nation. >> the latest mass shootings taking place hours before and after biden's address there at the white house. on wednesday in south carolina, a former nfl player shot and killed five people before taking his own life. while on thursday a gunman in texas, now charged with murder after he opened fire at a cabinet manufacturing facility where he worked. one person died, five others were injured. biden outlined several executive actions to enhance gun safety, including reining in ghost guns which are unassembled firearm parts sold in kits. they're untraceable because they don't have a gun serial number. he made it easier to red flag individuals that shouldn't be allowed to buy or keep guns. biden remains hopeful new gun laws will be passed by congress. >> it is frustrating that we haven't made the progress that we had hoped for, but it took five years to get the brady bill past and it took even more years to work to pass the assault

weapons ban. it saved lives. no matter how long it takes, we are going to get these passed. we are not going to give up. >> and that's not the only difficult policy area that biden is pushing in. this week he touted his $2.2 trillion comprehensive infrastructure plan. he emphasized its importance and says it is in the best interests of the american people even if republicans in congress won't support it. a recent poll shows a majority of americans support the plan. 62% of all voters think it is a good idea. 42% of republicans can get behind it. infrastructure is traditionally thought of as roads, bridges, tunnels, things like that, but biden is looking to redefine it. he is expanding its breadth to include things like access to clean water, internet, stable child care and even care for the elderly. >> it still depends on roads and bridges, ports and airports, rail and mass transit, but it also depends on having reliable high-speed internet in every

home. because today's high-speed internet is infrastructure. it depends on the electric grid, a grid that won't collapse in a winter storm or be compromised by hackers at home or abroad. it depends on investing in made-in-america goods from every american community, including those that have historically been left out, black, latino, asian-american, native americans, rural communities. >> the idea is for infrastructure to encompass all of the basics people need to improve their ways of life. government has the ability to do that by putting programs and systems in place, things that individuals and companies can't accomplish by themselves. oftentimes they're things you don't even realize you need. how about this? before president dwight eisenhower introduced the federal interstate system in the 1950s, we had a series of individual roads spread across the vast nation.

think where we would be today without that. even at the time that was thought of as advanced thinking. joining me now is sheila kohar, author of "black edge." sheila, let's start with, i mean you can look up the word infrastructure in various dictionaries. oxford says it is the basic systems and services that are necessary for a country or an organization to run smoothly. under that definition it can be a lot of things. what we have here is the issue of is biden redefining infrastructure for the 21st century or, as republicans say, he is sticking a lot of democratic priorities into something and calling it a infrastructure bill? >> like everything in washington right now, your definition of infrastructure seems to be based on your political affiliation. of course, yeah, it includes all of these very traditional things, roads, bridges, railroads, parks, airports,

improving amtrak, but i think one thing that the biden administration deserves applause for is that they've looked at how this pandemic affected people's ability to do their jobs and they recognized the fact that having child care or elder care gaps in your life ultimately may lead you not to be able to work out side your house. so, yes, they are moving some things that might not have been very strictly traditional types of infrastructure into their definition, but it is very much a response to what we have just seen where we have just witnessed a huge percentage of women dropping out of the workforce because they had to stay home with their kids. so by expanding child care centers, improving public schools, improving elder care, those are going to have direct economic benefits for families. so in that regard i certainly would include them as critical

infrastructure. >> let's take a look at a few of the things in this plan that aren't the roads and the bridges. there's electric cars, and really what we mean by that is the government is not going to build electric cars. it is the infrastructure you need across the country if lots more people had electric cars. universal broadband access, i think that becomes an easy one to think of as infrastructure. we may not have 15 years ago, but today it is like what electricity was the last time we did big infrastructure stuff. then care giving for older people and those with disabilities you talked about and improving pay and benefits for caregivers. at some juncture biden himself said, we're not going to get everything we want. he was talking about democrats. but this is sort of establishing a possible new framework for what we could think of as infrastructure. >> well, republicans traditionally want to see private companies stepping in and providing these services and even building infrastructure, but they certainly -- you know, they always say, well, we want

the private sector to solve these problems. we don't want government to get bigger, hire millions of people as it did in the '30s when fdr implemented his own infrastructure plans. so that's what they say. but, of course, once again the learnings of the pandemic economy have revealed there are certain gaps that the private sector for a variety of reasons, probably because it is too expensive and costly and perhaps not a quick win for them, and there are gaps that private sector companies have not stepped in to fill them. so, yeah, they're sort of acknowledging a reality instead basing their policy on the way we wish things were. care giving, like it or not, is just a very central part of the ability of most americans to work. >> yeah. and if they work, they are productive, they pay taxes. it goes back into the economy, the economy grows, all of those

things. sheila, good to see you. sheila is a staff writer for "the new yorker." joining me now is debbie stab know of michigan, a member of the senate infrastructure subcommittee falling under the committee on environment and public works. senator, that is very telling. really for 75, 80 years, 100 years we have thought about infrastructure as public works, and public works are dams, roads, water, things like that. we are challenging ourselves to think more broadly now. >> ali, first of all it is great to be with you. >> thank you. >> i have to say when i see president biden speak i just smile all over again because he really understands what infrastructure in america is really all about. just ask a working mom if child care is part of her infrastructure. you know, ask parents right now who even in my own family where

husband or wife had to decide who was going to step away from their job and stay home with the kids so they could zoom their cooling, or the rural hospital like where my mom lives, director of nursing in north korean michigan, that is now doing so much with telehealth dependent on high-speed internet to be able to proceed. you're right. it is roads, bridges, walter, sewer systems. i have to say as somebody who represents flint, michigan, has fought for them and continues to, when i see in that plan that their proposal is to eliminate all lead pipes in that infrastructure, like what has poisoned 100,000 people in flint, it can't happen fast enough for us. but when you look at this, this is a broad agenda about what infrastructure means for families. by the way, the majority of people in the care giving industry are women, or 95% are women, majority women of color. so when we look at where we need

to spend our energies so that families are successful as well as the economy being successful, this is a comprehensive view of the future. for me it is all about michigan's on almost every page, i have to tell you, ali. it is a make it in america agenda, and we are talking about bringing jobs home and making it. >> you got even single part of infrastructure. let's talk about this. you brought up flint. the american society of civil engineers gives america i think a "d" in infrastructure. they say that the first trillion dollars is just that kind of stuff, fixing water, bridges, roads, dams, we have a dam problem in florida right now. but how do you sell it to people in flint or who use roads like you do in michigan to manufacture goods across the country? how do you spell it to people like that, you're going to spend

$2 trillion, only a small portion of it is in the stuff we thought as the built infrastructure in our country? are there people in michigan who will say, we have to fix the built environment first? >> ali, i don't think we will have a problem selling it. you know, we have not been in session the last two weeks. i have been all over in michigan, and nobody is saying, gee, this sounds like too much. they're saying, how fast can you get it going. i mean they also know that all of this construction, no matter what it is, is tens of millions of good-paying jobs. they know that we're going to focus on by american, so whether it is the materials for all of these projects or whether it is leaning in to bye electric vehicles as the federal government so we help create the market, people get it. they know. again, you don't have to tell somebody high-speed internet is part of infrastructure. we have lived through what it means to be in plint, michigan,

or in detroit or other places where high-speed internet is not available. and it is school, as i said, it is health care, it is small businesses, it is family farmers. we don't have to explain it to people. they are scratching their heads saying, how in the world could mitch mcconnell right out of the gate say there will be no republican votes for this, rather than sitting down and saying, okay, here is what we will support, here is what you can support, let's figure it out. we all know this is an issue. everybody talks about it for years, about how we need transportation and water, infrastructure and all of these other things. everybody supports high-speed internet, and yet -- so the people in michigan are going, really, you're saying really that, you know, the republican leader of the senate just closed the door before we even get started on rebuilding america and being prepared to be the competitive leader for the future. >> yeah. we're further ahead than we were

in the last four years, right. i have lost count of how many infrastructure weeks we started under the last administration and never made it past tuesday in any of those weeks. at least if we can have this discussion we are somewhere further than we were. senator, thanks for joining me again as always. senator debbie stabenow of michigan is a member of the committees on budget, finance, energy, natural resources, agriculture, nutrition, forestry. she is in charge of a lot of stuff in the senate. thank you for joining us. coming up, senator bernie sanders will join us to discuss everything from the infrastructure to the union vote in alabama. meanwhile, it is national farm animals day in america. it is also national siblings day and other things, but it is just in america. you're looking at vienna where they are discussing iran. they actually have a national nuclear day in iran. we will go live to tehran to figure out how it fits into the renewed effort to restart the iran new clear deal.

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♪ ♪ over a month ago republicans in 43 states introduced more than 253 bills restricting voter access, but new numbers from the brennan center show since then republicans have added 108 more bills. there are now 361 bills in 47 states that are aimed at suppressing voters. one of the states with the highest number of bills is texas. it introduced 49 restrictive bills. texas has already begun shifting from dark red to light red. experts believe the state could turn purple. that's when democratic and republican parties have similar levels of support among voters. in an attempt to impede your constitutional duties, republicans in the state

advanced legislation limiting early voting hours, prohibiting drive-through voting and will give poll workers the ability to record voters at the poll. others would make sending applications even to voters who qualify illegal. republicans argue the bills are not designed to discriminate. let me be clear, they are discriminating and modern history proves that. since 2012 texas has closed 750 polling places. according to the author of a book detailing the struggle for voting rights in america, 542 of the polling sites are in the 50 counties that gained the most black and latino residents over the years. nearly 200 companies last week came out against the state's proposals that threaten voter rights. some republicans followed with calls for boycotts. minority leader mitch mcconnell originally warned businesses, quote, will invite serious consequences, end quote, if they don't stay out of politics except, of course, for political donations before walking that

idea back. one of my next guests in an op-ed writes, quote, republican elites treat the free market like a tragic casualty of the culture war. the party can no longer call itself fiscally conservative unless it is in pursuit of what the party is counting on. hayes brown, writer and editor for msnbc daily newsletter and erin haynes, founder of the 19th, reporting on gender, politics and policy. thank you for being here. hayes brown, let me start with you. this week has been the weirdest week i have ever seen with republicans chastising corporate ceos and telling them to keep their knows out of politics. republican politics exist because corporate ceos don't keep their nose out of it. >> absolutely. we are coming up on tax day, what normally would be tax day, april 15th. one of the reasons why it is so

complicated is because corporations are out there trying to lobby to make the tax code more complicated. that is something we have seen for decade and republicans have until recently been totally fine with that. like you said, senator mitch mcconnell, the senate minority leader, his career has been built on trying to make sure that corporations and as much money as possible can flow into politics. so for this sudden reversal to be taking place, like you said, is really weird, kind of shocking to see. but it all makes sense when you consider the fact that these republicans all are basing these laws that are being debated and passed in states like georgia and texas based on the lie that donald trump had the election stolen from him because republicans can't walk that back just yet. they are moving forward with these bills and using that big lie as a reason to hinder voting for people who they think will not vote for them. so it makes sense in a terrible, twisted way that when corporations say, these are not

popular bills, these are not policies that we want to pass because we -- and we want to stand up against them because we want our buyers to know that we are not for this, republicans are now saying, well, hold up, who let corporations decide what our laws are. democrats and liberals and progressives who have been saying things like that for years are just kind of stun at years are just kind of stunned at the ypocrisy from them. >> errin haines, let's look at why this happened. if you looked back a year ago the companies lining up, falling over themselves to figure out how to be in tune with black lives matter, i'm never clear whether this is good corporate citizenship, companies doing the right thing or risk management as stephanie rhule calls it. they know if you don't do the right thing, your customers are

going to come after you, because those act vues in georgia, those voting rights activists warned delta and coca-cola we're coming after you if you don't speak up and stop funding republicans carrying on about this big lie. >> for the activists who have long considered putting pressure on these businesses to be a strategy, while this may be a moral imperative for these activists they know it can be an economic imperative and money can be motivation for businesses that may not automatically choose to do the right thing, stand on the side of their customers, and also some of their workforces which are quite diverse. delta has 46% of their staff people of color, coca-cola also has a diverse staff. the realization of folks that

corporations are people too, they're asking corporations to weigh in on issues and understand where they come down on the side of these really divisive issues that shouldn't be divisive, an a majority of americans believe that black lives do matter. and a majority of americans supporting the idea that because america is built on the idea of being a democracy, that americans should be able to participate in the democracy, but just as the electorate, these corporations standing on the side of voting rights are all being met with backlash. >> you know, hayes, i've never been able to capture this cultural war that's gone above my head the last year, i never

understood what the mask thing was, why it's a civil rights matter. but now it's about vaccine passports. we have florida and texas talking about outlawing the idea that anyone might be required to show proof that they've been vaccinated. i get these things are irritated, but how is everything a fundamental civil rights issue now, when it has nothing to do with civil rights? >> because, they're coopting the language of civil rights to tell their supporters that we don't agree with things that progressives and liberals want. that's what it boils down to, basically. it's not a matter of actual rights it's protecting privileges that people have. and because of that, they're able to leverage this idea that someone out there, these liberals, democrats, are trying to tell you what you have to do and push back on that idea, even something that helps other people. like saying, you need a vaccine, if you want to take part in the

activity you should be able to show you are vaccinated so we don't have to worry about you wearing a mask so everyone can enjoy the mask free life you want for everyone. they're pushing back, saying no this is a fundamental abbri gags of our rights and the fact they have come upon this strategy as a way to hide the fact they don't have many policy ideas right now it's die boll cli genius but i'm curious what happens when they have their base this riled up for so long and nothing changes for them, that's going to be the interesting inflection point down the line. >> errin haines, i was fascinated when marjorie taylor green where's the mask, my body my choice. but kevin mccarthy tweeted this week about the passport saying forcing americans to carry a passport to go about daily life is unacceptable in a free society that's something you expect in communist china, not

the united states of america. this is the same crew saying everyone has the right identification to go vote. >> right, ali voter id next to address a problem in search of a solution, but vaccine passports unnecessary despite the fact that as a country we are attempting to get to herd immunity, and obviously not very many folks on that side of the aisle that are encouraing people publically to get vaccinated. you know, this is really about the issue who can require proof, obviously the federal government stayed out of mandating masks at the national level and now the federal government jen sake has said the president is not interested in making vaccine passports something they will address at the federal level. so again we're looking at this likely coming down to a state by state solution. on the one hand, you can see

this may be encouraging people, if they were to get vaccine passports, if businesses, for example, said you need proof of your vaccine to come back to an office setting. or to eat at certain restaurants, private businesses saying no shoes, no shirt, no service, could also say no vaccine, no service. but on the other hand we have a hesitancy issue, particularly among gop white men who may be skeptical of government who may see these vaccine passports as yet another reason to not be vaccinated, but really as the country is beginning to reopen and we're seeing folks getting back out, there has to be some mechanism. we know there are many black and brown folks out here, essential workers who still don't have access to the vaccine. we're talking about passports but also vaccine equity is still an issue and part of this

conversation. so what is the mechanism you know for protecting these people if it's not going to be vaccine passports we should still figure out a way we get there. >> i love talking to both of you. maybe we can do a segment called hayes and haynes. this is a great discussion. thank you for being with us. erin hains and hayes brown. thank you for joining us. hayesn thank you for joining us ♪ for decades, most bladder leak pads were similar. until always discreet changed that. by inventing a revolutionary pad, that's incredibly thin. because it protects differently. with two rapiddry layers that overlap, where you need it most.

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negotiations over iran's nuclear program continue next week. there were signs of progress during this week's indirect talks between the united states and tehran. the european union is mediating discussions between iran and the five countries that remain in the 2015 nuclear deal. the former president took the u.s. out of the deal and reimposed sanctions against

iran. the goal of the vienna talks is to bring the u.s. back to the table. the biden administration has said they're willing to lift sanctions with the nuclear deal. this falls on iran's national nuclear day, which is today. ali, good morning or good afternoon to you, a senior official is saying the sanctions imposed on iran by the trump administration deliberately make it more difficult now for joe biden to rejoin the nuclear deal, what's that all about? >> reporter: hello, my friend. good to be on with you. the trump administration had slapped iran with a lap rint of some 1,500 sanctions after pulling out of deal. in fact, some imposed by president trump were done in his final days in office possibly designed less to hurt iran and more to make it harder for president biden to return to the deal.

what it did was blur the line between nuclear related sanctions that would need to be lifted in order to return to the jpoa swiftly and other sanctions that covered human rights abuses, terrorism, ballistic missiles, cyber crimes, et cetera. when the u.s. signed the original deal in 2015 it made a distinction between lifting preexisting nuclear related sanctions and other sanctions related to non-nuclear sanctions. now iran is demanding all the sanctions after the jcpoa that came into force be lifted, many are nonnuclear sanctions making it more difficult to decide what to lift and leave. it was a crafty move by the previous administration to make it difficult and complicated to dismantle their sanctions, renaming many of the nuclear

sanctions as terrorism related. now sifting through the sanctions is going to be paramount to reaching an agreement and making it last. >> ali, i didn't know until this morning that today is national farm animals day in the united states. i also didn't know that it was national nuclear day in iran. do me a solid and explain what that is. >> reporter: to break it down quickly, national nuclear day became a ceremonial day in iran in 2006, on april 9th. after scientists managed to establish the complete chain of uranium enrichment now every year there's a ceremony attended z by the president where the country's latest nuclear achievements are announced. today they unveiled 133 advances they made over the last year and most controversial was the launch of advanced center fujs

at the under ground plant where this morning the president ordered the injection of uranium gas into those centrifuges. those will be viewed as a further breach by iran of their commitments. >> thank you for joining us, always good to see you. the bureau chief in tehran for us. as we discussed earlier, corporations are starting to wade into politics and civil rights issues, like celebrities have been doing for years. one artist who uses her lyrics and guitar skills will join my friend tiffany cross at 10:00 a.m. eastern. tiffany is with me now. what do you got? >> we have a full slate on the cross connection coming up after you, of course. we'll have the latest on the chauvin trial, what it could mean for the future of policing. we'll talk about the latest of voting, the battleground state of texas. we have grammy winning sensation

h.e.r. just got her first oscar nomination for the song "fight for you". and i can't wait to talk to her. we've really got a great show. let me say, ali, you are the hardest working man at msnbc, i'm knew her, i don't know if there's an employee of the month. you were working till 11:00 last night, you're back at it. you win the week for sure. >> we have a lot to talk about, until we run out of things to talk about, it's a privilege. good to see you, my friend. tiffany cross, the cross connection, coming up at 10:00 a.m. eastern next on msnbc. when we come back i'll talk about the unionization fight with senator bernie sanders. t tt with senator bernie sanders. t to carry and protect the things that were most important to us. (mom) good boy. (mom vo) we always knew we had a lot of life ahead of us. (mom) remember this? (mom vo) that's why we chose a car that we knew would be there for us through it all.

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i want to take you back a bit in history. in march of 1911, 146 workers, 123 of them women and girls were killed in a factory fire at the triangle shirt waist company in new york city. most of the deaths could have been prevented with safety measures, the fight made a momentum for better working conditions. president roosevelt signed the fair rights labor act, which gave workers rights to negotiate

for better working environments. less than a decade later unions took a hit when republicans allowed businesses to ban strikes and boycotts while permitting unions to contribute to political campaigns. the union grew and hit its peak in the 1950s when they organized one out of every three nonfarm workers in america. the drop in membership since, stands at 10.8%. one moment against unions came in 1981 when president ronald reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike for a pay increase and fewer hours, that moment is seen for the death nail for the leverage of strikes and walk outs. while there have been victories since, the urgencies for workers to form a union or join a union doesn't exist with many.

people feel unions outlived their purpose. an idea that's disputed by terrible working conditions in meat packing plants just six months ago and a call for better working at amazon's alabama warehouse. the vote is now being contested. after a quick break i'm going to talk to senator bernie sanders who helped lead the charge to boost the amazon workers' campaign to unionize. we'll discuss what happens next for unionization in america after this the. t for unionization in america after this the ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google, turn up the heat. ♪ ♪ ♪ among my patients i often see them

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disappointed but not surprised, that was senator bernie sanders' reaction to amazon's warehouse workers efforts to unionize in alabama. senator sanders joins me now. good to have you here. i was disappointed but actually a little bit surprised that

amazon was so successful in its efforts. this wuntd just workers who decide today vote on something, amazon played a remarkable roll, including requiring people to attend meetings and sort of intimidating them with the idea that if you unionize our costs go up and we may have to lay some of you off. >> you have to give enormous credit to the workers in alabama. here you are in an anti-union state, taking on one of the largest, most profitable corporations in the company, the wealthiest guy in the world and you are living under terrible working conditions, i was down there, people are monitored from the moment they get on the job. it is very hot. it's a huge facility, they get a half hour break from lunch and it takes 10 minutes to walk to the break room. and all they wanted was the opportunity to sit down and negotiate better wages, better working conditions.

and bezos and the company spent a huge amount of money to defeat that effort. and that tells me that, among many other things, we need strong pro-labor legislation, which says that workers in america must have the constitutional right to form a union. and right now it is so difficult, whether it's amazon, whether it is walmart, whether it is any one of these large corporations, companies have so much power to threaten and intimidate, to put people in closed rooms and tell them over and over again how terrible unions are. we have to change that. >> i want to ask you what model you use for that. because you talked about being in an anti-union state and the fact that so many companies are anti-union, but it doesn't have to be that way. look at germany, for instance, union members have a seat at the board so decisions don't tend to be made excludeing workers. so you don't have this an mouse

relationship between union members and the company. >> that's right. >> this is fixable. >> absolutely. not only in germany are union members members of boards, what we're seeing and having workers' cooperatives. here is the bottom line. in the 21st century we have got to rethink the role of workers, and workers are not just simply cogs in the machine. these are humans who should have some say of what happens to them eight hours a day or in the case of amazon ten hours a day. whether it's working on boards or making it easier to form unions, that is what we've got to do. as you indicated in your presentation, the truth of the matter is we would not have a middle class in this country today without the trade union movement. what's happened over many years

as a result of terrible trade policies, as a result of not raising the minimum wage, as a result of anti-union activity making it so hard for workers to form unions, wages today are stagnant over the last many, many decades. workers are not making any more today than they made in real dollars than they made 45 years ago. so in a variety of ways we have got to end this movement towards oligarchy where so many in the middle class are struggling and one way we do it is give workers more power on the job. >> that statute quote sounds to some like an exaggeration but it's not. i'll get the chart and i'll show it to my viewers. the average workers' wage has been stagnant for 40 years. let's take a quick break. senator sanders, i want to talk about the infrastructure bill and the concept of whether this should be bigger than we think of it in terms of roads,

bridges, dams, ports, things like that. "velshi" is back in a minute. now at subway®, buy one footlong in the app, and get one 50% off. subway®. eat fresh. we started with computers. we didn't stop at computers. we didn't stop at storage or cloud. we kept going. working with our customers to enable the kind of technology that can guide an astronaut back to safety. and help make a hospital come to you, instead of you going to it. so when it comes to your business, you know we'll stop at nothing.

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this. >> i believe that $2 trillion isn't enough to deal with the various challenges, the problems that we face in this economy. i'd like to see democrats go much bigger but recognizing that you've got to be very careful when you manage the so-called force. how do you spend in an economy moving closer to full employment. >> your thoughts? it's a lot of money. how do we pay for it? >> well, it is a lot of money, but when you have massive lempgs of income and wealth inequality, when you have people like jeff bez zos, elon musk, two people owning more than the bottom half of society. when you have dozens and dozens of corporations not paying a nickell of income tax. when you have an effective

income tax rate, you can raise money by having a progressive tax system. but most importantly, and i think what stephanie was saying, is that when we talk about infrastructure, of course we're talking about roads, bridges, water is a big deal. water systems, wastewater plants, but we've got to take a broad look at what infrastructure means, human infrastructure for ordinary people. human infrastructure means housing. a half a million people are homeless. 19 million households who are spending 50% of their limited incomes on housing. we need to build housing. and by the way, when you deal with housing, you create jobs. you've got to deal with climate change. who in their right mind would believe that transforming our energy system to protect us from the devastation that we're seeing from climate change, who would not believe that that is not infrastructure. so moving away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency, sustainable energies, that can create millions of jobs.

when i talk about infrastructure, it means if a worker, mom and dad are going to work, they have the right to know that their kids are in decent child care. that's infrastructure. infrastructure is having the best educated work force in the world. that means all of our kids should have the ability to get a higher education, not leave school deeply in debt. it means that we need a healthy society. our life expectancy is 40th in the world because we are the only major country not to guarantee health care to all people. i think as a nation we've got to take a very broad look at what we mean by infrastructure, its physical infrastructure. obviously bricks and mortar. it is human infrastructure. now is the time to create millions of jobs addressing all of the needs impacting the middle class and working families of this country. >> so it's a compelling argument. are any republicans going to buy that argument that you just made? >> probably not.

look, they live in their world and their world will be trying to obstruct as much as possible what biden and many of us in the congress are trying to do. what their job is right now, appealing, trying to divide us up by stressing xenophobia, racism, making it harder for people to vote. so our job, i believe, and i think we are in an enormously wonderful moment, is to rally the american people around an agenda that works for workers and the middle class who have been neglected for so many years. it is the right thing to do policy wise, it is the right thing to do politically and if we do that, if we bring people into the political process who say, you know what, health care is a human right. yeah, i need to make at least $15 an hour. yes, my kid is all right to get a college education. would he do that, we transform this country and we create a

political coalition which is not going to lose for a very long time. >> senator bernie sanders of vermont, thanks for your time this morning. we always appreciate you joining us on this show. that does it for me. thank you for watching. that is tomorrow morning -- we'll do it again tomorrow morning 8 to 10 a.m. on "velshi." "the cross connection" with tiffany cross begins right now. good morning. i'm tiffany cross and we have a lot to cover on "the cross connection" including the explosive expert testimony in the murder trial of former police officer derek chauvin. trust me, we will get to all of that and more, but we're kicking off the show with the fight over voting rights and the battle to protect the bedrock of our democracy. in just a few minutes, demonstrators are expected at the masters golf tournament at augusta to protest georgia's