>> we didn't get to this, time's up. jeff bezos got a 4000 dollar income from his -- great reporting, thank you article. i'd like to talk to you more. if more reporting comes out of this, i'd like to talk to you again. thank you so much. >> we'll be reporting more on this. that is "all in" on this tuesday night. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening chris, much appreciated. thank you all for joining us this hour. he went to morehouse. he got a law degree from emory, he went on to a distinguished legal career for him in the state of the new jersey in the most populace county in new jersey. he became a judge in new jersey, highly respected, distinguished, not a blemish anywhere on his record. at the beginning of february 2015, president obama nominated him to the federal court.

his name is xavier julien neals. that nomination from president obama was basically a gimme. distinguished record, not a word against him, sort of an ideal candidate for the job utterly and noncontroversial. they held his confirmation hearing in 2017 after president obama nominated him. the confirmation went great. he sailed through. no objections. the judiciary committee is where they hold confirmation hearings in the senate. they decided by his nomination by a voice vote. they didn't even bother taking a roll call vote. they just did all in favor, aye. no objections. passed him through for his floor vote in the senate and then he can become a federal judge. that was in november 2015. zero controversy about him. he passes a committee with zero objections. that sets up what is expected to

be a nonformal vote for him in the senate to confirm him to the court. but that never happens. the committee has this hearing and passes him through on a voice vote with no objections november 2015 but there is no floor vote. then december 2015 comes around, nothing happens. no floor vote. we roll into january 2016, nothing happening, no floor vote. president obama, of course, is in the white house. but in the senate that was controlled by mitch mcconnell and the republicans. and what mitch mcconnell and the republicans did when they controlled the senate was they just refused to consider president obama's nominees to be judges. they just refused to allow votes on obama nominees. so the seats would just stay empty. republicans in the obama era decided that a democratic president like, for example, president barack obama, he didn't deserve to nominate federal judges to the bench. he wouldn't get to do that

because he's a democrat. and republican senators decided they wouldn't confirm judges nominated by a democratic president, they would only confirm judges nominated by a republican president, and so for that reason and that reason alone, julien neals, this distinguished, noncontroversial judge from new jersey, he sails through the confirmation from the committee on a voice vote, but then the republicans just let him languish. they refused to vote to confirm him on the senate floor. they refused to vote to confirm him or not. they refused to hold any vote on him whatsoever for nearly 700 days. for the whole rest of the obama presidency, they won't vote on him. they hold his nomination until trump gets elected. and then they drop it. when trump was elected, republicans, having held open judicial seats that way in courts all over the country,

once trump got elected, they turned on a dime. and the republicans and the senate raced to put trump-nominated judges on the courts, in such quantity and at such a pace that they nearly sprang something. they did nothing anywhere fast as they did as trump-nominated judges. trump got judges on the bench in his scandal-filled office as democrats who had eight years to do it. they absolutely stuffed the court full of trump judges. well, today 139 days into the joe biden presidency, 139 days, four and a half months into joe biden being president, and the senate being controlled by the democrats, today, finally, julien neals got his confirmation vote on the floor of the senate. president obama nominated him for the job more than six years ago.

republicans raised no actual objections to his nomination, but they nevertheless held a vote to confirm him. president biden, when he was nominated, he decided he would re-elect julien neals. today, julien neals was con firmed in the united states senate and he will become a federal judge. julien neals is the first biden-related judge to be confirmed since biden has been president. so what is the takeaway there? right? you guys! it took four and a half months to confirm the first biden-nominated judge! four and a half months. trump got more than 230 judges onto the court in four years, and that's because the republican-controlled senate worked harder on that than they worked on anything else. it takes time and effort and prioritization of the calendar in the senate to get judges confirmed. but during trump's time in office, they absolutely stuffed trump judges into every corner

and crevice of every federal court in the country. democrats are in control of the senate now and they have a democratic president, but they took four and a half months to confirm biden's first judge. that's part of the story here. the pace here has got to be a little bit worrying for democrats, right? they know they don't have infinite time, right? republicans wouldn't let obama put judges on to the courts for a significant portion of his term. then once trump was elected, they stuffed the courts full of trump judges. if you have any hope of trying to rebalance the courts now, they really have to work triple time to get it done. they waited four and a half months until the first biden confirmation. tick-freaking-tock, democrats. that's one takeaway here. but the other part of the story here, you know, somebody has finally done right by judge julien neals.

the republican senate did leave him dangling for nearly three years. and that could have been the end of it. but president biden remembered he had been a good nominee. they didn't let the republicans have the last word in terms of the way they treated him. biden renominated him and they got him through. so there. late is better than never. they didn't forget him. and that's something. and that, of course, that same kind of small j justice was at work, of course, when president biden picked his attorney general, right? president obama, as you know, had nominated a judge named merrick garland to be a supreme court justice after antonin scalia died while he was still on the bench. merrick garland was someone who had been confirmed overwhelmingly and with zero controversy to his previous judgeship. he was somebody so centrist, so moderate, so objectionable and

they named him by name that they would love to vote for even if he was voted on by a democratic president. but when president obama did nominate him, republicans, under mitch mcconnell, they refused to consider mare rick garland's confirmation. they not only refused to vote for him, they refused to hold a confirmation for him. they pretended president biden didn't nominate him. republicans held a seat on the u.s. supreme court open and empty for more than a year just so they could stop a democratic president, president obama, from being able to nominate someone to the court. that's how they created the first vacancy for trump to fill on the supreme court. that's why judge gorsuch doesn't shave in front of a mirror. could you look at yourself every day knowing that's how you got your job? he just takes an electric razor to the corner saying, i don't

want to look at myself. he had remembered, right, what happened to merrick garland. he decided he wouldn't let that be the last of merrick garland's career, and merrick garland was confirmed to the attorney general of the united states. he was confirmed fairly easily. it turned out republicans didn't really have any substantive objections to him at all. there is a same sort of justice to that seeing judge julien neals being confirmed today. not forgetting, not letting that shameful treatment of that nominee by the republicans in the senate in the past, not letting that be the last word of either of their careers. that has a certain symbolism, sort of a satisfaction to it, a sort of small j justice to it. in practical terms, the result of that is that the attorney general of the united states is

merrick garland. he's running the justice department under joe biden. and aside from that sort of poetry about how he got the job, how is the justice department going under merrick garland? i will tell you, it's the job i think i would least like to have in the whole federal government right now. like if you could give me my pick of jobs in the biden administration, my first choice would be i don't want the job. my last choice would be, i want to be the attorney general coming in to clean up the justice department after what just happened there under the previous president. i mean, being attorney general after trump? that's a job for which you would need a hazmat suit several days of the week every time you come to work in terms of the smoking proverbial toxic wreckage of the justice department left behind by the previous president and the previous attorney general, william barr. not even in the worst of watergate did we see such a blatant record of the u.s.

justice department up-ending independent law enforcement to instead do favors for the president's friends. trump appointees and his attorney general literally intervened at the sentencing phase of cases against trump's friends to get them off the hook after they had been convicted or pled guilty. they waltzed in at the sentencing phase and say, no, no, no, we have to clean this up. these people can't get in trouble, they're the president's friends. if you're merrick garland spending all your time doing that, how do you clean that up? you can't just let it slide that the justice department was used that way. you can't just let it go or it becomes precedent that the justice department can be used that way. that future justice departments will do that sort of thing again for criminal friends of some other corrupt future president. right? you can't just let that slide if the justice department has been

used for corrupt purposes to help the president's friends. you can't leave that standing as precedent. that has to be addressed. that has to be readdressed. but that's just the start of it. two federal judges already have ruled that the justice department under donald trump and trump's attorney general, william barr, lied to the public and the court about president trump's own potential criminal culpability in office. just last month, the federal judge ruled that justice department lawyers under trump and justice department officials under trump have lied to the court about the consideration of federal criminal charges against trump while he was in office. that judge ordered the justice department to release a memo that they tried to keep secret in the trump years about potential criminal charges against president trump. how did merrick garland choose to deal with that misbehavior by the trump justice department, by officials and lawyers in the justice department under trump? how did he decide to deal with it? he decided he would fight the

judge's order and would try to keep that memo about potential charges against trump, he would try to keep that secret, too, just like william barr did during the trump years. even more recently than that, just in the past week, we've learned disturbing details about justice department officials during the trump administration entertaining demands from the trump white house that they should start investigations into trump's weird pet causes, including some of the kookiest, most bananas conspiracy theories of the 2020 election somehow being stolen by trump. mark meadows told the attorney general while trump was still in office that after the election there was a theory he had heard about on youtube involving italy and satellites and a supposed devious plot by a rogue general changing votes by italy using the voting machines? this was a theory that made

absolutely no sense. it apparently originated from a pro trump group in florida that i kid you not, has as their web address, italydidit.com. italy did it! italy? that's who hacked the election to put biden in there? you're sure, really? yes, they're very sure. they've explained it all over a small slice of qanon-promoted radio shows. it's sort of fine at this point. sort of a bunker, trump election, fan fiction chain e-mails that makes no sense but persists on the very fringy pro-trump right. we've seen a lot of those. except in december, the white house chief of staff directed the attorney general of the united states that he needed to have the actual fbi meet with the youtubers who were promoting this particular deep-fried kettle of trump election fraud

fantasy froot loops about italy and the satellites. it literally made no sense, but the white house chief of staff told the attorney general you need to have the fbi meet with the youtubers about this and investigate it formally as the u.s. justice department. now, that kind of communication from the white house to the justice department, that is a very stark, very obvious violation of longstanding justice department policy. for justice department officials to be even having that kind of a conversation with the white house chief of staff at all, let alone entertaining multiple requests for him to open these investigations? that is a serious violation of seriously important justice department policies. now, it is being investigated in the senate. the judiciary committee under senator dick durbin is reportedly investigating what went wrong there inside the trump justice department that they were involved in this kind of stuff and fielding these requests, which they never should have been fielding. but under merrick garland and

the justice department itself, apparently they're not investigating this. apparently, they're just letting that slide, not looking into it. just, i guess, planning to do better and not make those same mistakes again, hope that the trump era behavior that happened inside the justice department, what? just hope that it gets forgotten and doesn't get cited as precedent before some future corrupt president in terms of how he expects his justice department to act on his behalf? if the trump doj did it and it's known that they did it and nobody got in trouble for doing that, it becomes de facto president for what's okay for the justice department to do again. you're just hoping people will forget it happened and no one will cite it in the future when some future corrupt president gets in there? apparently. an even more recently than that,

late last night, the justice department under merrick garland told the court the justice department is now going to continue the position of the trump era justice department in the stomach-churning case of e. jean carroll. miss carroll, you'll recall, it's a very high profile case. she accused president trump of rape. he responded by insulting her and calling her a liar. in response to that, she sued him for defamation in his personal capacity as a private citizen. the allegation was about an alleged rape which she said happened many years before he was president. the defamation case was him defaming her, allegedly defaming her in response to her making those allegations. well, last fall in september, there was this sort of shocking move made by attorney general william barr when he asked if the court would remove trump as the defendant in that case and substitute in the united states government to be the defendant instead. barr said when trump basically made these public claims that e.

jean carroll was a liar and he couldn't have raped her because he doesn't like the look of her, william barr went to the court and said that statement from donald trump was him carrying out the official duties of the presidency of the united states, and therefore the government will defend this case. he is effectively immunized. it was a shocking thing, right, to say this was an official act by the president. but the point of that act by william barr was to immunize trump and also to make her case go away. legally the u.s. government can't be sued for defamation. so if barr succeeded in this shocking ploy, if he was able to get the government itself swapped in to be the defendant instead of trump, well, the government can't be sued for defamation. that would result in her case dying instantly. it's just a really shocking move by william barr when he did that last fall. late last night, merrick garland and the biden justice department said they are sticking with that

position, with what barr and the trump justice department tried to do there to rescue trump from that case. merrick garland is going to stick with that plan. oh, but wait, there's more. we also learned this week about bill barr and the trump justice department going after reporters to try to get their sources. first it was reporters of "the washington post," then it was the pentagon correspondent at cnn, then most recently it was four reporters from the "new york times." all of these reporters had written stories way back in 2017 that in their own ways were critical of trump and the trump administration. years later, in the last days of the trump administration, during 2020, william barr apparently approved subpoenas to try and find out those reporters' sources for those stories. under william barr, they demanded these documents and records to try to find out reporter sources. they did it in secret without notifying the news organizations of what it was they were looking for.

again, that sort of action, taking it in secret, not notifying the news organizations of what they were after, that would seem to be a very clear violation of justice department policy, as former attorney general eric holder explained to us here last night in our interview with him. very clear justice department policies that are on a serious issue. that is justice department officials breaking justice department policy, misbehaving in serious and substantive ways. what do you do about that? what is merrick garland, now in charge of the justice department, doing to clean up the behavior of his agency under its previous leadership? to find out what happened, to make sure people get in trouble for having done that so it doesn't happen again, so it doesn't become a de facto president that future corrupt presidents will use. what did merrick garland do in response to the revelations of that misbehavior by a justice department official when it came to seeking reporter sources? what did he do?

at least for a while during the biden administration, the justice department kept doing it, kept seeking the reporters' records and not telling the news organizations what they were doing. at least for a while. at least until it started to come out. come on. i mean, i get the poetic justice of putting judge merrick garland in this really big, prestigious job after he was so mistreated by the republicans in the senate and after he didn't get that supreme court seat. i get the good karma, whatever there. but at the justice department which he is running, there is a challenge unlike any other in government right now, which is to clean house at that department with its awesome power and its massive resources, to clean house and clean up and find the depths of the bad behavior and misconduct by officials at that agency. after the previous president really did use federal law

enforcement, he really did use the justice department to lawlessly go after his enemies and reward his friends. under donald trump, the u.s. justice department was corrupted in multiple cases. trump didn't just want to do that, he didn't just express a desire to do it. under bill barr, he did it because there were justice department officials who did it, who went along, who took the calls, who took the instructions, who quashed the stuff that the white house wanted lawlessly quashed. who forced the things they wanted lawlessly forced. that can't stant -- stand as precedent. the u.s. justice department is too important. its credibility is too irreplaceable. that misbehavior during the trump era at the u.s. justice department has to be cleaned up, has to be found out, ferreted out, punished, cleaned up and come clean to the american people about it. or the justice department will be used that way again by the next corrupt president who sees what happened under bill barr

and the former guy as a legacy of corruption you can build on, and trust me, it will happen. the job of cleaning up a corrupted u.s. justice department is a terrible one and a really hard one. but it is a necessity for all the obvious reasons. you can't just wish that stuff didn't happen and agree that under your leadership it won't happen again. it's a terrible job, a really hard job, but it must be done. you can't leave that stuff unpunished because it becomes precedent. we knew that job would be hard no matter who president biden picked to be his attorney general. but i'm not sure we knew to expect that some of the worst stuff from the trump era justice department, from the bill barr era justice department not only wouldn't be corrected in terms of accountability, it would be continued under the new leadership under the biden administration. we knew it had to be cleaned up. we hoped that it would be cleaned up.

i don't think anybody expected it would be continued. we're going to have more on the e. jean carroll case, that shocking decision coming up a little later in the show. we're also watching closely now in terms of how the justice department is going to go after reporters' sources, after this kerfuffle with the "new york times" reporters and "the washington post" reporters, under the source of propublica about rich americans radically underpaying their taxes compared to regular americans. unauthorized disclosure of private and stolen information from the irs is a big deal, but so is trying to pry reporters' sources from them. that was done improperly,

potentially illegally under the trump administration. under the biden administration, some of that continued. how are they going to handle this one? is this also going to be handled like bill barr's trust department did it, too, like all this other stuff has been? president biden leaves early tomorrow for his first foreign trip. he's going to a g-7 meeting, he's meeting with european leaders, he's got a big summit with vladimir putin. he's going to be gone for a few days. before he left, the white house announced that after weeks and weeks of talking to republican senators to see if they would support biden's infrastructure bill -- surprise! it turns out republicans aren't going to support anything. i could have told you that weeks ago. in fact, i think i did, as did all the progressives and most of the moderates in the democratic caucus on capitol hill. this was not a surprise, really. did anybody really think that republicans were going to negotiate in good faith with joe biden about supporting an

infrastructure bill and that they would all vote for it with big bipartisan numbers so something could be passed that the american people would all feel good about, because we have government that works again because republicans want americans to believe that. really? ha! what about republican senators tells you that's how they're likely to behave these days? the republicans, i will say, they do get a big fairly concrete win here, right, out of these talks that they've been engaged in with the white house. they won themselves three weeks, at least, of the democrats chatting with them pointlessly while the republicans stretched it out as long as possible running out the clock while never intending to give them any votes at all. think of the judges that could have been nominated and confirmed during these pointless weeks long talks. think of the progress they could have build that infrastructure bill. think of the budget reconciliation using just 50 votes instead of stringing this thing out wasting time while

republican senators only pretend to seriously consider the matter. the democrats are only going to control the house and the senate and the white house for so much time. every day wasted while they're not passing things and confirming people is a win for the republicans. every day the republicans can get the democrats to not do something, that is a win for republicans, and it's an inexplicable waste for the democrats. i say inexplicable because the republican leadership have made no secret of this. they have explicably promised that their 100% whole focus will be to block whatever biden wants to do no matter what it is. after they would admit that publicly, why would you waste time doing stuff and instead talking to them about their feelings. tonight the senate blocked a bill on equal pay for women, because they could, because why not? senator joe manchin is blocking his own party's voting rights bill on the basis of the fact that republicans won't vote for it. that's his only objection.

what else are democrats going to be able to do? on the point of voting rights, i should mention that the justice department under merrick garland has done nothing on voting rights at all, really, zip. every republican-controlled state in the country is now moving legislation, some have enacted new laws already to roll back voting rights in ways that target voters of color, poor voters, disabled voters, other constituencies that are considered likely to vote democratic. the u.s. justice department under merrick garland has taken no action to defend voting rights versus these new republican-passed state laws to restrict voting rights. the u.s. justice department has done nothing. and they've taken no action even in the face of what the u.s. justice department itself has warned is an ongoing violation of federal law in arizona. the cyber ninja thing they're doing in arizona, the justice department has warned that that

exercise in arizona is in violation of federal law in terms of the mishandling of federal ballots and voting machines. under merrick garland, the justice department did write a letter to arizona republicans, basically telling them their cyber ninjas thing was in violation of federal election laws, but that's it. they sent a letter. since then, nothing. what would you do if you were trump-supporting republicans who got a stern letter telling you you're breaking the law, and then nothing happened after you didn't change anything you were doing despite that warning? you would see that as effectively permission to keep doing what you're doing. and so with nothing to stop them from doing what they're doing, even though they've been explicitly told it's a violation of federal law, they're not only getting away with it, they are moving to spread this nationwide. they invited pennsylvania republicans to tour the cyber ninja's audit site a few days ago in arizona. those republican state legislators in pennsylvania have gone home, they held a rally,

they're agitating to do the same thing in the keystone state. today, arizona republican cyber ninjas folks hosted more republican state legislators, this time from georgia and also from alaska so they can do something like this in those states, too. they've got plans in the works, apparently, to host republican legislators from virginia next and wisconsin after that. i mean, why not? they are mishandling ballots from a federal election and voting machines from a federal election so they can tell tales and cast suspicions on the election result that put joe biden in the white house. it might be illegal for them to do it, it might be illegal for these organizations and these republican legislators to hand over federal ballots and election machines to uncertified, unqualified partisan actors and auditors and the way they're doing, but who cares if it's illegal as long as they don't get in trouble for it? why would they stop? under merrick garland, the

justice department notified them they were breaking the law, and then they did nothing about it. are you noticing a theme here? letting all this stuff slide is not only not going to stop it from happening now, it's not going to stop it from happening again. and i do absolutely and uncynically get the poetry, this sort of what goes around comes around karma of putting merrick garland at the justice department after what happened to him not getting on the supreme court. but under merrick garland, the justice department so far is awol on all of the scariest things that confront them right now. how long does that last? how long can it last, honestly? more ahead. stay with us.

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prosecute them. ever hear that? or i'm being sued because i'm a -- i'm being sued by a woman. represent me. personally represent me in the state of new york on not allowing my tax returns. what is that about? what is that about? >> yeah, what was that all about? that was candidate joe biden last fall criticizing president trump for turning the u.s. department of justice, as he put it, into his own personal law firm, including the justice department telling the court, telling the federal court that trump was engaged in his official duties as president of the united states. what he said about a woman who had accused him of rape that she was a liar. he said he could not have raped her because she was not his type. the u.s. justice department under william barr and donald trump told the court that was an official pronouncement in his official capacity as president and, therefore, the justice

department would represent him in that case. in fact, would insert the u.s. government as the defendant in that case to replace trump. the woman's lawyer, roberta kaplan, rebutted that effectively by saying this, saying, quote, calling a woman you sexually assaulted a liar, a slut or not my type, as donald trump did here, is not the official act of an american president. a federal judge last fall agreed, but late last night the justice department, under the biden administration, the justice department led by merrick garland said they would appeal that judge's ruling and try to continue with the trump justice department's case that trump cannot be held liable for those allegedly defamatory statements that he made. joining us now is barbara mcquade, a former justice storng district attorney for the eastern district of michigan. thank you for being here. >> good to be back.

>> have i explained everything accurate here? >> yes, i think you did. merrick garland came into this job with a mission of restoring the independence of the justice department and a commitment to be nonpartisan in all his decisions. i think maybe he's overcorrected. he reminds me of the dad who coaches his own child in little league, and out of an abundance to show how fair he is, benches his own kid, even though he is the best player. nobody knows how fair you are in you lose the game. >> on the carroll case, i remember this was a shock in the world and in the news-reading public, when the justice department made this decision they told the court this defamation case against trump can't go forward, he was acting in his official capacity as president when he said these defamatory, crude, untrue things about e. jean carroll, and therefore it's the u.s. government that you're going after, the u.s. government can't commit defamation, and so,

therefore, this case has to die. i remember the shock in the justice department doing that. is there similar shock today in the legal world that the justice department under merrick garland is continuing with that line of argument to the courts? >> yeah. i think it's the wrong decision. now, i think if you were to ask them their views, they would say, we are defending the office of the presidency and not donald trump per se, and it's important that we protect this right of the president to say whatever it is he needs to say in the scope of his duties. but the reason this fails, i think, is the reasons that were stated by the trial judge in this case when he rejected this position that the justice department took in the court below. this idea of scope of employment, the typical case is a letter carrier, mail carrier is involved in an accident with his postal truck while he's on duty. in that case, we say he was in

the scope of his duties, he was doing his job, he was doing what he was hired to do and his conduct was in the interest of his employer, the united states. now if instead of delivering the mail, he takes his mail truck and goes to the drag races or uses it to assault his neighbor, then we would say he was acting outside the scope of his employment, and we would not substitute the united states there. i think in this case with president trump, this was not a situation where he was using his office to further advance the interest of the united states, he was acting in his own self-interest about something that occurred in his private life 20 years earlier. as the judge said, it's just too attenuated to be within the scope of his employment. >> barbara mcquade, eastern district of michigan. thank you for your perspective. it's great to see you. thank you. >> you bet, rachel. thank you. we have more ahead tonight. stay with us. ht stay with us

late this afternoon, we got sort of long-awaited word that talks between the white house

and senate republicans on an infrastructure bill had collapsed like an obsolete, crumbling overpass that was never repaired. the white house invested almost two months of its time negotiating with senate republicans. that is time they will never get back and in the end, they'll get no republican votes. republicans will also provide zero votes for voting rights. their voting rights bills -- democrats' voting rights bill may have suffered a fatal blow after west virginia senator joe manchin wrote an op-ed this weekend confirming he's opposed to voting rights affirmation because republicans will all oppose it. president biden heads off to europe tomorrow morning for his first foreign trip, and it's a long one, but it feels like his agenda at home is quite stymied as he leaves. maybe the administration will get some judges confirmed? they finally started to do that today, four and a half months

into his presidency, but what else can the administration get done now? joining us is washington congresswoman pramila jayapal. she is share of the congress caucus. we've been checking in with her periodically on the objective of the biden agenda. good to see you. thanks for your time. >> it's great to be with you, rachel. >> we last talked about three weeks ago. we talked about republican senators on infrastructure. you said it was like waiting for goodeau, basically saying what are you waiting for, this is not going to happen. i have to ask your reaction after you've proven to be right about that. >> i wish i wasn't right in some way, we're just waiting uselessly. it was five weeks ago that mitch mcconnell said 100% of his energy was going to be focused on ensuring that he block anything from the biden administration. three weeks ago that you and i were talking when the republicans had just given their first offer, which was less than 10% of president biden's total

proposal just for infrastructure. today, here we are apparently still negotiating with a different group of republican senators. i just have to say, rachel, we can wait another week, we can negotiate with one different republican senator or two different republican senators, but the result is not going to be different, because this republican party has no interest, these republican senators have no interest in doing anything that the people desperately need or want. these jobs and family proposals from the president are widely popular across democrats, independents, and republicans just like the american rescue plan was. and if we want to use history as an example, there was not a single republican vote for the american rescue plan. there was not a single republican vote -- well, there weren't enough republican votes for the january 6 commission. this is a party that's not interested in delivering for the people, so we should just move ahead right now, get the budget

resolutions going and do a budget reconciliation bill big, bold and fast. >> what do you say to americans watching who may have supported president biden, may have supported democrats in down ticket races who feel like they got democrats voted to the house, to control the senate and the house, and it feels like treading water after the covid relief bill. nothing else feels like it's going to happen. what do you say to people who feel frustrated or a little hopeless give that outlook >> this is real. we just did a progressive caucus and focus groups in swing districts and ones that we lost and won with surge voters. and also with swing voters.

all of them are saying, deliver for us. don't just talk about it, deliver for us. so i understand the frustration, and that is why we have been saying at the progressive caucus, we have to get this done. no more negotiating with a party that's not interested in negotiating. you said it on the last time i was on your show, you know, this this has made it very clear that republicans do not want to come along. it is again very clear that republicans do not want to come along. and if we're going to get this done, the president needs to do what he did with the rescue plan which is to say, this is my agenda, this is what the american public wants, and i'm sticking to it and we're going to do it by ourselves. by the way, rachel, those republicans will probably claim some credit for it even after they vote no, just like they did with the rescue plan. >> exactly. that's always the tell, right, when they vote no and then they go home to their constituents and say, ain't that great legislation? don't forget about me, even after they voted no for it.

congresswoman pramila jayapal, key congresswoman in the democratic congress. thank you for your time here. always great to have you here. >> thank you, rachel. we'll be back. ve you here. >> thank you, rachel we'll be back. new from crest i've been telling everyone, the secret to great teeth... is having healthy gums. keep yours healthy with new crest advanced gum restore. it's clinically proven to detoxify below the gum line, and it restores by helping heal gums in as little as seven days. because you can't have a healthy smile, without healthy gums. advanced gum restore from crest. the #1 toothpaste brand in america. hey, you wanna get out of here? we've got you. during expedia travel week, save 20% or more on thousands of hotels. just book now through june 12th to plan your escape with expedia.

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prilosec otc. one pill a day, 24 hours, zero heartburn. i'm going to give you a quick update on a story we covered last week about a man in missouri named kevin strickland. in 1978 when he was just 18 years old, kevin strickland was convicted of capital murder. shooting three people in missouri. he was convicted of a single eyewitness who said it was him. he is still in prison today. he turned 62 years old yesterday. he's been there since he was a teenager and serving life in prison. but his case is something out of a fable or morality play. mr. strickland has maintained his innocence since day one. he has said consistently from day one that he did not commit that crime. he's not alone in saying that, though. in 2009, the one eyewitness in the case completely recanted her testimony. she said she had been pressured

by the police to wrongfully accuse him. she said it wasn't him and now she wants nothing more than to see him out of jail. that was the lone eyewitness. there were two men actually convicted of their role in the crime. they admit their role in the crime. they both say mr. strickland had nothing to do with it as well. they both served their time and have finished their prison sentences and are out while he's still in jail. last month, the prosecutors of the case told the court in missouri that kevin strickland was actually wrongly prosecuted, that they made a grave error in his case, he didn't do it and they believe he should be immediately freed. just yesterday, 13 state lawmakers in missouri from both parties urged missouri's governor, mike parson, to pardon kevin strickland because he did not commit this crime. it's fully within governor parson's power to pardon him at any point, setting free an innocent man who has been wrongfully imprisoned for more than 40 years. governor parson has now finally talked to the press for the

first time about kevin strickland's case. what he told reporters is kevin strickland's case will not be, quote, a priority for him. he views it as one of 3,000 backlog requests for his attention. i understand what the governor is saying here, but if there was ever a case for jumping ahead of the line, i might think that 40 years behind bars when even the prosecutors say you didn't do it and you should get out, i would say this is the case that should maybe be a priority. watch this space. but dusting with a cloth is a pain. and dealing with a bulky vacuum.. . is such a hassle. uchhh!!! so now we use our swiffer sweeper and dusters. the fluffy fibers? they pick up dust easily. grabbing it in all those hard-to-reach places. gotcha!!! and for our floors, sweeper's textured cloths lock all kinds of dirt, dust and pet hair. unlike my vacuum, it sneaks under and around places.

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that is going to do it for us tonight. i'll see you again tomorrow night. "way too early" is kasie hunt is up next. ♪♪ infrastructure talks collapse between president biden and a group of republican senators. the question is what is next for negotiations? plus, video surfaces from overseas of a member of the public slapping the french president in the face. the question is how did it happen? and the plane carrying the white house press corps to europe gets delayed after doing battle with cicadas. the question is huh? it's definitely "way too early" for this! ♪♪