deadline day for the department of justice to hand over its arguments about whether an independent third party should look over those classified documents that donald trump had at mar-a-lago with new questions now about whether the former president's request to have that so-called special master came too late, given the doj says its team has already done its own review to find any attorney-client privileged information. coming up, what this means for the criminal investigation and the new scoop from nbc news on who mr. trump just hired to try to beef up his legal team.

president biden looking to flip the script on republicans with a law and order midterm swing. we're live in pennsylvania with more on that. the news on another speech later this week, and why the president's advisers think now is the time to make a broader pitch to voters, besides the obvious pre midterm timing. two u.s. officials telling nbc news russia has combat drones from iran. what we're learning about how they plan to use them on the battlefield in ukraine and the push to prevent a nuclear disaster in that country. i'm hallie jackson in washington. we start with the latest fallout after that mar-a-lago search. i want to bring in nbc's julia ainsley, ben collins, charles coleman, former prosecutor, sich rights attorney and msnbc legal analyst and clint watts, msnbc national security analyst. julia, let me start with you first. the dod ruling is expected to come down at some point today.

we don't know the timing. that's what i'm trying to say here. we do know it's expected to be pretty beefy. >> that's right. it's a filing from the justice department today, hallie. they asked for more pages. the judges said they have a 20-page limit to respond to the trump team's request for a special master. they said they need 40 pages, that 20 pages wasn't enough to address all the legal and factual problems with the trump's legal team request for a special master. they're also going to say, hallie, likely that they've already completed the review that the special master would be asked to do in the first place. the fbi team has been through all the documents. they found some that were protected under attorney-client privilege, but the rest they believe they have a right to. some need to go to the national archives, some need to be put in a place where they can be properly classified. today we're going to see the

justice department response, but they are going before a trump appointed judge who has already said she has an inclination to request the trump legal team's request for a special master and allow that third party to come in which would delay the process even further. it's already been over three weeks since that search. this would allow someone else to go in and redo some of the work that's already been done. >> charles, talk about the slowdown factor. if this special master were to be appointed and where, having completed this review from the doj's filter team, by having finished that and identifying attorney-client privileged information, does that undercut the argument that donald trump is making that he needs a third party review. is it too late to make that request? is the toothpaste out of the tube sneer. >> hallie, to answer your question in reverse, i think the toothpaste is out of the tube and this significantly

complicates things. the fact that the doj has come forward and said, look, the fbi has gone through these things. we found things that were attorney-client privileged, we found things that need to go back to the national ar kifs and we found things that need to be returned specifically to the government to their rightful place, essentially leaving the trump team with little options other than just appointing a special master simply because i thought it was unusual the judge in this case already indicated without hearing from both parties that she did lean toward appointing a special master. usually you would have to hear from both parties up to their argument as to why a special master is or is not needed. the fact that the fbi has gone through this has made this virtually a moot point. to your first question, i do believe the trump legal team is looking to use this as an overall delay while they figure out what their next steps are outside if donald trump is going to run for president or whatever his next moves may be.

regardless of who the special master is, the judge appointed, you should expect president trump and his legal team to fight it or to question or to go with great scrutiny around who this person is and what their qualifications are. if not, you should expect the opposite from the doj to do the same. all of these things are calculated, trial delays that the trump team wants to take as they try to figure out their strategy and try to plan for the other investigations that donald trump is fighting on the legal front. >> when it comes to the legal team that donald trump is putting together around him, julia, our mark caputo is reporting this morning according to two sources he's hired a former florida solicitor general to join his legal team. we know based on reporting he has had trouble trying to build legal representation for him. how do you see this step moving forward? >> that's right. that's chris kite who has had some success. mark describes him as a

political knife fighter and says he has close ties to governor ron desantis and senator rick scott. now the question is will this person be -- will he be someone who will fight for trump at every level and every step of this fight? likely so. it's a win really for the trump team because, hallie, as you've pointed out and mark points out in this piece, it's been so hard for this trump team to recruit someone. there have been a lot of people who turned down this job because oftentimes their firms just say, look, this is too much of a divisive figure for us to represent. trump also has a representation of not being a great client to work for, known to be penny pinching and not paying his attorneys maybe as much as he should. in this case this was a win for them to get someone like chris kies. i think we can expect it to be an elevated legal fight from this point forward. again, hallie, it comes back to timing. it's been three weeks since the

search. to hire someone now, they could try to find new routes to slow down this process. and we also have to point out that it's taken until now for trump to get someone at this level. >> as we talk about where mr. trump's head is at, the former president seems to be in territory than he's ever been before, posting of exclusive k an none material. >> this is the first he's ever posted a q drop, a post by q itself, aggregated onto another website. it looks like an endorsement. i want to make this clear. i doubt he even knows what this is, jibber risch about three-letter agencies and the fbi and all the common enemies. i would bet he saw the letters fbi and who really has control

and he's like, ooh, this sounds good to me. why do i think that? he shared three dozen things today on truth social. they call them retruths. the guy is on that platform. he's going through an old-fashioned donald trump tweet storm on a smaller platform with the same amount of friction. there's not a ton to share because there's not a ton of people on there. he posted an explicit q post, the 11th q post ever. back from october of 2017. if he went back ten posts before that it was about him instituting martial law to take in hillary clinton and for everyone to be prepared to get ready for a long fight and battle and all this stuff. q is mythology, q is fan fiction. of course donald trump likes it because it makes him the hero. >> isn't q mostly evaporated into other entities at this point then?

>> there are some true believers who believe he secretly runs the government. most q people have divided off, a lot of militias try to recruit them, people like the proud boys tried to recruit them and they did successfully. some dissipate into general trump support and anger over what they believe to be the deep state. that's the larger problem. qanon people don't have a specific place to gloat about this like they did two or three years ago. >> ben and julia, thank you very much. i'll let you get back to the reporting. i want jackie and charles and clint to stay with us. jackie, as we talk about this moment of anger is being talked about, that is being felt by some on the right. you have to do reporting on how this is affecting specifically the national archives and specifically some of the vitriol the folks there are facing? >> hallie, this is part of a long-standing pattern that i know you're well acquainted,

having covered trump for over five, six years now. but when the former president is not happy with the way an entity and agency, politician or lawmaker, regardless of the subject, the way he is being -- he is perceived to being attacked or portrayed, he unleashes his army of supporters and following on social media platforms and vitriol at those entities. the latest victim being the national archives. in recent weeks the archives has become the subject of many of his truth social posts along with the fbi. he has attempted to use those platforms to discredit the work of the archives which is really the most apolitical and independent agency in the federal government. these are career civil servants, many of them have served in the national archives as archivists for decades. and even in the top leadership

of the archives right now, there are no current political appointees. all the people who have been handling trying to get back these documents from the former president under the presidential records act are all again civil servants who are dedicated to preserving the written word as in their view, in conversations they've had with archivists, current and former, in order that this is a central tenet of democracy, to have these documents accessible to the public and have a very clear track record and comprehensive account of american history. nevertheless, the former president's attacks have prompted an uptick in threats and vitriol that have been directed at the archives. we know they have received a spike in these attacks, and that a local police station even had

to ramp up the patrol around the former president barack obama's facility where presidential records are being stored somewhere outside of chicago, hoffman estates, because of the amount of misinformation that's going on and the spike in threats that have been directed at this facility that is storing these documents that the former president trump has been spreading misinformation about. >> clint, when it comes to the fbi piece of this, we know some republicans have blasted the fbi for what was, of course, this lawfully executed search at mar-a-lago. other republicans have said, hey, you can't malign the integrity here of the federal law enforcement agencies. president biden is set to deliver a law and order speech later on today that will likely focus on some of that discussion related to federal law enforcement. what are you hearing from folks who might still work there, from people you talk to n that broader law enforcement community on this front? >> hallie, it's a multi-year

period of confusion i think for most law enforcement. it's no secret that law enforcement across the board is generally more conservative leaning in terms of political leaning. they're not absolute. but it is quite confusing to hear what used to be the law and order party, essentially the gop, taking aim at the fbi. at the same point, what is most critical is the long-term damage and fractures between state and local law enforcement and federal law enforcement. that is where i think there's a significant degree of problem over the horizon because we need that sort of unity. everything we do from joint terrorism task force to forensic investigations where state and local organizations don't have the resources. look at the secret service, we have a very high-profile resignation again today. a lot of people exiting the high

ranks of both of these organizations. i think that's bad for the continuity of these institutions and doesn't help them do their jobs which is to protect and defend every u.s. citizen around the world, around the country. they need sources, they need tips and leads. they need to work with state and local partners. none of this is helping when you have them targeting institutions like the fbi. >> clint mentioned the high profile resignation. clint, you're referring to tony ornato, the head of the detail for former president trump. we have found out now, and the post has it as well, that he has retired. he told nbc news this was long planned. he was at that time center of that explosive testimony that was since dispute friday cassidy hutchinson about what happened, whether donald trump lunged at his drive tore try to get him to take him to the capitol on january 6th. what else do you know? >> the timing of his retirement is certainly suspicious or at

least conspicuous. he is scheduled to not only interview with the department of homeland security inspector general investigators, but also with the january 6th committee, and this retirement which makes him now a private citizen does at least sort of give him some new protections, private counsel, that he previously wasn't en titled to and makes the job of these entities that are investigating him or won ducting their investigation into some of the practices that have raised a lot of eyebrows that much more difficult. we know tony ornato was someone who was a first-hand witness to some of the chaos that took place on january 6th. cassidy hutchinson testified in that blockbuster testimony earlier this summer that ornato was one of the people who recounted the fight, the alleged fight that former president trump got into with the driver

of the beast, the vehicle that was driving him after his speech at the ellipse. trump wanted to go, according to our reporting, to the capitol to encourage and further rile up his supporters. secret service at that moment notified him it was too dangerous and would not be possible. the former president protested. the details of the altercation are still a little murky. the secret service did try to discredit cassidy hutchinson's account. but that is why january 6th investigators have wanted him to come back in to provide his firsthand sworn testimony as to what happened in his view as cassidy and ornato did have a very tie relationship, and there is so skepticism that the secret service is being honest and truthful in terms of coming forward with what actually happened on january 6th, the

days leading up to it and in the days after. >> we'll keep an eye out for the doj drop of those documents. in the meantime, we have breaking news about an assistant special agent in charge of the washington field office now resigning, retiring, if you will, an agent at the center of accusations related to the hunter biden investigation. a water emergency in jackson, mississippi, after flooding and rain. how long people there could go without drinking water. president biden heading to pennsylvania to try to flip the script on public safety. why are some democrats still hesitant to campaign with him? we'll talk about it coming up.

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take the xfinity mobile savings challenge and see how much you can save. switch to xfinity mobile today. some developing news about an fbi agent who faced questions about his alleged role in the investigation into hunter

biden's business dealings. with a senior law enforcement official confirming to nbc news that agent has resigned. nbc's tom winter is all over this one for us. tom, there's been a lot of talk about this agent, but some important context here that i know you want to lay out for us. so explain this. >> right. this person's name and information about him first came up in late may, may 31st when this letter was sent to the fbi and to the attorney general. it was sent from senator chuck grassley. it raised some questions about this agent, thomas -- timothy tebow who is an assistant special agent in charge of the washington field office. now that maybe sounds like a bit of a higher position in that office than it is. no disrespect to people that have obtained that title and that position. it is not somebody who necessarily runs that office day to day. may not even run certain parts of major decisions of that

criminal or counterintelligence, for example. when we look at this person, they came to, as i said, focus because of this letter which alleged that he made a number of improper social media posts specifically that he liked a linkedin post about a "washington post" opinion piece about bill ba and the roger stone case, that he liked the story about the michael flynn case which grassley saw as partisan against flynn, that he liked another washington postop piece that said william barr had gone rogue and that he made comments in regards to donald trump on his twitter page and retweeted a lincoln project tweet that said donald trump is psychologically broken, embittered and a deeply unhappy man. christopher wray called these

tweets troubling. seemed to indicate that phish special agents should check their politics at the door when it comes to their investigation and certainly not leave some sort of outward presence that may call into question their ability to be unbiased and fair minded as they conduct their investigations. a couple of things here as relates to hunter biden and the reason you said what you did, hallie. there's been additional information that grassley's committee received, that the agent tried to stop the investigation into hunter biden and particularly the content of his lab top. the context is critical. this came up towards the end of october leading back to the election in 2020. the question is, was an investigation, potential investigation into hunter biden improperly stopped by tebow's actions. a couple of things to keep in mind there, number one, the investigation into hunter biden and his laptop was being led by

the fbi field office in baltimore, not washington. two, the investigation is primarily focused on tax issues at this point. there's a heavy irs criminal division focus there. those investigators are heavily involved in that and have been for some time. it's unclear to me how this individual could have specifically thwarted an investigation. number three, as you well remember, there were no overt steps taken in that investigation in the lead-up to the election. same with the rudy giuliani investigation. any overt steps that were taken in those investigations happened after the election, hunter biden, about mid december. we have the rudy giuliani search warrant in april of 2021. that's kind of the backstory. there was no investigative activity that would have been happening if there wasn't a threat to a life or somebody else's life, it's unlikely any case would have been opened into the son of a presidential candidate at that time.

number four, and it seems like i'm picking this morning and i'm really not, the fact that an asap would have an ultimate determinative ruling into the investigation of a son of a presidential candidate would probably make a lot of folks at fbi field offices chuckle if they see this statement. it's typically something that goes to higher-ups and didn't even involve the washington field office. this was being handled by the baltimore field office who continues to investigate alongside the irs. >> tom winter with the news and context. in over an hour and change from now president biden is set to leave the white house and hit the road to pennsylvania, the first of a couple of visits to that battleground state. today it's about flipping the script on republicans, he hopes, when it comes to law and order. ahead of the speech on thursday on what the white house is calling the fight for the soul of the nation, a throwback to his 2020 campaign message. i want to bring in correspondent monica alba.

what's interesting here is not just the script flipping, but the timing of this. this is coming at a time when we alluded to at the beginning of the show, some republicans have tried to blast the fbi for that search that was lawfully executed at mar-a-lago. other republicans have tried to tamp the brakes on this. this is something that the white house sees an opening on or at least can bring um today. >> absolutely. it's a bit of a testing ground for a midterm message. the president was supposed to hold this event about a month ago. but then he got covid-19 and then he had the rebound infection. so he was off the trail for most of august. and now he is getting back out there on the road to try to see what messages may stick and what may work best. he is going to be talking about his crime prevention plans more broadly. he's going to be talking about gun violence. he's going to try to make the contrast between what democrats want to see done and more action he says that is needed.

he's going to call out republicans specifically for opposing a ban on assaulted-style weapons. yes, he is going to be talking about the other major headline that has been huge in the last couple weeks that, of course, the white house has been very careful to say they don't want to comment on anything related to the ongoing investigation. they've taken great care to say the president hasn't been briefed on the latest developments. politically he is going to try to make this contrast, and he's going to say that some republicans and some supporters of the former president who said the fbi should be defunded, you can't argue that position and still be pro police. that's what the president is going to talk about today in wilkes-barre. thursday, as you mentioned, for the primetime address, and then in the state on monday, labor day, marching in a parade there. he's going to be going there three times in one week as we get closer to the midterm elections. >> monica ap ba, live outside the white house.

let me bring in democratic strategist adrienne elrod, a senior aide on the biden/harris campaign. there's a time and question for you, the timing of president biden's approval ratings, gallup has him at 44% approval right now. those are numbers you have to think the white house is not unhappy to see, to use a double negative. they're hoping to capitalize on this. >> that's exactly right. i think we're seeing the manifestations of president biden passing four major economic bills in 20 months which is record-breaking for most modern day presidents in terms of accomplishments combined with the fact that republicans are doing nothing. you're seeing president biden going out there on the stump, like he did earlier this week, talking about the fact that republicans have done nothing, that the maga republican party has obstructed all the policies that president biden has worked hard and democrats have worked

hard to pass. because of the inflation reduction act passing, his number are going up. you can seeing more candidates eager to get out there on the campaign trail and campaign with him. so i'm looking forward to hearing his speech today. hallie, one of the things i think is very smart about what the white house is doing, typically republicans tend to be stronger on crime when you go head-to-head on a poll. but what president biden is going to do today is make the case that democrats are the ones who passed stronger gun safety legislation. we're the ones talking about degree tougher on crime and doing something about it, whereas republicans have done virtually nothing. i'm glad he's taking hold of this. we're not ceding ground on crime. >> you said some candidates are eager to campaign with him. some are less eager. nbc news has reporting on this that there's hesitancy on the part of some democrats, those that are appearing with him, john fetterman, push him on

issues of decriminalizing cannabis, for example. how does the president walk that tightrope ahead of the midterms? >> i think the bottom line i if democrats want to hold on to many as many seats as we can, if that means some democratic candidates have to run against, quote, unquote, democrats in washington, fine. if you're going to go out there and embrace the president's policies which he has passed historic amounts of legislation, positions on roe, putting a black woman on the supreme court f. you're going to embrace those policies, you should be campaigning with the president. numbers go from the mid 30s to now the mid 40s, a huge jump over the past few weeks. my guess is they'll tick up even more. as they tick up a little more, you're going to see more candidates who want to campaign with them. >> adrienne elrod, thank you for

their perspective, appreciate it. >> thank you. new data out in the last hour suggests more americans are feeling more confident about it. we're talking about the consumer confidence index which rose to 103, up nearly 8% from july. that jump is better than what economists thought was going to happen. it's been generally on a downward trend since the spring. we'll talk more about the economic impact on the world of politics later today on msnbc. first, a major flood threat coming up on this show. a full-blown water emergency. we'll take you live to jackson, mississippi, where families don't have the water for the most basic stuff they need. sunken boats and bodies brought to the surface. the new mysteries emerging from lake meade's receding waters. climate change on display, not just here in the u.s. wildfires in europe, monsoon flooding in pakistan. what does it say about our climate future?

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not drink the water. governor tate reeves declaring a water system emergency overnight after floodwaters overwhelmed the local plant there. there's not enough water in the city from fighting fires to plushing toilets. let me bring in vlad in brandon, mississippi. how long is this going to last? what are they supposed to do before it gets fixed? >> that's the question, hallie. the people here have been dealing with issues in the water quality even weeks before the flooding. there's a boil notice in effect for people who have running water in jackson, mississippi. so there was some issues. some distribution centers already set up for drinking water. now, what's happened as of last night, that main water plant that's just behind us that was overwhelmed with some of this flooding is now failing. the governor said he's declared an emergency with the water system which means it's no longer just about the quality of

the water. it could be the quantity. meaning some residents might not have any running water at all. this morning we went to one of the stores nearby and we saw a lot of people coming in and buying as much water as they could. this is for the people that can afford to go buy $100 to $200 of water for today as they prepare. one woman told us she was going to take that to her mother's home. her mother is 70 years old, couldn't do it on her own. as of this morning, she had very little water. not only can people not drink the water, some people will have no water. we know that mema, mississippi emergency management agency, is working with the city to essentially bring in water for all the people in jackson. here is the other thing, we don't know how many people are affected. the governor also said he could ensure that anyone would have water service for sure as of today. so it's all up in the air as we wait and see who is going to have water today.

what can people do? they can go to one of these distribution centers being set up as we speak. just imagine the effort it's going to take to bring in water for the whole city. we're talking drinking water and also water for basic necessities like flushing a toilet or showering, which means, according to state officials, they'd have to bring in the national guard to bring in tankers that would take that water to different places where it would be distributed. so it is a major challenge for city and state officials here in jackson. >> guad, thank you for being on top of this story for us. the southern u.s. deals with that flooding, there's a different kind of extreme weather causing problems out west, not enough water. levels in lake meade, a nevada reservoir that millions of people rely on has dropped by 150 feet over the last 20 years. locals have had to adjust to a new normal. that's also revealed some new mysteries once hidden below the surface of the water itself.

nbc's jake ward has more. >> reporter: on a burning nevada morning, i hiked with daniel generaler and his wife tara to a hill overlooking lake meade. >> two years ago me and tara taught our kids how to dive in this exact spot right here. >> reporter: we're a long way from the water right now. this was under water. >> right. >> reporter: 25 million people dink from this vast reservoir, but it has fallen by 150 feet in the last 20 years. >> we built huge projects like this on the assumption that the water would always be there. turbines inside the hoover dam are only spinning about 30% capacity. if the water level drops much lower, they'll be spinning in empty air. as lake meade falls, other parts of the lake are emerging as well. once upon a time, divers would dive down to this. today i'm standing maybe 150 feet above the lake. boats as old as the hoover dam are back in the sun.

now even bodies are being found. drowning victims, murder victims. there could be dozens, maybe even 100 more to be found. >> i think giving closure to families who lost loved ones on the lake and solving old murders, these are impacts of climate change i never saw coming. >> reporter: nevada officials are literally seeing climate change happen on their watch. >> a one-degree increase means 4% more water can get held up into the atmosphere. the atmosphere is getting thirstier. the atmosphere is sucking the landscape dry. >> reporter: everyone is scrambling to adapt, from the state to the jenner family. generaler and his wife used to take tourists dival. now they've taken new work relocating the marina as the water falls. >> we pick up the anchor blocks and move them. >> how often have you had to move them so far? >> we've moved thousands, thousands of feet. >> reporter: as the heat keeps coming, lake meade will only

reveal more and more. >> who knows what's going to pop up next. >> reporter: jake ward, nbc news, lake meade, nevada. i want to bring in david wallace wells, author of "the uninhabitable earth, life after warming." i'm glad to have you with us. we have covered in the last seven minutes on this show the extreme ends of the spectrum, extreme flooding and drought. how should people think about these kind of things as it relates to what we should expect in the next decade here. >> before we even talk about the future, let's talk about what's happening elsewhere in the world which may be more dramatic than the u.s. droughts across europe lowered the river so low that boats can't pass. they've had to turn off nuclear power plants and even coal-fired power plants as a result of low water there. in china, a heat wave going on, 70 days now, where people have had to take shelter in underground subway stations.

there's been a part of that concentrated in xinjiang where people are housed in something like concentration camps. in pakistan, flooding over the last few days that have displaced as many as 33 million people, destroyed 1 mill one homes and killed more than a thousand. when you look around the u.s. and think things are bad here, things are considerably worse elsewhere in the world, in part because they have fewer resources to deal with the changes we're seeing today. one of the lessons of the mississippi floods in particular is we have to rework our infrastructure to be resilient in the face of some of these chalt lengs which are going to get more intense and come much more often, just as striking as the rise in extremes brought by some warming over the next decade or two is how much more often they'll come. sometimes flooding events that used to come once a century will come once a year which means our

reaction time will be shortened much more dramatically. >> you're writing specifically about the investment in climate and energy from the bill signed into law, the inflation reduction times. you talked about how it doesn't go nearly as far as some democrats and activists had hoped for. you still think it signals some kind of a substantial change. explain that. >> the main thing i would say is the bill is piggybacking on a green transition already unfolding. there's massive, massive investments in renewable energy because it's cheaper in 90% of the world, according to some assessments. anyone making long-term plans today will be foolish to be focusing on fossil fuel investments. there are bumps in the road given the war in ukraine and the energy crisis, but making a 10 or 15-year plan, almost everyone is there to go all in in on

renewables. the bill accelerates that. it pours gasoline on the fire, so to speak, which means it will allow the momentum to accelerate and that's great. the underlying trends are just as important as the bill itself which allocates a few hundred billion which is a relatively small amount compared to the amount poured into the fossil fuel business in the last couple decades. >> thank you very much for being with us. nuclear inspectors are finally in ukraine to check for radiation leaks at europe's biggest nuclear plant after selling. we'll take you there live to the region next. ["only wanna be with you" by hootie & the blowfish]

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some new details this morning about russia's arsenal in ukraine. nbc news has learned the u.s. government has now assessed that russia got combat drones from iran this month. moscow plans to use them on the ukrainian battlefield according to two u.s. government officials. an adviser to president volodymyr zelenskyy tweeting the russians are deliberately shelling corridors meant for a u.n. team to get to the nuclear facility they're trying to inspect. josh lederman joins us from central ukraine. josh, good morning to you. >> reporter: hallie, u.n. inspectors are expected to arrive in the zaporizhzhia region as early as tomorrow where they have a major task

ahead of them. they'll have to spend several days not only inspecting the damage inflicted so far, but trying to get a handle on whether the backup safety system you need to safely run a nuclear plant of that size are still intact. there have been big questions about how they're going to get there safely, given the ongoing shelling in the region, and this dispute between russia and ukraine over whether they should travel through ukrainian-held territory or russian-held territory to get there. that visit is setting the backdrop for this counteroffensive that they've started after weeks of signaling that they plan to get back territory that moscow seized early in the war. in the first 24 hours of the offensive, both sides climb to have eliminated military assets. it's hard to know who has got the upper hand now. clearly the battle is heating up in the south as ukraine tries to

prevent this from becoming a stalemate and tries to start to claw back territory. president zelenskyy saying any russians left in the area of kherson should go back to russia now or else they may not be liveing much longer. the russians replenishing their military capabilities with the new drones they're getting from iran. officials i spoke with said the drones are the first of hundreds of combat drones that russia is expected to be procuring from tehran, hallie. >> josh lederman live in ukraine, thank you. coming up, when we could see covid boosters approved for the omicron variant and when those shots could end up in arms, coming up.

new covid booster shots could be ready just in time for the fall. the fda is expected to green light boosters geared toward the omicron variant as soon as wednesday. you could see shots in arms

shortly after labor day. i want to bring in dr. gupta. how important is it to have boosters that are aimed at some of the variants we have been seeing? do you think that's going to be an faekeffective argument to ge people to get those boosters? >> good morning. thanks for having me. this is a major development. we should be calling this a tri-vaccine. it covers three strains. this will cover three strains of coronavirus. the original version and the two new omicron subvariants that are very contagious. undoubtedly, it will increase our protection. we know respiratory viruses like to transmit as the warmth gets colder. whether that's going to change people's minds who have yet to

get vaccinated, that's a bigger question. only 50% of adults line up for a flu shot. we have to prepare for making sure we have adequate treatment available, which is becoming more challenging given the lack of congressional funding. >> explain the benefit to this. the hope is we keep people out of the hospital. >> absolutely. what we do know is that once you get a booster shot, any variety, you are protected in your nose and in your upper respiratory system to protect against testing positive. that wanes over time. however, you are still protected against ending up seeing somebody like me in a hospital. that severe illness component is why you get boosted. critical here. if you are at a medically higher risk, over 50, an underlying medical condition, get the shot once it's approved. likely by the middle of

september. if you are not in that high risk group, you had covid or you had a booster shot recently, wait three months at least since your -- if you recovered or had a booster and you are not high risk. wait three months. >> the biden administration wants 175 million doses out. they are scaling back on some of the pre-programs you could call them like the free at-home tests. are they putting their eggs in right basket? >> it's challenging. congress is wrong here to not fully fund testing, treatment, vaccines, all of them. we need all those tools. the biden administration is doing the best they can in what is a difficult funding situation. i will say, it raises the specter that employee benefits programs need to step up. if you don't have health care insurance and you don't have benefit of and employee benefits program to hopefully cover test,

treat and vaccines, go to healthcare.gov. you can enroll in medicaid. that can give you some services hopefully at a low cost or free. the uninsured will suffer. those that have an insurance plan, even though we both know claims reimbursement process, paperwork is not something anybody looks forward to, you have insurance, you are likely to have services covered. the uninsured are the folks we are worried about. >> dr. gupta, great to have your expert analysis. thank you so much for joining us. thanks for watching this hour. that does it for me now. andrea mitchell starts right after the break. (dad) andrea mitchell starts right after the break. rizon's new welcome unlimited plan, for just $30. (daughter) i've already told everyone! (nurse) wait... did you say verizon for just $30? (mom) it's their best unlimited price ever. (cool guy) $30...that's awesome. (dad) yeah, and it's from the most reliable 5g network in america.

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♪♪ good day. this is "andrea mitchell reports" in washington where president biden is preparing to make the first of three trips to pennsylvania in the next week. the beginning of a major midterm push. democrats try to save razor-thin house and senate majorities. biden's strategy is to return to broad themes that helped him win the white house, giving a prime time speech thursday night in philadelphia in front of the independence hall about saving the soul of the nation and the fight for democracy. today, he will be in wilkes-barre, contrasting his