>> leigh ann caldwell, thank you very much. that does it for this hour. balart reporting for craig melvin. we thank you for the privilege of your time. andrea mitchell will talk with vivek murthy about the covid spread that when "andrea mitchell reports." i'll see you tonight on noticias telemundo. >>> good day. this is andrea -- good day, everyone. this is andrea mitchell reports in washington, where the president tomorrow will be announcing a vaccine requirement for federal workers as a result of startling news over the delta variant in the next few days which experts say is 1,000 times more transmissible even for vaccinated americans than the alpha virus. the cdc is recommending that even vaccinated people wear masks indoors in highly transmissible parts of the country. that is reversing its guidance from two months ago that fully vaccinated people can go mask-free indoors and it's a major setback in the efforts to project success against the virus. the cdc is saying all k through 12 student should wear masks in schools raising new concerns with some p

we start in washington with leigh ann caldwell on capitol hill. leigh ann, brand new reporting on who is giving opening statements tomorrow and who else speaker pelosi is considering adding to the committee. >> reporter: good morning, hallie. representative benny thompson, the top democrat on the committee is giving an opening statement tomorrow and so is representative liz cheney, a republican who is on this committee, of course, she's his pick by speaker pelosi. another member, representative jamie raskin told me the other day that representative cheney is not a formalized role that she is going to be the ranking republican, but it seems obvious, because she is the top republican, she was at the time the only republican, now we have a second, representative adam kinzinger, whose sources told me he wants this position. he wanted to be on this committee. he's like-minded on this issue as representative cheney and even speaker pelosi. so that position was formalized just yesterday, and all of this is happening as they are set to hold their first hea

nbc's leann leigh ann caldwell. >> what this endorsement from this group of bipartisan members does iss, that's how many members in the problem solvers caucus there is, could potentially vote for the bipartisan plan, and you mentioned the trickiest part, in their statement they want a standalone vote on this plan, and we know nancy pelosi, chuck schumer, and president biden have linked the bipartisan road infrastructure plan with a multi-trillion human infrastructure plan, and so this is going to be very difficult still for these leaders to get both of these packages through congress, but it is a very good sign for the bipartisan plan that this many republicans have come out in support of it, craig. >> this problem solvers group, it's the most moderate parts of both parties. where do things stand with the bill with regard to the more progressive part of the democratic party? >> yeah, this is the big question. if they can get the 29 republicans to vote for it in the end, well, that means they can lose 29 a couple more democrats. i have been talking to progressive sources today and they

and leigh ann caldwell is joining us from capitol hill.t they got to meeting with senator manchin and they did not bring up the filibuster at all apparently. >> same. but they said that a lot of people were talking to him about the filibuster, and so what the texas democrats say they are talking to senator joe manchin about is actual legislation that could potentially pass the senate to restore and ensure voting access at the polls, and something that senator joe manchin has been talking about as the john lewis voting rights act which is a restoration of the 1965 voting rights act that the supreme court gutted years ago and something that senator manchin says that he supports, but there are problems with that, geoff, and including that the house of representatives has not passed that legislation, and has not written the text the of the bill yet, and there is still not 60 votes in the senate for that if it should be brought up in this senate. so while people are talking about legislation and moving this legislation forward, the reality is t

nbc's leigh ann caldwell is on capitol hill for us. how the senator from new york is going to meet that timeline. as of this moment, as i understand it, neither of the bills have actually been written. >> reporter: you understand it correctly, craig. no bill has been written. let's separate these bills. the reconciliation bill, the $3.5 trillion democratic bill with all of their human infrastructure and big priorities, well, that legislative text cannot be written until the process is actually started. that's how the rules of the game work because they're using this special reconciliation budgetary process. so, they have to take votes first. and then they can write the legislation. as far as the bipartisan bill is concerned, that's not how it works. it's going through the regular legislative process and they do need legislative text but they can open debate without legislation, but republicans with balking at that saying, no, we are not going to start this process until the legislative text is finalized and agreed to. they don't have a

joining me now is nbc news capitol hill correspondent leigh ann caldwell and nbc editor benjie sarlwell holdup in terms of writing the legislation itself? >> geoff, first let's start with the big $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. the way that process worked, because it's not the normal legislative process, they actually need to start the process with votes before they can even write the legislative text. that is normal, that they don't have the legislative written. so let's put that aside for a moment. as far as the bipartisan plan is concerned, schumer wants to start that process next week because he's running up against a very difficult timeline where he has a lot of things backing up and it takes a lot of time to pass things on the senate floor. but some of the republicans in these negotiations say they aren't going to start this process, they're not going to agree to that until they have an agreement on legislative text and they aren't there yet. one of the biggest holdups is this idea of funding for irs enforcement. they are going to put money into this legislation to enforce p

leigh ann caldwell, thank you very much, we appreciate it.ncloss, and he was a major in the reserves. thank you for being here. i want to start with the possible furloughs for capitol police. it says a lot that the politics of this are such that the people that were throwing themselves in front of -- they were literally beaten by american flags to protect all of you on that day now may have to go without pay because of political infighting. what is your response to this reality and what needs to be done here? republicans are on track to vote to defund the police for a second time in this congressional term. they have already failed the american people and capitol police by trying to undermine a bipartisan objective to understand the insurrection on january 6th and that was an attack on our democracy and that would have provided transparency for the american people and now they're failing the capitol police again by threatening to withhold funds at the people's house. >> congressman, do you think the capitol is or would be able to survive in a

but let's begin with the action right now in washington with nbc capitol hill correspondent leigh ann caldwell and nbc correspondent peter alexander co-host of "weekend today." peter, let's talk about what the white house wants to get with the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the new plan through congress on to the desk of the president to rack up a big legislative win before the august recess and september and how can they get both at the same time with different coalitions. >> andrea, exactly right. that is what the president and the white house is facing at this time. the president within the next hour will be going behind this effort after going to meet with the senate democratic caucus on capitol hill to focus these $4 trillion in new spending as it relates to the first infrastructure package and that bipartisan deal that has $600 billion in traditional infrastructure roads, bridges and other items beyond that and also this $3.5 million and while we don't have specifics on $3.5 trillion and what exactly would be in there, this is what the president has referred to as items that would ad

let's go right to nbc's leigh ann caldwell on capitol hill. why is the fencing coming down now?reporter: good morning, chris. so, the u.s. capitol police board, which is the governing body that oversees security up here on capitol hill, has made the decision that this, what they call incremental change, can take place. now, the black fencing that has surrounded the entire capitol complex or at least the capitol building, has really been a symbol and a reminder of what took place on january 6th, and it has become a major political battle as well with republicans charging house speaker nancy pelosi with keeping the barrier up for political reasons, as a reminder of what happened on january 6th. speaker pelosi would always point to security and saying it's up to capitol police to decide when they feel they are safe enough to take the fence down. now, the fence has been reimagined over the past six months. it has been moved back, and it has been shortened, but this taking down of the entire fence is a big development as far as security is concerned up here, chris. >> well, speaking

congressional allies, and those notes were taken by congressional aide and now joining us is leigh ann caldwellnd so at that time, it was reported that he was wanting it to be reported corrupt so they could declare the election corrupt, so it shows the lengths he was going to go to remain in power. >> we know that president trump had been pressuring the justice department, and mark madows had been pressuring them to look into the conspiracy theory, and the note shows leave the rest to me, to get the justice department to buy into the false narrative and the justice department had proven that there was no evidence of widespread fraud on the order to overturn the election, and the president of the united states who had lost by 7 million votes in the popular count was trying in effect to get the government to endorse a false theory to justify staying in power at the end of the term. and we focus on january 6th, justifiably, because it was a big moment, but the events leading up to january 6th is important, too, and this is the revelation that is many that we will find in the weeks and months to co

. >> joining us is white house correspondent leigh ann caldwell, and what more do we know about the deal, and when could we have a the text of the agreement? >> hey, geoff, we are still waiting to hear what the details, but we know some stuff. the house and the senate republicans and democrats separately were briefed by the leaders in their party about what is in this bill. they left those respective meetings relatively optimistic about the negotiations that came together. we also know that this was a $579 billion proposal. that has been decreased to $550 billion, and trying to figure out exactly what was on the chopping block there. the big question is if this is going to pass the key procedural vote expected to take place as early as this evening that will need 60 senators including 10 republicans if all 50 democrats support it. my sources are saying that they do expect ten republicans to support it, and all 50 democrats to support it as well. so that is a very good sign. as far as the text the of the legislation is concerned, we are told later this afternoon and this evening that legi

and lucky for us, we have with us, nbc news capitol hill correspondent, leigh ann caldwell, mike memoli, and sahil kapur. and leigh ann, i was struck by the degree to which the number of questions in that room reflected the fact that kevin mccarthy did not approve of the bipartisan commission that was suggested and that was voted on before the house speaker took steps to set up this select committee. so you could make arguments that this has unfolded in exactly the way that kevin mccarthy wanted. when the house speaker rejects them, he then says, i told you this was a partisan pursuit all along. >> reporter: yeah, jeff. one of the members on that select committee who is now no longer on that select committee, represent rodney davis, he told me a couple of weeks ago that the fact that republicans refused to go along with this non-partisan commission that republicans blocked, especially in the senate, that it was becoming republicans' worst nightmare, because now you go from this nonpartisan commission to this partisan select committee that is run by the democrats, where republicans don't

sahil kapur and leigh ann caldwell, carmen best, jeremy bash, sedrick alexander, thank you. most of you will be standing by, because before the hearing begins, let's look at where the investigation stands right now, as of this morning. >> nearly 570 people so far have been charged, at least five agreed to cooperate with the government, two have been sentenced and in just the past 24 hours a northern illinois couple became the latest suspects charged in the insurrection. joining our special coverage now, justice correspondent pete williams, katie brenner, for the "new york times," frank the former assistant director for fbi counter intelligence and clint watts is a former fbi special agent. pete developing news that i know is coming in to us this morning and it relates to former trump administration officials now apparently being able to testify to the justice department in the separate and concurrent investigation. why is this significant? >> well, katie was the first to report this, candidly, but we confirmed the justice department sent letters. my understanding is as peopl

leigh ann caldwell, capitol hill correspondent forn news and weijia jiang, cbs correspondent for cbsews. weijia, talk to us about the decision to pull out of afghanistan. president biden has been out forcibly defending his position. weijia: right, that's what happened yesterday. the real news is that his deadline moved up from what he initially set for september 11 and now plans to get all the troops out by the end of august. this was an opportunity to explain why and he made clear that from the beginning the u.s. was out for, one, hunting down osama bin laden and two, eliminating al qaeda's threat to the home lan he said both were accomplished and therefore it is time to pull out. he got a lot of questions about the civil war that looks like is already unfolding and about the fall of the afghan government and whether the u.s. would bare any responsibilies for the chaos likely to erupted and he said no. because we've done our part, not only for those two things but also equipping and training the afghan forces that he said had the capacity to defend themselves. his own intelligence c

. >> joining us now nbc news capitol hill correspondent leigh ann caldwell. h ann, you were in the room for yesterday's hearing what did you find to be the most surprising or important moment? >> reporter: good morning, elise. i was in the room for most of that yesterday, and it was really hard to sit there in this very serious, somber sad room. but watching these officers watch their video body cam footage was probably the hardest part for them, having to relive this experience again. what came out for me, out of this hearing is that the point of this hearing was not only to tell these officers' stories to let them tell their firsthand accounts of the front lines of that day, but also to refute all of the january 6th denying that has been going on among the republican party up on capitol hill, and conservative media. and that was an important thing to get on the record for this committee. and also to push back against these january 6th deniers. and so, while for all of us who cover this very closely and watch every incremental new piece of information that co

but let's begin with the action right now in washington with nbc capitol hill correspondent leigh ann caldwell's talk about what the white house wants to get with the bipartisan infrastructure bill and theew

joining us is nbc news capitol hill correspondent leigh ann caldwell, and ashley parker, and the nationalirman of the serve america movement former congressman david jolly, and a big welcome to the three of you. leigh ann, before we get to the committee, the house speaker did not rule out adding more republicans to the committee, and who might they be? >> that's right, geoff, she did not rule it out. and she said that the committee is now bipartisan, and she said it is nonpartisan, and of course, one republican on the committee representative liz cheney and conversations, and discussions happening, our sources tell us, about adding another republican perhaps or more. the biggest contender seems to be representative adam ken zinger and an ally of representative cheney, and outspoken about the lies told about the election and january 6th consistency, and our colleague, haley talbot, she caught up with speaker pelosi as she was leaving her office and asked her if she thinks that adam kenzinger would make a good member of the selection committee and she said that everyone else is, and so she

leigh ann caldwell has the latest from capitol hill. igh ann, these house and senate bills are both smaller than what democrats were trying to pass before. does that mean they're going to get more support? >> it's a good question, steph. the senate is proposing a slimmed-down voting rights legislation. it could be released as early as next week. and now in the house of representatives, ten house democrats sent a letter to speaker pelosi asking for something similar. they want to take out the campaign finance and the ethics reforms and other things from for the people act and focus just on access to the polls. now, this new push is coming as progressives are really pushing leadership to do it. also some of these members are facing tough redistricting and tough re-elections. they say time is of the essence. senator raphael warnock of georgia who is leading this push in the senate said that voting rights is just as important as everything else the senate is focused on right now, including infrastructure. let's take a listen. >> passing voti

joining us now is nbc news capitol hill correspondent leigh ann caldwell, and playbook coauthor eugene daniels and former fbi special agent and msnbc national security analyst clint watt. it is great to have the three of you with us. leigh ann, we have heard the new attack line of pelosi republican, and also about the phone call when he heard that she was going to nix two of his picks, and help us unpack this. >> it is not a traditional committee, and you have two republicans on the committee of course, representative adam ken zinger and liz cheney who are like-minded on the claim that the false claims that the election was stolen or that he did not lose the election, and so this is one that is not commonly seen up here on capitol hill. that group of nine members just broke up from a preparation meeting ahead of tomorrow's first committee hearing regarding the capitol police officers and the rank and file d.c. metropolitan police officers. and our colleague haley talbot caught up with adam kinzinger, and he said that leader mccarthy can say whatever he wants to say, and that the remark

leigh ann caldwell, thank you. >>> congressman, thank you for being with us this morning.s that have been mentioned, based on our reporting, would you welcome any of those people to join us in this investigation? >> well, i'll let the republican leader makes his appointments. that is his prerogative. i have served with some of these members on his committees so i hope he appoints people who will work with us in pursuing the truth. that's the only objective here, to find out what happened, find out how we can prevent this, and make sure that it never happens again. it shouldn't be that hard in pursuit of the truth. that's what we hope the republican leader who appoints people with that focus. >> you point out thats kevin mccarthy's prerogative to choose the residence. it's also speaker pelosi's prerogative to veto any of those potential picks. is it possible she already has? where does this process stand? >> the republican leader can make his nomination, and we'll go from there. again, we just hope it's folks guided by following the truth. that's what we want out of this co

. >>> joining us now, mn msnbc's correspondent leigh ann caldwell. does this have some teeth to it?reporter: he has no obligation to appoint or keep members on this committee at all. speaker pelosi wrote in the legislation that congress passed to create this select committee that she can override any choices. that mccarthy makes. it's ultimately her decision who sits on this committee. so what mccarthy did, he stuck with his members. he was not interested in participated in this committee anyway. there was lots of questions if he was even going to appoint anyone. he ended up doing that, and so, yeah, he absolutely can pull his members, and as you said at the top, this is an unprecedented move by pelosi. also in unprecedent times, congress has really been broken since january 6th, and this is a further manifestation of that, jonathan. >> unprecedent but also maybe predictable? walk us through how this plays out now. let's say mccarthy refuses to put any members on the committee. does he create his own committee or working group to come up with their own findings or does he simply say

>> joining us are leigh ann caldwell and benji sarlan. you work in the capitol every day.ast 6 months. >> reporter: i've governored capitol off and on for the past 15 years. it is extremely different from last 6 months ago. hard to explain the mood up here. fundamentally, there is a major breakdown of trust between the two parties, especially in the house of representatives where some democrats say how can you expect us to work with some of these republicans who are either january 6th deniers or gaslighters? that is manifested in the lack of distrust is manifested in the fact that there are still metal detectors outside the house chamber for house members to enter the house floor to vote. you will see the politics in disrepair of the january 6th commission and the creation of a select committee when that commission was not possible with republican leader kevin mccarthy not even yet saying he will definitely appoint republican members to that committee. so the politics here has just become much more divided than i personally have ever seen it, jeff. >> let's talk about sort

. >> nbc's leigh ann caldwell is on capitol hill. we expect to hear from speak e pelosi next hour. imagine she gets questions from you and colleagues in the press corps where democrats plan to go from here next. >> she sure will, hallie. while we know they're going to continue their work and perhaps even come back in their august break for another hearing perhaps, we don't know specifically what topic they're going to tackle next or what direction they're going to head. we do know that representative cheney, one of the two republicans on that committee, says that she wants to know what happened every minute at the white house on january 6th, so we can be sure that the white house and the former president is going to be a focus, and last night on fox news, jim jordan was asked if he spoke with the former president on january 6th, something that was rumored but was not confirmed. he said that he did. so liz cheney said jim jordan will likely be a material witness so that is likely to play into that. i asked a community aide if that is a factor. they said they don't have comment on th

here's what manchin had to say when our own leigh ann caldwell asked him questions about the civil rights filibuster. >> is that something you could support? >> well, the bottom line is we should be working together on basically legislation that protects the people's right to vote. that should be something that should be common sense. people should have a right to vote, it should be secured, it should be accessible, and it should be fair. >> are you getting any republican support? >> we're getting there. >> reporter: senator kyrsten sinema said she's friends with one of those. she's been outspoken. >>> joining us now, senior politics reporter, grace. thanks for joining us. we've got this critical meeting with joe manchin coming up. he's come up with enormous pressure from civil rights activists, voting rights groups to essentially outline what he would support. he finally did that. he knows if this is going to come to a head, maybe sooner rather than later. what's at stake for these texas democrats today? >> for them, everything. they left the state and went halfway across the country, le

. >> and let's sink into it with mike memoli and also leigh ann caldwell.this argument are clear. and it is critical to what happens withinfrastructure, republicans are blaming the president for inflation. today we heard firsthand his response. >> yeah, that's right. and this is a white house that is very well aware of what the lead republican argument has been against his spending proposals and the president tried to go on offense today and i thought it was interesting how he did so. first by rewinding the clock since months as he prepares to mark the first half year in office tomorrow. he noted that his critics and his former opponent were predicting that if he were elected, if he were sworn in, that as he put it, there would be a socialist agenda being implemented and he said in a capitalism is alive and well talking about the fact that the economy has rebounded beyond what many were projecting six months ago. so with that pretext, he argued had if we tackle some of the long standing issues like child care and infrastructure and boosting manufacturing, i

joining us now is nbc's garrett haake and leigh ann caldwell on the hill.'ve all been withdrawn after pelosi's veto. let's listen to what she had to say yesterday. >> i am absolutely confident that we will have a non-partisan investigation, that it will look at the facts. that it will go wherever the facts may lead. there are three members that the minority leader proposed that speaker did not object to. she has objected to two members and the rhetoric around this from the minority leader and from those two members has been disgraceful. >> garrett, this puts her in a unique position, certainly, as the leader is about to come out. >> cheney's indispensable now, and she was before hand. we have word about just how valuable she has been and how seriously she was taking it and as the only remaining republican on the panel and i'm not convinced she'll be the only republican on tuesday. this is bipartisan and this isn't democrats going after donald trump and this is a bipartisan search for the truth and that's valuable. we hear now, leigh ann, that you confirmed

>> leigh ann caldwell, live on the hill. >>> senator jon tester, as we've been promising, live now onitol hill. thanks for being back on the show. >> great to be with you. thank you. >> of course. we should note you're a member of the bipartisan group working on the more narrow senate track. are we going to see details on that release today? i know there was some discussion around that. do you anticipate bringing a bill to the floor by next week? >> hopefully, we will see details, at least by tomorrow. we're working hard to iron out. look, the hang-ups now are pretty small, to be quite frank with you. there are still some issues on pay-fors, but it's a great group of ten people. we've worked on harder things than this. we'll get it done. hopefully, it will be out tomorrow and hopefully be ready for prime time next week for a vote. >> senator john thune called it, in his words, awfully hard to look at your bipartisan framework. >> they're two separate bills, dealing both with infrastructure, different kind of infrastructure, of course. i will tell you that the five republicans and four

leigh ann caldwell. thank you very much. appreciate your reporting.ylvania who is an excellent person to talk to about the final point that leigh ann was making right there. congresswoman, thank you so much for spending time with us today and i'm curious. pennsylvania is a state that is changing, has been affected for sure as we faced this sort of rural, urban realignment under president trump. what's your sense of passing the bipartisan piece of this means for some of these swing districts in particular in your state where there are members who only narrowly won and who really would like to be able to show results to their constituents? >> kasie, it's good to be with you and i want to thank you first for the coverage for the florida families. may god bless them and the first responders there over the course of this weekend we were reminded how difficult and heroic the work is. we lost a firefighter on july 4th here in our area in lower marian which i'm sure you're familiar with since you're from wayne, pennsylvania. god bless those first responders.

leigh ann caldwell on capitol hill and mark murray.pect this news conference to begin any minute. it's slated to start at the top of the hour. we know sometimes house speaker pelosi runs late. we don't have any indication that will happen right now. as you and your team pointed out there's a couple of big questions for her as we come on the air. number one, specific reasons for booting jim jordan, congressman banks as well. and, second, is she going to fill those seats? and if so, with who? do you have any insights from your conversations with sources? >> reporter: that's right, speaker pelosi threw a bombshell in the process when she said she was not going to approve two of leader mccarthy's choices to serve on this select committee. speaker pelosi was mostly silent yesterday. she did not come and speak to cameras. she did not really talk much to reporters. instead, representative liz cheney, the only republican currently serving on that committee because she is a speaker pelosi choice, she's the one who came and spoke to reporters sa

and democrats on the committee have told me and leigh ann caldwell that if you were to put a blind foldlings on this were coming from a republican. they sound like what the democrats are saying about what happened on january 6. and the fact that people who disagree on almost every other policy issue are working together in this way is important. and if you wouldn't mind, i want to fact check jim banks there the idea that pelosi has control over the security of the capitol. the capitol police board has one member who is appointed by the house speaker, one who the house speaker has a role in, but the idea that pelosi had operational control over capitol hill security is just not true. >> so a straight up lie. jake, we'll be hearing from four law enforcement officers during tomorrow's hearing. it will be difficult to hear their stories. but we've actually heard a lot of what they experienced already. they have given lengthy tv interviews. these are important stories. but are we going to learn anything new? what are we looking for? >> well, we understand that there will be new video tomorro

. >>> we'll jump back across north capital street to my colleague, leigh ann caldwell, waiting to hearcision to pull republican members from this select committee on january 6th. we are less a than a week from that hearing. how do we think the democrats and liz cheney will proceed with that hearing, knowing that now they'll have the opportunity to make their case largely unhindered. >> reporter: that's right. it could be a much easier job for them, actually, to get to the points of what they want to get to and they've said all along that they are interested in not only find ought what happened on that day, on january 6th, but in the lead up and what speaker pelosi has said repeatedly over the past couple of weeks is that also the money behind it, the funding behind the protests and the riots on january 6th. and so they have -- >> leigh ann, i'm going to wrap you here. we have kevin mccarthy at the podium along with the five members who will not be on the select committee. let's hear what they have to say. >> speaker pelosi has taken the unprecedented step of denying the minority party'