Meet the Press NOW — June 27

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President Trump tabs a historic Supreme Court ruling that paves the way for his administration to renew its push to end birthright citizenship and plow ahead with other legally questionable actions in a major win for the White House and its expansion of executive authority. Plus, Republicans in Congress race against the clock to decide what's in and what's out of President Trump's so called big beautiful bill as some House lawmakers balk at the Senate's revisions. And President Trump prepares to stay in Washington for the weekend to try to seal a deal. And President Trump says he's terminating US Trade talks with Canada without reaching a deal as new data shows inflation ticking up and consumer spending ticking down.

Welcome to the press. Now I'm Kristen Welker on an historic day right here in Washington as the Supreme Court delivers another major victory for the Trump administration, expanding its executive authority by placing new restrictions on federal judges and their ability to rein in executive overreach. In a 6, 3 opinion, the high court allowed the Trump administration to move forward with its push to end automatic birthright citizenship, even though it did not weigh in on the legality of the plan and it could still be blocked by the courts. Instead, the court ruled that federal judges and lower courts did not have broad authority to issue nationwide injunctions against the government like it had in this case.

Justice Amy Cody Barrett, a Trump appointee writing the majority opinion, saying, quote, when a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too. The full impact of the ruling remains unclear, but the liberal justices in their dissenting opinions warned that it represented an existential threat to the rule of law because they said it hamstrings the judicial branch's ability to quickly intervene in cases where the executive branch is abusing its authority. President Trump celebrated the ruling, calling it a monumental decision in a lengthy press conference earlier today. So thanks to this decision, we can now properly file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoyed on a nationwide basis, including birthright citizenship, ending sanctuary city funding, suspending refugee resettlement, freezing unnecessary funding, stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries, and numerous other priorities of the American people.

We have so many of them now. To give you a sense of how far reaching this ruling could be for the president's agenda, lower courts have issued more than 40 nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration since his second term began. Those injunctions now in jeopardy as Attorney General Pam Bondi used the willing to slam lower court judges who rule against them while baselessly attacking them as an imperial judiciary. Americans are finally getting what they voted for.

No longer will we have rogue judges striking down President Trump's policies across the entire nation. These lawless injunctions gave relief to everyone in the world instead of the parties before the court. As the Supreme Court held today, they turned district courts into the imperial judiciary. Active liberal justices, judges have used these injunctions to block virtually all of President Trump's policies.

Joining now is White House correspondent Yesh Alcindor, senior Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley, former U.S. attorney and NBC News legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg, and Robert Tsai, constitutional law expert and a professor at the University of Boston School of Law. Thanks to all of you for starting us off on this hugely significant and historic. Let me turn to you first.

Obviously, President Trump taking a victory lap. We all watched that impromptu press conference that he called where he was flanked by his attorney general, Pam Bondi. What were your key takeaways from what we heard from the president? What we really saw was President Trump, as you said, wanting to take this victory lap because he really does believe now that his presidential agenda, his policies, the things that he's really been trying to push forward in this, in this really sort of whirlwind first few months of his administration that they can move forward.

Now we're thinking about all the things that have been subject to injunction, whether that's immigration policy, whether that's cuts through the Department of Urban Efficiency and targeting different agencies, including the Department of Education, the usaid. There's all this, of course, issue of sort of the way that he's going to use money and the way that he can use the sort of executive branch to expand powers. Frankly, the president is feeling like he really does have the wind at his back. And of course, there's the issue of birthright citizenship.

And of course, while the court did not decide this case on the merits, you heard the president say that he believes that his legal team has essentially crafted an argument here that will be able to pass legal muster. It's still not clear when that merit case may come up. But we know this ever since the first Trump administration that the president has a pushing for this to be. Miller and others have been pushing for this.

So we expect the White House and the president to continue to try to make sure that that essentially that part of The Constitution, the 14th Amendment, that is essentially done away with and that people no longer become citizens just by being born in a United States. Shall we follow up with you on that point? Because the attorney general Pambanti repeatedly said today that the Supreme Court will be taking up birthright citizenship in the fall. As far as we know, that's not on the docket yet.

They are about to go on their break. Do you have any sense of where that's coming from? Well, I can tell you first that I feel very lucky to have Lawrence on this pan with me. I know he picked up part of this question.

But I can just tell you, when the attorney general said this, the first thing we did was her asking the White House unit and asking White House officials what cases she talked about. There's nothing on the docket. There's no merit case before the Supreme Court. I think what she was saying was this aspirational goal that the White House does feel like it will be able to get a case together so that it can bring it before the Supreme Court and that they will ultimately win what they believe is a case against birthright citizenship.

Which also remind folks that the president does have his executive order put out there. But my sense of it is that the president's legal team is really trying to craft this in a way that's trying to be as precise as possible because, of course, he now had years to prepare for what this is. And of course, his questionable to do away with this right. That Americans right now enjoy.

Great reporting as always. Yamiche Alcindor, thank you so very much. Great to see you. Lawrence, let me head over to you.

Well, pick up on where Yamiche just left off. What do you make of the fact that the attorney general said repeatedly that she anticipates that the high court will, in fact, take up the issue of birthright citizenship in the fall? It's not on the docket. Was it a purely aspirational statement, or do you think it's likely that the high court will take a look at that?

Yeah, I think it's almost certain that at some point the Supreme Court will probably weigh in on this. But as you said, there's no actual case pending. That would be that vehicle to do that right now. And I'm not really sure what she was referring to.

I think the dissenting liberal justices in the case today kind of points out the idea that maybe the government wouldn't actually want to bring this case to the Supreme Court. The whole point of them getting rid of the nationwide injunctions means that if they lose a case in the lower courts, they don't necessarily have to appeal it to the Supreme Court because the order would still remain in effect in other parts of the country. So that kind of gamesmanship or potential for gamesmanship is gonna be something to look forward to as we continue to see the aftermath of this ruling. Lord Sullivani play for a little bit of my exchange with Peter Alexander and the Attorney General Pambon to get your reaction on the other side.

Take a look. The EO goes, had a 30 day grace period before it goes into effect. Is there any thought about trying to make it effective immediately within that period of time? We're gonna follow the law, we're gonna make those decisions, and we're gonna do what's written in the bounds of the law.

So what do you perceive to be the legal pathways for what might happen next, Lawrence? Right. So the Supreme Court in the rolling clay actually said that there's a 30 day timeframe here before it can go into effect. Right.

So that the government is pretty much banged. They conceded that, as you just heard. So there's 30 days for new stuff to happen in lower courts which have already started. So just as we're talking, new lawsuits are being filed and amended lawsuits are being filed seeking to get class action certification for anyone affected by the executive order.

That would mean that it have kind of the same effect as a nationwide injunction if the court, lower court was to grab that request so that anyone potentially affected, including people who are pregnant, people who have babies who might be affected by this order, could potentially get the order blocked that way. And the court, the Supreme Court today, it's ruling actually left open that possibility. Justice Brett Cavanaugh in concurring opinion, seems to think it was a possibility even at a nationwide level. So there's a lot of stuff going on in the lower courts that we're playing out in those 30 days.

And you know, one expert I just talked to who is actually cited in the Supreme Court opinion said he still thinks this order will never go into effect. Fascinating. I want to start quickly before I let you go. What are some of the other key decisions that we got today?

Well, I think we got five decisions at the end today. The Other one, aside from both our citizenship, that was particular interest, was a case from Maryland in which religious parents claimed a religious violation because their children weren't able to opt out of being exposed to LGBTQ books in elementary schools. This was another big religious rights ruling. We've seen the court do this a lot in the last few years.

The conservative majority, they did it again today. It's quite a broad ruling. The liberal justice were again in dissent and warned that this is going to have a massive impact on public schools because now religious parents are empowered to get optics from any kind of construction they don't like, which the law justice said could extend other things, such as the theory of evolution or things like that. So that's another one to keep an eye out for.

Going. All right. Well, we covered a lot of ground. Lawrence Hurley, thank you so much.

I do want to turn out Chuck Rosenberg, Robert Tsai, thank you both for being here. We really appreciate it. I want to start off because this is such a significant day and decision, quite frankly, that we got from the Supreme Court. Robert, why don't you start your initial reaction?

What were your key takeaways from what we heard from the high court today? Well, it should be a surprise to anybody, first of all, that the court ducked the merits question. That is to say, whether on the merits, President Trump's executive order excluding children born in this country to parents who are illegal migrants from birthwise citizenship, whether that violates the 14th Amendment. The justice in the majority, that question is expected.

What's interesting is that the three justices, the dissenters, seem to show their cards pretty clearly. Perhaps that's not a big surprise to anybody, but there's a lot in, for example, Justice Sotomayor's dissent, which basically says, we have a clear principle here, been true for a long time. And as they see it, it's a problem because there's some potential for the president to violate that principle and harm people if they're not a part of any suit. Now, what did the justice and majority actually say?

They said that nationwide universal injunctions are not historically authorized, and they use a historical test to make that argument. And even though we've had over 100 or so, 127 in recent years, they said that, in a sense, those probably exceeded the bounds of judicial power. Chuck, pick up on that point. And what do you make of what the majority argued?

Well, I wasn't surprised by it. Listening to your argument on May 15th on this procedural question, it seemed pretty clear that there was some distaste for nationwide injunctions to Robert's point, there have been 100 plus in the last five, six, seven administrations. By the way, presidents of both parties, Kristen, have been sort of bedeviled by this. If there's a left leaning president with left leaning policies and executive orders and right leaning folks run to right leaning judges seeking a nationwide injunction that happened to present Biden on the mythopestone medicated abortion drug.

If there's a right leaning president with right leaning policies and executive orders and left leaning folks run to left leaning judges, it's probably not the best way to do business. Except that here the underlying substantive question, birthright citizenship, seems settled. There's a Supreme Court case upholding birthright citizenship. And so a lot of people similarly situated all around the country could be adversely affected while we wait for this to play out.

So, Chuck, what could happen to those people? There are about 28 states, as I understand, have not challenged the Trump administration trying to block access to birthright citizenship. What could happen to people who are born here, to parents who are on document? One principle of the law is that similarly situated people are treated similarly.

So to that question, Kristen, they're going to have to find another path. They can sue individually that maybe an organization like casa, which sued in Maryland and was part of the Supreme Court decision handed down today, could sue on behalf of a class of people or there could be a class action lawsuit. That path is still open, but it's a little more cumbersome. Yeah, Robert, to this point of the 14th Amendment, let me read part of it so that our audience remembers what it says.

All persons born are naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor denying any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Do you anticipate, as the attorney general has said, that sometime in the fall, if there is a class action lawsuit, for example, that the Supreme Court will take another look at the 14th Amendment? I think those cases will definitely go back up.

I mean, what we're going to see now is that the cases have been sent back down. Unfortunately, this decision raises more questions than it really answers. It says universal nationwide injunctions are no longer available, but it hints at a bunch of other paths still are, without telling us exactly what's open and what's not. So, and this is a point that Chuck also made.

So, you know, I think we'll definitely get some tailoring of the injunctions. I doubt the judges below somehow revisit the merits which had gone against the administration. And then we'll see those cases come back. I think we will see this question come back to the Supreme Court.

And the key phrase, Kristen, you read it, is what does it mean to be subject to the jurisdiction thereof? We have commonly understood it since the 14th amendment, since the Wong Kim Ark case in 1898, to include children born in the United States to undocumented parents. But the argument from the other side is that those parents are not subject to the jurisdiction thereof of the United States. And so that's where the debate you think will center around that one sentence clause within the 14amendments.

I have a very smart constitutional law professor sitting next to me, but my sense is that it will center around that very phrase. What say you, Robert? I think that's absolutely right. This is the phrase that people with the Trump administration have long wanted to focus on, to argue that somehow the children who are here for moments, unauthorized migrants, are subject to some other nation's law still, even though they live here, they are here.

So that's the language that they want the court to basically revisit and exclude those children. Chuck, could lower courts be overwhelmed with cases? What are the practical implications of what happened today? Well, Lawrence Hurley reported earlier that the lawsuits are already being filed today and other lawsuits are being amended.

So could they be overwhelmed? Well, they're going to get a lot more work, but they have one advantage from the perspective of a lower federal court. There is binding, or I would say virtually binding Supreme Court precedent. So I don't think it's a very hard question for a lower federal district court.

The debate will be at the Supreme Court because only the Supreme Court could revisit and perhaps overturn the 1898 president. And so, Robert, people will also ask the question, not just what does this mean for the courts, what will this mean for President Trump? He has faced 40 different lawsuits and various different cases, many of them related to his immigration and deportation policies. What are the implications?

I mean, do all of those injunctions just get dropped? What happens? Well, if there's any language in any of the remedial orders, you may see some effort on the part of DOJ to go back and to get those judges to tailor them. I think it's definitely a strong warning from the high court that in any of these cases going forward that judges are going to have to be very, very careful on how they craft those remedial orders.

They gotta be tailored to the parties before them so they won't be vulnerable to an appellate court, Supreme Court basically kicking the canyon on the road or doing something like they're doing now just to buy more time before addressing the merits. Chuck, very quickly, before I let you go, you've made the point. President Trump's not the first president to face a number of nationwide injunctions, but has there been an upt in recent years? Oh, there absolutely has.

I mean, nationwide injunctions pretty much didn't exist for our first 200 years or so. I read the opinion today. They sort of trace the first one to roughly the early 1960s. And with the, you know, the shifting of power from the legislative branch to the president to the executive branch to the president with more executive orders, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that we see more nationwide injunctions.

But it really is a creature more or less of the last three or four decades. Well, it's just a fascinating discussion on a really complicated topic. Chuck and Robert, thank you so much for the great information and insights. We really appreciate it.

Coming up, as Senate Republicans grapple with setbacks on the president's legislative agenda, House lawmakers get their first briefing on the US Strikes against Iran's nuclear program. We'll check in on Capitol Hill next. Plus, the price you pay. New data shows inflation and consumer spending could both be headed in the wrong direction, even as stocks soar to new highs.

We'll have the latest economic development. Same with us. You're watching THE press now. Welcome back.

It's an unusually busy Friday on Capitol Hill. This morning, the House received its classified briefing on the US Strikes on Iran as questions continue to swirl about the status of Tehran's great nuclear program. House members are heading home for the weekend, but their Senate colleagues are not going anywhere anytime soon. Senate Republicans are still scrambling to put together their version of the president's mega bill after getting dealt a major blow from the parliamentarians striking down their provision on Medicaid.

And it's still not clear when they'll begin voting on the massive package. But Senate Majority Leader John Thu now says he expects they'll be, quote, ready at some point tomorrow. And administration officials tells me that President Trump had been planning to go to his golf club at Bedminster, New Jersey, this weekend, but instead will stay right here in D.C. to help get his one big, beautiful bill across the finish line.

Joining me now as Sahil Poor on Capitol Hill and NBC News national security reporter Gordon Lubel joins me on set. Thanks to both of you for being here. Sako, I have to start with you. What's the state of play on the one big beautiful bill?

Walker said they're hoping to start voting tomorrow at noon. That is the goal for Senate Republican leaders, although the majority leader John Thune did admit that that timeline is aspirational. There are some Republican senators already a little confused about this, complaining about this, saying they haven't even seen the bill text. Senator Randall joked me that they're probably going to drop this massive bill right before they're being asked to vote.

So the mood is certainly tense here because there are a lot of things that have to be resolved here. There's still concerns about the scope of the Medicaid cuts. There are clashes happening between Republican senators and Republican House members about the scope of clean energy cuts. And there's some optimism that they're getting to a resolution on the state level deduction.

That's the salt tax that certain blue state Republicans are pretty fired up about. So at the end of the day, Kristen, the way I look at it is the question is not which Republicans are going to vote yes on this. The question is which Republicans are willing to vote no and take down the centerpiece of President Trump's agenda. That is the ace in the hole that Republican leaders and vote chambers are looking at.

Some the Republicans are going to get a role. Not everyone's going to get what they want. But are there four Republicans in either chamber? But that's the margin they need to take down the bill.

For Republicans willing to block President Trump's agenda and take the heat report from the MAGA base. I mean, skeptical. Well, I know you're bracing for a long weekend, Sahil. Walk me through the other actions the parliamentarian took stripping some of the other provisions in the Senate bill.

What were they? Yeah, there's a lot that the Senate parliamentarian has invalidated from this process because remember, everything has to be primarily budgetary in nature to bypass the 60 vote threshold. And the parliamentarian and the Senate referee that decides what qualifies and what doesn't. With that said, take a look at some of the recent provisions that parliamentarian has said do not qualify.

Caps on the Medicaid provider tax that's used to fund the program states. That's a major loss for Republicans because there are a lot of savings there. Private school vouchers carved out for religious colleges from the endowment tax, deregulation of gun silencers, new rules on the earned income tax Credit also stripped out in the last 24 hours, new limits on student loan repayments on just today, immigration fees on asylum and visas. These are all provisions that the parliamentary deemed were policy in nature and not budgetary.

Kristen? Well, let me shift to another topic that I know you are tracking there on Capitol Hill as you continue to watch the debate over the big beautiful build. How Scott, it's classified briefing on Iran today. What came out of that?

What are we learning? It doesn't really seem to have moved any lawmakers off their previous positions. You see Republicans largely standing by President Trump's decision to launch those strikes in Iran, defending his claim that Iran's nuclear program is obliterated. Democrats are much more skeptical.

And of course, you're flying blind here because this was a classified briefing and we don't have information in front of us to verify who's correct and who isn't. Take a listen to what Congressman Jim Hines said about his unit. Right. So, you know, there's a lot of very sloppy adjectives like obliterated being used here, and it's still too early to tell.

I think it's pretty clear that there was no it's always in Iranian world. But I don't, I have not seen anything suggest that the threat of Iranians goes radical difference last Saturday than it was two Saturdays ago. And yesterday after the Senate briefing, Kristen, Lindsay Graham, the South Carolina Republican, told me that additional US Military strikes need to be on the table for Antifa's rebuild nuclear program. All right.

Well, you actually set me up perfectly for my first question to Gordon Sahil. Thank you so much. Hope you have your sneakers on for this weekend. Gordon, let me start with you right there.

Lindsey Graham has said you can't take more strikes off the table. And in fact, President Trump, who called that impromptu news conference today, did not take more strikes against Iran off the table. Table. He was asked if he deems it necessary.

He said yes, of course he'd be willing to do that. He went right to that. I think what is significant about that, of course, is the pushback from the president and his administration last couple days after the initial strike from last weekend. And then that initial intelligence report that many of us wrote about, including amazing news, saying that maybe it wasn't as effective as the president had stated.

The obliterated line is probably the most problematic. And so it's interesting that now the president is saying like he's potentially looking at or at least not ruling out more strikes for these potentially these very same sites or another site which where The Iranians may have moved something Iranian. So that's one of the big questions. Did they move the enriched uranium?

How much? President Trump addressing some of that today. Take a look. We'll talk about that on the other side.

Time will tell, but I don't believe that they're going to go back into nuclear anytime soon. They spent over a trillion dollars on nuclear. They never got it together. And nothing was moved from the side.

By the way, what's the reality check there? I mean, Secretary Defense yesterday, during this kind of tense press briefing was saying himself like there's no evidence of anything being moved. I think time will tell, as the president says there, that they may find that they do need to go back in. But the president still wants to make a deal and would like to kind of end this whole thing.

I just think that him kind of saying already now, just days after those initial strikes that were supposed to be so effective, he might need to go back in. Sounds like he's doing his fade work publicly to kind of suggest maybe we'll do that. All right, Gordon Leopold and Sal Kapoor, thank you so much. We are going to actually head to the White House now where President Trump is taking even more questions today.

He's in the Oval Office. Let's take a closer murder rate of U.S. history. I saw that the other day and that's an honor.

I mean, and that's really even better because, you know, we've taken a lot of illegals in into the country through Biden, through the Biden administration that are murderers, 11,888 to be exact. And many of them are now gone. We got rid of them. They're back where they belong.

But something going on. If you took that out, the numbers would be even better and created a lot of problems. You true social earlier about paying money to the airshow controllers. The big beautiful bill, which hopefully, hopefully, praise God, if we get this thing signed.

What does that mean to that industry that's been suffering the last couple years? Well, they've underfunded the airports for years. And I started the process of getting it completed in terms of the equipment necessary to land the planes with planes. Like a helicopter accident with the plane would have never happened if they had the right modern equipment.

It would have been bells and whistles would have been going on all over the place. And I had it all set. But when I wasn't here, they totally dropped it. You had a terrible head of transportation.

We have a very good one in Sean Duffy, but you had booted Edge and he didn't know a damn thing. He had right to work on his bicycle. He didn't know what the hell was going on. He was terrible.

So he totally dropped that it was a project that should happen. And I was all set. But we had a very sad experience with the voting, and so we didn't get to do that. But now I'm doing it, and we're having a great system and it's funded partially by the bill, the initial funding is by the bill, and then it gets to be funded.

The rest of it comes a little bit later as we build it out, but we're going to build out the best in the world. We're the best companies in the world. A couple of countries have very good systems. In fact, I noticed when I was landing, my pilot often would use the system of another country.

And I said, what are you doing that for? He said, the United States system is so bad. So we have the best companies that do that in the world bidding. You have Raytheon, you have IBM, you have a lot of different companies bidding.

And we'll get the best one, the best system for the best price. And they're going to go to town and give us a system that will be better than any other system in the world, and you won't have planes bucket into each other at 35,000ft. Mr. President, on the subject of these deals, how close are you in registration to a deal in terms of cause of ceasefire?

Often ask, and I think it's close. I just spoke with some of the people involved. That's a terrible situation that's going Gaza. He's asking about.

And we think within the next week we're gonna get a ceasefire and we're supplying, as you know, a lot of money, a lot of food to that area. Because we have to. I mean, you have to. We're, in theory, not involved in it, but we're involved because people are dying.

And I look at those crowds of people that have no food, no anything, and, you know, we're the ones that are getting it there. Some of it's been taken by some bad people. You know, if you give it and you give it out, it's supposed to be taken care of, the people, and they end up stealing the food and selling it. But we have a pretty good system now, but so we're helping with that.

You see the lines of people that just get one meal, essentially. But it's too bad other countries aren't helping out. Nobody's helping out. We're doing that because I think we have to.

On a humanitarian basis like this. We didn't have to get involved in Africa, but we did because we thought it was. I mean, I've been reading, like JD Said, he's, you know, for much of his life, he's been just saying this about this brutal war. And it actually got a lot of publicity because of the level of brutality.

Right. It was, it was. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. And to be involved in that, I mean, I consider this the most important of my conferences today.

We just had a great Supreme Court victory today. And everybody would say those things, but, you know, we're talking about saving thousands and probably millions of lives here. This is more important than anything. So anyway, but we're working on Gaza, trying to get it taken care of.

And again, you know, a lot of food has been sent there and other countries throughout the world should be helping also. And on another conflict I know you're working on, sir, is it true that you have reached out with a letter to North Korea's two gentlemen? Well, if there is a conflict, I get along with him very, very well, and we'll get the conflict solved with North Korea. I've had a good relationship with Kim Jong Un and I've gotten along with him really great.

So we'll see what happens. But somebody's saying there's a potential conflict. I think we'll work it out. If there is, it wouldn't involve us.

But again, we're very far away from a lot of these places that we're solving problems with. But I enjoy doing it, I like doing it. And it's the right thing to do. And we're able, we have an ability to get it done.

So we're solving things that we didn't have a lot to do with. Serbia, Kosovo. I told you we saw a potential disaster. I can tell you that some of the countries that you're not gonna hear about, but some countries that were ready to go to war with their neighbor are not going to go to war with their neighbor.

And that's a great thing. We have a number of them. But I just, I'm very happy about India and Pakistan because they actually have nuclear weapons. You know, when you talk about Iran, they were trying to get it, but India has nuclear weapons, Pakistan has nuclear weapons, high level nuclear weapons, both.

And getting that solved was. Was really great. We did it through trade, so it was a great thing. Are you concerned that the Iranians may have some enriched uranium at Pickaxe Mountain?

The last thing they're thinking about right now is enriched uranium. They're not thinking about it but what they want to do is they want to get back to life and they do want to meet me and we'll do that quickly. They may say that to you. Don't you think they want to meet me?

Don't you think we have sanctions on there that they can't do anything? Wouldn't you think that they want to meet me? I mean they're not stupid people but they went through a lot and they suffered and so did Israel. Israel suffered greatly.

That was a nasty 12 days and yeah, we'll see what happens. Are you considering sending Patriot missiles to Ukraine? There are a few unanswered questions. Let me ask you that question.

You want to answer that one? It sounds like an interesting question for you. Go ahead please. Thank you very much.

In the agreement we signed we have taken the concept of operation for the neutralization of the FDLR which is a vicious genocide movement and the lifting of non defensive measures. So this was already signed last year in November. So we will implement it. This concept of operation to do both things to neutralize this movement which has been deciding for many years and to lift our defensive measures.

As for the M23 in the argument, also we have decided to rely on the Doha talks because there are currently talks between the AFCM 23 and the DRC government to have a peace deal also that will complement the working on a peace agreement. So both things are taken care of. They will be working with them to get it enforced. They can enforce their own agreement but we'll be putting a lot of pressure on to make sure it gets enforced.

The two people in this room are very, very capable people and they'll get it done. I think they'll get it done. They, they love. One thing I learned very quickly is how much you love your country and you want to get it done.

They know it has to get done otherwise bad things happen. But I think we're well beyond that. Other president should have done what I'm doing right now. They never did it.

I don't think they ever tried. I don't think it's like they couldn't do it. I don't think they ever tried and if they did they wouldn't be able to do it anyway. Thank you Mr.

President. Can you share with us what can happen if one of the parts violates this peace agreement? Because we don't want war to come back to. Well, I'd rather not say.

I would just say that there won't be penalties if they violate and they're not going to violate, I think we have very severe penalties, financial and otherwise Was. So Canada, I put a charge on some of our companies and Canada's been a very difficult country to deal with over the years. You know, we hear Canada, we have a great relationship with the people of Canada, but it's been very difficult. And they put a charge in a little bit early.

We found out about it, so. And we have all the cards. We will every single one. We don't want to do anything bad, but they have.

Economically, we have such power over Canada. I'd rather not use it. But they did something with our tech companies today trying to copy Europe. You know, they copied Europe.

It's not going to work out well for Europe either, and it's not going to work out well for Canada. They were foolish to do it. So I said we'll stop all negotiations with Canada right now until they straighten out their act. They put a tax on companies that were American companies and they should have very severe tax.

And yeah, I guess they could remove it. They will. But I don't really. I mean, it doesn't matter to me.

We have all the cards. We have all the cards. You know, we do a lot of business with Canada, but relatively little. They do most of their businesses with us.

And when you have that circumstance, you treat people better. They've had farmers that are getting like 300, 400, 200% in tariffs. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. We have cases.

You don't read this and people don't report, but they charge us 400% on some dairy products. 400%. Nobody writes that it's not fair to our farmers and we better protect our farmers. How much do to the interest on the debt?

Earlier today, Director P was on CNBC talking about how he suggested Powell should resign. Any comments on whether or not Powell should step down or anything? Well, I don't have a comment. I'd love him to resign if he wanted to.

He's done lousy job. Look, if you were there, you'd say, well, you know, the United States is doing well. They have no inflation. And if they do get inflation in a year or two, we'll start raising the risk.

We'll get rid of the inflation, you know, do other things. Biden had the worst inflation in the history of our country, country 19, but I think was much higher than that. Frankly, they say 19. I think it's a lot higher than that.

And we have almost no inflation now. We've done a great job in a short period of time. Energy prices are way down. Gasoline now is down to close to $2 in a lot of places.

A couple of places, I see it even broke. It's like 198 a gallon. We've done a great job on inflation and honestly, pretty much everything else. I think that, I think it's very sad the way people act.

You know, you have a guy in there that with a stroke of a pen could lower interest rates and save us hundreds of billions of dollars a year. But he's a stupid person. You know, it's very interesting. He, I, I'm not sure if he doesn't understand it, because you should be able to understand it.

It's sort of 101 economics, but I'm not sure that. But think of it with the stroke of a pen, he talks about costs. We can save $600 billion, maybe even. These are nice numbers for you, right?

900 billion, $950 billion by lowering interest rates. And it's really just more of a paper movement. It's not like you're not cutting anything, you're not cutting jobs. It's just interest rates.

And we're number 40 and 44, number 45. Some places that you wouldn't believe that, you know, I don't want to be disparaging, but they pay a lower interest rate than the United States of America. And without us, everything blows up. You know, we sort of control the world in that sense, but we have a guy that's just a stubborn mule and a stupid person that is making a big mistake.

He's making a mistake. And it lasts for years. Because when you do the debt now I've instructed my people not to do any debt beyond nine months. Get this guy out, and whoever's in there will lower rates.

If I don't, if I think somebody's going to keep the rates where they are or whatever, I'm not going to put them in. I'm going to put somebody that wants to cut rates. There are a lot of them out there. And I said this morning, a lot of the business shows and they were saying, yeah, Trump is right, he should be cutting rates.

Think of it, we have a great country. We're making a lot of money. We're taking in billions of dollars in tariffs. We have one, we have $15 trillion of money that wants to be invested here, which is a record in two months, it breaks any record that we've ever had for a whole year and not even close.

15 trillion. And it's going to be much higher than that. That's after essentially two months, because, you know, we've been doing it for about two months, two and a half months. $15 trillion breaks every record in the book.

There's never been anything like this. We have factories moving in. We have car plants moving in. We have.

Everyone wants to be part of the United States. And as I told you, and I say to everybody, when I was in the Middle east, east, the king of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, uae, all great leaders. They have all great leaders, all three of them sitting at the hottest country in the world. And you did it in at that time.

I was there for four months because we got back a little while ago. But everybody says it, not only them, but we have the hottest country in the world right now. And the only thing is we have a Fed chairman that is he doesn't get it. And you could have substantially low, like if we cut him two points, would save more than 600, more than $600 billion just because you cut.

But you can't go out to the market and say, well, we have a guy that's got us at 4% to 4 and a half percent and we want to pay 2% or 1%. I think we should be paying 1% right now. And we're paying more because we have a guy who suffers from, I think, drug derangement syndrome, if you want to know the truth. But he said, not good for our country.

You're listening to President Trump answering questions in the Oval Office, the second time the president has responded to questions from reporters. Today, a couple of headlines just to tick through. The president saying it's close. When asked if there could be a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, he said, we think maybe in the next week or so, so we'll be watching that very closely.

He said, I may. When he was asked whether he would send Patriot missiles to Ukraine and its ongoing war against Russia, he defended stopping trade negotiations with Canada, of course, one of the United States largest trading partners. And just there you heard him again criticizing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The President Trump has been pressuring the Fed chair to lower interest rates.

The Fed chair has not done it in politics, part citing the president's tariffs and the questions looming over them. I want to bring in my NBC News White House colleague Yamich Alcindor. You should pick it up from there. What were some of your key takeaways?

Well, I think one of the striking things was the president going after Canada and confirming that he has terminated all trade negotiations with Canada. He said in Part Canada has been a very difficult country to deal with. We have all the card saved the United States essentially all the power in these negotiations. He said economically we have such power over Canada.

It's not going to work out well for Canada. We're stopping all negotiations until they get their act together. We should remind the president post earlier today that Canada announced a new digital services tax and he's taking issue with that tax, saying that because of that, he's stopping all negotiations. We should remind folks that Canada is the second biggest trading partner of the United States already subject to about 25 tariff on Canadian imports that don't deal with the U.S.

mexico and Canada trade agreement that the president negotiated in his first term for not complying to get 25% tax. And then there's also of course a 50% aluminum steel tax that is also affecting Canada a lot there. So the president really going after Canada I think was really striking. He said in his post that he's been talking about whether race will leave for Canada in the next week or so.

The other thing I think that's striking is what you talked about, which is going after Jerome Power to remind folks he was the one in 2017 President Trump who nominated Jerome Powell to be the Fed chair. Now he's going after him, calling him a very stupid person, saying he's a stubborn mule that he needs to cut rates and also say that the next person that he puts in that person must be willing to cut the rates. So the president here really, I think lashing out at one of our closest allies, Canada, and also lashing out as his own Fed chair. Kristen, you captured it very well.

Yamiche Alimore, thank you for being here to help us break all of that down. Really appreciate it. Yamiche. Joining me now is one of the House lawmakers who was in today's class by briefing on our Democratic Congressman Jimmy Panetta of California.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Thank you. So I want to get to today's Class 5 briefing, but I have to start with and hopefully you can hear President Trump.

They're taking questions from reporters. Couple of things I just want to get your reaction to, if you would respond to what we just heard. Yamiche broke down the fact that President Trump announcing there that he has in fact suspended trade negotiations with Canada, the United States second largest trade partner. What's your reaction to that?

Yeah, I appreciate that, especially being a member of the trade subcommittee on the Ways and Means Committee. This is one of these topics where Congress needs to assert itself. Hopefully Speaker Johnson understands that under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, it's the United States Congress that has the purview over foreign commerce. So I would hope that basically right now, if the President can't get this deal done, hopefully Congress can't.

Just like we did with the United States, Mexico, Canada, Trump agreement. Well, we also heard him say there that I think it's close when he was asked if there could potentially be a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. What do you make of that? He said we could see some type of agreement in the next week or so.

Really? The first time we've heard of that type of a timeline coming from him? Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think right now, as we're saying, based on the fact that you have the President of the United States taking part in the Israel, Iran war, hopefully he has some leverage over Israel in the sense that he looks at these upcoming negotiations not just with the ceasefire and diplomacy with Iran, but also looking at more of a bigger picture.

What can they do when it comes to ceasefire in Gaza? What also can they do when it comes to potential normalization with Saudi Arabia? Now more than ever, this should happen. Obviously, we want to make sure all the hostages are released.

We want to make sure that Hamas is degraded and decimate. But at the same time, we have to, as a president said, you have to make sure there's humanitarian aid into the people of Gaza. It's horrific what we're saying right now. And the President needs to be doing everything we can to ensure that there's humanitarian aid getting to these people who need it the most.

Do you think the United States is doing enough to ensure that humanitarian aid is getting to the people of Gaza? Congressman, what I've seen since October 7th of 2023 is the United States has been right there supporting our democratic partner, Israel. But at the same time, we're keeping Israel at the table and ensuring that they live up to our democratic values. That's also making sure that the people of Gaza have the proper humanitarian aid and that this, this war that's being conducted in a.

A way in which basically civilians are basically looked at as somebody that we have to care for. We have to watch out for this. And unfortunately, what we've seen is that although we've decimated that, Israel decimated Hamas, they have to basically carry out this conflict in a way that takes into consideration the civilians. Obviously, they can be doing a better job.

We. But the fact is that the United States is right there making sure they abide by our democratic values, and we need to continue doing. That's why when it comes to a potential diplomacy with Iran, you have to take into account what's going on in Gaza and hopefully there's a ceasefire. But first and foremost, that means releasing the hostages as well.

Absolutely. There's been so much focus on that. Let me turn now to the classified briefing that you attended today. Based on the briefing that you got, Congressman, do you believe that the US strikes obliterated those?

Of course. That's President Trump's word. Obliterated Iran's nuclear program, or do you think it's simply delayed it? Yeah, look, I think we need to, you know, stop worrying about the adjectives that are being used and start focusing on what actually happened, but more importantly, what we need to do from here.

But the briefing today, as much as I can say, really focused more on the mission rather than the objective. It focused on the past rather than what we need to be doing to go, to go forward and ensure proper diplomatic efforts. And so, you know, obviously, as an American, I was proud of the mission, the way they did it, in a concise, careful way and covert way. But at the same time, as a U.S.

representative, I have an obligation to ensure that it's done within the constitutional standards. But at the same time, where do we go from here, ensuring that there's diplomacy? The problem is, is that we're seeing way too much uncertainty. This vortex that we've been living in of uncertainty with this administration is carrying over the way they've carried out this raid and the way they're carrying out the potential diplomatic negotiations that need to happen.

It's uncertain in regards to what's going to happen with the Iranian regime. It's uncertain in what's going to happen to their will and their desire, desire to basically continue their potential for nuclear enrichment and their desire to have a nuclear weapon. That's why we need diplomacy. If we don't have diplomacy, we're then going to have to continue to be involved in the Middle east and trying to contain and constrain Iranian desires to have a nuclear weapon.

The President is saying that there is hope that talks will resume if, in fact those diplomatic talks that you're referencing are able to get on track. Will the strikes have been worth it, do you think? Congressman? Look, obviously what we saw and what we're saying through open source is that these, that this mission actually degraded and destroyed much of the Iranian nuclear efforts and their capabilities.

How, however, know how knowledge and geology still last through bombs. And so that's why we have to ensure that we actually talk to the Iranians, make sure they're at the table, not some intermediate areas that they're actually coming to the table and talk to us. The problem is, as we've seen, who does Iran trust right now? They may not trust the Americans after we bomb them, but at the same time, I really believe they have no other option but to negotiate now.

Because if they do, try to go it alone, try to withdraw from the non proliferation treaty, try to shut out any sort of IAEA inspectors and then develop in secret a nuclear bomb. We know what's going to happen. Again, we just saw it over the past week. I have to turn to what the President has done.

The one big beautiful bill. I know it's in the other chamber right now. The parliamentarian stripped several provisions out of it. I'm wondering if you can give us your best sense.

Do you see this passing? And by the way, President Trump said today, if I were a Democrat, I'd vote for this bill all day long because it's tax cuts and so many other things that are common sense. Do you have any concerns that by not voting for this bill it could make Democrats vulnerable? No, not at all.

Based on the damage that it can do to hard working American families right now as it is, you have a bill that basically cuts essential benefits, Medicaid, nutrition for working families in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. But also what I'm worried about, people need to be talking about more is what this will do to our children in regards to our debt and our deficit. Right now, as you know, our Debt is about 36 trillion. If this bill passes, basically that will increase the debt, the debt, debt by 4 to 5 trillion.

What's worse is that the interest we're paying on the current debt is more than we pay for Medicaid, Medicare and Defense. The only thing that we pay more to is Social Security. Basically. We need to do everything we can to show that one, this bill is going to hurt working families.

Two, it's going to hurt our sons and daughters in the future because the debt that is going to occur if it passes. All right. Well, we'll see how it plays out this weekend. Congressman, thank you so much.

We really appreciate it. Thank you. And as we've been discussing, there were also a series of economic development today, including what we just heard from the President in the Oval Office, again criticizing the Fed Chair as well as his announcement that he is ending trade talks with Canada. Joining now, CBC economics editor Jeff Cox.

Jeff, thank you so much for being here. So let's start big picture. What impact will the deal with China, the lack of a deal with Canada on the U.S. economy have on the U.S.

economy? We should say that they're really parameters of a deal with China. Yeah. Kristen, there are so many unknowns out here.

This has been the case ever since Trump started to wave the tariff bat around. As far as China goes, obviously the devil is going to be very much in the details there. We really don't know to what extent we're going to be getting where earth materials from. We don't know to what extent we're going to be sharing technology with the Chinese.

So it really all there are just a ton of variables here. Market reaction very interesting today on this. We were up very sharply earlier in the session. The news came out from Trump about Canada.

Markets turned back around. We had gone slightly negative for a little bit and then we closed very strong. So I think the market still looks at this Donald Trump right now as kind of the president who cried terrorists. They're still not taking these risks terribly seriously right now.

And assuming that at some level a deal will get worked out, that's not going to be the worst case scenario. Let me ask you quickly with a less than a minute that we have. There's a new report out this morning that core inflation rose to 2.7% and it was higher than expected. What do you think this says about the state of the economy and the president's policies?

Essentially it just says that inflation continues to inch higher. I think that by now some economists expected tariffs to work their way into the data a little bit more than they have. Most economists who I speak to say we still have to wait this out through the summer to see exactly what the impact is going to be. Of course, the president again going after Jay Powell today, trying hectoring them to lower interest rates.

Not likely to happen. Very low probability priced in by markets still not expecting that first rate cut to come until at least September. And we'll see what happens between now and then. But president obviously very adamant that he wants lower interest rates.

He sure is. We continue to hear that familiar refrain anytime that chairs comes up. Jeff Cox, thank you so much for the great information. We'll be back Monday with more MEET THE PRESS now.

And if it's Sunday, it's MEET THE Press on your local NBC news station. I'll have exclusive interviews with New York City mayoral candidate Zorhan Mandani, as well as Senators Mark Wayne Mullen and Chris Murphy. The news continues with Tom Costell in for Holly Jackson right now, everyone. I'm Dylan Drier, co host of the third hour of Today and mom to three wild boys.

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