not only to make it more challenging for communities of color to vote, to support jerry mander districtsto scape goat communities. and we have six former census directors who have come out and opposed this, democrats and republicans. this move was also done over the advice of the career civil servants at the census bureau because the focus groups found people of color, asian or americans and more reluctant to return the census if this question was asked. and so this will have real consequences not only in terms of disenfranchising people but leading to the loss of critical dollars that help communities. >> and the census bureau had done -- i think you might be alluding this and to ramona, and they found that when this question was asked, lower numbers participated in the census. at least in their testing in the polling here. does that make sense to you? >> not really. it is not asking -- this question about citizenship doesn't are you here illegally or an undocumented resident of the its and just if you are a citizen. there are a lot of people that are green card holders or spouses of gr

. >> as you know there has been jerry mandering but some are way crazier than others.s one was jerrymandered to the point gross illegality. republicans created a district in which it was supposed to be impossible for a democrat to win. the republican story was we had a bad candidate. >> yeah. yeah. well, i must say i have been around politics long enough to remember back in the years where there was even among fierce competitors a fierce sportsmanship. there is a grasping so again, i think it's we erosive and we need to watch whether white independence begin to show signs of fracturing. independence begin to show signs of fracturing. >> thank you for joining us again tonight. always great to have you on. >> thanks, lawrence. >>> we now have breaking news. the wall street journal has confirmed tonight's store i by the washington post about h.r. mcmaster confirmed trump has told kelly he has decided to oust mcmaster administration officials tell me. i don't know what that says. he joins you by phone. it issued tonight saying there is no truth to this that h.r. mcmaster a

jerry manders, the process of reshaping a district to favor one party over the other. the court heard a case last fall where it claim ed that the process favored republicans. the case being argued today was brought by republicans who say democrats intentionally altered a maryland district to favor democra democrats. pete williams is outside of the high court. why did the court taik on the maryland case? >> it accepted the challenge from the republican challengers from maryland to be a companion case with wisconsin. but here's the problem. the redistricting is always done by the majority party. it inevitably takes steps to entrench its position. the question is how much partisanship is too much. can it ever cross a constitutional line? i u would say based on today's argument it's no easier to an answer than it was in october when it heard the wisconsin c e case. now today was from marylands sixth district when democrats got. power. it unseeded a republican who held that seat for 20 years. he had before the gerrymandering won the seat by 28% of the vote. he lost it by 21

pennsylvania where they're trying to impeach the supreme court justices that struck down republican jerry mandering. the most extreme example is in wisconsin where scott walker just flat is refusing to hold special elections for vacant legislative seats since december, a federal court said you have to hold these elections and the wisconsin constitution is clear on this. immediately after the court orders him to hold special elections, scott walker and the legislature say we're going to hold a special session to change the law on special elections so we don't have to hold elections. and this is such a disturbing trend where basically if republicans think they'll lose an election, they cancel the election. if they lose a court order, they decide they'll nullify that order. this gets to shattering core basic norms of democracy. >> christina, when you use the words nullify or think about massive resistance, there are historical echoes of no, we're not going to bow down to what the courts tell us. >> we've talked about this for well over a year where we talk about the separation of powers. we have court

i want you to sell my medallion 2, 3, 4 years ago but unfortunately, there was a little jerry mandering in the list of how medallions were sold and all of a sudden it was a priority on people who because medallions that would never stated but was put into action, including different ratios of -- i think it was seven medallions or because medallions to three medallions of non-because medallions and there was never any public discussion about that. so it's up to you guys to give us faith on the honesty and straightforwardness of the mta. thank you. >> the chair: thank you. check check rachel hide enfollowed by conseka and mcmerdo. >> good afternoon, director. my name is rachel heidan from the director of san francisco transit riders you should have seen our items but i want to call out the speck items. first we have the version of the additional transit needs that he walked through. in particular we want to see funding for expanding lrb service and opening in the sub bay and funding for the staff position as well as the training and of course we support funding for any service equity need

. >> and jerry mander justice. the supreme court tackles partisan map shape shifting and this is "mtp daily" and it starts right now. ♪ ♪ >>> good evening. i'm katy tur in new york in for chuck todd and welcome to "mtp daily" on this wednesday. we begin with a pair of major developments surrounding robert mueller's investigation. centers around mueller gathering damaging information from people close to the president and the other centers around people close to the president trying to thwart mueller from gathering damaging information. both are major stories. "the new york times" and washington post are both reporting that the president trump's lead lawyer in the russia case, john dowd, was talking with michael flynn's lawyer and palm manafort's lawyer about a presidential pardon. as both the times and the post report, these discussions happened last summer as mueller was building a case against both trump aides. it is a case that we now know would lead to michael flynn pleading guilty and lying to investigators an