before we start in earnest tonight, i do want to take a second, if you will indulge me, i have thank you that i need to say. we've had a couple of real milestones here at the show, good ones. in january, for the first time in january, for the first time ever, this show was the number one most watched show on all of cable television, which is crazy, right? not just the most watched show on cable news but the most watched show in all of cable tv, everything. that was in january, which was flummoxing and i thought absolutely was a fluke. but then today, we learned that we did it for a second month in a row. it turns out we were the most watched show on all of cable tv for both january and february. which i have no idea what to make of. but even better than that, for february, for this past month,

not only were we the most watched show on cable, but our network, this network, msnbc, was the most watched network in all of cable tv in the month of february, which is the first time that has ever been true for us as a network since we came into existence nearly 25 years ago. so if you know me, if you've ever seen the show, you know that i don't talk about ratings and cable news wars and all that stuff so i'm not going to dwell on this, i will not mention it again. but it is a really big deal for us. and i'm really thankful to you for watching this show. i had no idea there would ever be so many of you watching. it does blow my mind personally, but i am so grateful and humbled. thank you for supporting the show. thank you for supporting msnbc. we will keep doing our best to be worthy of your time and your trust for you tuning in. all right. let us never speak of this again. sorry. but i had to get that out. all right. moving on. today, the nation's new commerce secretary was confirmed by the

senate, gina raimondo, she is the governor of rhode island, or she was the governor of rhode island, now she will be our new commerce secretary. miguel cardona was confirmed to be education secretary. cecilia rouse is confirmed. williams burns as cia director got unanimous vote from the intelligence committee, a unanimous vote in committee is a good sign that he may get a unanimous vote on the floor. deb haaland to run the interior department, xavier becerra to be health secretary, those biden cabinet nominations seem to be on track to happen soon as well. before tonight, we were still waiting after days and days and days and days to see if a republican senator would decide that he or she would support neera tanden to run the office of management and budget in the

white house. the reason the white house needed to look for a republican to support ms. tanden is because conservative democrat joe manchin of west virginia announced that he wouldn't vote for her, which immediately, it was evident as soon as he said that, that that could potentially scupper her nomination. he said he decided he did not like the combative tone of some of neera tanden's past tweets. and the reason this is sticking in everyone's craw, the reason that announcement that he wouldn't support tanden has become sort of a stain on senator manchin's reputation, is not that senators don't have a choice as to which way they're going to vote on every nominee. it's the question of the standard that he's applying here, because of course senator manchin voted to confirm plenty of trump nominees, all men, of course, who had much worse problems with their online tone

than neera tanden ever got anywhere near. the reason this is a real problem for senator manchin and his reputation is because for some reason, senator manchin was only bothered by her tone in her online statements. he was not similarly bothered by the much more inflammatory things said by republican male nominees who he happily voted for in the past. again, all senators have a choice to -- you know, they are consulted, right, advise and consent is a real thing, they're supposed to make a real decision on every nominee. the problem here is not senator manchin voting against a democratic president's nominee. the problem is senator manchin applying a blatant and inexplicable double standard, just for her, when guys who did much worse were no problem for him but for some reason she really bugs him. so because of that, we've been waiting to see if senator manchin would explain that so that this wouldn't accrue to his reputation the way it's going to. in the absence, we've been waiting to see if a republican would actually stand up to support her so she could get the 50 votes she needed to be

confirmed to run the white house budget office. lisa murkowski, the republican senator from alaska, was thought of as a potential crossover vote for neera tanden. tanden and murkowski met in murkowski's office yesterday. senator murkowski still had not said how she would vote on the tanden nomination when it got to the floor. but tonight all this waiting and wondering and i think consternation over the behavior of senator manchin came to an end. well, maybe the consternation about senator manchin will continue, but the waiting about neera tanden came to an end when she told the white house she would withdraw her nomination. the result of this based on a white house statement in response, is that tanden will get another job in the biden administration that does not require nomination, she will join the administration. and senator manchin will drag this around as a stain on his reputation in the long run. but president biden will need to

nominate someone else to run the office of management and budget because the tanden nomination has come to an end. that says, merrick garland seems to be moving forward fairly smoothly to be the next attorney general of the united states, although somewhat along the same lines, perhaps it should also be noted that two women of color who have been named by president biden to be other senior officials in the justice department working directly under attorney general designate merrick garland, two women of collar, kristen clark and venita gupta have attracted fairly rabid attacks from republicans at this point. we'll see what happens to their nominations as well even as merrick garland seems to be moving forward. we'll see if joe manchin decides if he doesn't like them for some reason. at the justice department, we'll have more ahead this hour on the proverbial burning wreckage that

all the biden appointees will be walking into at the justice department and the challenges ahead with the prosecutions related to the january 6th capital attack. there was an interesting and sort of surprise announcement made today about who's going to be taking a key job in the biden justice department that will have an important relationship not only to the january 6th arrest and prosecutions but also to a bunch of the cases that ended up in a weird semi legal limbo after what appears to have been improper influence, improper political influence on justice department decisions under the trump administration. a new appointee announced today for a key part of the justice department who will have that mess to clean up. we'll have more on that coming up later this hour. the new defense secretary in the biden administration, you'll remember he was confirmed very quickly after the inauguration, retired general lloyd austin. it's interesting, for all of the diversity in our armed forces, including at the top, for all the pioneering leadership of people like colin powell who served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, of course,

before he became secretary of state, before lloyd austin, it's almost impossible to believe, but the defense department never had an african-american secretary of defense before mr. austin took that role this year under president biden. and you might remember a few years back in canada, prime minister justin trudeau also made a groundbreaking sort of glass-ceiling-breaking choice for defense minister in that country. he chose a man named harjet singh sajan, for an equivalent position as mr. austin here. mr. sajan is a sikh, he wears a turban as a sign of his faith. he's a former police officer, he's very photogenic and charismatic and became a bit of an international media star when he was first named to the cabinet.

but interestingly, minister sajan was one of four sikh canadians who justin trudeau named to his first cabinet. the infrastructure minister, the science minister, the minister for small business and tourism, and the defense minister, all four of those canadian cabinet minister of sikh origin in justin trudeau's first cabinet. the canadian population overall is about 1.5% sikh. and as those numbers have grown and sikh families have prospered in canada and sikhs have been elected to parliament and started to become high ranking government ministers, every now and again we here in the states get sort of media crossover. we cross over into our media and our culture of something cool happening in canada to sort of celebrate -- celebrate is the right word, to celebrate this relatively new kind of diversity among canadians and new

immigrants there. like for example, this gentleman, who lives in the yukon territory. his name is gerdheep pander. his social media presence is about the over the top joy he takes in teaching other canadians, canadians born and bred, immigrant canadians from all over, everyone, he teaches bhangra dancing. here he is teaching canadian soldiers at a firefighting training base, see that helicopter in the background, these are canadians soldiers, he's teaching them all how to dance bhangra, everybody can do it, everybody is having the time of their lives. here he is on a navy warship, teaching canadian navy sailors. everybody can bhangra dance, everybody can do it. i love this guy. this is what that same guy just posted today. ♪♪

so he says in the tweet that accompanies this video, he says, yesterday evening i received my covid-19 vaccine, then i went to a frozen lake to dance bhangra on it for joy, hope, and positivity, which i'm forwarding to canada and everyone else. this is i got my vaccine dance, his joy at getting the covid-19 vaccine. honestly, it makes me feel better already. here in the united states today, here is the tennessee version of that for us. >> well, hey, it's me. i'm finally going to get my vaccine. i'm so excited. i've been waiting. i'm old enough to get it and i'm smart enough to get it. so i'm very happy that i'm going to get my moderna shot today. and i wanted to tell everybody that you should get out there and do it too. i even changed one of my songs

to fit the occasion. ♪ vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine ♪ ♪ i'm begging of you please don't hesitate ♪ ♪ vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine ♪ ♪ cause once you're dead, then that's a bit too late ♪ >> i know i'm trying to be funny now but i'm dead serious about the vaccine. i think we all want to get back to normal, whatever that is. and that would be a great shot in the arm, wouldn't it? if we could get back to that. but anyhow, i just wanted to encourage everybody because the sooner we get to feeling better the sooner we'll get back to being normal. so i just want to say to all of you cowards out there, don't be such a chicken squat. get out there and get your shot. >> dolly parton today. the one and only. she's had a long time relationship with vanderbilt university. you may have heard or seen the headlines from a couple of months ago, she gave them personally a million dollar

donation at vanderbilt, she helped pay for the development of the moderna vaccine and today dolly parton got her shot. because she's dolly parton, she got it without having to roll up her sleeve because of course she already had a special dress that already had upper shoulder cutouts so they could just give her the shot right there without once interrupting even for a second her perfect dolly parton glamour. >> think you got it? >> i got it. >> okay. that didn't hurt. just stung a little bit. but that was from the alcohol pad, i think. >> yes. >> all right. >> let me quickly -- >> you're going to mess up my beauty mark? i'm joking, you do what you got to do. i don't want blood on my clothes. hey, i did it, i did it!

>> i did it, i did it! dolly parton in tennessee today. dolly got her shot. the sikh canadian teach everyone to dance guy got it. and went out and danced the bhangra on a frozen lake to celebrate. i will take it, i will take it, more like this, please. today was a bunch of big news, really big news on covid. there was some inexplicable news mixed into it from texas and mississippi where today governors in those states announced their dropping their mask requirements entirely in those states. why now? texas and mississippi are both states where case numbers have very recently started to climb back up. look at the far right side of each of those graphs. for all the progress each of those states has made and all that trauma and death they have been through, their numbers have just started to come back up. case numbers in both states on the upswing.

and vaccines now rolling out in sufficient numbers and increasing numbers that can get us to the end of this thing if we can just hold on a few more weeks. and they're deciding they can't wait another second. they're pulling all covid-related rules. at least to some eyes, like i said, fairly inexplicable decisions in texas and mississippi. both states have problems with clean drinking water because of infrastructure failures. in the capitals of both states they have huge present dangers right now with thousands of residents without potable drinking water because the state has absolutely blown it. those two republican governors in those states have decided this is the right moment for a big distracting disastrous public health decision. anyway, knock yourself out. meanwhile, though, today is the day we got really very big news about vaccine progress. somehow, and we're going to try to find out how tonight, somehow the administration persuaded two big rival drug companies, merck

and johnson & johnson, to stop competing on this front and instead cooperate, to help each other out. johnson & johnson, as you know, has just developed this new vaccine that was only just approved this weekend, started shipping out yesterday. all the data say it works great, it only requires one shot, it only needs to be stored in a normal refrigerator without any special equipment. it is cheaper than the other two vaccines we got approved. it's got sort of everything going for it, except for whatever reason the biden administration has been saying for a while now that they were surprised to learn when they took over five weeks ago, that johnson & johnson didn't actually have the logistical capacity to manufacture that vaccine in large enough amounts. so we talked with the chief science adviser to the covid-19 response, dr. david kessler, about that a couple of weeks ago. he said that he had been working on that problem that very day,

and that there was a whole of government effort to work on that problem among others in terms of these production bottlenecks. today the biden administration announced they have worked out a deal where this competing company, where merck will come in and help with the manufacturing of another company's, with johnson & johnson's, vaccine. >> the vice president and i have some good news to report. today we're announcing a major step forward. two of the largest health care and pharmaceutical companies in the world that are usually competitors are working together on the vaccine. johnson & johnson and merck will work together to expand the production of johnson & johnson's vaccine. this is the type of collaboration between companies we saw in world war ii. we also invoked the defense production act to equip two merck facilities to the standards necessary to safely manufacture the j&j vaccine.

johnson & johnson's vaccine manufacturing facilities will now begin to operate 24/7. here is what all this means. we're now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in america by the end of may. let me say that again. i'm pleased to announce today as a consequence of the stepped-up process, that i've ordered and just outlined, this country will have enough vaccine supply, i'll say it again, for every adult in america by the end of may. by the end of may. that's progress. >> enough vaccine for every adult in america by may 31st. by the end of may. if he means that, i think that means in some ways we might get summer back this year. i mean, depending on whether or not that vaccine actually gets into enough american arms. end of may, that's two months earlier than they previously thought they were going to get there.

the president went on to say to administer all these vaccines, we need more vaccinators, retired directors and nurses, fema personnel, defense personnel. i definite want to know more about that. it's one thing to have enough fluid, it's one thing to have the vaccines sitting in vials. it's another thing to make sure it can get into enough americans. but if production is going to be that much faster than they thought it was going to be, if they've fixed bottlenecks so they'll have enough for every american by the end of may, then we better have a distribution system that will get it into enough americans by the end of may to -- well, to change everything. so i want to know more about that. i also want to know more about this part of it. we are of course i think we're 37 days into the new administration. president biden said in his first 100 days he wanted the u.s. to administer 100 million vaccination doses. well, at 37 days in, we're already over halfway there.

we're well over 50 million doses administered. so it does look like we are ahead of the target to -- ahead of pace to hit that target. but alongside the 100 million doses in 100 days, president biden also said he wanted all elementary schools reopened in his first 100 days. and the cdc has put out guidance about what it takes to safely reopen schools. most schools, honestly, don't yet meet that criteria. and there's a lot of concern as to what it's going to take to get schools to a point where they do meet that criteria. the money in the covid relief bill that's for reopening schools safely, that will help. but that too is a ways off, it hasn't even passed the senate yet. so teachers and school staff in particular have been really worried about what it means to have all this new pressure to open schools, especially to open elementary schools and to open them quickly. which everybody agrees is an important goal, it's really important for kids. but it's unnerving to have that sense of pressure and to have that sense of imminent, potentially forced reopenings, while so many adults who make

schools run still themselves can't get vaccinated. well, here's the other big news today. here's what president biden said about that. >> over 30 states have already taken the step to prioritize educators for vaccination. and today, i'm using the full authority of the federal government. i'm directing every state to do the same. my challenge to all states, territories, and the district of columbia, is this. we want every educator, school staff member, childcare worker, to receive at least one shot by the end of the month of march. to help make this happen, starting next week and for a month, the month of march, we'll be using our federal pharmacy program to prioritize the vaccination of pre-k through 12 educators and staff and childcare workers. throughout march, they will be able to sign up for an appointment at a pharmacy near them. >> they'll be able to sign up

for an appointment at a pharmacy near them. prioritize the vaccination of pre-k through 12. so pre-k through elementary school, middle school, high school educators and staff plus childcare workers. what is the federal pharmacy program and how will this work? getting every teacher and school staff member, every childcare worker in the country vaccinated this month, this month, he wants this done by the end of march, he wants them to all have at least one vaccination shot by the end of this month, by this new initiative from the federal government, that would be absolutely huge. how is that going to work exactly? and are we really going to have enough vaccine for every adult in the country by the end of may? is that just on paper that we'll have enough? is the distribution plan enough to actually make that happen? because -- because as much as i love the winter, and i do, like dancing on a frozen lake love the winter, the idea of a country where all the teachers are vaccinated this month and

there is vaccine enough for everyone else in the country before the start of june, that's enough to make me love the spring. and the summer too. joining us now for the interview is dr. david kessler. he is the chief science officer for covid-19 response under president biden. and sir, it's an honor to have your time tonight, thank you so much for being here. >> it's a pleasure to be with you, rachel. >> first let me give you a chance to correct me if i explained any of these new policy announcements or the new place that we are with vaccines in a way that was wrong or that missed the point at all. >> no, you got it exactly right. in three months we will have enough vaccine for every adult in this country. >> when you think about the match of the need to the

resources, this is obviously a huge piece of it. will there be enough actual vaccine, actual fluid in vials, to vaccinate every adult in the country, knowing that is now going to happen by the end of may rather than by the end of july which was the already-ambitious goal you had announced, that was a huge piece of it. the other part of matching the distribution to the needs is the resource. my family has experienced it, the difficulty and complexity of trying to get people matched up with vaccines that they need, try to get those appointments, try to get people in line, is distribution on that front going to expand to meet the need in the way that the production of vaccine is? >> exactly. you know, right now we have many of our state and local partners administering vaccines. but we will add and are adding every week not only increased

number of vaccinators but increased number of sites. we're doing that at mass vaccination centers, mid-size vaccination centers, community health centers. as you mentioned, there will be a federal pharmacy program for teachers, among others. so there are a number of increasing distribution channels that will keep up with this increased supply of vaccine. >> i'm not sure that i understand what a federal pharmacy program is and how that will work. for the teachers and school staff members and childcare workers and all their families who are watching this tonight trying to figure out what this means about their loved one or themselves being able to get the vaccine by the end of this month, how does a federal pharmacy program work? >> let me make it simple. beginning the week of march 8th, go to the cdc website. if you're a teacher, you will

see the participating pharmacies in your neighborhood that you can go to. go to their web page. and if you're a teacher, if you're a childcare worker, if you're a staff worker, if you're a bus driver in a school, you are eligible to go to that pharmacy and get your vaccine. and we want all teachers to have at least one vaccination the month of march. >> dr. kessler, the last time you were here, you said that president biden had instructed you when he took office to do everything possible to accelerate the production of the johnson & johnson vaccine. you told me and you told all of us here you were working on it day and night. i have to ask you, given your concern and your involvement in this, were you working on brokering this deal between johnson & johnson and merck, that merck would actually come in as a competitor and help johnson & johnson produce their product? >> the answer is yes.

if you go back, look at the history a little, president truman asked robert wood johnson jr. who was then president of johnson & johnson to help bring companies together in world war ii. and president biden made it very clear, the message was there is nothing too big that you can't do, go big here. these companies came together, i have to give them enormous credit, at the administration's urging. merck and johnson & johnson came together. this is an historic partnership. they will produce, they will double the amount of drug substance, that's the vaccine itself. this is what's required. this is their time. we were all in this with them.

>> dr. kessler, last night we learned -- i'm not asking you a politics question here, but it is a question that has a political context, so i'll just preface it by saying that. last night we learned for the first time, and we reported here on the show for the first time, that the former president, president trump, was himself vaccinated at the white house in january. and we learned of it for the first time last night because the white house didn't photograph the event, they didn't announce it, they didn't tell anyone that he had been vaccinated. while he was president he had never told americans to get americans, i told everyone last night. it turns out he did write in december one tweet that told americans to get their shots. we have an odd partisan divide now on vaccine hesitancy. among americans who aren't vaccinated, democrats are more than twice as likely as republicans who say they will get the shot while they can.

i don't know why the previous administration treated president trump's own vaccine as a state secret and whether that might have helped if he had told everybody he had been vaccinated. now that we have this weird partisan divide about vaccine hesitancy, how does a democratic administration, how do you guys work to help republicans feel more positively about the vaccine, given that divide that really does exist. >> just the science, rachel. 2,000 people, more than 2,000 people, have died each day recently. this vaccine prevents death. it prevents hospitalization. the vast majority of people. i mean, it's that simple. there are still today 65,000 cases a day. there are variants that are of concern. we can put this behind us.

and yes, we will have enough vaccine in the next three months for every american. but as the president said, you know, those are the vaccines. we need vaccinations. and it's going to take everybody to step up and do their part and get this over with. >> dr. david kessler, former fda commissioner, now the chief science officer for the covid-19 response under president biden. dr. kessler, it is a real honor for us whenever you're able to make time to be here. thank you. >> thank you, rachel. >> okay. it is an historic day. if there's going to be enough vaccine in this country for every american by the end of may, that is such a change in the trajectory that we were expecting. the delivery is going to have to be there in order to make the promise of this real. but this might have given us back so much time and saved so many lives in this country, if we can get there huge day. much more to get to tonight. stay with us. ♪♪

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there's something to watch for in tomorrow's news. the u.s. senate tomorrow is going to hold its second hearing about the january 6th attack on the capitol. and for the first time tomorrow we're going to hear testimony from pentagon officials about what happened that day. that's important because it means we might finally start to get some answers about one of the unsolved, unsettling mysteries about something that unfolded during the attack. last week you might remember police officials testified about their desperate efforts to try to get the national guard deployed to come in to help while the capitol was being overrun by the pro-trump mob. but their requests for national guard help were inexplicably slow-walked for hours during the attack. the acting d.c. police chief testified he was stunned by the lack of response from the pentagon while they were calling for help. we haven't heard much from the pentagon side of this and what we have heard hasn't been reassuring. there is the still unexplained fact that the pentagon

repeatedly lied about one of the people who participated in the key phone call to the army that day, when d.c. officials, and police officials, were begging the army to send in national guard help to back up the capitol police who were being overrun. on that call, on the pentagon side, we now know, was a general named charlie flynn. charlie flynn is the brother of disgraced trump national security adviser mike flynn who of course had called on trump to invoke martial law and use the military to overturn the presidential election results. mike flynn's brother, general charlie flynn, has denied that his relationship with his brother had any connection to his actions or the pentagon's lack of a response that day while they were getting asked for help. but we still don't know what his involvement was and we still don't know why the pentagon initially lied about him being involved in that decision. so that's something to watch tomorrow. why didn't the national guard turn up when they were being begged to be there?

and why did they lie about mike flynn's brother having some role in the decisionmaking process there? the first testimony from pentagon officials about january 6th tomorrow. today on capitol hill we got the first testimony from the fbi since the capitol attack. director wray told senators that the fbi has no evidence that the capitol riot as instigated by leftists or anarchists or people who were pretending to be trump supporters by dressing up like them in costume, which is a popular conspiracy theory among trump supporters including many republicans in congress. fbi director christopher wray confirmed that right wing extremists including white supremacists were among those who carried out the attack. he testified that the number of arrests of violent white supremacists has nearly tripled. he also reported over 300 people have now been arrested in

connection with the capitol riot and that they're starting to build more extensive cases against some of those people including charges of planning and coordination for the capitol attack. director wray did not offer a lot of detail today on the cases against accused capitol attackers. but frankly it was good to get anything at all, given how tight-lipped the justice department has been the last few weeks. i don't know if it's just that the folks at doj are staying quiet while waiting for president biden's attorney general nominee merrick garland to be confirmed and start working. we're expecting that senate vote, as i mentioned earlier, any day now. but whatever the reason, the u.s. attorney for d.c., the top federal prosecutor in d.c. who has been running the federal investigation into the capitol attack, he hasn't held a public briefing on that investigation in five weeks. we did get some news today out of that office, though, out of the d.c. u.s. attorney's office. the biden administration has announced a new acting u.s. attorney to run that office, a man named channing phillips. he's a veteran former federal prosecutor who has run the d.c. u.s. attorney's office twice

before during two brief stints during the obama administration. this is really a notable development for a couple of reasons. it didn't get a ton of national attention but it deserves it. first of all, it's unusual for a new president to appoint a new acting u.s. attorney, right? last month, nearly all the trump-appointed u.s. attorneys submitted their resignations, that's customary when you get a new administration. generally the top deputies in all the u.s. attorneys offices in the company step up on an interim basis to become acting chief while new u.s. attorneys are nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate. but in this case, a special case, the biden administration has put in their own acting top federal prosecutor in d.c., somebody from outside the office, who has a long tenure, is widely respected in that office because of previous service but hasn't been serving

there now, they're coming in from outside to take over immediately while they go through the process of nominating a permanent u.s. attorney for that role and all u.s. attorneys offices around the country. so it's an unusual move. and the d.c. u.s. attorney's office is an unusual place especially since donald trump got ahold of it. the last nominated and confirmed u.s. attorney in d.c. was forced out by attorney general bill barr. her name was jesse lu. she was replaced by one of bill barr's closest personal aides who set about turning the d.c. attorney's office into a cudgel to be wielded against the president's enemies and to help the president's friends who were otherwise in trouble. that included the justice department overruling career prosecutors at the u.s. attorney's office to recommend a significantly lighter sentence for trump friend roger stone, an intervention that prompted four prosecutors to withdraw from the case and one of them to quit the justice department altogether. it was also the d.c. u.s. attorney's office under trump that moved to trump all the charges against trump national security adviser mike flynn even though the office had secured

two guilty pleas from mike flynn already in court to those charges. all the attorneys involved in the flynn case refused to sign the court filing dropping the charges. it was signed only by bill barr's handpicked staffer who he had installed as the acting u.s. attorney. barr also installed a bunch of outside lawyers at the d.c. u.s. attorney's office to oversee and second-guess cases that had connections to president trump. some of those cases were reportedly not publicly known, indicating the possibility that investigations touching on president trump or his interests were simply disappeared by bill barr and his goons, and his henchmen, without them ever becoming known to the public because they made them disappear. that was the d.c. u.s. attorneys office under donald trump. that office is still, tonight, until this new guy gets there tomorrow, being run by a different former bill barr staffer who has been an acting u.s. attorney there since last may.

that office is the office responsible for prosecuting all the january 6th capitol attackers. but on top of that, there is a giant mess there. years in the making now, that needs to be cleaned up. we reported last night that there are currently multiple investigations including two criminal investigations, one by state prosecutors in new york, one by state prosecutors in georgia, that involve former president trump. that's a first in u.s. history. we've never had a former president under criminal investigation before. but for all those investigations that are ongoing, for all of that potential criminal behavior by the president being investigated by multiple prosecutors, none of those prosecutors are federal prosecutors. and none of those are federal cases, because in the justice department under president trump, all that was taken care of. in some cases, by activity that really, really looked like corrupting the federal prosecutors' offices that handled cases that might touch on the president.

that trash is tied onto the bumper of the justice department until somebody sets it on fire or cuts it off. that is a live wire that the biden administration cannot leave sparking and bouncing around. that absolutely has to be handled. we're about to get a new attorney general. we are about, about, to get a new acting u.s. attorney in d.c., which is an unusual move. is that a sign that this is about to be handled? expert advice on figuring that out, coming up. stay with us.

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like you, my hands are everything to me. but i was diagnosed with dupuytren's contracture. and it got to the point where things i took for granted got tougher to do. thought surgery was my only option. turns out i was wrong. so when a hand specialist told me about nonsurgical treatments, it was a total game changer. like you, my hands have a lot more to do. learn more at factsonhand.com today. last year, february, "new york times" justice department reporter katie benner wrote about serious trouble as career prosecutors found themselves repeatedly subjected to political pressure on their cases from their superiors. the article quoted channing phillips who had run that d.c. attorney's office during the obama administration, saying

that recent events under attorney general barr suggest, quote, undue meddling by higher ups at the justice department. today the biden administration announced that same channing phillips will be responsible in some ways for fixing the damage. katie benner reporting today channing phillips has been appointed to step into that u.s. attorney's office and take over starting tomorrow as acting u.s. attorney. it is an unusual move. joining us now is "new york times" justice reporter katie benner. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> at the start of a new administration we're used to a new president appointing new u.s. attorneys for all the u.s. attorneys' offices across the country, or at least most of them. this is unusual, for someone to be appointed as acting u.s. attorney immediately even before anyone has nominated on a permanent basis. >> it is indeed an unusual arrangement. the u.s. attorney's office in december has been the site of so much controversy. it's an unusual circumstance

that michael cherwin was put in place when the previous u.s. attorney had been ousted, her replacement had been removed, another u.s. attorney from ohio it was claimed would come in and act as u.s. attorney, but it was an fig leaf so that michael cherwin could stay on. bringing someone in like channing phillips with a long history in d.c. and the office and the police and courts is seen as a stabilizing move. >> and you wrote today, katie, that there's hope that he will help restore confidence and morale in the office that has been so roiled by accusations of political interference. does your reporting indicate there is going to be some sort of effort to find out what happened in term of undue political influence, in terms of the justice department essentially having misbehaved

toward that prosecutor's office in ways that were designed to help the president and his interests? >> i think those questions are being asked internally. i think bringing in somebody like channing phillips if you want to get those answers is probably a good move. he is trusted by people in the office. and channing phillips also has deep roots here in washington. his father, also named channing phillips, is a well-known civil rights leader here in d.c. he was the first african-american to be considered as a presidential candidate. that did not work out, but he was seriously considered for that role. and phillips himself, he has the trust of people in the office. so, if you want to get to the bottom of the what happened, you would like to have somebody like him in place. >> katie benner, justice department reporter for the new york time. it's really helpful to have you here tonight. it's nice to have you here on this beat for the long arc of the stories. being able to follow it through as these things start to get resolved and addressed, it's a real service.

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it's day 15 with no running water in part of south jackson, and bottled water has been the hardest to find. people needing to brush their teeth, rinse off or even take medication are having to drive to multiple locations just to get their hands on some. >> it's hard not to have any water. i don't want anybody to, you know, leave without water because that's not a good feeling. >> myers says on a daily basis they bring five to six containers for volunteers to fill up. >> for more than two weeks now, thousands of people in the city of jackson, mississippi, have been without safe drinking water. a cold snap just over two weeks ago caused all that trouble in texas we've heard so much about it. but it also caused 96 separate leaks or breaks. some people have had no running

water at all all this time. as of tonight the city says they've been able to fix 53 of the 96 water main breaks that they know of. local officials say they have no estimate as to when the water in jackson will be safe to drink. they still have no idea when normal service will be restored. more ahead tonight. stay with us.

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us tonight. it's going to be a big day in the news tomorrow. it's going to involve pentagon officials. they have a lot to explain about where the national guard was and why they were so delayed on january 6th. should be fascinating to watch. i'll see you again here tomorrow night. "way too early" is up next. this country will have enough vaccine supply for every adult in america by the end of may. >> moving up the time line. president biden is promising enough vaccines for every american adult by the end of may. but more and more statesare already lifting restrictions. and so will progress stall? >> plus tand