The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC, Rachel's got the night off, but she's going to be back on Monday and for a Friday in the dark days of winter.

There's certainly a lot going on today. Let's start with the team that President Biden is trying to assemble and try is the operative word here. A month into his presidency, fewer than half of Joe Biden's cabinet nominees have been confirmed. Only seven Cabinet officials have been seated. The Senate still has not voted on the other 16. Four of them are still waiting to get a hearing. And tonight, they've hit another bump in the road. Neera Tanden is Joe Biden's nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget.

She's worked on numerous Democratic presidential campaigns. She worked in the Obama administration. Now, Republicans have said Tanden should be disqualified to run OMB, essentially because her tweets about them were too mean, which is pretty rich coming from some of Donald Trump's most ardent supporters.

Now, President Biden's cabinet nominees, they don't need Republican support to pass. But with the Senate in a 50 50 split without any Republican on board, Biden's team can't afford to lose any Democratic support either. And that's where we get the speed bump today.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced tonight that he will not vote for Neera Tanden to lead OMB. Zero Republicans right now are expected to support her nomination. So barring some kind of surprise on that side of the aisle, Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget appears to be DOA.

Barack Obama's nominee to run the Commerce Department had to withdraw from consideration in 2009 for this reason due to lack of support in the Senate. Same with Donald Trump's pick to lead the Labor Department. As Rachel likes to say. Watch this space. We've also got our eyes on Texas tonight where tens of thousands of people are still without power in what is turning out to be a slow rolling catastrophe for the state.

Millions of people in Texas are under a boil water advisory. That's complications from these rolling power outages that have made the water unsafe to drink for millions of people because the water filtration plants don't have power. We're going have a live report out of Texas in just a moment.

But also today, we got a five hundred and ninety one page document reading material to cozy up with this weekend. House Democrats have released the long awaited text of their covid relief bill. Now, this bill would provide qualifying Americans with fourteen hundred dollar relief checks. It would extend the federal unemployment benefits. It would provide much needed assistance to small businesses. The bill provides money to the states to speed up the vaccine effort and help schools reopen safely. It also calls for increasing the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour over the course of a few years.

The total price of the package is one point nine dollars trillion dollars, which many Republicans say is too expensive. So today, President Biden addressed those concerns about the price tag of the covid relief bill. He said he was open to discussions about how to make the bill better and more cost effective. But he dared Republicans to be specific about how they want to cut costs because lowering the price of that bill means depriving Americans of a much needed financial lifeline.

It means denying states what they need to start returning back to normal.

So what exactly would Republicans cut back?

Let me ask them, what would they have me cut or would that be leave out? Should we not invest 20 billion dollars to vaccinate the nation? Should we not invest two hundred ninety million dollars to extend unemployment insurance for the 11 million Americans who are unemployed so they can get by? Well, they get back to work, should we not invest 50 billion dollars of small businesses, stay open with tens of thousands have had to close permanently and pass the American rescue plan, 40 million Americans will lose nutritional assistance through a program we call SNAP, the old food stamp program.

Do we not invest three million dollars, three billion dollars to keep families from going hungry? This is the United States of America, for God's sake. We invest in people. We're in need. President Biden make those remarks today at a Pfizer plant in Michigan, where they are manufacturing one of the two covid vaccines that are currently approved for use here in the United States. You've got a tour of the facility and he reiterated his promise that the United States would have enough vaccine on hand for the entire country by the end of July, was just shy of a year ago that this national nightmare began.

So this is welcome news and it comes at the end of a week of what was really sustained.

Good covid news.

The United States saw twenty nine percent decrease in covid cases this week compared to the same time seven days ago. This is the steepest one week decline since the pandemic began. The director of the CDC said today that covid cases have been on the steady decline for the past five weeks in a row. That's too early to say exactly why we are seeing such a steep decline. It could be a passing rush of cases from the holiday season. It could be stricter mask wearing and social distancing.

The early effects of the vaccine could be all of the above.

It's going to be a while longer, though, before we can let our guard down because we need more vaccines in arms before we do that. And today there was promising news on that front as well. One of the biggest logistical hurdles in administering the vaccine so far has been keeping it cold enough.

Both the Pfizer in the Moderna, vaccines must be kept at freezing temperatures before they're put into syringes.

Otherwise the doses will spoil. Now, right now, the Pfizer vaccine in particular has to be kept remarkably cold, somewhere between minus one hundred and twelve and minus seventy six degrees. But that might be changing.

Pfizer's announced that its data shows the vaccine may not need to be stored in an ultra cold freezer in order to be effective, but could instead be kept in a normal freezer, the kind that are more commonly in use. Now, this would significantly untangle some of the logistical hurdles that have slowed down the vaccine distribution so far. And Pfizer has officially asked the FDA for permission to allow its vaccine to be stored at a higher temperature. Right now, the Pfizer vaccine requires two doses.

And on that front, we've got yet more promising data. A peer reviewed study out of Israel found today that just one dose of the Pfizer vaccine was eighty five percent effective at preventing symptomatic cases of covid-19. Eighty five percent immunity. That's practically the whole ballgame. The faster we could vaccinate people with a vaccine that's eighty five percent effective, the faster we could achieve herd immunity.

And that's what they've been experimenting with in Great Britain. In the United Kingdom, they're waiting several months to administer second doses instead of the recommended several weeks like we're doing here in the United States. The idea is to try and offer a lower, lower level of immunity to a larger group of people by vaccinating more people once instead of fewer people twice.

That decision was controversial at the time, but this new data out of Israel seems to vindicate that strategy, which begs the question, should we be considering that, too?

Joining us to help make sense of this is someone who is going to advise the White House in making these decisions. Andy Slavitt is the White House senior adviser on the covid-19 response. Andy, this is the first time we've spoken since your appointment. Thank you for joining me tonight. Can we talk a little bit about this? We were told in the beginning that it's really important that you get the vaccine the first dose, you get the second dose at prescribed time interval.

You certainly can't mix it with another vaccine. And now we're getting this evidence about greater levels of protection than we thought. Explain this to me as an expert. What's the math on that? Is it better to do to to inject more people with one dose than it is to inject fewer people with two doses?

Well, good to be with you, Ali. Let me give you the bottom line first. The bottom line first is that everybody should still be getting their second dose now. It is good news to hear and to the new data comes in. And I think I spoke with the FDA today. I spoke with the NIH today. They pore over new data as it comes in, multiple studies. But the thing that I think to keep in mind is not just the efficacy of the vaccine, but but the durability of the vaccine.

And with with only one shot of Pfizer Moderna, the current view is that the vaccine just doesn't last long enough. So the second dose is really, really important. The other thing that Dr. Foushee mentioned to me today is that with the second vaccine, you have a much better chance against variants. The second vaccine at Pfizer, as we, as we know, does pretty well against the South African variant. And all of the vaccines we know do very well against the UK variant, but that's with two doses.

So they're going to continue to look at the data. But right now, people shouldn't be confused. The current recommendation from the FDA and it will be for some time is to take two, not one. Andy, let's talk about that term, you just used durability. We are approaching a year from the first case was the first widespread cases and boy, last March and April and May were a really difficult time. So there are people who got coronavirus then who are now approaching a year.

How how effective how long do we believe these viruses last at the moment? Will be anybody protection we know. And how long it lasts? Well, we can't precisely say, but we do know that that lasts at least 90 days and at six months to nine months, it's not as clear. What we also know anecdotally is that some of the variants, potentially the one from South Africa, the one from from Brazil, there may not be antibody protected from a first dose.

That's why the recommendation, of course, is that people still wear masks. Why people who've had Kuvin should still get vaccinated because the vaccines offer the strongest protection. Andy, let's let's talk a little bit about the rate at which people are being vaccinated. We're at about one point six million doses a day, but it seems that if we were not constrained by supply, we could be at a higher number than that. Yeah, I mean, we are going to continue to ramp up the production of vaccines and states are getting better and better at being able to to move through the vaccines that they have.

When we when we got here on January 20th, we didn't have enough vaccines that weren't enough. There were no vaccines and inventory. We hadn't yet ordered enough and purchased enough vaccines for the American public. The president directed us to do that. There weren't enough vaccination sites and there weren't enough vaccinators. We've taken action and all of those. And as a result, since January 20th, we've increased the amount of vaccines we shipped to states by 60 percent.

We've also been we also started a retail pharmacy program. We were setting up 100 community vaccination sites. And we're moving vaccines into community health centers to make sure that we get the equity and not just that we get more people vaccinated, but that we get people fairly vaccinated, including those that are most at risk and vulnerable communities. So that's a lot of progress. But we know it's not fast enough. We know that there we are still in a shortage situation.

Be very blunt. We're going to be in a shortage situation for some matter of time, probably measured in months, not likely weeks, certainly not more than certainly not beyond the middle of the year. And until that time, we know there's going to be more people that want vaccines than we have vaccines available. And it's good to see you again, thank you for joining us tonight. Andy Slavitt is the White House senior adviser on the covid-19 response.

We appreciate your time tonight. Thanks, Andy. Well, another part of the Biden administration's covid response that is getting extra attention this week is how the week's storms are delaying vaccine distribution. The storms that are pummeling the country have delayed distribution of six million doses of the vaccine. But while those problems are expected to be dealt with in the coming days, residents of Texas and other southern states could be feeling the effects of this weather for months to come.

After living without power and heat for days on end, something as basic as water is now a major issue in the state. In Harris County, which is home to Houston County, officials say tens of thousands of buildings have burst pipes, not only causing extensive property damage and flooding, but also making it hard to get access to clean, drinkable water. And look at what happened in San Antonio. This was the scene last night after a fire broke out within the flooring of an apartment building just outside the city.

Flames quickly consumed the entire building. After a few hours, the building collapsed, but not before cars parked on the street and in front of the building also caught fire, eventually forcing residents of other nearby buildings to evacuate. Dozens of firefighters were on the scene throughout the night trying to tame this blaze. But once again, access to water became the issue when they went to tap the nearby fire hydrants.

They were all frozen. They were basically useless. They were frozen, dried. The water in them didn't come out. They had to call on dozens of water tender trucks from across the region for reinforcement. Even still, hours passed before they were able to put out the flames. One firefighter told me today this is a firefighter's worst nightmare. You're there, you're on the scene and you can't put the fire out.

That's a situation in Texas right now as much of the state has been in crisis every day this week, millions of residents are still under boil water notices.

Residents have to boil their tap water before consuming it, which might work in a pinch if the taps worked, if water came out, if pipes weren't burst.

People have been forced to wait in line to fill containers with the water they need for their families. Given that their pipes have been frozen, shut or broken, 20 percent of San Antonio still has no water pressure. Meanwhile, more than one hundred thousand people in the state are still without power and heat. Temperatures were once again below freezing throughout much of the state last night, as they have been all week. People have been doing everything they can to get warm, wrapping themselves in winter gear and blankets, burning paper and artwork as kindling, sleeping in their cars, turning on their car engines indoors to try to warm up, which is incredibly dangerous.

That has caused a spike in carbon monoxide poisoning. At least five people have died from it. Texas is in crisis. Much of this was possibly avoidable. We knew weeks ago that this winter storm was headed south straight for Texas. Texas never designed its power grid to withstand the high demand, extreme winter weather that they get. But the board of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Bercot, met ahead of the storm.

They said they were ready for winterisation, that they were ready for the storm. This is how the president and chief executive officer, officer of Earth got began the board meeting on February the 9th. And one thing I want to say before I really get into the presentation is it's actually going to be winter here pretty soon as many of you and those of you in Texas know, we do have a cold front coming this way. We'll probably see our winter peak later this week or in the very early part of next week.

And operations is issued an operating condition notice just to make sure everyone is up to speed with their winterization. And we're ready for the several days of pretty frigid temperatures to come our way. So more on that over the next few days. But it does look like we will have a little bit of winter weather to contend with during the course of the rest of this week. So I want to go on to the next slide, if we could, after that.

A little bit of winter weather to contend with.

We're ready. Next slide, if we could. The head of our court made that statement about the then upcoming star storm took them 40 seconds.

That's all he needed to relay the message about the energy grids, preparedness for the storm, 40 seconds. One of the many Texas officials outraged by this story is County Judge Kepi George. A judge in Texas is the top elected official in a county. Fort Bend, Texas, is just outside of Houston. Earlier today, Kepi George George tweeted 40 seconds. Years of deregulation and lack of care led to this abject failure. Judge Kepi George also took a shot at state officials like Governor Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz writing Bercot brought to you by the people who are blaming windmills vacationing in Cancun and saying Texans chose blackouts instead of federal partnerships.

Joining me now from Fort Bend County, a huge county, which is right next to Houston, is Judge Kepi George Judge. George, I appreciate your time tonight. This is what you call gaslighting for people who don't understand the term when you go out and you tell somebody something that's a lie to distract from whatever it is that you're trying to distract them for. The idea that Texans chose not to be part of a larger grid because they'd rather be freezing and cold and without water, then have federal involvement in energy.

The idea that it was alternative energy that caused this because of frozen windmills, you don't have power in Texas.

It's gaslighting. It is it is yesterday, and I tell you this 90 year old senior citizens calling me and saying that I'm on my last oxygen cylinder and mother calling me and saying that my four week old baby, I'm driving around in their car to keep that baby warm and then people struggling with burst pipes and people struggling to keep themselves warm. And 850000 of my residents, I don't think not even a single one said or agree with what that statement is all about.

You also have a very strange situation.

You've got the governor and others making these statements, and then you've got the situation where your your senator, Ted Cruz, got himself mired in a situation in which he he left the state. What is this what is the solution actually look like in Texas? What needs to be done right now to get people out of the emergency that they're in, in which people are actually dying and what needs to be done? But in the longer term, to accept the fact that you're going to have weather instances like this and you have to be prepared.

I just I just think you don't you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out and also understand that you mentioned so before. We are for some reason, it's for the Lone Star State. And I just wanted to be very clear. I just wanted to say I'm so proud of being in Texas. We love Texas. And it's it's a unique state. But at the same time, when it comes to this kind of weather events, we cannot manage it alone.

And and also right now, I'm calling for a full investigation and the Texans need to know why this happened, what is the reason why it happened? And there should be some kind of answers coming. And also, I understand that our legislature is not in session right now and next Thursday. I believe that is a hearing on this issue. In between, Governor Abbott issued an investigation on onto our courts and also he asked the leadership to resign. But he appointed these people and and obviously, I believe they should have known better.

And so my point is, I am right here on the ground. You know, I'm I'm I'm the boots on the ground. And I am seeing this my citizens start calling me about these issues I mentioned. And I'm I'm going to the shelters that I'm setting up, warming centers. And I'm talking to people and they're saying last night is the first time in a week I slept here from a 80 year old person. It is heartbreaking. And, you know, Texas is a unique place.

But this is this many of this stuff would have be. Judge George, good to see you. Thank you for joining us. Our wishes are with you and the people of Texas that you stay warm. I bet a couple of power outages in the northeast this winter.

And we're we're much better prepared for it. But they're not pleasant under any circumstances to be cold in your own water.

Yes, I personally got my my home flooded so so I can understand exactly how my residents feel. Yeah. Thank you.

Our heart goes out to you and our thoughts are with you and our support is with you. Fort Ben County Judge Kepi George, thank you for your time tonight. We wish you the best of luck. All right. A lot more to get here tonight, too, tonight. Up next, a Republican, an example of Republicans in another state trying to pull some sleight of hand and stack the deck in their favor.

Stay with us for that story. Over the past year, the state of Georgia has done more than any other state to shape the political future of this country. After all, it was that grassroots driven voter mobilization in Georgia that flipped the state blue for the first time in nearly three decades, helping Joe Biden become president.

It was that historic result in Georgia that led then President Donald Trump to try and pressure Republican elected officials in Georgia to help him reverse the outcome of that election, a move that may yet land him in prison as Georgia prosecutors continue to investigate the matter.

It was also Georgia, where just one day before a violent right wing mob stormed the US Capitol, Democrats once again managed to turn out voters in historic numbers, electing not one but two Democratic senators handing Democrats control of the Senate. Every major piece of legislation that comes out of this Congress and this White House, including the sweeping coronavirus relief relief package that was just announced today, all of it is possible because of what happened in Georgia in November and then in January.

And so it makes sense that now, just as the rest of the nation finally thought it could stop focusing on Georgia, Republicans in Georgia are taking aggressive action to try to stop anything like that from ever happening again. Yesterday, Georgia Republicans introduced a set of sweeping new bills to limit access to polls in that state. Among the provisions in these new bills is a move to significantly restrict absentee voting in Georgia.

All Georgians have been able to vote absentee since two thousand and five without any problems under laws that were created and passed by Republicans. It was all good while Republicans were winning elections, I guess. But now the Democrats have won three statewide elections in Georgia, where the absentee ballots tended to favor Democrats. Suddenly, suddenly, Georgia Republicans have decided to significantly restrict who can and cannot vote absentee.

One bill would also end early in-person voting voting on Sundays days when black churches have historically held something called souls to the polls drives to turnout their members.

I'll give you three reasons why Republicans are three guesses as to why Republicans want to end early voting on Sundays in particular.

Of course, all of this comes just after Georgia held two elections with record levels of both early and absentee voting elections, where Georgia's own Republican secretary of state has stated emphatically there was no widespread voter fraud.

And Georgia Republicans do not appear eager to debate the merits of the bill before passing it, according to NPR. The text of one voter suppression bill was introduced just one hour before it was passed out of committee, giving the Democrats on that committee barely any time to find out what was in it. So what happens next in the state of Georgia? Georgia Democrats are still in the minority in the state House and the Senate. So is there anything they can do to stop these changes?

Joining us now is Democratic Georgia State Representative Rhonda Bruno. Representative Bruno, thank you for joining us. Tell me the status of this. This is a remarkable and interesting matter in that Republicans until this election were all about early voting and absentee voting. They wrote that law into being they they are the ones who passed these laws into being. Thank you for having me tonight. Yes, we did receive this bill yesterday and today during a committee meeting, it was a hearing in which fellow Georgians were able to talk to us about their concerns about HB five.

Thirty one, as we know, Georgia has been a leader in providing voters more options to vote than most states. So why would they undermine why we undermine our own success? And as you said, is basically because we did win those three elections. And so now they want to change all of the rules. And ostensibly, it's to stop illegal voting, fraudulent voting, but your own secretary of state, I've seen him itemize the cases that they're investigating.

They're very, very few there.

There's no evidence at all of widespread voter fraud, despite the fact that that secretary of state, a Republican, is under remarkable pressure from allies of Donald Trump to find voter fraud.

Yes, you are correct, there is no widespread voter fraud in the state of Georgia. So for that reason, we don't understand why all of a sudden we received a bill that was forty eight pages and it was a combination of all the worst bills that they could come up with. It would now prevent us. It would limit the days for for early voting. It would, of course, as you said, Black Sunday voting and one of the very popular things that happened during our elections, what will limit ballot drop boxes and also outside funding that they don't want the election supervisors to apply for the various grants that were offered during the election season.

There's a there's an element in here which is kind of interesting, because one thing we've watched in Georgia, not just in these last two elections, but in the previous election, which Stacey Abrams is running, is, you know, the degree to which people would stand outside for hours to be prepared to vote. There's there's a part of this bill that prohibits the handing out of food and water to voters. It says that no person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person display or distribute any campaign material, nor shall any person give offer to give or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including but not limited to food and drink to an elector.

So people would take water to people who were standing for hours in lines. This bill would make that a crime. Yes, it would, but part of the bill, yes, it would make it a crime and those people who were passing out water were passing it out to everybody, they didn't go up and ask anybody if you were a Republican or Democrat. And with all the changes that they're trying to do with this bill, we will go back to having long lines, people standing in line, not seniors not being able to have seats.

And so with all these changes, they're trying to take us backwards instead of forwards.

It is a remarkable development. We will watch it closely with you, Representative, thank you for joining us. Georgia state representative, underhandedly, we we appreciate your time tonight.

Still ahead, a very real example of the change that Georgia voters decided on in November.

Stay with us. All right, here's proof of how much difference an election makes during President Trump's first G7 meeting back in twenty seventeen, he was the last to show up for the traditional photo op, forcing the other world leaders to wait around for him. He was also noticeably absent when the group decided to walk through the Sicilian town that was hosting the summit. You can see them walking here. German Chancellor Angela Merkel flanked by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the British prime minister, Theresa May.

Trump, meanwhile, decided he'd go it alone, waiting behind for a golf cart to carry him. The seven hundred yards, that's four tenths of a mile from there. That partnership only got rockier as the years went on, not because of his isolationist impulses, although that was part of it, but also to some degree, because of this rather bizarre insistence that Trump had on try to insert Russia back into the G7, which when it had Russia and it used to be called the G8, but Russia was banned from the group after invading and seizing part of Ukraine.

That remarkable act of aggression didn't seem to matter to Donald Trump. He called the move common sense. He then said that when it was his turn to host the G7, he wanted Putin there.

Never mind the fact that Canada and Germany and France and the United Kingdom all disagreed with that.

Well, today we got a searing reminder of what a difference a change in leadership can make. President Biden this afternoon set a new tone in terms of how the United States plans to deal with Russia with remarks that took place as he attended his first virtual G7 summit.

Putin seeks to weaken European the European project and our NATO alliance. He wants to undermine the trans-Atlantic unity and our resolve because it's so much easier for the Kremlin to bully and threaten individual states and negotiate with a strong close to united transatlantic community. That's why that's why standing up for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine remains a vital concern for Europe and the United States. President Biden is making a clean break with Trump's America first foreign policy, no more pandering to Russia and we're not going it alone any more, riding in a golf cart while the rest of the world walks together.

This comes as the US voices a willingness to restart diplomacy with Iran and talks regarding that country's crumbling nuclear deal.

And amid this country's plans to reenter into the Paris climate agreement, there's a real sense that America is back on the world stage or at the very least, trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again and back on top of the wall. Joining me now to talk about this, Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser under President Obama. Ben, good to see you.

I think one can't overstate what has happened in the last couple of weeks with respect to Joe Biden engaging on the world stage, but in particular ways. It's not it's not pink cloud to pink cloud with everybody. In fact, he had a tough conversation with Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the lack of a conversation with the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, sort of sending a message to both of them, too, that America will have a clearer role even in the Middle East.

That's right. If you think about it, who are Trump's favorite leaders, Mohammed bin Salman was perhaps at the top of that list, the first trip that Donald Trump took as president overseas. He broke precedent. Instead of going to one of our neighbors, he went to Saudi Arabia. And, of course, the leader that Donald Trump would never criticize was Vladimir Putin. I think what you see is Joe Biden very deliberately picking venues. This the Munich Security Conference where he gave that speech today, virtually.

That's the venue in the heart of Europe signaling you are our friends, you are our allies, not these other guys. The agenda is very different. He's talking about democracy, standing up for Russia, climate change, diplomacy to get back into the Iran nuclear agreement. So both the tone, the settings and the substance is entirely different than what we've seen in the last four years.

So, Ben, this is the moment to determine whether some of those alliances have been damaged. Obviously, G7 is a is a key alliance. NATO is one that was undermined by by Donald Trump. Is everybody happy to take America back again? Are they OK to say, let's just forget about the last four years, it's back to business?

Well, yes and no, on the one hand, it just shows you how extreme the Trump policy is or was that Joe Biden had to go out of his way to reaffirm we are a member of NATO, we honor our commitments to NATO. We're back in the Paris agreement, which the US led in negotiating. We're prepared to have diplomacy to go back into the Iran agreement that we took the lead in negotiating. So this is a sea change. I think the rest of the world, particularly our allies, have thought know on the one hand, we very much want America back, back at the table, back, defending a set of values back, working to solve problems like climate change or dealing with pandemics which have been totally absent.

On the other hand, they just lifted the last four years and they're looking over Joe Biden's shoulder and thinking, well, who are those crazy people behind you who stormed the Capitol on January six? Can we trust that the Americans won't do that again in four years? Can we trust it? They'll keep their word if we want to negotiate a complex agreement like the Paris agreement was or the Iran nuclear deal, can we trust that the Americans won't just tear it up?

So his task is much harder than just making a speech and setting the right tone. He's going to have to build back credibility month by month, year by year, initiative by initiative, because of the wrecking ball approach that Donald Trump took to our alliances and our role in the world.

We shall watch to see how that goes. Ben, good to see you, as always. Thank you for joining us tonight. Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser under President Obama. We appreciate your time tonight. Tonight's show is special because tonight we've got two big science stories in the show, both of which blow me away, and the first of which is right on the other side of this break. All right, I want to show you something, science is amazing, but it's also, as you know, very complicated.

Sometimes we need someone to break it down into simple terms for us lay folks to understand it. When it comes to the emerging threat of the covid variance from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, there's a lot that we still don't know. And I'm certainly not a vaccine expert or a doctor or an immunologist, but I do understand video games.

Each vaccine is created to instantly recognizable virus by its shape. Once the vaccine identifies the shape it's been programmed to look for, it blocks it very efficiently. But when the virus mutates, it changes shape, making it more difficult for the vaccine to identify its target. And if a vaccine can recognize what it's trying to block. That was my ABC News colleague, Richard Engel, host of On Assignment, breaking down in layman's terms, how the virus mutation slipped by the immune system.

The CDC warns that these new variants spread more easily and quickly, which could lead to more cases of the virus, which would in turn put even more strain on the health care system, leading to more hospitalizations and potentially more deaths. Now, there is some hopeful news about our current vaccines, the so-called MMR and a vaccines providing protection against these mutations. There's also research showing them to have reduced effectiveness when compared to the original strain of the virus. But don't despair.

But hope is not lost, science may come to our rescue. The new type of MRSA vaccines developed by Pfizer, Moderna and others are so revolutionary they can be quickly reprogrammed to adapt as viruses mutate.

It just the modern way of making making vaccines, which gave us also the ability to respond so quickly because that is an effective and safe vaccine.

Or your invented the Fizer vaccine. He's the CEO of Tech.

Is it almost like you are cutting and pasting like a computer?

Yeah, it is, but it's a copy of the virus in this company. Of course, there's no genetic piece of the virus. It is just the information which is safe and which is not able to replicate. It is so easy. So it is of course not easy, but it is it is a process that allows us to make it fast.

So it's a copy and paste of the genetic material.

And and no matter how many times it changes, you just copy a new image and test copy and paste.

It's a transformative way of making vaccines. It's kind of amazing. It's now a race between an evolving virus and the scientists on the front lines working to make flexible vaccines. Joining me now, Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent and host of On Assignment. This weekend, he's going to be hosting a special edition of On Assignment focused on the race to stop those covid variants in their tracks. Richard, I always appreciate you staying up so late. You're always far away somewhere where it's the middle of the night to be with us.

But this is really, really important. This race between the virus that is evolving and mutating to escape the vaccine and the vaccine that can be copy pasted and adapted to the to the virus. Who wins this race? How does it look? Well, so far in this in this race, we are winning, but the virus is evolving very, very quickly. The vaccines that we have right now that are currently available do work against the main variants.

They don't work as well, but they still work. And that is the key thing to note. So it is a race to get the vaccines out before this virus continues to evolve, because this this is a battle against evolution. And we understand evolution sort of in human terms or in mammals terms. So it happens very, very slowly. You and I evolve. It happens over generations. It happens over millions of years because we are made of DNA.

DNA is relatively stable. We have long lifespans, relatively speaking, and there aren't that many of us. So evolution takes a long time. Viruses are made of RNA. They mutate more easily and there are trillions and trillions of viruses out there and they only live generally a few hours. So with each production, each generation of viruses, there are opportunities to mutate, opportunities for improvement. And that's what we've seen now. We've seen the virus over time because it has had so much room to to replicate.

It has had improvements accidentally and those improvements are propelling themselves forward, creating these new and improved strains. So then you have these amazing scientists who are trying to quickly adjust the the the technology so that they can compensate as the virus evolves at the speed of viral evolution.

Richard, at some juncture, our attempts to get herd immunity and lots of people vaccinated, we hope will overtake the fact that the virus is mutating and it'll be affecting fewer and fewer people and we will have developed a certain immunity. Is there a point at which we we look like we're we're in control of this situation? Well, herd immunity is a is a funny concept because with the variance herd immunity doesn't always apply because there was a city in Brazil, Manaus, they had huge percentage of the population that was infected, about 70.

Some say 80 percent of the population had the coronavirus. Then a new strain came. And the fact that they had been infected before didn't help them. Their previous infections gave them no protection because they were protected from something that was no longer relevant. The virus had changed. So the most important thing is not necessarily just herd immunity. If you just let this virus go and don't battle it with the vaccines, it will continue to change. And your previous infections might not help you very much.

But the key thing is to drive down the numbers because the rate at which the virus mutates is a factor of how much there is out there. So if you can shrink it, if you can reduce the general amount of of a virus on the planet, it will still mutate. But there will be less of it. It will be much more controlled and it will mutate less frequently because there will be fewer options for it to do that. So the way to achieve the herd immunity effect is by getting people vaccinated and reducing the number of virus particles out there.

This is amazing, and I'm so grateful for the time you've taken to explain it to our viewers, I've set my Sunday evening to watch your special. Richard Engle is our NBC News chief foreign correspondent and the host of On Assignment. This special hour, Unkovic Mutation's airs Sunday, 10:00 p.m. Eastern. Don't miss it. I'm not going to. Richard, we appreciate you making time tonight. Hope you get a little sleep before the sun comes up. Thank you, my friend.

Pleasure.

Coming up next is a story that both Rachel and I are very equally excited about. Stay with us. All right, this last story is not just a departure from the world of politics, but indeed from this planet, but Rachel and I are both very excited about what NASA is getting up to on Mars these days. Today, NASA released the first color images from the landing of their rover, the perseverance on the planet's surface now as a layman. This photo is definitely the straight out of Hollywood winner.

It shows the moment perseverance touches down, kicking up plumes of dust from the planet's surface. But after listening to NASA's team of scientists talk today, I'm now blown away by every single one of the images that they released. This, for instance, is not the most Eye-Catching photo until you realize it's the first high resolution color photo ever taken from the surface of Mars, or this photo taken from a satellite circling Mars of the perseverence parachuting down to the surface.

This feels like any other Google Maps photo you've ever seen until you learn that the satellite from which the photo was taken was traveling at six thousand seven hundred and fifty miles per hour and had the time and angle itself exactly right to get this shot in a single pass from over four hundred miles away at the very moment that perseverence was slowing down from going thirteen hundred miles an hour to two hundred miles per hour as it got ready to land and they got the shot.

Or there's this photo, which is literally just a photo of the front wheel of the rover and a bunch of rocks. But the scientists at NASA already think that the rocks right there in the upper left hand corner feet from where the rover landed may be able to tell them how old the dried out river near the landing site is, giving us a huge new data point about the history of Mars. NASA says we should start to expect far more photos like that and color videos.

And even I kid you not color videos from a small detachable helicopter to be transmitted back to Earth in the coming weeks and months. I use my phone to deposit a check. The other day. The check was on a table in front of me and I had to retake the photo because it was blurry. So color me impressed NASA. All right, that does it for us tonight.

Rachel is back on Monday, but you can catch me all weekend live from Birmingham, Alabama, with a special series that of shows that honor Black History Month. You're going to see my conversations with activists and ordinary citizens from all walks of life, from a city that is steeped in America's struggle for racial justice and equality.

All we want is for you to see if you were here, you want to be treated with the same dignity and respect that you would give somebody white or anybody else came out of my mother's womb just like you, and try to make the best out of this life that God has given me.

More of that this weekend, eight to 10 a.m. I am live from Birmingham, Alabama, The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC.