Hallie Jackson NOW - March 3 | NBC News NOW

ruticker 04.03.2025 15:25:08

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**Right now, the markets are closing the day in kind of a free fall over concern that some things are going to get more expensive soon.** With President Trump late today saying there's no way for Mexico and Canada to avoid a new round of tariffs set to go into effect just hours from now—*no room left for Mexico or for Canada.* The tariffs, uh, you know, they're all set; they go into effect tomorrow. Markets didn't love that. Look at this red across the board at the close: the Dow down nearly 700 points, the S&P posting its worst single-day drop of this second Trump term so far. Now, what the president is promising to do is, in his words, *tell it like it is* tomorrow night in his joint address to Congress, his address to the nation. We're going to have that Prime Time coverage coming up right here on NBC News Now. Von Hillyard's going to get into all that in just a second, but I want to start with Brian Chong on all these tariffs first tonight. **This tariff threat here, right?** And you heard the president say no room for Mexico and Canada to maneuver their way out of this. At this point, we know he's already put in place and has threatened to put in place China tariffs. The Mexico and Canada ones matter. You are seeing already some pushback, which we'll get to in just a second. *Explain the concern here.* Yeah, as you mentioned, uh, basically the president, by suggesting that there's no room, is basically saying this is going to happen at midnight. Now, of course, anything could happen. We saw a kind of staving off of the tariffs when this was a conversation about a month ago. But nonetheless, the reason why Wall Street is so worried here is because businesses don't like uncertainty, and neither do investors. Because when it comes to just this round of tariffs—yes, 25% on Canada and yes, 25% on Mexico, and then another 10% on China—that is just the beginning, if you will, of other trade-related tariffs that we'll expect to hear from the White House soon. The next one could be April 2nd, with the president saying he's already looking at these reciprocal tariffs and putting them into place in just four weeks from now. So this could be the beginning, the starting point, if you will, of what could be ratcheting up tariffs. And the concern is, well, if these companies in the United States have to pay more to bring raw materials or entire goods into the United States, what's going to happen? They're going to have to pass that on to the consumer. That could be bad for the economy after what was some improvement on inflation. Maybe it goes the other way. That's the reason why we saw Wall Street red on this Monday. *You bring up an important point, Brian, because I have to tell you, my phone just died on the way to the studio. So unless we got an email in the last 30 seconds that the president did actually put pen to paper and sign these tariffs into place, we don't know that that's happened yet, right?* He has technically until what? Midnight, EAS Eastern here, 11:59 Eastern to change his mind or to back off, despite what he said just two hours ago. Yeah, well, he did put the pen to paper to the China tariffs, raising them from essentially 10% to 20%. But yeah, I mean, in theory, anything could happen when it comes to these tariffs. What we've heard from the likes of Peter Navarro, his chief trade adviser, is that this is a *drug war,* this is not a trade war. So in theory, if there are concessions on the fentanyl bit, which I'll let Vau maybe get to, that it is—anything is really on the table. But look, we've heard this 25% tariff, and for all intents and purposes, we've already seen—and I've heard anecdotally from businesses say they've already seen price increases just off of the expectation that these tariffs will be put in place. A survey of manufacturers this morning confirmed that in many cases, they've already seen prices get passed on from the supplier to the companies that could then in turn get passed on to the consumer. This is very much a price impact that is already taking effect. *Ali, Brian Chong, thank you for breaking that down. Stay close; who knows how many developments there could be in the next little bit? Thank you.* Let me go to Von Hillyard now. So, V, you heard Brian talking about it—the possibility that things could get more expensive. Things getting more expensive is the opposite reason for why people voted President Trump into office. Many voters told us anecdotally and in polls that they wanted to see the president; they believed that President Trump specifically could bring prices down. That is what is so critical to so many Americans across the country. It's the economy, and it's what they pay for things like eggs, by the way, spiking right as we have seen over the course of the last several months because of bird flu. So President Trump, despite this threat—again, this pledge just today to continue to move forward on this tariff plan—has also got to presumably politically balance that with doing things to try to bring prices down for people. We probably will hear him talk about that in the next 24 hours, right? He has that address to the joint session of Congress tomorrow night, and undoubtedly what we could expect him to tell the American people is that he is executing on what he promised on the campaign trail—tariffs, for instance. He promised to do exactly this. In fact, he promised even higher tariffs than the ones that he says he's imposing at midnight tonight on Mexico and China. And in so many ways, we are looking at reverberations of his first administration when he had a trade war, for instance. And right, we heard from a lot of agricultural producers and farmers that said that they understood that the commodity prices were going to take a hit; they may even lose money, but it was for the greater good and that the president was fighting on their behalf for better trade deals that would not punish the American producer. So in so many ways, what we could expect for him tomorrow night is to make that case that, you know, you may see the American stock market go down or your prices go up, but it's for the greater good of America going forward. And when you look at polling there, Hly, you're seeing, of course, there is a clear divide between Republicans and Democrats. But I think the one number worth looking at is those independent voters who, by a 64 to 36 margin, suggest that they don't believe the state of the union is strong going into that address tomorrow night. One and a half months in, you look at some of the moves that the Trump administration has made in the course of these last maybe six weeks or so—V, those cuts, of course, Chief among them, those Elon Musk cuts to the federal workforce. Here, you've seen some anger over the last few weeks at some of these town halls, as members—we're showing it on screen here—as members are going back to their districts, they're getting questions about people losing their jobs. You saw it over the weekend just in Kansas with Senator Roger Marshall actually walking out. *He left, "Watch, appreciate everybody making the drive out, and God bless America. Thank you."* You heard people yelling, "You're not done! You're not done!" President Trump has seemed to downplay some of this concern that we've seen pop up at town halls, even as one of the most prominent Democrats in the country is now reemerging, of course, former Vice President Kamala Harris, to tell people essentially to keep up the fight. Right? There were questions of whether Republicans would continue to hold these town halls back in their districts, in their home states this weekend. Clearly, some of them are still choosing to do so. President Trump very dismissive of the images and the video that you just showed, suggesting in a social media post that these are paid organizers and demonstrators. Of course, we know that a number of them are part of organizations that undoubtedly—uh, a great many of them probably didn't vote for President Trump. But this is part of the American process here, and there is no evidence that all of these individuals showing up to town halls are paid demonstrators. But I want to let you listen to—you mentioned it—it was Vice President Kamala Harris, who we haven't seen all that much of in the last months, but this is her message to folks out on the ground: *"Please stay active, whether it's attending a town hall meeting or volunteering in your community or talking with your friends, your neighbors, your relatives about what's at stake."* Of course, this is a difficult time for Democrats. Of course, they do not are in the minority in the House and the Senate, and so there's a lot of questions going forward of how they will resist the actions of this White House in the Republican majorities up on Capitol Hill. It was interesting to see, uh, former Vice President Harris there. She's kept a fairly low profile since her election loss. Somebody else who's had a somewhat low profile, which is not altogether surprising considering what we saw in the first term of the former president or the current president, is Melania Trump. Here she is, the First Lady. She's on Capitol Hill today, and she was talking with lawmakers about one of her initiatives. *Right, that's right. This is a political activism, if you will, that we're not accustomed to seeing from the First Lady. But she was up on Capitol Hill talking with lawmakers and there talking to cameras as well about a bill that has made its way through the Senate and we expect to be soon voted on by the U.S. House that would force social media companies to take down non-consensual depictions of sexual acts. These could even be deep fakes of women, forcing these social media companies to respond to users who make the case that there are unfair sexual depictions of them online.* Von Hillyard live for us there outside the White House. *Von, thank you very much.* Let's take it down south to the Carolinas now and the urgent scramble to get a handle on fast-moving wildfires that have exploded. Look at this—you see the smoke? Look at that billowing above neighborhoods there. And here you see it on screen, from national forests to towns nearby to people just literally running to get out. You see crews dumping water from above these walls of flames. Part of the reason why there's now a state of emergency in South Carolina, forcing people to evacuate, is because of these high winds, these dry conditions. *Wow, that's a big plume of smoke there with one of 175 fires torching thousands of acres there, according to the governor.* And if you're like, "Wait a second, wildfires in the Carolinas? That's kind of unusual, right?" Yeah, it is. It's fairly rare. Our climate team tells us, though, that this is driven by how wildfire season is getting longer and more intense in certain spots. Bill Karens is standing by with more on what's ahead tonight, but I want to start with Emily Aeta, who is on the ground for us near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. *The risk has not abated after a weekend when the Carolinas were essentially working hard to try to combat these flames.* Yeah, H, just to give you a sense of just how dry the conditions are here behind me, you'll see these sprinklers going. They've been going for about a couple of hours, but look inside there—you'll still see pockets of smoldering hot spots that firefighters are having to return to time and time again to tend to. You also can get a sense at just the kinds of flames we've been—firefighters have been up against because it's not just flames that came up to here, so a couple of feet, but the entire pine trees in here—some of them completely, completely engulfed in flames when the fire came through this area. *What more? Here's the forest. If we come over here, I want to show you how close these fires came to homes. We are in a busy Myrtle Beach neighborhood, and so far, according to the South Carolina Forestry Commission, no homes have been totally destroyed, though some, like the one I'm standing by, have been damaged. This is a result of the largest fire that is burning right now in South Carolina. It is among more than 175 fires that burned over the weekend, according to the governor. Fortunately, most of those have been contained, but we continue to see and hear about new wildfires popping up again because of the dry conditions.* *Here's more from the South Carolina Forestry Commission. Talk to me about the conditions that firefighters are up against.* *Well, that's—it's very erratic. You saw it—the flames were low, and all of a sudden, they jumped up, right? So wind changes can do that, uh, and this kind of a fuel type, as we call it, so it can be a little scary.* Hundreds of other wildfires also burned over the weekend in North Carolina and Georgia. In Polk County, by the way, that is a region that is hard hit just a few months ago by devastating flooding. Some of those downed trees and debris from that flooding serving as fuel to the fire that they're experiencing now—a one-two punch. *Al, Emily Aeta sure is live for us there in Myrtle Beach. Emily, thank you.* Also tonight, you've got half the country facing not just the threat of fire but the threat of other extreme weather—possibly blizzards, possibly tornadoes in the next few days. And the biggest risk here is the wind. Look at it here, spinning up all that dust in Texas late today. The sky is all orange; it's all hazy out there. We're just learning that the governor in Texas has put more resources now—emergency response resources—in place, with millions of people in the path of those damaging winds. *Let's get to Bill Karens now, and Bill, the risk of tornadoes is always a huge concern. I know that you and our climate team have been watching the potential for this one developing overnight tonight, right?* Yeah, we're going to think about maybe 1:00 a.m. or so. So this is one of those nocturnal events. So let's start first with the wind because this is a classic late winter, early spring major wind storm. Everywhere you see the colors here is where we either have wind advisories or high wind warnings. We're up to 81 million people now, so this is a big, huge wind machine. So when we have that this time of year, we had a cold winter; everything died. So we have a big threat of fires and grass fires in the plains with this too. *These are the peak wind gusts we're expecting. Somewhere here in the northern portions of Texas, we could gust up to 70 mph, so we may have trees coming down; we may have power line issues. You know, regardless of if you get tornadoes or severe weather, the other thing is the extreme risk of this fire threat. These are pretty rare. This is a huge spot from Junction to San Antonio to Austin. If we get grass fires that form tomorrow afternoon in these 60 to 70 mph winds, firefighters are going to be pretty helpless, especially if they're heading towards any homes or heading to any towns. So that's the concern in the southern half of Texas tomorrow late tonight. I remember after midnight is when this threat comes in. Oklahoma City is in this, Wichita Falls, just outside of Dallas towards Fort Worth—so big population centers here. You're in that enhanced risk, and this tornado threat—this is the region. If we get them, we do not expect widespread tornadoes, not an outbreak, but we could have a couple isolated tornadoes, and this threat goes right through tomorrow morning and then into tomorrow afternoon. So we're going to take it early in the morning out of Texas and Oklahoma and then spread it through Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi. Make sure you have your tornado plans; you know, make sure you know what you're doing, where your family is going to be. I'm sure some schools will be releasing early in this area, and tomorrow we'll have a chance of not just tornadoes but maybe a couple strong tornadoes, especially our friends in the southern half of Mississippi and northern Louisiana. So just, you know, there's a blizzard with this storm too. I mean, this thing has it all; it's going to be a lot to watch. I know in the overnight hours we'll touch base again. I know, uh, in the day to come there. Bill Karens, thank you very much. *Let's take you overseas tonight because even as Europe is rallying around the Ukrainian president after that big Oval Office blowup Friday, they're also insisting the U.S. has got to be involved. But in the last couple of hours, you're not exactly seeing those signals from President Trump that he's super open to changing his mind at the moment on Zelensky, unless any talks lead to a speedy peace deal. Listen to what he said: he said he thinks the war's going to go on for a long time, and he better not be right about that. Maybe somebody doesn't want to make a deal, and if somebody doesn't want to make a deal, I think that person won't be around very long.* Kier Simmons is live for us tonight in Moscow, and Kier, this is coming as there are some real questions tonight about what is going to happen to U.S. military aid to Ukraine—that flow of weapons essentially. You had the president dodging that question a couple of times in just the last couple of minutes. Our colleague Gabe Gutierrez at the White House really five minutes ago asked Stephen Miller, a top adviser, this, who also deflected the question. *Talk about the sort of feeling in Moscow here, the feeling from the Kremlin about the president's position.* Well, here's the irony, H: if the Trump administration does decide to withdraw support for Ukraine, it may well aid the Kremlin here in Moscow to keep fighting. When you think about it, if it looks as if Ukraine is weakened, then President Putin may judge that, in fact, he's going to get to some of his aims on the battlefield more quickly. Why have a ceasefire? And that goes to a fundamental question here. *Let me put it to you like this: President Trump told the American people that he could quickly get to a ceasefire in Ukraine. Ukrainians, they want one, but only with security guarantees that would prevent Russia from restarting a war at a later date, and they want other guarantees too. The Russians say they want a ceasefire, but only if the West and America address what it accuses the longstanding root causes, which of course includes the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders—all the things that we've heard President Putin talk about for so long. And then you have the Trump administration that wants a ceasefire in order to deliver that for the American people. Those are three very different positions. That's why we're heading towards a crisis.* *Pull on that thread, Kier, because you have the UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, who just said this in the last 24 hours. Let me play it: "The UK has prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air. Together with others, Europe must do the heavy lifting, but to support peace in our continent and to succeed, this effort must have strong U.S. backing."* And there you see it, right? Part of the European rally around Ukraine, but what that would require is U.S. participation. The potential for boots on the ground, uh, is certainly opening this Pandora's box of questions here. *Big picture, how should Americans be looking at this moment in Europe with Ukraine and with Russia?* Well, look, as I said, it's a crisis, right? You saw the British Prime Minister there trying to reassure the UK and Europe. As he was doing that, President Trump was furiously posting his anger about President Zelensky saying the war could go on for a long time. Those boots on the ground promises—ideas from the Europeans—one famous anchor here in Russia said, "Well, you could fit the whole British Army into one football stadium, and you'd still have space for some French troops," so absolutely pouring derision on the idea that the Europeans can provide security for the Ukrainians. *The British themselves say you need support from the U.S. The Trump administration doesn't want to provide that support, ostensibly—that's what the Trump administration has been saying. So whichever side you stand on, whether you support Zelensky, whether you think the Trump administration has some important points, Europe is in the middle. It is divided; it isn't agreeing necessarily. And for NATO, that is why it's a crisis, because if Europe is pulled apart from the U.S., that transatlantic alliance that's lasted since the Second World War, then that will be a serious security crisis for Europe. That's why this is so serious, and that's why this is so difficult.* Kier Simmons live for us tonight from Russia. *Kier, thank you very much for being there.* Also tonight, a new health setback for Pope Francis after what's been a little bit of a roller coaster ride of news coming out of the Vatican, which says the pope has had to get back on a breathing mask. He had too much mucus in his airways, apparently, according to officials there, which is something that can happen when you're fighting pneumonia, as the pope is doing. This whole thing, this whole moment, undercuts some of the progress that the pope made over the weekend. *I want to bring in Claudio Lavanga, who is joining us now from the Vatican. Talk us through the latest on this. Just Saturday, we had heard the pope was improving. Now today, yet another hurdle for...* **for him.** Yeah, absolutely, H. This certainly was, uh, not unexpected in the sense that doctors always said that his clinical condition is complex; his prognosis remains guarded, meaning that he's not out of danger yet. So some days can be good, some days can be bad. Today was a particularly bad day because he had not one but two respiratory crises. Now, the Vatican said later in the afternoon that all these crises were over, that the pope was alert and he was cooperating at all times, but at the same time, of course, this remains a very sensitive situation. **Claudia Lavanga live for us there in Rome. Claudia, thank you very much.** Health officials in Texas tonight say there's no sign the measles outbreak is slowing there, with an update on the number of cases to be released tomorrow. As cases there and in 10 other states continue to pile up, a new op-ed from the new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is raising some questions. Because while he says the outbreak is a call to action and describes the vaccine, which can protect communities, as crucial to avoiding the potentially deadly disease, he also says the decision to vaccinate is a personal one. **Erica Edwards is joining us now.** Erica, when he says that the decision to vaccinate is a personal one, there are some vaccine skeptics who hear that as essentially permission to not seek that vaccine at a moment when that outbreak is so consequential. Yeah, H, you know, it's important to really look at what Kennedy did not say in that editorial. He never specifically urged the public to go ahead and get that vaccine, which, by the way, former HHS Secretary Alex Azar did during Trump's first administration during a major measles outbreak in New York in 2019. Now, bringing it forward to 2025, it's not just Texas; we're seeing measles cases pop up nationwide. There are now 11 states with confirmed cases, the latest showing up in Pennsylvania. Officials there say the case was in an unvaccinated child linked to international travel. But, you know, as vaccine hesitancy grows over time, experts worry that we will see more outbreaks like the one Texas is experiencing right now. **There's also this, um, sort of push to have vitamin A from the health secretary as this kind of supportive care for the measles. Is that a thing? Does that help? Is there a downside?** Yeah, so let me break this down for you. Vitamin A is usually given to very sick kids with measles in low-income countries where malnutrition is usually a big factor. It's not a standard of care here in the U.S. or hasn't been historically. It should only be given under the care of a doctor. Vitamin A in large doses is extremely toxic; it's a fat-soluble vitamin, meaning you don't just get rid of it in your body by urination. It's stored in organs like your liver and could cause long-term damage. The last thing the doctors want to see is for people to go out and get vitamin A supplements to try to either prevent or treat measles. That's just simply not the good course of action that doctors say that people should be doing. **Erica Edwards, thank you very much for that. Appreciate it.** We've got a lot more to get to here in the show, including TikTok now under fire, allegedly for not doing enough to keep kids away from stuff that's bad for them. We've got the new lawsuit and the first look at some of this data from TikTok itself. Plus, the head of a major grocery chain stepping down over what he's done personally—the explanation behind it next. **A shocking courtroom reversal tonight in the trial of a man accused of a mass shooting on the 4th of July back in 2022 at a parade.** Robert Creo III stunning prosecutors by pleading guilty today to 69 counts of murder and attempted murder—a plea coming literally seconds before opening statements in his trial. Just minutes before this wasn't a plea deal; lawyers say there wasn't like a negotiation; it's just guilty. Remember, Creo opened fire on a huge group of people in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, killing seven people and hurting dozens more. **I want to bring in NBC's Shaquille Brewster, who's been following this for us.** How did this come to be, the guilty plea? Obviously a surprise, but a little bit in line with the way this trial's gone. Yeah, no, that's a great point, H, because there's been so many twists and turns, so much drama in this case even before the start of the jury trial, which was scheduled for today. And just to give you a sense of how close this got, you know, before court officially opened for the day, we saw prosecutors in the courtroom getting their display boards together. They were ready to begin those opening statements to lay out their case and lay out that overwhelming evidence that they say they have against Robert Creo III. Instead, his defense attorney spoke up and said that he was changing his plea, which means that all the preparation that went into the trial was no longer needed, essentially. I spoke to the attorney who represents dozens of families and victims and survivors of this shooting who were set to testify as early as this week. Listen to a little bit of what he told me and how surprised he was by what happened. *"The fact that they don't have to go through this now, I think, is a big sense of relief, and I think they now know that any uncertainty that there was has been taken away and that this monster will go away for a very long time."* One survivor of the shooting told me there was a collective sense of relief. Creo will be back in court on April 23rd; that's when he'll be sentenced. He's facing life in prison without the possibility of parole, which is the maximum sentence one can face in the state of Illinois. **Hlee Sha Brewster live for us there in Illinois tonight. Thank you.** Let's get you over to the five things our team thinks you should know about tonight: 1. At least two people have been killed, 11 others hurt after a driver rammed a car into a crowd in Germany. Officials say the suspect has been arrested and that there's no indication it was politically motivated. This is just the latest in a string of violent attacks in Germany recently, including, of course, that other deadly car ramming just last month. 2. A big forest fire in Northern Japan has forced more than a thousand people to evacuate. You see them doing some water drops from above. Flames ripping through homes and trees. 2,000 firefighters have been deployed across the area to try to get this under control. 3. The head of Kroger, that big grocery chain, stepping down today after an internal investigation into his personal conduct. The grocery chain says Rodney McMullen's conduct was unrelated to the company but inconsistent with its ethics. His resignation comes as Kroger has been handling its failed merger with Albertsons, one of its rivals. 4. Big news from the sports world: you hear about this? Jimmy Johnson is leaving Fox Sports; he's going to retire after 30 years. He's 81. He says it's the most fun he's ever had, but he's been thinking about retirement for just a little bit. Johnson's a legend; I can even say that as an Eagles fan, although he did coach the Cowboys and won Super Bowls there in '92 and '93. He had that college football national championship with Miami in the '80s. It'll be a fun new chapter in retirement for him. 5. Serena Williams is now a co-owner of Canada's first WNBA team, the Toronto Tempo. Williams says this moment is not just about basketball but about showing the true value, the true potential of women athletes. Williams, according to the team, will be involved with designing jerseys and creating collaborations for merchandise. You know she'll be sitting courtside too in those games. **Tip-off!** We are getting a look tonight at some pretty stunning court documents from a case against TikTok, which seemed to show the app failing to moderate content that could be bad for kids. This is all coming out after a judge said that the D.C. Attorney General's lawsuit against TikTok can move forward. And here's what it says, right? This lawsuit states that moderators took down less than half the stuff considered violent and graphic—just 35% of content that "normalized pedophilia" and nearly 40% of material showing what TikTok calls "minor physical abuse." You can see some other disturbing categories where TikTok allegedly fell short, including all content "fetishizing minors." We reached out to the app about all this. TikTok said the lawsuit ignores the action that they've taken on user safety and that it, in their words, cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes things out of context. **NBC's Savannah Sellers has been following this for us.** It's a high-profile lawsuit, Savannah, and now for the first time, we're getting a look at what is allegedly some of the data from TikTok itself that the Attorney General is revealing as the judge allows us to move forward. That's right, H. And some of this really also has to do with how kids are even coming into contact with this content in the first place and then the shortcomings of the app that are making that possible. One of the big things here has to do with age reporting. That's where, when you sign up for an app and you say how old you are, well, it's quite easy to say that you are older than you actually are. About 70% of teens between the ages of 13 and 15 have said that they have done so, which ultimately is leading to them not being put in the more restrictive version of the app. So some of that content that maybe isn't meant for them, that shouldn't be seen by 13-year-old eyes, is being seen because they're, in fact, saying that they're 18. So this lawsuit is saying something needs to be done to make it more difficult to say that you are older than you actually are. We also are understanding that TikTok is aware, according to these documents, of the addictive nature of this app, that these teenagers are spending hours a day on this app, and that also that time is peaking from 3:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. Now, we know from mental health experts that part of the issue here is not just the content that you see; it's not just the doom scrolling—those are bad—it's also the lack of sleep that comes with having these screens in a bedroom and being on it at a time like 3:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. All really disturbing when you take all that information and couple it with the fact that it's also saying that there is this disturbing content still available for these young people to view, and quite a bit of it, as you pointed out, H. **So that people understand, this lawsuit is separate, right?** It is separate from the TikTok ban that we've talked about a lot here on the show. That ban is something different. The only reason TikTok is still up and running at all is because of President Trump's executive order that pushed that ban off basically for another, I think, month at this point to give it more time to be sold or spun off to an American owner. So, four weeks to go, what does TikTok need to do? Are they going to get it done? What is the future of TikTok come April? Yeah, H, it's just about exactly a month, and trust me, myself and many of our colleagues, we are all over this trying to figure out exactly what's happening when it's happening. But yes, that countdown—April 4th, it's a Friday, a few weeks from now—that's when that 75 days is up. So we are watching for a handful of that have kind of made some noise about being interested in buying TikTok. That's what this law stipulated, right? That it was 75 days for it to find some type of American owner. Now, how that split could happen potentially, if it would be a split between that existing Chinese ownership and American ownership, if an American would fully take it over—all questions that we have, all questions that we do not have answers to at this point. But right now, on your screen, you're seeing some people, some companies that have made a lot of noise. What's interesting here, I'll point out a pair right there that you see on your screen: Frank McCourt and Kevin O. You might recognize the name Kevin O; he's from Shark Tank. They actually just added another high-profile name to their bid today. This was announced: Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit and Serena Williams' husband, has been added to that bid. Now, that's interesting to me because at this point, we hadn't really heard that much about their bid. In fact, it kind of seemed like they'd almost sort of sent a bid over into the abyss to ByteDance, hadn't heard back, hadn't been in conversation with them. And yet, if they're adding a pretty big-name investor on, you might think that maybe there's some movement there. Another person who was not on that full screen there, his name is Reed Raisner; he's a billionaire out of Wyoming. He's also sent in a bid; it actually has the most money behind it—about $50 billion, pretty in line with TikTok's valuation. And he says that he's actually been in conversation; it's been a two-way street between him and ByteDance. **H, the big question we have right now, though, is how will the White House factor into this?** President Trump has essentially handed this over to Vice President Pence, saying, "This is a project for you to deal with. I want you to handle this." He's coupled that up with Mike Waltz, National Security Adviser. So we'll have to see here exactly what that team does to try to figure out how they kind of intervene in a sale rather than just going straight to that Chinese-owned company. **H, Savannah Sellers, thank you very much for all of that. I know it's keeping you busy. Appreciate that.** Also keeping Savannah busy, of course, *Morning News Now* with Joe Fryer every single weekday at 7 a.m. Eastern. You can watch her there. However you're watching right here, coming up after the break: a woman who got more than she was looking for at baggage claim—how she's doing after a, I hate to tell you, scorpion surprise. Plus, a daring voyage on the high seas cut short—the dramatic rescue of somebody who tried to row across the Pacific alone. Cases of a disease that seem ripped straight out of a millennial iconic video game popping up right here in the U.S., specifically Oregon. We're going to have the warnings tonight from officials in just a second. But first, tonight's original with in-depth reporting on a topic we've been watching, and tonight it's the man who is safe as we speak after a dramatic rescue from stormy waters this morning by the Australian Navy. Why? Well, he got stuck in a cyclone while he was rowing a boat across the Pacific Ocean alone—something only a handful of people have even tried to do. Here's NBC's Steven Romo. **A daring rescue on the stormy seas off the coast of Australia this morning, cutting short an attempt at a cross-ocean rowing voyage.** Sailors of the Australian Navy braving dangerous swells to save the stranded adventurer, Lithuanian Admus Macus, taken aboard the warship for medical assessment. The man who made it nearly all the way across the Pacific Ocean on a rowboat all alone—his 7,500-mile journey spoiled by a tropical cyclone on Friday that left him stranded in the Coral Sea for three days. His small custom rowboat rocked by huge waves and 50 mph winds, forcing him to activate an emergency beacon. The rescue authorities said just days before he was set to reach his destination of Brisbane. In an Instagram post just before the storm hit, Macus wrote, *"The next day is crucial for me, about to get maximum power from a passing typhoon."* A follow-up video showing just how treacherous the conditions were. Macus set off from San Diego 4.5 months ago on a journey to row from California to Australia without stopping. His reason? To honor Ukrainians who've died in the Russian invasion of their country, according to Lithuanian media. Woohoo! Documenting his adventure along the way, encountering everything from late-night seabird visitors to dolphins and even sharks. The non-stop solo row across the Pacific is a feat only a few people have ever accomplished. British rower Peter B is considered to have been the first, making his voyage in 1983, even though he was towed the last 30 miles to the Australian mainland. In 2015, another Brit, John Be, made the first fully completed journey from San Francisco to the Australian city of Cairns. In 2023, Australian Michelle Lee became the first woman to do it. Macus is thwarted by Mother Nature just days away from joining that elite club. **Stephen Romo is joining us now.** Stephen, it is just wild to see that go down. Yeah, it's incredible to me as well, H. I didn't realize until doing the story how many people were actually trying, and this one, it could have been much worse. Listen to this: back in 2022, a young man just 24 years old hoped to be the youngest to complete this trip, but he was stuck for 265 days about 1,500 miles off the coast of Australia. He was eventually found, and a cruise ship was able to come and rescue him. His name's Tom Robinson, so his situation lasted a lot longer. It could have been a lot worse—a lesson to any people who are trying to make this trip. It's pretty common to have to be picked up by another boat that happens to be passing by. **H, yeah, no way.** Stephen Romo, wild to see. Thank you so much for that. Appreciate it. NBC News covers hundreds of stories every day, and because it can be tough to read or watch or listen to them all, our bureau teams have done it for you. This is what they tell us is going down in their regions in a segment we call the Local. **Out of our Western Bureau:** Health officials in Oregon are reporting a rise in dysentery—more than 40 cases in January alone. Dysentery can spread easily from person to person or through food or water that's contaminated. The health department says it's providing short-term housing to people who test positive to try to cut down on the spread. **Out of our Southern Bureau:** Police in New Orleans say there will be an unprecedented level of security in place for this year's Mardi Gras after the terror attack that killed 14 people on New Year's Day on Bourbon Street. You can see some of the preps in place, some of the celebrations already happening now—more barriers in place. Police are also going to have the ability to slow traffic down more in some spots. **And out of our Northeast Bureau:** Officials in Boston say a woman was stung by a scorpion while getting her luggage out of baggage claim. They don't know where it came from—the scorpion or what kind it was. She was taken to a local hospital, and obviously, folks are hopeful she will recover just fine. So listen, top of the show, we talked about those tariffs set to go in place on Canada and Mexico in just a matter of hours from now. And one of the things you could see a price hike on, of course, avocados. We get them from Mexico—many of them, about 90% of all the avocados in this country. So that could be challenging for folks who like avocados or perhaps guac. And that brings us to Chipotle, right? Everybody knows that Chipotle last year had to implement a bit of a price hike on their menu because of inflation. But now, a new commitment from the Chipotle CEO in our one-on-one conversation that even if tariffs do raise the price of some of its products, they will do everything they can not to pass that on to you. **Watch.** Chipotle's head these days feeling optimistic—the model at their 3,700 restaurants across the country: fresh food served with a smile at a fair price. And it's the price, whether at Chipotle or anywhere else, customers think about. *"We're all buying for share of wallet with the same consumer,"* CEO Scott Boatright near Chipotle headquarters in Newport Beach says. That's the kind of thing that keeps him up at night—economic pressures like inflation and the potential for new tariffs on Canada and Mexico. President Trump now signaling those tariffs could roll out as early as this week, which may mean higher prices on things like avocados and tomatoes. *"We don't think it's fair to the consumer to pass those costs off to the consumer because pricing becomes permanent,"* Boatright said. *"So if it starts to cost you more for your avocados down the road, if tariffs go in place, you're not going to pass that cost on to your customer."* *"I can't say we wouldn't ever,"* he added, *"but I'll tell you it is our intent as we sit here today to absorb those costs."* Boatright's also thinking about immigration and how new policies might affect the company and its workers. *"We believe in a sustainable solution for immigration reform long-term."* *"Have you seen an impact, or do you anticipate an impact from this current immigration crackdown on your business and on your labor pool?"* *"I haven't today,"* he said, *"but I think it would be naive to believe as leaders in any organization that there aren't cohorts of people that aren't impacted, whether that's directly or psychologically. And I think it's a really important moment for us to connect with all individuals in our organization as a mental check-in to say, 'Hey, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Is there anything we could do to help or support?'"* And while there's been a divide in corporate America over commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, Boatright says to him, it's not about the labels but the work itself. *"It was just a belief in how we do business, and that belief is still constant."* But no plans to bring in another DEI officer, for example? *"Not at present."* Behind the scenes, Chipotle says it's working on efficiency to make it easier for workers to serve customers. The company employs more than 130,000 people—23,000 of them promoted internally last year—and now we're going to hire 20,000 people here, leaning into burrito season. **Okay, burrito season is springtime for us.** It's when people get out and they enjoy. I did not know there was a burrito season! **There's a burrito season!** And this year, it'll include a new limited-time-only offering: Chipotle honey chicken rolling out at stores nationwide within the month. Cheers! And we got an exclusive first taste. I hope you're ready for this, Ally. I'm kind of nervous. *That's good! It's got a kick! It's got a kick!* Keep in mind, I have the world's lowest spice tolerance on that one. Chipotle has also been experimenting with the use of AI in its hiring process to try to make that more efficient. They have dubbed that AI hiring assistant, quote, "Ava Cado." **More coverage picks up right...** **Right now, we are coming on the air with some developing news here tonight.** FBI sources are saying the head of a field office, who has vowed to fight President Trump's pursuit of agents who worked on January 6 cases, has been forced out of his job. What’s behind this sudden change? Coming up, a scary night ahead for a lot of the country with tornadoes, blizzards, wildfires, and even dust storms in the forecast. We're going to have the latest from the Carolinas, where you can see the scene here—entire neighborhoods having to evacuate from that fire risk. We'll also take you to the Vatican with a new setback for the pope and what's been a roller coaster ride on his health. Then, parents in Texas bracing for a new update in just hours about that measles outbreak and the new comments from the health secretary that may be seen as giving an opening to people who don't want to vaccinate. Plus, coming up live this hour, SpaceX planning to launch its super powerful rocket after the whole thing didn't go so great last time around. We're going to be joined live by an astronaut who's actually been to space on what it means for the future of space travel later in the show. **Hey, I'm Hie, and we start tonight with those markets closing the day in a free fall on Wall Street.** Concerns that some things may get more expensive soon—that's after President Trump late today said there's no way for Mexico and Canada to avoid a new round of tariffs set to go into effect just hours from now. *No room left for Mexico or for Canada.* The tariffs, uh, you know, they're all set; they go into effect tomorrow. Markets didn't really love that. Look at this red across the board: the Dow down something like 700 points, the S&P posting its worst single-day drop of the second Trump term. Now, what the president is promising to do is, in his words, *tell it like it is* in a joint address to Congress tomorrow. We'll have coverage of that. I want to start, though, with Brian Chung, who's joining us now on all things tariffs. So, looking at my clock, we've got what? Four hours to go? Uh, that's bad math—six hours to go before these tariffs are supposed to go into effect, and the president just a couple of hours ago, late today at the White House, showed absolutely no sign of backing away. That's why you've seen the jitters here from the markets. Explain that. What's the end game to this as the president's been signaling? Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, two hours could be all the difference there, H, right? Because these are negotiating tactics, as we've seen the president do in the first term. We were threatened with these 25% tariffs on Canada and also Mexico, in addition to that 10% on China. Because, as you recall, about a month ago, these were very much on the table, and then there were kind of these final hour negotiations and agreements with both Canada and Mexico to stave these tariffs off, at least for another month. But here we do have the president saying that there's essentially no room for negotiations here, so it does sound like come midnight, this will take effect. And again, 25% tariffs on any sort of imports that come into the United States. As a reminder, if the company in the United States that imports those raw materials or imports those goods has to pay that cost, well then they might, in many cases, opt to pass on those costs to consumers like you and me, which would increase the price tags that we see at the store. That's the reason why we saw stock markets really fall today—not just because of the tariffs that we're talking about right now, but also the president teeing up the next round of tariffs, which he says would happen on April 2nd in the form of reciprocal tariffs that would basically put into effect on every other country around the world that can make inflation go higher from here, Hie. **So, what if anything is the immediate impact on Americans?** You know, this week or a short to medium-term impact a week or a month from now? Yeah, well, when it comes to the types of things that we import from our neighbors to the North and South, a lot of agricultural products—when you think about fruits and vegetables from Mexico, we import potatoes from Canada. But it's not just that. When you consider things like potash, this is not the sexiest item that we usually talk about when it comes to tariffs, but let's do it. It's a type of item that farmers will import mostly from Canada to help basically fertilize their crops to grow everything else. So even for domestic producers, if you have to pay more just to get that potash in the United States, well, that can make all the crops that we even grow here more expensive as well. But the other big one is automotives because we import so many parts from Mexico; we assemble so many things in Canada and then bring it back into the United States. That's why you have some estimates out there that it could add over $10,000 in some cases to the MSRP of a vehicle. So people that are trying to buy cars, this could be very painful for them as well. So we're watching all these different types of categories, which is a big deal. **All right, we'll see what happens as the clock strikes midnight tonight.** Brian Chung, thank you very much. Let's get to some other breaking news tonight because just into us out of New York, five sources are telling our team here at NBC News that the FBI's field office head in New York is retiring under alleged pressure just a month after saying he was preparing for a "battle" with the Trump administration over agents who worked on January 6 cases. I want to get to Von Hillyard now, who's joining us from here in Washington. Big picture, um, this is what the president and new FBI director Cash Patel have suggested that they would do, right? I mean, they had a vision for how the FBI should work. This is also, I think, what some critics of the Trump administration, in particular some Democrats, had feared—the potential targeting and retribution for people high up. Talk us through what we know about this now-retired FBI field head. Right, James Deneh, for more than two decades, rose through the ranks of the FBI, and in 2024, he took over as head of the New York field office. Upon the declaration that the FBI and the Department of Justice were going to be seeking the names of all the FBI agents that worked on cases related to January 6 defendants—of which there were more than 1,500—that they were seeking out these names. That is what prompted Deneh at the time to send an email saying that he intended to dig in and effectively attempt to stand in the way. At that point in time, he said in his email, *"Today we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy."* Fast forward a few weeks, Dan Bongino, the right-wing provocateur podcaster, was brought in to be the deputy director of the FBI, a close ally to Cash Patel. And today, in a note to staff, Deneh told them that he was given the option of whether to resign or whether to be fired. Our colleagues Ryan Riley and Ken Delaney have been on this over the last hour and obtained the memo that he had sent. Just in part, he said, *"I've been told many times in my life when you find yourself in a hole, sometimes it's best to quit digging. Screw that! I will never, never stop defending this joint."* Those were the words of the outgoing field director at the FBI's New York field office. As we said, Van, this plays into the concern that some Democrats had about what could happen in a Trump administration. As that's happening, we're also getting word from the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives ahead of that big speech—the address to the nation tomorrow night from President Trump—with Hakeem Jeffries encouraging Democrats to be there, saying it is important to have a strong, determined, and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber. You're also hearing that kind of encouragement from somebody we have not seen a lot of lately, and that is former Vice President Kamala Harris, who, of course, was defeated by President Trump in the election in November, essentially telling people to continue to make their voices heard. Talk about the Democratic pushback here to what the president's doing. Right, Hakeem Jeffries is just urging folks to make sure that they are in the chamber for the president's address tomorrow night. But there are others, like Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. I'll just read you his social media post not long ago: *"For folks asking if I'm going to attend Trump's joint address to Congress on Tuesday: No. Instead, I'm choosing to hear directly from Oregonians. I'll be hosting an open-to-all town hall."* This is really where Democrats find themselves in the minority in the House and the Senate, without the White House. You've seen these protests at particularly Republican town halls and districts around the country. And that's where we are. Even hearing from the likes of former Vice President Kamala Harris, who we've heard very little from. I want to let you listen to the message that she posted online: *"Please stay active, whether it's attending a town hall meeting or volunteering in your community or talking with your friends, your neighbors, your relatives about what's at stake."* And of course, now Alyssa Slotkin, the new senator out of Michigan, she's going to be delivering the response tomorrow night after President Trump's speech to Congress. This, for Democrats, is a time of great political peril and policy peril, and that is where you have seen over the course of the last month and a half some discord within the party about how best to respond to the efforts of President Trump's administration and Republicans on Capitol Hill. **Hie, Von Hillyard, thank you very much for that reporting.** As we look ahead, of course, to that big speech tomorrow, let's take it down south to the Carolinas now in the urgent scramble to get a handle on those fast-moving wildfires that have exploded. I want to show you this—look at that wall of flames, the smoke above neighborhoods there. Here you see it from national forests to flames touching close to people's homes, some people scrambling to try to get away. It's part of the reason why there's now a state of emergency in South Carolina, as people are evacuating, triggered by high winds and dry conditions. Something like 175 fires are torching thousands of acres in South Carolina alone. And if you're like, "Wait a second, wildfires in South Carolina? That's kind of unusual, right?" Yeah, it is. It's fairly rare. Our climate team tells us it's all because of how wildfire season is getting longer and more intense in certain spots like the Carolinas. Meteorologist Bill Karens is standing by for more on what to expect overnight tonight, but I want to get to Emily Aeta, who is on the ground near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. What's going on with this firefight, Emily? **Well, their main focus right now, Hie, is the dry conditions that they are up against.** You can see some of the measures that they are taking to counter that. These sprinklers have been going on for hours, and you'll still see some plumes of smoke in these woods throughout the area here. Also, military aircraft overhead—we've been seeing them go back and forth, dumping some 60,000 gallons of water in a span of just 18 hours, trying to douse the flames but then also trying to prevent some ground from reigniting. This is a result of the largest wildfire burning in South Carolina at some 1,600 acres so far. It is also the largest wildfire South Carolina has seen in at least five years, according to the Forestry Commission. You can see just how dangerously close it has come to homes—the siding of this home melted off, though remarkably, officials say not a single building, home, or business has been completely destroyed in this fire. I spoke with a woman—we were there as she returned to her home after evacuating over the weekend, returning to her home for the first time to see just how close the flames came. Take a listen here: *"I seen two fire trucks on this left side of my house, and I says, 'Uh-oh.' I says, and then I seen smoke over there, and before I know it, knock knock knock—'You got to go now; there's a fire behind your house.' And it was black; everything was black."* The good news today in terms of the firefight: some of the winds have died down, but again, those dry conditions continue to pose a problem. There is a burn ban in place for the entire state of South Carolina. This is an area that is about four inches short of its typical rainfall. **Hie, Emily Aeta, thank you very much for that.** I want to go to Bill Karens now because, Bill, you've got some places that are dealing, like the Carolinas, with these dry conditions with the fires. You've also got about half the country facing the threat of tornadoes, blizzards, a ton of wind. We've already seen some of that. I want to show some of the video here—dust storm warnings in Texas. And look at this—the sky is so orange; it's so hazy. We saw something similar in Arizona within the past 48 hours. The real concern is what could happen in this sort of pre-dawn hours tonight into tomorrow, right? This is the beginning of this powerful storm, Hie. I heard a report of a pile-up; Roswell, New Mexico was under a dust storm warning from that similar scene to what you're just showing there. The visibility is so bad that, you know, on the interstate, there are cars piled up. That's what you get when we deal with these things. And you can see some of these pictures here—yeah, uh, geez, yikes. Yeah, that's scary. That's so scary. Yep, one car hits the brakes, and then you can't see it. You can see how bad the visibility is. Yep, that’s in Phoenix, it looks like. **Yeah, so Arizona and New Mexico is where that is taking place.** Now, heading into Texas behind this line, that's where the really strong winds are. And once it gets out into the plains, where there's some moisture available, then we're going to get thunderstorms. There's enough spin in the air that we're going to get some tornadoes. So this is going to be during the overnight hours. We're still roughly about five, six hours away from these storms even forming. So everyone will be asleep. It'll be the middle of the night, and if we get any tornadoes, it's in this red area here—from San Angelo, Oklahoma City, Durant, Dallas, Fort Worth. Everyone just keep your phone near you, have the alerts on, and make sure you get warnings in case those tornadoes happen to be near you. And then tomorrow morning, these continue. They're not going to stop; they're going to plow through the South all day tomorrow. The areas of greatest concern for tornadoes will be from Monroe, sort of Alexandria, Jackson, Mississippi, Baton Rouge, just north of New Orleans, likely by Mobile, and a little sliver here of Alabama. And then finally, on Wednesday, this line of storms—not so much tornadoes, but there'll be some strong winds with these thunderstorms. Yes, we need the rain; we just saw all the fires in the Carolinas. We will plow that through as we go throughout the day Wednesday. And on top of all of this, we have blizzard warnings in effect in Nebraska, portions of Colorado, and Omaha, Nebraska. **Hie, how do you like this forecast?** So Omaha is going to be almost like 60 to 70 degrees, then they're going to have a flash freeze, and they're going to have 70 mph winds and about six inches of snow. It's like they could have power outages like a snowstorm. It's going to be a mess. **I mean, talk about whiplash, Bill.** That's the thing that's so critical that I know you and our colleagues in the climate team are watching. Bill Karens, a busy night for you. We'll talk again, I'm sure, tomorrow. Thanks, friend. **Let's take you overseas now because even as Europe is rallying around the Ukrainian president after that big Oval Office blowup a few days back, they're also insisting the U.S. has got to be involved.** But here's the thing: late today at the White House, we heard from President Trump, who is not really signaling that he's down with some big change of heart on Vladimir Zelensky unless any talks lead to a speedy peace deal. He said he thinks the war's going to go on for a long time, and he better not be right about that. *Maybe somebody doesn't want to make a deal, and if somebody doesn't want to make a deal, I think that person won't be around very long.* I want to bring in NBC News correspondent Kier Simmons, who is live for us in Moscow. Kier, what does the Kremlin think when they hear comments like that from the president? Well, President Putin's newly appointed envoy to the talks with the U.S. posted an image of the confrontation between President Trump and President Zelensky on Friday with the simple word *historic.* A famous opinion anchor here in Russia described President Trump as like a chess grandmaster. So, I mean, I think those words speak for themselves in terms of how the Russians feel about what they've been seeing since Friday. I think also the Kremlin perceives that a split is happening between Europe and the U.S.—the kind of split that President Putin has frankly wanted to see and has said that he thinks he can engineer. So the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said today, *"We see the collective West has begun to partially lose its unity,"* calling it fragmentation. Now, of course, some of that is kind of celebration by the Russians; it's also trolling, if you like. It's also the Russians trying to push the process along a little bit—not necessarily, though, that the Russians need to give it any help because what you have is this almost seemingly irreconcilable division between President Zelensky and President Trump, with the Europeans desperately trying to paper over the cracks, but it does seem as if that's just getting harder and harder. **Kier, when you talk about this moment of crisis for Europe, potentially for Ukraine, as you look at the relationship now and the way that, as you described, the Kremlin has essentially positioned itself as it relates to the United States and President Trump here, how should Americans be understanding this relationship?** How should people here in the United States be thinking about what's happening over where you are and in Ukraine? Well, listen, it's a crisis in Europe; it's a crisis for NATO. It is presenting the possibility that President Putin here really thinks that he's winning. And the reason why it's a crisis is because whatever side you fall on—whether you support President Zelensky and think he has a point, or whether or not you think that the Trump administration has a point—what's happening is that between those two, the Europeans are being pulled, and they're frankly being pulled apart. The British talk about a coalition of the willing in Europe, which of course suggests that there are those in Europe, even in Europe, who are not willing to support Ukraine in the way that, for example, the British think you should. So there's that issue in Europe. And then in terms of NATO, of course, it's a transatlantic alliance, and if there is a gap opening up between the Trump administration and European capitals, then that alliance is in jeopardy. **Kier Simmons live for us tonight from Moscow. Kier, it's good to see you. Thank you so much for being with us.** Back at home tonight, a stunning courtroom reversal in the trial of a man accused of a mass shooting at a 4th of July parade back in 2022. Robert Creo III shocking prosecutors by pleading guilty today to 69 counts of murder and attempted murder—a move that came quite literally just minutes before opening statements were supposed to begin in his trial. And here's the thing: this wasn't a plea deal; lawyers say this was not some sort of negotiated thing—just guilty. Remember, Creo opened fire on a group of people in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, killing seven and hurting dozens of others. I want to bring in NBC's Shaquille Brewster, who's been following this for us. How did this come together? What happened to make Creo change his mind apparently at almost literally the last second? Well, Hie, we really don't know the specific answer to that question. The prosecutors were asked that earlier today; they did not want to touch it. We didn't hear from the defense. I did pose that exact question, though, to the attorney of several families of victims and survivors of that shooting. I asked him that exact question. Listen to what he told me in response: *"We don't know. Nobody understands. This man is unpredictable, and I think he manipulates the system to gain as much attention and put as much pain as possible on these victims, the same way he did on July 4th."* **4th, 2022.** Now, when you hear him mention the defendant being unpredictable, just remember what family members and victims had to deal with since that shooting took place. This is a defendant that last year backed out of a plea deal; before that, he dismissed his attorneys and said he was going to represent himself. At one point, he called for a speedy trial, which moved up the trial date an entire year before reversing many of those decisions. Survivors have told me they frankly have been on an emotional roller coaster as they've been following this case and what was going on inside that courtroom. One put it to me after the hearing today; she said she was shocked by what happened with this plea and change in plea, but she also said there was a collective sense of relief because now they know there will be a sentencing on April 23rd. He's facing the maximum sentence anyone could face in the state of Illinois, which is life in prison without the possibility of parole. **Hie, Sha Brewster live for us tonight in Illinois. Shaq, thank you.** To Texas now, our health officials say there's no sign the measles outbreak there is slowing down, with an update on the number of cases set to be released tomorrow. As we look ahead to that, some 10 other states are also seeing measles cases as well. There's also this new op-ed from the new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., raising some questions. Because although he says the outbreak is a call to action and describes the vaccine, which can protect communities, as crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease, he also says the decision to vaccinate is a personal one. **Erica Edwards is joining us now.** Erica, explain sort of why it's important when you look at this editorial by RFK Jr. to look at what he says but also what he does not say. That's exactly the point, Hie. It's what he does not say that's really critical here. He never specifically urged the public to go out and get that MMR vaccine, and that is a stark contrast to what former HHS Secretary Alex Azar did in 2019 under the first Trump administration when there were two measles outbreaks in New York that threatened to reverse the U.S. status as having eliminated measles. Azar at the time said publicly that measles vaccines are among the most extensively studied medical products we have, and their safety has been firmly established over many **Right now, the window in total lasts from 6:30 Eastern to 7:30 Eastern.** They've got time here to work this issue, and the issue is: what do we know? It sounded like this booster issue was cleared, or is that still giving them some trouble? I think they're trying to make sure that they have crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's on that issue, and very closely analyzing all of the propellants. As we said, you've got 11 million pounds of fuel that's been loaded up there, and they just want to make absolutely sure that they have double-checked everything. Of course, propellant issues in space, or rather as they were climbing to space, led to the breakup in January, so they need to be very careful. Now, I'm going to listen in because I need to hear what they're saying as landing. You were talking about the rapid part of rapid reusability. This booster may fly on a future Starship flight if we're able to catch it and bring it back online. So for those of you that have just recently joined us, we have paused at T-minus 40 seconds just to assess and work through a problem that popped up in the countdown. We are holding here as the teams troubleshoot it. We believe that we have put in a solution and we will be able to proceed, but we have some chatter on some nets indicating that we're just holding here for a few more seconds. Now, this is a great opportunity for the teams. This is unique on Starship; we don't have this ability on Falcon to hold here, partially because there's just so much propellant that it takes longer as a whole for it to cool down with that amount of volume that we have compared to the Falcon vehicle. But this T-minus 42 hold is pretty cool because basically everything that would have been a scrub is actually just an opportunity to hold here and work through it. I should say many things—not everything. Like I said, we're working through an issue now, but we can also pause here for final checkouts or completion of pressurization to get up to flight levels, that kind of thing. So, it's a nice feature to allow the team to wait for final checkouts or assess final prop levels or engine health and that kind of stuff. **Tom Castell trying to jump back—one important point here.** I'm sorry, Hie, didn't mean to walk on you. One important point here is Falcon, when that lifts off, they're headed to the space station, right? So they have a very fixed rendezvous point in space, and the station is moving at 177,000 mph. So this is not going to the space station; they've got a little bit more time and wiggle room here. As I said, they can go till 7:30 Eastern Time on their window. This is all about a test flight; nobody's on board. We should have stressed that all along—nobody's on board—and they want to see if this mega rocket is going to have problems. Every rocket is going to have issues, and you work through them, solve them, so that you can then eventually, hopefully, go on to the real mission that is going to the Moon. Tom, I'll let you listen back in for any updates here, but Dr. Rice, let me bring you back in because one of the pieces that you were looking for had to do with the release of these four Starlink satellites that SpaceX is going to try to release if and when this launch goes off. Can you explain the significance of that? It would certainly be a first if it were to happen. Yeah, of course. We know that there are lots of Starlink satellites out there already. These are the first of a new generation, so these are kind of prototypes. They’re not functioning Starlink satellites, but they’re simulators of the size of the new generation. This will be the first time that Starship has actually deployed payload in space, and this is going to be very crucial because this Starship is eventually going to be in orbit around the Moon to get astronauts between the Orion crew capsule and the surface of the Moon for the Artemis 3 and 4 missions. So having this functionality is going to be very important. **Terry, to you:** What SpaceX is trying to do, as we know, is not easy. Same for any of these other big private corporations that are trying to revolutionize space travel here. How important is this launch in that bigger, broader picture? Well, it's a really important launch. As we just heard, NASA wants to go back to the Moon. We're not going to do that without this rocket to launch the lunar lander. So it's very important for NASA's plans. Even bigger in Elon’s universe, the Starlink satellite system really needs this rocket to work because a Falcon 9 can deploy dozens of Starlink satellites, but the Starship can deploy hundreds of them. So I think from an economic point of view, this is really kind of the foundation of the original business plan for Starlink. So there are a lot of people depending on this, and it really makes me proud as an American to see that this American company has made such an amazing rocket. It's a very cool moment of pride for Americans to see this. **And we have now been in this hold, Terry and Dr. Rice and Tom, for about five minutes.** They can only really hold a couple more minutes before they have to scrub. They can come back and try to launch as soon as tomorrow. Tom, I think that's you jumping in here. I know you said that the window is open till 7:30, but this is not an indefinite sort of waiting period up until 7:29, right? No, and part of the reason for that is they have to very closely monitor the propellant temperatures. **Yeah, hang on—time to go for launch. Go for launch!** Launch, let's listen in. So 30 seconds to go, and we just heard a hold, so we kicked back to the T-minus 40 hold. In that hold, you've been listening to those SpaceX staffers, Dan Watt, SpaceX Communications, Kate Ty, their quality engineering manager over at SpaceX. I haven't heard "psych" on a launch in a long time, Terry and Tom and Dr. Rice here. But Tom, clearly, we understand now that this issue is not with the booster; it is specifically on the ship, and that's what they're trying to figure out here. Can they get that cleared? Can they get this thing up and off in the next couple of minutes? **Yes, and this is a very complicated piece of equipment that you're looking at.** We trip a few more holds automatically from the booster itself, so we are now going to hang out here again at T-minus 40. They've got a couple more troubleshooting steps that they can take. If we're able to get through that, we can start counting down again. If not, we could always offload and try again tomorrow or another day. Right now, we're not done for the day yet, still holding at T-minus 40 seconds. And as soon as we hear some more, start seeing that clock move, there’s also the very real tangible issue here: this costs money, right? So you want to make sure you want to be 100% sure before you launch this thing that you have no variable that you can control that might lead to the rocket's destruction as it was on its way into space. If they've got any issue, no matter how small, they're going to work it because they need to make absolutely sure. Let's reiterate again: nobody's on board; this is an uncrewed mission. It was just back in early January when they had that other launch that, of course, ended with the Starship breaking up over the Atlantic Ocean, raining debris down on the Caribbean. They really don't want that to happen again. They really are looking for not just sticking the landing with the booster in the chopsticks that we've talked about so much, right? Coming back down and landing on the pad. **Down from T-minus 40 again, and it's not something we can change with small config tweaks.** So we are going to offload our prop and then try again another day. **Okay, scrub.** You heard it there. There we have it—launch scrubbed. I'm sorry; I didn't mean to walk on you. I'm listening to them, and you and I got another one in my ear. You know, it literally underscores the issue there: there is no need to rush; no lives are at stake. They don't want to do anything that they don't—there's no reason to take a risk. They've learned, they think, a lot of what caused the problems in early January. They've redesigned propulsion systems, redesigned avionic systems, and they've added some flight control systems to the booster. They will continue to work this issue and probably try again tomorrow or the next day. Dr. Rice and Terry, I'll go back to each one of you because, again, this happens, right? And Dr. Rice, you know this. I've seen you nodding through this process here. They've got to make sure, as Tom says, that things go off safely here. You could hear from some of the cheers when the clock did start to count down a bit prematurely. These things have become, in many ways, a spectacle. You have people who have gathered to be able to witness the launch of something this massive. **Yeah, that's very exciting.** That's one of the thrills of SpaceX—it's kind of the brand recognition, for lack of a better term. You know, NASA's had it for decades, and we kind of didn't know all the companies behind it. But now SpaceX is right up there with NASA, and so this is very exciting. Again, this is a crucial component of them working together to get to the Moon. And then, of course, you can't listen, as I said here in Washington, Terry, I can't help but think about the person who runs SpaceX, its founder, and that is Elon Musk. We see plenty of him here in D.C. We'll see more of him tomorrow, of course, when the president delivers that joint address, presumably. There is an intersection here, right, to so much of what Musk has been trying to do on a lot of different levels, on a lot of different platforms, as the world's richest man. You see him there in D.C. wearing a t-shirt in the Oval Office with a chainsaw. **No, you know what? Everybody loves space, and I love space.** And when you see what NASA's doing, you want to be proud of NASA; you want to be proud of what we're doing as Americans. And it's really unfortunate and tragic to see that this admired person, the CEO of SpaceX, who created this amazing rocket and company, diving off the political board the way he has and the conflict of interest that this has set up. You know, the person who's the CEO of the company getting billions of dollars is also in charge of the government that's giving him billions of dollars. So it's kind of the definition of corruption and conflict of interest, and that's not what NASA deserves. That's not what the engineers and scientists who work there deserve. **And, you know, we need to do better.** And I don't think Elon should be the CEO of this amazing company with amazing engineers, and I know them. And so I really hope that this ends quickly because, you know, space is a place for corruption and conflict of interest. It's only a place for science and excitement and exploration. **There are those, I think you might argue, that Musk has helped boost SpaceX's brand.** It seems to be your argument, Terry, that you feel that there's some concern that it may, in fact, be doing the opposite—that his foray into politics may have tainted what SpaceX is doing. Do I have that right? **The last few weeks have, you know, taken a lifetime to build a reputation and just one instant to lose it.** So yeah, I mean, he's getting all of the data for the government, and he has an AI company that that data might help his AI company. He's getting insights into other competitors. You know, there's this FAA contract that now might be going from Verizon to SpaceX. So there's this principle in business that you need to be independent in fact and also independent in appearance, and there clearly he's not independent in appearance—maybe not in fact either. **Dr. Rice, not to put—oh, go ahead, Tom, jump in.** No, I can just jump in on that only because, as you know, I've spent a lot of time covering NASA. Last week, I was with the Department of Transportation secretary. Here's the problem: Elon Musk is running Doge, which is going into every government agency and cutting various levels, cutting so many jobs among those agencies, including the Department of Transportation and the FAA. The FAA oversees and approves SpaceX launches. Oh, by the way, NASA also. And the man who is supposed to take over NASA, Jared Isaacman, is a very close associate of Elon Musk. As you know, Jared has gone into space twice on a SpaceX rocket and is supposed to eventually command Starship. So there is a whole thread of potential conflicts of interest here with the regulator actually being also the guy who needs to be regulated, or at least that's the concern. So, you know, a lot of people are expressing this concern in every agency I talk to. **Dr. Rice, I see you wanting to jump in here.** Yeah, it's a hard time to be a scientist, I imagine. Also a hard time to be an engineer. Terry, maybe a hard time to be a former astronaut as well. In this country, you know, we, like Terry said, space is for everyone. Everyone should be able to do space, and right now it seems like, you know, some people are playing by the rules and some people are shattering the rules, making them up as they go along. And it's really heartbreaking in a lot of ways, and I hope we can get through this and go back to space being for everyone. Really, it makes our country better. It should be something to be proud of how much we've been able to accomplish as a country in space. **We, you know, no one's been back to the Moon with people since 1972, and NASA's on track to do it in the next couple of years with the Artemis 2 mission.** If we can hold it together for the next couple of years. Can I underscore that? That does not mean these concerns about Elon Musk and regulator and regulated—that does not mean anybody is less enthusiastic about going to space, about what SpaceX has accomplished, right? About the potential for Starship to eventually take humans to the Moon and Mars. You can be all in on that and be a total space geek and still have concerns about what's happening in terms of a potential conflict of interest. **Well, I'm grateful to all of you.** I fair to say Space Geeks in your own way for joining us for this despite the scrub of the launch. Dr. Emily Rice, Terry B, and Tom Costello, really appreciate you all being with us tonight as we watch this unfold together. **That does it for us for this hour.** We've got more coverage picking up right now. Thanks for watching. Stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media.

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