Morning Rundown: Luigi Mangione in court, how the CIA vetted the D.C. suspect, and the backfiring Aaron Rodgers experiment
President Donald Trump has pushed Indiana lawmakers to approve the maps, which would benefit Republicans.
Trump again urged Tennessee voters to support the Republican candidate in tomorrow’s special election to fill an open congressional seat that was vacated when GOP Rep. Mark Green resigned this year.
“GET OUT AND VOTE FOR MATT VAN EPPS, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” he said in a post to Truth Social.
Trump pushed for people to support Republican Matt Van Epps, a former state official, over Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn.
The race has attracted outsized attention, despite Trump having carried the district by more than 20 points. Democrats have expressed optimism about their prospects, as off-year elections tend to generate less turnout overall and favor candidates who have more energized voters.
Trump is expected to sign congressional bills at 4 p.m., though the White House did not release details about which bills he is signing.
The Oval Office event is the only event on his public schedule today.
Indiana state lawmakers will consider redistricting when they reconvene today, even though the GOP state Senate leader previously said there are not enough votes to redraw the map.
Trump has publicly pressured the state’s Republican lawmakers to take up new maps to bolster the GOP’s prospects to keep the House after next year’s midterm elections.
It’s unclear if lawmakers have changed their minds after the pressure campaign. The Indiana push is the latest in a series of redistricting efforts across the country.
Both the House and the Senate have started inquiries into a reported second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September that killed the survivors of an initial strike.
The Defense Department conducted a second strike on a boat the Trump administration says was carrying drugs from Venezuela after the first strike on the boat failed to kill all of its occupants, one U.S. official and a source familiar with the Pentagon’s actions that day told NBC News.
Read the full story here.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are “not serious people” in response to their comments about a video Kelly and several fellow Democrats made earlier this month urging military and intelligence personnel to “refuse illegal orders.”
“This president thinks he can bully and intimidate people, and he is not going to, he’s not going to stop me from speaking out and holding him accountable for the things that he does that are wrong and unlawful,” Kelly told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
Read the full story here.
President Donald Trump says there’s a “good chance” for a deal, but his bid for peace now heads to the Kremlin and faces more work with Kyiv after what the United States described as “very productive” talks.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected in the Russian capital to discuss changes that Kyiv and its allies have secured to the U.S. peace plan. Vladimir Putin signaled last week that he was ready to have a “serious” conversation, but has shown little sign of stepping away from his hardline demands that formed the basis of the original 28-point proposal backed by Trump.
Read the full story here.
NBC News