let's go to lauren egan in wilmington, delaware. the democrats are negotiating right now the details of the reconciliation package. first of all, how engaged is the president going to be in this? >> yeah, the white house says that the president is going to continue to be deeply involved and engaged with negotiations. his negotiating team on his staff is up on capitol hill frequently having conversations with senators manchin and sinema. right now, the big hold-up over this debate is how big the bill should actually be. what should the price tag be. the white house has acknowledged it's going to veto be a lot smaller than they initially proposed. a few weeks ago, we were talking about potentially $3.5 trillion. now it's looking like it's closer to the $2 trillion range. the big question is how do you get to that number? you can do two things. cut of elements of biden's agenda from the plan or put as much as you can into the plan and allocate les money for each policy item. that's the conversation happening on capitol hill. president

nbc's white house reporter lauren egan has the latest from wilmington, delaware. good morning.t can we expect from the administration on this issue by tuesday? >> reporter: guys, this texas law was passed, then halted for 48 hours and then reinstated as of friday night. it was a three-judge panel that decided to reinstate the law friday night, and they asked the justice department to come back to them with a response as of 5:00 p.m. this coming tuesday. that's something we're going to be looking for going into next week. this was expected. this is not a surprise. the appeals court has a representation for being conservative. one of the judges, a trump employee, he has written that abortion is, quote, a moral tragedy. this is no surprise. the justice department would have been expecting this, preparing for it. the biden administration would have been ready for it. the big question is what do they do next? do they ask the supreme court to get involved and step in? we don't know yet. we'll have to wait and see where they decide to go with this. bottom line is this is just the begi

>> nbc news white house reporter lauren egan is in delaware this morning, the president is trying tore, cut down some of the noise. >> reporter: that's right, there is a lot on this president's agenda as we stare down these last few weeks in 2021. most important to president biden and this white house is his build back better agenda. that's that bipartisan infrastructure bill that has been coupled with the democrats' social spending plan. and the president has talked about how it's going to have to be a lot smaller than he had initially floated. closer to the $2 trillion range. right now the big discussion among the white house and lawmakers, democrats on capitol hill, is how you get to a smaller size bill. you can either cut out certain programs entirely from the final deal or allocate less money to each policy item. this has been a real headache for the white house, this has been the focus of conversations amongst lawmakers in the past few days. take a listen to what the president had to say on friday. >> right now things in washington, as you all know, are awful ly noisy. every di

nbc's lauren egan is joining us from wilmington, delaware. call with the dnc, right, and then the president really have to talk about some of these numbers. i mean, he had a prediction of 500,000 jobs added to the economy. in fact, when we got the jobs numbers yesterday morning, it was only 194,000. how is the president spinning this? >> reporter: yeah, well, the president's message just a few minutes ago was a call for party unity. he urged democrats to come together, especially as they head into the 2022 midterm election year. now, this message from the president comes as there's been a lot of intraparty fighting among moderates and progressives recently, especially over the president's build back better agenda. that's that infrastructure bill that's been coupled with the democrats' social spending agenda. there's been a lot of disagreements over how big that package should be, what should be in it. we also saw some disagreements among democrats this past week over how to engage with republicans when it comes to issues like raising the debt

stay with me for a moment, jennifer, we're going to go to lauren egan, right along that route with thein washington, d.c. they are on their way from freedom plaza to the supreme court. where are you? have you gotten to the supreme court? we're seeing photos to the left of screen of women that have arrived and they're certainly there at the bottom of the steps. >> reporter: yeah, alex, we just made it up here to the supreme court. as we arrived to the steps to the supreme court, the protesters that were coming from freedom plaza were greeted by a large gathering of counterprotesters, people chanting that abortion is murder, and it's really underscoring the clash that we're going to see in the coming months, particularly as the supreme court takes up that december case and we've been talking about regarding that law in mississippi. this is an intensely felt debate, and it's being underscored and highlighted right here on the steps of the supreme court already. >> you know, lauren, we've been seeing all these supporters of the march and the activists. have you seen counterprotesters? any

nbc's lauren egan with the president in wilmington, delaware, and julie tsirkin joining us from capitoll. lauren to you first, as the democrats are ramping up negotiations on the reconciliation package how involved is president biden in these discussions? >> the white house has said that president is going to be deeply involved in these discussions, but he's going to continue to hold phone conversations with senators manchin and sinema, the two moderates that are deeply involved in the conversations, as well as progressives. the big hold up here is the price tag of this bill. think back to a few weeks ago when we were talking about this looking closer to $3.5 trillion or more, now the white house says it's likely going to be closer to that $2 trillion range, in order to get moderates to buy into it. how do you get to the smaller number? first you can just cut out elements of the president's agenda entirely to size down the bill or you can try to fit as much as you possibly can into the package and just allocate less funding for each item, giving it an expiration date. the president has

nbc's lauren egan is in washington, d.c., and stephanie stanton is standing by in austin, texas. lauren, i want to start with you on this one. it's been almost five years since the first women's march made its debut there in washington. from what i'm understanding, capitol police officers have now arrived at the steps of the supreme court to keep things peaceful. talk us through what you have been experiencing on the ground there so far. >> reporter: yeah, that's right. it's been five years since that very first protest, but the intensity and the passions are just as high. i want to show you a little bit about what's happening right behind me here. you see the pro-abortion activists are walking across the other side of the street. there you see the u.s. capitol police that have confronted them right there and right here, closest to me in blue shirts, those are pro-life, anti-abortion protesters that greeted the women's march as they made their way up here. the women's marchers, their intention was to make it to the steps of the supreme court. they haven't been able to do that beca

joining us right now, nbc's laura egan and gary grumback as promised in des moines, the site of the rally for donald trump. laurenwe're starting this hour with you. why did the white house decide to reject donald trump's executive privilege claims nd release the white house documents to the january 6th committee? >> the white house has said that the president feels very strongly that it is important to get to the bottom of what happened on january 6th so that it never happens again. so it's no surprise yesterday when the white house announced that the president would not block the national ar kooufs from handing over this first batch of documents to that house committee. former president trump, of course, did not want these documents to end up in the committee's hands. as to what's in these documents, we don't actually know what's in this first batch of documents, but we do know that the house committee had requested really a wide range of materials from the national archives. everything from phone and visitor logs, really any kind of materials that can shed some light as to the events that happened the day of ja