hello and thanks for joining us this hour. nice to have you here. so one thing it has going for it is it has a nice view of the kremlin. this is the bolshoy central bridge in moscow. location, location, location. it sits in the red square and has a great view. in the end the bridge is where they got him. boris nemsoff was the leading opposition leading in russia,

deputy prime minister under yeltsin. after putin seceded yeltsin, he became a vociferous and fearless critic. he was planning an opposition march to protest against the putin regime. it was two days before that he was shot four times in the back when he was walking across the bridge. press reports at the time called it the highest profile assassination since the stalin era. days before russian authorities had thrown one of his key russian allies in jail, another vocal putin critic. nemtsov's friend was put in jail for the high crime of hand being

out leaflets. the guy who was put in charge just for handing out leaflets about the march, his name is alexi naflny. he went home and went to visit his grave. and navalny meant it. he became the biggest, loudest, most charismatic, pushiest opposition leader in russia. he vowed to run for president himself to unseat putin. navalny built up an irreverent, creative, forward thinking, nimble opposition movement that kept coming up with new, unexpected ways to expose corruption in the putin

government, keep poking his finger right in putin's eye. navalny and his group flew cameras over properties of russian officials who had salaries to acquire he's wineries and yachts and tracked mistresses and secret second families of high-ranking officials, linking them to organized crime officials and exposed putin's own secret palaces for which there was no public accounting at all as to where the money came from to build these monday strong cities. the last putin-palace video was the most watched video of the year in 2021 in russia, according to youtube. the putin government has not

appreciated any of it, as you might imagine. and so a series of increasingly unfortunate events started to befall alexeinavalny. he was doused with a chemical that died his hand and his whole face bright green. he didn't wait for the dye to even wear off to resume his political action against putin. he said it made him look like a super hero and supporters started painting their own faces green in solidarity with them. just a month later, another assailant attacked navalny with

another green die and this time he said it hurt like hell, he thinks they mixed it with a caustic chemical. and it got in his eyeball. he started losing sight in that eye and needed surgery to save his eye from a specialist in spain. since he picked up that mantle, alexei navalny was poisoned with a russian-made nerve agent novichok last year. it almost killed him. he recovered in germany and against the advice of everybody who loves him, he said he would return to russia. he returned to russia this year and was immediately arrested and

then almost just as immediately convicted on phony charges and spent two and a half years in a russian colony. he's been labeled an extremist group. not only has putin banned him from standing as a candidate in any russian election, he's banned his whole anti-corruption group from operating inside russia at all. they're considered to be a terroristic threat, like al qaeda. many of his associates and colleagues have had to flee the country for fear what russia did to navalny will next be done to him. putin appears to be learning from what happened after the assassination in 2015, making it so this time there's no next man, there's no next leader, there's no next navalny in this

case waiting in the wings. he's pulling up his entire opposition movement by the root, at least he's trying to. except there's another element that putin hasn't accounted for. this is moscow in january this year, a few days after navalny returned and had got arrested, thousands took to the streets to protest against putin's corruption and authoritarian regime. it wasn't just in moscow. russia is physically the largest country in the world, spans 11 different time zones. there were protests in little pockets all over russia and created a wave effect all day long of people pouring into the streets. they gathered as far north as siberia, one remote village where it was minus 60 degrees that day, people turned out in pretty considerable numbers.

i bring this up now almost a full year after these demonstrations in russia because this happened at the beginning of the year and this ended up being kind of an appropriate first course for the year that we have had since. this has been a hard year. it has been a scary year at times. tough we've covered on this show over the last 12 months has only very rarely been good news. but what we've also been able to cover this year is people standing up in remarkable numbers, in remarkable ways, against remarkable adversity, people standing up for what they think is right, standing up for democracy, against tyrants and against abuse and violence by the state, violence by police and we saw it certainly in very dramatic form in russia but we haven't just seen it in russia. we haven't just seen it in putin, we've seen it everywhere. over the course of the last year, i think it remains one of the most undercovered things

about the politics of the moment on this earth. there has been an explosion of peaceful, dramatic, direct action from all kind of people and all kind of places on all kind of issues calling on other people's consciences, trying to move people to do the right thing. sometimes it does happen with big groups of people standing together, finding safety in numbers. but sometimes it happens in ones and twos, people standing up really all alone. >> i am here. hierm with -- i'm here with my friend diana. we're here with block aid

australia stopping the operation. this is humans trying to survive and overcome the system that is killing us, that is enslaving us and we're trying to induce the social tipping points which will give us a chance at another generation. what a wild thing to want. >> what a wild things to want. those two young women in australia, they repelled off this giant piece of machinery at the largest coal port in the world this year. they were protesting australia's use of coal, as well as a major coal exporter and that port and its roll of distributing all over the world, they are strung themselves up by those harnesses and it did halt the export of coal for at least a little while. eventually they were brown down. this was glasgow scotland this

year. 100,000 people demonstrating, urging people to take action on climate change, including these scientists who chained themselves together and refused to move off this bridge. there were dramatic protests at home, dedicated activists pushing the climbs an crisis, ever since president biden proposed legislation in the build back better legislation, they are dogged to get congress to do it and see it through. by the end they had to be carted out in wheelchairs because their bodies were so weak. several of them were hospitalized after not eating anything for that whole stretch of time. that action by these young members of the sunrise movement was one part of a much larger series of protests and demonstrations that we saw this

year urging lawmakers to pass president biden's agenda, this build back better bill. when conservative democrat joe manchin, the senator, is in watch, he likes to live on a yacht, as he calls his house boat. a group of activists from his home state of west virginia paddled up to senator manchin's yacht in their own kayaks. they called themselves kayaktivists, "don't sink our bill," senator manchin. they eventually got senator manchin to come out and talk to them and listen and debate the bill and its costs. credit to him for not hiding belief deck when they showed up. congress held ielt annual congressional baseball game. this year during the game folks

dropped banners over the bleachers at the stadium and said things like our lives are not a game. pass 3.5t, which was 3.5 trillion, which was the price tag for the build back better bill. another got to the point, "dems don't f this up." an the group adapt staged a protest outside the hart senate office building where senator manchin and sinema have offices. they are trying to move the two conservative democrats to agree to pass build back better. 15 of the protesters from adapt were arrested that day. by the next day, several of them were at another direct action outside the capitol. they did a 24-hour vigil, for 24

hours straight they camped outside the capitol and explained why so many lives depended on build back better, they were directing attention to this really important and previously overlooked part of build back better, which is its support for elderly people and disabled people getting home-based care and community-based care. that is huge for the lives and the dignity of elderly people and disabled people and their families and that's in the build back better bill and they went out there for 24 straight hours to put a spotlight on them. at one point in the night they held up this illuminated sign, "care can't wait" and that has been a rallying cry among those trying to get president biden's agenda passed. health care activists held a rally outside to support the health care provisions in build back better.

they set up chairs to make it look like they were in a doctors's waiting room. they blocked access to the building for a while while they told stories about loved ones who had lost, who had died because they land proper access to health care. there was a similar event just a few weeks ago, this group gaerped outside the capitol to urge congress to help us better prepare for the next pandemic and about half a dozen of those activists walked to the front steps of one of the senate office buildings and held card board tombstones of those who had died of covid and spread their loved ones' ashes on the steps chanting "bringing the dead to your door, we're won't take it anymore." this summer three black members of congress, three african-american members of congress were arrested and hauled away by police at

demonstrations in d.c. on the issue of voting rights. they were calling on members of the senate to change the filibuster rules so voting rights legislation could be passed. it was also this summer that democratic legislators from the texas state senate fled the state of texas and came to washington, d.c. so texas republicans couldn't have a quorum back home. the democrats barn stormed the hill and they delayed the passage of the voter suppression bill in texas by weeks and weeks by fleeing themselves across the country to take that stand. these are student all over the state of oklahoma this fall participating in a surprisingly large and sustained series of high school student walkouts to protest the scheduled execution of a man named julius jones who had been on death row in

oklahoma for nearly 20 years for a murder he said he did not commit. serious questions had been raised about the fairness of his trial and whether he's truly guilty of the trial for which he's been sentenced to death. lots and lots of people in oak okay mobilized this year to get the governor to call off the execution and in the end it worked. with just a few hours left on the clock, it happened. the governor did commute julius jones' sentence. they -- he was spared from the death chamber. you can listen to the reaction at the capitol when they learned. [ cheers and applause ] all those people who had been organizing to try to save julius jones' life finally getting the last-minute news it was worth it what they had done, he would be spared. he was direct action of yet another kind. this was glynn county, georgia

last month, outside the trial of three men accused of killing an unarmed black manned maimed ahmaud arbery. the defense attorney attempted to have prominent african-american pastors thrown out of the courtroom over the course of that trial. the defense attorney kept saturdaying their presence was intimidating. he said it was black pastors specifically who were intimidating. just the black ones. he didn't have any trouble with other pastors. in response more than 100 black pastors showed up outside the courthouse to establish themselves as a peaceful, powerful, prayerful presence at this truly and pray with mr. arbery's family. if you're looking for one indelible image from this year, if you're looking to sort of quantify or nail down one of the pro pulsive currents in the news this year, even if it didn't get

credit from anybody else, creative, nonviolence, conscious calling direct action all over the place this year, all over the country and in many places all over the world. we're going to cover some of that tonight over the course of this hour. direct action doesn't always work. navalney is still in prison, the globe is still warming but the world isn't ever, you ever know, just one thing, just one direction and people aren't just helplessly tossed by the currents that we swim in. part of what this year has been has been a real master class in humans trying to change the course of human events. people being brave in the face of authoritarianism. people being unwavering in their convictions, the conviction we must change and do what's right. not in spite of the strength of the opposition but because of the strength of the opposition. unsung story at 2021.

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her name was isabella. she was only five months pregnant but her water broke. something was wrong. that's not when your water's supposed to break. she went to the hospital and was told her fetus lacked amniotic fluid, which could cause severe birth defects. she was told the baby was not going to survive. that is when she texted her mother. she said, quote, they gave me an irchlts v. drip because i was shivering from fever. the baby weighs 485 grams, 17 ounces. for now thanks to the abortion law, i have to lay down and they can't do anything. i hope that i don't have septicaemia, otherwise i will not make it. it is dretful and i have to

wait. in the end she did suffer septic shock and she died. she was 30 years old. she mentioned "thanks to the abortion law." she was talking about the near total ban on abortion that had gone into effect earlier in the year where isabella lived in poland. in poland, it is against the law to terminate a pregnancy at any stage in a pregnancy. so when isabella went to the hospital, even though they were sure the fetus would in the survive, the doctors told her she would only be treated after her fetus no longer had a heartbeat. by that point it was too late. being forced to continue to carry that pregnancy killed that woman. protests erupted over the news of her death, outraged at the law to stay pregnant until it

killed her. they held signs that said "you have blood on your hands." red lightning bolts have become symbols of the pro abortion protests. isabella's story is upsetting and it's also a policy story, it's what happens when women are forced to stay pregnant against their will. our supreme court heard oral arguments about an abortion law passed to get roe v. wade overturned to erase the protections that allow women to get abortions in this country. access to abortion is widely supported in the united states, cuts across all kind of demographics and ideological

lines. there were demonstrations all across the country urging justices not to end roe v. wade. in the end, the republican-appointed super conservative anti-majority super majority on the supreme court, anti-abortion super majority supreme court appear to be ready to outright overturn roe v. wade or to gut it so it doesn't mean anything. the oral arguments ran about three hours. if you had a long drive ahead of you or something over the holidays like this, it's worth listening to all three hours. trump appointee just brett cavanaugh appears poised to gut abortion rights. this is hum characterizing that prospect as the court simply becoming neutral on the issue of abortion, no longer playing a role in the issue, which makes

it sound like there won't be a rule on abortion either way. what it actually means is all republican-controlled states will now be free to make abortion a crime. the lawyer who answers him is julie from the center of reproduction rights. >> i think the other side would say that the course problem here is that the court has been forced by the position you're taking and by the cases to pick sides on the most contentious social debate in american life and to do so in a situation where they say that the constitution is neutral on the question of abortion, the text in history, the constitution is neither pro-life nor pro-choice on the question of abortion and they would say, therefore, it should be left to the people, to the states or to congress.

and i think they also then continue because the constitution is neutral that this court should be scrupulously neutral on the question of abortion. neither pro-choice nor pro-life but because they say because the constitution doesn't give us the authorities we should leave it to the states and be scrupulously neutral on the question and that they are saying here, i think, that we should return to a position of neutrality on that contentious social issue rather than continuing to pick sides on that issue. so i think that's a the a big picture level their argument. i want to give you a chance to respond to that. >> yes, a few points if i may. those very same arguments were made in casey and the court rejected them saying this philosophical disagreements can't be resolid in a way in a a

woman has no choice in the matter. second i don't think it would be a neutral position. the constitution guarantees liberty. women have an equal right to liberty under the constitution, your honor, and if they're not able to make this decision, if states can take control of women's bodies and force them to endure months of pregnancy and child birth, then they will never have equal status under the constitution. >> if states can take control of women's bodies and force them to endure months of pregnancy and force them to endure child birth against their will, then they will never have equal status under the constitution. the day of those oral arguments earlier in month, we talked with our friend, who is senior editor at slate.com. this is her article on what kind of ruling we might expect from this super conservative point. "scotus will gaslight us until the end."

oral argument made clear this court will overturn roe. she explained her basis for that clarity. listen. >> i think going into argument today there was a narrative that went this is isn't really a 6-3 court, it's a 3-3-3 court and brett kavanaugh and the chief justice are incremementalists and there was no reason to believe other than the chief just to figure out a new way not overturn roe. there was no reason to believe, rachel, that he had a single other person on the court with him in that project. i think anyone who could count counted all of the conservatives justices except for roberts gunning for roe. >> you said today -- you said

today in your piece that's just posted, dalia, perhaps it would be refreshing if the conservatives on the u.s. property no longer felt the need to lie to us. the lying is becoming nearly untenable. after confirmation hearings in which they promised it was a deeply felt value and roe v. wade was a clear precedent in the law of the land, there's something soothes about knowing the lying to our faces will soon be over. they were put on the supreme court to put an end to roe v. wade overall and that's what they intend to do. under president trump when he talked about supreme court nominations, he essentially dropped the guise and said whoever you put on there is going to overturn roe. are we sort of at a new layer -- a new place where it's just

essentially open combat on this issue and we're no longer couching it? >> yes and no. i mean, i think -- look, let's be grateful that all of the fancy law professors and susan collinses and these folks really meant when they said roe was precedent, they met that. that artifice is gone. the artifice is the one saying let's be neutral. we're not going to ban abortions, we're just not going to say there's a right and that middle place, that neutral place is to just let states decide. we saw that same artifice, amy coney barrett kept insisting because there are safe haven laws, because can you give up for adoption, it's not a problem to force women to carry to term

because they can just give their babies up. the artifice of we're being reasonable, nothing earth shaking happening here, not to worry about our precedence when we are gunning for roe, that rankled the pretense this is a big nothing burger and everything is worked out. >> as always, thank you for your clarity. >> thanks, rachel. >> much more ahead for tonight. stay with us. >> much more ahead for tonight stay with us

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watch this. the sky totally, totally, totally gets it. i don't think that he really has a clue of what we do because when you put something in a blue box, it gets there. and when i started working here, i seen the miracles behind these walls right here. >> when you put something in the blue box, it gets there. it is kind of a miracle when you think about that. that is mike bates. he's been a u.s. postal worker for nearly three decades and he's talking about the mail when he says he has witnessed miracles on the job. did you catch what he said right at the top there? he said "i don't think he really has a clue about what we do." the "he" in that sentence is about a specific guy, about this man, whose name is louis dejoy, the head of the united states

postal service, the postmaster general appointed during the trump years. it was louis dejoy who basically broke the mail last year immediately after trump put him in the job, he instituted draconian new policies that created unprecedented, devastating backlogs in the mail across the whole country. somewhat unfathomably even after that disastrous start to his tenure as postmaster general, dejoy is still over there, still in charge of usps. he's still coming up with new ways to monkey wrench the way the mail gets delivered. leier this year he proposed a new ten-year plan promising he had found a way to permanently make the mail slower and more expensive and less convenient. well done! "the washington post" called it the largest rollback of consumer mail services in a generation.

part of the plan would entail offloading more mail operations to private companies in a way that is specifically to designed to slow mail down even further. so that's what that postal worker, mike bates, was saying, was that his boss had no idea what we mail carriers do. you see the signs over his shoulder there. when mike bates made those remarks, he was at a protest, he was at an informational picket. postal workers held a rally in des moines, iowa, to protest the changes, they chanted "raise hell, save your mail." "they say cutback, we're save fightback." they made signs that said "destroy equals delays."

this was in may of this year. it was fascinating to see, folks using grass roots efforts to focus public attention on what was going on and to try to catch the attention of president biden. president biden can't directly fire louis dejoy. it's the postal board of governors that hires and fires people for that postmaster job. well, now in a surprise move late last month, president biden made changes to the postal board of governors that may finally clear the way for louis dejoy to finally get ousted. the move costs doubt on dejoy's future at the agency.

joining us now is illinois's representative rajjia krishnamoorthi. he's been calling for the replacement of mr. dejoy and "delivering unless judiciously act, which spells out dejoy.

your direct pleas, you've been really, really focused on this, perhaps more than anybody else in government. did you know that president biden was going to do what he did today? >> i didn't. but, you know, my pleas really came from my constituents, rachel. we've received more complaints, thousands of complaints about slower mail delivery and raised prices than perhaps any other issue that we talk about in government. and now we're on the verge of the holidays and unfortunately the postmaster general is taking dejoy out of the holidays, too. it was time to call for his removal. once mr. bloom refused my plea to remove mr. dejoy, i ask that the president also remove mr. bloom, who is the chair of the board of governors, which he announced today. >> what sort of timeline do you think that people should expect here? as you say, your constituents have been giving you more

feedback on this than any other issue. a lot of americans, people who run small businesses, people who just use the bail for normal bill paying and correspondence, a lot of americans, millions of americans have been really mad about how bad the postal service has been under his leadership. it is apparently all by design, what he's set out to do and what he's done. if you can speak directly to americans about that who have been mad or hurting about this, what would you expect in terms of the timeline for getting rid of him and starting the process of undoing some of what he's done? >> in the new year, i'm hoping the new board of the chair of governors conducts a vote and relieves him of his duties. i'm very hopeful that happens sooner rather than later in the new year. >> you have been on point, doing a job that is infuriating and

inconveniencing millions of americans of every stripe, it now looks like he may be on his way out, something the congressman has been calling o for. it's been a huge. thank you for helping us understand this. much more tonight. stay with us. this. much more tonight. stay with us do you remember who this is? it's a gift that surprises you, moves you, and bonds you. ...papa? i can see the nose and everything. she was the original strong woman. i know. this holiday, give the gift of family. give the gift of ancestry®. ♪ this is your home. this is your family room slash gym. the guest bedroom slash music studio. the daybed slash dog bed. the living room slash yoga shanti slash regional office slash classroom.

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by the end of this year, subaru will have donated over two hundred and twenty five million dollars to charity. this is what it means to be more than a car company. this is what it means to be subaru. the raid happened at dawn. 500 police officers entered this office in hong kong on a june morning this past summer. the office belonged to a newspaper called apple daily. the officers rifled through computers and notebooks. they disconnected all their computers. they then arrested five of the newspaper's executives. they frog marched them right out the front doors. for more than 20 years, apple daily was an independent pro-democracy newspaper in hong kong. in recent years, it had become the only pro-democracy publication still operating in hong kong. following escalating crackdowns on independent journalism by the pro-chinese government.

after that dawn raid, authorities froze the assets of the paper, and so apple daily, the last remaining independent, pro-democracy publication in all of hong kong, they announced they would shut down. their employees being thrown in jail. how are they supposed to keep going? they announced they were shutting down the paper right away. but then look what happened. this was outside the apple daily offices on their final night of publication. all these people gathered outside in the rain to show their support to the journalists inside for doing the hard, dogged work of the free and fair press. they held up their cell phone flashlights in the air. they waved at the journalists inside. the staff of apple daily waved back through their office windows. others went up to the balcony and shined the lights on their cell phones too, sort of a back and forth. it was ultimately from that vantage point that a

photographer snapped the cover photo for the final page of apple daily's final print run. the headline says "hong kongers bid a painful farewell in the rain. we support apple daily." this was the queue. this was the line in hong kong the next morning to buy a copy of the last edition of apple daily. people got in line before the sun came up. on a normal day, that paper would print about 80,000 copies, but for their final issue, they printed a million. and by 8:00, they were all sold out. the shutdown of apple daily will end up being a footnote when the history books are written about this time, about rising authoritarianism in the 21st century. but for right now, in the parts of the world where it remains a scary time for freedom of the press, it's also a story of hope, of people at least even in that context being willing to use their voices, use their

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if you're washing with the bargain brand, ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ even when your clothes look clean, there's extra dirt you can't see. watch this. that was in these clothes... ugh. but the clothes washed in tide- so much cleaner. if it's got to be clean it's got to be tide hygienic clean. no surprises in these clothes! couple more surprises.

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so the thing about this show is that there is just one person's name on it, which is convenient, i know, but it's also ridiculous because besides me, this show is stacked with incredibly talented producers and editors and production assistants and artists and archivists. do you know we have a whole team of archivists here? how else do you think we could find all that cool old tape? without all of those folks, this would not be the rachel maddow show that you know. it would be the, you know, potbellied lesbian lady in a room by herself wearing a cheap blazer but not making much sense show. it's more efficient for it to be the rachel maddow show, but it couldn't be this show without

everybody who works so hard to make it possible. without further ado, a major thank you to everybody who works on this show for making me, oh, so much better at this job. please behold. ♪♪ ♪♪

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♪♪ good evening and welcome to a special holiday edition of "the last word." 2022 will be the year of the all-important midterm congressional campaigns. mitch mcconnell has already said republicans won't be running on any issue. here's the headline. mcconnell: no legislative agenda for 2022 midterms. joe biden and kamala harris won more