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And to show your support for the show, The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at nine Eastern on MSNBC. Happy to have you here.

We're going to start tonight in the great American city of El Paso, Texas. We're going to start tonight with the chief medical officer at Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso. Just two weeks ago, we were having public discourse, around 500 cases a day, 700 cases a day, eight hundred. Last week we broke the record three times a thousand twelve hundred and then fourteen hundred. Today, people need to understand that it's cases, hospitalizations, unfortunately, deaths eventually.

And even though the mortality rate is better, the more people come in, the more this goes a bit unabated. There's just going to be a lot of dark days going into the fall. And that's really unfortunate.

We are in a crisis. We obviously have 100 percent capacity now and all the hospitals that ICU units are full capacity, we're now not able to take emergencies like we used to have none covid of patients, which is always a danger point emotionally.

You know, it's just been a really hard thing to take on. Of course, you would hear about all these cases and we would just pray that it wouldn't get to your family and you would have anxiety leaving the house thinking that potentially you were exposed hearing of someone nearby that was has tested positive thinking.

Is that mean between our E.R. doctors and our hospital doctors or ICU doctors? Everybody's tired and they see the patients that are coming in the temple of patients. It's not just in our hospitals across the city. All my colleagues that I talk to across the city are realizing that there are more patients coming in, sicker patients coming in. And so, as you can imagine, people are just tired. There's that exhaustion. But again, we buckle up and we just have to take care of the patients.

We're trying to do the best that we can as this epidemic spreads throughout our city. So it was a domino effect.

My uncle got my grandfather, my grandfather got my grandmother, my grandmother got my mom and my uncle. And then my mom got my father and my siblings at my sick this weekend.

And over the last week to two weeks have really been the tempos increased. It's been amazing. We're seeing all sorts of patients. And the narrative historically has been that about sixty five of those have multiple comorbidities. We've seen 20 year olds. We're seeing 30 or 40 year olds. Yes, it's definitely hard.

It would have been hard. I knew it was going to come, but knowing that it was because of Cohen was definitely one of my biggest fears. And it came true, but. It makes me smile because that day that they took him to the hospital, when he tested positive, he I went to go visit him just to see how he was doing, and I asked him how he was feeling. He struggled to get his words out just because he was having difficulty breathing.

But then he finally said, Campion, which is like a champion. So that just. Proves how he felt about the virus, about life, really, because he had told me that before, so it made things a little easier for me. Of course, I wish it didn't have to go that way, but unfortunately that's the way that it went and I just hope that no one else has to go through that any more or less people have to go with anymore and that this pain can stop for everyone as soon as possible.

Andrea Curtis is twenty three years old. There are 15 members of her family in El Paso who have been infected with the coronavirus, have tested positive. She's talking there with all that sadness. She's talking about her grandfather, Lázaro, who did not survive. He died with covid. El Paso tonight is in crisis. El Paso is closing in on a thousand people hospitalized with covid in that one city alone. In addition, everybody else who has to be hospitalized for every other reason, they've got a thousand covid patients hospitalized nearly in El Paso.

Now they're they're adding 30, 40, 50 more covid patients to other hospitals every day. There just isn't the medical capacity to treat that many people. So I wanted to see the medical director there from the local hospital just talking about how exhausted the health care providers are. There's one hundred and eleven covid patients on ventilators right now in El Paso, according to the city's latest data. One hundred and eleven people all on ventilators right now.

That one city in almost every state in the country. Forty seven out of 50 states, the epidemic is now officially growing. Forty seven out of 50 states. It's getting worse. More than a thousand Americans died from covid today alone. Last night, we covered the new study out of Kansas that compared Kansas counties with a massive mandate to Kansas counties without a mask mandate. The clear as day totally blunt findings of that study are good news that you can cut your new case numbers in half by implementing a mask mandate.

In half new cases in Kansas doubled in the counties without a mask mandate. They stayed flat and the counties that did require masks. It's as simple as that. Kansas conducted what amounted to a natural, a natural experiment on mask mandates, and what they found could not be more clear. That ought to be news that we can use. That ought to be prescriptive information for us tonight. Beyond that, we got more evidence along those lines about mask mandates, not only bringing down new case numbers, as was proven in Kansas, but also bringing down covid hospitalizations as well.

This is brand new data out of Tennessee. It is just as clear. It is just as clearly prescriptive as what we are seeing out of Kansas. The news right now on covid is terrible. It is a blessing that the diagnosis about what to do about it, to bring the numbers down is so clear and so clearly proven in multiple states. We're going have more on that later on this hour. We're also going to be speaking later on this hour with Sherrilyn Ifill, head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Among all the other things the Legal Defense Fund is doing right now to protect the election, to protect voting rights. They have also today and their court fight against the Trump administration, messing with the post office today. They turned up jaw dropping new information about just how badly the Trump administration has made sure to screw up the mail right in time for this election. Thanks to Sherrilyn Ifill on this court case that her organization is fighting. We now know that in the all important swing state of Pennsylvania, where the most Democratic votes in the state are going to come, obviously from Philadelphia, the Trump administration has now made it so that less than forty three percent of first class mail is being delivered on time forty two point nine five percent in Detroit, which happens to be the Democratic voter stronghold of the all important swing state of Michigan.

Mail is being delivered in Detroit on time, less than fifty three percent now less than fifty three percent of the time. Now, is the mail getting there on time. Northern Ohio. Hello, Cleveland. The mail is now on time. Only fifty six percent of the time in South Florida. Hello, Miami. It's sixty three percent of the time. I mean, that's that's one way to try to win an election, right? If everybody has to vote by mail this year, then throttle the United States mail in Democratic strongholds in all the swing states.

Easy peasy. Nice work, if you can get it. We talked last night about warnings from people like former US Attorney General Eric Holder, who is now bluntly warning American voters that it is now too late to rely on the on the mail to get your ballot in. If you have your ballot still at home, you have to physically bring it into a drop box now or to the clerk's office or to another location that your city or town has set up to drop off ballots.

It is too late for the mail now. We have also seen that warning from Michigan Secretary of state. She released this blunt statement yesterday as well. It is too late to rely on the United States Postal Service. We're seeing similar warnings now from state officials in the all important swing state of Pennsylvania. Also, the all important swing state of Wisconsin. Officials in both of those states warning it is now too late to count on the mail. You've got to bring your ballot in in person now.

There's no other way. So we're going to talk with Sherrilyn Ifill tonight about her organization's lawsuit against what Trump has done to the post office and everything else the NAACP is doing right now to try to get all our votes counted and to push back on the voter intimidation measures we are now seeing around the country. But bottom line right now is that it is time. It's time. If you have your ballot at home, it really is too late to mail it in.

Don't panic. Don't worry about it. Just be real. You need to drop it off by hand instead. Now, if you need help figuring out how to do that in your states, NBC News set up a very clear website. NBC News.com plan your vote that you can go to to help you figure that out. You put in what state you're interested in learning about and you it will direct you to the information in terms of how you can get your ballot in now.

But hear me now. Bottom line, in all states, it is too late to count on the mail now. Don't mail it now. Bring it in yourself. Election expert Rick Hasen, who we have relied on for years on this show in terms of his knowledge of election law. Rick Hasen is now online all but screaming at Rick Hasen is a very mild mannered guy, which you should know for context. But now on this point, he is yelling all caps.

If you live in Pennsylvania at this point, you should not use the US mail to return your ballot or at this point, anywhere in the USA, use a Dropbox or government office if allowed or vote in person. Yes. What he said. We are seeing court decisions, including from the United States Supreme Court coming in fast and furious now about how long various states will be allowed to continue accepting ballots. Republicans in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and North Carolina have been trying to cut short the time after which ballots won't be counted.

Pennsylvania today decided that they will segregate, they will set aside any ballots that are received after the close of the polls on Tuesday. Even if those ballots were put in the mail and postmarked long before Election Day, they're going to set those ballots aside if they arrive after the polling places closed on Tuesday because they know Republicans inevitably will try to get those ballots thrown out and not counted. The newly empowered hard right conservatives on the US Supreme Court today signaling that even though they're not going to decide on that Pennsylvania issue before Election Day, they very well might decide it after Election Day, especially if it looks like that might make the difference in whether or not Trump selected.

Right. So because of that, Pennsylvania is making sure that ballots received after the polls close on Election Day are set aside just in case, because they know that Republicans and potentially conservative justices will attack those ballots and try to have them not counted. And that's interesting in terms of what's happened to the courts and what's happened to the basically right wing seizure of the law enforcement process around voting rights. But what that means for you, the voter is very simple.

Like I said, don't put it in the mail at this point. You've got a ballot. You're going to need to bring it in, in person. And while we're on the subject about being real, about our expectations, we also need to get real about what's actually going to happen on election night, on your TV and out there in the states that are going to decide this election. Now, there's no reason for this to loom large in your memory, but when Pennsylvania held their primary this year, they originally going to hold it in April.

They ended up moving it to early June because of covid, Pennsylvania, this incredibly important swing state of Pennsylvania when they held their primary this year on June 2nd. Not only were the results of that primary not cold for six days, six days by the press, eight days in the state, the states after action report on how that primary went noted that in more than half of Pennsylvania's counties, the actual count of ballots was still going on more than a week after Election Day.

So that's just Pennsylvania. But a lot of experts and some well-known, very stressed out worriers on television think that the election is more likely to come down to Pennsylvania than to any other state in the polling right there. The polling there right now is tight. The state of Pennsylvania, even in the best of circumstances, doesn't report their results quickly. Their most recent election was that primary in June when it took them over a week. I mean, this year, Pennsylvania is one of the states, Wisconsin is another where poll workers aren't even allowed to open and start counting even one ballot until Election Day itself.

I mean, lots of states, they start processing ballots and counting them as soon as the ballots come in. But in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, nope, not a single ballot counted until Election Day dawns. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are also states where they don't have a ton of experience with mail in ballots. In twenty eighteen, about five percent of the ballots cast in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were cast by mail, only five percent this year. It's going to be way, way, way, way more than five percent.

And those states just don't have a ton of experience and, you know, well-worn infrastructure for dealing with that. So it's going to be slow.

Even even with if everything goes perfectly, it's going to be slow. It is not a sign of a breakdown in the system, it's a sign of the system.

Particularly in Pennsylvania, up in Michigan, they do have more experience with mail in ballots, they're about a quarter of all their votes in twenty eighteen were mailed in as opposed to five percent in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. So Michigan is more used to dealing with considerable numbers of mail in ballots. But even still, Michigan is now explicitly warning that nobody should expect election results from Michigan on election night. The secretary of state is just saying, no, it's not going to happen.

There's not going to be Michigan results on November 3rd. It will take longer than that to get the votes processed and counted. And so, I mean, you can say this about a lot of different states in Alaska, for example, where there's a really interesting Senate race right now where an incumbent Republican senator might lose his seat. Alaska saying they won't even start to count ballots other than ballots cast on Election Day. So any absentee ballots, any mail in ballots, Alaska isn't even going to start to count those ballots until a week after Election Day in individual states like they're not even.

There's no expectation whatsoever that we're going to have quick results if the results are anywhere, anywhere near close. But thinking about the presidential race in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, that trio of crucial states on election night, experts are warning they're trying to sort of raise awareness of the fact that the way the vote is going to be counted in those states, the expected partisan divide between an early vote that's likely to be heavily Democratic and an Election Day vote that's likely to be heavily Republican.

Experts are warning that, particularly when looking at the crucial tier of northern battleground states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, that experts are warning that when the first results are released after polls close on election night from from those states, those states are likely to look better for Trump on election night than how they are going to turn out in the end, because the Republican leaning votes are likely to be tallied first. Now, there's a few other potentially important states where that same dynamic might be at work in Virginia, for example.

But Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin is where the experts are most focused in terms of a potential false impression on election night in states that could be determinative. Of course, it's also why President Trump is now constantly insisting that the winner of the election must be declared on election night before all those other pesky ballots are counted. That might show a result that he doesn't want.

Senate Democrats have just put out a short little guide. Interesting that I've never really noticed that sitting senators have done something like this before, but it's helpful, actually. And basically what they're doing here is they're trying to set expectations for what the election is going to be like as we the voters, as we, the citizens, absorb information about the tally as it is taking place. They've called it counting votes and what to expect on Election Day. And they actually I credit them.

They actually spell it out sort of perfectly quote, this year, we know that in some states, vote totals on election night might not give us a complete picture of who will win when all the votes are counted. Election experts warn that because this year a higher percentage of Republicans are voting in person, while more Democrats are requesting mail in ballots. Early vote counts that don't include many absentee ballots may create the false appearance that Republicans are ahead. President Trump's rhetoric indicates he may exploit this illusion and claim victory for himself, then falsely claim that there's massive fraud in mail, in ballots that have not yet been counted or reported.

Some states are working to reduce the opportunity to undermine our elections in this way, by reporting how many outstanding absentee ballots remain uncounted, Americans should be prepared to reject misinformation and be patient about results in places where counting ballots may take longer. Be patient, reject misinformation. I feel like we should all collectively get that same tattoo right now. In the great state of Minnesota, they've always got huge voter turnout there, which is a source of great Minnesotan pride.

They're almost always the best in the country today for former governors of Minnesota, Republican, Democratic and independent. Do you remember who the recent independent governor of Minnesota was for governors of Minnesota? Put this together that I'm going to show you basically to tell people to chill out, to relax and reject misinformation, be patient, basically saying don't expect an election night result. Also, I should warn you in advance in this video, we learned that a significant proportion of former former Minnesota governors have unexpectedly interesting hairdos.

Minnesotans, Minnesotans, Minnesotans, Minnesotans, we've all had the privilege of serving as governor of this great state, well, we may not agree on every issue. We all agree that this election is the most important election of our lifetime. So make your voice heard and vote. Go vote with so many of us voting by mail. It may take a little longer to verify a winner. And that's OK. It's by design. A delay just means our system is working and that we're counting every single ballot.

There may not be a clear winner on election night, but no matter who wins, let's demonstrate the civility and decency that Minnesotans are known for. There is so much more that unites us rather than divides us. Let's show the country there's a better way. If you're a man and you have ambitions to be governor of Minnesota, someday, you need to think right now about what your crazy hairdo is going to be in your retirement. Right? She didn't know that.

But it's it's a hard one. But start thinking about it now. They're right, though. And and more leaders in more states, frankly, need to be doing what you just saw from those former leaders and current governor of the state of Minnesota, especially when it comes to Republicans and independents, because there really are a ton of people voting this year. And we've seen that in we've seen that not only because this is a crucial election, there's a lot of people voting by mail this year.

States that have long had voting by mail have always had elevated voter turnout compared to the rest of us. So, yeah, the votes are going to take a long time to count, in part because there's a lot of us and because there's going to be lots of mail in votes, particularly states that don't have a lot of experience with that. Those votes may take a particularly long time to count. And a lot of particularly crucial states, particularly for the presidential outcome, may be the places that count the slowest.

And so we prepare, we think ahead and we absorb the hard truth that it is now too late to entrust your ballot to the post office. So you need to bring it in in person. We absorb that information. We plan accordingly, and we act and we absorb and maybe even explain to others that it doesn't mean something's wrong if we don't have anywhere near a definitive result on election night in terms of who's going to be the next president, it doesn't mean something's wrong.

If the results we do have on election night only reflect which votes have been counted first. And that's likely to give those early night one results a partisan tilt one way or the other, depending on which states picked which votes to count before the others. That's OK. Be patient. There's nothing wrong with that system. We've all got to be patient, though. It's going to take a while. It also means that anybody declaring victory on election night based on those early preliminary first votes counted, they should be left off the screen.

Joining us now is Senator Amy Klobuchar of the great state of Minnesota. She's one of the authors of that Senate 20 20 report that I told you about earlier. Senator Klobuchar, it's great to see you. Thanks for being here tonight. Well, thanks, Rachel. Thanks for noticing our governor's hair. I will say Jesse Ventura has had even Wylder haircuts than that. And thanks for mentioning the report. It's actually I'm going to I'm the ranking on the Senate Rules Committee and worked on this, along with Bernie Sanders and Tammy Duckworth, Martin Heinrich, as well as Chris Murphy.

And we really thought it was important for both the Senate races, which, you know, are so critical, as well as the presidential to tell people to be patient. And I'm trying to picture you being patient, Rachel, but I know you can be. And the other thing we want to make clear is that you've got to turn up the troops that turn up that turn out, but turn out the misinformation because we just know there's a lot of stuff out there.

And the president himself has really recently very often been saying, oh, hey, we've got to get it all done on election night. He's just playing a game there. Twenty one states, Rachel. Twenty one states. Twenty two states actually vote and count their votes after the Election Day. They start before many of them, but they don't finish it until after because their ballots can be postmarked on Election Day. That includes red states like Utah, that in state, that includes states like Kansas, that include states like Texas.

So this is complete misinformation that the president is putting out there. And that's why we thought it was really important. And I love that Tim Pawlenty was part of that video, the former Republican governor, that we have Democrats and Republicans coming together to say, be patient and you must count the votes. In terms of how to deal with this in a practical way, I mean, part of the reason that it's hard to give people an advance practical information about how exactly to get their ballot in, what's the best way to do that, how to make sure their ballot is going to be counted and what to expect on election night is that some of these rules are still in flux.

I mean, we're still getting Supreme Court rulings tonight, multiple Supreme Court rulings tonight, for example, on how late ballots can be counted in places like Pennsylvania and North Carolina. And it's sort of, you know, we can go into the weeds in terms of explaining the absolute implications of each of those rulings for each of these states. But the fact that these things are being decided so late I think makes it feel daunting to give people hard and fast advice.

Well, it does. And the Republicans in many states are just going to the edge, pushing this to the very end, trying to limit the number of people that can vote. But at the same time, Americans are voting in droves. Seventy five million people have already cast their ballots. And as you said at the beginning of the show, people have got to vote and vote. Now, we've seen increased covid numbers in a number of states.

So go out there tomorrow and vote. Either bring in your mail in ballot if you have it, figure out where you need to go or go in there with so many states having early voting right now and do it that way. And that's one of our number one messages, especially when we see it on the rise, as you pointed out, in Texas, next door in Wisconsin. And I've just been so heartened by what people are doing out there, learning the rules, helping each other to vote.

And certainly this bodes well for Joe Biden. You know, he's leading in so many states. I'm so excited that he's doing so well in the middle of the country, working to the end. And Donald Trump, to me, he's on defense right now. And when he gets on defense, he gets meaner than mean. And he is going out there and trying to discredit our democracy. And I don't think the people are going to stand for it.

They're ready for change and they're ready to have a president with competence and compassion in the White House. That's what I see around my state. Senator Amy Klobuchar of the great state of Minnesota. Senator, thanks to you and your colleagues for putting this out. I thought this is even handed and clear. It's a nice touchstone, I think, for people to be able to, like, get realistic column information about what's otherwise going to be a fraught week.

Thanks to you being here. Thank you. Thanks. All right. There's so much going on. It's sometimes easy to forget that we have already had major cases of allegedly criminal voter intimidation in multiple states and foreign interference this month. And because this year is this year, both of those instances just got crazier. We've got, I think, important updates on both of those stories coming up for you next. Stay with us. We've heard for years that it's important to have a diversified portfolio, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, that kind of thing, but what about real estate things to fundraise?

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In August this year, registered voters in Detroit, Michigan, most of them African-American, started receiving a phone call, a robo call which was full of claims that are absolute bull Puggy from top to bottom. This was the call. Hey, listen, I think 15, 1990 civil rights organizations founded by Jack Burkman, intake of all human body sounds great, but you know that if you vote by mail, your personal information will be part of the public debate that will be used to track down those three companies to collect outstanding debts.

The CDC is even pushing for civil liability to track people for mandatory, but not releasing this information to the media.

They say beware, beware of vote by mail. None of that is true. None of that is true of voting by mail in Michigan or anywhere else does not actually put your personal information out there anywhere for the police department or credit card companies or the CDC is going to track you down and inject you with a vaccine by force. None of it. None of it is true. It's all false and it's disgusting. And sending people robocalls that tell them that's what will happen if they vote, that's likely very, very, very illegal.

Well, a couple of weeks ago here on the show, we spoke with Michigan's attorney general the day that her office filed felony charges against the two men named at the top of that robo call. Felony charges all related to the crime of intimidating voters. Turned out this robo call, though, did not just go out in Detroit. It went out in lots of cities, especially in lots of districts and cities with mostly black voters Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia.

The indictment in Michigan claimed that as many as eighty five thousand mostly black voters got these trash calls in. Multiple states will now update following on those felony charges in Michigan. The same two guys have also just been indicted in Ohio since that same robo call apparently went to registered voters in Cleveland as well. Also today, and this is kind of amazing, a civil case was brought by civil rights groups who are suing these guys for allegedly sending out these intimidating calls.

This is in addition to the felony charges they're now facing in two states. And in that civil case brought by civil rights groups. A federal judge in New York has now ordered these two pro Trump guys to send out a new robo call to all the tens of thousands of people who received the original one. And they have to do it right away. Now, before the election, the judge even wrote the script for this new robo call he is ordering them to do.

According to the judge's order today, the corrective call from these guys must say this quote, at the direction of United States District Court. This call is intended to inform you that a federal court has found that the message you previously received regarding mail in voting from Project Fifteen ninety nine, a political organization founded by Jack Burkman and Jacob Wahl, contained false information that has had the effect of intimidating voters and thus interfering with the upcoming presidential election in violation of federal voting rights laws.

These two guys who allegedly sent out the intimidating robocalls to black voters, they have to provide proof to this federal judge by close of business tomorrow that they have sent out this new robocall, taking it all back, explaining that the courts have called this voter intimidation and it was an illegal attempt to interfere in the election. They've got to do that. They've got to tell the court that they've done that by close of business tomorrow or they'll be facing new contempt of court charges.

So watch this space on that one, but this is now officially crazy season and things are getting weird fast on a number of different fronts. You will also recall that last week, Trump's appointed director of national intelligence, former Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe, not held in high esteem by his colleagues or by anyone in the intelligence community. As far as we can tell, John Ratcliffe held an emergency press briefing that was in equal parts, scary and inexplicable. Ratcliffe announced that Iran was behind a bunch of emails that had been sent to Democratic voters in multiple states.

The email said they were from a violent pro Trump white supremacist group called The Proud Boys. The messages were spooky because they contained Democratic voters full names and home addresses. And it threatened these voters that if they didn't vote for Donald Trump, the proud boys would know it and they would come after them again. It included voters real home addresses. Well, Trump's intelligence chief, John Ratcliffe, announced that these emails had been orchestrated by Iran. And then he said something truly odd.

He said that Iran had done this to, quote, damage President Trump. Which made no sense, right, threatening emails sent to Democratic voters to scare Democratic voters into voting for Donald Trump or else those were designed to hurt Donald Trump. How does that work? Why does he say that? What could that possibly mean?

Well, today we got our answer, Trump's director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, who apparently just made that part up. This is from the excellent reporter Natasha Bertrand at Politico. Dotcom tonight, quote, The reference to Trump was not in his prepared remarks about the foreign election interference as shown to and signed off on by FBI director Chris Wray and senior Homeland Security cybersecurity official Chris Crib's right. And Krebs stood behind Radclyffe as he addressed the public, supportive of the general intention to alert voters to a malicious influence operation.

But according to two senior administration officials, they were surprised by Radcliffe's political aside, which had not appeared in the prepared text.

He made it up, he ad libbed, he just blurted that out in the middle of what had otherwise been prepared for him to say. Good to know that the director of national intelligence just flat out makes stuff up that appears to be diametrically false while otherwise warning the public about voter intimidation operations.

I mean, between intimidation by the president's allies in the form of these racist robocalls and the administration being the opposite of straight with us about foreign interference and Republican officials at all levels trying to make it harder to vote or to stop votes from being counted, American voters this year we are up against a lot. But one of the most experienced and powerful defenders of voters in this country against all those forces and more is and has been the NAACP Legal Defense Fund than they are right in the middle of one of these red hot fights right now in a way that is turning up all sorts of useful information to the public that we didn't have before their president.

Sherrilyn Ifill joins us next. We get support from ancestry. Every family has a story, maybe you know a lot about yours or you're just starting to dig in. Ancestry makes it easy and fun to bring these stories to life. One name is all it takes to start building your family tree with ancestors, billions of records. You'll be able to amplify your discoveries in no time and you can flesh out your story even more with an ancestry DNA kit.

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As I mentioned at the top of the show, there is a court case brought by the NAACP fighting with the Trump administration has done to mess up the post office. And that case has now turned up some stunning information about how much damage they've done on time delivery rates for the mail down in the 50 and 60 percent range, and sometimes even worse in some of the most important Democratic voter strongholds in some of the most important swing states in the election, just as everybody's been mailing in their ballots, it's now too late to mail in your ballot.

If you still have a ballot, you have to bring it in in person. But I have to tell you that that case, that NAACP case has done more than just revealed the extent of the problem. Judge Emmet Sullivan has been overseeing that case, is also now ordered the Trump administration to reverse all of the postal service changes they implemented that screwed up the mail so bad and he's being really specific about it. Look at this from his order. Quote, The guidelines regarding the use of late and extra trips are rescinded.

USPS personnel are instructed to perform late and extra trips to the maximum extent necessary to increase on-time mail deliveries, particularly for election mail. To be clear, late and extra trips should be performed to the same or greater degree than they were performed prior to the summer of twenty twenty when doing so would increase on time mail deliveries. Any prior communication that is inconsistent with this instruction should be disregarded. He is rescinding the changes that the Postal Service that screwed up the mail and ordering the Postal Service to give new directives to all postal workers, telling postal workers that they now need to do whatever it takes to get the mail delivered on time, particularly when it comes to election mail.

Not only did the judge order the post office to issue that new order to their workers verbatim, he also ordered them to make sure that all relevant Postal Service personnel must receive that order, either as a one page notice or as a stand up talk. Like I said, just remarkable stuff. It is still too late to trust your ballot to the Postal Service, but in terms of trying to force the post office to actually deliver election mail right up until the wire, this is as direct as the courts can get.

And none of this would have been possible were it not for the work done by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who, in their tireless efforts to protect the right to vote, brought this case before the court. Joining us now is Sherrilyn Ifill. She's president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, as I felt an honor to have you here tonight. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Rachel.

I am I feel like I have sort of to equal, not opposite, but equal and parallel thoughts on the Postal Service right now, which is they did so much damage that nobody can count on the Postal Service to get their ballot in now between now and Election Day. And if you still have your ballot, you should bring it in. And also, people like you seem to be sort of fixing the damage that they did to the Postal Service. It may not be in time to rescue everybody's ballots over the next few days, but it does seem like you are nailing them to the wall here.

Well, yes, Rachel, this suit is really important and our partners are LGF, the Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen, and bringing suit on behalf of the nobility. Some of this is about the mail. Some of this is just about people who need their prescription drugs, elderly people, people who count on the mail with regard to the election. You're absolutely right. If you haven't already dropped your absentee ballot in the mail, you want to take it to a drop box, want to take you to the board of elections.

But all of us know some actually put their ballot in the mail and they've been tracking it and it still hasn't arrived. So there's still work to be done with ballots that are in transit, that are in the postal system. And this ruling by Judge Sullivan today requiring the Postal Service to inform their employees there to take extra this late drips, that there are people every day of the kind of information that you showed earlier in the show is vitally important to seeing to those ballots are delivered by Election Day.

Every vote matters and you can't just give up on it and say, well, it's too late. Know there are still ballots in the system that have to be delivered and this ruling is going to help.

What do you think overall, sort of big picture about the level of voter intimidation and voter trickery and the other things that are being done to undermine people's ability to safely and safely navigate the voting system to get their vote cast and counted? It feels to me like we've had a number of very high profile, scary intimidation tactics that have been exposed. I know that we've got a lot of people who are worried about things like potential violence around polling places. How does this year compared to previous years?

Well, I mean, if you're in the business of civil rights, you've seen stuff like this before this I saw the top of your show yesterday. We all know of a history of voter intimidation. And if you've been a voting rights litigator on time, you know that it never really went away completely. But the situation we have now is that we have an accelerant, the president who is spreading disinformation in a climate that is extremely tense. And so when the president says things like the remarks he made today, discrediting the idea of counting vote after Election Day, as you pointed out, absentee ballots are regularly counted after Election Day.

Military mail in ballots are counted after Election Day. Provisional ballots are cured and counted after Election Day. But when the president deliberately puts this kind of misinformation out there, essentially suggesting to his supporters that if counting is happening after Election Day, it is somehow illegitimate or illegal. He is lighting a match already tense situation. We saw what happened in Michigan. The secretary of state issued a guidance and an order saying that you couldn't have unconcealed weapons in polling places that was challenged.

A judge overruled that yesterday, which the threats against the Michigan governor and other elected officials. This is a very, very volatile period. People with open carry intimidating. And so we have a right to be concerned. And usually what you would have is responsible leadership attempting to tamp down that kind of conduct. And what makes this year different is that what we have at the very top of our country is someone who is actually riling that up. And so we are wary but fortunate to be so many civil rights organizations and actually many leaders in the states, including attorney generals and a number of states are really preparing for this, are getting out ahead of it, are working to ensure that voters can feel safe, that they can cast the ballots and that those ballots will be counted.

Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director, counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, somebody whose work is part of the reason that people can feel assured that their votes will be cast and counted because of the work that you and your colleagues have done so tirelessly. Thank you so much for being here tonight. I have a feeling I'm going to be talking with you again in days ahead. Sherrilyn, thank you so much. I hope so.

Thank you, Rachel. All right, stay with us. Last night, we highlighted a new study that shows Kansas counties that mandate that the residents wear a mask have half as many new covid cases as Kansas counties that don't mandate wearing masks, just clear as a bell mask. Mandates will flatten the number of new cases. If you don't have a mask, man, that you're going to have double the number of cases you'd otherwise have that was out of Kansas.

Now, researchers in Tennessee have shown that the same principle applies when it comes to hospitalizations. Researchers at Vanderbilt University have just found that hospitals, mostly treating patients from counties without a mask mandate, saw covid hospitalizations increased at a much steeper rate than hospitals, treating patients from counties that do have mask mandates. Look, here's the growth in hospitalizations from June for now at hospitals in areas without mask requirements. Again, this is Tennessee. Looking at that line just shoots up in October, more than a two hundred percent increase in covid hospitalizations.

Now, look at this. This is the same scale, same time frame, June through now, same y axis. But this shows you that the hospitals in areas that do require residents to wear masks, well, they've had a very different experience. There's no growth in covid hospitalizations there. It has flattened again. The difference between what's on the left and the right is a mask mandate. Look side by side on the left without mask mandates, on the right with mask mandates.

It's very simple. It is a blessing that the science is so simple and so clear on this point. It's just a question of whether or not we're actually going to do anything about it. To that point, we have recently reported on North Dakota, which has the worst outbreak in the country. Now, the North Dakota state capital of Bismarck has only two hospitals between them. They've been reporting one or two ICU beds available for the whole city. Just last night, the Bismarck City Commission finally did act to try to turn those numbers around.

The commission passed a county wide mandate for the first time in a three to two vote. Now it's a weak one. There's no penalty for defying that mandate. But they're trying to watch this space and also watch those stats. Last week, when Trump was asked if he'd do anything differently, you know what he said? He said not much. Not much. Really not much, you can't think of anything that you might be doing differently, like maybe you shouldn't have gotten on TV and suggested we might inject bleach to cure covid, we had no problem.

Hey. Former President Barack Obama has been having what appears to be the time of his life on the campaign trail for Joe Biden recently. Tonight we learned that President Obama is going to make a joint appearance with Joe Biden on Saturday, on Halloween in Michigan, just three days before this election comes to a close. You will recall that Obama and Biden handily carried Michigan in 20, 08 and in 2012, whereas Donald Trump eked out a win in 2016 there by 10000 votes, while Obama and Biden will be together in Michigan on Saturday.

All right. That's going to do it for us tonight. See you again tomorrow.

The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC on Tuesday joined MSNBC as Rachel Maddow, Nicole Wallace, Joy Reid and Brian Williams analyzed the election of our lifetimes. Steve Kornacki will break down the data. Stay with MSNBC until the last vote is counted.