This Morning’s Top Headlines – March 25

good morning good to have you with us I'm Joe frier and I'm Savannah sers we begin a new week here in New York where former president Trump is facing a deadline today to pay a more than $450 million bond in his civil fraud case in order to stop his assets from being targeted Mr Trump has said that he is challenging the Judgment in the case and will take it to the Supreme Court if necessary those penalties against Mr Trump and his company stem from a lawsuit brought by New York attorney general L

aticia James after a monthlong trial last month a judge ordered Trump to pay more than $354 million in Damages a number that increased because of Interest also scheduled for today a hearing to set a trial start date in the criminal hush money case against the former president Mr Trump is expected to appear in court for that hearing which is slated to start at 10:00 a.m. eastern time his motorcade arrived at Trump Tower overnight trial was originally actually supposed to get underway today but th

e judge delayed the start date by 30 days now Trump is ACC acced of falsifying business records in connection to $130,000 in alleged hush money payments that his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges against him breaking it all down for us we're joined by NBC News National correspondent Yasmin mugan in lower Manhattan and NBC News legal analyst Danny savalos is here with us in studio so Yasmin lots o

f New York centered legal news let's start with you that deadline the former president is facing today over paying the money owed in his civil fraud case he says he has the money that appears to contradict his lawyers last week so where do things stand what could we start seeing today a big day guys um this morning down here at 100 Center Street where the former president um will be later on today when the trial begins around 10: a.m. I'm not sure if the news today is the Press lineup Andor what

going to be happening inside that courtroom but let's talk first about um the deadline when it comes to the 464 million in which the former president um owes right now um for that appeals Bond he says as you said um has he has the money that was Thursday night in which he put out two subsequent tweets and in that he said he had $500 million and then said he had a lot of cash as well his attorneys though saying he does not in fact have um the money the thing is for the former president true soci

al Trump media is going to begin trading today publicly for estimating um H that valuation could bring his um his money up3 billion do so think about that he could use his for instance shares in true social and Trump media as collateral if he wants to gain that $500 million in loans from either a wealthy donor and or a bank he's going to have to seek permission from his board though to use those shares as collateral but let me tell you who's on that board one of which is his son Donald Trump Jr

along with three former members of the Trump Administration so the likelihood that the board will say yeah go ahead and do that is fairly high so we're going to be watching today because Tish James has already says that she would move to seee some of his properties whether or not he comes up with that money today is really in question but again truth social hitting the market trading publicly um we'll wait and see Danny we know the appeal here will make its way through state courts what would th

e Supreme Court's options be if this ultimately did land there they have no options because if you're talking about the United States Supreme Court there's really no way the Supreme Court could even take this case on there really isn't a jurisdictional hook you can't appeal every case in every Court up to the Supreme Court you have to have a federal reason most often that reason is based in the Constitution if you're a criminal uh defendant for example it's that your search and seizure rights ha

ve been violated something along those lines but you don't automatically have a right to go to the federal United States Supreme Court in all likelihood this is a case that involves purely state issues and the most you can appeal it to is from the new now this is where it gets confusing in the state of New York the lowest trial court is actually called the Supreme Court from there you can go to the Appel Division and then from there you can go to What's called the court of appeals that is effect

ively New York's Supreme Court in that it's the highest court of the land will it go to the court of appeals likely I think the court of appeals would take it up even if the issues aren't novel because it's Trump and things change when it's Trump but in all likelihood that's as far as it will go it will not make it to the United States Supreme Court all right Yasmin let's talk about the hush money case Manhattan district attorney Alvin brg did not oppose the Trump legal teams request for that 30

-day delay now we know Trump he wants us to postpone 90 days brg doesn't want it to go that long what can we expect today he he wants this thing to go out the window altogether that that's not going to happen today was supposed to be the the the start of the trial Daye jury selection but because of that subsequent delay likely today we're going to learn two things first and foremost is the actual trial date we'll get a trial date set today the second is an explanation over why 170,000 documents

were handed over to Trump's attorneys so late in the game just in the last couple of weeks by the way so Moran wants really an explanation as to why that took place to then subsequently decide when this trial is going to uh begin and you walked folks through the delays and the Motions to delay from Trump's um attorneys I think the other thing is um Bragg and his attorneys are kind of making the argument that despite the fact that they handed over 170,000 um documents to Trump's attorneys really

only 300 pages of those documents pertain to this actual case in which they should be able to read through those go over those in the next subsequent couple of weeks to be able to start a trial within the next 20 days or so so those are the two things we're going to be looking for the arguments made by uh da Bragg's office as to why this happened this delay happened and then the trial dat guys Danny let's talk about some details about what we could see you know when this does actually get underw

ay so the judge presiding over the case he had denied the former president's bid to try to prevent both Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen from taking the stand uh but they there are some restrictions here especially when it comes to Daniel's testimony how's that going to impact things this is a rare glimpse into what are called motions in lemin these are motions that attorneys like me file in advance of a trial to pair down the issues and ordinarily you ask high and hope to get somewhere in the m

iddle I don't know that Trump's attorneys really thought there was a chance that they'd be able to preclude uh Stormy Daniels or Michael coh especially Michael Cohen he is the star witness in my view of this Manhattan DA's case so in all likelihood they weren't going to preclude him completely from appearing but what you can do instead is ask the judge to consider different areas of testimony that should not be entered into and normally those have to do with either relevance or maybe they're too

prejudicial or maybe they're redundant so uh there are some victories here for the Trump team and you can win a lot of a criminal case in the Motions in Lion a process because if the judge excludes critical information from the case then that that jury is never going to hear that bad stuff all right Danny Yasmin thank you both for kicking us off this hour we appreciate it well this morning four suspects are in custody and charged in connection with Friday's deadly terror attack on a concert hal

l in Moscow at least 137 people are dead yesterday Russia honored those who were killed with a day of mourning NBC News International correspondent Matt Bradley has more Moscow mourned a rare silence over this city is after Russia endured its deadliest terror attack in 20 years that's why we're with the country we're together said this mner the death to again to 137 according to Russia's government including three children as emergency workers continued searching for more dead under the rubble o

f this vast concert hall and investigators search for Clues One Survivor recounting that terrifying moments gunfire erupted people trying to run for safety and then seeing bodies on the ground it was clear they had no signs of life we realized then that there would be no hostage taking he said we had to do something to run away because it was somebody coming to kill two of the suspects were seen in a video released by Russian authorities as police transferred them to investigators but more than

80 people are still missing among them Igor pv's wife yeah C I ran among the ambulances searched among the crews and asked questions he said but I couldn't find anyone Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility for Friday night's attack a claim American intelligence backed up the group even released a video showing the gunmen filming themselves as as they maraud through the crocus City Hall hunting victims and shooting them at Point Blank Range but Russian officials including President Vladimi

r Putin have repeatedly implicated Ukraine America's government fears Putin will exploit the attacks as a pretext to Rally support for his war in Ukraine Matt Bradley NBC News well the UN is mourning that more people in Gaza could die from starvation after Israel said it would no longer allow food convoys from the un's Palestinian refugee agency to enter the northern part of The Enclave unra as it's known as the largest Aid group operating in Gaza the head of the agency made the announcement yes

terday in a post on X he called the decision quote outrageous and called on the restrictions to be lifted and said many more people will die of hunger and dehydration the worsening humanitarian situation comes as the United Nations security Council prepares to vote again on a new ceasefire proposal well the UN Secretary General says pressure is growing on Israel to Halt its assault on Gaza I see a growing consensus emerging International Community to tell the Israelis that the ceasefire is neede

d and I also see a growing consensus I heard it in the US I heard it from the European Union not to mention of course the Muslim World a growing consensus to tell clearly to the Israelis that any ground invasion of Rafa could mean a catastrophic humanitarian disaster joining us now is NBC News International correspondent rap Sanchez as well as Hagar shamali she's the host of om my world on YouTube and the former NC director for Syria and Lebanon good morning to you both Raph I will begin with yo

u so walk us through this decision by Israel to Halt amra's food convoys from entering Northern Goda remind us what happened there and then tell us the reaction to this kind of move and the impact it could have Savannah good morning yeah unra says the last time it was Del able to deliver food to Northern Gaza was January 29th so nearly 2 months ago it says since then it is applied multiple times to the Israelis to the military to get that food up to Northern Gaza it has been denied each time wit

hout being given specific reasons and they say they found out on Sunday from Israel there is now a blanket ban on any unra food deliveries to the north of Gaza despite that warning that famine is now looming there unra is saying this is only going to lead to more deaths as you said they are calling this outrageous and they say this is making what is already a man-made crisis much much worse now unra has been in the sights of the Israeli government for decades there is no love loss between these

institutions Israel accuses anra of of perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem rather than trying to solve it and they have accused unra employees of actually taking part in the October 7th attacks crossing over into Israel kidnapping hostages themselves the Israeli government today is saying unra is quote tainted with terrorism and saying that it needs to be dissolved so they are not at all trying to hide that they are blocking this agency from delivering food what you will hear from other

humanitarian organizations is whatever animosity there is between Israel and unra unra is the only show in town in Gaza it is the only organization with the scale with the capacity to address this crisis and that if you cut unra out of the equation it is only going to lead to an already dire situation especially in Northern Gaza getting worse guys haar let's bring you in here the United Nations Security Council is expected to vote again today on another resolution that would call for an immedia

te humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza for the remainder of Ramadan comes after the United States own resolution was blocked will this one be any different no the United States is expected to veto the resolution today which has been drafted by China and Russia and the reason for that is that it does not at all mention the hostages it doesn't ask for them to be released or demand that Hamas release them in exchange for this ceasefire um and there's also another aspect to this which is that the US alon

g with Egypt and cutter are continuing to mediate negotiations between Israel and Hamas on a six we ceasefire uh apparently over the weekend there had been some improvements made uh or just you know inches made closer on the agreement on how many of the 40 hostages that Hamas would release out of 130 how many of those 40 would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners Israel had agreed to the number and now the the that that proposal is in hamas's lap waiting for their response on it and so the vie

w is that if this resolution were to pass it would undo all of that work and Hamas would have no incentive to agree to that ceasefire but either way the US will veto it the problem with that is that it will only make the US government look awful in this situation when they're actively trying to work on this other path Raph this is all happening alongside ongoing ceasefire talks uh as we've been discussing part of this resolution but also generally we understand you do have an update for us there

what are you hearing yeah Savannah so the CIA director Bill Burns was in Qatar over the weekend it's one of many many trips he has made either to the Middle East or Europe to try to get these talks on track as AAR was saying it does sound like there has been some slight improvement over the weekend I spoke to an Israeli official this morning they say they are putting the chances of a deal in the near future at 550 now that is not super optimistic but it is more positive than we were hearing fro

m the Israelis the other week they say at this point they are waiting for a formal Hamas response to a proposal that was hammered out with the help of the CIA director in Qatar over the weekend I'll caution we've been here many many times before where the US Israel Egypt and Qatar are able to agree something amongst themselves they send it to Hamas it's a non-starter and we end up stuck as we've continued to be guys and Hagar you know yesterday vice president kamla Harris appeared on ABC News an

d warned Israel against a ground offensive in Rafa let's hear more of what she said any major military operation in Rafa would be a huge mistake let me tell you something I have studied the maps there's nowhere for those folks to go and we're looking at about a million and a half people in Rafa who are there because they were told to go there are you ruling out that there would be consequences from the United States I am ruling out nothing so Hagar if there were consequences from the US what cou

ld those even be well you have a few angles here so from the US side when you have a situation like this where where Israel may end up causing not just this humanitarian catastrophe but one of the things secretary blinkin was warning Netanyahu about was that this could have problems for decades to come and could create could make this war a long Insurgency where you've basically driven these individuals these the civilians into the arms of the enemy and now they they're going to be taking up arm

s the terrorists are the ones who are going to be welcoming them causing a decades long problem and so what happens with that is that back in the US you're not going to be able to have much control over how things are viewed on Capitol Hill for example when they appropriate foreign aid they're likely to discuss as or or they already are about making it conditional that it's where it becomes tenuous I don't think the Friendship is going to go anywhere but when you make that Aid conditional and th

e US is really the only friend standing left it makes things very difficult for Israel's future Hagar and Raph thank you both very much on the campaign Trail both President Biden and former president Trump are still on the path to a 2024 election rematch they've already clinched their respective party nominations and over the weekend both nominees easily won the Louisiana primary elections the president still waiting for the results of the Missouri primary which should be released next week NBC

News senior National politics reporter Jonathan Allen joins us now so John uh Louisiana do to tell us anything that we don't already know I would desperately love to tell you that uh pouring over the results of Louisiana looking at maps all weekend uh that I could tell you something prophetic uh that came out of those numbers but the truth is no uh Joe Biden easily won the Democratic primary Donald Trump easily won the Republican primary uh with no real competition on either side uh there's not

much that you can extrapolate there it was not a heavy turnout election there probably uh 300,000 or so people that voted between the two sides uh there are about 2 million people that vote in general elections in Louisiana all right John I know you got something for us maybe with swing voters recent polling giving us an in-depth look tell us what we're seeing but also remind us how critical some of these voters could be in this particular election this rematch yeah great question Savannah I mea

n there were so many close uh states in the last election and the last two elections and really going back uh to about 2000 we've had historically close elections in terms of electoral votes outside of Maybe Barack Obama's re-election and I'm sorry first election in uh 2008 so uh swing voters are are the um the premium voters those are the ones that the that particularly in swing States uh can really make the difference between who wins and loses the presidency um you know what we see from swing

voters is uh a lot of what we see is dissatisfaction with the two candidates but um you know right now polling shows uh broadly that Donald Trump is in the lead uh and you know that's part of that is Swing voters having moved a little bit from where they in 2000 John while we have you Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher announced that he is resigning early he's a republican he hasn't been afraid to criticize his own party what impact could this have on Republicans in the house who have this na

rrow lead yeah normally you would say uh a congressman deciding that he was going to resign early instead of simply not seeking re-election which is what he had said before was not really a big deal uh but the margins are so narrow in the house that when Gallagher leaves in April uh it will put the Republicans in the place where they can afford to lose only one vote on any uh on any particular uh measure that comes to the floor um so if you're Mike Johnson the speaker of the house uh your your u

h your margin for error just got cut in half and as we've seen it's very difficult for him to get anything done um you know as it stands so uh this is actually like much bigger news than it would normally be all right John thank you so much appreciate it let's get you to weather now first weekend of spring felt like the height of winter for a lot of people across the country let's check on your Morning News Now weather with Michelle Gman Michelle good morning good morning guys yeah we're seeing

heavy snow in a lot of spots some spots saw more snow in this storm than they saw all winter long so uh we're looking at the Northern Plains parts of the central plains into the Upper Midwest looking at really heavy snow today it's a big storm extending all the way down to the Southern Plains as well the Lower Mississippi Valley on the warm side we're looking at the chance of widespread rain we're seeing that right now even seeing a couple lightning strikes early this morning it's later on today

with that daytime heating where we're going to see the chance for some strong storms that includes a chance of tornadoes back to the West we have some snow falling the Inner Mountain West we have some snow and rain along the Pacific Northwest we're looking at California also Washington into Oregon and the East Coast looking really good it was so soggy over the weekend especially Saturday looking nice from New England all the way down to the southeast with lots of sunshine so many people Million

s under alerts this morning because that because of that storm system in the middle of the country 12 million under winter alerts that's where you're seeing the white extending from the Northern Plains the Upper Midwest into the central ples we have wind alerts for 67 million people could see some power outages as we go throughout this Monday so it is a stormy Monday for many radar showing us how stormy it is we see that blue that is where the snow is falling the lighter blue the white color tha

t's where the heaviest snow is falling kind of sandwich in the middle you see a little purple there that is sleep and also some freezing rain and then on the warm side we're looking at some really heavy rain that's where you're seeing those darker colors here's that area of low pressure it's a big storm in size all stretching from the Northern Tier of the nation all the way to the Southern Tier of the nation intense snowfall 1 to 2 Ines per hour could see some torrential rainfall as well that co

uld lead to some flooding but we're also concerned about some strong tornadoes later on today tomorrow we'll see that area of low pressure move off to the east we'll see that snow slowly tapering off in the Upper Midwest coming to an end and then we're looking at strong storms in the Ohio Valley and also the East Central go co uh Gulf Coast then by Wednesday it's back to the umbrellas along the Gulf Coast we're not looking or the East Coast we're not looking at what we saw on Saturday but still

some wet weather especially in parts of New England you can see those brighter colors showing up and then Al parts of the Carolinas into the southeast widespread rainfall it's excessive in some spots that's going to lead to some flooding and we're also looking at that severe weather threat as we go throughout the afternoon 9 million people under the threat for severe storms especially where you see the orange Greenville Jackson Alexandria Hattisburg looking at the chance for some really Gusty wi

nds winds gusting up to 60 miles per hour some hail and also some strong tornadoes we're going to watch us closely throughout the day all right thank you Michelle appreciate it thank you thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on on the NBC News app or follow us on social media