On Saturday’s Up w/ Chris Hayes, we’ll discuss the Supreme Court’s announcement that it will hear oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, a case that may decide the future of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. We’ll be joined by people with stakes in the case on both sides, and we’ll ask — based on data from the most recent presidential election — whether Section 5 should apply to the entire U.S.
Then we’ll turn to the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. We’ll examine how the battle over the ACA has shifted from health care exchanges to state-level expansions of Medicaid. And we’ll focus in particular on Florida Governor Rick Scott’s reversal on the Medicaid expansion this week when he announced Florida would become only the seventh state with a Republican governor to opt into the expansion, even after he spent millions of his personal fortune in an attempt to defeat the ACA before becoming governor.
And finally, Chris will respond publicly for the first time to an invitation from the Conservative Political Action Conference to speak at their famous annual C-PAC meeting this year. Then we’ll turn to the broader topic of the Republican Party’s apparent decline. With the GOP’s favorability rating as low as its been in decades, many analysts are asking what the GOP needs to do to save itself. But instead, we’ll ask: Is the Republican Party worth saving at all?
Joining Chris at 8 AM ET on msnbc will be:
Tia Mitchell (@TBTia), staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times.
Bishop Harry Jones of the New Mount Moria Missiory Church in Calera, AL, he is the defendant-intervenow in Shelby County v. Holder and is a party to the Shelby county suit in support of the Voting Rights Act.
Ryan Haygood, director of the NAACP’s Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.’s Political Participation Group.
Ari Berman (@ariberman), contributing writer at The Nation, author of “Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party & Reshape American Politics.”
Valerie Arkoosh (@VAArk), professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine and member of the board of directors of the National Physicians Alliance.
Julie Fernandes, former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, senior policy analyst at the Open Society Institute.
Horace Cooper, adjunct fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and co-chair of Project 21 Advisory Board.
Avik Roy (@aviksaroy), senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, former member of Mitt Romney’s health care policy advisory group, author of the Forbes blog The Apothecary.
John McWhorter, professor of Linguistics and American Studies at Columbia University, contributing editor at the New Republic and Daily News columnist.
Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn), senior contributing writer to Newsweek/Daily Beast.
Joy Reid (@TheReidReport), managing editor of TheGrio.com.
Katherine Guthrie