good to be with you. i'm katy tur. what does a donald trump presidency mean for the supreme court. he already appointed three justices during his last term. he could get two, maybe more, this time around. if he does, he will be the first

president since fdr to appoint a majority on the supreme court. so what will a hand picked trump super majority want to get done? the court, as it's currently composed has already overturned roe v. wade, loosened the federal government's ability to regulate, and made the power of the presidency nearly absolute. what else do conservatives want? justice chance thomas already signalled he wants to revisit contraceptives and gay marriage. mark joseph stern who covers the high court for slate looks to us to talk about the potential agenda, and it's not just the supreme court. it's the federal judiciary itself. you'll remember senator mitch mcconnell made confirming conservative judges, his primary focus during trump's first term, which included judges like aileen cannon, the south florida judge who slow walked and dismissed jack smith's

classified documents case against donald trump. how many more cannons will this next two years yield, and what lasting challenges, and changes could they make to legal precedent on everything from free speech, and discrimination, to prescription drugs and guns. but first, how many outstanding vacancies can the democrats fill before january. there are 47 bench openings on the lower courts, which include trial courts and the courts of appeal. joining us now, nbc news senior national political reporter, sahil kapur. much of this reporting is yours. walk us through what could happen with the supreme court, and the discussionings you have been having. >> mitch mcconnell is leaving his role as senate lead after 18 years. whoever is going to replace him will also be putting a high priority on confirming conservative judges under a second donald trump presidency. there's a lot of talk about lower courts, senate majority

leader chuck schumer told me before the election that democrats will use the lame duck session to fill some lower court vacancies that they have. it's not entirely clear how many vacancies he'll have. the chatter is about the supreme court. there's a simple reason why. the oldest justices, the two most conservative justices, samuel alito and clarence thomas, as well as conservative legal advocates are talking about these two justices will see this as the ideal time to require. and senate republicans have the power to confirm their successors. alito is 74 years old. there's more eyes on him lately than clarence thomas, who's a little bit older, but a few years off from setting the record as the longest serving supreme court justice. there's talk about he wants to set the record before he goes. if trump gets to replace these two. he will have, as you pointed out, picked a record five

justices, a record since fdr, since the existence of the two-term limit for a president. it wouldn't shift the balance of the supreme court. it would still be 6-3. these are conservative justices. it would make it much, much harder, and force democrats to wait a lot longer to have any hope of cutting into the majority. >> it could be 20 more years of conservative rule, if not more on the supreme court. there's a report right now, as we have been speaking, sahil, that senator j.d. vance, the vice president elect is on capitol hill. this was confirmed by a senate side spokesperson. any idea what he could be doing there? >> he is actually downstairs, one floor from where i'm standing right now. in his russell senate office building. we don't have full details on what he is doing. he is, of course, the vice president elect. here's currently the senator from ohio until he's sworn into that job on january 20th. his team is holding their cards close to the vest on this one. one interesting question is

going to be whether senator vance has any thoughts on the leadership race. senate republicans are going to elect a new leader. does he want john thune, john cornyn, senator rick scott who's a long shot, more maga aligned challenger. these are the questions we have. joining us now to talk about the courts, senior writer at slate, mark joseph stern, "washington post" senior national political correspondent, and msnbc political analyst, ashley parker, and staff writer at the new yorker and author of the letter from trump's washington, susan glasser. everybody welcome. mark, i'm going to begin with you, the courts are your specialty. if donald trump gets two more, say he gets two more, and it's a safe bet that the two conservatives, most conservative justices are the oldest on the supreme court, they could step aside. who might donald trump replace them with. >> so i think it's very likely that if alito steps down, trump will replace him with a judge on the fifth circuit named andrew

oldham. he was a clerk for alito. it's becoming a tradition to replace justices with their former clerks, and perhaps more importantly, oldham has proved himself to be an extreme kind of maga conservative. he has authored or joined some very far reaching rulings against abortion, against immigration, against the environment, regulations, you name it. he has been auditioning for this seat, and i think that he has proved that he will be loyal to the trump agenda. for clarence thomas, i think there's a kind of similar man in waiting on the fifth circuit. judge james hoe. he has taken the role of a kind of troll in robes. he often uses extremely provocative language in his opinions that seems designed to own the libs. he has developed a fan base among the conservative legal movement and trump's own community of, you know, someone who would not pull punches, who would join the court and very aggressively enact an agenda that perfectly aligns with, you

know, project 2025 and everything trump has promised for his second term. >> what's on the agenda? what would be on the table? >> look, katy, sky's the limit. they have started a revolution. they're at the beginning of it. there are cases pending that would destroy a bunch of federal agencies, including the national labor board, make it impossible to make enforcement exist, test the existing limits of campaign finance restrictions to allow billionaires and corporations to donate unlimited amount of money to candidates. there are challenges to many of biden's signature achievements, including the inflation reduction act, elements of the tax reforms, and efforts to make it no longer legal for the government to negotiate over drug prices for medicare. that is a fifth circuit case that has been teed up as a test for this supreme court. so i think it's quite possible that in addition to continuing

the conservative agenda that we've gotten used to, we're going to see a court that's eager to roll back a lot of the reforms that biden was able to enact into law. >> not just that. this supreme court has made it so that the president is immune from most things, completely immune when they're talking to their justice department, the doj, the ag, presumed to be immune when they're talking to their vice president. i mean, they've already given donald trump a lot of leeway. now that donald trump is going to be back in office, what is that leeway from the supreme court going to allow? >> yeah, i think this is an extremely important question, katy. obviously even when donald trump was president, the first time he took a very sweeping, although sometimes legally untested view of the powers inherent in the presidency. he would often brag, as he did in the summer of 2019, essentially that the constitution article two gives me the power to do anything i want, and it will be a brutal

irony of ironies if one of the major legacies of the biden administration's efforts to hold donald trump accountable for january 6th results not in donald trump's conviction for his actions in seeking to overturn the 2020 election but in further empowering him because this immunity case that you mentioned was brought by trump in the effort to counter those biden prosecutions of him. so i just think that, you know, this is the cruellest kind of defeat in a way for the biden administration, not only have they not succeeded in even bringing trump to trial on charges stemming from his actions after 2020, but they may have produced the supreme court precedent that will empower him to be a very unchecked president with a very radical and extreme agenda. >> so they have the vacancies in the lower courts, 47, as of right now. the democrats will likely eat into some of those vacancies, not all of them.

one of the things that the heritage foundation, project 2025 wants to do is to use the comstock act to enforce an abortion ban nationwide. it is not one donald trump would have to go to congress, they would use existing laws on the books to stop the transfer, the transport of abortion-related medical equipment, et cetera, across state lines. this is a premium court, mark, i'll give this one to you. is this a supreme court that would allow donald trump to use the comstock act? >> i really think it is. i think that providers of abortion in blue states and red states are going to face prosecutions under the comstock act. this is a statute that was enacted like 150 years ago. >> 1873. . >> in a fit of puritanical of women's rights and a different kind of court would say it reflects an animus toward women,

it should not be interpreted broadly. that's in the this court. this is a court that says we apply the plain text of the law and congress's will, and in 1873, congress didn't think that women should have any rights, not a right to read feminist literature, not a right to birth control, certainly not a right to abortion. i think it is very likely that trump's justice department will bring these prosecutions and that the supreme court may well uphold a very far reaching interpretation of the comstock act that at a bare minimum makes it nearly impossible to acquire medication abortion, possibly procedural abortions adds well. >> donald trump has walked back the support of a federal ban on abortion. he said he's tried to be both ways on the fact that roe v. wade was overturned. but he said ultimately it's up to the states. it's a state's issue. he wouldn't sign a federal abortion act. and when i've talked to a source close to him, this person has repeatedly told me over the years and recently that donald trump's personal stance on abortion is not as conservative as you might think from some of

the people that he has around him. is there any reason to believe that donald trump as president might not want to pursue these sorts of things, ashley? >> well, it's interesting. a number of voters believe what you just articulated, katy, and what this person close to the president-elect told you. which is that sort of his heart and his passion is not really in restricting reproductive rights, the way, say, his former vice president mike pence sort of truly believed that as a guiding conviction and principle. what's interesting in, you know, sort of reporting i did on how trump got to deciding this should be left to the states was his team put together a memo, that was based -- that had nothing to do with ideology, and when he believes, you know, you can no longer have an abortion, nothing like that. it was based on pure electoral

politics, where they presented him with a map, and they showed him, for instance, the blue wall states, pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin, and told them what the current laws were on the books. and said that if you support a federal ban, the democrats in the media will paint you as restricting and rolling back abortion rights in these states, and that will hurt you politically. he's now won. that political calculation no longer matters so there's a world in which he might be more susceptible to pressure for people in his orbit, like say a kellyanne conway pushing for a 16-week federal ban. there's the belief you articulated, this isn't something he's particularly passionate about, and by the same token, he no longer has to placate that sort of base, and he can do what he wants. >> i wonder, though, the folks around him are much more conservative. if he's looking at judges, he's

relied in the past on the federalist society, very conservative, clarence thomas, i'm going to bring this back up, said in the overturning of roe v. wade, an opinion of his own, that he thinks that the court should probably revisit the bans on contraception and maybe even the rule to go allow gay marriage. do you have any -- what would donald trump do on those two things? do we have any insight into where his head is at on guy marriage or contraception, ashley? >> again, the thing that's challenging about this is there is a belief, and this has been born out in the past that donald trump sort of at his core and personal convictions, you know, sort of before this, manhattan impressario, having a club mar-a-lago, in palm beach was one of the first clubs to

welcome gay members is not that socially conservative in his bones, but the flip side as we both know having covered him for as long as we have is donald trump is incredibly susceptible to whoever is surrounding him, to the last person he's spoken to. and often in that push and pull, before moving a little to the center, where he may naturally be, and where he frankly, sometimes has the ability to bring his base, who will never abandon him, and then the outcry that some of those moves cause. online, on the far right, on the conservative, you know, cable news networks he watches, he almost always retreats to where that conservative base is. some of this is unknowable for someone who's so impetuous, and swayed by the last person in the room. >> the uncomfortable alliance that his base now comprises, i mean, you have like the bar stool sports guys, and then you have the j.d. vance version of,

you know, male conservatism, and, you know, i can't imagine that the bar stool sports guys are going to want to get behind a contraception ban maybe in the same way that others in the coalition might want to. there's ideological differences there. i wonder, if you're thinking about this, where might donald trump fall on this? who might he be listening to? if it's just the federalist society, i would imagine he would be going in a much more conservative direction, throwing his hands up and allowing them to do what they want. >> yeah, i mean, look, remember, that congress is going to have at least one and possibly quite likely both houses controlled by republicans. they are a completely anti-abortion majority of republicans in both the house and the senate. there's almost no ideological diversity on this question, and in fact, in congress, the question is how many different ways can we go after restricting women's reproductive rights

. that's what you're going to see from the magnified house republican conference. they're going to be sending up bills to donald trump. they may only have two years of republican government, the question then will be will donald trump sign those bills. the sports guys if they get to make the decision about where donald trump ends up on abortion policy, i think that donald trump said when he was president, by the way, and this is very relevant to this conversation, donald trump said he would sign a 20-week abortion -- national abortion ban when he was president. and, you know, i have no reason to think that that policy was any more or any less one that he would follow through with than the very opportunistic statements he made on the campaign trail. he also said on the campaign trail that every single person in america, literally was in favor of the repeal of roe v. wade, and he repeated that again and again and again. i don't think we have seen a very coherent statement from donald trump, and what we have seen is a republican party that

has made this a focal point and a goal of their efforts for the last 50 years. i think they're going to keep going. >> i think you're right. but listen, there's a natural, at its core, a discomfort or just -- they're not idealogically aligned, the base that voted for donald trump. not everybody believes -- not everyone's beliefs within his base or even the podcast that he went on, the joe rogan's, theo vaughn, whatever, they're not as idealogically conservative as some of the people that donald trump has surrounded himself with in terms of aides and allies, when he was in office last, and certainly when he's in office now. ashley parker, mark joseph stern, susan glasser, everybody, thank you very much. still ahead, what the pentagon fears donald trump may do with the military in a second administration and why this time won't be like the last time. plus, the uncalled election races in both the house and senate, what we're watching for and why it matters for donald

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chief of staff. wiles was the cochair of his 2024 campaign, and now she will be the first woman to ever head up the west wing. joining us now, nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard, who is in west palm beach. it is an impossible task to try and wrangle in donald trump, but the word is that if anyone's going to do a decent job of it, it's going to be susie wiles. >> reporter: that's the idea here for donald trump and his allies. it was encouraging news for them, especially so quickly after his victory because not only did he go through four chief of staffs in his first administration, but there's, in trump world, as you're well aware, katy, there's a lot of voices, and susie wiles over the last two years, really figured out the chemistry to make trump orbit exist mostly cohesively, and with little turmoil. which is very different than the first really six years of his political relevance. that's where susie wiles did it by a combination of allowing, you know, sort of the more right

wing provocateurs and bomb throwers like steve bannon, and steve miller to still have the ear of donald trump, while also ensuring that the traditional conservatives who have been around in the party for a long time, and people that she's had long standing relationships with still knew that they had an open line into this incoming administration, and it worked throughout the campaign. source after source always told me that susie has somehow figured out how to strike that balance. when it comes specifically to donald trump, can that transfer into the white house when it comes to policy, when it comes to actually working with folks on capitol hill and the pentagon and the secretary of states, the department of state, this is where it's going to be a sort of next level challenge for susie wiles, especially over the course of the last month, she was effectively, we are told, able to help donald trump keep focused more so than others have had successes in the past, and yet, how does that translate once they actually get into the

oval office in washington, d.c. and to what extent does she continue to allow the oval office, like the campaign, be sort of a come and go as you please, call up donald trump at free will, versus an effort to actually try to put at least some barriers around 1600 pennsylvania avenue in order to try to isolate and keep not all of the information making its way to the sitting president. >> we'll see how long she lasts. vaughn hillyard, thank you very much. coming up, what we know about the three people just charged in an iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill president-elect trump. and also an american journalist . plus what the pentagon fears about donald trump, and what they say he might do in a second administration. nd administration cing that the clarity wasn't there that i needed. and that was frustrating. i'd seen many commercials about prevagen and i thought, "why not give it a try?" after taking prevagen, i'm a lot sharper than i used to be. my memory is a lot better.

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donald trump wants generals who are loyal to him. the pentagon is preparing for what could be a major upheaval. amid fears that donald trump will follow through with his plans to quote, deploy the military domestically against american citizens, demand fealty from key leaders and attempt to remake the nonpartisan institution into one explicitly loyal to him. joining us now, former senior adviser to the secretary of defense, and special assistant to the secretary of the navy, mark jacobson. he's currently president at the partnership for public service. thank you very much for being with us. >> thanks, katy, good to be back with you. >> so what do you think is going

to happen or what do you worry will happen with the pentagon? >> well, the first worry i have is that there's a smooth and orderly transition. i mean, this is absolutely critical to national security. we saw in 2000, 2001, at least according to the 9/11 commission report, some of the dangers that can happen if you don't have a smooth transition. you're not ready for all of the challenges that are faced out there in a very dangerous world. i think the first thing that has to happen is the trump, the incoming administration, the trump team has to be serious about transition. they have to make sure to get the landing teams in place, and they have to listen to the civil servants and the uniformed military who are going to provide in an apolitical, nonpartisan way, their best professional judgment on a range of issues that the team's going to have to face when they start on january 20th. >> what about the desire for donald trump to have generals who are loyal to him and also the desire that he had at the

end of his last term to implement something called schedule f, which would have gotten rid of anybody who wasn't explicitly loyal to him, making all of those appointments instead political and trumpian in nature? what could he do with the pentagon if he decides to pursue that? >> whether it's the pentagon or anywhere else in the federal government, i think schedule f is a problem because it's a blunt instrument. any president, any secretary of defense, any cabinet official wants a team that helps to implement the president's policies and gets things done. and that's the job of an apolitical civil service, a nonpartisan civil service and nonpartisan, to implement the orders of the commander in chief, the political appointees that are going to guide those efforts so i think any president that thinks they're going to simply really throw the baby out with the bath water, we're going to get rid of everybody stands in our way runs into a problem, and that is group think.

in other words, everyone's going to tell you what you want to hear, rather than what you need to hear, and i can't think of anywhere where it's more important than the national security arena that people hear that a president hears what they need to. they need to understand the risks, the tradeoffs, there are dangers in uses military force, there are the right ways to go about it. i'm hopeful that the president brings in a serious national security team that leverages that sort of expertise. >> do you think he's going to have people around him that will get him to stay in nato? i mean, he just had a conversation with zelenskyy that zelenskyy says didn't leave him more worried, according to reporting that's out there. elon musk also was on that call, according to "axios." but in terms of nato, which obviously the ukrainians want to join eventually, do you think that the united states stays in it under donald trump? >> i think if we take donald trump at his word, and what he said during the campaign, there's likely going to be shift in u.s. policy towards ukraine

or the arming of ukrainians, but remember, first, the europeans are doing a lot, and in some cases, a lot more than the u.s. has done in order to make sure the ukrainians stay in the fight. the second thing, and i'm encouraged by this, the nato second general mark root has had a conversation with president-elect trump, and i think is playing things the right way, a little bit of, look, you know, president trump, whether you like it or not, his efforts forced the europeans into a situation where they started having to pay more for defense. do i worry about the future of the alliance? i do, i worry about the credibility of the u.s. commitment and i were advising president trump, i would tell him to look further, deeper, it's not just what nato provides on the surface. it's not a club. it's an organization that has kept the peace in europe for a long time, and, again, it's an organization that protects u.s. interests as well. >> yeah, and by the way, there was a national defense authorization act in 2024 that included a provision to help

protect nato from the executive, but donald trump, if he wanted to get rid of it t he would need 2/3 of the senate of an act from congress, which would require the house and senate, and stands to reason that donald trump could get a republican house. that does put nato certainly at risk, if donald trump wants to go after it. mark jacobson, really appreciate your time, sir. it's been a long week. thank you for joining us. >> take care. today the justice department announced charges against an iranian man and two others in a murder-for-hire plot, targeting president-elect donald trump, and an iranian-american journalist. nbc news national and intelligence correspondent tom winter has that story for us. explain. >> so what happened here, according to the fbi and the criminal complaint that was filed today is they became aware of farhad, he was communicating as an asset for the irgc, the

iranian revolutionary guard corps, the military operation in iran was working on their behalf. he originally lived in the united states or at least came to the united states when he was a young kid from afghanistan, was arrested, charged and sentenced in 1994 for robbery here in new york state. in the course of his 18-year travel through the prison system, according to the charging documents, he built up a network. in this network of people that he met that were imprisoned, that he could then go back to and say, i want to employ you to conduct criminal acts, and that's what these other two individuals who have been charged here have been charged with going after this iranian american journalist. i'll get to her in a second. as it relates to the former president, president-elect donald trump, he's somebody who has been top of mind for the iranians since -- under the trump administration, they killed one of their top leaders, and so we've seen a plot and arrest already this summer, in august, an individual was situa trying to find somebody to go

after former president trump, unrelated to the other two assassination attempts. this is a new one, in october 7th of this year, the irgc, an unnamed official says we need you to put together a plot, and to put together a plot in the next seven days to go after donald trump. effectively don't worry about the cost. spend what you need to spend, but put together a way to make this happen. iran said, according to the discussions with the fbi, iran's belief was that donald trump was going to lose the election, and then would be, perhaps, easier to target, following election day. he might not have as much security in their eyes. so that was kind of the thinking at the time. shecari explained this to the fbi in five phone conversations, including one that allegedly happened yesterday. he was trying to help out somebody else he knew in jail and was talking to them in an effort to get some sort of cooperation and get that prison sentence reduced. doubtful that would happen, but, you know, for the fbi, why not take the phone call and figure

out what the irgc is telling this guy to see. >> love to see how well our prison system works. build up a network for a foreign country for future crimes to commit, for a foreign country, as you said, tom winter, thank you very much. still ahead, what races we are still watching in the house and the senate, some consequential stuff. plus, what one working class latino family says drove them away from the democratic party. y . ♪♪ fastsigns. make your statement. at humana, we believe your healthcare should evolve with you, and part of that evolution means choosing the right medicare plan for you. humana can help. with original medicare you're covered for hospital stays and doctor office visits, but you'll have to pay a deductible for each. a medicare supplement plan pays for some or all of your original medicare deductibles, but they may have higher monthly

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three days after the election, and we are still watching a number of uncalled congressional races. control of the house of representatives is still up for grabs. and several senate races are still too close to call. as is the size and the scope of the republican majority. joining us now nbc news capitol hill correspondent ali vitali back on her home turf. so ali, what are you watching? >> reporter: and without my big board, i'm feeling a little bit sad not to have it next to me to help explain what's still on the map. we'll make do. on the senate side we're waiting to see races in nevada, arizona, pennsylvania, technically maine, but that's because of a rank choice voting system here, and we expect the incumbent, angus king will remain the senator from maine. but those three key races are going to tell us a lot about what the balance of power looks

like on the senate side. yes, they already have control on the republican end, but to what end and what margin is the question we're waiting to see answered and then of course if you bring up the house map, regularly we talk about how everyone is just trying to be the first to get to that magic number of 218, increasingly it looks like the democratic path becomes narrower and narrower. but in conversations that i've had with senior democrats, they are still holding out hope that various places like those in oregon, potentially the alaska seat, maybe they're able to flip some in california, there are different paths that they're still watching for. that being said, most republicans are really preparing for this to be yet another congress where they are in the majority and with another very slim one and that, of course, proves always to be complex and complicated. >> yes, indeed. ali vitali, thank you very much. ashley parker, and susan glasser are still with us. come on, it was a understandable flub. ashley, let me ask you, the last time donald trump had all power

in washington, all three houses or all two houses of congress in the executive branch, it has been a really long week. he didn't get a lot done. is he better prepared this time? are the republicans better prepared to get things done in the first two years? >> well, from a reporting point of view, you know, talking to some people election night, there was a sense that when he had that for those first two years, there was actually a lot of, you know, republican on republican crime and infighting. and, you know, again part of that we've also talked about was donald trump came into power. he didn't really understand the federal government. he didn't understand he wasn't going to be a king. he had never really run for anything other than the presidency before, so he was surrounding himself with people who he would argue did not always have his best interests in mind, they would argue he did not have the country's best interests in mind. he could come in and be more effective and efficient this time. that's something we have discussed on this show

previously, and it's also worth noting he may have these -- the house and the senate, but the republican composition is slightly different than it was when he took office last time. a lot of moderate republicans or as he and his maga base would call them, rhinos or deep state actors are gone. they have lost primaries. they have been forced out. he has bullied them out. they have realized they don't have a future in the republican party of donald trump, so i don't think it's a given that we will see a replica of what we saw the first time, but because you control the white house and the congress hardly means you're going to get a ton of stuff done as both democrats and republicans have learned. >> especially when you have rabble-rousers in the halls of congress as well. the senate majority is going to be meaningful. if it's just two seats, there's less that this administration can get done, say, if it's a

three, four, five seat majority. do you see a difference in confirmations, who donald trump will be able to put in meaningful positions? >> yeah, i think that's what we're looking for right now. absolutely, katy. right now is will there be, you know, any constraints on donald trump or really none at all? i think the size of the senate majority matters there. it's a much trumpier republican party in the senate as it was before. mitch mcconnell is leaving as majority leader, and while he publicly endorsed and supported donald trump, everyone knows that he, you know, privately was very very critical of trump, that he also on some key policy areas did provide something of a break, for example, when trump came into office in 2017, and wanted to immediately lift sanctions on russia. it was mcconnell, along with the then still living john mccain who worked hard to rally opposition to that. i think the size of the senate majority matters but, remember, donald trump mostly has a -- rather than have a big

legislative agenda, what he really prefers is executive action, his slogan in this campaign was essentially i alone can fix it. he did not propose a big roster of legislative accomplishments that he was looking to push through congress. what he talked about was the kinds of things that he can do unilaterally, and even when it comes to appointments to office, donald trump showed a great willingness to essentially bypass the u.s. senate, despite the constitutional role that they have in confirming officials and essentially put people into acting positions. there's already been reports this time around that he's asking people if they would be willing to serve in acting positions. this is almost a direct flouting of the constitutional requirement for advice and consent. i just don't think that trump would hesitate to go around the senate if he felt that he needed to do that. >> further testing of the boundaries. susan glasser, ashley parker, thank you very much. and coming up, a politically divided working class latino

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latino voters on tuesday. nbc news national correspondent david noriega jones us from las vegas. i imagine you can't paint with a broad brush here. talk to me about what latino voters and what one specific family told you about what they voted for trump. >> reporter: yeah, katie. we have been hearing a lot about this pretty substantial swing towards donald trump by latinos and the role that this plays in this new surprisingly multiracial coalition that the gop at least for now appears to have built. there are a lot of factors going into this. arguably the main ones are class and the economy. we've been covering this all election cycle long as you know. and this one family who i've been touch with here in las vegas for months helps explain what's going on. take a look. they found the american dream in las vegas. they came to the u.s. from mexico and guatemala in the '80s with his job in a supermarket

and her job in a casino they bought a house and raised three children. now they wonder if their kids and grandkids will inherit that dream. is it still possible to do that for the younger generation? >> that's my main concern right now. what's going to happen to our new generation? nowadays they're not even able to move out of their houses anymore because everything is so expensive. >> life wasn't expensive as it is right now. >> reporter: we first met mario back in february when he was considering to vote for donald trump. he was undecided with previous votes for bush, obama, hillary clinton, and biden. at the last moment he broke for kamala harris, but today he's not upset about the results. >> i'm kind of like more happy than upset. why because donald trump is going to help the country with the economy. >> reporter: the whole household is happy. their 29-year-old son did vote

for trump. >> initially i was happy with him and i saw he was not afraid to speak his mind and noticed he was not scared to say what he felt regardless of what people will say, and i think i respect that about him. >> reporter: so you liked his kind of brashness? >> i would say yes. >> reporter: they're not alone. across the country donald trump made huge in roads with latino voters. according to nbc exit polls, 55% of latino men nationwide voted for trump, a 19-point jump from 2020. among latina women, an 8-point gain. while vice president harris won a slight majority of the latino vote overall, trump increased his support 14 points from the last election. the top issue among latino voters, like it is for the alvarez family, the economy, with immigration a distant fourth. they both crossed the border illegally as teenagers but became citizens under ronald reagan's amnesty.

they see themselves as different than migrants crossing the border today. in what way are you different? >> the people coming here are criminals, you know, the ones that did something bad in their country. they're running away from the law. >> reporter: despite having close family members who are undocumented, they don't believe they'll end up in trump's cross hairs. when you hear trump promise mass deportations, do you worry about that? >> yes and no. because the ones that i know, they're doing good. they're not breaking any law. >> i believe he's going to start deporting all the bad people. >> reporter: trump won over the alvarez family and many like them. whether the economy improves and who exactly he chooses to deport may determine if he keeps them. >> my family is latino and a lot of them are immigrants, but at the end of the day, we're american. >> reporter: katy, as we continue to make sense of things it's important to keep a couple of things in mind. first of all, this was not limited to latinos.

nearly every demographic expressed this. there are others who are now deeply worried about what lies in store for them with a second trump administration. >> i thought it was really interesting when they said the immigrants that are crossing the border illegally right now were not like them and they believe the ones that are crossing are criminals. david noriega, thank you very much for bringing that to us. really insightful. all right, we're going to go now to minnesota, eagen minnesota, specifically. because gwen walz is speaking ahead of governor tim walz. let's listen. >> they may be buried deep, deep down, but i know they are there. because of all of you, they are there. and because we are in this together, they are there.

there is a verse from second timothy that's been on my mind this week, and tim and i have often shared it with each other. i have fought the good fight, i have finished the race, and i have kept the faith. minnesota, we have kept the faith. but here's the thing, and kamala said this. sometimes that fight takes longer than we thought, and sometimes there are roadblocks and boulders and fences without gates in that race. but we have no choice but to

keep the faith, and we have no choice but to fight on, right? that's right. and we will. so you know what tim says. we'll sleep when we're dead! as some of you know, i'm more moderate. i think now that the election's over, we can take a quick nap. but after that -- after that we know this. we are getting right back to work, aren't we? yes, we are! i'm ready. and i am certain that there is

no one who is going to fight harder than our governor. and i am so very proud of him, so will you please join me in welcoming the governor of the great state of minnesota, tim walz! ♪♪ ♪♪

>> wow. thank you. thank you. you've been here. wow, wow. [ chanting "walz" ] thank you, minnesota. thank you, thank you, thank you. i don't know about you, but i've had a week. i know you have, too, but let me just start out by saying it's great to be home. we came home. it's great to be home. and i do want to start a huge thank you and an i love you to minnesota's first lady, to