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Hey, everybody. And welcome to here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugian. So today on the show, the Federal Reserve says interest rates are going to stay unchanged for now, but could the war with Iran drive rates back up? We're going to talk about the conflicting economic data that the Fed is parsing. Plus why President Trump's pick for the new Department of Homeland Security secretary got grilled by his fellow senators in his confirmation hearing. And the WNBA and the players union just struck a deal. Was it a slam dunk? Up first, though, we had a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill today as top national security officials were pressed by lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee about the Trump administration's decision to launch a war with Iran. The testimony from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the CIA director John Ratcliffe, and the FBI director, Kash Patel is coming. A day after one of Gabbard's deputies, the head of the national center for Counterterrorism, resigned, saying that he was unable to support the war in, quote, unquote, good conscience because he said Iran posed, quote, no imminent threat to our nation. So lawmakers were, of course, drilling down on this seemingly contradicting information and what kind of intelligence there really was to make the decision to get into this war. So for that, I want to bring in NBC News intelligence and national security reporter Dan Delous, who who is watching the hearing and is joining us now. Hi, Dan.
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Hello.
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It was quite a packed hearing. It was contentious at times as well. Let's first start with some of your biggest takeaways.
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You know, it was really interesting. I don't think there's ever been in a situation where when the country was at war, the top intelligence official would demur and deflect when asked if the country that we're attacking presents some kind of imminent danger. Right. It was, I think it was just extraordinary how Tulsi Gabbard was just so careful and neutral in her language.
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I'm glad that you brought up Tulsi Gabbard, because I want to start there. She read her opening statements, which we had previewed before the testimony began, and there were parts of her opening statement that she subsequently omitted. When she read out that opening statement, Democratic Senator Mark Warner pointed out her omission. And I want to play for folks that exchange.
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And your last paragraph on page six. As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There's been no efforts to try to rebuild their enrichment capability. You omitted that Paragraph from your oral opening. Was that because the President said there was an imminent threat? Two weeks?
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No, sir, I recognize that the time
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was running long and I skipped through
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some of the portions.
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C
You chose to take my oral delivered remarks. You chose to omit the parts that contradict the President.
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To be clear, here, he is talking about Operation Midnight Hammer, which was the operation that was carried out in early summer when the United States launched on Iran's nuclear sites. And this question kept coming up repeatedly throughout this testimony. What did we learn about the intelligence surrounding Iran's nuclear program and what they actually still have in place and how close they were to being a threat when it comes to specifically their nuclear program?
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That was a really key moment because it showed again that Tulsi Gabbard is clearly in an uncomfortable position. She has not publicly come out and really endorsed the decision to go to war. Right. And so in this situation, she removesomits this passage in her opening statement that also said that since June, since the US Bombed those nuclear sites in June, Iran had not resumed or been able to revive its uranium enrichment efforts. And that was also an indication then that it was not an imminent threat in terms of its nuclear program. So we know that before June, Iran had a large amount of highly enriched uranium, enough to make maybe up to a dozen atomic bombs. But then there were months or maybe a year away from actually building a warhead. Right. And then there were these huge strikes in June that Trump ordered that really damaged three major nuclear sites. And the assessment afterwards was from the CIA was, okay, their nuclear program is severely damaged. And we didn't really hear anything today at this hearing that indicated why Iran was an imminent threat, especially when it comes to its nuclear program, because those sites were heavily damaged.
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I want to play for you an exchange between Senator John Ossoff and Tulsi Gabbard.
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Was it the intelligence community's assessment that nevertheless, despite this obliteration, there was a, quote, imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?
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Yes or no, it is not the
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intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is
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and is not an imminent threat.
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Okay, that is up to the point. Here's the problem. Based on a volume of information that he received, it is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States.
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I'm wondering as to whether or not she didn't say that because she didn't have the intelligence to support that claim, or she does not want to contradict years of Tulsi Gabbard standing up and saying it is not the United States responsibility to get involved in regime change. You know, obviously meeting with Bashar al Assad, I believe, at this point, nine years ago, after he attacked his own people with chemical warfare.
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B
I think it's both of those questions, and the answer might be a bit of both. We don't know. Her answers suggest that there isn't intelligence that explicitly backs up what the President and the White House have been saying. It becomes this very odd answer she has, which she says, it's not our job, the intelligence community, to say whether something is an immediate or urgent or imminent threat. That that's the commander in chief decides if something's an imminent threat. And that seems to fly and fly in the face of what we've all witnessed for years now, which is every year, all the intelligence chiefs come to the Hill and testify about the worldwide threats facing the United States. So her answer wasn't really persuasive for at least the Democrats on the committee. It was also very telling that Republican Senator John Cornyn from Texas, he asked CIA Director John Radcliffe if he thought Iran presented an immediate threat. And, of course, Radcliffe said yes, and he didn't hesitate. Cornyn did not ask that question of Gabbard. So it does then feed all this speculation. We all know, as you said, that she built her whole political career on opposing foreign interventions, on criticizing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the US Needed to, you know, rein it in, be more restrained, how it exercised military power. She endorsed Trump as someone who would keep America out of foreign entanglements. And now she's in this very awkward position. And Joe Kent, who resigned, was very much in her camp. They're part of that, a whole faction inside MAGA that really wants to see kind of a more restrained, isolationist approach to the world. And they're alarmed at how much Donald Trump's been using the military and, you know, he's ordered strikes in Nigeria and Syria. There was the operation to capture Maduro. So you do have to wonder, a, whether she'll stay in her job. Right. And then you have to also wonder what is going to be the political effect of this if the war continues for some time.
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I want to talk a little bit about something that you alluded to, and that is the communications between the intelligence community and the White House and. Or the lack of communication. And I say this because of what Democratic Senator Ron Wyden called the Trump administration's failure to predict Iran's blocking of the Strait of Hormuz as a, quote, unquote, historic mistake. He said it went against the assessment of the intelligence community. What have we learned about how it is the president is communicating, gaining classified information from guidance, from assessment from his top intelligence officials.
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Well, Radcliffe did answer a question today that was interesting. He was asked, how often do you does the president get an intelligence briefing? Radcliffe today said, well, you know, I might brief the president on a particular issue or some intelligence matter, maybe up to 14 or 15 times a week. And he said, maybe sometimes it's even three or four times in a single day about a particular topic. But what was not really answered clearly today, but which kept coming up, which is the president has been saying publicly it's a surprise that Iran attacked its neighbors and attacked oil facilities after they came under attack from Israel and the US he seemed to suggest that this wasn't predicted. And in indirect language today, both Ratcliffe and Gabbard said, well, there were U.S. intelligence assessments that said that Iran would probably attack energy sites in the region, and that's why the US Government took precautions at US Bases before the airstrikes began. And then Gabbard also said that it has been a long time intelligence assessment that Iran would try to use its leverage and close off or try to shut down commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which they have done through these drone attacks. So it did again call into question how the president has been talking about the war and about Iran's response. I think for years, people at the Pentagon and at the CIA always worried about what Iran might do in the Strait of Hormuz. And that dates back to the 1980s. As you know, during the Iraq Iran war, Iran did attack commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf and around the Strait, and they planted mines and the US Navy ended up escorting tankers. So there was nothing shocking about Iran's response in that sense, and intelligence seemed to indicate that that would be the case.
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Dan Delous, thank you.
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Thank you.
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By the way, Iran has confirmed that their intelligence minister was killed by Israel last night. It's coming just a day after Israeli strikes took out the country's top national security official and its besieged militia chief. We're going to take a very quick break. And when we come back, could the war with Iran drive interest rates back up? We are following what's happening with the Fed. Stay with us. And hey, while you're waiting, why not subscribe to here's the Scoop. Wherever you get your podcasts. That way you will never miss an episode and then rate and review us five stars. Of course, you know you want to. We'll be right back.
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And we are back with here's the scoop from NBC News. No cuts or increases for now. The Federal Reserve says it's holding interest rates steady, but the Fed is grappling with mixed economic messages. You got rising costs on the one hand and then sluggish economic indicators on the other, and then balancing that with the pressures of the Trump administration and the effects, of course, of this new ongoing war with Iran. So here's Fed Chair Jerome Powell this afternoon at a press conference.
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The implications of events in the Middle east for the US Economy are uncertain.
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In the near term, higher energy prices will push up overall inflation, but it
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is too soon to know the scope and duration of the potential effects on the economy.
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I want to bring in NBC News business and data correspondent Brian Chung, who was at that press conference and is joining us now from Washington. Brian, I want to get into Fed rates here holding steady. Walk us through how we got here. Hey.
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Yes. Yeah. The Fed not doing anything with interest rates. They're still where they were before we had this meeting. And it wasn't a surprise. I mean, as is the case oftentimes with the Federal Reserve, we kind of know what they're going to do before they do it because they don't want to surprise markets. But in this case especially, they don't want to surprise markets. And that's because of all the uncertainty that's been introduced as a result of the war with Iran. You can imagine that with oil prices spiking. Right. If that makes it more expensive for not just you and me to drive around, but also more expensive for the diesel that goes into trucks that move food and move other types of products around the country. Then there's the potential for inflation at a aggregate level to rise further from here. And so for the Fed, they don't want to cut interest rates into an environment where inflation could be going up as a result of all of this, because historically, lower interest rates has led to higher inflation. They don't want to put kerosene on the fire here. That's the reason why they decided to hold interest rates steady.
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So I want to draw a little bit more on that, because we know the President's not happy about this. He is a President who wants to see interest rates cut every time this decision comes up, and he has made that clear. But when you talk about the motivation for keeping interest rates steady here, you paint kind of the larger picture for folks. Right. The economy was already in this shaky territory. You had the most recent jobs report showing sharp downward revisions for December and January, talking about inflation, as you did, still stubbornly above the Fed's 2% target. You mentioned the war. Crude prices are up more than 40% as of today. Then we got the latest producer price index, which essentially is referring to wholesale prices rising a lot faster than expected. As we put all of these pieces together, Brian, walk us through how that may have played a part in this decision today, which it seems as if the Fed chair hadn't necessarily settled on the board had not necessarily settled on until the last really few days in the lead up to this decision.
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Yeah. And look, the picture has changed dramatically. The last time the Fed met on interest rates was in January, where they also decided not to move on interest rates. But since then, you have this whole new geopolitical conflict that didn't exist prior to that. And now you talked first about the President wanting to aggressively lower interest. Interest rates from the Federal Reserve. That has been the story since the President took this second term.
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Yeah.
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And by extension from his first term as well. He has been berating constantly, Jerome Powell, who was his own pick, by the way, for the Fed to lower interest rates more aggressively. The Fed has not done that. They did cut interest rates three times last year. But I think that the political undercurrent of all that can't be ignored. But I think, putting all that aside, I think there is also an interesting story from the labor market, as you point out, where there's been considerable weakness. I mean, we saw a negative number on that last jobs report, as you mentioned, revisions to previous jobs reports as well. But when you see a negative number on how many jobs are added in a month, no one wants to see that that is obviously a bad thing. In a normal time, the Fed would respond to that by lowering interest rates. But again, because of the inflationary worry, and I think that this shows where the Fed is thinking. They're more worried about INFL than they are about further deterioration in the jobs market. Because whereas the jobs market might be flashing and saying you could potentially cut here, the inflation side of the story is saying, you should definitely not cut here. And I think the decision today to not cut interest rates shows that they're more concerned about that, because not only is it the war with Iran, but you still have all those tariffs which could have that lagged impact, perhaps showing up in the data later on this spring. That's something the Fed is thinking about, too.
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I was gonna ask if there was a sense that they may have cut interest rates if the war with Iran was not going on.
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Yeah, well, look, I mean, there's always counterfactuals. No one could have predicted that this was going to happen. But when you think about the story going into 2026, New Year's Day, for example, you had a lot of forecasters saying, yeah, we could see the Federal Reserve cutting a few times this year. You could throw those forecasts out the window. It's completely irrelevant now, what we have seen in the Strait of Hormuz with the choking up of a major thorough point of commerce, 20% of the world's oil, about 20% of the world's fertilize going through there. You have no idea how long this is going to go for. And as a forecaster at the Federal Reserve and a policymaker that has to decide on interest rates now you're saying we have no idea how the rest of the year is gonna pan out. There's the possibility, Yasmin, that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates before the end of this year. I was speaking with the Cleveland Fed president, Beth Hammack. She's one of these people that gets to vote on interest rates. To be fair, our conversation was before the war broke out, but she was saying there's a chance if inflation is worse than I think, that you would want to raise interest rates. That would be kind of a dark horse outcome that is certainly possible this year, depending on how all this plays out.
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There are a lot of people, though, likely on the Federal Reserve Board that would disagree, which speaks to my next question, which is kind of the internal dissent. Right. Historically, the Federal Reserve Board has voted unanimously in favor of either increasing or decreasing interest rates. But it seems as if there Is more dissent now in the ranks there?
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Yeah, and it's because of that tension that I described between the labor market, where the jobs numbers are not looking that great, and the inflation numbers, where there's a concern that it could go up again. Higher inflation would normally call for higher interest rates, whereas a weakening jobs market would usually recommend lower interest rates. And so for that reason, you have this divergence of viewpoints on the Federal Reserve where, yes, they may have decided to hold interest rates steady, but you have dissent from some pretty big names on the Federal Reserve decision making board. It's a type of divergence that you don't tend to see. But I would say more so than interpreting that as Jerome Powell losing control of the board or not being able to corral consensus, it's really more a story of how uncertain this economic moment is and how people, including some of the smartest people in economics who are at the Fed right now, really kind of have no idea where we go from here.
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When we're talking about the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, he has been the target of President Trump for quite some time. The president wanted him to cut interest rates. The Fed chair said, no, it's not the time now when he felt as if it was the time. They subsequently cut interest rates multiple times over the last year or so. He has also been the subject of a DOJ investigation into alleged mismanagement of renovations at the Fed. Then you had a federal judge who blocked subpoenas that were served to Powell saying the DOJ had, quote, essentially zero evidence to suspect Powell of a crime. How big of a deal is it that he has been put into this position?
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It's a big deal because it's unprecedented in the Federal Reserve's history. We have never seen this type of public lambasting and using of the Department of Justice to go after a sitting Fed chair, who even more remarkably, is someone that the President had picked himself. I think that within the moment that we're seeing right now, we have to remember that there's a considerable amount of uncertainty over who will even be leading this institution come the fall of this year. And that's because there's been a lot of attention on the president's nominee, Kevin Warsh, to replace Jerome Powell. And Jerome Powell's term ends in May. So in theory, this is going to be one of his last meetings on paper. But you have Thom Tillis, the Republican from North Carolina, that said, I'm not going to advance that Kevin Warsh nomination until the Department of Justice drops its investigation into the Federal Reserve and into Jerome Powell for, as you mentioned, these allegations that they're overspending and wasting money with this big building renovation project. Now here's the challenge. We just saw court documents recently where the Department of Justice says that the Federal Reserve's lawyers told them that Jerome Powell is not going anywhere while the investigation is going to happen. So, translation, Powell will not step down once his term ends if the Department of Justice investigation is still ongoing. So in theory, Yasmin, you have this fascinating scenario where Jerome Powell could stay as the chairman of the Fed until the next Congress is sworn in in January of 2027 if this standoff continues. It's the craziest game of chicken that we've seen in Fed land.
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Brian Chung, thank you.
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Thanks, Yaz.
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After a break, things get testy at the confirmation hearing for Kristi Noem's successor. And deal alert. The WNBA has reached a tentative agreement with the players union. It's all coming up in the headlines.
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And we are back with here's the scoop from NBC News. Let's get to some headlines. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, President Trump's pick to take over the Department of Homeland Security from departing head Kristi Noem, got a grilling from his fellow senators during a confirmation hearing today NBC senior national political reporter Sahil Kapoor has more fireworks
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at a Senate hearing today as Mark Wayne Mullen clashed with fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul, the chairman of the committee overseeing his nomination. Paul confronted Mullen for saying he completely understands why a neighbor physically assaulted the Kentucky senator in 2017. Paul questioned his fitness for the job as DHS secretary, asking why a man with anger issues should be trusted to set the right example for ICE and Border Patrol agents. Mullen refused to apologize for his comments about Rand Paul and stood by his remarks. He said the two just don't get along. Bottom line, Republicans control 53 seats in the Senate and Mullen remains the odds on favorite to secure confirmation. But as this hearing showed, his path might not be so smooth.
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Meanwhile, the impasse over the funding of DHS is wreaking havoc for travelers. TSA workers missed their first full paycheck over the weekend because of the ongoing partial government shutdown, and they are increasingly not showing up. Houston had the highest rate over the weekend, with more than half of its agents calling out. And then a number of major airports are temporarily closing TSA lines due to staffing shortages. TSA Administrator Adam Stahl told NBC News that smaller airports may have to close entirely if the trend continues. Michigan Democratic Senator Alissa Slotkin is pushing for clear guardrails around how the US Military uses artificial intelligence. A bill that she put forward earlier this week could ban the DoD from allowing AI to make autonomous, lethal decisions, using it to conduct mass surveillance on Americans, or integrating it into nuclear weapon systems. Slotkin is on the Armed Services Committee and says that she wants to get an early start on defense budget talks later this year. Just ahead of tipping off their 30th season, the WNBA and the players union say they have reached a tentative deal on a new collective bargaining agreement that could be transformational for the players. The new salary cap will start at $7 million, up from 1 1/2 million dollars under the previous CBA, according to a person with knowledge of the terms. But it is not just the million dollar players who can make out big. The deal terms would see players making an average salary of around $600,000 and minimum contracts to come in above $300,000. Across the life of the deal, players will earn an average revenue share of 20%. The terms still need to be ratified by the players and then approved by the league's Board of governors. And finally, the Internet's favorite zoo animal is trading in his favorite stuffed animal for a real life mate. So punch the monkey who we all know so well and watch repeatedly, was hanging on to a stuffed orange orangutan like a mother after his own mother, by the way, rejected him at birth. Who does that? But recently, he was spotted kissing, cuddling, playing with a female macaque named Momo Chan. But Punch the Monkey may not have outgrown his mama. Visitors at the Japanese zoo are noting that Punch's girlfriend looks a lot like his doll. Every mother's dream that is going to do it for us at Here is the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugin. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also subscribe to our daily newsletter, the Inside Scoop. It is a deeper dive on the main stories of the day that comes out every weeknight straight to your inbox. You can sign up for the Inside Scoop as part of our paid subscription@NBC news.com we'll see you tomorrow. Pandora makes it easy for you to
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