it is saturday, march 6th. i'm ali velshi. covid relief could be in reach for millions of americans. the senate debating joe biden's $1.9 covid relief package. senators are making amendments as we speak to the bill. who knows what the final version of the bill will look like, but we're staying on top of that. a final vote is expected today, but ones what happens? republicans have done everything in their power to delay derm democratic efforts to pass biden's american rescue plan. all 50 gop senators are expected to vote against this bill that will bring it to struggling americans amid the pandemic which is inexplicable on the subject. 62% of those surveyed approve the package and 32% are opposed. unemployment benefits with west virginia's joe manchin, the deal ended a nearly 12-hour standoff. the deal as it stands will extend the existing $300 weekly

unemployment benefits through september 6th. it would offer tax forgiveness of up to $10,200 on unemployment benefits on americans who make less than $50,000 a year. amanda golden is on capitol hill. good morning to you. what do we see on the floor there? does it look like there is a vote coming any time soon? >> good morning, ali. without pursing everything around us, i think we can see the end in sight that this could wrap up within the next two to two and a half hours. we just heard from chuck schumer who said they're in the final 14 amendments and i believe there are 13 amendments left to go and they've done 24 amendments so far that republicans have brought to the senate floor and keep in mind there were 500 amendments coming on for this vote-a-rama and that's part of what we've seen with the delay

of the 12-hour initial delay over joe manchin and whether or not he would support the unemployment benefits unless he was on board with the democratic-advised plan and we are watching this carefully and looking to see what will move forward, but what we're hearing from our own senate sources from the majority leader is this could wrap up within the next two and a half hours. of the votes that will happen there are two to three which could be voice votes and the others are expected to take ten minutes each and we do think that this is inching closer. we're looking to see what other developments will happen if we can get this vote through. keep in mind, as you noted, that everything that's passed through the senate will have to go back to the house to be re-passed to president joe biden's desk and the hope is to do this before march 14th and that's just a week away when unemployment benefits will expire. >> right. that's a whole other problem

when people are losing the $300 a week benefit. amanda, thank you very much. we'll stay close to you. amanda golden, correspondent at capitol hill. turning now to the ongoing investigation into the january 6th riot, exactly two months to the day of the insurrection to the capitol and the threat of extremists is still very real and active. authorities piece together the event that led to the riot and now the investigation is circling closer and closer to the former president. we learned this week of charges against the political appointee and the first arrest of someone with that administration with the official connection to the deadly riot. the complaint alleges federico guillermo klein faces multiple charges for his involvement in the insurrection. klein was still under the employ of the u.s. government with top security clearance when he allegedly engaged and participated in violence alongside the mob. according to the complaint, klein was among the rioters who assaulted the officers holding the line at the capitol

entrance. "the washington post" reporting that after the insurec ekz klein still worked at the department. adding to the drip, drip, drip of news connecting the former president to the insurrection reporting that the fbi has found contact between a member of a far-right extremist group, the proud boys, and a trump associate in the days leading up to the capitol riot. quote, location, cellular and car record data involved of tying a proud boys member to a trump white house according to the white house official briefed on the investigation. the fbi has not determined what they discussed and the official would not reveal the names of either party. i spoke with new york times reporter katie benner in the last hour about the significance to klein's arrest and the connection to trump. >> one of the things that the fbi said in their affidavit is that he was identified by several people, many of whom when we did our report on him that he was not notable in any way. he was under the radar and it

goes to show that even though the president had people inside the government and there were people in the government who truly, truly supported him of all ranks and all levels and who would go to extraordinary lengths and extremes to break the lieu to keep him in office. >> another new development in the fallout from the capitol riot. democratic congressman eric swalwell of california who served as an impeachment manager has filed a lawsuit, a civil lawsuit against trump and the second of its kind since the insurrection. it accuses the former president, his son don jr., rudy giuliani and mo brooks of alabama of violating federal civil rights laws and local incitement laws with their speeches at a rally near the white house on the morning of january 6th. it alleges the attack was a direct and foreseeable consequence of the defendants' false and incendiary allegations of fraud and theft and in direct response for the express calls for violence.

i had a chance to speak with fallwell on the last word. >> they put on a master class in marshalling all of the evidence and there should have been a conviction because trump was in office and had in his personal capacity for his own personal reason his gone way beyond the bounds of the office. this is another venue for getting the relief that the american people deserve. it happens to be the only venue right now because the senate punted and because there hasn't been accountability. >> the lawsuit comes following testimony this week questioning the timeframe of the national guard response to the capitol on january 6th. the d.c. national guard chief telling lawmakers it took the pentagony through hours to green light troops while the capitol was under attack. the commander, william j. walker also said that military leaders including the brother of

ex-trump national security adviser michael flynn advised at one point during the afternoon that deploying troops would not bring good optics. let's bring in yamichal sindhor and joining me is joyce vance, good morning to both of you. joyce, let me start with the civil suit. i was speaking to eric swalwell's lawyer last night. this is the second civil suit, something that mitch mcconnell said at the end of the impeachment was that no one is above the law including the former president and there are ways in which he can be held to account. so i assume these civil suits are ways that trump and others can be held to account. what is the likelihood of them succeeding and what is the difference between that, a normal trial and what happened in the white house -- in the senate, i'm sorry. >> yeah. sure. so these civil cases are a very interesting aspect of the search for accountability.

we've seen the flawed impeachment procedure despite evidence. we're looking at the criminal process and criminal investigations ongoing too early to conclude whether that would ultimately reach former president trump and his inner circle. these civil cases are a direct and potentially more quick route for the american people to gain the truth. representative swalwell's complaint is particularly interesting because it raises claims under the ku klux klan act which talks about interference with congress' performance of official duties and files suit in his individual capacity, arguing interference and interference with his well-being and the well-being of others. only one of the claims in this complaint have to survive a motion to dismiss, an early preliminary motion that the defendants will file in order to begin the discovery process and that's part of the legal

proceedings in the civil case where a litigant like representative swalwell has the ability to take depositions to ask for documents where there's actually an obligation that the defendants respond under oath. so this could get interesting relatively quickly. it's too early, i think, to assess whether the suit has a chance of success on the merits. >> yamiche, major general william walker, the commander of the d.c. national guard said a lot of very interesting things this week that he was not able to get permission and the day before january 6th he was explicitly told that he would need to have a request to help out at the capitol be approved by the secretary of defense. he said that's very unusual. that would not normally be how things operate. so there's a sense that something else developed almost in preparation for these demonstrations. >> that's right.

what we learned this week was that there was a three-hour delay from when the national guard was needed to when they were given opportunity to go and respond and what the big question, of course, is who is making these decisions? from our understanding it was coming from the department of defense, but the department of defense also, of answers straight to the white house. there was this feeling on the lawn talking to sourcing, was there this feeling that president trum hoping that no o killed at least from my sources, that's what they were telling me, he was in some ways looking at these people saying these are my people. they're doing what i was telling them to do and in some ways he was basking in the idea that his loss created this chaos, a chaos that he didn't have to live with because he was at the white house with me surrounded by the safety bubble. so what you see here in these lawsuits and what you see here in the information that we're learning is that there is obviously more that we need to know about january 6th. we need to know exactly who was making these decisions?

when did the president at the time, former president trump when did he actually get on the phone and started authorizing help and start authorizing the national guard and also who made the decision to change the protocol for how the national guard could respond? >> yeah. >> i think all of this get us into the idea that there's a straight line, it seems, from president trump to many of these decisions and i think the question is are we actually going to be able to draw that line or is it still going to be that's murky or that we're not going to understand? these lawsuits are in some ways trying to get at that and as you said former senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and he said that the president was responsible for this and there is a real feeling in this country that the president needs to be held responsible. >> joyce, the accountability or the punitive stuff about it might excite some people and the bottom line is there is a larger issue here and that is the role, the power and the threat coming from domestic terror

organization to have an attorney general in place to deal with, but we're focused on the bill and there's obstruction in the simple nomination of the attorney general. >> it has been a very slow process. it's important to get the attorney general in place and even more than that, it will be important to get assistant attorneys general, the deputy attorney general and u.s. attorneys in place because, ali, something you and i have talked about is how difficult it's been for federal law enforcement as well as state and local folks to focus on white supremacists the same way we focused on the threat of foreign terror over the years and getting merrick garland confirmed and in place and something that will happen in the not too distant future is incredibly important to protecting the american people. >> thank you to both of you this morning. joyce vance, former united states attorney and yamiche

alcindor, white house correspondent, i appreciate your time. he's one of history's most beloved children's writers, dr. seuss' are embroiled in places some people will go. we're monitoring the senate floor where the covid relief bill is being debated. more "velshi" after the break. g. more "velshi" after the break. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa ♪♪ for skin as alive as you are... don't settle for silver 7 moisturizers 3 vitamins 24 hours hydration gold bond champion your skin gold bond ever notice how stiff clothes can feel rough on your skin? for softer clothes that are gentle on your skin, try downy free & gentle. downy will soften your clothes without dyes or perfumes.

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♪♪ ♪♪ let me tell you a story that's based in the truth. they say they're canceling a doctor, canceling dr. seuss. how these rumors began should not fill you with shock as you can probably imagine many started on fox. the real story is this, so gather round and take note. dr. seuss wasn't canceled for something he wrote. theodore geisel is what the real seuss was named, but since creating his work, the world sure has changed. those who manage his legacy have

taken a look and to preserve his integrity they've deleted some books. you see in the '30s and '40s if for decades thereafter stereotypes were common and often brought laughter, but the seuss' now fine are find them at odds and they're removing six books of their own omission. if i ran the zoo and on beyond zebra are three and they're pretty old-fashioned, i think you'll agree. scrambled eggs and the cat's quizzer and you get the gist. plus to think that i saw it on mulberry street, a book originally called a story no one can beat. that was the first book published under the seuss name, the first of many that brought him success and acclaim. six books out of many will now no longer be. thy bei canceled. there are still dozens to see, but some blame this edit on woke liberal vultures, swooping down on your fun, you know, cancel

culture. but it's not censors or government taking this stand. it's the company that manages the dr. seuss brand. they just decided those stories and pictures inspired ideas wrong and outdated that should be retired. dr. seuss wasn't cancelled and suffered no such vexation, the brand has just changed to preserve its reputation. it's more fun to scream censorship and the muting of views, but with so much going on, can we please just stick to the news? we'll have more velshi to show you when we come right back. you've got a few minutes so grab a quick snack. m inutes so grab a quick snack.

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will begin in two days. he'll be charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. many believe this to be an open and shut case. it was all captured on video and spread widely across the web, but if this trial somehow ends up in a not guilty verdict we could see another round of nationwide protests that so swept the nation after floyd's death last summer. on wednesday the house of representatives passed hr-1280 as it's called seeks to overhaul qualified immunity for police officers, ban chokeholds, federally prohibit them and prohibit no-knock warrants in federal drug cases and outlaw racial profiling and form a national registry on police misconduct. the bill received bipartisan support, sort of. one republican congressman lance gooden of texas voted in favor of the bill. he later tweeted that he had pressed the wrong button voting for it accidentally.

so close, a version of this bill passed last year and it stalled in the senate as did so many bill, but that's a story for later in the show. republicans argue that these so-called anti-police measures go too far and they weaken police officers' ability to perform their daily duties? does that sound right to you? because it sounds off to me. a police officer can't do their job because they can't choke someone out, or stop them for being sd if they mess up. that's life. sonia pruitt is a retired captain of the montgomery county maryland police department and a founder of the black experience and captain pruitt, thank you for being with us. you know the landscape of policing very, very well and there are always concerns with police that civilian oversight and governments will hamstring us in our ability to do the job. so how do you evaluate the

criticism of this bill that passed in the house that it is going to hamstring police? good morning and thanks for having me again, ali. it's good to see you. >> you, too. >> so we have this bill, and i have read the bill over and over trying to find out where in the bill does it say that officers are not going to be able to do their jobs? you cannot do your job effectively as a police officer if you do not have accountability measures in place. this is simply saying we need to strengthen those accountability measures. listen, all police officers including myself took an oath. we took an oath to police ethically. we took an oath to serve and protect everyone. we gave our word that we would do that, and i say to you, if you cannot abide by the accountability measures of the people who the police serve then you need to find another job. >> tell me about the influence of a bill like this because as you and i have discussed, a lot

of policing -- police are local. there are 18,000 or something police forces around this country. they are determined, their rules and enforcement is determined by their municipality or their state. so what effect is it to have a federal law for a number of these things that happen locally? >> i think it's important that people see that the federal government has the best interest of the public at heart. i think that moving forward we should have opportunities for expansion. i'm hoping that the federal government or congress, i mean, would make sure that they're speaking to the people that this bill actually affects and takes some time to listen to the people about what it is that they want, not that they have not, but there's still ample room for that. what's concerning for me is that a lot of the laws or a lot of the tenets of this bill only affects federal police officers. there are some things that i really do like, like the use of force and the police misconduct

databases. those are really important, but you have to have police departments actually send you the information for the database. they tied that to federal funding. they've also tied to federal funding reporting sexual misconduct by police officers, and i really do like the part about rolling back the military equipment giveaways and that's what i call them to police departments just because they want those things. i like all of those things, but again, there's still going to be room for improvement. >> i want to talk to you about the george floyd trial that's set to start on monday. those images that we saw last may changed things for a lot of people regardless of where you stood on policing, watching this man's life get snuffed out. as a black police officer, as a black woman and as a black mother, what's going through your mind as you get ready for this trial?

>> wow. that's a very loaded question in so many ways and i am hoping that justice is adequately and appropriately served in this trial and over the last couple of weeks i've noticed in the media that there's a lot of questions about george floyd's background, not necessarily from msnbc, but maybe a little more to the right. he's not on trial. this man's life was taken in a murder. who should be on trial is derek chauvin. we want to see a trial that's fair and equitable and yes, he gets due process, but at the end of the day we saw what we saw nine months ago with our own eyes. i saw a man take another man's life and it looks like it was on purpose to me so i would like to see him found guilty -- held responsible for what he did, and i think that most other people would like to see the same thing. even police officers. this is not just something where police officers have spated themselves and say we didn't see

that happen. we all saw it and we all want him to be held accountable. >> sonia, good to see you, as always. sonia pruitt is a retired captain from the montgomery police department, and a former of the national black police association. thank you, my friend. you're looking at the floor of the senate where the president biden relief bill hangs in the balance. they're using a special process for the filibuster. i'll make an issue for why the filibuster needs to be a bell on earned after this. it's important. we walk three to five times a week, a couple miles at a time. - we've both been taking prevagen for a little more than 11 years now. after about 30 days of taking it, we noticed clarity that we didn't notice before. - it's still helping me.

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welcome back to "velshi." here is a live look at the u.s. senate floor. senators are continuing to debate and that's the formal term for it and it's not a debate that's going on and they're continuing to try to deal with president joe biden's $1.9 trillion covid relief bill and it could be a few hours before everything gets settled. he's sticking very close to the senate. he doesn't want to get pulled away from the senate floor. senator, good to talk to you again. are you close because you think something might happen or are you close because there are constant votes going on and you need to be close? >> both. both, ali. thank you for having me in such an informal way like this. i'm close because we're doing a series of votes.

frankly, we've been successful all night for 12 hours or so, and not quite 12 yet, but it will be 12 in beating back all kinds of cultural warfare issues and all kinds of issues that take money from pockets of low-income people and all kinds of issues that are weakening this bill. we will cut the child poverty rate in half and this is the thing that most of us have been involved in and it's a huge victory for the american public and i don't remember being this excited about this job. i was talking to senator casey about this just a minute ago and how excited we both are about the work we're doing right now. >> what's the -- i mean, there's no real work in convincing people of the value of this because if you were a republican senator and you are from a state where a lot of people vote republican, the bottom line is the provisions in this bill are supported by an overwhelming number of americans including

republicans and we're talking about putting money into the hands of americans that have suffered at the hands of coronavirus and we're talking about extending unemployment benefits. i'm troubled trying to figure out who is on the other side of this and why. >> you're far too logical. the other side is mitch mcconnell has a mission to stop a democratic president from getting things done. he's put party over -- over country. he did it -- you remember this, in 2010 he once said that probably said it more than once and we know of once, my number one goal is keeping barack obama from being re-elected. his number one goal is he doesn't want joe biden to achieve much of anything. it doesn't sound believable, but it's his record and the fear -- i watched it during impeachment and i watched it when they tried to overturn the affordable care act. i'm watching it now, the fear in republicans' eyes and the fear of the radical right and the fear of trump voters and

primaries does the business, and it's disheartening except that we're winning today and this package is going to stay together and we're going to pass it within two or three hours and we'll go to the house i assume on monday when they'll come back to town and they'll vote on it and it will likely be the law of the land and the biggest victory and you could not fiend a democratic senator, and this is the biggest victory that we've seen in our careers for the american pub hick. ? one of the things we've been saying all morning and stop saying that they're debating it. there's no policy debate going on and this is half procedure and stop the inevitable passage of this bill have you talked about changing what's in this

bill? >> they are good policy arguments to me and they're a cultural warfare and making sure that transgender people can't compete in women's sports. they're doing things leak that. they have abortion amendments and they have amendments to cut spending on low-income people. they can't stand it that someone making $11 or $12 would actually get paid as much in unemployment benefits as when they're working, understanding that if you're getting unemployment and you're offered a job you have to take it or you'll lose your unemployment. they think poor people are lazy and it's okay rich people getting breaks and not someone making $10 or $12 an hour. it's the same invisible hand. the market takes care of all things capitalism with no rules and regulations and works well for everybody. i'm for capitalism. i believe it's a great wealth generator, but you have to have

rules otherwise the rich get richer and everyone else is left out. >> and recessions have a way of exacerbating that problem. senator, good to talk to you. thank you for being with us and continue on with your work. senator brown of ohio. all right. we will continue to watch these proceedings on the senate floor. we'll bring you the final vote on the covid relief bill as soon as it happens. we'll be right back. as soon as it happens. we'll be right back. when it comes to your financial health, just a few small steps can make a real difference. ♪ ♪ ♪ learn, save and spend with guidance from chase. confidence feels good. chase. make more of what's yours. needles. essential for pine trees, but maybe not for people with certain inflammatory conditions. because there are options. like an “unjection™”.

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the senate is where bill goes to die. $15 minimum wage? not so fast. voting rights act? slim chance. if we were playing a game of clue and trying to uncover who murdered mr. bill my guess would be republicans in the senate using the filibuster as a weapon. some people love the filibuster. some people hate it. i think a lot of people don't understand it. let me give you a crash course on the filibuster rule, pardon

me, it will derail every bill in the senate for years to come. say you're a senator and your party is in the minority and we'll call you senator john doe, and and your caucus of 35 others oppose. your 35 votes is not enough to tank it. senator doe has another tool at his disposal. the filibuster. senator doe can launch a filibuster to attempt to block the bill and force the senate to invoke cloture which takes 60 vote which is means the bill really needs 60 votes to pass instead of a simple majority of 51. the rule says any senator can slow down the process or block a bill from getting a vote and it's being used by the republican minority as a way to stop democracy in its tracks. we saw a perfect example of it this week. republican ron johnson of wisconsin ground the senate to a halt by demanding that the clerks read the entire stimulus legislation aloud, all 628

pages. it took nearly 11 hours. that is a classic filibuster right there. the next step gets even messier. most legislation normally requires a simple majority to pass, but in order to break a filibuster, the opposite party needs to trigger a cloture vote. the threshold for a cloture is higher under senate rules, three-fifths of the senate must vote to end debate and that's 60 senators. with the makeup of this congress, with the democrats owning the slimmest, poof, the bill lives in limbo never to be seen again. there were 590 cloture votes from 1989 to 2009. since then there have been 930. the filibuster is no longer a helpful tool and it's a weapon against progress and don't get me wrong. a weapon against democrats and republicans depending on who needs it at the time and it's the gop who has taken complete

advantage of of rule. the writer of the msnbc daily newsletter said it became an art form under mitch mcconnell. during the obama years he impeded nominees left and right and he has the nickname the grim reaper for a reason. mcconnell's senate was a chamber where house-passed bills went to die. cloture was passed on legislation only a handful of times in those two years. now those who support the filibuster say it encourages consensus. opponents argue it just creates gridlock. last week it's minimum wage and last week it was a stimulus bill, and health care, immigration reform, you name it so how do we get around this? let's discuss this with mollyru politics of filibuster limitations in the u.s. senate. molly, you have literally read the book -- written the book on the filibuster. here is the problem.

it doesn't matter what you or i think about this right now. ending the filibuster itself would be too high a bar to overcome at the moment. >> good morning. thanks for having me. you're right, absolutely, at the end of the day it doesn't matter what you think or i think about the fill buster and what matters is what a majority of senators think. right now there is not a majority of senators who are willing to vote to eliminate it, you have a minority that have something they all agree on, that they really want to do and they're sufficiently frustrated with the other side for not letting them do to all come together and be willing to make a pretty fundamental change to how the senate works. >> and this isn't just democrats versus republicans. there are certainly a few democrats in the house even if the democrats needed 50 votes plus the vice president to deal with this, which they don't. they need more. there are a couple of democratic

senators who said they don't want to touch the filibuster including joe manchin and kristen sinema. >> right. this all comes back to the rules aren't magic. they can't force agreement where agreement doesn't exist and so in order to get to a point where the senate is willing to set aside the filibuster assets currently used we need to find a way to build that agreement and it's really likely to be connected to a particular policy question. senators talk a lot about principle and about their vision for how the senate works and should work and has worked over the course of its history, but at the end of the day, most of the time, senators' preferences about rules or preferences about the underlying policy about the rules that are letting them get done or not letting them get done, and so we really need to ask what's the issue on which, in this case the democratic majority might finally be willing to make that kind of

change. >> some people say that it was a good tool to prevent extreme legislation from getting through the senate. my colleague hayes brown writes in a piece, obama's recent convert to the cause after leaving office called the tactic a jim crow relic called for john lewis, the civil rights icon. the filibuster is an invention of the time when slave-holding senators turned it into a weapon and it was a cause picked up by those same southern states as they stymied civil rights legislation. there are people who think this was a weapon against civil rights. what's the history behind this? what is it a relic of? >> so it's absolutely the case that particularly in the middle of the 20th century and there were certainly other points before that as well including the run-up and following the civil war that the filibuster and the senate have been

intimately connected to make racial progress in this country upon i think that quote from president obama from last summer as we watched the unfolding of this debate over the future of the filibuster is really important. again, if we can possibly imagine it going away, we need to think about what issue on wh democratic majority would unite behind right now to get it -- to get rid of it, and president obama -- former president obama, still a very powerful figure in the party, and so he's kind of issued leadership here, him coming out and saying, this is -- this is the issue that i would favor elimination for. i think that -- that's really important as we imagine a path from here to a future that might not have the filibuster. >> so you wouldn't have to eliminate the right of any single senator to block legislation. the issue is if a single senator

decides to block legislation, you need 60 votes to overcome it. if you change the rule to say you need 50, any senator could attempt to filibuster something. they just wouldn't be able to actually stop legislature from going through. >> right. i think the best example here is to look back to the most recent significant change to the filibuster rule that came in two stages, one in 2013 and one in 2017 around judicial nominations and executive branch nominations. we saw there in 2013, democrats in the senate felt very frustrated after continuing republican obstruction against president obama nominations. they made a change to the way the system work such that now you only need 51 votes, a simple majority to cut off debates, the normal nominations. i think if we were to see democrats choose to try to eliminate the filibuster in the short or median term, they would

use the same steps they used in 2013 and republicans used again in 2017 on nominations to the supreme court to make the change. >> why did that work and yet an overhaul of the filibuster wouldn't work using the same methodology? >> again, you could use those same steps to reduce the number of votes that you need to invoke clesure or end debate on any legislation. the biggest challenge right now is that it's not clear that there are 50 democratic senators who want to do that in part because it's not clear what the issue is they're so frustrated. all of them together, they're frustrated and can't agree on what they want to do about it in order to be willing to make that change. >> molly, thank you for this. it's a complicated issue i've asked you to sum up in just a few minutes, but really people should read the book. it's a detailed issue that's going to face us for months to

come if not years. molly reynolds is the author of a remarkable book on this, "exceptions to the rule." the scope and loss that the country has suffered is hard to put into words. tomorrow we're going to turn the microphone over to people who can help us get there. in a special hour we're going to hear my interview with six frontline medical personnel who have been living ontown front lines throughout the year. with one sad constant has been death. the death toll which now stands at more than half a million has been one we we have been trying to portray the scope of the pandemic and honor those we lost to it, and while we fight for life, we're hardwired to fight for longevity. one thing we rarely discuss is the right to die.

this author spent years researching and interviewing doctors, nurses, researchers, and activists. her book includes patients who say they'd rather die like a dog for a peaceful chance of death. she told me about sick pets who were euthanized. when asked, they asked why they couldn't have the same opportunity. here per capita we spend more than any others and people were begging for a veterinary solution. my friendengelhart. my good friend, congratulations on the book. thank you for being here. it's an interesting topic because for the last year we've spent dodging and escaping death and you have been working on a

book regarding people who have a greater embrace for death. they're saying can we allow people if they choose to to die with dignity. that seems to be the biggest theme for those advocating with this. >> absolutely. i think it's something people aren't aware of. already physician-assisted deaths are legal in nine states and d.c. it's being debated now and laws are passing around the world, but it's not something people put their minds to or think a lot about. i think it's possible covid will change that. i think we've been confronted with death up close and people are thinking more about what they want their endings to look like. but certainly, you know, the people i spoke to talked a lot about dignity, and there's been this trend in american health care to really extend life. i think for the last few decades, we've seen doctors promise an end to aging or sickness and aging and we're all

going to live healthy and fit and happy. medicine hasn't delivered. science hasn't delivered. in some cases we're seeing a move back. it's a patient autonomy movement. patients are saying we have a right to say when enough is ro chemotherapy or surgery or a direct hastened death. >> on page 13 of the book, you write, what surprised me most is that most people who asked to die are reportedly not in terrible pain or in future pain. they cytolosing autonomy of their end of life concern. others worry about dignity and losing control of bodily functions. where pain enters the equation, it is a fear of future pain or a

wish to fend off forthcoming pain. will it be a good death or a bad death? there isn't a common thread for why everybody thinks this is a good idea, but they'd like an infrastwruc tur that allows them the right to make the decision or their doctors to end their life with dignity without facing legal consequences. >> i'm glad you raised the case of oregon. oregon was the first place to legalize physician assisted deat tt means is we have a lot of data, and a lot of the data disproves some of the early concernsful critics of right to die laws were worried that low income patients who don't have access to good health care would be bulldozed into early deaths or those who get poor pain management choose to die because they had bad doctors or bad access to care. in fact, that's not the case. those who choose are educated, insured, they're not in pain.

they're choosing this because they want to avoid the kind of bad deaths that i think a lot of us have seen with our own parents and grandparents. forward.inly i think, y i think what i heard from a lot of people is, you know, in america we have the right to live, we have the right to die, but i think there's this question of whether modern medicine has pushed us toward a duty to live, whether, in fact, you know, we're requiring that patients try more and more treatments, fight for longer and longer when sometimes it's not what they want. >> katy, thank you for a remarkable book. katy engelhart is author of "the inevitable: dispatches to the right to die." before we go, the senators are on the floor over the $1.9

trillion bill. maybe that bill passes tofrmd it has to go back to the house where because it's substantially changed, it will have to be voted on again. the aim is to get this done by march 14th because that's when enunemployment expires that. does it for me. join me tomorrow at k89 a.m. for a special "one year and a look at the covid crisis." "velshi: one year later" tomorrow on msnbc. you can listen on any podcast device. do not go anywhere, however, msnbc's coverage of the covid bill continue os. meanwhile "cross connection" with tiffany cross begins right now.

good morning. i'm tiffany cross, and, boy, do we have a lot to get to today. today on the "cross connection," a very special guest. dr. anthony fauci will be coming up later in the hour. but first let's get to this breaking news on capitol hill on the still pending $1.9 trillion covid relief bill. we're monitoring the latest developments from the senate floor where a final vote could happen before noon as senators vote on a handful of remaining amendments. the bill was nearly derailed your night by senator joe manchin's objections to the extended unemployment benefits with senate democrats and president biden spending more than, get this, nine hours working on a compromise that eventually passed earlier this morning. payments are reduced from $400 to $300 per week. they're extended through september and taxed less for

those making under $150,000 a year.