. >>> joining us now, congressional reporter nicholas wu. good morning. this has been a long saga with lots of twists and turns. where are we now? what are the roadblocks that we're currently facing in order for this infrastructure deal to happen? >> you identified one of the key roadblocks here. senators are still trying to figure out ways to pay for anything let alone identify their key spending priorities. and so even if the senate does advance the bill and passes the procedural vote on wednesday, it still leaves them time to hash everything out. as was mentioned a few moments ago, this is something that could face a lot of resistance among republicans if they're being told to vote for something that has really not come together yet. and so this is yet another roadblock in the long path to achieve some kind of infrastructure package. >> let me ask you a quick followup on this one? what's your assessment? how close was this deal to collapsing last week? do we feel like it's in decent shape now? do we know how much the white house wants? there's a lots t

so joining me now nicholas wu, congressional reporter for "politico". welcome.his? >> this absolutely opens up a host of other avenues for committees to investigate things around the january 6th insurrection and beyond. so when i talked to lawmakers this past week democrats were increasingly confident they could use this department of justice ruling to find a way to get ex-trump administration officials to testify before the select committee, and this could mean that officials from the department of justice like jeffrey rosen or acting deputy attorney general donoghue, who were found recently to have been pressured by trump to try to call the election corrupt, to come and testify before, say, the select committee or the house oversight committee. so we'll see how this plays out over the coming weeks after the house comes back from its recess. >> i'm going to go through a bunch of names here. this according to david corn from "mother jones" who came out this week responding to the efforts with a list of top republicans who he believes should be brought in to test

nicholas wu, thank you so much for your insights. >>> a very good day to all of you from msnbc world headquarters here in new york. welcome to ""alex witt reports"." here is what is happening at 2:00 p.m. eastern, 11:00 a.m. pacific time. we begin the hour with the coronavirus pandemic. today cases, hospitalizations and deaths are up in almost every state. the number of new cases is up more than 64% this week according to the cdc. this week the new daily case average has surged to 66,000 a day, compared to 40,000 a week ago. new data from the cdc reveals it was concerned over breakthrough cases that prompted a reversal of the agency's mask guidance for vaccinated americans. the study behind the change shows three-fourths of people infected in a massachusetts outbreak were vaccinated. the cdc says this suggests it is possible vaccinated people can still spread the virus. >>> nationwide, at least 125,000 fully vaccinated americans have tested positive for the virus according to data collected by nbc news. it is important to note that these cases though represent a total of less than .0

wu. nicholas, it's great to have you here.nks for getting up so early after the late fourth of july night celebrations. i want to spin back to the the possibility of president trump testifying. i mean, what do we know about how this is going to unfold? we talked about the benghazi select committee meeting. what is your latest reporting on how this is going to proceed? >> right. well, the very first hearing they're going to have is going to strike a slightly different tone. chairman benie thompson told us last week he wants to hold a hearing where the members of the capitol police will talk about their experience on january 6th, where many officers were injured, beaten by protesters, and are still dealing with the long-term psychological trauma of that day. but moving on from that, he and other top democrats have repeatedly declined to rule out calling people like former president trump or even former leader kevin mccarthy to testify about what happened that day and this could shed some light on exactly what happened. it's wort