first caucus, the details of which were met with attacks from the left and the right. >> the members who start this america caucus first caucus, it's the silliest thing i've ever seen and republicans need to denounce it. later this hour we'll look at the group that appears to pose the biggest roadblock to herd immunity, republican men. what their hesitancy to vaccine means for this country. we do want to begin with the trial of derek chauvin and a city on edge as closing arguments are set to begin tomorrow morning. lawyers will be presenting their final arguments as to what actually transpired in minneapolis on may 25th, 2020, the day that george floyd died. they will have to decide if derek chauvin is guilty of any of the charges laid out against him. the defense and prosecution

rested their cases last week after nearly three weeks of tomorrow and 45 witnesses, most of which came from the prosecution and did not include derek chauvin himself. >> have you made a decision today whether you intend to testify or whether you intend to invoke your fifth amendment privilege? >> i will invoke my fifth amendment privilege today. >> all right. so my panel is here to discuss this. melissa murray, nyu law professor, former law clerk for justice sonia sotomayor. rachel paulo, former u.s. attorney for minnesota. and sonia pruitt, member of the law enforcement action partnership. ladies, welcome, thanks for joining us. melissa, i want to start with you. i want to talk about closing arguments specifically. what we can expect from both

sides tomorrow. >> well, i think we've already seen a little bit of what we'll expect from both sides. last wednesday the defense made a motion for an acquittal from the judge on the ground the prosecution had not proven his case so in arguing that motion we got to see what both sides are going to say, a preview, if you will, next week when they make their closing arguments. but i expect the prosecution to hammer home the three pillars of this case. the video testimony, the eyewitness testimony and then that expert testimony, hammering for the jury that you can believe what you saw because it is backed up by what other people saw and concluded as well. the defense will try to poke holes in that, to inject some reasonable doubt that in fact it was mr. floyd's pre-existing conditions and drug use that were contributinging factors in his death and mr. chauvin's responses were reasonable given the circumstances. >> all right. rochelle, i want to bring you into the conversation here and

talk about one of the major sticking points, which was the cause of death. you have the defense essentially saying there were many contributing factors to the cause of death. you have the prosecution saying it was a lack of oxygen. i want to play for folks two separate sound bites of both defense and prosecution's expert witnesses. >> how did the heart and drugs contribute to the cause of death? >> they were significant or they contributed to mr. floyd having a sudden cardiac arrest in my opinion. that's how i would read it. >> is it your opinion that mr. chauvin's knee in any way impacted the structures of mr. floyd's neck? >> no, it did not. >> mr. floyd died from a low level of oxygen. >> mr. floyd died from positional asphyxia, which is a fancy way of saying he died because he had no oxygen left in

his body. >> rochelle, how do you see these two arguments playing out in closing? >> i think the government gave a very clear picture of the cause of death here, lack of oxygen due to derek chauvin's knee on mr. floyd's neck. a particularly compelling piece of evidence was dr. tobin's testimony that no healthy person would have survived what mr. floyd was subjected to. in other words his body was basically put in a vice so that it became impossible for him to breathe. now, i think the important response from the defense was again previewed during their opening statement. all along this case they have claimed that mr. floyd died from pre-existing health conditions, including a drug overdose. notably even their own expert, dr. fowler, whose testimony you just played for your viewers refused to say that. in the end he was reduced to saying the cause of death was not determinable which was not the home run that i think the

defense was hoping for and certainly not what they promised the jury during their opening statement. so at the end we have a question mark from the defense and a solid statement of lack of oxygen as cause of death from the government. >> let's play the moment, guys, that they talked about the carbon monoxide from the expert witness from the defense. >> he would have the toxicology, the fentanyl and methamphetamine. there is exposure to a vehicle exhaust so potentially carbon monoxide poisoning. >> how do you know the car was even on? >> it was a question i specifically asked and then i made an observation of water dripping from what appears to be a tail pipe. >> so carbon monoxide poisoning being a contributing factor to

george floyd's death. melissa, does this hold any weight? >> again, it seems pretty thin, but all the defense has to do is convince one juror that the state has not met its burden to prove all elements of the crimes charged beyond a reasonable doubt. so again, the prosecution has made a really compelling case here, but they have an uphill case to make. they have the harder burden to bear. and it's really just up to the defense to convince one person that there is perhaps doubt here that something else may have led to this. >> all right. sonia, i want to bring you into the conversation here and i want to play for you chief arradando's testimony when he was asked about chauvin's knee on george floyd's neck. >> once there was no longer any resistance and clearly when mr. floyd was no longer responsive and even motionless, to continue

to apply that level of force, that in no way, shape or form is policy, it is not part of our training and certainly not part of our ethics or our values. >> captain, what was that moment like for you seeing the chief's testimony there, and also what do you think -- what type of influence do you think the chief's testimony will have on the jury deliberation? >> well, i hope that he influences the jury greatly. i mean he is a man -- he's a leader. he's a police leader. he's the leader of that particular police department. he spoke with confidence. he was clear. he is a very credible witness. and so i am hoping that the jury was listening very closely to what he had to say. but here's the point i would like to make about what he said. when i heard that, what i

thought about was this argument from people who would like to make george floyd responsible for his own death, that he did not comply. but what the chief just said was the police officers, derek chauvin did not comply with their training, he didn't comply with policy, and so compliance goes both ways. and so i am really, really hopeful that the jury is really thinking closely about what he said and who said it, the leader of that police department. >> i want to play some sound of witness testimony. melissa, i'm going to go to you on this after i play the sound but i want you to think about this question as we take a listen, which is how does witness testimony ultimately impact jury deliberations, especially when jurors can put themselves more in the shoes of those witnesses than they can, for instance, derek chauvin or other actors involved. so let's take a listen to some

of the witness testimony that we have. >> if you're trying to be heads down on a patient that you need to render aid to, it's very difficult to focus on that patient while there's other things around you. if you don't feel safe around you. >> does it make it more difficult to assess a patient? >> it does. >> does it make it more likely that you may miss signs that a patient is experiencing something? >> yes. >> sometimes the use of force, it looks really bad, right? >> yes. >> and sometimes it may be so -- it may be caught on video, right, and it looks bad, right? >> yes. >> but it's still lawful? >> yes, based on that department's policies or based on that state's law. >> there was also another witness testimony, melissa, in which it was the woman who took

the video of george floyd that allowed all of us to actually see what took place there. she kept saying i wish i could have done something else. i wish i could have done something else. the person that had to call the cops inside the store said i wish i'd never called the cops, was seen pacing the scene, couldn't believe what was happening before him. what type of impact does that have on jury deliberations? >> i think it's clear that this particular circumstance and all of the eyewitness testimony, all of the video testimony that we have here, which again is very unusual from some of the police violence cases we've had in the past, like the rodney king where there was only that one video. here we have multiple perspectives and they all seem to be coalescing around one particular viewpoint, that this was horrifying to everyone who observed it. and that people wished that they could have done more in the moment. that will surely go into the jury room, go into the deliberations. but again, the most important

decisions that either the prosecution or the defense made all actually happened in advance of them even beginning to presenting evidence. deciding who's going to be on that jury is probably the most important set of decisions that were made in this entire trial. so what they're really hoping for are people that are open minded, don't have any fixed views but will be swayed by what they saw over the course of the last couple of weeks. this testimony was incredibly sobering and incredibly stirring. >> absolutely. captain pruitt, this decision, whether it is a conviction or not, will have incredible ramifications throughout the entire country. and it will likely set some sort of precedent going forward. what do you expect to happen here? >> well, i'm hoping for a conviction. i'm sure that most of the world who saw george floyd murdered

are hoping for a conviction. but even more so, more holistically as we think about the police reform conversations, i'm saying police reform in quotation marks because police reform can look like many things. there are some people who are calling for abolishing policing altogether. so however that looks, because policing belongs to the people, this is going to have ramifications. we've already started that ball rolling. changing laws, holding officers accountable in certain areas, not as much as i would like to see, but it is happening. and so we have to continue to push, push, push because 400 years of oppression is long enough, i think. the black community is utterly exhausted. we're holding our collective breaths. we're trying to remain hopeful that you don't want to see someone go to jail necessarily, but you don't want to be happy about that, but justice delayed for so long is way too long.

>> just quickly here, captain, because i was speaking to deray mckesson about some of the changes that happened to the maryland police force and the alliance that he has with maryland state legislators, the work that he's done on the ground, do you expect to see more changes like that, reforms to police departments as you mentioned, across the country on local levels? >> i am hopeful because that's exactly where the changes are going to need to come from. things like pretextural stops and officers being able to ask someone from their car during a traffic stop. those are based on supreme court case law. so, yes, we're going to need changes and the states are going to have to take a look at their laws and say what can we do to help this mission, you know, this purpose, this goal, of making sure that all of our citizens remain safe and that black people in particular can go out and just drive to the store and get home safely and

that our children are going to be safe just walking down the street. >> melissa murray, rachel poulos and sonia pruitt, thank you all. backlash towards the possible creation of an america first caucus continues from both sides of the aisle. >> this is just flat-out racism. it needs to stop. it's about time the republican party put an end to it. >> i think it's awfully cruel. frankly it has no place in the republican party. >> coming up, what marjorie taylor greene's attempts to protect anglo-saxon tradition says about today's republican party. we'll be right back. pa rty. we'll be right back. this is my body of proof. proof of less joint pain and clearer skin. proof that i can fight psoriatic arthritis... ...with humira. humira targets and blocks a specific source of inflammation that contributes to both joint and skin symptoms. it's proven to help relieve pain,

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designed for the golden days ahead. ( ♪♪ ) welcome back everybody. the proposal to start a congressional caucus called america first is today causing denials and finger pointing. the proposal was reportedly started by far right congresswoman marjorie taylor greene and backed by other ultra conservatives. it's language like this that has greene's own party distancing themselves from the proposed caucus. touting a common respect for anglo-saxon traditions in the united states. let's get to the latest with my panel. elena beverly, shermichael singleton is a political consult ankt and contributor for the washington examiner. charlie savage is an msnbc

political contributor and washington correspondent. charlie, i want to start with you and talk about the whiplash that we're getting from marjorie taylor greene's office, and i want to walk folks through the tick-tock because to me it is fascinating. nick dyer, capitol hill is full of dirty back stabbing swamp creatures willing to leak gossip to borderline tab lights like punchbowl. be on the lookout for the release of the america first caucus platform when it's announced to the public very soon. the congresswoman wants to make clear she's not launching anything. this was an early planning proposal. nothing was agreed or approved. an issue later on saturday night, there was an early planning proposal and nothing was agreed to or approved. this means as her earlier statement implied she plans on driving president trump's america first agenda with her

colleagues. what do you think happened here? is this all a result of backlash that she immediately had inside of her own party? >> well, it sure looks like the backlash was extreme and may have at the very least slowed things down and caused some distancing from this document. we also have other congressmen like representative gosar said he never heard of it when he was according to punchbowl was going to be part of it and that gives me pause of how much of this was almost fully baked. either way the platform described in this document fits well with her politics and that of the people around her in this far extreme of the republican party caucus right now. certainly she's not backing down from the content even if some of the phrasing about anglo-saxon seems to have given more mainstream republicans the willies about this. so i'm not quite sure this is over yet, notwithstanding the whiplash you just described this weekend with republicans in particular, like kevin mccarthy

denouncing it as dog whistles. yasmin. >> shermichael, let's talk about a little bit of the content as charlie just pointed out there. the america first caucus content is very similar to that of 1924 national origins act. that was passed actually by congress and signed by president calvin coolidge. national origins act. thank god we have an america perhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadultered ak anglo-saxon stock. it is for the preservation of that stock. shocking to break. and the america first caucus of 2021. america is a nation with a border and a culture strengthened by a common respect for uniquely anglo-saxon political traditions. history has shown that societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en masse into a country.

>> yeah, i agree the united states is a place of disparate cultures, people all over the place, yasmin, who share the highest ideals of this country that purports to represent freedom, liberty, justice. that's what brings all of us together, that unique collective. i've seen some republicans say this isn't the party of lincoln to embrace this. the republican party hasn't embodied the spirit of abraham lincoln in a very, very long time. so i think the party is really finding itself in a position where i think distancing itself from this is not enough. i think there has to be very strong, very straightforward condemnation of this from every single republican leader in the house and the senate. i think state parties need to make it very clear that they do not support nor embody these types of ideals. but i think what's more interesting about this, yasmin, is the fact that these members were elected by people. so what it tells me is that at

least some of the folks who voted for these people clearly believe in these types of ideals. that's dangerous. it's not what a forward-thinking, a forward-moving country can represent. yet here we are having one of our major political parties essentially saying, yes, not only is this what we'll represent, we're going to articulate into a caucus and send folks to congress to represent those values. i think it's extremely troubling and problematic. >> so elena, what is to be done about this when you continue to have a republican party that in some cases, yes, in this respect we have seen them stand up to the america first caucus and speak out. but of course it's marjorie taylor greene, it's not necessarily someone who has an upstanding reputation in washington at the moment. but what is to be done here to make sure voices like this do not rise to the top? >> well, in some instances i agree with shermichael that this type of language, this type of rhetoric needs to be rejected

wholeheartedly and full throatedly by the mainstream republicans. so the language about white supremacy has been echoed throughout our immigration policy since our country was founded, protecting whiteness, claiming eugenic principles of us versus them. so if the republicans are going right align themselves or thing themselves back together and actually have a party worth standing for, my recommendation is that they start to reject this type of rhetoric wholeheartedly. let's remember that this platform is not just about the anglo-saxon ideals. she raises policy issues that are central to how our government functions right now. everything from challenging or claiming that election fraud continues to exist and perpetuaing that lie to saying

that she wanted members who would be willing to challenge sacred cows. sacred cows i would imagine like our capitol, our institutions. while we're just 100 days out from people having attacked our sacred institutions, to immigration and claiming that mass immigration -- or that immigration is a challenge and eroding our societal values without assimilation. this type of rhetoric needs to be rejected. and as adam kinzinger of illinois said, anyone who says this type of stuff, who would sign up for this type of caucus, should be stripped of their committee standing. >> so, charlie, i kind of want to go a step further and try to understand exactly what is happening here, especially to the republican party and the theories inside of it. i want to read for you from "the washington post" explaining if you thought replacement theory was bad back in 2018, it's only

getting worse post trump. they go on, the gop's gradual descent into replacement theory and nativist dog whistles. president trump made refugees his calling card beginning with the launch of his 2016 presidential campaign and goes on accusing countries of sending rapists and murderers to the border. but it's taken until trump was out of office for the idea that immigrants are replacing and diluting american voters to begin to take hold. so really taking hold in a post-trump era. he set the stage really. >> the first time this came to my attention in any kind of way that was way outside the extreme was the charlottesville riots and protests in 2017 when you had white nationalists marching with torches chanting famously "jews will not replace us." that was a reference to this

theory, a conspiracy that globalist, which is an anti-semitic dog whistle, jews are trying to bring in immigrants to get rid of white people or replace them or dilute them. this theory or this way of thinking about immigration has been creeping in to more and more mainstream republican circles. now, we have to be careful in calling this mainstream. you saw as you just mentioned a lot of republicans like adam kinzinger and liz cheney and even kevin mccarthy calling this dog whistles and condemning it. the larger context is there's a civil war happening inside the republican party about whether they're going to continue in the direction that donald trump took them or get past that and revert back to a more traditional republican party. this war is highlighted by this extreme rhetoric over immigration but it also bleeds over into things like whether they're going to be for free trade or against it, whether they're going to be more hawkish militarily internationally or

retreat and pull our troops out of places and that sort of anti-neocon way. all of this is up for grabs. so the fighting we're seeing is spilling way beyond just the most extreme spectacle of this white nationalist rhetoric. >> all right, elena beverly, shermichael singleton, charlie savage, thank you guys. appreciate it. vaccination milestones are being hit every single week but there are still a lot of people being hesitant. i traveled to mississippi this week where they're struggling to convince everybody to get a shot. up next, the efforts being taken to change the perception. >> this is the bible belt so it's like i'm just going to trust the lord, you know, and be fine. i said, well, you know what, god made doctors, right? x. and nce maria ched to gain fabric softener, it's hello soft scenty bliss. we're good, honey! everything's fine! so scenty. soooo soft.

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we're talking about a good amount of vaccine hesitancy in

this state. if we talk about this state in general, right, 40% of the state of mississippi are african-american. there's a high degree of vaccine hesitancy in the black american community. on top of that it's white conservative men and there's a high degree of vaccine hesitancy among white conservative men. but let me talk to you about what i'm seeing and what i'm hearing as well. what i'm seeing this morning is folks have been lined up all the way down the street for the last couple of hours coming to get their moderna vaccine shots. we got here early, around 7:00 a.m. this morning, and since then you have seen more and more folks showing up to get this vaccine. but what i'm hearing is, yes, there is a lot of hesitancy in this state, especially in this community. let me tell you why. one of the reasons is, this is a very rural community. so you see one house and then you don't see another house for ten miles. so you have to drive 25, 30 miles to just come and get this vaccine. that is a long way for a lot of these folks and also costs a lot of money.

this state and this neighborhood and community in general has been hard hit by this pandemic so that's a problem. they don't necessarily have the money to get to these places to get this vaccine. another big reason is lack of trust in the government. a lot of folks are scared of getting the shot. i'm already hesitant in getting this vaccine, so if i'm going to agree to get it, i'm only going to get one. and that's why the johnson & johnson pause on tuesday has been a major blow to this community. i was actually speaking to a woman, her name is pam chapman. she's the head of an organization called boss lady workforce and they try to help get vaccines to some of these rural communities. she talked to me about that day on tuesday when we learned about the pause in the distribution of johnson & johnson and how it was a major blow to her efforts in getting the vaccine out. let's take a listen to her. >> yesterday was almost like the worst day of my life. we were all excited because we had so many people committed to taking the j&j. as soon as we informed them that

they had taken it off the shelves, they panicked. everybody left. they cancelled their appointments. we had local industries that had committed to bringing their employees over to get vaccinated and no one wanted it. not that they just said i don't want it, they just didn't want it. they didn't want to take moderna. they were out. >> reporter: and so the idea now is, okay, we have to move forward with encouraging folks to get the vaccine in the community. it's all about the ground game on a couple of different levels. first it's about leaflets, about getting educating, educating folks in the community. it's about billboards on the highways encouraging folks to get the vaccine where they can get it and when they can get it. it's also about engaging church leaders, engaging folks in the community. this is the bible belt, after all, and so they listen to their church leaders, their pastors, their reverends in their churches to educate them and inform them and tell them where and when they can get the vaccine. so they're moving forward

despite high levels of hesitancy in this community, they are moving forward and encouraging people to get the moderna vaccine until a decision is made from the cdc and fda on johnson & johnson. so that was just some of my reporting this week on the vaccine hesitancy amongst black americans. while we've done a lot on the reluctance in communities of color, there's another large block of vaccine people we want to turn our attention to. the reluctance of republican voters. a recent quinnipiac survey showing 45% of republicans don't plan on getting a vaccine. another poll from monmouth university, 43% of republicans will likely never get a shot. these are just the latest string of surveys showing a disproportionate number of conservatives declining doses. it is all starting to show up in real life statistics and trends with blue states now steadily outpacing reliably red states nationwide when it comes to vaccination numbers. also within those conservatives

resisting the vaccine is an overwhelming number of republican men. here's what some residents in smith county, one of the reddest counties in mississippi, had to say about the prospect of getting a shot. >> do you plan to get vaccinated? >> no, ma'am. >> how come? >> cuz i'm a good old country boy. i don't need it. >> i made up my mind 40 years ago never to get another flu shot. >> so no flu shot, no covid vaccine. >> it's the flu, it ain't covid. it's the flu. >> i've just got questions. and i don't feel like my questions have been answered. we have news media outlets that say one thing and then we have another outlet that says completely the opposite. you don't really know the truth in the matter anymore. >> i just ain't never got no flu shot so i ain't planning on getting no covid-19 shot. i wouldn't be wearing this but you've got to. mainly affected people has got low immune systems so i just say

take some vitamins and move on. >> all right. so why does this matter so much? because unless those numbers change, the country as a whole is likely never going to achieve herd immunity and we might even end up with a country of have and have nots. blue states that have it and red states that don't. i am joined by the former executive editor of "the new york times," hal raines, who lives in the bible belt. he said getting the vaccine was so easy because there's so little demand down there. we'll talk to him about whether there's any chance of changing minds below the mason-dixon line, next. hey there, i'm joshua johnson. tonight at 9:00 eastern it's climate change week. an actor from "game of thrones" joins us. his new documentary series shows how climate change is affecting his adopted country, greenland. join us tonight at 9:00 eastern here on msnbc. s tonight at 9:00 here on msnbc.

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welcome back, everybody. with covid shots now in the arms of more than 200 million americans, parts of the country are excelling while others are struggling. it's starting to look a lot like our nation's political map. deeply divided between red and blue states. let's bring in hal raines, former executive editor of "the new york times." hal, welcome. thanks for joining us on this. i know that you got your shot in alabama and your family actually got their shots in mississippi. for both of you it was incredibly easy because there is a surplus in both states of these doses. is this more from your estimation a southern state issue or a party issue? >> it's a southern state issue in the sense that as you pointed out in that excellent report from mississippi, it's concentrated in those five states clustering alabama.

georgia, tennessee, mississippi, louisiana in that all of those are hovering at about 30% of the vaccination rate. that is entirely the big determiant is the red state phenomenon and what i call the, with all respect to mississippi, the alabamafication that donald trump has imposed on politics. now we see it in places like where i'm speaking from today, my home in the pocono mountains, pennsylvania, where i spend the summer. what we saw -- what you saw in mississippi is a reflection of the fact that 60% of the residents of that state are white and almost all of them are conservative trump voters. 40% of mississippians are black. and for historical reasons, they

are resistant to these kind of government programs because of the tuskegee experiment and also just today, "the new york times" had a story about how margaret sanger discriminated against women of color in founding planned parenthood. so the roots of distrust in the black community go very deep. but let's talk about the white south for a moment. what trump has succeeded in doing is taking the core white conservative attitude of alabama that i called self-destructive defiance, dating back to the civil war, into the civil rights movement and on into the trump boom, which took us all by surprise. we're seeing the core value of alabama voters of that stripe, the people who voted for george wallace, is that we are going to

do what we want to do regardless of how much it hurts you or us. i was talking to my 90-year-old sister in birmingham today and she was saying somewhat ruefully that the attitude that we have seen over the years is that i'm not going to do what you tell me to do, even if it kills me. so that's what you're really looking at in the red state resistance in those core states. now, how does that affect those of us who live at least part of the time, as i do, in other parts of the country. let me talk about what i found in pennsylvania since my wife and i got back about ten days ago. we live in the pocono mountains, in the center of a triangle defined by new york city, philadelphia and the president's hometown of scranton. in this area, we are now experiencing the highest

infection rate that we've had from covid since december. and that peak reflects the fact that we have now hit a red wall in pennsylvania. pennsylvania, as you know, went for trump in '16 and for biden in 2020. but now most of the willing participants in vaccination programs have been taken up and we're now seeing this same red wall of vaccine distrust starting to hold our figures down here. pennsylvania is head of the southern states we talked about. they're all at about 30% for the first dose. pennsylvania we have 43% of the people who have hit the first dose but we are still seeing -- >> so howell, let me -- >> go ahead. >> let me ask you a question. i don't mean to cut you off, but i wanted to ask specifically

about whether or not folks can change their minds, especially in some of these southern states that i've been talking about, mississippi and alabama. when i was down there last week in the black community, specifically in the delta, they engaged the church community, the pastors, to be the leaders, to talk to their parishioners about the safety and efficacy of these vaccines and what they'll be able to do if in fact they get vaccinated. it seems as if that works, right? that tactic works in talking to folks about hesitancy. is there any type of means of communication or tactics that can work, especially amongst this percentage of republicans and republican men specifically in talking about vaccinations and their hesitancy? >> it's a mixed answer, yasmin. what you saw in mississippi is not for the first time the black community and particularly the

black church is pointing the way in a more progressive direction. i think that's happening in mississippi. it's happening in other parts of the south in the white community. for example, my wife and i lived in fair hope, alabama, in mobile barracks an affluent, highly educated retirement community. there the senior citizens, of which i'm one, queued up quickly at the local hospital and have a high degree of vaccination. another hopeful sign is that governor kay ivy has been a good role model about masking, distancing, and vaccination. that's very unusual for an alabama governor to take that kind of progressive step. so i expect to see some progress. however, this southern egotistical defiance that you saw among those rather charming young men in mississippi and an

older mississippian as well saying, no, i'm just not going to do it, that is that core attitude that i think probably affects 30% to 40% of the republican men in those deep south states at a minimum. >> wow. howell raines, thank you for joining us on this sunday. i appreciate it. great to talk to you. we'll be right back with a look at the week ahead, including closing arguments in the derek chauvin trial and a virtual earth day summit at the white house. stay with us. y summit at the wh house. stay with us

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welcome back, everybody. tomorrow, nasa is scheduled to fly its ingenuity helicopter on mars after fixing a software glitch as we mentioned earlier, closing arguments are also expected to begin in the chauvin trial. the officer accused of killing george floyd. on thursday a funeral is scheduled for daunte wright, the 20-year-old black man fatelogical a shot during a traffic stop in minnesota thursday is also by the way earth day, so the president will hold a forum on climate change. the president has other events plans. monica alba is standing by. walk us through what is on tap this week for the president. >> reporter: a busy week ahead in washington, once the president returns to the white house this evening after this weekend that he has spent with his family here in wilmington. tomorrow he's going to hold the

next in a series of meetings on his infrastructure plan. this meeting at the white house tomorrow will fcus on highways, drinking water systems, broadband and the care economy and tuesday gathering with important stakeholders from the congressional hispanic caucus, something that's up in the air because it depends on when the u.s. makes and crosses this vaccination threshold. we expect in mid to late week the president to talk about and tout his goal of exceeding 200 million shots in arms in the first 100 days. we're close to day 90 at this point and originally this started at 100 million shots and 150 million, then he upped it to 200 million, given the pace of where we're at. that will likely happen in the next couple of days. he'll likely hold an event and we should point out the tomorrow we should be talking about every adult who wants to get a shot

will be eligible around the country starting on monday. that's the concerns and the pause in the j&j vaccine. as it coincides with earth day the earth day summit is hosted by the white house. 40 world leaders invited to attend, including president xi jinping of china and vladimir putin of russia. major environment concerns this week not just for the white house and here on msnbc and nbc news. we expect to bring more details in the coming days. >> monica, are we expected to get any clarity on the refugee cap from the president in the coming week? >> reporter: we are expecting to

get a new cap of where he would increase this to but not until may 15 the deadline the white house set on friday after the pushback and what they called confusion but really it was on their part they reversed on this campaign promise. we expect to get more even though the president said he's committed to raising this number but likely not to 6. it, the initial goal for that. yazmin? >> monica alba, thank you. good to see you. that wraps up the hour for me. i'll be back here next saturday and sunday at 3:00 p.m. eastern. going to turn it over to sharepoint sharepoint and "politics nation" after a quick break. than the bargain brand in hot. so, mr. t can wash his hanes tees in cold. that's true mr. t. i pity the fool who don't turn to cold. ahh. i'm still exploring what's next. and still going for my best. even though i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib not caused by a heart valve problem.

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good evening and welcome to "politics nation." tonight's lead, no more symbols. this evening the country is on high alert ahead of the most anticipated police misconduct verdict in 30 years. tomorrow prosecutors will begin their closing arguments in the trial of derek chauvin for the killing of george floyd. and on thursday, in my charge as president of national action network, i will deliver yet another eulogy as i have for countless people of color who died