>>a you very good day to all of you from msnbc world headquarters. welcome, everyone, to "weekends with alex witt." anger and fallout are growing for georgia voting restrictions that will be felt by millions of people. president biden says the department of justice is taking a look at the law suggesting legal action may be taken and the pressure is mounting on georgia businesses with new

calls to boycott some of the state's key industries for staying silent on the bill. congresswoman barbara lee told msnbc how congress could take its own action. >> of course, they're targeted toward people of color specifically african-americans. that is why we have got to pass hr-1. also the john lewis voter -- voting rights act. we have to have federal protections because otherwise we're going to go back to before the days of jim crow. we're going to go back to days where african-americans were, quite frankly, not seen as human beings. >> meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers heading to texas as the u.s. grapples with the surge of migrants at the southern border ask it comes one day after dueling trips of democratic and republican lawmakers. new york congressman adrian

espailot telling what he feels for what's happening at the border. >> we have to do better in connecting these young people with their family members. let's be the leaders of the hem hemsphere that we want to be and let's get to the root causes on the ground addressing that right now. >> a new coronavirus concerns today as cases in the u.s. are rising again. the cdc director is warning, of, quote, another avoidable surge in cases as more states are loosening restrictions. right now the u.s. has more than 30 million confirmed cases of coronavirus. more now on the outcry of georgia's new voting law and amanda golden on capitol hill and we'll begin with you, josh there at hey city hall. what are you hearing now that the restrictions are indeed,

law? >> activists here are pledging to take this back to the ballot box in 2022 saying that this creates a real impetus for voters to come out in even larger numbers next year to try to make clear that this is not going to be tolerated and to get back control so that they will be able to pass new laws that will actually be able to restore these rights and further expand access to voting. with activists saying that this is shaping up to be the defining civil rights issue of president biden's term. we are also seeing this fight being taken to new fronts including to the courthouse where a federal lawsuit has now been filed by a coalition of voting rights groups as well as corporate america and to big companies like coca-cola, home depot, delta and under pressure now and boycott threat to do more to intervene here and as well, also hearing calls for major sports leagues to re-consider whether to hold

tournaments here in the state. part of what really seems to have people worked up here in georgia, alex is the fact that this seems to have been done as so much of a response to the fact that democrats were so successful in georgia in 2020, winning the two senate seats being held by republicans. i spoke to mark wilkerson here in the atlanta area. they have tens of thousands of workers at the airport and other places who will be potentially directly affected by this. take a listen to his response to this new law. >> it's almost gotten to the point where it's outright cheating and you know, you hear about the lies that they talked about last november and now it's just right in the open and they're trying to switch the game on us. >> there have been rallies

taking place over the last several days here in atlanta outside the state capital as well as today, just outside atlanta city hall behind me where there is a rally, specifically, alex, in solidarity with representative park canon, the state lawmaker who was arrested and charged with two felonies as she was knocking on the door of the governor's office as she was signing the bill into law. we don't know if representative canon will be in attendance at this rally today, and clearly as she was treated as she was trying to speak out is adding fuel to the sense of what has been done here. >> sure is as we look at the video of the proof of injustice. >> growing rights on capitol hill and amanda is joining me from the capitol there. what are the odds any of them can pass? >> alex, there are two key indicators here. first is timing and second is do they have the votes.

the senate and the house are both out right now. they're in recess so we're not going to see them in the next few weeks and nothing is imminent to push this forward and get it over the finish line and with president biden to push it over, the hr-1, the for the people act and that's the one that has not passed this congress and they're seeing that start to inch forward and democrats aren't sure that they have their own party onboard, for this legislation in order to push it forward. senator manchin is holding it up on a couple of key indicators, its implementation in rural communities where he comes from and proposals as part of the legislative package. and so without having all of the democrats onboard for this, president biden has to decide

where does he go from here? is he going to grapple with the filibuster if they can't get all 50 democrats onboard to get ten additional supporters on this, and he said just earlier this week during his press conference that he's open to having that debate around the filibuster for the legislation as important as this, as voting rights and elections protections and at this time they still don't have all 50 democrats onboard to even get that debate started. it will be playing out here for quite a while and there were interesting comments that came from rafael warnock of georgia who as josh noted comes from a contentious state which gave senate democrats the majority here and talking about implications for the filibuster and whether or not he even wants to be having this discussion. >> folks keep asking what we are going to do about the filibuster. i think they ought to ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, what are they going

do about voting rights? the question is not where do i stand on the filibuster. that's a senate rule. the most fundamental question is where do you stand on voting rights? we wouldn't have to have this debate about the filibuster, at least on this issue if the folks on the other side would do the right thing and stand for voting rights. >> so you hear rafael warnock putting nu own us on, and especially warnock who is up for reelection in two years and that could hurt the democratic majority that they hurt by a very slim margin. >> 100%. amanda, thank you for that. so there's georia, everyone.

42 more states are considering laws to tighten voting. joyce vance, current university of alabama law professor and one of our esteemed msnbc contributors. you spent a lot of your career working to expand voting rights. we have georgia this week, talk about that and what happens if these other 42 that have constricting voting in their states. >> we have elections in all of the different states and they're governed as we are acutely aware by different laws and different rules in every state. so what we see as so many of the pieces that you just played for the audience touches upon is this notion of moving the goalposts and republicans didn't expect to lose in 2020 and now those state legislatures are

changing the rules and hope they can win in 2022 and moving forward despite the fact that the american electorate is changing, the demographics are changing and there are more minority voters and republicans seem to believe that they can boast win not by coming up with policies that appeal to those voters, but instead by restricting access to the ballot. >> yeah. among these measures, joyce, shortening runoff election times and it will be 28 days instead of nine weeks. there's also the one giving way more control to legislature instead of counties. so what do you think will be the impact of those two specifically? that last move is the most dangerous one and it couldn't be more plain what's going on here, alex, because as the former president reached out in many cases in this really

unprecedented, unseemly direct fashion for state and local officials trying to get them to find the votes that he needed for him, it was ultimately in many cases one predominantly republican election official who stood up and refused to let the election be stolen, who insisted on standing up for an accurate count of the vote. these laws seek to put it in the hands of the people who are acutely political and that's very dangerous. look, the bottom line here is who you vote for once you're in the voting booth. that's your own political decision, but voting itself, that's not political activity. that's a fundamental american right. we should all stand up for access to the ballot. who you choose to vote for is your own personal matter. >> 100%. i want to get your take on what's happening with the stop the steal lawsuits and dominion voting system has sued fox news, they're claiming that the channel knowingly lied about the

company in order to win back viewers, including its most important viewers back then including president trump. fox calls this baseless, but what do you make of the suit overall? >> those are, of course, civil lawsuits and not criminal cases where someone is being prosecuted and being sent to jail. dominion is saying they suffered from the big lie and they suffered financial losses and people are not as willing to buy their product and voting machines and related materials that they sell and so they're suing the people who perpetrated the big lie. it's really interesting. sydney powell, former lawyer for president bidens had offered as her defense the notion of the lies that he is peddling and no one could have believed them and that's a fascinating strategy to see that someone is engaged with candor to see them taking that approach, but fox news will ultimately fiset dilemma,

they'll earth stand by the reporting and say it is true or something akin to the strategy. i think dominion will drive the 2020 election. i want my director to please put up sydney powell's actual statement. she wonderfully paraphrased it and just to read it specifically, her lawyers are now saying, reasonable people would not accept these statements as fact. i mean, again, to your point, this is a lawyer who went around the country talking about this, but dominion says that the company spent millions on employee security and from a pr perspective, and the reputation damage, right? so if sydney powell acted on behalf of donald trump, can she be on the hook for some of this, too? >> so she's, of course, been separately sued. it seems like dominion is on a little bit of a march to the sea

and they started with lawyers and now they sued fox and i'm curious to where they might decide to head next. >> joyce vance, thank you for the chat. we look forward to seeing you again. >> a member of congress said hammers are just as dangerous as guns and that's why there's no need for new gun laws. you heard it right. what do you think about that? we'll talk about it next. be more successful with payments, payroll, banking and live bookkeeping. is mealtime a struggle? introducing ore-ida potato pay. where ore-ida golden crinkles are your crispy currency to pay for bites of this... ...with this. when kids won't eat dinner, potato pay them to. ore-ida. win at mealtime. for skin that never holds you back don't settle for silver #1 for diabetic dry skin* #1 for psoriasis symptom relief*

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>> president biden is pushing

forward with his agenda as he defends his approach to leading the country. >> i can't guarantee we will solve everything, but i can guarantee you we can make everything better. we can make it better. we can change the lives of so many people. >> and joining us now msnbc political analyst robert gibb, a former white house press secretary, of course, under president obama whom we saw an awful lot of during those years. good to see you. thank you for joining me. >> how are you? >> i'm well. i hope you are, too. the word that came to mind was honest. that was just an honest response from joe biden there, but i'd love to get your accessment overall of the first press conference by this president. if you're in jen psaki's shoes, which you've been in -- well, not really in her shoes, what did you think of that event and what would you say about it? >> they're interesting events and you go in there wanting to

make news and oftentimes you come out not necessarily making the news you went in wanting to make because there's lots of topics that you end up covering. he started talking about covid and sort of re-doing the goal for how many shots we'll get into people in the first hundred days which i think was an important marker and probably the thing that carried the most weight for the rest of america outside of it, but obviously, you have to grapple with a lot of situations with a lot of different issues and i think the white house, though is happy with the performance and pleased to have moved the ball down the field and not created any new controversy. >> much was made of the fact that he didn't get any questions about the coronavirus pandemic. what did you think about that? >> i think everybody had to be a little surprised. you know, gosh, i wonder when was the last time they had an open press event in the last year plus where somebody didn't ask a question about covid and

there are certainly a lot of things that we need to understand what's the plan or having him talk about the plan for vaccine hesitancy among certain people. what do we do to make sure everybody has equal access to vaccines and how are we doing on school re-openings? sometimes what is the focus of washington, a question on whether the president that hasn't even hit a hundred days will run for re-election in 2024 is a hotter topic than what is quite frankly being talked about or worried about in the heft rest of the country. >> it was remarkable, that particular question and the follow-up will you run against donald trump? >> after the president addressed the migrant surge on the board my colleague chris jansing spoke to florida voters to get their reaction. let's take a listen to that.

>> i was getting conflicting messages about the border crisis mid-conference. one sentence we were sending people back and the, in sentence, we're opening up a military base to house more. >> want to know what's going on? >> what do you want to know? >> i want to know what the conditions are? how many children are in particular facilities and how are they being treated? >> we don't know if we'll resolve the entire thing? >> what do you make of those assessments? are they fair? >> think it is. this is a tough situation and this has something that has vexed last two presidents, president obama and president trump. this will get more complicated and potentially worse before it gets better. we've had more people come across in the last month in march than we have in a decade and estimates are that we'll have more trying to come across in april and may, so this is not

something that is going away. i think that the administration understands that and also understands that they don't have the luxury either of controlling whether this is an issue or controlling the amount of time that it's going to take to deal with it. i think you saw this week the president is surging ahead by putting vice president kamala harris in charge of the diplomatic efforts around this. they understand that this is an issue that has the potential to take a lot of time and energy and the politics of immigration on the republican side in a world in which they've struggled to come up with a message opposing some of the economic initiatives of the biden administration. immigration in its politics tend to rally and create a more cohesive republican message for a more cohesive republican base. >> yeah. interestingly, a couple of reporters, two, getting into a back and forth surrounding the border and it was asked by pbs's

yamiche alcindor. here it is. >> you said over and over again that immigrants shouldn't come to this country right now. this isn't the time to come. that message isn't being received. the perception of you that got you elected as a moral, decent man is the reason why a lot of immigrants are coming here and trusting you with unaccompanied minors and how do you resolve that tension. >> so "the washington post" jennifer rubin writing an op ed said biden excels at his first news conference. the media embarrass themselves. and rubin tweeted about that question we just played there. yamiche makes the statement unproven that his words set off the surge. this is factually wrong. alcindor responding to that, perhaps you haven't interviewed migrants and asked them this question and rubin responded, there is no uptick. this is seasonal. robert, from a white house

perspective, they'll look at this back and forth if they do. how might they see this? >> well, i mean, your first inclination is maybe to get some popcorn, but look, i think -- it underscores again, it's a complicated issue, it's an emotional issue even just the questions around an issue like this, and the causes, look, the causes of migration from those northern central american countries are vast in number, right? it's crime and it's economics and it's politics and climate change. there's a lot that's going on. i think it underscores that this is an issue that isn't going away any time soon and something they've got to get a handle on. they're acutely aware of that. they weren't exactly dealt a great hand in the facilities that they had down there based on what they inherited from the previous administration and so they understand that there's a

lot of work that has to be done. >> so president biden mentioning his predecessor donald trump several times. let's take a listen to some of them. here it is. >> what did trump do? he eliminated that funding. he didn't use it. he didn't do it. building back up the capacity that should have been maintained and built upon that trump dismantled. no previous administration has done that either, except trump. my predecessor needed to. my predecessor -- oh, god, i miss him. >> i'm detecting a slight note of sarcasm. however "the washington post" mentioned the former one by name ten times and on more than half a dozen occasions and sometimes to trump-specific questions and sometimes unprompted. does that reveal anything to you, robert? >> well, i think on the issue of immigration, look, obviously, and the politics around the

transition and quite frankly, the lack thereof and the cooperation is something that clearly still acutely stings, i think, the biden administration and i think particularly if you were a part of with vice president biden, if you were a part of that transition into trump there was just a different sort of collegiality, obviously to that transition and a much different one here and i think that probably is a bird that's not going to go away any time soon, and i will say this and again, the biden administration understands this, that white house does and the farther and farther you get away from that inauguration and the more and more you inherit that responsibility and i think they understand that and they're moving quickly to try to fix a problem that quite frankly is going to be extraordinarily hard to deal with. >> 100%. there are some headlines and particularly this one from news outfits that are conservative

leaning and they cite president biden's use of notes. robert, is there something wrong with notes? wouldn't you rather have a president with notes rather than soon shooting at the hip with answers? does it indicate anything beyond a president coming prepared to the podium? >> you're all -- it's always a little bit funny to watch what might come out of this. as you mentioned, i'd much rather have somebody, wouldn't it have been good if someone had passed donald trump a note that maybe said before he thought injecting clorox would be a good idea into people to clean up the coronavirus, please don't try that. but no, i don't think there's anything wrong with that. again, the point of the exchange is to get information. you want to understand the point of view, the press does on behalf of the public, wants to understand the point of view of the current president on those issues and i think having those, again, there are a lot of things that you might want to criticize

about any administration, but i'm not sure this is one that, quite frankly, is going to draw much blood. >> robert geb, so good to see you. come see me again soon. >> happy to do it. >> we are learning more about the colorado gunman's deadly assault and the one thing haunting investigators nearly a week later. we'll talk about it next. we'll talk about it next the fastest 5g in the world. this is 5g built right. only from verizon. ever notice how stiff clothes can feel rough on your skin? it's because they rub against you creating friction. and your clothes rub against you all day. for softer clothes that are gentle on your skin, try downy free & gentle. just pour into the rinse dispenser and downy will soften your clothes without dyes or perfumes. the towel washed with downy is softer, fluffier, and gentler on your skin. try downy free & gentle. recognized by the national psoriasis foundation

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tonight, boulder, colorado, will begin ten days of mourning to honor the victims of this week's mass shooting as the city tries to heal from the violence that took ten lives. investigators have reportedly spent 3,000 hours conducting 156 interviews. they're trying to figure out what motivated the suspect. the police chief says the search for the motive is haunting them. >> let's go to my colleague nbc 18 scott cohn from colorado. first question is what do we know about the suspect, what more do we know and about his weapon? >> reporter: yeah, alex, the weapon we now know was an ar-556

pistol which is made by ruger. it's called a pistol, but it looks similar to the ar-15 rifle that we've become familiar with, just short of a shorter version, a shorter muzzle and shorter stock makes it more maneuverable. he did, we understand, purchase it legally at a gunshot in arvada, colorado, where he lives and he did pass a background check according to the gun shot owner who is cooperating. al aliwi alissa who in custody and the motive of why he did it. >> the communities and the families want to know the motive. we want to know the motive and that will be the focus and whether or not we are able to

determine it remains to be seen. >> reporter: and a big part of that effort involves reconstructing the crime scene, figuring out what's going on. you see the giant makeshift memorial that's taken hold behind me, but behind that is still on day five an active crime scene as authorities go through literally every shelf in the store looking for spent cartridges, shell fragments and things like that, anything that they can do to reconstruct what happened which they expect will result in additional charges for alissa. meantime, the community is coming to terms with it both through this memorial and also through when they're calling individual moments of silence or collective moments of silence, i should say. at 8:00 tonight asking people to come out, take ten deep breaths, and one for each of the victims and to continue that for the next ten nights. it's a little bit more complicated mourning something like this in the midst of a pandemic.

>> that sounds very poignant, indeed and thank you very much for that update. joining me now is colorado secretary of state jena griswald. thank you for being here and we'll talk about the colorado shooting and first i want to get to voter protection because you are an attorney who worked for president obama's 2012 campaign and talking about voter protection and working on that. i am curious of your assess chlt of georgia's new dramatic voting restrictions. >> alex, thank you for having me on and my reaction to georgia's law that was just passed is it's one of the worst packages of voter suppression since the jim crow era. it would dramatically decrease access to the polls specifically for communities of color and even go so far as making it a misdemeanor to give water to folks standing in the 12-hour lines that georgia sees that they created. it's the same elected officials that create the lines and are now trying to disincentivize people from standing in them.

>> the outlawing of water seems asinine. are they trying to do anything different for georgia republicans? >> they are. what we are seeing coast to coast is the sun apple of voter suppression laws that want to help the gop win by tilting the elections in their favor. one of the things georgia is doing is taking the power of the elections from bipartisan election boards to gop-elected officials and we need to make sure as a nation that all americans have access to the ballot. voters deserve to choose who get elected and not partisan-elected officials and alex, what we are seeing across the nation is even more need. why we need so quickly the for the people act to pass in the u.s. congress to protect all of our voting right. >> to that point, you are one of the leading groups there and the secretary of states of state and you are ahead of that and the spearheading that group and all across the country from

supporting that bill and putting it together and i want to play for you what republican senator ted cruz said this week. take a listen. >> this bill is the single most dangerous bill it ever considered and this is to corrupt the election process permanently and it is a brazen and shameless power grab by democrats. they do this by instituting a bill that would promote widespread fraud and illegal voting. >> is anything that he is saying true? >> no. it's part of the big lie that people like him have been spreading for the last year to try to tilt the election in their favor and when they did not succeed they're now trying to pass these bills in every single state legislature in the nation and what is truly corrupt is people like senator cruz trying to spread the big lie for him and others like him to keep power. what this federal legislation would do is guarantee that every voter in the united states has

access to mail ballots, early voting, polling locations close to them and would also start to combat the corruption that we see from money and politics. colorado, we already have these reforms most all of the reforms on the books and i'll tell you, alex, we have the most accessible and secure elections in the nation. we just had 86.5% of active voters cast a ballot and when you give people access to voting they will vote and then the voters choose their elected officials instead of elected officials try to choose their voters to keep power. >> wow. on that note, let's go to the deadly shooting in boulder. authorities also a gun store owner saying the suspect legally bought that firearm after passing a background check and are there any laws, jena, that could have prevented this? >> alex, i would just want to say that now we have ten people whose lives were cut way too short from this senseless, senseless violence and this

senseless tragedy and these people were moms, dads, sisters and brothers and all of colorado is grieving with them. in colorado, we have universal background checks, red flag law, large-capacity magazine ban and an accident treatment risk protection orders, but it's not enough. we need to see immediate state and federal action to make sure that all of us feel safe going into a grocery store and watching a movie. we don't have to live like this and we need congress and state legislatures to act. >> let me talk about colorado congressman lauren boebert who said it wouldn't stop the shooting and big gun grab laws. >> in america we see more deaths by hand by hands, feet, even hammers. are we going to start legislating that away? are we going to be like these

other countries who even ban knifes? if hammers are the cause of more deaths than firearms maybe we need to start having background checks on hammers. look out black & decker. >> there was something missing, she is typically seen with guns in her background and how pervasive is her mentality across her state of colorado and how does it ensure safety for all? >> the congresswoman's statements are incredibly insensitive and i do not think that they are widely shared by many coloradoans and the statement is just wrong. letty think about, for example, driving. coloradoans support the idea that you have to have a driver's test, and a driver's license and

insurance and to say that owning an assault weapon is the same thing as buying tools for household repair is just so insensitive in the light of what we are facing in colorado, what the boulder community has just seen and the ten victims who will not be able to continue their lives. so just very insensitive comments from the congresswoman. >> very sensitive comments from you for which i thank you, jena griswald. >> it is the last thing the former president wanted to hear, a blow to one of his businesses. those details ahead. businesses. those details ahead. lic choir) ♪ and here's mine! allergies don't have to be scary. spraying flonase daily stops your body

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save 40% on hotel and ticket packages right now. not later, like right now. lawmakers are headed to el paso, texas, to, dress the surge of migrant crossing and it comes one day after the democrats and republicans held two dueling border trips with how to handle the crisis and who is to blame for the record surge. >> the biden administration are taking people testing positive for covid-19 and locking them in cages side by side. this is inhumane. it is wrong and it is the direct consequence of policy decisions by the biden administration to stop building the wall to return to catch and release and to end the stay in mexico policy. >> president biden inherited a situation where the previous administration had sought to dismantle the infrastructure for

processing asylum seekers and settling asylum seekers in the united states. >> joining me from texas is suzanne gamboa, senior writer for msnbc news. republicans there blaming the biden administration. is joe biden really to blame? some of the things that ted cruz brought up, we all heard about the republicans and kids in cages. >> i have talked to people where they didn't hear a strident criticism and questioning from ted cruz when the children were being separated from their parents at the border, but you know, this question about whether biden is to blame, i'm sure there are people out there that maybe have heard things might be easier. some of them are people that got sent back and have been waiting for things to change or were told that things are changing, but you know, this is not, as

they say our first rodeo. we have seen spikes of children coming across the border of unaccompanied children and families for a number of years now. i think it's the second or third administration that this has happened and the bigger question that people should be asking is why are we prepared and why haven't we come up with a system already and why is it something that we should know how to handle? i'll get to a question on that for a second -- in a second, but when it comes to the timing. i mean, this is spring. isn't it typical that there are surges when it's this kind of weather because it gets so beastly hot, insufferably so during the summer month, right? >> right. actually right now it's actually getting kind of warm right now, but there's coolness in the morning and yeah, that's the best time to cross. the people that are helping people get across, the smugglers or guides, whatever you want to call them.

they are helping them come and they know this is the time to come. you can call is seasonal. the statistics are presented in many different ways. so there could be more than there were at the same time -- maybe not last year, but the year before, but you also have to remember that there's a lot of other factors that go into that, alex. >> is there one thing that comes to mind that could be done to help control the surge? >> i don't know about controlling the surge only because, you know, the human behavior migrates and with all of the things that are going on in central america, starvation, droughts, hurricanes, flooding out towns how do you control people wanting to survive? the democrats that were here talked about not necessarily new resources, but reassigning resources and some people have brought up to me, do we need border patrol to be doing the processing? shouldn't it be child welfare people and i go back to the point how is it after two or

three spikes in families coming to the border and children coming that we are not ready to handle them yet? >> i tell you, susan gamboa, there is not a simple answer to this issue, and thank you very much for your time. appreciate that. trump dumped. another disappointing business assignment for the president. we're discussing it next. presit we're discussing it next for me, the greatest benefit over the years has been that prevagen seems to help me recall things and also think more clearly. and i enthusiastically recommend prevagen. it has helped me an awful lot. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. ♪ the calming scent of lavender by downy infusions calm. laundry isn't done until it's done with downy.

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unless... getting lost is the whole point. ♪ ♪ oofrmt tomorrow, reverend al sharpton will be in minneapolis one day before opening statements in the derek chauvin murder trial. the rev will talk with members of george floyd's family so you can all watch "politics nation" tomorrow. well, trump hotels is facing a new setback after a luxury travel company dropped the chain. the company, virtuoso, removed all trump hotels, severing ties between its high-end clean tell and donald trump. joining me now is a staff writer for the "washington post." in the article that you

co-wrote, a travel industry analyst tells you it's a big deal because virtuoso is very well respected in the industry, serves a very elite base of customers and its actions are often studied by others. does that mean there are thoughts that other companies could follow their lead? >> i think it opens the door for other companies to do a similar thing and be able to say, well, you know, virtuoso did it, so it's not so groundbreaking that we did it. sure, it might give them a comfort level. >> yeah. so, how big a deal is this just in itself? the fact that virtuoso took the six trump hotels off its website. >> it's a big deal because virtuoso prides itself on how high-end their offerings are, how high-end their partners are, and they have a network of some 20,000-plus travel agents who are busy connecting their clients with those high-end properties and other travel companies.

so, that's potentially a good amount of business that the trump hotel companies are not getting. >> yeah. in the past, as you know, eric trump has called the wave of broken business deals following the capitol hill riots, quote, cancel culture. have the trumps commented on virtuoso's decision to end the partnership? >> you know, they haven't. they haven't addressed this. we asked. they just didn't respond. and you know, so, they were canceled with this company, but i can't say that it was any kind of cancel culture that eric trump might have been talking about because there are any number of reasons why virtuoso could have dropped this partnership. they're just not saying why. >> can you speculate as to what some of those reasons might be, even though they're not giving you specifics? i mean, i'm curious, why would they want to end a partnership with the trump hotels? if it's not political, so to speak. >> well, we don't know if it's political. it certainly came in the context

of other political breaks with the company. but you know, they evaluate their partnerships annually, and we do know that trump hotels have had a tough year during the pandemic. we reported that some of their hotels had stopped putting out flowers and chocolates over the past year just because business was so bad. >> yeah. >> so, this certainly could just be all kinds of business reasons why it wasn't a product that met their standards anymore. >> yeah. >> but again, that's just kind of one option. we don't know. >> yeah, it sounds like potentially they downgraded the quality, i guess, could be a reason and then potentially if people are not flocking to trump hotels and virtuoso's making less money off the deals too. as you're well aware, we're just a couple months away from what's expected to be a busy travel season with people getting vaccinated and the potential for travel opening back up. when could trump hotels start

feeling a break like this? how badly could it affect the business? >> i mean, i think it could affect the business immediately. we are seeing travel come back. we're not seeing business travel come back as much, which would be more probably of the clientele that would be going to some of these properties. but any lack of business being funneled their way will be an immediate hit, will hurt immediately, and this was effective as of the beginning of march. >> okay. >> so, effectively as we move forward into the summer, when people are feeling more comfortable, sure, it could be. >> got you. okay, hannah sampson, interesting article that you co-wrote with the "washington post." thank you so much. and it was a simple knock and it put her in jail. in just a moment, the first interview with that georgia state lawmaker handcuffed and arrested while protesting new voting restrictions. w voting restrictions. ♪ and a little bit of chicken fried ♪ ♪ cold beer on a friday night ♪

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push to protect americans reached an all-time high with a record 3.4 million vaccinations on friday. now nearly 14% of americans are fully vaccinated. more than 40 states say they expect to meet the administration's goal of making vaccines available to all adults by may 1st. let's go to cori coffin, who's joining me from miami beach. big welcome to you in this 2:00 hour. how are health experts connecting spring break to any possible surge in cases? because it's been spring breaking down there where you are. >> reporter: yeah, for about six weeks now, alex, and can many health experts we're hearing from now that we're seeing this steady rise in more and more states say that it is not a matter of if but when we get this extra surge from these tourists coming in, these partiers coming into various states, including miami beach here behind us with states that have more relaxed restrictions. on the front of the vaccines, i do want to mention that florida is one of those states that's opening up their age