Meet the Press NOW — April 14

Foreign. Today. This is BE THE Press now checks out reporting from Washington and where the quick open because of our unions out of the Supreme Court. Just moments ago the court temporarily blocked that Texas federal court district court's ruling that would have pulled a common abortion drug Nifel Presto off the shelves across the United States at midnight tonight.

This key abortion drug is part of two step regimen that accounts for half of all abortions that take place in the United States these days. The court ruled in favor of the Justice Department temporary after the DOJ requested that the court intervene and supersede a partial stay that was issued by the Fifth Circuit Court appeals. That stay would have kept the bill legal but significantly increased regulations to obtain and use it. This ruling means that neither state or the original Texas ruling will go into effect overnight, but it still could go into effect at a later point.

All of this essentially basically just stops the clock this weekend. So I got a slew experts with me right now help break this down. Covers the abortion rights fight in this country for us. Also with me I got Robert Barnes, a Supreme Court correspondent for the Washington Post.

And we will have Laura Jarrett, our senior legal correspondent joining us in a moment. But Yamiche Breakdown give me the quick details of this day from Justice Alito. Well, certainly an important development here. I want to make sure I'm reading part of this because I think it's important.

Justice Alito is granting the Justice Department's request for administrative state to preserve the status quo when it comes to this abortion bill. He called for a response from the plaintiff that originally filed the Texas lawsuit. This means that last week's decision, as he said, will not go into effect tonight. But this is a state until the 11:59pm on Wednesday, April 19, 2023.

So this means that for now if you have if you want access to this bill, for my understanding from reading this, nothing is changing as of yet. But this shows that the Supreme Court is going to be looking at this and that both sides will be able, it seems to plead their case in front of the Supreme Court. We have to remind folks that this is possibly going to be the most important abortion decision or abortion looking at an issue with abortion when it comes to this issue after Roe v. Wade because we saw of course that that huge decision that that sea change when Roe v.

Wade was overturned. And now this is really the next big front in talking to people about abortion and talking about abortion access in this country. Well, let me bring in Robert Barnes here who's a deadline and is gracefully Taking a quick break to give us your perspective. Robert, nobody understands how this court works as well as you do.

Maybe a couple other people on earth. So tell me how, what should, how should we read into this ruling? Alito? Essentially, it's a one week stay.

What does that mean? Or five day stay. What does that mean? Yeah, I don't think you should read anything about the merits of the case or what the court might ultimately do.

The court was faced with a very short time frame here, had to make a decision by midnight. So this gives them the chance to get a little more briefing, to sort of take a breath. It keeps the status quo in place until next week, as you have explained. And so then the court will face some other options about what to do.

So what are those other. I mean, what's the most likely way this plays out? Next week they'll schedule a full hearing for down the road. Is there going to be a full hearing Monday or Tuesday?

Walk me through the scenarios. No, there wouldn't be a full hearing. Then what would happen? The government has said, you know, if you want to take this up right now, schedule full briefing and a hearing and a decision before you recess this summer.

But the court doesn't have to do that. The court either could put this ruling from the lower courts on hold and hear the case next term, or the court could decide to let these lower court decisions go into effect. All of this is in place of the regular process, not in place of, but to sort of allow the regular process of the appeals courts going first and really looking in depth at the merits of this case. Do you read anything into the idea that Justice Leo wants to hear from the original plan?

No, that's a standard procedure. And I should also say that the reason Justice Alito is doing this is not because he wrote the Dobbs decision, although he did, but because he is the justice designated by the court to receive emergency orders from the 5th Circuit. So they want to hear briefs. So basically, does this mean they get briefs?

They have to be filed. I believe it's by the 18th. So they're just going to make it. What happens the next day they read these briefs and they make a decision about whether to keep going or not?

Yes. And whether or not to extend this stay that they have now put in place or whether to get rid of it? That would be the first thing that they have to decide. And then they would have to decide whether or not they want to hear this case on an emergency basis.

As I say, the court usually likes appeals courts to go first and to try to, you know, work through all the issues that a case like this involves, but they don't always do it. And the other thing that sort of pushed them here was they have a district, a different judge in the state of Washington saying this drug has to remain available in 17 states in the District of Columbia that came to me with their request. And so it's very, it's a very complicated situation that the court's trying to just quickly, Robert, and I know you got to go on deadline. Do we assume that is it that there were just five, that there were at least five votes, or is this an Alito only temporary decision before, or was this a case where there had to be five votes for this temporary stay?

No, I think that there surely were. I'm sure that this is what the rest of the courts would like to do, But Justice Alito did this on his own. And that is often the case when, as I say, a justice from one of these appeals courts is faced with making a very quick decision and issues an administrative stay. All right, Robert Barnes, I promised that I would get you in and out again.

I know you've got your own organization, your own bosses to report to the breaking news. So much appreciate you. I want to bring Lord Jared in here. But Yamiche, I want to get you to respond.

Where do we expect the Justice Department? What do they hope to have here? Are they do they want just this whole thing to go away, or are they essentially preparing for a hearing in the Fifth Circuit? Well, from my understanding, at least from what we hear from the Justice Department, they are saying that this ruling, if it is allowed to stand and if the FDA is allowed to be but if the approval is allowed to be taken away by court.

But that won't just have issued impact on this portion bill, it will have impact on all sorts of other medications, whether that's Alzheimer's, whether that's cancer, whether that's all sorts of other things that the FDA approved. So my understanding is the Justice Department wants to say we should continue to leave scientific approval in the hands of the fda. And they want to be able to say that this should not be something that is taken away by a court. The approval should be able to stand.

And when I talk to people who close this and I talk people who are watching this case, of course, they're also focused specifically, of course, on the abortion piece here, because as you said, something like 50 of the women who are having abortions in this country use medication abortion. And this is seen as very Very scary that this could be taken away from them. This is in some ways the right continuing to go forward and trying to find restrictions and ways to lessen access to abortion after having that big generational win in Roe v. Wade.

I remember at the time talking to conservative activists saying they were going to continue to go forward. They were going roughly way. Was that the only thing they're going to go after? So when you look at the Justice Department, they're asking for something specific, but also when you're looking at people who are worried about access for abortion, they're hoping that all this goes away and that women are able to have more access.

Bring our senior legal correspondent, Lord Jared Laura. What role do you believe the Washington State ruling, which was in direct conflict with the Texas ruling, played in Justice Alito's decision? A lot. A lot.

Because it set up a direct conflict. And a direct conflict is typically one that the Supreme Court wants to resolve in the lower courts to give them guidance so that you don't have sort of this patchwork of bizarre rulings where literally the FDA could be held in contempt of court for not following that Washington ruling. We talk about it, you know, being co equal, certainly those two district courts, but if they don't follow that Washington one, it could be quite serious, especially since the judge doubled down on it yesterday, reiterating, you have to follow this order fda. So it is certainly possible that Alito found that to be one of the reasons why it would be prudent to at least go on the administrative state.

Now, we should be clear, just because he's done this administrative stay doesn't mean that when it comes to the merits of this issue, he's going to rule in favor of the Biden administration. We've seen this before where he puts on administrative stay and then it comes out a different way when it comes to the merits. But this, what this really does, especially since it's only him doing this, is it does preserve the status quo to get everyone out from underneath this midnight deadline, which by all accounts was sort of this arbitrary deadline that the judge had sat for no reason for a drug that had been on the mark for 23 years, mind you. And so I think the idea was, let's just hear everybody out.

We haven't even heard from the plaintiffs. And so the justice is ordering obviously the plans to respond to this, because they haven't so far. We only heard from the Justice Department of the plain manufacturer. What is five days by?

What is five days by? Yeah, well, the Supreme Court, I think has enough clerks and enough smart folks in that building to figure out what they want to do with this. But at least it doesn't the whole idea if they had asked for just a pure stay, the worry was they wouldn't be able to get themselves together enough by just like six hours from now. Right.

I guess more than that to be able to put it in. And so that's why you asked for the administrative stay. Just because of the time crunch. The longer stay issue.

Again, not clear how they'll come out, but I think you might see a decision by Wednesday at least Thursday. You this what is the most what are the I guess the very scenarios are they could throw it back to the 5th Circuit and tell them to do a full hearing, which is already agreed to do this circuit is agree to expedite this. So if in fact they say, okay, we're going to keep this stay on the district court order in Texas, so has merit success stuff essentially stays on hold. So then proceeding what happens is the case goes back down to the 5th Circuit.

They will hear it on expedited basis in May. The fifth Circuit tends to be conservative. If it rules against the Justice Department, then that will go back up to the Supreme Court for a full appeal. But at least the state preserves the status quo while the case, you know, circles around courts.

Is that the most likely scenario that this is going to get stayed until there's a full hearing and there's a full hearing in the Supreme Court. So this could get Bob Barnes was essentially kind of predicting that it could be the next term, you know, in the fall, that the Supreme Court says we're here this and we're gonna stay this till the end of the year. I'm not so sure. If you asked me that two years ago, I might have a different answer.

I think after the court struck down Roe, I'm not so sure that that's what they'll do here. Especially because remember, what we're talking about is not the invalidation of the original approval of imprisonment. That's no longer on the table. The fifth Circuit said that wasn't okay.

All we're talking about now is a number of steps that the FDA takes starting in 2016 that makes it easier to get the drug. And so the justices may say, hey, in the year 2000, people weren't being harmed. And for 16 years you had this drug and nobody said that there was a reputable harm. So how can you say that there's a replicable harm now just because you can't get it in the mail.

They may not find that burdensome enough. And that's why I'm not so sure that they will say this piece of the Oregon Yamiche. There's been some chatter that one idea circulating in the Biden world is resubmitting mifepristone for a new authorization. Is that on the table or not?

It's a good question. I'm not sure if it's on the table. It's obviously something that could be on the table if you have an administration that's just trying to find new ways to give women access to abortion. Because this, of course, is an administration that realizes that they are dealing with a Supreme Court that already overturned president, that has already shown that it is, in their minds, willing to, they would say, provoke a right that women had lived with for years and years and years.

So I think it's not. While I don't know exactly whether or not they're going to do that, I think it's not surprising that could be something that happens because this is an administration that has said that they're going to try everything they can other than break a law to get women access abortion. All right, let's move from our constitutional law scholarship here and move to medical school, if you will. I'm gonna bring in Kristen Ly.

She's an OBGYN currently practicing in Minnesota due to Wisconsin's current strict abortion law that we expect to be off the books soon. So, Dr. Ly, let's talk about the fallout on the medical side of things. So if this is, if the new version of this ruling is put into place where you're down to just seven weeks, where you can use this and you can't do it in the male.

Give me some practical impacts medically for women. Well, I think the most important thing that needs to be mentioned is mifepristone is safe, Mife is effective. And mifepristone has been used for over 20 years. Over 5 million people in this country have used this medication.

This medication. Doctors know how to use mifepristone. We know that it works up until 10 weeks. And we use it for abortions, of course, but we also use for miscarriage management.

This is a very commonly used medication. It's just it is our imperative to be able to offer our patients the safest, most effective medications. And taking away this option after the 10th week of pregnancy is just, it's truly unmanageable for those of us who use it. So if you have a miscarriage and it's past 10 weeks and you don't have mifepristone, what do you do?

Well, if it's before 10 weeks, that's generally when we're using mifepristone. Then we do have the option of just using one medication, but it's not nearly as effective as the dual regimen. So if we're only using the mesoprostal, patients are more likely to have to come back for a second dose of medication for a surgical procedure for things that cost more money, that mean they have to take more time away from work, they need more help with taking care of their kids and their other daily obligations. It is just a much less effective way of delivering care.

Let's talk about a pregnancy that's at six weeks or seven weeks. How often do people know they're pregnant at six weeks or seven weeks? Some people do, but a lot of people don't. And that's where things get really tricky across the country, especially with these really early bands like what we're seeing down in Florida.

It just makes it really hard for us to offer care for people to seek care. You know, one of the biggest problems that we're seeing is doctors don't know what kind of care they can deliver. Patients don't know what kind of care they can receive because of all of the confusion and all of these changes that are happening. This again is such a huge disservice to people who are seeking women self care in general.

Explain why you won't. Right now you won't practice in Wisconsin. Why Wisconsin has an abortion ban that dates back to 1849, which is a year after Wisconsin was formed as a state. This ban has only one exception and it's for the life of the mother, but that is ill defined.

So I am very open, I'm very outspoken, and I don't feel that it's safe for me to practice general obgyn care. Abortion doesn't live on a satellite somewhere. Abortion is actually part of contraception care, miscarriage management, helping people with complicated pregnancies. So abortion care is too deeply integrated into women's health care for us to tease out and feel comfortable practicing in a state that is so hostile when it comes to abortion care?

Look, I don't. And how many other of your obgyn colleagues are you seeing leave communities where there is questions about the legality of the law? Because that would mean there's a lot of people who suddenly are not gonna even have. I mean, I know this is something that some lawmakers have brought up even on the right side of the aisle going, hey, will there be any OBGYNs available in rural red America?

Well, they should be questioning that. We're seeing this in Idaho right now. There already weren't enough doctors in Idaho to take care of the population there and doctors are fleeing. Wisconsin's a little bit of a different story because we have hope now.

So many of my colleagues do have other plans just in case things don't work out. But we are dearly hoping that we can keep practicing in Wisconsin. I can't wait to get back because I'm a sixth generation Wisconsinite. I want to take care of my people.

Let me ask you this. On mifepristone, what is the most common side effect that you would have before 10 weeks taking mifepristone? There really aren't any significant side effects. It is so fundamentally safe, Chuck.

It is safer than Viagra. It is safer than ibuprofen and Tylenol that you get over the counter. My patients have not had any adverse effects from mifepristone. They're exceedingly rare.

All right. I just want to get that in there as well. Lord Jared Yamiche, Dr. Ly, thank you all for helping us getting started with this breaking news, both from the legal front and the medical front.

Up ahead, we're going to talk about the political front. Republicans have been grappling with some unpopular politics when it comes to the abortion bans around the country, especially after Florida's governor signs into law one of the country's most restrictive, plus inside the manhunt, arrest and first court appearance of one of the biggest leakers of US Intelligence in a decade. I'll talk about the Washington Post reporter who first wrote the story wide open before the FBI went public with what it knew. You're watching me, the press now.

And now to the politics. Today's ruling comes a day after Florida Governor DeSantis late last night quietly signed into law one of the nation's strictest abortion bans. That bill mostly bans bans most abortions of Florida after six weeks before many women even though they're pregnant. It's the latest example of candidates trying to pitch themselves to the Trump base.

The Florida legislation would also impose significant hurdles to qualify for exception in cases of rape, incest or human trafficking. A position like that is not popular nationally among voters. And when Florida voters were asked their opinion about a similarly hardline policy, a six week pain with no exceptions, Republicans also didn't like it at all in Florida. Two One, compounding issues for DeSantis is that his emerging campaign operation seems to struggle as he simultaneously tries to pick off Trump voters while making himself seem like a more reasonable alternative to Trump.

He had the unfortunate optics of rushing back and forth last night from Battleboro, Ohio, not to attend to the devastating floods in the southern part of the state, but to quickly sign a six week ban legislation behind closed doors, no media. He then probably left the state of Florida again this morning to play up some conservative bona fides as governor at Virginia's Liberty University, where he spoke today. But then he didn't mention the six week ban, though it was a major part of his introduction. Take a listen.

We have embraced freedom, we have maintained law and order, we have protected the rights of parents, we have elevated the importance of family and promoted a culture of life. We have respected our taxpayers and we have rejected woke ideology. In addition, the sanctus stole when he attempted to carve out an even Trumpier position on the war in Ukraine, initially dismissing it as a territorial dispute to Tucker Carlson and then after getting criticized by the establishment and donors, he quickly changed his tune and called Putin a worker. And in a quest to bolster his cultural credentials seem to have won.

Found out he got out, maneuvered and then kind of threw that potential about it to be fair other potential republic presidential and it's not fairing a whole lot better at the moment. We've seen numerous Republican candidates struggle to answer simple questions about how they did different than Trump while also struggling with hard line positions taken by so many in his face. Miami City News colleague today Alex sat down with Republican Senator Tim Scott who himself just signaled his intention to get into the race. Take a listen.

How he struggles in part of her interview to articulate a clear position on the issue of abortion rights. So every time a state goes about decision, states have the ability to have the most conservative bills that they can get passed in their legislature. I support the culture of life, but six weeks the right mile marker? Well, the people have decided that their elected leaders have the opportunity to do so.

So I say absolutely, as a culture of life is being protected, we should celebrate that. States will have different varying views on that. But yes, if I were president of the United States, I would literally sign the most conservative pro life legislation that they can get through Congress. Even if it was six.

I'm not gonna talk about six or five or seven or ten. I'm just saying that whatever the most conservative legislation is that can come through Congress, yes, it is notable. He it's a different answer that he gave another network yesterday on abortion. We talked about having 100 central life, but at the same time seemed to be open to a 20 week limit if that was what could get passed through the US Congress.

Bottom line, as you can see, Republicans like Senator Scott, Governor, scientists, they find themselves facing in perhaps what is an impossible task of navigating national politics while also navigating Trump's Republican Party. So joining me now, Gary Finow. He is a Florida man covering Florida politics for Politico and Miami Send news, Colorado, Italy, who's been traveling the United States a lot and sat down with Senator Tim Scott earlier today. Gary, let me start with the optics issue here with Governor DeSantis.

The administration has given Fort Lauderdale everything it needs. It's done all the administrative stuff that it's needed. But it is pretty notable that he decided not to be a physical presence at all during this crisis down there. And it's not lost on those of us who are very familiar with florid politics that the bluest county in the state is Broward County.

And yet he came in and out of the state of, you know, it's been an odd way he's handled the Fort Lauderdale situation. Can you give any insight? Well, the only insight I can give is that, you know, these events that he, that he attended were previously scheduled. I guess the question would have been would he have been able to cancel an appearance of Liberty?

Would you cancel an appearance in the Hampshire with the narrative, oh, he, what's he doing? Why isn't he here? I mean, I understand what you're saying about the, about the flooding. But yeah, what was more interesting to me was the fact that, that they wanted to get the bill signing done last night and they did.

And then he goes to and you know, just as a casual aside, you would think, oh, well, he's going to talk about it. That's why they wanted the bill signing. And then he didn't really talk about it. So that was a little bit of a surprise.

I'm really curious. He has really made a conundrum of an abortion because he made a big deal out of lowering the 15 week, then didn't want to have anything. They want to talk about it. And you just describe what he did in the last 24 hours, which on one hand it looks like he wanted to get some political, short term political benefit, but didn't.

I mean, it appears to me it looks like he's like, look, I got it. I don't want to be the only guy who's got more abortions in A state than a year ago hard stop. And at the same time it's like he doesn't want to be defined by the six week ban. Right.

And I think that is what you mentioned is important thing to notice of course is that Florida's current law which is only passed just a year ago still puts it out of step with other southern states. And as we've seen the statistics have worn out that a lot of people are coming in from other states and coming into Florida because it has a 15 week ban. And so you're left with the impression that you know, Florida was a hate and as compared to other states run by other conservatives. And so what I have been able to glean however in continual conversations with people on the standest team is that as of right now, I mean the goal has been to sort of take care of everything that could potentially be a speed bump along the way to Republican primary.

Right now they're focused on trying to get his conservative credentials. So where they think they're going to be, you know, as one person told me, like independent. Is there a single Tallahassee Republican, Gary, that is paying attention to what happened in Kansas, what happened in Wisconsin, what happened in Michigan. I mean La Crosse, Wisconsin is a Republican area.

Green Bay votes Republican. Now these are not that different than Pasco County. This is not that different than Jacksonville. This feels like how do you what happens when a party pushes that?

Do they really not expect back last year? Yeah, but you also know of course is that the Democrats are not in a very strong position here. The Republicans have a super majority. And it was very interesting as a House speaker, Paul Renner who did delve into this very deeply when he was talking reports about this week basically.

I mean he called this bill the sixth granted compromise. He said well there are people on my part who want to go to a zero weekend. And he basically. And then, and then I noticed that both the statement that put out by the governor's office and by people like Speaker Renner, they basically pointed to well you know, in California and other states they want abortion on demand all the way up to Perth.

I mean I know that we can argue about what exactly Democrats have said but the point is is that so that's how they're trying to position. But I think it gets to the fact that right now Republicans in Florida, I don't think they see much of a danger to their position. They've been in charge now for more than two decades. They've had some close calls but in the end they keep Winning.

Right. The only time they've lost is if it's a presidential candidate or Bill Nelson. Barack Obama or Bill Nelson. That's basically been about it.

Anyway, Gary, find out. Okay. A Florida man covering Florida politics for our friends at Politico. Appreciate your inside here, sir.

Good to see you. Let me move out. It's been interesting. Tim Scott and the abortion issue.

In some ways I feel like Tim Scott, in his struggle to articulate his position is him looking at the polls and realizing this isn't a good issue to be, to be nailed down on. Is that the sense you got? Yeah, look, I think it's a reality between the consistency that he said he's 100 pro life and the new reality that we see in the polls and the electoral politics overall that reproductive access is a galvanizing issue for Democrats and it looks like a pretty losing issue for Republicans. I'm struck as you're talking to Gary about the Florida at all and how DeSantis will have to own this six week abortion ban.

I actually think that every Republican will have to own and answer for what every other Republican does on this issue throughout the 2024 presidential campaign. Especially because if they're not willing to articulate the position of, well, My position is 15 weeks, 20 weeks, 6 weeks. If they're not willing to articulate it, then every other governor and state legislature throughout the country gets to put the parameters on that conversation for them. And that becomes very problematic when you have states that want to have a six week ban, wanna have ones that are much more restrictive.

20 even fell on really tough years in Washington right before the midterm election when Lindsey Graham talked about it. The fact that we're now talking about six and thought he's finally coming down with a position in that interview saying, yeah, okay, eventually I guess I could get to six. Even though he doesn't say that he wants six. I mean, it's allowing the rest of the country in this case to define the terms of the debate for everyone.

They're all, they're all right now. They're all afraid of looking like there's somebody who has a. They don't look like they have a softer position compared to somebody else. Tell me about your, your travels with Tim Scott and tell me about the reception he got.

I know he's a well liked figure. He's a well respected figure. Did you feel like you got people that were ready to sign on or you got people that were sort of, you know, window shopping? It's window shopping season.

Iowa, Chuck I mean, that's where I spent time with on the road. I think it was the same sense in New Hampshire. Folks are just starting to tune in, I think. Nevertheless, though, if I think about his stunt speech now, it hasn't really changed that much over the entire time that he's been traveling to these early states over the course of the last few months.

And it's not heavy on policy specifics. Instead, it sort of hobbles between, like a hopeful message about what can happen in America while also demonizing Democrats and saying that they have a blueprint to basically ruin and destroy America. So it really is kind of a heavy contrast between those two polls, but I think that's kind of where the contrast ends, especially when you consider in this soundtrack I'm about to play for you. He has a real hard time contrasting with anyone else in the field.

Watch. One of the open questions here is you look at the polls, you look at the fact that in this Republican field, President Trump is sort of a man to be. I mean, why should he not be the nominee of the party? One of the things I'm hearing a lot on the faith in America is that their concern about the most important issues in their lives is what's driving their decisions.

And one of the most important issues in their lives is the economic reality that President Biden seems to have figured out a blueprint for how to ruin America. The American people are looking for leadership, positive, optimistic, and anti conservatism. The bill that I wrote, I am thankful that I wrote the bill. The opportunity zones that spot about $200 million into poorest communities.

I wrote the bill. So there is a very important part of being the architect of legislation. American people continue to have an opportunity to weigh in on what their priorities are. My agenda so far has met their priorities.

As long as it continues to do so, they'll have a choice to make. And it's time to make that choice. I believe they'll choose me. So if he thinks that voters are gonna make that choice, Chuck.

But I didn't ask him. On foreign policy, those recent comments from former President Trump praising Putin and xi. He seems to say that's not how we should be talking about our allies. But didn't criticize the former president or adversaries.

But didn't criticize the former president for talking about our adversaries that way. I don't know that you can make the Republican primary sounding exactly like Trump on policy, but not delineating from him in any other way. But I guess we're about to find out. That's Jim Scott's strategy, at least for now.

Ally, another way to look at it is is he running to just be on the ticket? I think that's something a lot of people are saying. I mean certainly when you don't take any shots, when you take no shots at anybody, you running against it sounds like you're hoping you're view to Switzerland inside the concern. I think he's probably gonna do a good job of Switzerland.

Yeah, that's right. I think that's what it is. Doing a great job of using an umbrella in a live shot. Well done, my friend.

We're gonna ignore in all of this on the panel. Plus, after the break, the latest from Indianapolis where top Republicans, including the former president take the stage of NRA's biggest event of the year. And guess which presidential candidate got booted at the nra. It won't surprise you.

You watch the press now. Welcome back to NRA's annual convention taking place right now Inapolis. Donald Trump is scheduled to speak in a few minutes from now. Most of the announced or potential presidential candidates have also addressed convention go or in the case of DeSantis, sending a video message.

This year's convention comes in the backdrop of two recent high profile mass shootings, actually in the same region as where this is. One was at a school in Nashville and the other was at a bank and Louisville, neither place very far from Indianapolis. Former Vice President Mike Pence addressed those tragedies earlier today when he spoke, ignoring the motivations of the trans activists who killed three children and three adults at that Christian school in Nashville and ignoring the mental health challenges of the man who killed five people and injured eight others in Louisville, President Biden. The Democrats have returned to the same tired arguments about gun control and gun confiscation.

But we don't need gun control. We need crime control. We don't need lectures about the liberties of law abiding citizens. We need solutions to protect our kids.

Now, that was not the part where he was booed. He was booed at some parts and called a trigger. That of course, hasn't do with his relationship with Donald Trump. This year's convention is hardly the first NRA gathering to take place with a deadly mass shooting event basically hovering over the event.

Last year's convention changes days after Uvalde, the evolving school shooting was 19 children, two teachers. And weeks after white crimes kill 10 people and shooting spree at a Buffalo supermarket, the 2019 area convention was taking place as a gunman opened fire inside a Southern California synagogue during Passover. And back in 1999, the area convention started 10 days and about 50 miles from Columbine Half School, where two students killed 13 people and injured more than 20 others. Joining us on set is DMH Washington Correspondent, strategic President and Executive Director for American Progress Action, CEO of the Dispatch, as well as an BBC News political analyst.

Steve, let me start with you on the idea that Mike Pence, who arguably is ideologically in step with the ra, with so many major conservative institutions, that just because of his relationship with Donald Trump, he's considered a person called a trade. Yeah, I mean, it's reflection of what the Republican Party is today. And we see this now over the course of several years. Look back to the Republican convention in 2020 and the lack of an actual platform.

There's not a policy prescription if you're a Republican these days, it's your loyalty to Donald Trump. Now, I think that that's we're seeing a change at the sort of grassroots level. You have a hardcore base that supports Donald Trump, but you have a bigger collection, I think a growing collection of people who say enough is enough. That's who I think Mike Pence needs to appeal to.

Basically, as you were discussing in your earlier segment, they're copying rock and hard places. They don't want to alienate the Trump loyalists, but they want to appeal to people who are sexual. My pen strikes me as he's the first Willist candidate in Sixth Sense. And his candidacy, you know, he takes this candidacy as a life.

I don't know if he's going to get a look. I don't know if they're going to get this look. Right. To Steven's point, there, there is a segment of the Republican Party that's going to move on from Trump, but we don't know if that's enough to build a majority coalition that you need to win primaries and win a nomination.

And that's where Pence and all the others that are looking to challenge Trump are finding themselves challenged. Because where is your lane to. To really go up against Trump, especially with DeSantis hanging in the wing? Well, it's funny.

I mean, I, Tim Scott, I call the sort of the Senate Republican nominee because every Senate Republican, oh, I wish it was with Tim Scott. And they talk about him and they very much are the ones that encouraged him in there. And I asked this person who's been an encourager, I said, you know why? Prescott said, well, he can unify the party.

I said, does the party want to unify yeah. And he said, I don't know. And he made that. He's like, that's the problem.

If it does, Scott can win without it. Maybe not. And I think that's exactly the problem. The party cases right now, which is how do they unify without Trump?

How do they unify with Trump? In both cases they are really fractured and no one's really running the experiment. And you know, Tim Scott is not in the first few days of trying to see if there's a non MAGA wing that actually wants to be the alternative. They're all trying to basically appeal to MAGA without, you know.

Yeah. The other thing is unify around what? Like I believe Tim Scott could be a unifying figure for the Republican Party of 2012 or 2014. Unify around what?

I mean, as I just said, they didn't even have a platform in 2020. You talk to Republicans today, you've got, you know, go to Republicans who would be comfortable with a Mitt Romney candidacy or somebody like that and then you've base this Trumpy base. Republicans can't, I think can't win a general election without the people who are skeptical of Trump. We've seen that, I think pretty clearly.

But it's hard to win a Republican nomination unless you win the hardcore Trump voters. It's this conundrum that they have here. And Tia, if you were the Biden White House, on one hand you're ecstatic about all this. But his numbers never improve and things don't seem to look rosier other than, you know, it's almost like delivery.

Like that car's a mess. I mean, look over here. Like I can't even drive that car. I mean that's, that's what you end up looking like.

Yeah. I mean, and to me that looks like that's the Biden strategy right now is like let the Republicans continue to make each other look crazy or you know, make themselves create challenges for themselves and Biden will just lay low or not even lay low. Biden will focus on what he's done and trying to sell himself as like the president for the people and hopefully that'll work out when it becomes a one on one one competition. Now that's leaving a lot to be a lot up to what could happen over the next year.

We heard the story in 2016. I'll just wait till it's Trump. And one up doesn't have 50% until he got 50%. I mean, I mean that to me is just really the challenge.

No one wants to take him on. And I think that's the experiment that someone has to be willing to run. And you know, he's not transcending, but it has to be someone with some stature. And Ron DeSantis keeps doing this.

What do you make of the Santa Steve? He feels like he's saying, I feel like we're watching him shrink before our eyes. The guy January looked like this potential huge stalking horse. And you're like, oh.

And now, you know, he strikes me as somebody who's constantly sailing but literally tacking, oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. And it's almost he. He's hearing everybody's criticism and responding to everybody's criticism. Yeah, I think that's right.

He's obviously had a rough patch here. It seems to me that his campaign and maybe the candidate himself having a hard time deciding whether he wants to try to split the Trump coalition, the Maguires that we I think all agree are likely to be needed to win the Republican nomination, or if he can build a coalition that doesn't require winning them. As of right now, he certainly seems to be courting the Trump base. I mean, if you look at his outreach to the so called national conservative movement, the kinds of policies that he's advocated, there are departure for policies that he's believed in and argued for in years past, but they're popular with that Republican base.

Right now, Donald Trump's going on the airtier with an attack ad hitting DeSantis on Social Security. He is really trying to make this idea, he wants everybody to think of DeSantis instead party as the guy wants Social Security. And DeSantis is not doing anything to inoculate himself on this. I think he's not paying enough attention to this problem.

I found the ad so interesting because the ad, it's about policy, but it's also about trolling Desantis. By the way, I had a Google the pudding story. I didn't, I had a poll hadn't heard about. But now you know about it, right?

Some of us have decided to try to cover politics with alcohol on social media. And by the way, my life's been too, you know, but that's the thing. It's not just about dinging him on policy. It's about, you know, trying to humiliate him, trying to marginalize him, which we know Trump does really well to his opponents.

But your point is made that DeSantis is not hitting back partially because he hasn't seem to figure out what he wants to do about Trump and the Trump, the Big Trump base of the party. Before we go, I want to play a clip when I get this Feinstein business clip of what Senator Klobuchar had to say about the various, about how Democrats are going about trying to push her out of office. Do you have confidence that she can continue to fulfill her constitutional duties as a senator from California? Well, I'm hopeful that you can.

Again, I want to see what happens in the next month or so. You give her that time to be able to come back. But if she can't come back month after month after month with this close Senate, that's not just going to hurt California. It's going to be an issue for the country.

I mean I understand that when it comes to digital nominations, the interest by the means in our politics these days, we can discuss who started it. I don't want to get into that debate but this, this just seems like a bad look of just trying to push an old lady out. I mean I, I think that there's a handful of people who have kind of gone there. I, you know, this is the one who's given her life public service almost literally.

And so I do think most people have landed in the place of let's give her time to see if she's healthy and come back. I think she'll be the first person to say that if her recovery does take months, it really doesn't make sense. Listen, the courts and the importance of the courts, it's not just, I mean the significance now when we talk about abortion. I understand, appreciate, I get it and it's like, you know, I write down it here yesterday but geez, you know, if this was set at fine committee, somebody had to step aside and replace there would be no problem.

And I'm like so Republicans knowing that they have Chuck Grassley who could also become an issue for them and he says no, not when comes to judges. There's no cooperation between two parties. Yeah, it's very different. I mean it is the issue that poll with Washington long before this moment.

I would disagree with you on dying fisa. Her problems have been open secret. Not for weeks, not for months, for years. Reporters around Capitol Hill tiptoe around asking questions of her that they ask every single other member of Congress because they're worried about making her look bad from a human level.

I mean this is true of conservative reporters in the room. This is done to that Cochrane. This is not a stronger the point is it does seem like she's being treated slightly differently than some of these old guys. And I thought Not Thad Cochrane.

I mean, certainly not near the end of his time. And there are questions about that. Oh, I know. Because nobody pushed him out of office.

Yeah. I mean, I think we should have. It's better if we can have an open and honest debate about people who aren't capable of serving an office. I think there are a lot of good actors or t.

I think the senator's family's not looking after her. I think the sender staff is not looking out for. I think everybody's thinking about politics, at least thinking about the person. And I think about the person.

Yes. And if she's not doing well, she probably shouldn't be serving in Congress. That's what I wonder. Where's her family to sort of help them.

But also we have to think this, this is a nation of several hundred million people and There are only 100 Senators and 435 members of the house and you want them all to be healthy and cognizant and working hard for the American people. And if you're one of a hundred and you can't do your job, I'm not gonna say about age but for whatever reason in the long term, that's not good for the country. No, it's all true. It does seem like it's selective depending on the person.

All right, T.N. steven, thank you. Up next, this is executive leaker behind a major breach of US intelligence disappeared court for the first time the latest on the story and the criminal charges that the 21 year old National Guardian faces. You're watching.

Welcome back. 21 year old Jack Teixeira, the international guardsman accused of sharing top secret government documents made his first court appearance in Boston today. Teixeira is being charged with possessing classified documents pertaining to national security security and possessing national defense materials. Those charges carry a maximum sense 10 years in jail.

According to Uncle David to share it has held a top secret security clearance as well as access to sensitive compartmental information since 2021. On April 6th when reporting about leakers became public, the FBI says sheriff search a classified database of the word leaked the API believes he was looking into the status of intel of the intel community's investigation. The affidavit also says the FBI contacted member of the online chat group on or around April 10th. That was Monday ahead of to share his arrest yesterday in north Dayton, Massachusetts.

National security report at the Washington Post he spoke to one of the members of this online chat room. Looks like before the FBI got to him where the classified documents were shared. Shane, it's good to see you. Congrats again on the scoop.

But let me. Let me start with this. Do we know if all the documents that he could have released have been released? Is the leak over or could more stuff pop up?

I think it's safe to say that no, the documents in the Adam's possession of the share of the group have not all been made public. I would say probably only a fraction of them really have. I think that we have at the post have reviewed. I have seen more than 300 documents.

I think there's around 50 or 60, maybe they've been out there that reported on. So there's a lot more of it's out there, Chuck, and just buried in. Buried in the Internet or in this chat group or what? We don't know.

I think it's safe to say they're no longer on the Internet, but I'll just leave it at that. Okay. As for Teixeira, essentially he had all this access and clearances because of his. It works.

Is the military at all rethinking how they do this? I think they're gonna be asking a lot of those questions. In fact, President Biden said today that he's ordered the intelligence community in the military to start looking at tighter restrictions. But honestly, that's kind of what you would expect him to say.

And the fact is, there have been other breaches like this in the past decade. I think of Chelsea Manning and I think of Edward Snowden, where you have people, including low level people like Teixeira, who have these very high level security clearances and manage to get information that they have authorized access to that are certainly not authorized to share. And they essentially walk it out of the building and make it public. So we've seen this before, and each time officials have assured the public they're putting guardrails in place to prevent this kind of, as they call insider threat.

And consistently they have proved to be imperfect. Can we get sense that to share went, you know, aggressively looking for this material to find, or was it stuff he sort of stumbled upon as he was doing his job? I think it's probably more of the latter. I mean, it seems like there's a consistency to what he was sharing in that they were daily updates and kind of intelligence reports over the course of a number of months.

Now, we believe he would have had access to them because he had access to a particular computer system that will get you to those documents. It's also not clear though, were some of these things maybe printed out in the office and lying around? Was There something in the trash that he retrieved. So we don't know entirely how he did it, but the basic fact is that based on his clearances and access they had to internal Defense department network, he could have conceivably gotten access to what we're looking at right now.

And I guess that's what. But it. I look at his background. I mean it was.

Did all his IT trained from within the military? It seems that way. I mean, we don't know a lot about what happened in his life before he got to the military. He had this specialty that is basically like a tech support person.

And it seems that, you know, he got the Air Force and maybe they trained on this. But we do know is that he had a longer history of being very efficient in online gaming. He was clearly technologically very fluent. I mean, administering Discord servers, you know, connecting with people online.

So he understood technology. I think it's probably safe to say before he joined the military, we're working with technology was his job. But there he's just working on your computer networks and systems. It's fairly basic, I think, compared to the stuff he was doing in his real life.

Do we have an idea of, you know, that there seem to be some anti Semitic and racist tropes that he was dabbling in? Do we have a sense of I necessarily political motivation, but something else here? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I talked to a couple members of the community who said yes, they did share and post racist memes and jokes, anti Semitic commentary.

But one of them said no, look, it really wasn't about that. This wasn't a political group. And he was really adamant that Teixeira was only sharing this class of information with these like largely teenage boys in the group as a way of impressing them like, you know, what a big shot he was, that he had access to all of these secrets and he never intended for it to go out more widely. This person also said to share what he was doing was illegal.

Those are the words that he used and said he is absolutely not a whistleblower. He was doing this to impress his friends. That was always one of the. The theories of motivation.

If it's not money, if it's not ideology, sometimes it's simply ego. Shane Harris at the Washington Post. Shane, thank you. Happy weekend to you.

We'll be back Monday with more Meet the Press now. Hey, everyone, I'm Dylan Dryer, co host of the third hour of Today and mom to three wild Boys. I've learned a lot my years as a parent, mostly that I don't have it all figured out yet. And I'm not the only one.

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