ballot, is going to be voter later to this care. because you have folks who clearly need ethics reform, holding all of these officers from attorney general to the state supreme court to lawmakers. that's incredibly concerning. >> one of those fights happening in ohio, we spotlighted yesterday, in which they've no inserted a ballot amendment in august to raise the threshold to 60%, to stop a majority of ohioans, who they suspect, will vote for abortion rights, from being able to do that, there's gonna be a pre vote in august, just one of the many fights on this front. alexis mcgill johnson, thank you very much for time today. >> thanks, chris. that is all in on this thursday night, alex wagner tonight starts right now, with fights o this. that is "all in" on this thursday night. alex wag nar tonight begins right now with alicia menendez in for alex. and tonight we've got major

news on special counsel jack smith's criminal investigation into donald trump's alleged mishandling of hundreds of classified documents after he left office. you think of that investigation i want to bet your mind goes straight to the events of august 8th last year. you'll likely think of the fbi's court authorized search of mar-a-lago and of the 100-plus classified documents the fbi found on the premises that day. tonight's news centers on a time about two months before that, june 2nd and why the events of that day may be key to john smith's case. tonight "the washington post" describes the events that took place on that day as being of importance to investigators in the classified documents case. we've previously known may 11th of last year trump's attorneys received a subpoena.

then we know june 3rd an attorney from the department of justice and three fbi agents met with trump's lawyers at mar-a-lago to collect those documents from trump's team. now, we also already knew at some point between those two dates boxes of documents had been moved around mar-a-lago on the president's orders, and we knew the special counsel had tat on video. what we did not know until tonight was this. "the washington post" reports tonight the boxes of documents moved into a storage area by trump's body man and another employee the day before the justice department came to get the documents. quote, on the evening of june 2nd, the same day two employees moved the boxes, a lawyer for trump contacted the justice department and said officials there were welcome to visit mar-a-lago and pick up classified documents related to the subpoena. tonight "the new york times" adds the other employee was a maintenance worker and he and

trump's body men moved the boxes of documents back into the storage room before trump lawyer evan corcoran conducted his own search of the room that day. so trump ordered his employees to move boxes of documents back into a storage room before his own lawyer, evan corcoran, conducted a search. and later that same day corcoran called the doj and told him it was fine to swing on by. the following day doj officials came to pick up documents. the signed attestation signed by corcoran confirming to the best of her knowledge a diligent search had been conducted and they'd turned over everything they found. of course we now know that was not the case. the fbi later found more than a hundred more classify documents on the premises, even more at a storage site months after that. and one of the key questions of the investigation was that obstruction of justice? was all the weird back and forth

moving of boxes evidence of trump trying not to give these documents back? ordering these boxes moved before he had his lawyer searched the room and trying to trick his own lawyers. the thing that makes trump's documents investigation such a stark contrast from president biden's and even president pence's investigations is the appearance of obstruction. all signs indicate that biden and pence immediately and fully cooperated with authorities after being informed they had classified documents in their possession. the same simply cannot be said for trump. the investigation into trump here is a criminal investigation, so the bar for proving obstruction, it is high. and we're going to get some expert legal help unpacking all of this in just a second. the events of june 2nd, they weren't the only thing we learned about tonight. no, we also learned jack smith's office has gathered evidence

even before trump received a subpoena in may he had what some officials called a dress rehearsal. we learned smith's office had been told by more than one witness trump at times kept classified documents out in the open at his florida office where authorities could see them and that he sometimes showed them to people including aides and visitors. you put all that reporting together, certainly looks like jack smith is forming a case here. now, nbc news has not independently confirm any of this reporting and former president trump denies he did anything wrong, but this certainly doesn't look good for the former president and does seem time is not on his side either. tonight bloomberg reports this investigation is coming to a close and that jack smith is poised to announce possible criminal charges in the days or weeks after memorial day. joining us now lisa rubin, msnbc legal analyst.

ladies, what a treat to have you here tonight. we'll get to the reporting on a possible time line. but we have this reporting from "the washington post" and "the new york times." a day before doj prosecutors show up at mar-a-lago, trump having aides move balks into a storage unit, what strikes you? >> what strikes me was that evan corcoran was used by the former president and perhaps others in his orbit. right, we know from prior reporting that the boxes were actually moved out of that same storage area after the subpoena was served on may 11th. it now appears that someone, possibly former president trump took documents out of them, moved the boxes back in on june 2nd. that's when evan corcoran went in, conducted his search and even called the department of justice and said you guys should come by tomorrow and pick these up. that's because when the

department of justice sent the subpoena in lieu of showing up to grand jury you can let us know where you put the documents and we can come and get them for you from the certification we now know was signed on june 3rd. >> again, making attorneys get attorneys. like obviously evan corcoran is a legal professional. he's taken an oath. he has professional obligations. he cannot lie for the former president, and so the moving, the reshuffling of these documents, again we seem an attempt -- we don't know if that's the case, but seems like an attempt to allow evan corcoran to say there's nothing here even though we know donald trump may have directed someone else to move the documents out of a place where evan corcoran was going to do a search and say to the department everything is clear. you don't move those kinds of documents around with such

ilacruty. >> in this case judge barrel howell of the d.c. district court apparently found in a lengthy opinion evan corcoran had been apparently been dupe by donald trump and that there was enough evidence of possible obstruction by the former president as well as retention unlawfully of classified documents to justify piercing that privilege. that's the context in which the phrase dress rehearsal showed up. she said essentially the way in which trump had interacted with the national archives was a dress rehearsal. the first time trump was notified the national archives wanted these documents back it wasn't last year. it was in may of 2021. and he has been playing footsie essentially with the federal

government with the location of these documents. >> i'm a dance mom, so dress rehearsal is something very different to me. i want to come back on obstruction. the reporting would bolster this, and "the washington post" reports, quote, people familiar with the situation said smith's team believes it has uncovered a handful of distinct episodes of destructionest conduct. that stuck out to me, episodes. >> i'll just say if you're a dance moms fan abbey lee miller did have a case brought against her for similar kinds of machinations. it's always the cover-up or moving things around or trying to obstruct the process going on here. again, we've seen this play out in popular culture in a lot of different ways. think back to the movie "the firm" where tom cruz is a lawyer caught up with that terrible firm that has tie tuesday the mafia. and he has to the fbi agency i

have mail fraud here and it's not sexy but it has teeth. but obstruction is still a federal crime and it sticks. >> and it's part and parcel of having a complete disregard for democracy. i'm struck by this idea of the retention of documents, the obstruction piece of this but also this idea he potentially the documents out, was sharing them with other people. how does that factor in legally? >> it's a separate violation. the espionage act under 18usc e of that statute basically prohibits sharing the documents in an unlawful way and handing them or disclosing their contents to someone else. we have known for some time donald trump unlawfully retained them. that's another violation of the espionage act, but here when

we're talking about sharing its contents if you're sharing them with aides, possible political donors or even foreign countries with respect to donald trump's business dealings. >> one of the questions we've been asking here is who is it that's talking, and it would seem from this reporting in addition to the body men moving the documents you also had a maintenance worker who is cooperating with prosecutors. what is it that that maintenance worker could offer prosecutors? >> well, from what we understand from the reporting the maintenance worker is one of the people on the videotapes seen moving it. so he -- if it is a he -- is obviously someone already in some kind of legal jeopardy. because he's actually there, so he has a lot of incentive if it is a he to show prosecutors he has no intent to move documents. he doesn't know these are classified documents. so there's a lot of incentive, i think, for that person to work with prosecutors and provide as

much information. being on the inside the kind of person who sees things but isn't necessarily a hotshot, a big guy at mar-a-lago means they probably observe things that might go unnoticed by other people and are really in a position to provide the kind of inside baseball knowledge you probably couldn't get anywhere else. >> the other big news tonight and what folks at home don't see we were on our editorial call and all of a sudden lisa went missing and it's because there was breaking news from bloomberg and she had to run-down stairs and analyze this. the fact we now have potentially some sense of a time line is a big development here. >> it is a big development and dove tails with "the washington post" reporting in a crucial way tonight. "the washington post" in addition to providing these details about june 2nd and 3rd points out another key date. that's the first time the grand jury and jack smith's investigation met. it's the day after key employees of the trump organization involved in the collection and maintenance of those surveillance tapes and the

maintenance worker are seen moving the boxes testify before that grand jury. the grand jury hasn't met since may 5th and the investigation is wrapping up and potential charges could be in the works for donald trump and others. >> and trump's lawyers request a meeting with a.g. garland. >> typically when you have something coming down the pipe the prospective defendant has an opportunity to speak with the prosecutors in advance to perhaps persuade them that there's nothing to see here. and it seems this was donald trump's hail mary attempt to get merrick garland to get off this case. >> are you surprised by this time line? >> no, not really. as melissa said earlier, there are sexier cases than this, but this is straightforward and the types of evidence that have been collected here that would lead to a potential obstruction charge is really substantial. and we've been seeing drips and

drops of reporting indicating this would come for some time. i think what people are surprised by this would likely happen before any other indictment including from fulton county district fani willis of georgia. >> the no in sync really gave me such life. thank you both for being here. we have a lot more to get to tonight including with the stroke of a pen an entire swath of america has now lost an important right. we'll explain. plus, the 2024 republican primary is under way and quickly turning into a race to the bottom. jen psaki joins us to break it all down. i joins us to break it all down

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it is now day two of the ron desantis presidential campaign. after a disastrous glitch plagued rollout yesterday desantis spent today trying to turn the page by focusing on had his rivalry with former president donald trump. in an interview this morning desantis attacked trump for of all things being too soft on immigration. >> he's moving to the left, attacking me, for example, for opposing an immigration amnesty that he supported when he was president for illegal aliens,

and i did oppose it because i don't support amnesty. >> okay so what governor desantis is calling amnesty is a 2018 proposal by trump offering a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children. but the price for that sliver of sanity would have been a host of draconian cuts to legal immigration and harsh new border enforcement policies. ultimately trump proposal went nowhere, but now desantis is rewriting history to position himself to the right of a man who destroyed families by separating migrant children from their parents. when it comes to dreamers desantis doesn't have the track record to back up his tough talk. just this month desantis lost a fight in his state to deny dreamers to florida colleges. and despite his new willingness to attack donald trump, desantis still finds himself defending

the former president amid trump's ongoing legal challenges. today the governor told another conservative radio host that he would be opening to pardoning trump and the january 6th capitol rioters if elected. >> do you think the january 6th defendants deserve to have their cases examined by a republican president? and if trump let's say gets charged with federal offenses and you are the president of the united states would you look at potentially pardoning trump himself based on the evidence that might emerge of those charges? >> the doj and fbi have been weaponized. on day one i will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases who people are victims of weaponization or political targeting, and we'll be aggressive at issuing pardons. >> the strategy as a declared candidate is ignore or excuse trump's biggest vulnerabilities and differentiate himself by offering a crueller dark reform

of trumpism if that could even exist. what will that mean for the country as the republican primary contest officially kicks off? joining us jen psaki host of inside with jen psaki on msnbc. jen, desantis thinks he can position himself to the right of trump. he's aligning with trump on 1/6 and here he was just tonight in an interview on news max. >> some of the things he's been attacking me on i've been a little surprised at because he's attacking me from the left. and that hasn't been the donald trump from 2015 and 2016, very edgy on conservative issues, and it was part of the reason he did so well, but when he's taken disney's side against me i wonder, okay, i get he wants to hit me but don't take the side of a multinational corporation that wants to sexualize kids. he's also hitting me against

voting against immigration amnesty. lots of lies in there. first, will that work to sway voters in a republican primary, jen? and if it does and you've got desantis as a republican nominee what's it then going to do to him with voters in a general? >> well, it certainly wouldn't help him in a general because running to the right of trump on some of these issues and even in a bizarre way, for example, being on the other side of disney -- i mean who hates mickey and mini mouse, i guess ron desantis. he's trying to find his path. he's trying to find the way to contrast with trump. now, the truth is there's another path that may not prove to be successful but would be a more mainstream less insane right-wing candidate who he could have had the bio in the background to do. he's chosen so far not to take that path. will it work in a primary? we don't really know yet.

there's no evidence it's going to work. he has only dropped in it polls next to trump since november when he was probably at his peak at this point. there is still a long way to go, but so far he has not shown that he knows what his pathway is and one that is going to work to bring trump voters to his side consistently. >> well, to that point today you had desantis saying he'll look at potentially pardoning january 6th defendants, and it seems that is -- >> and trump. >> and trump, which also sort of speaks to the fact you have his campaign saying, well, his polling numbers aren't exactly where we want them to be, but that's because the base feels sympathy towards trump. i mean is that good spin, bad spin? what do you make of that as their defense for their poll numbers? >> well, look, i mean when you're down in the polls you're always going to try to find some spin, and being down in the polls there's never really great spin, so that's true no matter

what party you're in. but i think the challenge for the desantis team is that so far they've hit their peak in november after the november elections when of course governor desantis won by a large margin in florida, and he was seen as the candidate that many republicans who didn't think they could quite stand trump, really they put all their fears aside and they projected onto him what they wanted him to be. so far he has not become what they wanted him to be. he looks good on paper maybe. so the challenge for them is this a guy who can stir a room in iowa, get people going in new hampshire and south carolina. it's not just about his bizarre and horrendous announcement last night. that was sad. it was a big night on twitter, of course, laughing about it. it's about what happens now. he raised a lot of money, can he light the fire under activists

in the republican party? and we've seen no evidence to date that they have the political skill set to know how to do that, but there is a long way to go. >> it strikes me, jen, biden's re-elect message right ought the gate was about freedom, more freedom not less, one party giving rights, another taking them away. freedom was supposed to be ron desant' core argument unless you're a pregnant woman, a teacher. has he already ceded the freedom frame, which he wanted to be his to biden? >> well, i think in part the biden team, my own colleagues over there and the campaign are trying to seize the freedom frame from republicans. it has long been the republican frame. remember freedom fries, right, freedom from the restrictions of government, that has long been a republican frame. why i think this could work and why it may be working already is

that nobody likes their rights being taken away. their rights and access to health care, abortion rights, their rights to have clean drinking water, for their kids to go to school safely. and that is kind of the feeling with some of these republican policies, and certainly a lot of what we've seen from the desantis agenda. i mean make america florida means a ban of -- on abortion after six weeks. it means concealed carry is allowed. it means you can't have books. it means diversity is not something that will be championed in the country. that's what he's running on, and that is taking away rights from people in the country. and even if you're not a hard core progressive or a hard core democrat, that may not sound great to people. >> yeah, let's talk about making america florida again. desantis has tried to campaign both about making florida a conservative bastion, but now he has to campaign in other gop led states.

nbc news reporting desantis has encountered spirited push back from governors and officials who believe that their states have done just as much, if not more, to advance a conservative agenda. the example that sticks out to me christy nolan bullying him on the idea this 12-week abortion ban in florida did not go far enough. of course you saw them rolling out their 9-week abortion ban. if the bulk of the next year is ron desantis and donald trump and a host of other republicans trying to out-trump each other for a lack of a better term, how does that change the contours going into a general election, if that is most of what voters have been exposed to? >> well, that's only a benefit to my old colleagues in the white house who are trying to get current president joe biden re-elected because a lot of these positions are extreme, extreme in the country.

not just in a democratic electorate, but among independents and even among many republicans. people across the country, 58% of the country think women should have access to abortions if they want to. that's not just democrats, that's according to a recent nbc news poll, right. a vast majority of people in this country, overwhelming majority thinks there should be universal background checks and more should be done to address gun violence. people think you should have access to health care. these positions people are not supportive across the country of election denying. we've seen that play out in 2022 but also even in recent months. the kentucky secretary of state just last week defeated and won running against election deniers. so these right-wing -- the farther right-wing and extreme it goes, the better that is for joe biden, and that's i think how you see it if you're sitting in the white house right now. >> jen psaki, former white house press secretary and host of "inside with jen psaki" on

msnbc, jen, thanks so much for joining us. still more to come tonight including the leader of the oath keepers gets the harshest moment for his role to date in the january 6th attack on the capitol. what it was and how he reacted. plus the key to south carolina republicans passing an extreme abortion ban turns out to be an end run around women. we'll explain next. e an end run. we'll explain next

this is how it looked in 2021 when south carolina's republican governor henry mcmaster sent a 6-week abortion law into law the first time. he signed that bill blocking abortions before many people even know they're pregnant. less than an hour after the statehouse sent it to his desk, hundreds of people packed the statehouse in the middle of the pandemic to watch. the ink barely dry before planned parenthood got a federal judge to block the law temporarily. and just this past january the state supreme court agreed the only woman on the south carolina supreme court cast the deciding vote and wrote the opinion striking down that six-week abortion ban as unconstitutional. that is how it went down the first time. south carolina republicans tried to enact a six-week abortion ban and failed. but today it worked. this time governor mcmaster

signed a six-week abortion ban into law two days after the state senate sent it over. and this time he signed it behind closed doors with only five republican lawmakers watching, no media allowed. in fact the only images we have of the bill signing came from mcmaster's office. this time the state senate passed the bill, sent it to the governor of defeating the five women in the chamber who attempted to filibuster the ban. just like last time planned parenthood and other local providers sued immediately, but this time around the state supreme court is not expected to rule in their favor because the justice who wrote the january opinion overturning the last six-week ban retired. and the republican led state legislature voted to replace her with a male justice making south carolina the only state in this country with an all-male supreme court. this new challenge works its way up to the state supreme court, odds are six-week ban will

survive. so the people of south carolina might be stuck with a law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in a state where the only three abortion clinics have appointment backlogs. they try to treat both residents and out-of-state patient. they're stuck with a law that gives victims of rape or incest 12 weeks of pregnancy to get an abortion but requires their doctors to notify local sheriffs and provide victim's addresses. so that's the bill governor mcmaster signed into law this morning restricting access to abortion in a state that until now had become an unlikely destination for women in the south. as a result this is how abortion access looks right now in this country. with the exception of virginia, the entire south has now effectively gone dark. coming up with the debt ceiling deadline just days away, new reporting tonight the white house and house republican leaders are closing in on a deal to keep the u.s. from defaulting on its bills.

plus, the longest sentence to date for a january 6th defendant, one who never even entered the capitol. stay with us. e capitol. stay with us

it's been nearly 2 1/2 years since members of the oath keepers charged into the u.s. capitol building in a military-style stack formation. and today the federal judge gave the leader of that far-right militia group the longest sentence in a january 6th

criminal case so far. steward rhodes will spend 18 years in prison for his role for mobilizing the oath keepers in the far reaching plot to attack the capitol to keep the loser of the 2020 election, trump, in power. last fall rhodes was convicted on the rare charge of seditious conspiracy along with other crimes with a fellow oath keeper member kelly meggs. he received a 12-year sentence in a separate hearing today. in rhodes sentencing the former army paratrooper and disbarred lawyer showed no remorse for his actions calling himself a political prisoner and asserting that, quote, like trump my only crime is opposing those who are destroying our country, but the d.c. district judge who presided over his trial rejected those claims saying, quote, you are not a political prisoner, mr. rhodes. that is not why you are here, it is not because of your beliefs.

the reality is you sit here today and as we heard you speak, the moment you are released you are prepared to take up arms against our government. he added, i never would have said this to anyone i sentenced. you pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy in the fabric of this country. i dare say we all know hold our collective breaths when an election is approaching. will we have another january 6th again? that remains to be seen. joining us now the former d.c. chief of homeland security and intelligence. thank you so much for being here. how significant is stewart rhodes' 18-year sentence? will that be a meaningful deterrent? >> well, it's significant and it's a victory for the justice department, clearly. they've done a great job in convicting not just the foot soldiers of january 6th but the captains. and stewart rhodes, enrique tario, the leader of the proud

boys are two important pieces of that. in term of deterring future extremism, i don't think we're seeing that specifically in the online space or in social media. in fact, the reason why stewart rhodes is able to say in court he's a political prisoner is because he's parroting many on the right in terms of elected officials even on the hill saying him and other january 6th defendants are political prisoners as opposed to convicted felons, which is what they are. >> and we've spoken with other intelligence experts that really these groups have gone underground, become harder to track. it strikes me in previous cases, previous january 6th cases, judge meta had denied the prosecutor's request to a terrorism enhancement. >> it would have gotten stewart rhodes to 25 years.

i think that's important because as you read the january 6th report and you see the select committee, this was an act of domestic terrorism, full stop. this fits the exact definition of domestic terrorism, and so if we're not going to charge people who try to overthrow our government using violence with domestic terrorism, i don't know what we're going to use that statute for. it's unfortunate that he wasn't convicted, that add on wasn't applied to him, but the fact they brought it up and prosecution wanted to use that i think is a sign for those who may want to commit political violence in the future. >> to your point about the way in which some of this is being repeated, kentucky representative thomas massy tweeted stewart rhodes never entered the capitol and didn't commit acts of violence or destruction, yet he's going to be sentenced thursday for seditious conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding and tampering can with doc, and then in parentheses the stuff on his

phone, weaponization of speech. i mean talk us through the sentencing decisions as you see it. >> well, i'm not an attorney, but i'm an avid student of all this, so obviously over the last 2 1/2 years. it doesn't matter whether he entered the capitol, right? enrique tarrio just convicted last week didn't enter the capitol. the fact is these individuals are master minds of the plot to overthrow the election process. so you don't have to physically be there to be pulling the strings on those myriad individuals, tens of thousands of individuals that were following the cause. the fact they once again these were captains. i actually believe stewart rhodes isn't intelligent nor sophisticated enough to have pulled this off by himself. i think there are people outside his organization well above him that enabled this january 6th from happening, and i hope the

justice department will start going after those higher level official. >> other oath keepers convict of january 6th related crimes will be sentenced tomorrow, next week as someone watching this do you think what we saw today will impact some of these case snz. >> i hope so. and i hope some these individuals that saw stewart rhodes get 18 years are evaluating their defense and cooperating with prosecutors. the fact of the matter is we saw stewart rhodes, the oath keepers, and the proud boys a month before january 6th start scheming openly online to overthrow the election pros. and so to go into a courtroom and use this kind of we just got caught up in the moment, this is an organized event is nonsense. the evidence speaks for itself. me and my intelligence team we printed that stuff out, we shared it, we saw it live in time, and so you can't go into a court now using that defense.

stewart rhodes didn't do it, he tried to do it, didn't work for him and didn't work subsequently for other defendants. we have one more story for you tonight. the clock is ticking on negotiations to raise the debt ceiling with the u.s. set to run out of cash, but there are reportedly signs of movement tonight. more on that just ahead.

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the debt to avert cutattrophy. significant progress "the new york times" is reporting. top officials and republican lawmakers are closing on a deal that would raise the debt limit for two years while capping federal spending on everything from the military and veterans during the same time period. if this is indeed the deal we end up with that is good news for everyone. for one the debt ceiling won't become a campaign issue before 2025 and both democrats and republicans can claim some level of victory. republicans can say they delivered on their promise to reduce some federal spending while expanding resources for veterans in the military. democrats, on the other hand, can say they protected program from significant cuts. that last part extremely important because among those most likely to be affected by a default are senior citizen. today "the washington post" reported on june 2nd, a day after the treasury believes the u.s. could run out of money, roughly $98 billion worth of benefits including medicare, medicaid, and military and civil

retirement payments are scheduled to go out to social security recipients and people with disabilities. not making that payment would be devastating to retirees especially low income seniors who on average don't have the resources to withstand the hit. quote, in interviews more than a dozen americans who received the benefits said delayed payment would have copse knss on their ability to pay for housing, groceries. many were making plans to do without blood pressure medication, borrow against their homes or return to work. with the prospect of joining the labor force after years away making them anxious. claire mccaskill, thanks so much for being with us. let's get your reaction to tonight's news. how significant is this? we're going to see a deal before the end of the week you think? >> oh, absolutely. i believe there will be a deal. but there's going to be some needle threading that's going to have to go on because even if

kevin mccarthy makes a deal, and let's keep in mind most of us don't want the deal that kevin mccarthy is pushing for, but this has to be a compromise because the republicans control the house. and the president is really focused on making sure that those recipients of social security don't suffer. but what's going to be fun to watch or maybe painful to watch is whether kevin mccarthy can hold his caucus together. how many votes will he lose? and is it possible that he would lose so many votes that it could jeopardize the deal? and if that happens, then i believe the republicans get all the blame for a default and all the pain that would come afterwards. so this is a real high wire act for kevin mccarthy because you know he's got a clown car full of crazies that aren't going to vote for this no matter what, at least 12 to 20 people. >> let's talk about some of the

threading of the needle you just spoke about. one of the things "the times" is reporting tonight is that the deal they're working on would, quote, also roll back $10 billion of the $80 billion congress approved last year of an irs crack down on high earners and corporations that evade taxes, funding they said would reduce the deficit by helping the government collect more of the tax revenue it is owed. that is a lot of congressional speak there. if you could both decipher it for us and give us your reaction to it. >> they're trying to give mccarthy a fig leaf. they're trying to give him something that will please enough of the republicans to get this across the finish line. at the same time they've got to be really careful and protect the priorities of the democrats. so what this would do is basically they're acknowledging it's very hard to rollout all that $80 billion as quickly as the irs would like to.

so they would trim that, they would give that a haircut, and that money would allow there not to be draconian cuts to the social programs the democrats care so deeply about that the republicans are happy to cut to smith renes if they could get it done. >> it's just so interesting to me during the trump years the republicans looked at inroads they were making with white working class voters and thought to themselves maybe what we need to do is position ourself against corporations. that's what part of what you're watching with desantis and disney. not against workers rights or tax cuts but instead about an ideological difference, but that is the core of what he's trying to do here, so it is interesting to me that the irs going after corporations that don't pay their fair share of taxes would be something that republicans in that mold would not join democrats in standing up against. >> yeah, it's funny because republicans like to say if we only ran government more like a

business. think about this for a minute. can you imagine a business being in debt and saying the really smart thing for us to do is not collect our receivables. let's not go out there and get the people to pay that are supposed to pay. and that's what the republicans have been doing to the irs. they've been basically stripping its ability to give good service to honest taxpayers who just want to know they're going to get their refund and decimating the audit staff so that the cheaters are getting away with it. and frankly, the republicans ought to be all about personal responsibility and making sure everyone is following the law and paying their share. >> claire, i've only got about 30 seconds left, but if this deal were to go through, it means that they would raise the debt ceiling for two years, meaning neither republicans would have an opportunity to make it a campaign issue until 2025. that is clearly good for the american people. the politics of that --

>> yeah, i think it's really important that we are not back here watching this again next spring. we've already seen republicans will be irresponsible for this. they're happy to raise the debt ceiling when trump is in office. they did it a number of times and trump said, oh, no, you can't mess with the debt ceiling. let's not give them that opportunity. let's stay focused with what needs to happen next year, which is protecting people that need it in our country. instead of taking care of the very wealthy and then let the election occur, and hopefully that election will allow the debt ceiling to be dealt with a way responsible going forward. >> thank you so much for being with us tonight. that is the show for tonight. reminder you can catch my show "american voices" this weekend 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. eastern. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. i am not going to give up. we're not going to default. we're going to solve this problem. s