Meet the Press NOW — September 9

If it's Tuesday. President Trump tells NBC News that the lewd birthday letter he allegedly wrote to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is, quote, a dead issue. As the White House tries to stem the fallout, lawmakers on Capitol Hill warn that more documents are coming. Plus, 1 million jobs up in smoke.

The Labor Department revises a year's worth of employment data showing the economy added far fewer jobs than first thought, fueling new concerns about the strength of the labor market. As new polls show trouble for President Trump on his handling of economic issues. And the White House criticizes Israel for a strike inside the capital Qatar aimed at taking out Hamas leaders and marking a major escalation of the war, as the Israeli military orders a total evacuation of Gaza City just hours after Hamas responsibility for a deadly attack in Jerusalem. Hi, there.

Welcome to Meet the Press. Now I'm Ryan Nobles in Washington. Under the Trump administration faces two ongoing headaches tied to two politically potent issues, the economy and the Epstein files. President Trump is trying to downplay the latest batch of Epstein related documents turned over to the House on oversight Committee, including an image of a note that President Trump allegedly sent to EPSTEIN for his 50th birthday more than 20 years ago that featured a crude outline of a woman and the words, may every day be another wonderful secret president.

Telling NBC's Garrett Haig that the letter is a, quote, dead issue. White House officials claiming the signature on that sketch was forged, even though it appears to match other Trump signatures around the same time. I have already seen many forensic analysts of signatures coming. I believe it was a daily signal that published a piece with three separate signature analysts who said that this absolutely was not the president's authentic signature.

And we have maintained that position all along. The president did not write this letter. He did not sign this letter. And that's why the president's external legal team is aggressively pursuing the education against the Wall Street Journal.

And they will continue to. Top congressional Republicans are taking the White House's lead on the story. They're either dismissing or just ignoring the letter's existence. And the White House is not true.

I mean, I don't have a, let's say I don't have motivation about that. I think the, you know, there's a dispute about whether that's really signature. So, I mean, right now it's just gonna be, that's gonna be already back and forth. But the issue is not going away.

As the House oversec committee's chairman plows ahead with his committee's investigation and vows that more documents are coming. We're going to look at bank record. We've already stopped to start getting those suspicious activity reports. We're going to follow the money and we're going to put it together.

We've got a lot more documents we expect to get in. We're going to bring a lot of people in for deposition. So this investigation is moving along very rapidly. Hopefully we'll get some instant registration.

Meanwhile, the White House is also dealing with new economic worries as we learned today that the labor market is in significantly worse shape than we thought. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than first reported during the one year span that ended in March of this year. The White House is blaming the Biden administration for the downward revision. And once again calling on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates as a result of.

I'm joined now by NBC News White House correspondent Vaughn Hillier, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Julie Serkin and NBC News senior business correspondent Christine Romans. So, Vaughn, President Trump, he's calling the Epstein birthday letter a dead issue. Is the White House essentially just hoping that this story goes away on his own? Well, if there's just denial after denial, which is exactly what's taking place, that is where they hope this ultimately finds itself in the trash bin of folks memories here.

But what this is revealing is a great relationship between the NOW president and Jeffrey Epstein. Of course, this was back in 2003 that this alleged card as part of the birthday book to Jeffrey Epstein was made here. But this follows a long lie, a long history of denials, of accusations of sexual harassment or assault against Donald Trump. More than a dozen women have come forward with claims against the now president of the United States.

Of course, he was found to have sexually abused Eugene Carroll and defamed her. Defamation was found after he denied having even known her or having abused her. And so for the president, we have seen this history of denials here. And as it pertains to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, in that conversation with Garrett, again calling this a dead end issue, they have tried to suggest that this is all part of a Democratic scheme to distract the American public and that is it is a hoax.

When of course, some of his closest allies up on Capitol Hill, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace, have joined with Democrats in the House to try to call for greater transparency in the deal. They have turned over all the records that Congress could be released to the public. Joy, let's go. What's been the reaction from House Republicans to the alleged Trump letter that oversecked Many Democrats once yesterday.

Well, Ryan, if you were the speaker of House, Mike Johnson, you haven't seen that letter. That was a similar remark that was echoed by other members of leadership, other Republicans up here. Others have said that we saw it, but we stand by what the White House is saying. We believe the president when he says that wasn't his signature.

There was an interesting answer from Congressman Don Bacon, whoever noticed retiring. He told our colleague Mel, look, it appears that it might not have been forged, but also could have been. Anything is a possibility. Ultimately, though, Republicans are sort of trying to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to the story.

As we've seen time and time again, this drawing is certainly no different. What's interesting is that Democratic forces jump on this moment. The top Democrat has oversake made. Robert Garcia is swiftly tweeting a picture of this, trying to get it out there before hours later, the Oversight Committee ultimately released what they had received from this birthday book and other documents.

But certainly this is not going away. Even if Republicans are trying to say they haven't seen it, they're gonna have to answer for it one day. What is the status rate now, Julia, the Oversight Committee's investigation, What more could come? Well, they're flowing forward, as you've heard that sound by James Comer, saying they're still waiting for more documents from the Department of justice.

There are 100,000 pages of documents. They only received a fraction of that, about one third. And separately, I just talked to a source, confirmed to me that bipartisan group of staffers on that committee, lawyers, Republican and Democrat, are going to travel to New York City tomorrow to meet with the Epstein estate. Remember, that was designed in part and parcel so that Democrats could be sure, of course, Republicans were interested in this, that what the state was redacting when they gave them that birthday book yesterday, when they gave them these other files, they were making any onerous redactions, meaning things that don't have to, due to personal information concerns, implicating others who may have not been involved.

And so that process is going to start tomorrow. They're gonna see the birthday books, they're gonna see flight logs, call logs, a lot of information that the state has its hands on of what exactly Jeffrey Epstein did, who he talked to, whose associates were besides Billy and Maxwell. That's really what they're gonna find out here. And of course, separately, you have that discharge petition effort from Rohana and Thomas Massey, a Republican, that's still plowing ahead, too, because at least in Nassi's case, they don't trust that the House Oversight Committee is working in good faith even though they are Republicans.

And of course we're getting this from the doj. Okay. But let's talk about the other big issue today, economy and these newly revised jobs numbers. How's the White House trying to use this to negate or use this negative organization to its advantage?

Right. They're trying, Ryan, to pin the current state of the economy on the Biden administration and noting that these jobs numbers indicate that there was a weaker economy that was handed to now president and the Trump administration in January than previously understood. I think the important context of this is it just 45 days ago, people like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had claimed that once GDP growth had surged to 3%, this was now the Trump economy. Just in an interview on the Press with Kristen Walker here this weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Benson suggested that Americans should anticipate stronger fourth quarter numbers, essentially setting the table that the economy will be in a better place because of Trump administrative policies.

And that is where in a statement provided from the White House, they write in part that quote, today the BLS released the largest downward revision on record, proving that President Trump was right. Biden's economy was a disaster and the BLS is broken. This is exactly why we need new leadership to restore trust and confidence in the BLS's data, much like the BLS has failed the American people. So as Jerome Julie Powell, who's officially run out of excuses and must cut rates now, of course, it's been one month now since the BLS commissioner who oversees the data of that goes into the Bureau of Labor Statistics job number was fired by the president from her job.

And of course, then Chair Jerome Powell does remain in place and continues to hold back against seemingly the pressure that this White House continue to puts on him and other members of the Fed to cut interest rates even more. Christine, I do think they must have a bit of a point here, right, about how we should trust these BLS statistics when they come out on a monthly basis. How could they be so dramatically off? Okay, so let's step back a bit here.

Those monthly numbers that you see that are so important, those are derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reaching out to companies and saying, hey, here's a survey, tell us how many jobs you've added, how many you cut where you are. And then those numbers very quickly every month are sort of extrapolated into a picture of snapshot of what's happening in the job market. Well, a lot of companies aren't responding anymore. They're not turning those surveys in.

And there's been something that's happened since COVID where the way that they, the methodology they use to figure out jobs being born in literally called the birth death model, the jobs that are born, the companies that are created, the companies and jobs that are, you know, killed. Weighing all that, something has happened and they're just not getting it very accurate anymore. Then as time goes down, they use tax receipts and use census data and they get a better picture. And that's what this revision is.

We get this revision every single year. I'll point out in the 2018, 2019 period in Donald Trump's first term, there was a revision where jobs were revised lower by more than 500,000 on his watch as well. So it's something that happens every year now. It's been incredibly politicized, of course, and it's even more important because 911,000 is a large, is a larger number than we're used to, which suggests something needs to be done at bls.

So you're right, they do have a point. But a lot of economists and statisticians, people who really care about these numbers, are concerned because they see a lot of brain drain at bls. They see a lot of senior people who have left have taken buyouts and they're very worried about budget cutting over previous administrations altogether. That may be eroding their ability to really keep up with the changing economy.

Because two things can be true, right? There can be an effort by White House to politicize the collection of data when it comes to the labor market. But there's also questions about the way this information is tabulated. Do these experts each talk to them a better way to do this on a month to month basis that would be a little bit more accurate in the near term?

Oh, they want more. They want more field offices open. But in fact, the Trump administration has been closing field offices. I mean, you think about that when you have these regional field offices for the BLS and the Labor Department, you can go out there, you can actually talk to companies and you can follow up with companies and you can try to just get, you know, get more information so that you have more real time information about the opposite is happening.

Okay, thank you for that. Vaughn, Hillary, Julie, Circuit, we appreciate all of you. We're going to turn down the situation in the Middle East. And signs of new tensions between the US And Israel after Israel says that it carried out striking Doha targeting senior members of Hamas.

This was the moment that Qatar's Capital was rocked by the explosions. A member of Hamas's political bureau says their leadership survived the attack. Israel's prime minister said today's strike was in retaliation for an attack on Jerusalem yesterday where a gunman opened a fire at a bus stop, killing six people. He also said that Israel acted wholly independent and took full responsibility for the strike.

The White House reacted to the strikes of dampening period at odds with Israel's decision to unilaterally strike Doha. Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard in bravely taking risks with us to broker peace does not advance Israel or America's goals. However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal. President Trump immediately directed special envoy Wikoff to inform the Qataris of the impending attack, which he did.

President Trump believes this unfortunate incident could serve as an opportunity for peace. The president also spoke to the emir and prime minister of Qatar and thanked them for their support and friendship to our country. He assured them that such a thing will not happen again on their soil. The Qatar has pushed back since US officials first warned them about the attack 10 minutes after it began and accused Israel of working to sabotage the Gaza ceasefire talks.

NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel found this report from Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says that he took the decision to launch this military strike against top Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, after Hamas carried out a shooting attack here in Jerusalem yesterday that left at least six people dead. Hamas has claimed responsibility for that attack. According to Israeli media.

This was a complex operation involving about 15 Israeli fighter jets firing at least 10 munitions, refueling midair before returning safely to their bases. But why Doha, Qatar? Israel has carried out many attacks against Hamas leaders, but not in Doha, not airstrikes against a peaceful city that had been acting as a moderator in these in this conflict. In fact, the reason that Hamas has an office in Doha at all is because of a deal made 10 years ago supported by the United States so that there could be a neutral territory where enemies could come and discuss very difficult subjects.

President Trump had been urging Qatar had been urging Hamas to come up with a response to a ceasefire proposal. And that process, according to Qatar officials, was underway when this attack took place. Now another question is was it a success at all? Israel is still assessing the operation, but Hamas has released a detailed list of people it says were killed by this Israeli strike or by the Israeli strikes because there were multiple attacks on the same residential compound.

And Hamas says that none of its top leaders was killed, but that junior aides and relatives of Hamas leaders instead were killed. All right. Richard, thank you for that report. Coming up, two high stakes political battles are beating up as both parties ramp up their redistricting plans and Congress faces a looming government shutdown.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers will join me in studio straight ahead. Plus, if it's Tuesday, someone's voting somewhere will tell you who's going to the polls ahead. You're watching THE PRESS now. Welcome back.

Congress has until the end of the month to come to an agreement to fund the government. Lawmakers are already bracing for a fight and a potential shutdown with more and more Democrats finally take a hard line position if their demands aren't met. Democrats are also eager to avoid a repeat of the last funding battle back in March when Senate Democrats allow Republicans to pass their funding bill. Also complicated government funding negotiations is the president's push to use a rarely used mechanism called a pocket recision to unilaterally cut congressionally mandated spending, a move that some Senate Republican appropriators say is unconstitutional.

Joining me here on set is Democratic congresswoman from Washington, Susan Delaney. She's also the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Congressman, thank you for being here. Absolutely.

Thanks. So let's start with government funding. You know, what is it that you want as a Democrat in these negotiations? Do you have some specific asks as you go into this process?

Well, I think this is about doing the work for the American people, the people we represent, folks are seeing costs go up dramatically. Affordability is the number one issue across the country. Housing, food, health care, childcare, energy costs. Folks aren't relief.

In fact, that was the number one issue in the last election. Trump promised a cost on day one. That's a big broken promise from Republicans. Our focus as we look into funding for next year should be on what is the work we're doing to help working families across the country.

And the big ugly bill that Republicans passed made it even worse. So your situation now we're only nine days or so, I think legislative days away from the end of the fiscal year. It's impossible to pass the appropriations bills necessary to keep the government. So it's going to require some sort of a short term continuing resolution.

Would you be willing to vote yes on a short term clean as cleanse? It can be CR to allow those negotiations to continue. Well, you just brought up, I don't even think we know exactly what that means under this administration. And again, Republicans have the White House, they have the Senate they have the House.

They've been in charge this whole time. They can drive this agenda if we're heading for its head House, because that's where they're leading us. Let's have folks come to the table working a bipartisan way to pass legislation. That's what's critically important.

And it is Congress's job, not the president's at his whim, to decide what's funded or not. I think that's critically important. Republicans have basically given up their authority to the president and they're not listening to American people. They're just waiting for Donald Trump to tell him to do.

You're probably not surprised that Speaker Johnson has a different view of that. This is what he said earlier today on the funding fight. It seems Democrats may take the path of maximum resistance and try to shut the government down. It's not surprising because they're struggling because they don't really have a message.

They're desperately searching for a solution. And some of the party apparently think the government shutdown would be some sort of political advantage to them. It'd be what we all know is dangerous and harmful to millions of Americans. That is not the answer.

So I'm going to say this again. I'm saying in good faith. I shared this with Leonhouse and other colleagues at Democrats who want to work with us. We have our speech.

We want to do this in good faith. So I want you to respond to one thing specifically. He said that the Democrats view the government shutdown as some sort of a political advantage. Do you think that's true?

I think what's important is that we are supporting American people. Shutting down the government does not help the American people. It hurts American people. The damage they have done to the federal government, to agencies, hurts the American people.

We should be fighting for funding. And in fact, the fiscal year always ends on September 30th. Republicans shouldn't be waiting to the end of the year to come up with a funding package. They should have been working on this a long time ago.

I think it's really important that we have year long funding bills that provide that certainty and stability. Because what we've seen from congressional Republicans and from the administration is chaos since the beginning of this year that's having effects on the ground. Prices are rising. Businesses don't have any certainty going forward.

And then you have uncertainty about whether the government's going to be funded or not. All because Republicans, the White House, the Senate, and he says you're not willing to. We're ready to get the tickle Republicans don't know what they want to do. They're in charge.

They have, they have all the. They're in charge. So it's actually pretty funny that the leader, the speaker of the House is saying he doesn't want to do. He has a majority in the House, he has the control to do that, and yet he doesn't know what to do.

I feel like I'm a bit of bizarre one because I was all over the Capitol table, both in the House and I said both the Senate leadership pressers. Republicans say Democrats don't want to negotiate. Democrats say Republicans don't want to negotiate. Should I just get you all in room?

I mean, it seems like this shouldn't be that hard. If everybody says they want to negotiate, if we want to have true leadership on Republican side, they're in charge. They have to go forward and tell us how they're going to work with us to get this moving forward. We're ready.

It has to be bipartisan. We can't even get them to admit that there's going to be a bipartisan solution here. They're in charge of everything. So.

But they have no leadership because they don't know what to do unless Donald Trump tells them. Okay, let's move on and talk about the major. You are of course, the chair of the Democratic Congressional campaign. They want to show you this poll that NBC News conducted over the weekend about party favorability.

It says Right now that 41% of Americans view the Democratic Party favorably, 59% view them unfavorable. How difficult does that make your job as chair of the dcc? You know, when we actually talk to people in districts, when we actually talk about members of Congress, they like their Democratic members of Congress, especially in battleground districts. In these purple districts across the country, they have strong representatives and they're polling well.

And so I think what's important is that we have great candidates. We're talking about the issues that matter on the ground. They're the folks who are gonna make a difference in B voices here in Washington D.C. right now.

Even in the last election, we had 14 Democrats win in districts that Donald Trump also won in 14 democracy purple districts. Why? Great candidates who are independent minded voices for their communities. That's how we pick up more seats too.

I'm just here with comments. You mean more than commons? Right. And you're gonna introduce new candidates in many of these races that are gonna run under the Democratic brand.

Doesn't the democr need to improve to help those new candidates? These are great candidates. And that's what makes that's why I said we won in Trump districts last time having great candidates. They are the ones who actually make the Democratic brand.

They are the ones who people look at and say these people doing work that matters make a difference. And Republicans broke promises. They've raised costs. They are creating damage to our economy.

Working families are hurting. Their bill is underwater because it's slashing health care across the country. That's what people are seeing. And that's why you see pulling on Republicans and on the president way underwater, because people are feeling what's happening on the ground.

They know the damage. You have one other complication you have to deal with and that's the Republican effort to redistrict in so many of these spread states across the country. Already seen it playing Texas, Missouri's talking about doing it now, your Democrats responding in some blue states. Are you worried about this arms race that's happening with redistricting and how that could impact just the way you do business in Washington?

Well, we have always been fighting for fair amounts across the country. Republicans vote against any legislation we put forward to try to make sure that we have voting rights, fair maps across the country. They can't win on the issues. If they could, they'd be out talking about the issues kind of from my earlier point, it's clear that they can't win on the issues.

So they're trying to rig the system. And that's what Trump didn't say. We're hearing from people, the people of Texas, they want to see a new map. He said, I want five more seats.

And the people of Texas hate this. The people of Missouri, when you talk to them about they hate it. So, you know, Republicans are going to go down this path. One, they should be careful what they do because they're going to probably create districts that we're going to win in because Democrats have been running ahead in special elections and people are angry.

But we're going to fight back with everything we have. And they can't take away the voice of voters in other states. And that's why you're seeing states like California fight back. We're going to leave it there.

Congressman, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. All right, up next, if you from a House Republican on the FC Files fallout debate over the dystrophy and fair representation. You're watching the.

If this truly was a Forged documentary, shouldn't the Oversight Committee look into this? This is the president of The United States, US Representative I'm pretty sure the document was 22 years ago. 22 years ago, I believe when that was allegedly said. I don't think overcame invest in look it up something 22 years ago.

That was our secondary Chairman James comer downplaying alleged 2003 birthday letter from President Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, which was among the documents his committee obtained yesterday. Joining now is Indian Republican Congressman Morland Sussman to talk more about this than others the whole time talking about Jeffrey Epstein. But I do want to ask about this. President Trump tried to dismiss the Epstein files as a hoax, but the Oversight Committee led by Congressman Culver says that more files are going to be coming out despite the pushback from the White House.

Do your constituents want to see more? Are they asking for more transparency? They're asking for more transparency. Is it the top of mind issue for constituents?

It's not. But at the same time, it goes back to a matter of trust. Can we trust our government? And I think that's where this really stems from.

And I think that this is such a complicated case, unfortunately, where you have a lot of victims that need to be protected. And at the same time, you also need to be sure that justice is brought to those who harm those victims as well. So I think that the House leadership and the chairman of the Oversight Committee is handling this properly. It's like, let's make sure that we don't rush ahead and hurt people in the process of actually being methodical about it.

So to that point, do you agree with some of your Republican colleagues that the discharge petition should come to the floor? There should be a vote to compel the Department of Justice to release everything they have on the case. I don't agree on the discharge petition, but I do believe that we're going to get there. We're going to get the answers.

You know, let the Oversight Committee do their work and they'll get the answers. And this is a serious issue that we're all taking very seriously. And I think that Chairman Comer is doing the handling it appropriately and making sure that it's very. He's careful as he walks through this process.

All right, let me show you what Congressman Tom Massey said about your point as relates to the district which he's championing. Take a listen. Oh, we don't talk about. Okay.

But basically what Congressman Massey is concerned about is that you need this backup, this kind of forcing mechanism to compel the Department of Justice to do this, because there could be opportunity where the Department of Justice just had piecemeal's information out and you don't get the full picture. Was that concern you at all? They need to hold the Department of Justice accountable. I mean, yes, we do need hold them accountable.

And I do think that the process, it's playing out, it's just taking than what we all hoped that it would. You know, information continues to come forward. Again, as I said, Chairman Comer is really one of them. They're both from Kentucky, they're both good friends.

This is an issue that Congressman Massey has spearheaded. But at the same time, Congressman, Chairman Comer has been, he has better access to more information and of course the speaker of the House has access to information. So there's a, it's a team effort. While they may not always agree on the call, I think that the speaker of the House is making the right calls and moving forward carefully.

Okay, let's talk about government funding. Now. We're just 98 legislatives will pay from September 30th. It seems unlikely that they can get a full appropriations package done.

Do you support a continuing resolution to keep this process? I do. Because we don't want to shut the government down under these circumstances. And again, and we don't have to for a lot of US budget hawks, I know the Budget Committee cr, it's not the worst thing in the world because we need at least free spending, control spending.

And you know, what we've seen with this administration is that that they're finding ways that we can cut in terms of budget down. $37 trillion of debt is not sustainable. A trillion dollars in debt service every year is more than just as much as our military spends. So something has to change.

And so if a CR is what it takes to get us to finding more savings and let this economy grow, I think it's a recall. So in order to do that though, you need Democrats in Senate to come along and it's not like the Democrats are going to agree to the type of spending cuts that you're talking about. What's it going to take to create that bipartisan deal that sustains the government funding stream for an indefinite amount of time as opposed to these three month increments? Well, I think that's why CR is actually probably the solution because it's something they voted for.

Not all of them, some of them voted. But then I'll get you through maybe in November or some talk about doing a year long CR and actually just going out again one more year at the current levels. And I would seriously consider that we'll walk through this process again. It's Going to take a little bit more time as leadership looks at all the options we have working with the White House.

But budget standpoint, I think that CR makes sense because at the end of the day we don't want to get ourselves into a position where we have more spending and we're not fixing the problem that many of us ran for office to do. That's a fix the federal budget. So that again, I want to ask you about the Affordable Care act tax credits, which is kind of split the Republican Party right now. Democrats absolutely want to see that extended.

There are some of your House Republican colleagues, especially some frontline districts, that believe that they should be extended as well. You call yourself a budget haul, but where do you stand on these tax credits? Should it be part of the negotiation? You know, from a broader sense, I understand why.

Maybe part of the negotiation, I would like to see it repealed right now. In fact, this is going to be a big issue for us, Ryan. I mean part of our budget problems is just our whole healthcare industry. I mean, you know, what is the insurance side, whether it's the service side.

We're going to have to tackle this at some point. It's just again, it's not sustainable. It's the biggest, it's the fastest growing item in our budget that we're going to have to deal with. So I believe that, you know, we're learning more and more that these subsidies are just strictly coming out of taxpayer pocket and going to, you know, to other taxpayers.

And this is where, you know, we're starting to see this redistricting as an issue that's coming out. And that's another issue where we're seeing states like California, New York, Illinois taking advantage of programs compared to a state like Indiana. I mean, Indiana, we're very self sufficient. We work together, we find solutions.

We work with the federal government. Of course, you know, healthcare is a part of our system as well that we have to work through. But to see a state take advantage of other states is something has to stop. Okay, let's talk about redistricting.

You said earlier this week that you were helping support a midday decade redrawing Indiana's congressional maps after conversation with your governor like bon of forces was a senator appeared not too long ago. The governor himself really hasn't weighed on this yet. What's his take on it from your conversation? I don't know what his take is necessarily.

I've not talked directly to the governor about it, but have talked to other state legislators. I've talked to folks in the administration here in D.C. but here's what's happened. We've seen the same situation go from states like California taking advantage of the their sanctuary state.

Indiana's not a sanctuary state. Illinois, all you have to do is look at the Illinois map and look at the Indiana map and you can see there's a big difference in the way that the maps were drawn. So, you know, we're not a sanctuary state. Those who are here illegally have been counted in the census and now we're finding out that those numbers are huge.

Just from Illinois to Indiana, we've had over 100,000 Illinoisans move to the Hoosier state in the past several years because they're leading bad policy, coming to where they know that they can, you know, raise their family safely and they don't worry about the crime that's going on in Chicago. But I understand your point of view on this. Perhaps maybe you feel like you've been incorrectly counted in the census, but why do it mid decade? I mean, isn't that what we're breaking norms here?

I mean California, every time they've redistributed, it's been during that 10 year process which is constitutional. That's really different. I think it's the mid decade part that's at least part of what the complaints are. Well, you know, I mean other states have been required to redraw their maps.

I mean this is the one, you know, the one responsibility the state legislature has is to draw the maps for the US of House of Representatives congressional districts and to realize that you know what we have states like Illinois, California, New York that drew their maps to favor Democrats. There's no doubt. I mean Massachusetts has nine districts and they don't have one single Republican. We have nine districts in Indiana.

If you like kindergarten class, draw the maps. You probably have the nine Republicans. Okay. Congressman Marlon Sultz.

More I believe there. Thank you for being appreciated. After break, new polling shows that Democratic socialist Zoran Mandami has a commanding lead in a race for New York City mayor. As a fractured field of rivals faces pressure deny Ryan alternative it Steve Kranaki will break down the data straight ahead with the President.

Welcome back. It's Tuesday. That means voters are voting somewhere in today. Those somewheres are Virginia and Boston not far from.

We are in Virginia's 11th congressional district. In the D.C. suburbs, voters are choosing who will fill late Democrat Congressman Jerry Connolly. C.

Connolly's former chief of staff James Walkinshaw facing off against Republican Stuart Whitson. Meanwhile in Boston, today's preliminary election will narrow down the mayoral race to two candidates before November's general election. The incumbent mayor there, Michelle Wu and Josh Kraft, the son of patriots on Robert Kraft, are the two front runners. All of that is we have some new numbers on the New York mail race.

Steve Karnaki is at the big board to break those down for Steve. All right, new poll finds that Zori Mandani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, New York City, may still be beatable this November. Take a look at him. CDs numbers say.

What the heck are you talking about, beatable? He's up almost 2 to 1 over his nearest foe, Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, Curtis Lee, with a Republican, Eric Adams, the current mayor, also running as an independent. So why would you say Mandani could still be beatable? Number one, think of it this way.

He is the Democratic nominee, one of those Democratic cities in the country, and he's under 50% at this point. So just the fact that there is this much opposition to him suggests there's a big chunk of the electorate he hasn't made the sale with yet. So what's sustaining Mandani now is not only is the opposition divided among three candidates, but the opposition's unpopular. Look at this.

Only 30% favorable for Sliwa, 37 for Cuomo, 29 for Adams. Meanwhile, Mandani is 52% favorable. So he's got divided unpopular opposition. And as long as that's the case, he's probably going to coast in this race.

But the poll found Mamdani is vulnerable on issues like crime, for instance. And it also found there are some very clear demographic contours, disports, some groups he did extremely well with and some groups that seem very, very reluctant to get on board with him. Take a look at one here. It's age.

Look at this. Voters under 45, 67% are going for Mamdani. You go past that, suddenly his support cuts in half. And the other candidates come like there are a lot of voters 45 and older.

So there's an age dynamic to this. There's a class dynamic, madame, doing much better with college grads than folks who don't have four year degrees. A lot of blue collar voters out there as well. So there are some demographic pools for his opponents to tap into.

So who could potentially tap into that? This was an interesting question in the poll is if you're not already backing the candidate, would you consider potentially backing that candidate? And look who's in first there more than half who are now backing. Course, Cuomo say they could at least consider it.

Only 34% who are now backing Mandani say they could still get on board there room to grow for Cuomo. So that raises the question, what if somehow you've heard this chatter the opponents to Mandani could get Sliwa and Adams out of the race and get a one on one with Cuomo and Mandani. What would happen? Test it in this poll and there you have it.

Suddenly it's a race 48, 44. Cuomo would have a chance there if he could get in that scenario. Look, Adams has shown no willingness to do this so far. Neither has anywha that would have to change.

It may not change at all. But if it does, then yes, this poll shows Mandani could be beatable still in New York. Okay, see that's interesting. Let's talk about it with npr White House by Tamara Keith, former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp and the editor and CEO of the Dispatch and NBC News contributor Stephen so you saw Steve break that down for us.

Hypothetical. Very much emphasis on hypothetical. Head to head race. Maybe a four point margin between Madame and Cuomo.

Is that the only way Madame doesn't win is if Sliwa and AMS get out? I am not an expert on New York politics, but I will tell you that that's what President Trump says. President Trump is rooting for those other two candidates to drop out. There have been all kinds of rumors about ways that he is trying to urge them.

He is certainly making a public case that a one on one race is the only way for Madani not to win. There was a question today whether the President is going to meet with Adams when he's in New York later this week and they didn't offer any guidance. Trump is not a popular figure in the city of New York even though that's where he's from. Though of course he moved to Florida because he was not that popular in some town.

So hi, this is a great question for you because you are a moderate Democrat. Obviously there's a lot of angst among senior Democratic leaders to get behind Zami despite the energy that appears behind his campaign. I want to play for you what your former colleague Senator Bern Sanders told me just about an hour or so ago. Take a listen.

Are you so concerned about the fact that your Democratic leadership has yet to endorsement to Ronaldi New York? Look, it is hard for me to understand how the Democratic leadership is not supporting the candidate who won the Democratic primary, the candidate who has gotten 50, 60,000 people volunteering for his campaign has created enormous excitement on new people to register to vote. How do you not support that candidate? So, yeah, it is a little perplexing to me that they're not there.

I'm sure you probably don't agree with everything sorry, my dad stands for, but is it hard to ignore that there's a lot of enthusiasm behind what he's bringing the Democratic Party? I mean, number one, you can always say, look, that's what New York is going to do. He's talking about really important issues like housing costs, like bread and butter, you know, macaroni and cheese issues. And the thing is, he's bringing energy back.

And I think this is really dangerous. And it further exacerbates this split between kind of traditional populace like Bernie and the core of the Democratic Party or, you know, someone say the moderates like me. My point is it's all hands on deck and you cannot be dividing this. This party that now is, has a lot of, I think, trouble ahead if they stay divided and if they start picking on each other as opposed to keeping their eye on the prize of actually moving this country forward for working men and women.

It's interesting for me that Ellen Cortez, her point was, I get behind moderate Democrats when they win the primary, even though I don't agree with them, it's your turn to get behind the progressives. Does she have a point there? I think absolutely. And I think that this is, this is really tough.

And they're so spooked by someone coming up and saying, oh, you know, you've supported this guy who's a socialist and has this idea, Listen, as a moder Democrat from North Dakota, that's been my life. And I'm like, well, listen, this is how you handle it. You aren't going to agree with everything that he stands for, but he is working for the working people of this state and of his city. You got to get behind him because he's talking about the right issues.

So, Stephen, it does seem as though Eric Adams's intent and stay on this race is obviously getting some sort of entree from the Trump administration for some sort of cushy exit strategy. Do you think Adams is the reason that Cuomo does have a shot at winning this race? I mean, right now it certainly seems to be the case. The polling makes that fairly clear.

Can you imagine the behind the scenes conversation between Donald Trump and Eric Adams, like the transactional politics that are taking place right now? We're going to do this. We'll take this yeah. Look, I think if you don't want Mom Donnie to win and Donald Trump doesn't want to win, this is what you do.

You try to get the other two out of the race and support Howard. Luckily, the Trump is very clear that he wasn't endorsing Andrew Cuomo, but he's working to get the others out, or at least his political team's working together, because that's the only way that Cuomo's gonna win. I'm not even go down. I think it's kind of interesting that he has taken this position, because in some ways there, the Republican Party is hoping that this.

This candidate at New York will define the Democratic Party. And so it's really a weird kind of position to take, but I think he just can't stay out of a good fight. I was wondering what the senator said. He loves a foil, right.

If any were the mayor of New York City, wouldn't that give him a foil? Absolutely. And even as a candidate, it's giving him a foil. And President Trump is eager for that fight, but also apparently doesn't really want it.

I don't. This is one of those things where sometimes he sort of like, tiptoes around other people's politics, doesn't make an endorsement because he doesn't want to get blamed if it doesn't go his way. But I do think he's undoubtedly hearing from his business friends in New York City who are saying this would be a no. He may be speaking on their behalf and taking the steps.

Listen to what Speaker Mike Johnson had to say about that this morning. It seems Democrats may take the path of maximum resistance and try to shut the government down. It's not surprising because they're struggling. They don't really have a message or a leader or a.

The party registration is falling, their approval ratings are in the low 20s, and they're about to elect a Marxist to be the mayor of New York City. They are desperately searching for a solution, and some of the party apparently thinking that would be some sort of political advantage to them. I think I sit through, I don't know, three or four Republican press conferences a week. They always love this point that the Democrats don't have a leader.

And now they've kind of anointed Mondavi the leader in absence of having a leader. Is this a problem for democracy? Even that they don't have a person that they can point to as kind of standard? Look, I mean, I defer to the senator on wisdom about all things Democratic Party, but, yeah, I think it is if you look issue by issue, to the extent that people care about policy anymore, he's incorrect.

Incredibly radical. The things that he has proposed in his primary campaign, which he is softening a little these days. He's a radical, radical Democrat. He's a socialist.

That is a problem. If he were to win. And Republicans can make him sort of face a young Democrats, the Democratic Party, and they point to people like the senator and other, the two other moderates remaining in the Democratic Party and say, hey, this. This is who Democrats are now.

Yeah, I think it's a political problem for Democrats all. But before let you guys go, can I just say hubris to say the Democrats pass the budget, you're the speaker of the House, you have the majority pass the budget, then I'll listen. On the economy that we just learned just in the last minute, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases on the legality of President Trump's tariffs. That's gonna be before the high court November.

Tamara, so much of his economic policy, really his broad foreign policy, is based on these tariffs. How crucial these cases be? These cases are crucial, though potentially. The decision could come back saying you just need to find a different way to do what.

Yes, they've been doing that in a number of cases. It's such an interesting issue, though, because the tariffs aren't actually all that popular with anyone other than President Trump who loves them and thinks they solve all problems, and people who have sort of followed his lead, but they are not necessarily popular with the general public. The Supreme Court could give him an out, though. It's not clear that that would happen.

And it's not an out that he wants. And it will be a big 2026 issue no matter what, right? Absolutely. But the challenge here is if the court reverses on the statutory authority that he assumed he had, this emergency authority, they will have to refund about half of those and there's no going back.

But they can do two 32s, they can do 301s. But the business community is breathing aside relief and cheering for the reversal of these tariffs. It could be a real blessing in disguise. And who else doesn't like these tariffs?

Economists. There's near unanimity among economists that tariffs are bad and that they're not helping the economy. I think we're seeing the fact of that now. Him to keep my money.

Terrific conversation, guys. Appreciate you being here. Still, Missouri takes center stage in the battle of redistricting. There's Republican House lawmakers advance a plan that aims to house a Long time Democratic Congressman.

Keep it here watching Meet the President. Welcome back. Turning now to the latest battle in what's becoming something of a redistricting war. This afternoon the Missouri State House passed a bill to redraw the state's eight congressional districts.

The new map splits up the state's longtime Democratic 5th congressional district in the Kansas City area and it merges with a heavily Republican counties that spread far into central Missouri. The Missouri state Senate will take up the bill tomorrow. Joining me from outside the capital in Jefferson City, Missouri is NBC Shaquille Brewster, Shack. Now this bill headed to the Senate.

How are Missouri state senators responding and how quickly could we see this move through the chamber? Well, Ryan, we'll see things actually slowed down a little bit. The Senate will gave in for this special session tomorrow. This will have to go through a committee process before that ultimate vote happens.

But you know something that we're watching and I should say the debate that we're watching that we heard in the House chamber is going to only continue as this process moves forward. I just spoke to the bill sponsor who calls this Missouri first map. He says that this is a map that essentially better reflects the conservative values of this very conservative state. But you heard the debate inside the chamber earlier today.

Democrats pushing back aggressively, saying that this is essentially a racial gerrymander, saying that this is essentially lawmakers moving at the behest of President Donald Trump. Those are arguments that you are only going to hear amplified in the days to come when this moves to the Senate. I want to listen to what one Democratic senator told me just earlier, earlier today. I think one of the most important things that we can do is bring other like minded Republicans with us.

We saw in the Missouri House that this did not pass on a party line vote. We are hopeful that we can do the same in the Senate. We're going to use the tools at our disposal here as well to do what we can to push back. Now when you hear them talk about those tools, one thing that is different than what we saw in Texas when Texas lawmakers went through a similar process is that Democrats there had power to have that cornbreak they left the state Capitol.

Democrats didn't have that ability here in the state of Missouri. But when it gets to the Senate, they do have essentially a talking filibuster. So you can see this process delayed for hours, perhaps days. But I'll tell you, Ryan, no one here expects that these maps will not ultimately be passed.

And if the opponents are able to gather enough signatures to qualify for the referendum when can we see that take place? Well, that's something that you know is a longer term process. Essentially they call it a citizens veto here in the state of Missouri. It's something that you heard the minority party leaders, the Democratic leaders here say that it will be the next step.

That's something that you'll look at about 90 days after the bill ultimately passes. But when you talk to some of the community groups, when you talk to lawmakers here, they're geared up for the fact that we're going to see the next couple of days. There's a massive protest that's expected at the state capitol tomorrow. But one thing you know, I did ask the Democrats after the vote earlier today as they had a press conference was what are they calling for other states to do?

You remember you heard Texas lawmakers saying that this is something that California should get involved in. They're saying they're making the same calls to other leaders. And here, Missouri. Okay, check booster.

Thank you for that. We appreciate it. We'll be back tomorrow with more meetup press now. But there's more ahead right now on NBC News.

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