cook from politico. thank you for taking the time. appreciate that. >> thanks so much, steve. with coronavirus relief bill negotiations between the white

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california's economic challenges are deepening. frontline workers stretched too thin. our nurses and medical professionals in a battle to save lives. our schools, in a struggle to safely reopen, needing money for masks and ppe,

and to ensure social distancing. and the costs to our economy, to our state budget? mounting every day. we need to provide revenues now, to solve the problems we know are coming. there are a number of developments we're following with the coronavirus pandemic and here are the latest facts as we know them at this hour. the director general of the world health organization says

that he anticipates that the global total of registered cases will reach 20 million this week. 750 deaths. on sunday new zealand marked 100 days since it stopped the spread of the coronavirus. for the 5 million residents of the island, life has been able to return to nornl ming includi return to restaurants and sporting events. the "detroit free press" is reporting the big ten football conference canceled the season. two schools have declined to comment to nbc news. we have breaking news for you, as well. president trump says he has narrowed his choice for where he will deliver his acceptance speech tweeting this, quote, we have narrowed the presidential nomination acceptance speech to be delivered on the final night of the convention to two locations the great battlefield of gettysburg, pennsylvania and the white house. we will announce the decision soon. meanwhile, today congress

and the white house remain farther apart than they've been before on a long-term solution for covid-19 relief. this after the president signed an executive actions over the weekend to deal with the economic fallout from the pandemic. while treasury secretary steve mnuchin indicates that the white house is open to more negotiations, senate minority leader chuck schumer says they are still far from the same page. >> we're prepared to put more money on the table. so, there are things that i said that made sense to compromise. we've compromised. so, we're not stuck at the trillion dollars, but we're not goegto going to go to unlimited amounts of money to do things that don't make sense. >> their proposal will not deal adequately with testing. will not dealed ed adequately f opening schools safely and not deal adequately with unemployment insurance and not deal adequately with state and local needs. it will be a disaster. >> joining me now is democratic

congresswoman from washington state a member of the budget committee as well as the judiciary and education committees. congresswoman, thank you for joining us. appreciate it. i want to get into the possibility here of more negotiations. i want to start with the basic question, sort of a nuts and bolts thing. i know you don't think the president should have taken these actions over the weekend. i know you don't like the approach that he's put in them. but practically speaking, do you believe the things that he has done or says he has done through these executive actions. do you believe they are going to be implemented? >> i don't know if they're going to be implemented, but even if they are, these were a pr stunt. nothing more than a public relations stunt and a bad one at that, steve. these executive orders he does not continue the eviction on rent and mortgage assistance. he says maybe they should be considered as continuing the eviction moratorium. he says that he's increasing or

he's continuing unemployment benefits but he's actually slashing them in half because he's asking for states who have no money to participate in giving even less unemployment than what was assured before to people. he really has done nothing with these executive orders and, to me, what's horrifying is he's thinking about which battlefield to deliver his acceptance nomination speech, but we have the battlefield of coronavirus right here in america. and these executive orders do nothing to put money in people's pockets to help deal with the testing and contact tracing. you mentioned the statistics for new zealand. they took immediate action. we in the united states of america have shown no leadership because this president refuses to admit that this is a real thing. now we surpassed 5 million cases and 3.5 million in the 12 weeks since the house of

representatives passed the heroes act. 163,000 deaths of americans and i just think it's disgraceful because there is no relief and my constituents are desperate. they're getting kicked out of their homes. they don't have money for food on the table. there is no money for their kids to go to school. there's no assistance for states and local governments to actually be able to deal with all the things that they're having to deal with. so, complete lack of leadership from the president. what he needs to do is come back to the table and negotiate. >> let me ask you, congresswoman, how do you get him there? steve mnuchin saying he is open to it, but he has taken these executive actions. how do you get him back to the table and get the white house there to get the kind of deal you would like to see? >> i think it's really the people of america are going to speak loudly and they already are. you went through the numbers of polling for the president. he's doing terribly because people see that there is no leadership. but these republican senators

are going to have to step up because many of them are in tough elections. they're going to go back to their districts and hearing from their constituents just like i am. this is not something that is only hitting blue districts. this is red and blue states and these republican senators are hearing the desperation. so, it's now going to be up to them to say, all right, kids, mr. mnuchin, mr. meadows. get back to the table and do what is right for the american people. >> the "new york times" reports one of your colleagues and one of your democratic colleagues from new jersey on a call for caucus members over the weekend. democratic caucus members said if there is no deal, if folks don't get all back to the table and hammer out a deal, he thinks the reaction of the public will be pox on both their houses. this is the fault of washington and the fault of both republicans and democrats. that voters would take it out on both parties in november. do you agree with that assessment? >> that was a very cherry picked comment. i was on that call and tom

started by saying to the speaker, please, fight hard. there is no relief here and we need big relief. and, of course, we all want to get to a deal. the speaker wants to get to a deal, as well. we all understand that is essential. that's why democrats reduced our demands from $3 trillion to $2 trillion and asked for the white house to come up by a trillion so that we could meet in the middle. that's what principled compromise looks like. i will tell you where we are in this crisis, over 20 weeks of more than one million new unemployment claims filed for 20 straight weeks. that is worse than the great depression. we should be pulling out all the stops and, honestly, i think there is no amount of relief that could be enough for the american people today. so, i think that that is what the caucus wants from the speaker is to continue to fight hard and to make sure that we're actually getting some relief to people that is going to last and

is going to be able to help them in their greatest hour of need. and that's where we are, steve. this horrific situation with no leadership from the president. no leadership from the republicans. and people across this country hurting so badly. >> all right, congresswoman j a japayal from washington state, thank you for the time. appreciate itp. less than three weeks away and we're looking at what measures need to be taken to secure the security and efficiency of the mail-in system. you're watching msnbc.

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we are just 85 days out now from election day. and states are scrambling to allow more mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. but as president trump attacks the idea of widespread mail-in voting and with the post office under scrutiny for closing offices and cutting services, what has to happen to ensure the 2020 election is safe and fair?

joining me now is amber mcreynolds the ceo of the national vote at home institute, that's a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to expanding voting options. she testified before the house committee on homeland security yesterday on protecting the integrity of the 2020 elections. amber, thank you for joining us. appreciate it. we look at this topic here of mail-in voting. a few states out there that have been doing this for years, for decades, really. they got it down to a science, it seems, when they look at them. other states including the one that i'm in including new york that are doing it on this scale, this mass scale for the first time and trying to get a lot of things in position to pull this off. states like that. states that are doing that on a very widespread scale for the very first time. what is the biggest challenge that they face right now? >> well, time is frankly the biggest challenge we all face right now including election officials across the country. the fact is vote by mail has been available for use in every

single state across the country. it's tried and true. we know that it's secure and safe and especially in a pandemic it provides voting access to the vast majority of folks that are worried about the pandemic and worried about covid. frankly worried about other barriers that voters face in the voting process. so, we know it works. it's also critical now for states that are scaling up similar to new york to replicate what works so well in so many states that have done this for a long period of time. not reinvent the wheel but replicate what we know works well and many states right now are doing that across the country. >> yeah, the reason i mentioned new york is they just had the primary, actually the primary was june 2 3rd. we just got the results and 84,000 mail-in ballots. that's 21%. one out of five mail-in ballots that were received were rejected in new york. and i'm just looking at that rate and comparing it to some of

these states that i say, again, have been doing this for years and doing it for decades. staggeringly high number. what do you think is behind that and what can be done to address that between now and november? >> absolutely. well, one of the biggest reasons that election officials struggle with vote by mail limitation is because there are four policies on the books. new york is a great example along with michigan, wisconsin, maryland. all of those states limit election officials ability to process ballots in advance of election day. so, it can really delay the process that also means that they're not giving voters a window to cure any issues that come up with the ballot, including signatures. so, it's important to have processing in advance similar to states like florida and ohio and colorado and utah that have done this for a while. but also give voters a chance to cure. a lot of reasons the voters' ballots get rejected is because

they're late. in new york we saw some instances of where they were attempting to accept postmark and it wasn't prevalent on the envelope and those are some of the issues that we have solutions for in terms of states that have done this before. so, it's critical now for states to make these policy adjustments and make operational adjustments and also approve systems like ballot tracking, which is what we're doing in a lot of states right now like california, michigan, georgia is considering a ballot tracking system. those are all examples of things that can be done now that protect voters and also enhance security and add accountability to the process. >> amber mcreynolds, thank you for taking a few minutes. i appreciate it. >> thanks. meanwhile, lebanon's prime minister just announced that he, along with all of his ministers, will be stepping down this following last tuesday's deadly explosion in beirut. that blast killed nearly 160 people. it injured thousands more. public anger has grown in recent

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with tensions between the u.s. and china already high from disputes over trade and hong kong, conspiracy theories over how the coronavirus pandemic began have only added fuel to the fire. in a first for a foreign news organization since the pandemic began, nbc news has been given exclusive access to the wuhan institute of virology, that was once the epicenter of intense speculation about the sources of the outbreak. joining me now from wuhan, china, is msnbc foreign correspondent janis mackey

frayer. j janis, that is a location that we say a great deal of speculation, a great deal of attention and focus the last few month. what have you been able to find out? >> well, when we went to the lab, we went with the same idea, that this is a place that has garnered so much speculation, so many questions, been the target of so many conspiracy theories. when we got to the lab, it was almost surprising how small things were. it was a box inside of a box where the technicians who had been trained in france and the u.s., wear the positive pressure suits, all of their work right now is focused solely on covid-19. we spoke with two of the directors. one from the institute, one from the lab itself. not surprisingly, they told us that they had nothing to do with the virus. there was no leak. there was no accident. and it wasn't manufactured in their lab. we also learned that the world health organization, when it launches its investigation here,

with international and chinese scientists, they will not be investigating the wuhan lab as a possible source for the virus. here is the institute's director. >> they didn't mention any investigation. what they talked was, like, study. the word they used was, like, study. projects, international cooperation. no investigation was mentioned. >> so what does that suggest to you? >> in terms of the exchange with the world health organization, i think they also believe that the coronavirus should have originated from the wildlife and nature and is not made by or leaked from the lab. >> and steve, that state department cable dated january 2018 that was fueling more scrutiny of the lab recently, the lab officials say they were

confused because u.s. officials didn't visit the institute until march of 2018. it was for a seminar that wasn't about biosafety. they maintain u.s. officials have never seen the wuhan lab. we reached out to the state department for a statement. they didn't directly address it. the white house also had no comment. steve. >> all right, janis mackey frayer in wuhan, china. thank you for that report. really appreciate that. >> that is going to wrap it up for this hour. i'm steve kornacki. thank you for watching, and my colleague, chris jansing, picks up our coverage after this quick break. you're watching msnbc. you're watching msnbc. awesome internet.

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good afternoon. i'm chris jansing. it is 11:00 a.m. out west, 2:00 p.m. in the east. today, uncertainty and frustration building just days after the president announced executive actions on coronavirus aid. doubts about the real world impact of those orders and whether the president actually has the power to bring economic relief to americans without congressional approval. so, we expect to hear from the president. he's going to respond to those concerns, i'm sure, later today. because we just learned he'll hold a briefing at the white house that is scheduled for 5:30 eastern time. >> with both washington and american workers in limbo, confirmed cases of covid-19 in the united states have surpassed the 5 million mark. possibly fueling the transmission of the