facing backlash from rafael nadal. >> if you don't want the vaccine, you will get trouble. >> reporter: controversy on the court. reflective of the division around the world. miguel almaguer, nbc news. thanks for watching msnbc reports. i'm kori coffin. "velshi" starts right now. today on velshi, new reporting on on the january 6th committee has investigators zeroing in on the highest profile targets yet. plus, it has been a year since the attack on the capitol, but the insurrection is still going on in plain sight all around us. even if we haven't noticed. i'm joined by the smartest i know to help us understand what is happening. and life sentences for the three white men convicted of

killing a 25-year-old black jogger named ahmaud arbery. can accountability in this case make a difference? down side to the pandemic social safety era. watch this before you plan to spend your tax return. and the collective efforts behind voting rights. i'll talk to the man charged with getting them in line. the house majority whip james clyburne. "velshi" starts now. good morning. i'm ali velshi. there is new reporting this morning on the high stakes ramp up of the january 6th investigation into congress. i want to start with the hard truth over the attack on the capitol that took place on

january 6th. crucially, the insurrection was not put down that day. the attack on democracy. the plot to overturn the will of the american people is all still ongoing. which brings us to the year two of the insurrection. if you want to get a sense of how the fight is going, consider the republican party by and large no longer seems willing to acknowledge or condemn the causes of the violent coup that took place just over one year ago an. congressional democrats marked the one-year anniversary, nearly the entire republican side of the house chamber was empty. aside from liz chaney and her father. dick cheney. that is a far cry for donald trump setting that mob of supporters on the capitol.

>> the president trump bears the responsibilities. >> they were provoked by the president. >> the president needs to understand his actions were the problem, not the solution. >> those republicans first reaction was the correct one. apparently they are now more concerned about the opinion of the twice impeached ring leader than the fate of democracy because they all since backtracked. their spinelessness is a threat to all of us. what they are downplaying when they refuse to acknowledge the attack on the capitol is the seismic shift away from democracy. a shift that started to wane in the look at the norc poll this week. only 40% of republicans believe the attack was very violent. which is to say a large majority of ordinary americans are

willing to accept a rewrite of their own memories of what they saw with their own eyes on tv. and peddlers are willing to feed them more lies of the 2020 election. and npr analysis of secretary of state races happening across the country this year, found at least 15 republican candidates who questioned the legitimacy of joe biden's win in 2020 are running to be their state's top election official. one year after america's democracy barely scraped by, we have election deniers and liars running to replace the fire wall of public servants who upheld the true will of the people in 2020. the gop is facing a moment of reckoning right now. the very fate of democracy should not rely on the hope that a few key officials when faced with the choice and under

immense pressure will do the right thing. uphold our laws. choose simple lawfulness over criminality. one key member of the administration is given the opportunity to make that choice. the house committee investigating the insurrection will ask the former vice president mike pence to voluntarily meet with members this month which could offer valuable insight in the days leading up to the attack. with the midterms approaching and republicans poised to seize power in the house and possibly the senate, the committee does not have time to waste. for more on this, i'm joined by hugo lowell. a dogged reporter, i might add. hugo, good morning. you have new reporting about the house select committee potentially zeroing in on its highest profile target yet. the vice president.

tell us more about it. >> reporter: we have reporting to suggest that they are also targeting the former president himself. the fact that the committee is getting pence to cooperate is significant. the committee is now looking at if trump saw a conspiracy that connects a white house plan or the white house plan to stop joe biden's certification on january 6th with the insurrection then this comes as the committee has a trove of evidence that suggest that the white house read in republican members of congress into trump's plan to have pence effectively throw the election or refuse to certify various states for joe biden. what they are looking at is if there is a connection with the political elements of that plan and the extremists who stormed

the capitol. that would amount to a conspiracy theory. >> we ask questions about the people who refused to submit information have done so because they claim the committee lacks power. we know the justice department can get certain things. right now, much of this committee's success hangs on what the supreme court will do with a bunch of evidence they need that trump doesn't want the committee to get a hold of. >> reporter: that's right. it all centers now at least with the white house records, on this national archives case before the supreme court. the committee asked the supreme court to expedite this case so the hearings and oral arguments come sooner because they want to wrap up by the summer.

at least the evidence gathering phase. it is right because the justice department, at least in the committee's eyes, is not investigating or they have no idea if they are investigating trump and the top people in the white house when the previous administration. one shrugged his shoulders when i asked if they knew if the justice department was investigating trump personally. the archives case is added significance in the weeks to come. >> you studied that speech that was made by the attorney general this week. it was something that a lot of people wanted him to say. they wanted him to talk about the january 6th prosecution. it left a lot of people wanting. he implied he will go as far as he needs to go and as high as he needs to get it done, but added in the time that it takes. that's what is frustrating. when justice works the way it is supposed to work, it is slow compared to the way it works during the trump administration where with the president would target someone and his attorney general would do his bidding.

>> reporter: yeah. i think the attorney general's speech was interesting. it mentioned watergate. department officials say that was deliberate and a message of sorts to signal that the justice department or merrick garland wasn't afraid of going after the former president when they now have a criminal investigation. you know, the justice department doesn't talk about ongoing investigations. neither we nor the committee know where is the justice department is going with this. i do think that was significant he mentioned that and it was significant that the justice department is prepared to pursue prosecutions against anyone at any level. that, i'm told, is deliberate and may signaling where the justice department is going next. >> hugo, thank you for your reporting. you have remarkable reporting that comes out every day on the

actions of the committee. we appreciate you taking time for us. hugo lowell. joining me now is joanne freeman. she is the author of "the field of blood." good morning, professor. you and i spoke the other day. one of the points that you have been making is that we don't want to know some of the truth about this. there is a lesson we all learned in school and as we grow up as americans about what america is and america is the cradle of modern democracy in the west. all sorts of things like this that want us to deny what happened on january 6th was anything more than a bunch of people storming the capitol. >> right. correct. we're taught american exception

exceptionalism. we are immune to what happens in other countries. we see them and wave our finger and say tisk-tisk. we're not the same way. the fact of the matter is, democracy, by definition in its nature, is fragile. no matter what the country is or the democracy or the politics in place, it is fragile. part of what i see is a lot of people really not willing to or able to understand the absolute risk we face now and the fact that we can lose democracy. democracy in america, we may see ourselves as the cradle of democracy and in the founding period, we will spread democracy and liberty around the globe. the fact of the matter is, as that same generation well knew, democracy is vulnerable. the same thing that makes it unique or different, which is the way in which it really relies on the public and the american people in our case.

that very thing makes it vulnerable. however the wave of public opinion goes, that's the way the nation goes. so, as historian, as everyone, it is particularly frustrating to feel as though people aren't seeing what might happen because they're looking back and assuming everything that happened before pretty much covers the base and we survived lots of crises before. we will survive this one again. >> there are different ways of referring to what happened on january 6th. some people call it an insurrection and some people call it a coup and some people call it a riot. if you think about it as a discreet event, you may miss the point. on december 10th, you wrote an op-ed. saying our government is still under attack. the defensive is quieter, but no less menacing. the regulation of elections is

being corrupted and faith in the electoral process is fading. the big lie about donald trump's supposed victory in 2020 has staying power for just that reason. in fact, just this week, on january 6th, donald trump came out again and said that the election, itself, was the lie. the election remains fraudulent. for whatever reason, this is a sticky thing he says. it is obvious to us it should be stupid and dismissed. by so many americans, it is not. >> that's true. i think in part and this is an easy answer and partial answer, but i sense that people don't fundamentally understand some of the working of the democratic process. some of the ways in which the constitution and what surrounds it as far as politics and regulation of politics goes is intended to work in a bipartisan manner. you have bipartisan groups of people overseeing elections.

there is a process in place and that, yes, at various times, that process can be yanked out of the normal course of events. however, to say the election, despite the fact there is no evidence that anything was awry in the results, that falls along the same lines as what you were saying, ali, about how people watched what happened on january 6th with their own eyes and are still basically denying what they saw. we are now in a moment where the message is more important than the actual evidence. >> i'm not 100% sure we are more polarized than we have ever been in the american politics. the civil rights movement and the vietnam war was polarizing. we have to think about the degree to which this is a very, very big deal and it is a

moment. john meacham talked about the role of citizens. instead of evaluating polling or evaluating president trump. what does history tell you we need to do to repair our democracy? >> and just as you are saying more than anything else, democracy relies on us. on the citizens that democratic politics govern. as citizens, you know, on the one hand for a while, i was pleased about what was happening because as a variety of crises unfolded, that americans were getting more an tuned to politics and as citizens, alert to what was going on in a way that i hadn't seen in my lifetime. in addition to that, you need to step forward. at this point, it is hard for me to say you need to contact your member of congress. congress is an institution and

it is having its own issues right now. it is important to understand and whatever way you can and this will boil down in some ways to locally to defend the democracy and workings of democracy. don't surrender school board meetings. don't ban books. stand up for those local battles because, you know, the civil war, yes, we were polarized. when the south seceded, they left and created their congress. the confederate congress. they abide to the democratic process. what we are looking at now is a real attack on the democratic process. >> it is a simple call to action. there are things we can do. dr. joanne freeman. professor at yale university. we appreciate your time this morning. still to come on a power

packed edition of velshi, representative jim clyburn joins me. covid-19 is continuing to devastate. it doesn't have to be this way with the life-saving vaccine. first, an update with the story from last weekend. the fire that destroyed the planned parenthood has been ruled intentional. the building was destroyed. no one was injured. there is a reward up to $10,000 for information leading to the prosecution. the fire was the second attack within a year on that planned parenthood location. in january of last year, on the anniversary of roe v. wade, an unidentified gunman opened fire on the clinic. no one was injured then. clinic. no one was injured then. “let's get you on some antibiotics right away.” we could bring it right to your door. with 1 to 2 day delivery from your local cvs.

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mark, we are learning more about how some of the vulnerable are faring during the pandemic. children under 5 years old are unable to get vaccinated. according to the cdc, hospitalizations of kids in the age bracket have risen to the highest levels since the start of the pandemic. including in that are hospitalized children for covid. hundreds of kids across the country have been hospitalized. a sign that omicron is surging among all age groups beyond kids. hospitalizations are soaring right now and faciliies are maxed out. 128,000 patients were hospitalized for covid. that is not far off from the record a year ago on january 14th. 142,000 people treated in the hospital for the virus then. cases are sky rocketing. on monday, january 3rd, the

country surpassed 56 million total cases. the next day, 57 million. on thursday, 58 million. on friday, 59 million cases. we're adding a million cases a day. this might be less dangerous, but a lot of people are getting it. the daily average of infections is up over 228% in the last two weeks. more cases does mean more deaths, even if it is less dangerous. average of 1,500 americans are still dying from covid every day. the numbers are grim, but what we see play out is a crisis among the unvaccinated. they may cause milder symptoms, but that is for those vaccinated. those in the hospital have chosen not to get jabbed. the rate of hospitalizations in new york city. the epicenter in the united states, the hospitalizations among vaccinated people remain

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in place to pass voting rights legislation immediately. chuck schumer used a rare friday session to compel members of the party to support changing senate rules to get the legislation passed. the senate will likely take up voting legislation next week. if republicas block the bill, schumer will bring change to the filibuster before january 17th. in an effort to get around the rule, my next guest was one of the first lawmakers to propose the filibuster carve-out to pass voting rights electric legislation with a simple majority. jim clyburn says i'm not a fan to the filibuster. i maintain issues like voting

should apply. as much of the nation is focused on the threat to democracy posed by the january 6th insurrection, he says, our best protections against the threat to the big lie is to ensure the most fundamental thread of our democratic fabric holds. the right to vote. joining me now is representative jim clyburn. majority whip in the house of representatives. thank you for joining us. let me ask you this. i spoke to one of the activists from georgia who signed a letter to the president and vice president who said don't come here without an absolute plan about what your legislation looks like. we know it passed your house. what is the math that gets it to pass the senate? >> first of all, thank you for having me. you know, i do believe that the reason the president and vice

president are going to georgia is to layout the plan. that's why they are going. they would not be going otherwise. let's put that aside. now, i think we are all should get over the issue here. that is we are not getting rid of the filibuster because the majority of the senate wants to hold on to it. we have seen the willingness on the part of the senate historically and recently. historically, wehave reconciliation. we have a carve-out to raise the debt limit. once again, dealing with budget issues. my view is reconciliation is a term much more applied to the constitutional issues than to budget issues.

i think we should all push for this, you called it a carve-out. i call it filibuster. let's visit the filibuster rule in total at a later date. we do not have time for that now. if we don't move forward, this fragile fabric we call democracy will become unravelled. >> it depends on a forceful approach by the president and vice president of the use of the bully pulpit and the use of the president's experience of the four decades in the senate. it comes down to krysten sinema and joe manchin. you offered a way out of this as soon as joe manchin said i don't want to support the filibuster. you said here is the solution to keep the filibuster and let's us

have voting rights. have you spoken to him about this? >> yes, i did. not long after i made that statement. we spent about an hour together. my staff and his staff and the two of us. i think he came forward with the proposal, if you recall, hr-1, for the people act. it went to the senate as well. he came in with the substitute for that to put it on the floor. he asked for time to gather up ten republicans who would allow the debate to be shut off around his bill. he could not get ten to circle and support his bill. so, he has not been successful in that. he joins us now and said i've done my best. we will not allow a filibuster to defy basic constitutional rights and let's visit that later on. i think that the ball is in his

court now. i think he ought to play ball. >> that sounds like a reasonable approach. you put together a plan you thought republicans and democrats could support. they said no. the ball is in his court. at this point, chuck schumer set a date of january 17th. people have nine days to get this sorted out. are you involved in the full-court press to let krysten sinema and joe manchin do their best? >> i have not talked to krysten sinema about this. we sat together during the signing of the infrastructure bill and we chatted as we often did when she was a member of the house. i have not talked to her on this subject. i talked to joe manchin. our staffs are still in conversation. and we have spent a lot of time

dealing with this issue. he and i aren't on the same page. i hope he is having talks with his colleagues and i would hope that his colleagues would resip reciprocate what is necessary and return to the senate. i think it is all good for us to think about what is good for me and my prospects going forward. i think the thing to do is think about your brother's prospects of going forward. >> congress member, good to see you. thank you for joining us. democratic congress member jim clyburn of south carolina. coming up next, what this week's underwhelming jobs report means and why so many americans are continuing to quit their jobs. ans are continuing to quit their jobs

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we got some mixed economic news this week. yesterday, the united states labor department announced the nationwide unemployment rate dropped to 3.9% in december. down from 4.2% the month prior. sounds like good news, but i said for decades that number is all but irrelevant. the denominator keeps shifts. the country added 199,000 net new jobs which was way short of the 400,000 the jobs the economists predicted. as jobs slowly come back during the pandemic, millions of americans are quitting their jobs in record numbers. it is called the great resignation. here is kerry sanders. >> reporter: across the country,

americans are quit going jobs at record rates. they call it the great resignation. >> i'm going to quit my 9:00 to 5:00 job. >> reporter: data shows 4.5 million americans quit in november. the biggest number on record. that is 3% of the work force. >> we're seeing people quit in restaurant jobs, hospitality, retail, transportation. jobs which have gotten the brunt of covid. >> reporter: in florida, the restaurant group director says these days hiring is a challenge. >> we have to put a lot more effort in than we used to. >> raising wages doesn't solve the problem? >> paying different rates doesn't seem to make a difference. >> reporter: the nearby brewery had 53 employees. now they're down to 28. >> it has been a challenge. especially to keep people. there has been so many employees that we had that have been with us since the day we opened three or four years long that have

left to go into other industries. >> reporter: it is not just restaurants. the great resignation is impacting every industry. after seven years as a police officer, rachel decided to make a change. >> with everything going on with covid and everything in the world, i decided i needed a change and growth. i started a company with one of my friends. >> reporter: kirsten left her job in august. the pandemic helped clarify her priorities. >> so, it came to a point for me that exchanging my time and talents at a job 48 hours a week was not worth the exchange in my mental health and wellness. >> reporter: so many now reevaluating how work fits into their lives. >> thanks to kerry sanders for that report. it is nearly tax time.

don't plan on how to spend the big refund yet. after the break, my friend betty is coming back. i'll explain why the tax refund expectations are different this year. join us this afternoon for the special coverage of former senate majority leader harry reid's funeral. chuck schumer and nancy pelosi will give remarks along with former president barack obama to give the eulogy. it starts today at 2:00 p.m. we'll be right back. 0 p.m. we'll be right back. hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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hopes up. plan accordingly. remember the relief the government gave out last year? if you got it, your refund may be smaller than expected. let me explain this through the life of our friend betty. the pandemic is not kind to her financially. she is about to find out that tax day is going to put her in a financial hole. betty has been collecting the expanded child tax credit for her 5-year-old son bobby. the american rescue plan signed by president biden boosted the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 per child aged 17 and under with the extra $600 for children who are under 6. this was a game changer for betty last year. she received half the credit up front in the form of $300 monthly payments.

she will have a smaller write off for taxes. like many adults, betty is paying off student loans. one of 49 million americans who owe $1.57 trillion in student loans today. betty nearly doubled her debt by going to graduate school in a field she did not pursue. betty, like 90% of student loan borrows have taken a pause on the repayment plan. like the child tax credit, it was a tradeoff. betty is not going to writeoff the federal student loan interest when it comes time to file taxes for 2021. betty and her partner are smart. they have mutual funds which did well, but they are not invested in a 401(k). any gains the fund took are

taxable. at the beginning of 2021, her partner was out of the job because of the pandemic and collecting unemployment benefits. the american rescue plan offered a tax break on a certain amount in 2020. there is no indication that congress will pass a law to offer a similar tax break for unemployment received in 2021. for now, at least, betty's partner will pay more in taxes on their unemployment benefits than they did in 2020. betty is a normal american. she received the tax credit and paused the federal student loan payments and made mutual loan funds. all of that equals a smaller refund or perhaps a tax bill. one thin silver lining. betty has extra time to get her taxes together this year. the irs extended the tax filing deadline from april 15th to may 17th. get organized ahead of time.

manage expectations and plan accordingly. betty will put bobby to bed early and start digging in on her taxes, but not without a big glass of wine because betty likes wine. because betty likes wine . -hey tex, -wooo. can someone else get a turn? yeah, hang on, i'm about to break my own record. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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she follows in the footsteps of donald trump who was banned last year who used the site to glorify violence on january 6th and the days that followed. greene posted a covid-19 rant rife with misinformation to her verified personal twitter account. in it she falsely claimed that covid-19 vaccines were killing people, saying quote, extremely high amount of covid vaccine deaths are ignored and that is simply untrue. the cdc says it has been able to verify nine deaths caused by heart inflammation associated specifically with the johnson & johnson vaccine. this type of misinformation violates twitter's terms of service policy and it gave greene not three or four, but five strikes before freezing her personal account. her account or lack thereof has looked like this since last saturday. the congresswoman's professional government account remains active, however. misinformation on social media, we've discussed this several

times and it's dangerous and it's important we do something to fight it and most of us can agree it's been quite nice not dealing with donald trump's hateful nonsense on twitter for a whole year, but there is a deeper question here. are we actually doing the public a disservice by banning people like trump and marjorie taylor greene from social media platforms because there are places on which they exist? if extremists are not on twitter or facebook it means they find alternative ways to spread their toxic messages and many have flocked like parlor, telegram, dline, rumble, gab and getter, a social media site founded by the former trump aide jason miller. after her suspension, marjorie taylor greene called for her republican followers to leave twitter to teach the company a lesson and she was back two days later. >> joining me is an adviser for

stop hate for profit and the author of the book "zucked" waking up to the facebook catastrophe. he's on the west coast and always makes a great sacrifice to get up and talk us to. good to see you. we're not talking about the first amendment. people misinterpret the first amendment. is this the right thing to do? for people who are not going to shut up, is it important for us and is it actually useful for our democratic dialogue for them to be pushed into some corner where they will continue to have their conversations, but now in a bubble of like-minded people? >> so, ali, i think the underlying problem here is the architecture like internet platforms like facebook and like twitter are based on attention. so they're going to amplify content that grabs our attention and for most people that's going to be stuff that's inflammatory.

so hate speech, disinformation and conspiracy theories trigger our self-preservation instincts so we have to look so they've become incredibly valuable by essentially amplifying dangerous speech. to my mind, when we have a conversation about marjorie taylor green or donald trump as being on or not on. that's an important question. why do we allow businesses that have demonstrated themselves to be unsafe to operate freely? we went to the food industry in 1906, the drug industry in 1906, the chemical industry in the 1960s because they were unsafe and we reformed them. that is what we should be doing here. >> how do we manage distasteful ideas and the ability to protect dialogue and debate and engagement around distasteful ideas? i'm trying to walk a thin line here between distasteful ideas and lies, and lies that are

hazardous to democracy and public health which facebook and twitter, that is the bar with which they finally object to. how do you think about that? >> so i think about it very simply. if you think about facebook as the platform, there are 3 billion people that engage with facebook more or less, and those 3 billion people are on one giant network that has no guardrails and no safety nets. the result of that, because of the focus on attention, the amplification of hate speech and disinformation and conspiracy theories or profit, that business model takes ideas that historically have lived happily at the fringes of american society and it drives them into the mainstream and that is what the problem is here. i don't want to ban anybody from the platform, but i want to prevent all internet platforms from using algorithms to amplify dangerous speech. to do that for profit is insane

and it is exactly as dangerous as allowing quacks to make medicine without fda approval. >> is there any -- is there any harm -- people tell me all of the time. i get it on twitter all of the time. don't show me what trump said and don't report it on people and frankly, my life is nicer and better without donald trump's tweets all of the time, but is it bad for our discourse and our democracy if we're not hearing what people like marjorie taylor green and donald trump and others are saying given that they have such a strong following and that they might end up being influential again in our politics? >> i think the critical thing is to not give them a giant advantage over facts in the national dialogue. what's wrong with facebook in particular, but also of twitter, youtube and some other platforms, tiktok in particular is that they do amplify the most harmful voices and those voices crowd out the facts and those voices crowd out other reasonable voices and in my mind

that's incredibly dangerous not just for democracy, and we've seen this with the covid pandemic. we've seen this with the insurrection a year ago. these were direct results of allowing the platforms to continue to operate without regulation and it seems to me that you're going to continue to have disasters like that right up until the moment when you have sensible, safety regulations, sensible privacy regulations and some sort of regulation for competition that allows alternatives to come to market. >> roger, it's good to see you as always, we always appreciate your analysis and your expertise. roger mcnamee is an early investor in facebook and google. he's the author of "zucked" the facebook catastrophe. michael steele and olivia troy help us make sense of the gop, if that's possible. and d.c. attorney general karl racine on democracy. another hour of "velshi" begins

right ♪♪ ♪♪ good morning. it's 9:00 a.m. on the east coast. i'm ali velshi. it is saturday, january the 8th. there was a moment one year ago when it seemed that america was on the brink of reckoning about an ugly era of authoritarianism that the president ushered into our nation's capitol and our democracy. it seemed like the january 6th insurrection helped find clarity to an anti-democratic tyrant. mitch mcconnell and kevin mckarthy and lindsay graham clearly accused and rebuked the then-failed president for inciting an insurrectionist mob. >> the president bears responsibility for wednesday's attack on congress by mob rioters. he should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. >> all i can say is count me out. enough is enough. >> there's no question -- none, that president trump is