covid variant. the evaporate was first detected in south africa. already, it has prompted the uk to suspend all flights from six african nations. this morning, dr. anthony fauci was asked if it's possible the new variant is already in the u.s. >> you know, of course. anything is possible. we don't know that. there's no indication that it is right now. it seems to have been restricted. there were some cases that originated in south africa and that went to bot botswana. that's the reason why we're getting together to try to get the precise molecular makeup of it, so you can actually test for it. that's something that will take a little bit to put the appropriate materials together to do that. but we are in very active communication with our south african colleague scientists. >> yeah, there's a lot going on just today in reaction to this. joining me now with more, nbc news correspondent, gabe gutierrez. nbc news foreign correspondent, rav sanchez in tel aviv, who's

following some informing from there. and dr. kavita patel, physician and fellow at the brookings institution. a former obama white house policy director and a medical contributor here at msnbc. gabe, you and i were just talking about the markets, at one point, reacting to this. they were down 900 points, as we speak, down 882. tell me what we know about this variant so far. >> yeah, chris. a lot of people around the world are closely watching this, and the world health organization has just convened an emergency meeting today to discuss this variant, and there are several more fast-moving developments. belgium has just confirmed its first case, meaning the strain has spread to europe. public health authority are now watching this very closely. this morning, another worrying new covid variant surging abroad. scientists in south africa identified the strain, which has also been found in other southern african countries and has spread to israel and hong

kong. expert warning this contagious variant may be more resistant to vaccines, as it has a high number of mutations. >> this variant has the two characteristics we've been most concerned about. which is high transmissibility, and some level of immune escape. >> reporter: multiple countries including the uk are immediately banning travel from south africa and other countries in the area. vaccinated travelers from there are currently allowed into the u.s., after the biden administration rolled back foreign travel restrictions earlier this month. this all comes as another covid winter wave may be on the horizon here. daily infections are now rising by at least 10% in 35 states. since last week the average of new cases jumped by 18% nationwide. hospitalizations by 6%. dr. tanya gergenroth works in the er at umass memorial fill. >> as a health care worker,

really devastating to have to make people wait for so throng get chairs that they really do need. >> reporter: in long island, new york, this er temporarily closed due to a nursing staff shortage. >> with hardly any notice, this was thrust upon us in our community. >> reporter: northeast and the midwest are seeing the biggest covid spikes. the south, which saw surging case loads this summer is no longer the hot spot. >> and again, for that new variant, the w.h.o is meeting right now, and potentially could label it either a variant of interest or a variant of concern. then the next step would be to label it, chris, with a greek letter. it's important to note that there have been other variants over the past couple of months that have fizzled because they were overpowered by the delta variant. however, this one with delta on its way out, a lot of scientists around the world again looking at this var closely, and it's already spooking markets. >> the world view, let's go to raf sanchez. raf, i want to talk about how some other governments are reacting. but there's at least a confirmed

case where you are, in israel already? >> yeah, that's right, chris. one confirmed case here. this is a traveler who returned from malawi. there are two other suspected cases. all three of those people are in isolation. all three of them were vaccinated. we shouldn't necessarily draw too much from that, but it is worth saying. the israeli prime minister is getting the public ready here in israel for potential further spread. he said earlier today, we are currently at the threshold of an emergency situation. and he has ordered the most aggressive action so far we have seen anywhere. israel has banned travel from most african nations, with the exception of a couple of nations in north africa. that's further than what we've seen in europe. as gabe was saying, the uk is stopping flights coming from south africa, from five other southern african nations. a number of other european countries are doing the same.

and of course, europe is in the grips of a very, very serious delta surge right now. austria is in a nationwide lockdown. the absolute last thing they feel they need is an aggressive new variant showing up. the w.h.o is meeting, it's likely to be some time before we have a really clear idea about what these mutations mean in practice. but a number of asian countries also taking measures to tighten their border against travel from southern african. we've seen both singapore and japan impose new restrictions today. chris? >> so dr. patel, let's do a reality check. obviously, lots of concern abroad, but it is very early. some variants have turned out not to be much, especially in the u.s. but then we have the delta variant. you know what happened with that. european countries, the w.h.o are acting quickly and aggressively. what's your take on this morning? >> yeah, chris, it's definitely

concerning and i think three things. number one, we know that the number of mutations as gabe and raf both pointed out have correspond officials. and we see at least 30 mutations on the spike protein with this newer variant. that compars to two that are concerning. we shouldn't immediately jump to the conclusion that it's 15 times as worse. we're all hoping that our current vaccine technology holds against these evaporates. but the second thing i'll point out is that we need to also be prepared quickly to pivot, if our vaccines do not prove to be effective, we know we now have the technology, chris, and that we can turn the technology around quickly enough -- >> what's quickly, dr. patel? matter of days, matter of weeks, matter of months? >> it's a matter of months to get global manufacturing. but we know that the actual technology -- the vaccine itself can be genotyped and turned into a vaccine, so to speak, in a matter of days.

so that's good news, chris. the third thing we'll emphasize to be very clear, this is where some of those antiviral treatments. we don't know if monoclonal antibodies will hold up against the newer variants. that has been difficult, even with the delta variant. they're less effective, but still good. but those pills on the horizon, chris, this is exactly the kind of thing that we need more than just one or two or three options. and now we have them. and i guess a final reminder, we've been talking about the global vaccine race. and this is another reason african countries are some of the lowest percentage countries in terms of pace of vaccination. it's just another stark reminder to me that until we're all vaccinated, we're not going to get out of this thing. >> and you know, look, we've opened up as a country. we've opened up for people to travel here. i can tell you where 30 rock is, where i'm sitting right now, this is the heart of tourism. it's been incredibly busy, not just for the parade yesterday. it's hard to walk home. and on my walk home, which is 10, 15 minutes, i hear many

languages being spoken often along the way, not just european languages, either. so what are you going to be looking for? we see the w.h.o reacting quickly? we've seen the european commission reacting quickly, some individual countries. what are you looking for from u.s. officials right now? >> yeah. two things. i'm going to be looking for those molecular studies that dr. fauci mentioned, working with south african officials. and i'll be looking for and hoping we can do it soon, getting what we call neutralizing data. chris, this is where we take our vaccines that we have in our body, we take some blood from people who are immunized, and push it against this new variant, to see how effective that is. that process normally takes two to four weeks. i'm hoping we can speed that up so we can get some information in the next couple of weeks. but i always assume the virus is here. to your point about international languages and borderless travel, let's assume that it's here, but let's try to find out if our current vaccines work. and let's emphasize people need to get boosted, get up to date

on their immunizations, and if you're not immunized, this should hopefully be another wake-up call and reminder. >> i'm going to get in trouble because we're out of time, but i want to ask you, dr. fauci kind of hedged a little bit. he said there's no indication that it is here. but when i talked to dr. hotez last hour, he said, kind of what you were indicating, like, it wouldn't surprise him at all if it is, indeed here. and his correspond is that we're not really good as a country for testing for this kind of thing. it isn't a regular part of what we do. and when we talk about what the u.s. should be doing, do we need to say, look, whether this turns into something big or not, given the possibility of variants going forward, we need to ramp up and fast. >> we do. and testing with a purpose. it's knowing, for example, when i see a breakthrough infection, and it's something that's fully immunized, that needs to get escalated and that needs to be a molecular type and the genetic analysis needs to be done and we need to have pa 360

communication around it. we have more work to do and a lot more to learn, but i want to reassure people on a friday evening, i'm hopeful that our vaccines will illicit a very broad response including against these newer variants. >> and you're boostered and wear your mask indoors, that's a good indication that you're doing everything you can to stay safe. doctor patel, great to see you. i know we got you going very quickly when news broke. raf sanchez and gabe gutierrez, thank you to both you've as well. passing the biden agenda. with the president's infrastructure bill passing in the house, it passes an uncertain outcome in the senate. plus, smash and grab. a string of robberies hit high-end stores from chicago to l.a. how that is impacting the people who work there. pacting the peope who work there bogeys on your six, limu. they need customized car insurance from liberty mutual so they only pay for what they need. woooooooooooooo... we are not getting you a helicopter. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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markets have been reacting, at one point, it was down more than 900 points. i think the latest as i'm looking, the markets are down 940 points right now. i've got the perfect team to break all of this town. garrett haake is in washington. jake mason. betsy woodruff swann with politico. and robert gibbs is the former white house press secretary under the obama administration. robert, let me start with you. look, the president has been out there. he's been talking about the good news in the economic recovery. he's counting on build back better. and now you have the markets reacting to this thing that we don't know a lot about right now, but a lot of folks in europe, south africa, the w.h.o, react quickly. the dow down right now 925 points. how worried should the white house be? >> well, chris, i have no doubt that the white house yesterday and the covid team probably did a series of conference calls

around this new information. they've briefed the white house and the president, i'm sure, today on it. look, there's no doubt that they were going to watch this and monitor it. a lot of the things that we're doing already, we should continue to do. we should push vaccinations, we should push boosters. we should ramp up testing. figuring out all of those things. i think when it comes to the president and the economy, as you mentioned chuck schumer saying, the goal has to be getting this bill done by christmas or the end of the year. and then i think what the president and that team needs to do is talk about what in this bill reduces costs for americans. making child care cheaper, making health insurance cheaper. a child tax credit that acts much like a plaza tax cut. all of those things, we're in an economy now that is not measuring economic strength based on jobs or growth as much as we are focused on prices and supply chains. and i think that's where the administration has to be rhetorically. >> i just want to ask you, given

that you believe and i'm sure that you're right that these conversations that are going on, the president has been briefed. are they proactively talking about, if "x" happens, then we have to look at travel restrictions or are they already setting up contingencies for what we might find out in the coming days? >> oh, i think undoubtedly. there's no doubt that they've planned for different scenarios before. we've seen variants rise in different part of the world and come to the united states. so i have no doubt that we've gone through scenario planning. and i think that will become accelerated. the good news is, i would say, we've had a decent amount of information sharing from south africa and other places. the w.h.o is meeting on this. so i think the international public health community, as well as the american public health community have really go their foot forward here, understanding how big the spread of a new variant could be.

>> i want to go back to the covid variant, but let's back up and set the stage. we have seven days to prevent a government shutdown. 19 days until we get the debt ceiling. so what's the government doing about it? >> they're on vacation, chris. they're out enjoying their thanksgiving. we know there was at least one meeting between chuck schumer and minority leader mitch mcconnell before they left up to about all of the things they're going to have to get done before the end of the year to keep the lights on. i think the most likely outcome here is we might see another short-term extension of government funding. maybe just until the end of the year, so those negotiators can continue their work on funding the full next year's bill. the debt ceiling as it was a few months ago remains more problematic here. republicans aren't interested in helping democrats raise that limit at all. they think if they're being shut out of the talks on the build back better bill and all the spending that will go forward in the future, they argue, not exactly correctly, that they don't want to have any responsibility for raising the debt ceiling.

and they haven't budged on that. so that could be a much thornier negotiation. in this case, democrats seem to have backed off a little bit of their earlier resis taps to raising the debt ceiling through a 50-vote threshold by adding it perhaps to the build back better bill or to another reconciliation bill. stay tuned, that could get messy. we have never defaulted and both leaders are pretty insistent it won't happen now. >> it does feel in the last couple of years, things have gotten even messier, given the disparity between the right and the left. how much of a wrench, if any at all, do you think this covid variant could potentially play into what congress needs to do and what the white house wants to have done? >> well, i think, chris, as robert gibbs would be able to explain well, a white house's job is to july a lot of thing. and day do that, but that said, i think you can also see that we

sort of have one narrative, usually, in washington. and if the covid narrative ends up taking over again, that will not be helpful to president biden's agenda. he has a desire, i think, and you referenced this in your intro, to spend the next few weeks really pushing for that build back better bill to get passed in the senate, but there are these other distractions. especially the debt ceiling. and if this variant ends up becoming another distraction, that will make it harder to get people focused on what he would like to do, which are those elements of the bill that robert went over just a few minutes ago. >> yeah, and you know, to be fair, betsy, as you know, wall street doesn't always get it right. just because the dow is down 940 points, doesn't blow up in the faces of all the hard and good work that's been done to get coronavirus under control. it does reflect the concern about and it what they're seeing

in the global situation. and maybe the way to look at this is, we know joe biden has no room for error, for lack of a better word in the senate. joe manchin is worried about build back better, its impact on the debt and on the economy. what do you think about that and how this might throw a wrench into the works or maybe we're overstating it? >> i don't think we're overstating it. there are so many complex moving parts here, and this news today about this new variant just makes everything less predictable and more challenging. looking at this way that some of these powerful senators are raising concerns about build back better only amplifies that unpredictability. of course, manchin's role as a potential spoiler when it comes to this type of legislation is very well known. it's a role he's very much comfortable playing. he knows that as one of the only senate democrats who's willing to break with leadership, it give him an extraordinary amount of power in the upper chamber and something it's comfortable

wielding. but he's not the only senator who's pushing for changes to the build back better plan or what they might call improvements. senator bernie sanders has said that he's deeply concerned about a provision in build back better that would change the way that state and local tax deductions are capped. sander points out that that's a provision that would disproportionately benefit wealthy families and households. and he's said that it's a real problem, both from a political and a policy standpoint, since that provision would reduce the amount of revenue that the u.s. treasury get every year. so there's very much still a high amount of suspense in terms of what happens with build back better in the senate, not to mention how the senate parliamentarian comes down on provisions. and if changes get made, it has to go back to the house. it's just another complicate factor in a host of complexities and difficulties that congress is dealing with. >> one of those difficulties right now is the polls. they can be flawed, but the

president's approval rating keeps falling. the latest has his approval down to 42%. which doesn't help, you know, chuck schumer and the democrats who are trying to get this pushed through. how do they get this done at this point? >> well, look, i think there's a decent amount of momentum coming out of the house. i think most democrats understand how imperative it is to get thing done and get something done this year. i will say, i take some optimism from the idea that -- from a story a week or so ago on nancy pelosi's involvement on this. the speaker spent a lot of time before the house voting talking with senator sinema, senate manchin, and understanding where they were on this bill. i think the house has a bit of an understanding of where this process is going to go. i'm not going to say it's going to have to be dope fast. because quite frankly, nothing

happens quickly in the senate. but i think you can see some light at the end of the tunnel of this coming back. there are certainly going to be concerns on either side. the house understands the bill they passed is not the one that will become law. but if you change a little bit around the salt deduction that was discussed and a couple of other things, i think the house and the senate could declare victory with a really, really good piece of legislation. >> and for what it's worth, you certainly are not hearing and won't hear, i think, a senator sinema or manchin saying that they're not being listened to, that nobody is paying attention to their correspondence. because they have been to the white house more than a couple of times. garrett, representative ilhan omar responding to comments allegedly made by representative lauren bob art. what can you tell us about this? >> this is in response to a video that's been circulating online of lauren bobart that

appears to be giving remarks to supporters possibly over thanksgiving break, although we have not. able to determine exactly where or when these remarks were made, in which he is telling a story in which she calls a pretty derogatory name of congresswoman omar makes a joke she might be blowing up the elevator that they're about to be in. congresswoman omar said that antimuslim bigotry isn't funny and shouldn't be normal i'd. it's another example of the way in which relations in congress have completely deteriorated. some of these republican members who have really banked on quite literally in some cases fund-raising off of verbal attacks against their democratic colleagues, that you'd to have been considered far below the level of decorum, simply, for a member of the u.s. house. i reached out to congresswoman

boebert's office about when and where this exactly took place, and so far, i haven't heard anything back. >> here we go again. jeff mason, betsy woodruff swann, gary hake, great to see all of you. hope you had a great thanksgiving and enjoy the rest of your weekend. coming up, with small business saturday just one day away, we'll look at how that sector of the economy is dealing with the supply chain crisis and its shortage of workers. is and its short anage of workers we'll pay off your phone up to $1000. you can keep your phone. keep your number. and get your employees connected on the largest and fastest 5g network. plus, we give you $200 in facebook ads on us! so you can reach more customers, create more opportunities, and finish this year strong. visit your local t-mobile store today. voiceover: riders. wanderers on the road of life.

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millions of folks out there right now trying to get a deal today for black friday, but we also have small business saturday tomorrow. and they need our help more than ever. tens of thousands of small businesses closed during the pandemic. either temporarily or for good. but for those that survived, higher costs and supply chain issues are making it harder to stay afloat. and harder to compete with big box stores. on top of all of that, businesses nationwide are on edge after a slew of smash and grab robberies along the west coast. erin mclaughlin is all over that story. cnbc's kristina partsinevelos is at a mall on long island, new york. gene marks is part of a small business consulting firm. let's start with these skmash grab robberies that i know you've. following. what you tell us? >> this is a crime wave that is affecting a range of retail here in california, from small stores

to some of the state's most popular shopping destinations. this morning, amidst the black friday frenzy, retail stores and shoppers across california on edge. >> so it is kind of scary. and the fact that this has happened now makes me wonder if i should even walk in there. >> reporter: following a string of so-called smash-and-grab robberies. striking retail stores across the state. wednesday night, suspects attacked a department store security guard, snatching $25,000 worth of high-end purses. >> they attacked him with some kind of a caustic chemical. after the initial suspect attacked the security guard, additional suspects entered location and removed a number of high-value, high-dollar purses. >> get down on the sidewalk? >> criminals seen using similar tactics in the heart of san francisco. and in a nearby suburb, organized shoplifting crews

breaking into high-end retailers, grabbing merchandise and fleeing as a cluster of getaway cars blocked traffic. an estimated $200,000 worth of merchandise gone in a matter of mince. >> i saw people running down the street. i probably saw 50 to 80 people in like ski masks, crow bars. >> many of the robberies orchestrated by criminal masterminds. >> they're paying the individuals to do the robberies. they collect the goods and fence them and move them to other parts of the country. >> and the situation is getting worse. in 2020, the state saw more than five times the number of investigations into organized retail crime compared to 2019. designer clothes and handbags now among the top targets. according to law enforcement officials, california is now home to three of the nation's top ten cities for organized retail theft. >> you're a holiday shopper in california. how concerned should you be about this? >> i think that people need to

keep their wits about them. don't flash cash. keep your purse in two hands or close to your body, under junior coat. at the sign of trouble, loud noise, cars where they don't belong, get off the sidewalk, get off the street. >> now, we don't really know why this is happening now. some law enforcement are pointing to legislation that reclassified some felony theft offenses as misdemeanors. others are pointing to copy cats and the internet. many of these stolen goods end up for sale on fringe websites. >> there you go. so that brings us, kristina to more traditional challenges of this holiday. a record 4.4 million people quit their jobs in september. a lot of those are service jobs in smaller businesses. what are you seeing? how are they meeting holiday demand? >> reporter: well, i've come to this mall and we've been here since 6:00 a.m. and it's jam packed. but unfortunately, on al of the

storefronts, there are still for-hire signs, all throughout the mall. it's not just big box retailers, as well, it's the smaller mom and pop clothing shops, candles, stores. and the difficulty we're facing, just last month alone, there were 940,000 seasonal job postings. seasonal hiring declined 9% compared to october of last year. the major problem for a lot of these smaller businesses is how do they compete with the incentives being offered by larger retailers. take, for example, macy's, offering a $500 referral business. some are offering college tuition, free iphones, really flexible work schedules. nordstrom offering $650 buck incentive for new employees. this makes it all the more difficult for the smaller mom and pop shops to get retailers, those front line workers, and there's four major reasons they're not coming to the door and they're not applying. you have, first, the fact that covid fears persist. vaccine mandates are not required here. we don't know who's vaccinated in this mall.

the second one is unusual high child care costs. the third one is the government benefits did allow people to save a little bit more, think about what they're doing, rethink their careers. and lastly, early retirement. and all of that is making it very difficult for smaller businesses to find those retail workers. >> which brings us to you, gene. your group works with 600 small businesses across the country. there are a lot of people who do want to support small business. who like going to the store in their neighborhood. they are people they know, they are people who they want to be able to stay in business in spite of the pandemic. how tough is it for employers? >> it's tough for employers to find good people. and many of my clients have the added challenge of supply chain issues, which is why small business saturday, tomorrow, is an absolutely huge day for many small businesses around the country. i mean, they are -- many of my clients are really concerned that they're going to be having

enough supply many their stores to last them through the holiday season. right now, off of the coast of california, there are still 144 ships that are backlogged. that number hasn't changed that much since the beginning of the month and even from october. those suppies themselves are being snapped up by big box retailers and a lot of the small merchants are being sort of pushed out. so merchants themselves have really got to leverage small business saturday to make sure that they can turn their holiday season into something good. >> so what advice are you giving to the folks, to the business who is you represent, but also what's your advice to customers? >> i'm glad you asked. so here we go. number one, that is a big year, chris, for gift cards. it was big last year with restauranteurs during covid. but gift card sales are like 20% ahead of where they were before. many of my clients are doing that. if you're a small merchant, offer gift cards to your customers. even if you run out of inventory, they can still come back, even after the holidays and get the products that they bought. and it's a great way to support

small businesses. also, if you are a small merchant, you should be looking into buy now, pay later programs. hugely popular. kind of exploding in growth. that way your customers can come in, you can still give them product, and they pay it out over installments -- >> when i was growing up, we called that layaway, gene. that was a big thing when i was a kid. >> me too. all of a sudden, you would buy a sofa in a furniture store and there was a layaway plan. well, guess what, it's back, and now they're calling it buy now, pay later. those are two things to do if you're a small merchant. if you're a customer of small businesses, go out and buy from small businesses tomorrow. it is a big deal for many of your small merchants. remember, small businesses employ more than half of the people in this country and contribute half of the gdp. it's a big deal. please do your part. >> gene marks, kristina partsinevelos, erin mclaughlin, thank you for all of your expertise this morning. we have this news of a new mutated covid variant and it is rattling the stock market.

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power through your day, medicine. new from vicks. right now, we're keeping an eye on the markets, as major concerns grow over the new south african covid variant that's spreading in regions around the world. take a look at where the markets are right now. down 870 points. they've been hovering close to 900 for a good bit of this morning already. i want to bring in josh brown, ceo and cofounder of ritholtz wealth management and a msnbc contributor. good to see you. bad about why we're talking this morning. for you, on a scale of one to ten with ten being panicked, how worried are you about these very early report of a new variant? >> well, risk-off days are never fun. and this is clearly the first risk-off day that we've had in quite a while, where you have a major of stocks in the red. you have stocks that are down very well-known, large-cap stocks that are widely owned,

that are down between 4 to 6%. and of course, that's concerning. it's people's money. but i think it's important to have context. none of us know whether or not this variant will be something that we'll be talking about for six months or we're going to fit about in six days. it's unrealistic for anybody to truly know which path we're going to take here. so i think what you want to do is ask yourself, what is my time horizon? is this the kind of thing that i want to completely change the way i'm invested for retirement over? and the answer to that question almost all of the time is always going to be no. i want to point out one really quick thing here about being down #00 points on the dow. that sounds terrible! 900 points is a big number. it's important to appoint out, ten years ago, a down 900 point day would be a crash. that's because the dow was at 11,000 and change. the dow today is 33,000, 34,000. you can lose 900 points there and it's not that big of a merge

drop. i think we want to get away from focusing on points, think more about percentages. the stock market went into today up 27% on the year. we can give a little back and still be just fine. >> i think it is the worst day of the year, i think, oil prices are down 10%. that's never a good sign. i mean, if you're in the travel business, you're not likely what you're seeing. airlines, cruise lines, that kind of thing. so tell me, understanding, again, and i want to emphasize, there's a lot more that we don't know than we know about this. given that we're in a global economy, given what we're already seeing from the eu commission, changing -- suggesting changes to some of travel rules, what are you watching for in the coming couple of days and into monday? >> that's a great question.

the last two days, the greatest news was whether we would need to tap the strategic economy reserves. that's what the stock market and the economy has to offer us. one of the biggest items of consternation from the markets in the last couple of months has been whether or not the federal reserve would start tapering economic stimulus too quickly. well, if this virus mutation will be with us for a while and cause the types of travel bans and shutdowns that you're talking about, well, then, maybe there won't be so much is consternation over interest rates, because there won't be any rush to raise them. so this is the kind of thing you look at it and you say, okay, i understand this is a new risk the market is considering. i understand certain segments of the economy, like travel, leisure, will have to take a step back here. but, there are some ways that we can think about this positively,

or at least not think about this like a worst-case scenario. so investors have been able to keep an even keel over the last 20 minutes since this pandemic started have been rewarded. investors who have looked at every headline as if the end of humankind were imminent have been punished. we want to keep everyone on an even keel, balance the unknowns with some of those trade-offs, you'll get through this. >> and i think to be fair, a lot of people waking up to this news, their first thought isn't, oh, what's happening to my 401(k)? it's, i thought we were passed this and what does it mean for christmas and hanukkah parties, right? let's see what happens. it's great to talk to you, josh, appreciate you. and loving the fall-looking backdrop. it's very festive and puts me back in the thanksgiving spirit. up next, how michigan

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story. >> reporter: michigan republicans may be about to go through tighter election laws without the support of most michigan voters. they're doing it with a petition drive that requires signatures from fewer than 4% of all registered voters. >> our petition drive is designed to make changes to michigan law that restores faith in both sides in the outcome of the election. >> reporter: because of a quirk in the law, the gop-led legislature can circum visit the governor to enact a stricter voter i.d. requirement, ban the use of private donations to help administration elections and prohibit the state from mailing absentee ballots. some say it would have a chilling effect on voter participation. >> i think a lot of people will not choose to exercise their right to vote absentee in michigan. >> one believes it's only

happening because of trump's allegations there was -- >> how do you win by ohio by so many numbers and lose michigan? >> the only reason this is being put forth is because republicans lost the election and we know there was no fraud in michigan, and they want to suppress the vote. >> democrats are organizing their own decline to sign campaign that includes a major canvassing effort. >> understand that it's really making voting more difficult. and so we're asking people to decline to sign. >> reporter: democrats claim it will drive -- are ri tick yuls, says row. >> the fact of the matter is you have to show your i.d. to buy a 12 pack of beer. there's nothing wrong with having to show your i.d. to vote. >> reporter: what's happening in michigan is but a slice of new voting restrictions being enacted by gop-led legislatures across the country following the 2020 election. and for voters like davis, who remembers voter discrimination

in the south before the 1965 civil rights act, the issue is personal. >> it makes me angry. i was born in the 40s. i've seen people go through the -- come from the south to michigan. they enjoy voting. they were so happy to be able to vote because they weren't able to do it back home in the south. >> our thanks to heidi for that. ahead from the george floyd trial to the january 6th breech of the capitol. we'll have a look at time top photos of 2021. but then ray went from no to know. with freestyle libre 2, now he knows his glucose levels when he needs to. and... when he wants to. so ray... can be ray. take the mystery out of your glucose levels, and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free. visit freestylelibre.us

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event the withdrawal of u.s. troops from afghanistan. here you can see a member of afghan special forces during a combat mission. tell us about this and the importance of this photographer. >> yes. this was a really striking photo taken by photographer denise sidiki. they have covered events around the world. sadly, denise was killed just a few days after this image was taken in clashes with the taliban. this image is a bit of a tribute to him and the hard work he's done over the years. >> and so many journalist who is put themselves in harm's day year after year. then there's the insurrection at our nation's capitol. hard to believe it was almost a year ago. i mean, there were so many images. but this one is a photo of officer eugene goodman trying to steer rioters from the senate chamber. you must have had a lot of photos to choose from. why do you think this was so important? >> absolutely. so many photos made that day. this one to me is an iconic

moment that shows the bravery of not only the officer but also the photographer. christopher lee. and the standoff between the officer and the rioters. it just really stands for just encapsulates the day and the urgency of the day. >> and the bravery. >> another crisis this year, of course, was the record number of migrants who pled from their home countries. often to escape violence or poverty. here you see this beautiful young boy arriving in rio grande. how do you think this encapsulates part of how history will remember this time? >> yeah. what i think is so striking about this image is this moment of connection between this young boy and the border patrol agent, and you really try and look into the boy's eyes and wonder what he's thinking but also what the patrol agent is thinking. it's a striking image. >> it is. and then there is on a little bit lighter note, an iconic photo that broke the internet this past winter.

bernie sanders bundled up at joe biden's inauguration. it spawned millions of copy cats. tell us about this picture. >> yes. well, you know, it's funny. this picture isn't the most beautiful or the most well-composed image of all-time. it's a moment. and it's a memorable moment. it's one that made us all giggle, and we all needed a good giggle this year. so that's why we include it in our complementary photos. >> i'm looking at this, and i'm thinking maybe it's time to pull out the mittens. it's getting a little bit cold outside. >> yes. >> i think mittens sales went through the roof after that. katherine, i encourage people to take a look at this amazing article that you and your staff have put together. it really -- it's a walk down memory lane, but also visually, it's so compelling. thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. >> thank you. and that's going to wrap up this hour. i'm chris jansing. jose diaz-balart will pick up our coverage right now. good morning. it's 11:00 a.m. eastern. 8:00 a.m. pacific.

i'm jose diaz-balart. we're following some concerning new developments in the fight against the coronavirus. covid spikes in more than 30 states and the nation inches closer to 10 0,000 new cases a day, health experts are monitoring a new covid variant. this one in south africa. fears over that new variant's potential spread has spent the markets tumbling. with the dow plummeting more than 900 points in early trading today. and consumers trying to take advantage of black friday deals as rising inflation leads and covid fears are not keeping millions of consumers across the country out of shopping malls to take advantage of black friday deals while millions more are looking ahead to better prices on some big ticket items on cyber