Meet the Press NOW — February 2

Hi there, and welcome to Meet the Press Now, I'm Ryan Nobles in Washington, where it's Groundhog Day in the halls of Congress, with Washington in the midst of another government shutdown. Less than three months since the last funding fight, this time over Democrats' demands for reforms to ICE and Border Patrol in the aftermath of the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Goode and Alex Prady in Minneapolis. Right now, the House Rules Committee is meeting as it tries to set up a floor vote on the government funding package that was passed by the Senate on Friday. That deal, negotiated between Senate Minority Leader Schumer and the White House, includes only two weeks of funding extensions for the Department of Homeland Security to give lawmakers time to negotiate potential reforms.

But a number of House Democrats have panned the Senate deal, raising the possibility of another prolonged shutdown. Yesterday, on Meet the Press, House Speaker Mike Johnson told Chris and Welker, he's confident that House will pass that legislation to reopen the government by tomorrow, but he appeared less open to some of the reforms put forward by Senate Democrats. Are you confident that the government will reopen on Monday with Republican votes? Do you have enough Republican support?

Well, let's say I'm confident that we'll do it at least by Tuesday, some of these conditions and requests they've made are obviously reasonable and should happen, but others are going to require a lot more negotiation. And you'll support some of those that you say are reasonable. Yes, in fact, I was in the Oval Office with the President a few days ago when he was on the phone with Leader Schumer, and they agreed, and Tom Homan was on the other line, and they agreed to most of those conditions. But the mask, for example, the additional judicial requirement for a warrant would be a whole other layer of effectively bureaucracy.

Complicating matters, Speaker Johnson is working with a razor thin majority and can only afford one Republican defection, one Democrat Christian Menefee who won the special election in Texas, gets sworn in. And moments ago, President Trump posting on social media urging the House to pass his funding deal without delay, saying we cannot have another long, pointless, and destructive shutdown. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, over the weekend, a federal judge rejected a bid by state and local officials to temporarily halt Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration's deployment of federal agents, but did acknowledge the quote, profound and even heartbreaking consequences of that deployment to the community. One of those heartbreaking consequences was the detention of five-year-old Liam Quahano Ramos, who was taken into custody with his father and transferred to an immigration facility in Texas last month, the photo of him being detained by ICE agents in his blue hat in Spider-Man backpack, drawing nationwide backlash.

But today he and his father are back home in Minnesota while their immigration case proceeds through the court system. Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro posting this video on social media of Liam and his dad walking out of the Daily Detention Center last night. Joining me now is our team of reporters, NBC News Senior National Political Reporter, Kyle Kapoor, is on Capitol Hill. Also with me is NBC News White House correspondent, Monica Elba, NBC News Senior holding security correspondent, Julia Ainsley, and NBC News correspondent, Maggie Vespa, is on the ground in Minneapolis.

Let's start with you, Kyle. Where do things stand when it comes to this government funding package? How likely is it that it's going to be passed tomorrow, like Speaker Johnson is predicting? Well, Ryan, the House does appear to be in good shape to pass this bill tomorrow, and part of the reason is it got a big boost in the last hour when President Trump posted on Truth Social, saying that every member of the House should support it.

That's important because every Republican in the House, not named Tom Massey, has proven malleable to his wishes. So the fact that he's out there saying it should pass with no changes. That is also important because there's some Republicans who wanted to make changes to this, add some of their demands onto it, which would have created problems in the Senate when it would have to go back. Trump is saying that is not going to happen, put a pin in all those demands, just pass it as is, and reopen the government, which is in a shutdown right now since Saturday.

What's interesting here is this division between the Democrats, including the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, who negotiated this deal and voted for it, and Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, who did not appear to have a hand in cutting this deal and as indicated to Speaker Johnson, as he told Kristen Welker that Democratic leaders are not going to support this. If you look at this letter led by Benny Thompson, the top Democrat on the committee that oversees DHS, urging colleagues to vote no, he says, quote, Democrats must act now to demand real changes that protect our communities before ICE and CBP receive another dollar in funding and, quote, he says that's what constituents want them to do. In other words, they don't even want a two-week stopgap bill to keep negotiating. Benny Thompson and many Democrats appear to think that DHS funding should not go on in any form at all until they get these reforms.

Well, I mean, it does seem as though they're positioned well to get this pass, but it seems as though the real fight is going to be after the government reopens and they need to negotiate these proposed reforms to ICE and CBP. They've only got a two-week window to get this done. How difficult will it be to get consensus on those reforms? Enormously difficult, Ryan.

I think this is going to be the much bigger challenge, yes, passing a bill to reopen the government and do a two-week stopgap for DHS looks to be in good shape, but the bigger struggle here is going to be coming up with a deal that President Trump and both parties and Congress, at least majorities of the House and Senate, can live with when it comes to Democratic demands to reign in ICE and CBP. I just spoke moments ago at a Senate majority leader, John Thune, who identified multiple issues that he thinks would be problematic, controversial on the Republican side, including the Democratic demand to prohibit agents from wearing masks because that was going to be a problem among Republicans. He indicated that Republicans are going to have some of their own demands, like ending sanctuary cities, which Democrats are not going to want to tolerate. So it's a big, big open question, whether they can come to a sweet spot here.

And for Democrats, look, they see this as an existential question of reigning in what they believe is now a lawless agency, too, rather with ICE and CBP, that are operating outside the bounds of the Constitution. And they don't want to put their fingerprints, many of them, at least, on anything that keeps funding going for these agencies, right? Okay. So I'll have to wait and see if Congress, Congress, as they often do, and if this gets done and then what the fight looks like after, we appreciate that report.

Monica, let's go to you now. This funding package was negotiated between President Trump and Minority Leader Schumer. We heard Speaker Johnson earlier in his interview with Kristen saying that he was in the room when they were talking on the phone about this. Should we expect the president to get on the phone to make sure House Republicans passed this funding package?

It was probably enormously helpful to Speaker Johnson that he posted this truth social post, but could he do more to make sure it gets over the finish line? Ryan, you know this so well. If we look back to the last shutdown, the tone this time around from the president is a different one. Remember that back then he was a bit on the sidelines, certainly at the beginning of it.

That is not the case with this shutdown with the president posting in that social media message that he will work together in good faith between Republicans and Democrats to try to see if they can get to this solution, to get to this place, to get the government reopened as quickly as possible. He is saying, essentially, we cannot have another long pointless and destructive shutdown that will hurt our country so badly, one that will not benefit Republicans or Democrats. So I do think you can expect the president to lean in on this, to be involved. It was notable also that Speaker Johnson said in that interview with Kristen that Tom Holman was on the other line while they were all gathering and trying to figure out a way forward here.

I think given the fact that the president was willing to make that change to send Tom Holman to oversee the operations on the ground now, they have had a little bit of different messaging on exactly what's happening in Minneapolis in the days since he made that decision about a week ago. But I do think the president is going to try to use every lever he can to see this come to an end fairly quickly. And you're right to point out, Monica, that it seems the president is aware of how the optics of the tactics in Minneapolis could be problematic for him. We know that Holman's there.

We know that they made at least some changes on the ground. But is he ready to make real concessions on efforts to rein ice in? Yeah, and that is the big, big question. Remember that Tom Holman in his big news conference last week said that there could be improvements made, that there was no way you could call what was happening in Minneapolis perfect or flawless, that there were changes that they were going to see, and that he used the word drawdown.

And then when the president was asked what that meant and whether there really was going to be the scaling back in Minnesota, he said no, no, no, absolutely not. And then a White House official told us that basically the president is still trying to carry out his larger immigration policy and priorities here, but that Tom Holman on the ground is somebody who can make some adjustment. So we simply don't know yet, Ryan, whether those changes are going to be enough to change what has been happening there. But certainly they have more of an eye toward potentially making those changes while not wanting to signal that it's a complete reduction in force there or a complete withdrawal from the city of Minneapolis or from the state of Minnesota.

But I think something else that happened last week is an indication when you talk about Maine and some of the targeted enforcement raids there that were being conducted that had been canceled and scaled back with Senator Susan Collins or Republican, of course, announcing that saying that she worked that out directly with the DHS secretary, Kristin Ohm. So you are seeing signs in this administration of a change and a shift, again, is it going to be a massive change in the tactics? It's too early to say. Okay, Monica, thank you for that.

Let's turn out Julia here in the studio. We mentioned at the top of the show a judge did not grant the state's effort to end operation metro service. Tell me more about what she said in her ruling. Well, they were asking for preliminary injunction.

So that means someone intervening because there's so much damage being done that before they can even weigh in on the merits, they need to put a stop for this. And she seemed to genuinely pretty conflicted, but backed up her ruling pointing to the circuit court because she said, this is Catherine Mendez, a judge was appointed by Joe Biden, who said, yes, there's damage being done here to the state, but the eighth circuit has already tied my hands because they say that if I stop the federal government from doing the business of the federal government, which is their right to enforce immigration law of federal law, that that would be causing harm to the federal government. She's basically saying, I don't want to open the window for judges to continue to put a stop on the federal government's authority when there's no real reason to do so because that could cause further harm down the road. Okay.

So let's talk more about that church protest. Yeah. A lot of follow up from obviously the journalist Don Lemon was arrested as a result of it. Attorney General Pam Vani announcing that there have been two more arrests tied to this.

What more do we know about that? Yeah, that's right. That we saw when we got the news about Don Lemon, and she's saying, if you riot in a place of worship, we will find you. This is of course what she put out just recently after these arrests, and she's naming these two people here.

We understand that Ian Davis Austin is a veteran and Jerome D'Angelo Richardson has described himself as somebody who's gone to college and Minnesota. We believe it's still a student. Not nearly as much. None of them, of course, are not as high-profile as Don Lemon.

But these were appeared to have been protesters, people have been involved in the effort really to resist what they see as an executive overreach by CBP and ICE, and they were in the church that day. Remember they targeted the church because the pastor there is an ICE official in that region. So that's why they were there. He was just acting as a journalist.

Right. And then as if there wasn't enough going on, DHS also confirming there are two measles infections at the Dilly Corrections Center. What do we know about this? And could it be the sign of more to come?

Well, and of course, Dilly got back in the headlines again because that's where Liam was held the report that you heard from Maggie there. And so this is obviously raising questions about what's happening in Dilly. We have seen outbreaks in ICE detention centers in the past. There were problems during COVID.

What's different now is that these are people who have been taken from the interior of the country and put there rather than people crossing the border who go through those medical screenings when they cross, measles is up across the country. This is not unique. What we heard from DHS is that they've put a real stop on any movement within Dilly. So that not only means that life just got a lot worse for the families that are being held there, but it also means that they think that they really need to contain this so that it doesn't become more widespread.

Dilly is the largest family residential center. It was closed under Joe Biden. It was reopened under this Trump administration. And now it's getting a lot more attention because this isn't the first administration to support children.

And when you see so many of them that have been taken from their schools from their families from their communities and held there, they put it in a different light, especially now with measles. Yeah, right. You mentioned Maggie. Let's go to her now in Minneapolis.

She's on the ground where Liam almost has just come back home. Maggie, what's next for him and his family's immigration case? What kind of situation is he returning to? Well, Ryan, as far as the situation that he's returning to, I'll tell you, I'm standing in front of Liam's elementary school today.

And the reason that we're here is because this school is closed due to a bomb threat that was emailed into actually multiple schools in the Columbia High School District overnight, which caused the entire district to shut down. Effectively, what this means is that this kid is home, his dad is home and everyone that we spoke into including the superintendent last night is unbelievably relieved, like this rare sigh of relief here, but he's coming home to chaos and he's coming home to this continually tense situation here and the city that he's the only city he's ever known as his home. And the city, by the way, to the measles outbreak that you and Julia just spoke about, we've reached out to the family attorney to ask how Liam is doing because, remember, last week, Congressman Joaquin Castro, the one who escorted him out of Dilly over the weekend last week when he visited Liam and his dad, he said Liam wasn't doing very well. He said in his words, he seems depressed that he wasn't eating well and he seemed to kind of indicate that he might be falling under the weather.

So in the wake of the news of this measles outbreak over the weekend, we reached out to the attorney to ask how he's doing health-wise. We haven't heard back, but obviously Liam's condition is top of mind for a lot of people. As far as their case goes, they're waiting for that case to move forward and again, the family attorney said that they had come legally, they had applied for asylum. I reached out to DHS over the weekend to say, with this ongoing operation, continuing, as we saw from the judges ruling here in Minneapolis, can Liam's family expect to basically not be targeted for arrest moving forward while their case continues?

DHS declined to answer that question directly. I even reiterated the question after the gave a generic statement about how the agency doesn't specifically they say target children, which people here on the ground dispute that based on what they've seen. And they again refuse to say that the family is basically safe from arrest moving forward. So right now, they're asking for privacy, the superintendent said there are no plans for Liam to come back to school at this point, they're just kind of together, healing, hoping this moves forward.

Again, just with all this chaos, Ryan swirling around them. Yeah. Alright, Maggie, Vespa, thank you for your excellent work on the ground there. We appreciate it.

Turning now to the breaking news out of Arizona, where Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of our NBC News colleague, Savannah Guthrie, is missing. And according to officials, the incident is being investigated as a crime. Guthrie was last seen Saturday night in her home outside of Tucson, Arizona before she was reported missing by her family on Sunday. The Pima County Sheriff gave an update on the investigation earlier today.

Here's some of what the officials said. We saw some things at the home that were concerning to us. We believe now, after we've processed that crime scene, that we do in fact have a crime scene. She is very limited in her mobility, right?

We know she didn't just walk out of there. That is that we know. There are other things at the scene that indicate there was there was a a she did not leave on her own. But right now, we don't see this as a search machine as much as we do a crime scene.

Officials also saying that Guthrie needs to take daily medication and it could be fatal if she does not. Authorities are asking for the public's help. If you have any information, you can call the Pima County Sheriff's Department at the number on your screen. And joining me now from outside the Sheriff's Department in Tucson, Arizona, is NBC's Liz Schutz.

Liz, tell us about the latest in this investigation and why authorities are calling it a crime scene instead of a search mission. Yeah, hi, Ryan. I mean, this is a multi-agency effort right now with the Pima County Sheriff's Department saying they're working in tandem with the ATF, the FBI, trying to figure out where Nancy Guthrie might be. You heard the sheriff there say that what they found inside her home is what led them to believe that this was no longer a search and rescue mission, not somebody who just simply wandered off and got lost, but actually a crime scene.

The Sheriff's office was pretty tight-lipped about what exactly they found. We do know that they have her cell phone, that's what the sheriff said. And they are pleading with the public for any kind of information, any kind of tip that could help give them some kind of lead to what may have happened here. We saw them.

We were just in the neighborhood. We saw authorities. They were going door to door. They're asking people to look at their wind camera footage.

They say, no detail is too small. It could be a person that walked by. It could be a car. We know that it's very much rattled the community.

I was talking to some of the neighbors who say that it's a really safe neighborhood. There's really no crime at all. They joke all the time. People just leave their doors open.

So people are very shaken. We also saw two women driving around showing a picture of Nancy Guthrie to people saying have you seen her? People are coming together to try to search for our colleagues' mother here in this situation. And what more do we know about Nancy Guthrie's health?

I know that's a concern as well. Yeah. So we know she's 84 years old, but the sheriff's department was saying she is the term that used with sharpness attack, that she cognitively, she is really with it. That's a big reason that they do not believe that she wandered off.

They said it wasn't some kind of dementia situation. They say she is, she does have some mobility issues, but they say it's like standard mobility issues for an 84 year old woman. The sheriff, I believe he said she wouldn't be able to walk 50 feet. And then we do know as well that she takes this medication that she has to take every 24 hours or within a 24 hour period.

And the sheriff said that if he doesn't take it within 24 hours, it could be fatal. So time is really of the essence here. Okay. Let's go ahead.

Thank you for covering that story. Obviously so many of us here are waiting the baited breath for more information. So we appreciate it. We'll continue to follow that story closely.

We'll bring you any major updates as we get that coming up, revelations and ramifications. What we've learned so far from the millions of Epstein-related files recently released by the Justice Department. And why some survivors are raising privacy concerns about the administration's handling of the release watching beat the press now. Welcome back to Justice Department is facing renewed scrutiny over its release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Department acknowledging it had accidentally released the names of victims when it made more than three million pages of documents public on Friday. The DOJ releasing a statement saying in part when a victim's name is alleged to be unredacted, our team is working around the clock to fix the issue and republish appropriately redacted pages as soon as possible to date one tenth of one percent of the release pages have been found to have victim identifying information on redacted. The newly released files contain several prominent names, but Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche says none of the revelations will likely lead to new criminal cases. Well, look, I can't talk about any investigations, but I will say the following, which is that in July, the Department of Justice said that we had reviewed the files, the quote, Epstein files, and there was nothing in there that allowed us to prosecute anybody.

And the senior Justice reporter Ryan Riley joins me now. So Ryan, the Justice Department facing backlash by what's revealed in the files and the documents. It's interesting. It's a little perplexing.

They said the reason that it took more than a month for them to release this information was to prevent this exact thing from happening. What's their explanation? Yeah. Maybe the explanation is they're not that great at tech, the federal government's job.

But essentially, you know, even one tenth of one percent, as they said, that's a human being. That's a human being. That's a lot that, you know, if you look at three million documents, that's a lot of documents still that are out there that have the names in it. But you know, what they say is that they really dedicated hundreds of agents to this, or rather hundreds of lawyers, or 500 lawyers who are working on this.

And so that's the reason that they blew the deadline. But still, with all these mistakes sort of slipping through the cracks here, you know, there's been a lot of pushback from advocates for people whose names got inadvertently put into these documents. And also, when they brag about it, I don't brag is the right word. But when they say less than one percent or one tenth of one percent, we haven't gotten through that much.

Right. I mean, I mean, there's a possibility that a lot more are going to be uncovered. Yeah. What's your biggest takeaway of what's been revealed so far?

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things around people who are dealing with Epstein. I do think that there's this interesting sort of trend that's emerged where there's a lot of documents that are in here that are very credible, meaning the ones that were directly between Jeffrey Epstein and his emails between individuals. And otherwise, there's a lot of documents in there that really aren't reliable.

So a lot of these FBI documents that were just tips that were put into the tip line, sort of just even reading those. And you want to see that they're not really reliable, and that was sort of sorted out by the process. So it's a unique circumstance that you have the Justice Department putting out all of these documents, all of this raw material that normally would be protected by numerous laws and internal policies. And when you have all those documents out there, there's a lot of chances for people to pursue stuff that's not necessarily reliable.

So you really have to rely on news outlets that have vetted this and looked into this and put this in proper context in order to decide what you should believe and what you should. Right. And the Deputy Attorney General said on Friday that they were essentially done. There's no more files to be released.

Do we believe that to be the case? Could Congress try and push for more wells that happen? I think there's still a lot of documents that they're protecting by privilege that could come out in the future. But I think the main thesis I've been putting everyone together to work on this, having that many lawyers working on this, that era is sort of over.

It did feel like the Deputy Attorney General just wanted to be done. Yeah. There was also a shake-up today at the Department of Justice. What can you tell us about that?

Yeah. So Ed Martin was the weaponization czar within DOJ and sort of going after a lot of Donald Trump's enemies. And he's now out of that role. He's still in this part of the attorney role that he held, but we reported today that he's no longer in this really important weaponization position, which I think you can expect to hear a lot more about down the line because that's a real intense focus of the White House that saying a year after that, Pam Bond, he put out this memo on weaponization where things stand.

And obviously Donald Trump has sort of been ringing the bell about all of this very frequently on social media. Okay. Brian Riley, thank you for that. We appreciate it.

The Oversight Committee responds to the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein Files. Plus where the shutdown showdown goes from here with the House Act to Vote on a funding deal as soon as tomorrow. That interview next on Meet the Press Now. Welcome back to Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

We'll be front and center this week on Capitol Hill, the House is set to vote on whether to hold former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt for failing to comply with the House Oversight Committee subpoena as part of the Committee's investigation. Meanwhile, Congressman Rokana, one of the authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, says the Justice Department's release of Epstein-related files is so far insufficient and is threatening to move forward with contempt and impeach proceedings against Attorney General Pam Bondi if more files are not released. We are trying to give the Justice Department some benefit of the doubt. They did do a release that was significant.

I mean, this is the most documents that we have seen released so far in history, but it is not good enough. And so Thomas Massey and I have requested a meeting with the Deputy Attorney General. He said he's open to meeting with members of Congress. He said he's open to explaining why the redactions were done.

So I hope that we will have a meeting. If we don't get the remaining files, if we do not get the remaining 302 forms, the remaining prosecution memo from 2019, and if the survivors are not happy, then Thomas Massey and I are prepared to move on impeachment or contempt. Joining me now is Congressman Suha Subramaniyam, a Democrat from Virginia and a member of the House Oversight Committee. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.

I want to start first with your reaction to what you've learned since the Justice Department's release of the Epstein Files on Friday. I know this is something that you've been closely monitoring. Yeah, you know, even by their own admission, they withheld about two and a half million files. And their excuse is that it was to protect the victims.

But I don't really know who exactly they're protecting because even the files that they released had identifying information about victims. And so they said last March that they had the files ready to release. And we've been looking for certain things in all of their releases, like victim statements and interviews that they had during the investigation or prepared indictments that were shelled to get Jeffrey Epstein's sweetheart deal. We haven't found any of the key evidence that we've been looking for.

And so they're clearly withholding things and continuing to cover up. But we're going to continue our investigation and move forward with it regardless of how this administration acts. And are you frustrated enough at this point that you're prepared to move to some sort of impeachment or contempt charge against Attorney General Pam Bondi? Yes, we actually on our committee that the Democrats moved to hold Pam Bondi in criminal contempt because the Republicans won and we're trying to do the same to the Hillary Clinton, but also because she violated the law repeatedly.

And so now we're in a place called Blanche now, I think is someone else that we're looking at because in addition to being the president's former personal attorney and then after we're talking, we'll move towards a minimal security prison. He's saying that this investigation is over, you know, he's still in clear violation of the law. So I think not Blanche and Pam Bondi should certainly be held in contempt at this point. And we're going to keep pushing and putting pressure on them to release the files.

You mentioned the Clintons and as a member of the committee, you know that the House Oversight Committee has voted to hold the Clintons in contempt of Congress. You voted against that resolution. In, can you explain why you decided to vote yes and now that these motions appear to be going to the floor, how will you vote in that respect and why do you view it differently than your belief that the Attorney General should be held in contempt? Yeah, so to be clear, I voted for the Clintons to be held in civil contempt because I want to put pressure on them to come before a committee.

I do want to hear what Bill and Hillary Clinton have to say. I don't think they have much to say. Hillary Clinton says she never met the guy, but Bill Clinton wasn't in some of the photos that were released. And so I'd like to hear from him and what analogy he has about Epstein's operation.

But I voted against criminal contempt because this is clearly a ploy by the president to once again play his political enemies in prison and to go after his political enemies criminally. And we haven't held anyone else in criminal contempt. We haven't even tried. And we haven't even given the Clintons the opportunity to come before a committee and give us answers.

They've offered to be to pose for four hours with a transcript and with multiple questioning lines. And yet the committee, the Republicans on the committee keep moving the target and moving the goalposts because I think it's pretty clear the president wants the Department of Justice to be able to go after the Clintons and put them in jail. So I think that's what this is really about and I'm not going to be party to that. But you do believe that at some point Bill Clinton in particular should answer some questions about his involvement with Epstein, especially given the fact that his name has appeared repeatedly in these files.

That's why I voted to subpoena him. I voted to hold him in civil contempt. I've still continued to call for him to come before a committee and testify. But you know, look at how he's being treated compared to everyone else on a pan body is violating the law.

Other witnesses have been given written statements like the Clintons did and been told that that's all that we needed by this majority on the oversight committee. And so they're clearly treating the Clintons differently because they're political opponents of the president. And so I'm not going to be party to the president trying to go after his political enemies and put them in jail, which is what's happening right now across the country. And then finally, the oversight committee, I finally on this topic, I should say, is conducting its own investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

Do you think the committee should also conduct a separate investigation into how the DOJ has handled the release of the Epstein files? And if the Democrats were to win the majority, would that include issuing subpoenas and hauling some of these cabinet members before Congress to answer questions? Oh, absolutely. I mean, this investigation is not just about the crimes that Jeffrey Epstein committed.

It's also about the cover up and why he was able to get away with it and commit more crimes and expand his criminal operation. And so we don't want this to ever happen again. And we certainly want to make sure that people can trust their government institutions and not feel like they can, they're powerless when the most powerful are of committing crimes and not being held accountable. And so we're going to continue this investigation regardless of whether Republicans join us.

They join us on some occasions. But when the president is involved, they seem to stick with the president on many issues. But we're certainly going to continue our line of questioning, we're going to continue our investigation. And there's much more to come.

So the top lunch thinks this is over, but this is the beginning. All right. So we are on day three of a partial government shutdown. The hope is that it's a short term shutdown, especially for someone I'm sure who covers the district like you do with a lot of federal employees.

How are you going to vote on Senator Schumer's deal that he hatched with the White House on these five operations bills and then a two-week extension of DHS money. Will you vote yes once it gets to the House floor? Well, right on the rules committee is debating whether to put them all in one vote or separate them again. But I have concerns about the Department of Homeland Security and the way Secretary Noam has basically operated immigration enforcement.

I mean, we have seen a complete and utter chaos all across the country because of her. And so to ask me a fund, the ICE and DHS after all that has happened is a very difficult ask. And I have separate concerns as well about Secretary Hexett, the way he's operating DOD. And so I've actually voted against these two packages already.

And unless I see some changes, I plan to vote against them again. I know there's a lot of federal workers and contractors in my district and I want to make sure that we avoid a shutdown. I want Republicans to come to the table with us and try to figure this out. And I'm really sick, honestly, of these shutdown fights because we should be passing budgets.

That's one of the main sort of things that Congress should be doing. It's one of our main jobs. And we shouldn't be holding federal government employees to task and have them suffer just because we are having these fights on Capitol Hill. And so I hope that we can change the system moving forward.

Congressman, respectfully, I mean, the House and Senate were prepared to pass all 12 appropriations bills as close to the normal process as it can go. It's obviously several months delayed. And it was Democrats who raised a red flag over the DHS funding. Isn't that what you're doing here holding government funding hostage to elicit a policy goal?

I'm not saying that's a bad or a good thing. But isn't that how the situation is playing itself out? I would give you another perspective, which is that they're putting really bad policy before us and telling us if you don't pass this and it's shut down time and we don't mind having a shutdown. If Republicans actually want to be collaborative and work with us on these budgets and work with me on these budgets, my office is open, my door is open.

I've stepped forth to some things I wanted to see, some changes I wanted to see on ICE, on DOD, and the way in which some of these agencies are conducted, I have many of the federal workers that live in my district that tell me all the time what's going on. These agencies and they've had it. And so they want to see us use our leverage to put pressure on this administration to change. And this is one place where we can do it.

But I think the system, though, is failing because the reality is we're, you know, I think federal workers and contractors should get paid regardless of what happens during these budget fights. Okay, Congressman, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

And after the break shot across the bow, Democrats cruised a victory in a Texas special election for state Senate, flipping a district that President Trump won by 17 points. Steve Cordacki breaks down the results and what it could be ahead of the midterms. Stay with us. I'll meet the press now.

Who is in the Oval Office right now taking questions from reporters. Let's hear what the president has to say. And spend billions and billions of dollars on it. Something went wrong.

We have to find out what it was. Yeah, please. You announced you want to build a new and spectacular entertainment complex at the Kennedy Center. Right.

Do you plan on tearing it down and how much will all of the renovations cost? Probably around $200 million. And you know, it's funny in real estate and building, I've done so much of it. I've done so well with it.

You want to sit with something for a little while before you decide on what you want to do. And you know, we sat with it. We ran it. We said very bad shape.

It's rundown. It's sort of dangerous. Things fall out. Fall out of ceilings.

You've seen it. And we had some big events there. We had a lot of great events there over the last year. But you can't do any work because people are coming in and out, and you have to work in a way of a marble man over there the other day.

He said, you know, every time I put down a piece of marble, people are stepping on the marble. They don't even have time to drive. And you can't do the same quality job if you close it, and you know, we're fully financed. And so we're going to close it.

And we're going to make it unbelievable, far better than it ever was, and we'll be able to do it properly. I was thinking maybe there's a way of doing it simultaneously, but there really isn't. And we're going to have something that when it opens, it's going to be brand new beautiful. I'm not ripping it down.

I'll be using the steel. So we're using the structure. We're using some of the marble, and some of the marble comes down. But when it's opened, it'll be brand new and really beautiful.

It'll be at the highest level. We can do a much better job, probably in a way, a faster job, because when you do a piece of me on, for instance, to have a play tonight, and you can't do anything, you have to pull out everything, and you can't have stanchions all over the place, so people are walking in to see a play. So we'll be closing it sometime around July 4th. It's like, we'll close it on July 4th in order to do something great for America.

And then we're going to build it. We have great contractors. We're going to build it. And we'll do it right.

We're using the highest grade marbles, the highest grade, everything. It'll be brand new. Tremendous carriers, putting in the air conditioning, I guess they're a bidder, but they're probably going to get it. Carrier.

We're going to have all brand new air conditioning heating. The steel will all be checked out, because it'll be fully exposed, you know. It's been up for a long time. But as anybody knows, it was in very bad check.

It wasn't kept well before I got this. So we're going to make it, I think there won't be anything like it in the country. Sir. By meeting with President Petro later this week, he's been quite critical of you since you spoke back in January after the Maduro raid.

What would you like to hear from him tomorrow in terms of drug trafficking, Venezuela? What do you expect? I mean, he's been very nice over the last month or two. He was certainly critical before that, but somehow after the Venezuelan raid, he became very nice.

He changed his attitude very much. So no, I look forward to seeing him. He's coming in. We'll be talking about drugs, because tremendous amounts of drugs come out of his country, and I look forward to seeing him.

We'll get a good meeting. Yeah. Good evening. See, we're probably going to be waiting for a menstrual fight.

What do you hope that you'll get out of it? Well, you're going to have a lot of things are happening. You have Iran, and you have Russia, Ukraine, and you have the Middle East. We have a lot of things going.

A lot of problems were here for a long time before I got here. We settled eight wars, and I think we're going to, I think we're doing very well with Ukraine and Russia for the first time I'm saying that. You know what we're doing? I think we're going to maybe have some good news.

We're losing 25,000 people a month that are being killed in that war, ridiculous war. 25,000. It was 31,000 last month. Thank you.

Young, beautiful kids, you know, the kids of parents and parents. It doesn't affect us in one way, but in another way, it's 25,000 souls that if I can solve it. You know, we're not spending money like Biden did. He gave $350 billion away.

I make everyone pay. And the United Nations, you know, they're a little bit involved, but if you look, take a look at what's happening, the countries of Europe are paying us for the weapons. So we have NATO paying, you know, we send missiles over there to pay us in for, it doesn't cost us $0.10. We make money, I guess, but I don't even want to talk about that, because what I really want to do is save those people from that.

Then it was, Mary, can you imagine, 25,000 to 30,000 people, but that's like a stadium full of people every single month. And you know, I mean, I was blessed with something where I can get these things done, got eight of them done. I thought all eight were going to be more difficult than this one. I thought my relationship with President Putin would give us a, you know, much easier road, but there's tremendous hatred between Zelenskin Putin, tremendous hatred.

I mean, it's a shame, but second longer than we thought. I did call up President Putin, and he's agreed, has put it out too. They have the same cold wave that we do, maybe different, because it's pretty far away, but it's equivalent. And Ukraine's a very cold country, it's much colder than us, it's colder than they say, on average it's Canada or colder.

And on top of that, they have a tremendous cold wave. Then I asked him if he wouldn't shoot for a period of one week, no missiles going into Kiev or any other towns, and he's agreed to do it, so it's something. What about a launch nuclear program, do you think Mr. Whitcock will need to deal with that?

Well, we're talking about that, we have ships heading to Iran right now, big ones, biggest and the best. And we have talks going on with Iran, we'll see how it works out. But we're going to make the two things. When I'm talking about a release national with that strategy, what are you from with that nice effort?

Where are you from? We're from Europe. We're from Europe. We're from Europe.

We get along very well with Europe. I do, because don't forget I got the GDP lifted from 2% to 5%, nobody thought that could be possible, and they're giving us a lot of that money, we have the best military equipment, we're selling it to NATO. But I get along very well, but Europe has to be careful, because, you know, there are those that say it's no longer recognizable between immigration and energy, you know, it's so much potential, in UK, you know, you have the North Sea oil, and they basically close it down, and then they buy energy from Norway, which is the North Sea oil, so you figure that when I know we've got trillions of dollars, they have to be careful. You need energy, and you can't do the windmills, because the windmills, you're supposed to make money with energy.

That was right. So I'm very disappointed. Look, I love Europe. I love the people of Europe, and they have to be very careful.

They're at a tipping point. You have tremendous immigration problems, and you have tremendous energy problems, it's a big combination. Mr. President, Christine Long just announced that you're deploying body cameras to Minneapolis.

What's your thinking behind this decision? If you want to see this? Well, it wasn't my decision. I would, you know, I leave it to her.

They generally tend to be good for law enforcement, because people can't lie about what's happening. So it's generally speaking, I think 80% good for law enforcement. But if you want to do that, I'm okay with it. Remember one thing, we closed the border.

We had a, I got elected on a disastrous border, and we have nobody coming in throughout the border anymore. We had 25 million people coming in four years throughout the border. Many of them were murderers and drug dealers, and mentally, those are mentally insane from mental institutions and incentives. And now, we don't have anybody coming in.

For nine months now, I mean, they actually report zero. We have zero people coming in, which I find hard to believe, but the Democrats do that report. They tend to be left leaning. They do that report.

So I assume it's true. If it's not, it's a very tiny amount of people. But we basically have a tremendously perfect strong border. And also crime levels are at the lowest point they've been in 125 years.

Since 1900, we have the best numbers. And that's despite the fact that we had a lot of criminals and murderers, 11,888 murders gamut. And we have the lowest numbers that we've had in 125 years. So, you know, so we do a good job.

If she wants to do the camera thing, that's okay with me. I was just wondering, during January, do you think this would do your efforts? And do you think we'd seen this at a time that they should cooperate with you? Well, if there was one, I mean, we haven't had one in a long time.

DC has become a very safe, it was in-house homicide. It was in-house. It was a dispute within a family. We have had virtually no crime in DC.

DC has now considered a very safe place, and it should be its nation's capital. And we said to the soldiers, I read the Washington Post this week, and it was incredible. They were trying to determine how come-how did we get so low numbers? The low numbers in DC because we have very little crime, if any.

And they talked about everything except for the fact that we put our National Guard and great soldiers inside our city. They don't want to mention that. It's how dishonest. Because if we didn't do that, you'd have tremendous crime in DC.

And I can thank every single day by people that work in the White House. People, young ladies, men, they come up, thank you, sir, for making DC so safe. They walked to work now. A year and a half ago, they wouldn't have walked to work.

They would have been killed or mugged or something would have happened to them. So it's a great honor, but you're going to read the story of the Washington Post. What are you doing? Crime is way down in DC.

Now, what's the reason for it? The reason for it is we have very big, strong, good-looking soldiers standing around. And I think they make the place look better. But this is our capital.

We have a very safe capital. We had a very dangerous capital before. Yeah, please. Sir, yes, sir.

You were speaking to people about Cuba to reach an agreement. What's our agreement? Are you hoping to reach? Is that with the Cuban government?

Well, it's a failed nation now. And they're not getting any money from Venezuela. And they're not getting any money from anywhere. It's a failed nation.

Mexico is going to cease sending them oil. So I'd like to take care of the people that are here from Cuba. You know, we have many people that came from Cuba that were thrown out of Cuba that fled Cuba. They came over at refs.

They went through shark-infested waters. I don't know how they did it. And it was many years ago. Many of you would like to go back.

Men would like to at least visit their relatives. And I think we're in a pretty close. But we are dealing with the Cuban leaders right now. Mr.

President, I was the president of all three journal recorded at the Guilford family. I would not be investing hundreds of dollars in Guilford financial. Can you explain why I decided to take that investment? Was that a transaction?

Well, I don't know about it. I know that crypto is a big thing. And they like it. A lot of people like it.

The people behind me like it. My family is handling it. And I guess they get investments from different people. But I'm not.

I have all I can handle right now with Iran and with Russia and Ukraine and with all the things we're doing. So I don't know exactly other than, you know, I'm a big crypto person. I'm the one that probably helps crypto more than anybody because I believe in it. And the reason I believe in it is because if we don't do it, Scott, I think we can say then China's going to do it.

If we don't do crypto, then China's going to do it. And it's just like AI. We're leading AI by a lot. And if we weren't leading, China would have led.

You know, they're very capable. They're very good. What do you have to say about that? You made America the digital asset capital of the world.

We did the genius actor stable point of many of the people standing up here working on the clarity bill to market structure. Yeah. And we're bringing us best practices to an exciting. You've been listening to President Trump take questions from reporters inside the Oval Office.

Perhaps the most interesting bit of information there was a president commenting on Christie Noem's announcement that law enforcement, ICE agents in Minneapolis will now be wearing body cams if they're going to issue body cams to the officers there in Minneapolis and beyond this. Of course, a key demand of Democrats in this funding battle that we're on the verge of. We'll talk more about that in a minute with our panel, but right now we're going to turn to Texas, where a major upset in a state Senate race is rattling Republicans nationwide and driving Democratic optimism ahead of this year's midterms. Democrat Taylor Remin won a state special election Saturday beating Republican Leah Wands-Gons by 15 points flipping a district president Trump won by 17 points in 2024.

Remin telling reporters after that this race wasn't about party. This isn't red versus blue. This is right versus wrong. This is this is about school public school funding.

This is about helping working folks is about lowering costs. This is about every working vote. So that's what I think this is about. Joining me now to break it all down at the big board is NBC's chief data analyst Steve Cordacki.

Steve, we don't normally drag the big board out for a legislative race on the state level, but clearly this is something different Democrats outperformed in this election. Talk to me about how it tracks up with other special elections we've seen this cycle. Yeah, I mean, definitely, we don't always see this for a state legislative election against this kind of attention. But it's the fact that this is in the Fort Worth area in Texas, a 15 point win for the Democrat here.

You mentioned Trump's margin in this same district was 17 points. So what is that? That's a swing toward the Democrats away from Republicans of 32 points relative to the 2024 presidential election result in this district. That is broadly consistent with what we have been seeing.

These are congressional special elections now that have taken place since Trump came back for his second term. And again, the story in these elections, no matter which party is winning, has been that Democrats have been overperforming relative to 2024, for example, April of last year in Florida in this district. It had been a district that Trump won by 37 points in 2024 in the special election for Congress last year. Republicans won it, but only by 15.

So it was a shift there of 22 points toward the Democrats away from the Republicans. And in each one of these, you see a shift here. The smallest and in fact was that Tennessee's special election at the end of last year, it was a shift towards the Democrats of 13 points. And again, at the larger edge here, you see 22 points that I just showed you.

So that's been the range we've been seeing in House elections. This one's a little bit more dramatic in Texas, which may have to do with some turnout variables. But overall, this is consistent with the atmosphere, I think, that we've been seeing for a while now, certainly in Virginia, New Jersey, those election results too of trouble for Republicans in opportunity for Democrats this year. Okay, Steve, we appreciate that.

We're going to bring our panel in now to you. Mitchell is the Washington Bureau Chief for the Atlanta Journal of Constitution, Herbie Ziskin, former White House principal deputy communications director during the Biden administration and former Florida congressman, Carlos Corbello, he's an NBC political analyst, Carlos claims that he escaped the frigid temperatures of Miami to be with us here in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, guys, we're not a ton of time because the president ate into a lot of it. But let's talk about this situation in Texas, Tia.

It feels like this is a trend. Are Democrats overplaying just how well they're doing in these special elections? Will it tell us anything about them in terms of? I mean, the midterms are going to be very different in terms of turn out than a lot of these special elections.

But I don't think Democrats are making up the fact that they're getting a lot of momentum by Republicans and swing voters who don't believe that Donald Trump is making good on his promises. I don't think that these elections have been quite frankly referendums on President Trump or at least on his messaging on affordability and the economy. And I think that's something we saw in this special election in Texas. So, Carlos, let's play or I want to show you what your governor, Ron DeSantis, said about this because we talked about Democrats over playing it, but this was his point.

Special elections are quirky and not necessarily projectable regarding a general election. That said, a swing of this magnitude is something that can, not something that can be dismissed. Republicans should be clear-eyed about the political environment heading into the midterms. The governor is giving your party a warning here, isn't he?

Ron DeSantis ran for governor in 2018 and nearly lost against a very flawed Democratic candidate in Florida. And he knows what 2026 is. It is what 2018 looked like at this point, maybe even worse, given some of these dramatic swings. So, this is yet another wake-up call for Republicans, and we will see if they actually pick up the phone this time.

And listen, this is the time to pivot to the middle, to start working with Democrats. You see the president, maybe with his body cam issue, taking a few steps back on immigration. An issue that was the number one issue for Republicans a year ago. Right now it's a top issue for Democrats.

It's remarkable the time to pivot to the middle and try to correct is now before it's too late. And HerbieDoo, Democrats run the risk of maybe going too far the other way and not be able to take advantage of this moment. How do they respond to this? But here in this new rule, which is when Trump gets involved, Republicans underperform.

From Texas to races in Iowa and Pennsylvania and Mississippi to other states, Republicans are underperforming. Trump's deeply unpopular on the economy, seven and ten voters say that he's not doing enough to address economic issues. And so Democrats should continue to hope that Trump continues to get involved in these races because when he does, Republicans are simply not doing well in the ballot. And I have to imagine, and we have less than a minute to you, but in a state like yours in Georgia, which would be so crucial to determining whether or not Republicans continue to control the Senate and Republicans are anxious to win that race in Georgia.

How is something like this playing? How are Democrats and Republicans responding? It's tough for Republicans because all of the Republicans that are vying for the parties nomination want Trump's endorsement. They want his support.

But at the same time, they are keenly aware that they have to face John Ossoff in the general election, and they can't go too far, you know, too far right knowing that they have to win in a swing state. It's a really tough spot for Republicans. How do I react? Can Trump moderate?

They'll get Trump moderate enough to help these guys over the finish. Trump has to moderate. He's the one that gets all the attention. He's the one that the country looks at if he wants to help these congressional Republicans.

He needs to hurt you. We're so good. We can't go back to you again. Thank you all.

We appreciate it. We're back tomorrow with more meet the press now, but there's more news ahead on NBC News now. We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalist. It's a fresh take, a sharp, thoughtful, and informative for you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world on the front page of the Zeitgeist.

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