In the history of television, only two of the 100 most watched shows have not been live sporting events, the oscars and the State Of The Union. So as a campaign kickoff, you dont get a bigger platform than joe biden has tonight. But with enormous opportunity come enormous challenges. Can he meet the moment and how . Our team has reporting on what is happening inside the white house right now and the unique unvarnished insights of a former biden Speech Writer. Plus, as the president prepares to address the israelhamas war tonight, conditions in gaza are deteriorating to new lows. Children starving to death. Bright orange bursts of flames as a plane makes an emergency landing, what exactly caused it. An awful lot to get to. We begin with this, among all of the goals President Biden has for tonights State Of The Union address, there is one that rises above all others. Show americans he is still up to the job. Do not expect to hear the words age or energy or focus, but as much or maybe eve
Interviews with political figures and news updates. Or observed it. I think if this is true, its a very important development. Its always been hard to accept trump juniors characterization of this meeting as unimportant because of the timeline that it happened on and because of the participants. You have microsoft, the then campaign manager, along with trump jr. , kushner and others meeting with russians. That didnt look like an unimportant meeting that you would runt after the fact which is what trump jr. Said. If there were setup meetings in advance, this will take on increasing significance as a key part of the narrative involving collusion between the campaign and the russians. And barbara mcquaid, the fact that the proximity of the then candidate, just one floor away from when that meeting took place, the fact he then went to a Campaign Lunch later that day with his son, the likelihood they never would have discussed that becomes even more implausible just because of the relations
across the country because of that new federal vaccine mandate for workers. the tsa says 93% of its workers have been vaccinated, and tsa administrator david pikosky tells me that all of this preparation is leading up to this big rush. we re ready. you know, we ve looked at passenger volume projections. we work with carriers and with the airports, and collectively we re ready for the thanksgiving holiday. our goal is to make it as safe and secure and as enjoyable for people as we possibly can. reporter: let s get back to the sunday after thanksgiving. that is when we saw an all-time air travel record back in 2019. the tsa screened 2.9 million people nationwide on that day. the tsa says, we will come close to that number, but we re unlikely to clear it. christine, paula? thanks for that, pete. well, tsa promises notwithstanding there could still be some travel trouble this week from wind, rain and even snow.
minimum wage to air traffic controllers and other members who are pardon me accepted from the furloughs during the government slow down, finally, alleging that the faa failed to promptly pay over time to natca members in violation of the flsa law. they are required to pay members for the work they have performed as well as liquidated damages. we have more breaking news, now this coming from the tsa. 51,000 tsa officers working without pay, the tsa chief just sent out his name is david pikosky. he said, i am committed to explore ways to compensate employees for their work and determine that legally and financially we can pay for work conducted on saturday, december 22nd, that is before we actually had the shutdown go into effect. we are working hard to process every tsa employee who worked that day so they can get paid early next week.
of this program is to ensure passengers and flight crew are protected during air travel and it s not intended to surveil ordinary americans. passengers are selected for surveillance if their foreign travel and other factors raise concerns. including criminal records, curious financial transactions, e-mail or phone numbers that could be tied to terrorism. we recently talked to tsa chief david pikosky about the air marshals. we keep their presence covert because we don t want our adversaries to know they re on particular flights. reporter: but passengers aren t told if they re on the quiet skies list or what happens to the information collected about them. some federal air marshals complain the program is a waste of money. the unions saying the american public would be better served if these marshals were instead assigned to airport screening and check-in chaiareas so activ shooter events can be prevented. it should go without saying government agents shouldn t be monitoring trav