texas representative colin allred said "ukraine's fight is our fight."turn back this tide before it is too late." and congress colin allred was recently part of a congressional delegation that visited ukraine. thanks for joining us on this busy morning. you mentioned the tide. you talking about the tied of autocracy as we are watching this house oversight subcommittee hearing on russia. what do you want to see come out of this, the action that is needed to get moscow under control? >> well, when i was in ukraine, i went as part of a bipartisan delegation and we were united in terms of supporting ukraine and the need for us to have crippling sanctions ready to go if russia did invade. now, for us to do that, we also have to work with our allies in the eu in particular because they're the folks who economically would have the biggest impact on russia. that's what the biden administration is doing. so i agree with the ambassador that we have to ratchet up sanctions if russia does this. weep we also have some allies that will only join us in the sanctions if

. >> colin allred, i want you to put on your voting rights attorney hat.en you were -- you've interviewed voters like pam gaskin, who have had struggles like this with voting laws. in order to make a case about how these voting laws are actually working. this seems to me to be pretty much what you were predicting this law would involve. >> yeah. lawrence, we've talked about this for sometime. we knew this was going to happen. you know, they messed with the wrong person with pam gaskin. she's not going to let them disenfranchise her. as she said, they're going to be thousands of texans who will be disenfranchised. you know, we've seen this before in texas. and 2014, when they passed the voter i. d. law, they didn't implemented well. there was no attempt to educate on the changes they made. the governor to time had a hard time voting, even jim right couldn't vote because he had an expired license. so, people who are prominent were affected by that in that election. where are the mass event to educate voters about these really important changes that they've m

joining me to discuss, democratic congressman colin allred, who was part of that meeting.cing plenty of headwinds right now. cnn's ryan nobles is reporting that president barack obama -- former president -- rallied the troops, encouraging you all to tout your progressive -- your progress, i should say, excuse me, this year. is that the strategy going forward into midterms? >> well, he basically told us we have to get out of our defensive crouch. we have to talk about what we have done and as our current president would say, don't judge us against the almighty, judge us against the alternative because we have to talk about what is happening on the other side, as well. and, you know, we have done a lot, already, in this year i think to set us up in the position where we now have one of the lowest unemployment, lowest child poverty rates in decades from passing the american rescue plan to the bipartisan infrastructure bill. we have a lot to talk about and a lot to tell people act. but now, we have to kind of stop this back and forth about what we haven't gotten done on voting

congressman colin allred, i want to started with what we just played from president biden.n a couple weeks ago listening to the president. our reporting is that that wasn't something he had planned to do, meaning reveal the intelligence that the plans are in the works for sure from russia. do you think that was a good move? >> i think the president has been very effective at denying the russians the ability to have any pretext created or to use misinformation to try to get any international legitimacy. i think the transparency from the biden administration has been a good thing. i think the russians would love to have the element of surprise or at least to try and get some kind of international support for what they're doing. i think he's denied that by talking openly about what we have. >> susan glasser, you lived in russia, you reported from there. you certainly mow the mind of vladimir putin better than most of us at this table. why do you think he's doing this now? >> look, vladimir putin for two decades has been obsessed with the breakup of the soviet union. we called

joining us how democratic member of the house foreign affairs committee, congressman colin allred ofresident zelensky and where you think we are right now in terms of being on the doorstep of war. >> well, thank you for having me. we began in brussels speaking with our eu and nato allies, and then went to kyiv and spoke with the president and the defense minister and their foreign minister. you know, i was actually incredibly impressed with the ukrainian people themselves, maybe even more so than their leaders, just the idea that they are united in not wanting to go back to being either a russian puppet or back into the russian orbit. so when i was there, the impression that i got was not of a people that were ready to just accept this kind of an invasion, but they were already talking about it then and i met a young woman who told me she was going to get her white wine and her gun and defend her country. speaking with her, i believed her. we are seeing that now. we are talking about some real people here who are really going to resist, and their leaders, you know, support and that's