i'm jose diaz-balart. in just a couple minutes, president biden and the first lady will head to florida to see firsthand the damage left behind by hurricane ian. one week after the monster storm made landfall here in the u.s. >> this is everything we worked our whole life for. and it's gone in a flash. >> people's entire livelihoods destroyed. meanwhile, donald trump is appealing to the supreme court over classified material in the mar-a-lago documents case. we're going to break down where things go next. in ukraine, resistant forces were greeted with flowers and ukrainian flags after pushing russian forces out of another village in the kharkiv region. we'll bring you the very latest from kyiv. and on the cusp of an unprecedented third term, the chinese leader pledged to take control of taiwan by any means necessary. what taiwan's foreign minister

said about how they are preparing in case china attacks. in just two hours, spacex will launch a spacecraft with five astronauts to the international space station. we'll take you live to the kennedy space center and explain the significance of this historic mission. we begin with our top story this morning. this hour president biden and the first lady will head to florida where crews are working around the clock doing door to door searches in neighborhoods hardest hit by hurricane ian seven days after this monster storm battered the gulf coast. and these communities, particularly those outside of major cities, are still suffering.

>> they are saying they have no power, no water, no food and help is not getting to them like it did in the past. this is the scenario many florida residents are dealing with right now. at least 105 people have lost their lives in the wake of this storm. the sheriff says crews are more likely to the recovery phase. heartbreaking development for families still waiting to see if their loved ones survived. joining us with the latest is nbc news correspondent dasha burns and sam brock. what's the president going to witness today? >> reporter: i just spoke with some of the crews we have on the ground in bonita springs, which is a little south of where i am. as they are driving along the beach, all they are seeing, mounds of sand and debris, six feet high. we talk about the fact that blocks were just obliterated. it's one thing to describe. it's another to go through it.

it's a haunting experience and visual what you're looking at right there. now fort myers beach has 3,500 structures. nearly all of them are damaged or destroyed. we expect president biden -- ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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12 past the hour. just want to give you a quick explainer of what happened. we lost all kinds of power on the network level. so we have reestablished all our communications and not really up to speed on all the technical stuff, but i can tell you that we just suffered a technical problem that we have, i believe, since solved. i want to go back to sam brock who is in fort mers beach. what is the president going to see when he gets to that area and also we're with dasha burns in florida. >> reporter: no doubt, jose. the president has seen some pretty sobering images from the aftermath of disasters before. what he's walking into now are communities that have literally been erased. as you drive down the roads, you'll see things jutting out of the ground. the foundations are just air-conditioning units and nothing else, piles of debryce.

as you're look at that aerial, there are 3,500 homes on fort myers beach. almost all of them were either damaged or destroyed. when you hear about the fact search and rescue is ongoing, 79,000 structures, think about that for a second. 80,000 homes or businesses times however many people, that's how many of those properties that search and rescue crew hs to go into to check to see if everyone is okay. the power lines are down. that's been a major issue right now. as we talk about the president's visit here, he's meeting with governor ron desantis. so many people still have no power. more than 300,000 customers so far in southwest florida, a good chunk got nothing. not even ice to put in their fridge to keep food from spoiling. we went to a food drive yesterday. 2,000 people a day receiving kits. 28,000 are getting meals. we talked to a pastor there about how this cuts across all settingments of society.

here's what she told me. >> i think what we have seen this week, a great need for water and food. water, number one because the water main grid was broken. the army corp. of engineer hs to come in and repair it, but there's no clean water. people who can even afford to pay for water can't get it right now. >> reporter: we are also getting more information about the victims this morning. we know there's almost 110 of them. roughly half in lee county. the average age of the victim is 71 years old. so certainly an older population here that's been devastated. we're just learning more about what that number could rise to in the coming days. >> just to recap some of the numbers that you gave us. every single number, every single one of those 80,000 structures that have had to have been searched, every single one of those 3,500 homes damaged or destroyed.

that's someone's entire livelihoods, someone's dreams and things that they have been able to achieve here in their american dream. >> you see these interviews. you might have played a segment coming into the show just the fact that people are crying at the idea their homes are gone. everything they have worked for their entire life, in a blink of an eye, absolutely roesed. people came down here thinking it's going to be retirement. homes that used to stand there are just gone. thaps just the reality. it's the displacement. we have to create a new chapter in our lives after all of this. >> i was speaking to a family there, a mexican american family who was saying my house was everything. it's my bank. it's my hospital, it's my doctors office, everything in our lives revolved around the house.

dasha, you're at a minor league hockey rink, which has now become a shelter. >> that displacement that you and sam were talking about, the psychological trauma, the psychological challenge of realizing you have to start over again, the homes that sam has been standing in front of, the people living in those places are now coming here to try to take a moment, to have a moment of peace, a moment of processing. nobody wants to come to a place like this. nobody thinks they'll need to come to a place like this. but when disaster strikes, it's important to have a place like this for folks to go to and the resources that are here. i want to bring in lori arnold from the red cross. thank you for everything you're doing for these community communities. walk me through what are the resources you're providing here and how great is the need right

now? >> the red cross is here to provide for emergency needs, but also we have other really critical services that we can provide. we're providing disaster and mental health services, mental health counselling, spiritual care. we have health services, first aid, we have showers set up for people to get showers. a lot of things, we're taking care of people's pets. we have the great community partners like the county and other nonprofits helping take care of other different needs. so we're not here just for the feeding and the sheltering. there are so many other needs that people have. doctors and pharmacies are no longer standing. who is coming here and what are some of the experiences people are coming here with.

>> it hit a lot of mobile home parks. there's older people. there's younger people and small children. it hits everybody. so we have all these people here, but the one thing they really do have in common is that sense of stress, anxiety, not knowing what their next steps are going to be. so we're here to help them in the immediate needs now, but we're also looking forward and thinking about how to help them in the future making sure they have their next steps so they can begin their recovery. >> this shelter right now is at capacity. over 500 people here, butt the red cross has 22 shelters that do have space. but the need is great and it's growing. >> i thank you for being with us this morning. crews were working methodically through this extraordinary difficult crisis. some say they feel left behind. my colleague kerry sanders spoke to some residents further inland.

>> reporter: miles from the coast in predominantly black neighborhoods, some say help has not arrived. >> the damage here is not as dramatically visible, ruby says her community was also hit hard. >> we had water up to here. i said, look, it's looking like the house. >> used an extension cord. all she could find to tie herself to her niece so they wouldn't get swept away. >> it was the grace of god. >> reporter: now they are concerned they won't get the aid they need. a recent study shows dmunts communities with large populations often receive less money from fema than mostly white communities. fema considers several factor when is deciding aid requests. sin colluding property value, which is often lower in minority

neighborhoods. let's bring in the fort myers mayor. thank you for being with us this morning. talk to me about what life is like for fort myers residents. >> we have about 84% of the residents with power. almost as much have water. the pressure is increasing every day. we're dealing with the debris that's piling up and we are working with both our city crews and contractor crews to get that cleaned up. i have personally been out walking neighborhoods in all parts of the city. i was out in the minority community this morning and yesterday. it's great to come across people in good spirits.

they know it was a serious storm and it's going take awhile to get things back up and running. >> those numbers are very -- 84% power and water is a substantial progress. just a week ago when this monster hit. what is your community like? what's the city that you represent like? >> i couldn't really get the question, but where the damage was tone primarily in our city was along the river. a lot of wind damage, but the damage along the river was obviously from the storm surge. our marinas were devastated. but we have the roads open. we have power coming back on. we had distribution centers for food, water and ice. >> mayor, what is it do you need

from the federal government, from the state? what is it that you need going forward? >> we're going to need continued support, especially with the cleanup and the rebuilding. and we need to make sure because the days pass and -- we still need the water, the ice and people still need food. >> mayor, i thank you very much for being with us this morning. if you need help f you're watching and listening to us or know someone who needs help recovering from hurricane ian, go over to fema.gov. there you can apply for assistance or you can call the number on screen. 1-800-621-3362. fema.gov.

we're also following wall street where the dow jones industrial average is down and it is down almost 400 points. there you see it right now. about the concerns about the state of the economy ahead of the september jobs report, which is due out this friday. the selloff is coming after two days of huge gains spurred in hopes the fed and other banks may ease their interest rate hikes. but there you see that it's dropping almost 400 points. we'll keep an eye on it throughout the remainder of the hour. we'll be right back with much more. you're watching "jose diaz-balart reports" on msnbc. g diaz-balart reports" on msnbc. can get it on us at t-mobile.

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president trump is asking the supreme court to intervene in the case involving documents seized from his home. he wants the high court to allow the special master to review the material taken during that search to be able look at the roughly 100 classified documents the justice department was able to keep aside as part of its investigation. the justice department has until next tuesday to respond to that request. with us now to talk about this is "washington post" reporter carol lenting and former prosecutor charles coleman. so carol, what is the former president looking for from the supreme court? >> a lot of ways, it's unclear. the basic request is this. he argues and his lawyers argue that the circuit court didn't have jurisdiction to stay or

block the lower judge's decision saying, hey, there's a special master and you can't have access to the classified records, but really it's a small technical request that donald trump's lawyers are making. just say that on this one issue please the circuit didn't have jurisdiction. the problem with the request is it's hard to imagine a way in which this court didn't have jurisdiction. because the judge's ruling didn't have a lot of legal foundation behind it. she ignored a lot of legal case law and precedent that defers to a government in deciding how to protect national secrets. basically, the case law says that we have to rely upon the government that create classified records to decide how seriously and how carefully to protect them. the judge blew through that. so what trump is asking the

court to do in this emergency application is just say that the court didn't have that authority to intervene in the way that they did. >> carol, donald trump's emergency application was sent to justice thomas. why is he overseeing the case? >> well, he is the justice in charge of the 11th circuit for emergency appeals. in charge in a nominal way. it's almost like formally addressing the top boss, but really you're trying to reach the supreme court for the emergency application. he's the justice in charge of this division. this section of court. so that is not a shocker. however, it's just intriguing because clarence thomas is the one justice in disagreement with all of his colleagues who wanted to side with donald trump on another key issue, which was

trying to block congress from having access to presidential records regarding january 6th and the insurrection on the capitol. >> but it's kind of like a formality who you address it to, depending on who is in charge. it is super interesting. and trump's lawyers are arguing that the 11th court lacked jurisdiction to review the special master order. how unusual is that? >> jose, it strikes as being very unusual, particularly in a case like this. usually if there was a question of jurisdiction or standing, that's something that would be raised in front of the court that you're saying doesn't have the standing to begin with. it's odd they will have already pled these things and argued these things and never previously made this a significant issue. but yet then turn around to the supreme court and say, well even though we basically responded to the brief and did not make this argument in the past, we are now

really making this a center piece of what it is we want to argue about even though it's a technicality in front of the supreme court and basically turning around and making it a mainstay around this filing that has occurred. so in many respects, it's a pretty bizarre thing that's highly unusual and not something you usually see. it's not necessarily a matter that the notion of not having standing or not having jurisdiction in a particular case would not be argued. it's the fact that you would choose at this point to argue it, particularly as it relates to such a very relatively minor issue. >> charles, donald trump hasn't faired very well in other emergency applications to the supreme court. efforts to prevent white house documents fromming with turned over to the house january 6th committee. his financial records for being handed over to new york prosecutors. what does that tell us about how the supreme court may deal with this case?

>> well, based off of what we have seen, even though there is a conservative majority on the supreme court, we know that they are not necessarily adverse to telling him no. so it's possible we maybe looking at a situation where, again, he's told no and his status as former president does not grant him any additional favoritism or extra kaech in front of these justices. they have laid the groundwork to say we can be objective to a reasonable degree. and we are not necessarily going to be overly swayed by who he is or was when he was president. i think that everything that we know around this application before the court combined with the recent history of his emergency applications in many respects were denied does pave the way for a resounding no from the supreme court in this case.

>> so carol, if it is a resounding no, what are the former president's next potential steps? >> i mean, who knows. charles makes a very good point that this wasn't argued at the 11th circuit by trump's lawyers. i feel like it's really important to say that you can't underestimate how potentially chaotic donald trump's legal strategies are because in any given week at "the washington post," we are hearing from sources that this lawyer is out, this other lawyer is in, now that lawyer is back and important and leading the charge. now that lawyer is sidelined. there's a lot of disagreement on this team about how to proceed. there's some back fighting. there's a view from some of the newer lawyers that arrived that the lawyer there is in the first, not the former president got in a lot of trouble with

legal advice. and i think anything is possible to be fair. anything is possible in terms of what donald trump will try next. >> carol, charles, i thank you both for being with us. hackers posted online thousands of files stolen in a cyber attack on the los angeles school district after the l.a. school superintendent refused to negotiate or pay ransom to the criminals. the district was forced to shut down most of its computers last month after it detected a ransomware attack on its network. the relows of documents included psychological assessments of students, legal documents, business records, and database entries, according to law enforcement. joining us now is los angeles unified school district superintendent alberto calvaro. what happened in your district?

>> good morning, jose. it's great to be with you. during labor day weekend, we were cyber attacked by a well-known entity, whose residence is far beyond the borders of the u.s. with servers in netherlands, germany and canada. and they took advantage of that long weekend to attempt to penetrate our systems. they were successful in touching some of our database systems. in actually retrieving some information, particularly from our facility servers, which warehouse contracts, payment information to private sector ebtties, but they were unable to penetrate into our payroll system or confidential information for employees or students. they were a able to uphold significant amount of data, most of which is actually old data going back to 2013 and 2016. impacting students, no social security numbers, no health information, in personally identifiable information for the

vast majority of employees or students. nonetheless, they were attempting to really disable, to cripple our central nervous system and hold us hostage at to an assaulting amount of money that would have robbed educational dollars and taxpayers' investments into our school system. we don't negotiate with cyber criminals or cyber terrorists. what we anticipated would be released was released. we are in a good position today. >> how do you decide not to negotiate with these people? what were they asking? >> i'm not at liberty to disclose the amount of of money that they were asking for, but i can tell you it was substantial. this is a well-known criminal enterprise, well known to federal agencies. we have benefitted over the past month or so from incredible support from the white house, the fbi, local and state entities that helped us identify

the type of data that they obtained, therefore, putting nus a position of categorically saying to this entity that we would not negotiate. we would not pay. even if they had sensitive information. i can tell you one thing. it's never a good policy or practice to negotiate with terrorists, whether they are cyber or otherwise. so they made an extremely high demand for information that turned out to be not as sensitive or confidential as we once thought it would be. >> what are these people doing? they are going into america's school districts, the organizations that teach our children. what kind of entities are these? >> i can tell you that is a will-known entity. we believe that this is an entity of criminal enterprise that operates from behind the curtain of russia with servers

that have a worldwide net. they have targeted 25 different school systems in the u.s. they usually target k-12 institutions and colleges and universities, particularly in the u.s. as well as the united kingdom. and as i said, i don't recommend, nor do federal entities recommend that a negotiation be entertained and a payment be made. this only continues to encourage this type of behavior. in successful ransomware attacks, they actually cripple via encryption whole systems, including the payroll system of the systems or obtain critical information that could debilitate the credit standing of employees and students. we were able to avoid that because, as the attack was ongoing, we brought down all of our systems, stopping the attack midstream and actually

empowering the opportunity, which is very unusual of retrieving tools they left behind, actually allowing federal entities to better understand the attack and the entity behind the attack. >> there's cyber war against school districts. i thank you very much for being with us. i appreciate you being on. >> off topic, let me just quickly wish our friends and family in florida a speedy recovery in light of hurricane ian. >> thank you so much. thank you. up next, the look at abortion rights across the country 100 days after roe v. wade was overturned. and just moments ago, president biden boarded air force one on his way to survey recovery operations in florida. there he is getting on to air force one. you're watching "jose diaz-balart reports" on mississippi nbc news. n mississippi nbc wsne (vo) with verizon, you can now get a private 5g network. so you can do more than connect your business,

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legal. the u.s. announced an additional $625 million in aid. that brings the total aid to nearly $17 billion since russia invaded ukraine in fen. joining us now is cal perry. also with us is rick stangle. russia launched drones, which struck the wider kyiv region. what are you seeing? >> reporter: so about 80 kilometers south of here sometime at 3:00 in the morning, two separate waves of drones, how big they are. 6 to 12 of them impacting 3 locations, about 80 kilometers south of here. no word on casualties probably because it was a military target. three things to tell you. the first they have civilian-made components in them. so they can evade military

defenses. number two e they are accurate. you may remember in april the ukrainian forces are using turkish-made drones and that's what happened to that large column that our viewers may remember about back in the spring. that 30-mile long column was decimated by drones. the last thing i will tell you is they are cheaper than cruise missiles, which had is going to be very important to the russian president who is spending money he may not have on this war. it's possible we're going to look at another front here where drones are used more and more often. >> cal, these drones are curtesy of the government of iran. according to the government, they are courtesy of the government of iran. we need to be careful about our sourcing. we don't know how they got here or how that works. that is what the ukrainian government is saying and they are forcefully saying it because there's been major attacks using the drones in the city of odesa in the past, and that's what

that tweet is about. it's a response to the iranians saying they have not supplied these drones. ukraines say that's simply false. >> i'm just wondering this whole thing that putin did today which absorbs four crane ukrainian regions. he sees in 2014 there wasn't a lot of reaction to that, but it's a different time and place. >> absolutely. russian invasion of ukraine is unprcedented since world war ii. he's also having sham referendums in areas of ukraine, which russia has not captured. there are regions under pressure. so he has den this kind of sham referendum and annexation. a lot of people believe what he wants to do is have this be declared russian territory so that he could use tactical nuclear weapons to defend it by saying it's actually the russian homeland. that would be a disaster.

>> so i'm just wondering as putin's opportunities and certainly successes dwindle, he maybe feeling a little bit put into a corner. what do you think he is going to do as he sees his victoies becoming losses? >> well, a lot of people have gone down the road of trying to predict what vladimir putin is going to do and haven't emerged from that. i haven't been good either. a lot of people have been suggesting he might resort to tactical nuclear weapons. the u.s. has down played that a bit because if you are going to use tactical nuclear weapons, which have never been used on a battlefield before, you have to get your troops out of the way. it doesn't look like he's going to do that. i hope when he's in a corner, he realizes, look, i have to stand down. but that's more wishful thinking

than prophesy. >> always learn something from you. i thank both for being with us this morning. abortion is still at the center of the political landscape more than 100 days after the supreme court ruled the constitution does not grant the right to an abortion. president biden and vice president harris harris marked moment by holding a meeting of his white house reproductive rights task force. they talked about the need for a national law to protect reproductive health care and the president tried to reassure people. >> my message to folks across the street who are worried about what we're seeing is first that we have your back. we're not going to step back from this. second, we've heard your voices. >> joining us now is "washington post" national political reporter who covers abortion. good morning. what's the biden administration been able to do so far when it comes to protecting abortion rights, certainly on a federal level?

>> the short answer is not much. yesterday the conversation was really about reinforcing existing legal protections. the biden administration was particularly responding to some news out of the university of idaho which issued guidance saying that any employee could be charged with a felony for even discussing abortion with their students. so they were responding to that, reiterating existing title ix protections. but they can't do a lot. and a lot of is going to hinge on the midterms and the kinds of majorities that the democrats can get. >> yeah, and you actually co-wrote a piece looking at how some efforts by republican lawmakers to enact tougher abortion restrictions are actually, well, not working. what is going on? >> well, i think you're seeing a

lot of republican lawmakers really nervous. they saw what happened in kansas when an antiabortion amendment failed. they've been seeing other indicators suggesting that, you know -- particularly women voters are really energized by the fall of roe and really want to take action and go to the polls in large numbers, and i think you're really seeing republicans pausing and watching and wanting to see what happens in november before they enact more restrictions. >> meanwhile, democrats have made abortion a central theme of the midterm election. how much of an effect is that having? >> i mean, i think it really remains to be seen. but it is pretty remarkable how prominent abortion is in every campaign that i've been watching, particularly in the states in pennsylvania, wisconsin, arizona, where the

governor of that state is going to be a backstop. they're really going to decide is abortion going to be legal here or is it not. so there's really some real serious implications for a lot of these races and what it means for abortion rights on the ground. >> thank you so much for being with us this morning. >> thank you. in about one hour, spacex will launch its dragon spacecraft along with a team of four astronauts to the international space station. it's an historic trip full of firsts. nasa astronaut set to become the first native american woman in space. joining us now, tom costello live from the kennedy space center of florida. tom, what are we expecting from this trip? >> reporter: well, this is a fascinating trip for a couple of reasons. we have commander nicole mann on

board. we've also got a russian astronaut on board. she's very accomplished but the only female russian astronaut right now. and given the tension between the united states and russia, just really amazing that the space programs continue to cooperate. ten days ago, we had an american go up on a rocket. so these are two headlines given the tension between the united states and russia, we continue to have cooperation on the space station and now we are going to be bringing her up to the station. i talked to her, by the way, and i asked her and asked the commander the same thing, any tension right now in space or in training? they both said no. we got to focus on the mission because our lives depend on each other. so they try to avoid the topic of ukraine and the threats of nuclear attacks. also two other people on board, we've got the pilot.

he's a navy fighter pilot and a test pilot, philadelphia in physics and another astronaut's fifth voyage to space. they're going to be lifting off at noon. five months on the space station. a lot of science on board the station as well. jose? >> tom, when is this thing set to takeoff? >> reporter: we're lifting off at noon eastern time and they will dock with the station tomorrow afternoon, 5:45 or so eastern time. they're going to do about 17 orbits around the earth before they finally rendezvous and dock. what's fascinating here is that yet again, this is the fifth crude mission for spacex, putting astronauts to the space station. nasa is focusing on the big long game, going to the moon eventually with artemis. and a quick update on artemis.

we were supposed to launch in august, then it was delayed because of a problem, then delayed because of the weather, the hurricane, it's right now behind me in the vehicle assembly building. they hope to launch mid-november. >> tom, thank you so much. we turn to breaking news. alec baldwin says the actor has settled a lawsuit with the family of the cinematographer who was killed on the set of his movie "rust" in october wasn't. halyna hutchins died after a live round was fired from baldwin's gun. her family sued those involved with the film saying cost-cutting led to the tragedy. that wraps up the hour for me. i'm jose diaz-balart. you can reach me at twitter and instagram at jdbalart. thank you for the privilege of your time.

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♪♪ good to see you on this wednesday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian for you live here at msnbc headquarters in new york. all eyes on the state of florida with the president on his way there now to survey the catastrophic damage left behind hurricane ian. a trip that will include a face-to-face meeting with ron