you for this second hour of chris jansing reports. any minute now, president biden will meet with ukrainian president zelenskyy as he makes a direct appeal for u.s. aid for their grueling fight against russia. and it is in russia where allies have imprisoned putin foe navalny are sounding the alarm, saying they haven't heard from him in days and his whereabouts remain unknown. plus, the big cop 28 climate change summit forced into overtime after activists warned a deal was in complete failure. plus, decision day. the embattled president of harvard will keep her job after nearly over a week of outcry over the speech she made about antisemitism. our nbc news reporters are following the latest developments and we start with ukraine's leader sitting down with ukraine's leader sitting down with president biden any minute now. kelly, set the stage for us. >> the stakes are particularly high and they have been in different ways each time zelenskyy has come to the united states and the white house. but now you have a case where there is resistance that we have not seen before from some elements on capitol hill and for president biden, who has tried to demonstrate leadership on this leadership and an ability to bring together allies across nato, across europe, and around the world to support the ukrainian people in this fight. it is a test for him as well. so we will see them have a meeting in the oval office. they will talk about these issues. about next steps and other ways the u.s. can provide more support. obviously, there's the political dimension on capitol hill where president zelenskyy has been doing personal diplomacy and personal outreach. lobbying, if you will, on behalf of his country. and then a bit later in the afternoon, after those private meetings, the two leaders will come forward for a press conference and we don't see these very often from the white house but this is a high stakes moment and so we would expect to hear the outcome of their conversation and then take questions from reporters from both those who have come with president zelenskyy from ukraine and of course our u.s. press. so that is the outline of the afternoon. what happens in the private moments, the discussions and what certainly the president can glean from president zelenskyy coming off of those capitol hill meetings could be critical in how president biden may be able to close the gap or seal the deal and try to secure the funding that he believes is in the u.s. national interest. not just for the people of ukraine. >> kelly o'donnell, thank you. now to the growing mystery surrounding alexei navalny. the fierce critic of putin whose whereabouts inside the prison system have been unknown for days now. matt bradley is following this story. what do we know from his spokesperson? >> we heard from her this morning and said an employee of ik6, the peal colony, said the prominence dissident had left the colony, but didn't know where he is now. now apparently, his friends and allies haven't been able to hear from him for the past week. this is particularly concerning because navalny is widely considered public enemy number one when it comes to putin's russia. he's by far putin's most prominent and really determined political opponent and he and his organization which the kremlin have classified as terrorists have relentlessly reported on corruption and abuses in putin's regime. he's already serving a 30-year jail sentence from at least two cases. and he was nearly assassinated just a few years ago. it's thought by russian regime operatives. now, according to amnesty international, navalny may now have been subjected to a forced disappearance. now, another issue is that he has been suffering from poor health. even if it looks like suffered a fainting episode in his cell last week. this according to his spokeswoman. it's not like they're clueless about his whereabouts. he was supposed to move prisons. it was part of his sentencing. he's likely headed to an even harsher prison colony where already limited access to the outside world is probably going to be constricted more. but there's a timing question here that doesn't make this look like a coincidence because he appears to be being pushed further underground just a few days after putin, who has run russia for more than the last two decades, announced his bid for the presidency in next year's vote. now, this could put him in office until 2030. that long. and putin is popular enough to win yet again, but now his most prominent competitor is even more out of the picture than before. chris? >> matt bradley, thank you for that. the global climate summit in dubai is going into overtime with countries still divided over a key issue. fossil fuels. diana olick is at the conference. what can you tell us? >> chris, it's now approaching midnight in dubai and we're told there will not be another draft of the cop deal tonight. we've really heard nothing at all from leadership today. the latest draft totally dropped language to phase down or face out fossil fuels. it just said countries should take action that could include reducing their consumption of fossil fuels. this is a major blow to those who wanted to slow global warming. representatives from governments, policy groups, ngos. one called it alarming that this is much more amenable to oil and gas procedures. another, a nightmare and former vice president al gore posted on x that this cop is on the verge of complete failure and the deal reads as if opec dictated it word for word. he said it is deeply offensive to those who have taken this process seriously. now, the cop 28 presidency which is led by the ceo of the state owned oil company adnan called it a huge step forward. to that, one analyst responded well, i'm not sure which direction that step would be in. there was a protest here this afternoon calling for action on fossil fuels. we haven't seen much protesting at all. at least not on the cop grounds but clearly, frustrations are running high. there have been a lot of agreements here outside of fossil fuels. there was a side agreement among over 100 nations including the u.s. to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. nations have not raised the $100 billion for pledge for climate action in developing countries but got to 83 billion. money was also raised for a loss and damage fund for developing countries. so everyone awaits the next draft. some wanting to see if the word could might be changed to should. i know it doesn't sound like a lot but chris, that is where we are. >> diana olick, thank you for that. harvard's embattled president is keeping her job after a week of controversy over her congressional testimony. antonia hilton is following that story for us. so, i guess the announcement came after long meetings of the schools essentially board of directors. what do we know about what happened? >> the harvard corporation, the school's very powerful top governing body, they met yesterday and there was a lot of chatter leading up to this. conversations about how all of what happened last week in conversations with congressmen, about six hours of testimony might factor into her future. for anyone who doesn't know, she's relatively new to this position. only about six months ago did she become the president. i'm an alum myself. but they sent out a very clear and unanimous letter of support for her this morning to the entire harvard community. this comes after hundreds of faculty members signed a letter in support of her after undergraduate students spoke up and support. many black alumni reached out in support of her very historic appointment. to be clear, we're not at all making any excuses for what happened in that hearing and by the way, most of the people in the harvard community who i speak to were dismayed by the fact they gave, that she gave by their description a legal answer to a moral question around the experiences of jewish students on college campuses right now and the question of what to do if people call for a genocide against jewish students on campus. but what they feel is that with the outcry they've seen and the pressure they've seen from lawmakers, particularly from republican lawmakers, that it put the school in a position to need to protect its academic freedom, freedom of speech, and to give gay the opportunity to apologize as she has repeatedly and continue serving the community. she has deep roots at harvard. and so they wanted to essentially send a signal here that outside groups, political actors, megamillion dollar donors, they don't get to dictate harvard's policy, harvard's leadership. so for now at least they're backing her but what we're hearing from people like congresswoman stefanic is that they're going to continue investigating colleges when it comes to antisemitism on campus. what that signals to me is that there's still going to be tension on harvard's campus and other campuses and there may be more challenges for her in the future. >> thank you. we have breaking news related to this. minutes ago, the u.s. department of education confirmed there are some new title six investigations that they are starting into alleged ethnic discrimination at stanford, ucla, rutgers, and ucsd. they join more than a dozen other institutions. harvard, penn, columbia. under federal investigation related to their handling of antisemitic and or islamophobiaic activities on campus. we'll keep you posted on those investigations. and coming up, the reaction we're seeing on harvard's campus. a reporter from the harvard crimson will join me in 60 seconds. rvard crimson will join me in 60 seconds. ♪ #2 should be easy to do ♪ trust colace to soften stools with no stimulants for comfortable relief. the subway series? it's the perfect menu lineup. just give us a number, we got the rest. number three? the monster. six? the boss. fifteen? titan turkey. number one? the philly. oh, yeah, you probably don't want that one. look, i'm not in charge of naming the subs. ♪ students... students of any age, from anywhere. students in a new kind of classroom. ♪ using our technology to power different ways of learning. ♪ harnessing ai to plant new beginnings. ♪ so when minds grow, opportunities follow. now that we know harvard's main governing board unanimously stands in support of president gay, we're getting new reaction from campus. joining me now, harvard student and reporter for the crimson, claire young. first of all, thanks for being here. what can you tell us about what was the driving factor behind this decision? i mean, we all know it ended differently at u penn. what do we know about how the corporation came to this decision? >> right. well, thank you so much for having me. i think this is a great question. it's so interesting. between the three different witnesses, the three different presidents. we saw at upenn, president mcgill was asked to step down. at mitt, the president had their essential board of directors full support very quickly. that sort of put harvard's corporation, their board of overseers, in a position where they really had to say something and in the past week or so, president gay has faced a lot of criticism and many, many calls for her to step down from representative stefanic to letters from congress to various harvard affiliates. then over the weekend, the tide sort of changed when we saw first saturday night, a lot of faculty taking to social media to really vocally support president gay and then we saw over 700 faculty sign a letter. thousands of alumni also joining on. strong forces harvard had to consider going into their meeting and making that decision yesterday. >> i know it's only been a few hours since it was made public, but what's been the reaction on campus from students? >> yeah. i mean, it's kind of an interesting time because everyone is struggling with finals so students are honestly kind of locked up in the library. but it's not unexpected that there are sort of mixed reactions. i'm not sure there were a ton of students vocally calling for president gay to step down or the opposite in part just because of everybody studying on campus. >> you know, this controversy didn't happen in a bubble. it came after we saw rising tensions on campuses all around the country. discontent about how university administrations handle the difficult questions surrounding free speech. i just reported that breaking news about the department of education opening new investigation. what does your reporting tell you what needs to happen now to address what are these very thorny issues? >> right. that's a great question. i think what we heard from students on both sides of the issue is that they really just want to feel more university support. in the sense that they want to know that president gay and her administration care. they are hearing these concerns and they're actually making efforts to address the situation on campus. in the testimony and also during a faculty meeting that same day, university administrators announced additional dialogue to combat all sorts of hate on campus. that's sort of the response that we're seeing to the requests of these student groups. >> do you think, in your own experience, claire, this has at the least, opened a dialogue that people are talking? that maybe those conversations can help? >> it's hard to say what the impact of those conversations will be, but i do certainly think that people on campus are talking. whether informally or in a more formal sense. we have people writing through the opinion pages of the harvard crimson so there is dialogue. >> claire, i'm guessing you have finals as well as we know. most of the members of the great crimson have, but i just want to say i've been following your reporting, the reporting of the paper. you guys have done a great job on this. so congratulations on that and good luck with your finals. thank you. >> thank you so much. new from nbc, u.s. military talks with china have still not restarted. you might remember about a month ago, president biden and xi agreed to resume communications. they touted that move as a major accomplishment as the leaders breakthrough d.c. summit. well, three government officials now say american defense leaders have repeatedly tried to reach their chinese counterparts but so far have not gotten any response. still to come, rudy giuliani doubling down on his false claims about georgia election workers and the judge really isn't happy about it. we're outside the courthouse next. first, we want to celebrate a major milestone. today, "the new york times" has published its 50,000th issue. they celebrated by reminding readers of a front page correction in 1999 when a 24-year-old news assistant noticed something off about the issue number. he found the times accidentally added 500 issues to the ticker on february 7th, 1898, which means this young desk assistant found a mistake nobody else caught for more than 100 years, so the times fixed the count at the top of the front page at the turn. turn also try for fizzy fast cough relief. 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(vo) it's your last chance to turn any iphone in any condition into a new iphone 15 pro with titanium and ipad and apple watch se - all on us. only on verizon. why are we the only birds heading this way? ♪ ♪ what is that? duck à l'orange. what's duck à l'orange? it's you, with l'orange on top. a moment of high drama in atlanta today when shaye moss took the stand at the defamation trial of rudy giuliani. face-to-face with the man she says is responsible for ruining her life. but giuliani tried to claim that all the lies he told about moss and her mother, ruby freeman, are in fact true. setting up a confrontation with the judge. >> when i testified, we get the whole story and it will be definitively clear that what i said was true and that whatever happened to them, which is it's unfortunate if other people overreacted, but everything i said about them is true. >> do you regret what you did to -- >> of course i don't regret it. i told the truth. >> well, the judge sees it differently. the judge already found giuliani liable for defaming the two former georgia election workers. falsely claiming they committed fraud in the 2020 election. the question now is what price he'll have to pay for that. they are seeking between 15 and $43 million in damages. ryan riley is reporting for us outside the district court in washington, d.c. also with us, barbara mcquaid, former u.s. attorney, university of michigan law professor and an msnbc legal analyst. so i understand the court just came back into session after lunch break, ryan. this morning, jurors did hear from shaye moss for two hours. what did she have to say and what did the judge tell giuliani before the jury was brought back in a few minutes ago? >> yeah, it was really dramatic testimony about how the impact of these lives had on her life. this was a job that she got after she graduated from college and had worked there for five years. first as a temporary worker then a permanent job. she had been hoping for a promotion and thought she would be eligible after all these lies were spread. in fact, the day she found out about these false videos, she went in with a smile on her face when she went in to meet with her boss because she thought she was getting a promotion she thought she had earned. but it turned out it was much more devastating news. it really upended her life. she said she put on about 70 pounds and has gone into depression because of the impact this has had on her life because of random strangers showing up at her mother's door. people sending pizzas to her grandmother's house. all sorts of attacks and a lot of racism embedded in that. what the judge said just earlier today, in fact before the jury was coming in back in, was that giuliani cannot continue to testify during his testimony expected this week. that these false claims were true because giuliani just can't seem to give up this initial lie. he wants to pretend like there was some basis for this and there wasn't. they did nothing wrong. that's been established for a very long time now. that these two election workers did nothing wrong and these attacks were false. so that's where things stand today as now shaye moss is being questioned by giuliani's lawyer as jurors listen on here. >> barbara, it's not a good day when your client, when the judge tells the client's lawyer the statement giuliani just made could support a whole new defamation trial against him. what kind of predicament is he putting his own defense in here? >> a good lawyer knows the phrase that when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging and you'll notice if most important word i said there was a good lawyer. rudy giuliani repeats his lies and exposes himself to new claims. this is what we saw donald trump do. remember that jury returned a verdict against donald trump for his defamatory statements about e. jean carroll then the very next day, he goes out and repeats them again and she and her lawyers say all right, you want more, we will file another claim and add another claim to our case. that one is coming up for trial now in