. >> looking ahead to attorney general merrick garland who is set to appear before one of your committees, the house judiciary committee for the first time on thursday, with the topics ranging from january 6th to texas abortion law and the assaults on voting rights, what do you want to ask the attorney general? >> so that is a great question, alex. a lot also depends on what the people before me ask the attorney general. >> good point. >> so i do have a thousand questions i would like to ask merrick garland, so it will depends on what is asked before it gets to me. >> i would suggest, though, those topics are among those consideration, those three that i rattled off? >> yes, absolutely. >> okay, what about "politico," which is predicting a tense and contentious hearing especially with republicans likely to dig in on the hot button issues like the ones around vaccine mandates and crime in major cities. are you preparing for gop fireworks? something you've certainly seen before. >> i'm prepared that radical republicans are going to continue to be extreme and say dangerous things. for exampl

if you think back to when mitch mcconnell said that merrick garland couldn't be appointed to the supreme court because it wasn't fair to appoint him in the same year that the president was going to be leaving office, and then, of course, he turned around a few years later, after lecturing america and pointing his finger at us and lecturing on the virtues of when scotus's should be appointed and then turned around and put amy coney barrett in within 60 days. if we don't reform the filibuster, we need to do 50 votes just for this, because what's happening right now, redistricting across the country, how black and brown communities are being trampled over and how in states like texas, where they're debating redistricting right now, trying to tie these black and latino districts into yurl districts where there's been no growth. voting rights in this country are being set back right now and states where republican legislatures are dominating the redistricting process and you've already seen these egregious anti-voting bills that republicans keep throwing up and the american public's face and

part of the reason that biden named merrick garland as attorney general is because he wanted someone there running the department, who would be totally apolitical and who hadn't ever been part of his political -- of biden's political ambitions. biden put garland in place at doj, specifically so that he would help the department reassert its independence from political institutions. and that -- the result of that is, the result of that project, moving forward, effectively, is this uncomfortable moment, where biden, at least in the justice department's view, overstepped by suggesting a particular prosecution should take place and the justice department succinctly, firmly, and politely pushed back and said, the president's allowed to say what he wants to say, to paraphrase doj, but we're not going to be deciding how to bring cases or who to bring cases against based on anything that the white house tells us. >> which given the last four years, five years, almost, is refreshing. betsy woodruff, thank you, my friend. >>> suing donald trump. he has been trying to dodge tomorrow's depositio