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- [00:01]
Kristen Welker
This week on a special edition of MEET THE press, Kristen Welker talks with advocates, innovators and trailblazers striving to meet the moment, how they're using their influence to make meaningful change. This week on a special edition of MEET THE press. Listen to the full episode now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:24]
Yasmin Vesugian
Hey, everybody. I'm Yasmin Vesugian. Welcome to here's the scoop from NBC News. We have a lot to get to today, from the Americans making waves in London to what every woman should know about taking charge of her breast health. Up first, though, we turn back to Central Texas, where devastating floods have left over 120 people dead and 170 still missing. And now FEMA's facing a storm of its own as federal crews scramble to help. The agency's future is in question. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says FEMA should be eliminated. Texas Governor Greg Abbott agrees, kind of. He thanked Trump for unlocking emergency funds this week, but slammed FEMA back in May while serving on its review board.
- [01:05]
Julia Ainslie
FEMA is slow and clunky and doesn't solve the needs of those who need it the most and deliver what is necessary.
- [01:14]
Yasmin Vesugian
But critics worry that cutting FEMA loose could lead to patchy, unequal responses, especially with more and more climate disasters. And now with hurricane season ramping up, NOAA is predicting an above average number of storms. The big question is FEMA being reimagined or quietly dismantled? Joining us now, NBC News senior Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainslie. Hey, Julia.
- [01:37]
Julia Ainslie
Hey, Yasmin. Thanks for having me, Julia.
- [01:39]
Yasmin Vesugian
We had the massive Texas floods and then we had the flooding in New Mexico. And of course, we're at the beginnings of what may be a really historic hurricane season. And amidst all of this, there have been a lot of changes to fema, especially with the Trump administration not wanting if not to wholly dismantle fema, but to make it a lot smaller.
- [02:01]
Julia Ainslie
Yeah, I mean, they say their goal is still to eliminate fema. The question is when? And it doesn't look like it's going to happen ahead of this hurricane season, which we're already in the middle of. But they do still want to eliminate it. In fact, they're part of first acting head of FEMA, who told Congress he didn't think that was a good idea and wasn't in the best interest of the American people. He was fired the next day. And so there's clearly this political effort to keep the messaging out that FEMA is this big bureaucracy, states should be the ones making decisions about how to respond to their disasters. The question is, what does that look like in reality? And you would have to give states a lot of time to be able to ramp up, get money in their coffers to be able to respond to large scale disasters. And it's not clear what the timeline for that would be. And also should states start saving planning now when they don't know that timeline themselves?
- [02:59]
Yasmin Vesugian
If you're wanting to displace FEMA and essentially have the states more involved in helping with cleanup and aid efforts, the issue is, do these states actually have the money, as you mentioned? Right.
- [03:11]
Julia Ainslie
The idea about putting more control in the hands of local and state agencies to respond to national disasters is not new to the Trump administration. It's been a Republican idea that's been talked about for a long time. And there are some disaster experts who say yes, sometimes there's so much red tape at the federal level and sometimes states and their emergency responders know what their communities need very quickly. But they all say there is still a need for a federalized force who can go in, particularly to those underserved communities, particularly when there is a widespread disaster. Think of a multi state hurricane. Think about what Hurricane Helene did last year and how it hit communities starting at the Gulf coast all the way up through Georgia and then the western part of North Carolina, communities that are not typically ready to see hurricanes in the mountains. Now, when you look at what happened in Texas, that is actually a case where state and local authorities did take most of the recovery and rescue operations on, but it was so small. The geographic area, of course the devastation is enormous. Texas has a lot of money. And so that is a time where, yes, localized efforts work, but it's not one size fits all. And every emergency disaster expert that we talk to says there is still a need for fema and they really worry about eliminating the agency without enough thought into what that looks like in giving states enough time to prepare.
- [04:41]
Yasmin Vesugian
When you talk about Texas, Governor Greg Abbott actually thanked the President. He thanked the federal government most recently for the help that they have provided so far in the cleanup efforts and the search and recovery efforts down in Texas. But in lockstep, Governor Greg Abbott is also a part of this council that is helping to figure out ways to reshape and or completely eliminate fema.
- [05:04]
Julia Ainslie
Yeah, I think it's kind of a difficult political situation for Abbott. If the goal is to make himself better in the eyes of Trump and to try to be aligned with him. He wants to thank him for his efforts. But of course he can't thank him too much, because then that would be thanking the very agency that Trump wants to eliminate.
- [05:21]
Yasmin Vesugian
Talk about this $100,000 cap that's in place now essentially that they're instructing FEMA that anything that's over 100 grand, they have to go to Kristi Noem. Right. The Secretary of Homeland Security, to get approval.
- [05:34]
Julia Ainslie
First of all, let me just tell you in so many levels how unprecedented that is. The Secretary of DHS was not historically very involved with fema. FEMA may take an estimate to the White House of how much they thought they were going to spend in recovery. The White House, usually that was a rubber stamp. Of course, they don't want to stand in the way of a recovery effort. FEMA goes out and does this. The Secretary of Homeland Security very rarely got involved.
- [05:58]
Yasmin Vesugian
But Fema is under DHS.
- [05:59]
Julia Ainslie
They are. But in this case, she's putting $100,000 cap on anything FEMA wants to spend that she wants to approve. And now there's a task force to come up with parameters about what could be spent and when. But it's adding more red tape to the agency that Trump already accused of being overloaded with bureaucracy and red tape.
- [06:21]
Yasmin Vesugian
There is bureaucracy when it comes to fema, and it sometimes takes a long time to get that money back. And many of the folks that are affected by these natural disasters oftentimes live on the margins, some of them, and they can't bridge the gap when it comes to 6, 7, 8 months of not having that money and your home and your belongings are completely destroyed and you really have nothing. Are they addressing those concerns?
- [06:43]
Julia Ainslie
Yes. There is a bipartisan effort in Congress to try to take FEMA out of dhs. This is similar to an effort to try to take the Secret Service out of DHS and put it back in Treasury. There's this understanding, and it's founded in some truth that DHS is just this behemoth agency that exploded in the wake of 9 11, took on so many different departments with so many different missions, but at the core has really become about immigration and that there needs to be a separation of some of these agencies.
- [07:18]
Yasmin Vesugian
Oftentimes, door knocking is a big part of what FEMA does in getting folks the assistance that they need and letting them know what is actually out there. Especially as we look ahead to hurricane season. Right. You get knocked out by a Cat 5 hurricane, you don't have wifi, you don't have any phone service. How have those efforts changed since FEMA has been downsized?
- [07:38]
Julia Ainslie
Well, they've certainly changed in the wake of Hurricane Helene. I think that was the first time we ever saw that outreach be politicized. And there was a lot of misinformation going around in the recovery efforts in western North Carolina. And of course, this is just weeks before the election when Trump basically starts accusing FEMA of not going to help people with Trump signs in their yard. With that in mind, Trump's coming into the White House and the czar reporting has brought out. They have eliminated this door knocking. They don't think that that is the best way to provide outreach, that it may be better to set up a center where people can come and get help.
- [08:16]
Yasmin Vesugian
How much is FEMA involved when it comes to these natural disasters?
- [08:21]
Julia Ainslie
I think that we sometimes think of FEMA as the group that comes in after the storm. And they can also be used for preparation. And in this case, people aren't pointing fingers. So much of the recovery efforts as they are on. Were there warning signs? Could there have been different measures taken by people in Kerrville, the government there and in Texas to put in warning systems? And as we know, there was a proposal that was voted down in Kerrville, Texas to put in alarms that could have awoken people in the middle of the night so that they could have escaped before that devastating flood.
- [08:56]
Yasmin Vesugian
Julia Ainsley, thank you.
- [08:58]
Julia Ainslie
Thank you. All right.
- [09:02]
Yasmin Vesugian
We're going to take a quick break and be right back.
- [09:11]
Danny Gold
Do you want to know what it's like to hang out with Ms. 13 in El Salvador? How the Russian mafia fought battles all over Brooklyn in the 1990s?
- [09:18]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
What about that time I got lost in the Burmese jungle hunting the world's biggest meth lab?
- [09:22]
Yasmin Vesugian
I'm Sean Williams.
- [09:23]
Danny Gold
And I'm Danny Gold and we're the hosts of the Underworld podcast. We're journalists that have traveled all over reporting on dangerous people and places. And every week we'll be bringing you a new story about organized crime from.
- [09:33]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
All over the world, available wherever you get your podcasts.
- [09:37]
Kristen Welker
I'm Josh Mankiewicz and I hope you'll join us for season four of Dateline Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends and the investigators all desperate to find them. You will want to listen closely. Maybe you could help investigators solve a mystery. Search DATELINE Missing in America to listen on Apple Podcasts.
- [10:11]
Yasmin Vesugian
And we're back with here's the Scoop. We're going to shift gears here to talk about a story that touches everyone. The actor Olivia Munn says her mom was recently diagnosed with stage one breast cancer just a year after Mun went public with her own battle. She says they were only able to catch the cancer because of a free online lifetime risk assessment test. She wrote on Instagram that it saved her mom's life. The test showed that her mom had a high risk for cancer, so Munn insisted her mom get an MRI even though a mammogram had recently come back clear. That mri, which she wouldn't have gotten otherwise, is what revealed the cancer. Her story made a lot of people, including me, say, wait a minute, should I be taking this test? That is why I called up Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani. She's a board certified OB GYN and specializes in women's healthcare. She's also my friend. Hi, Dr. Ghaffani.
- [11:01]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
How are you?
- [11:01]
Yasmin Vesugian
I'm good. Tell me why. It's important to ask some of the questions that they're asking in this risk assessment.
- [11:07]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
So they ask things like, when did you have your first period? When did you have your last period? Or if you're currently menstruating. Because we know that the more frequently someone ovulates, the more potential risks we have. Meaning. We also know indirectly that when you have interrupted ovulation, for example, through being pregnant, you decrease your risk of breast cancer. So if you've had your period earlier and you've gone through menopause later, those are risk factors. They also ask as you know family history, and they go into a pretty detailed view of family history. Not just your mother or your sister, but your mother, your sister, your aunts, potentially your uncles, or any males in your family. Because men can get breast cancer. And then they also want to know about breast density, which this particular model addresses that other models don't address. So there's a lot of parameters of it, including nowadays even race, which is very important.
- [11:57]
Yasmin Vesugian
What are some parameters when it comes to race? Who is more likely to develop breast cancer?
- [12:02]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
Well, we know that black women are unfortunately more likely to die of breast cancer for a lot of physiologic, but also just systemic bias reasons. We know that Ashkenazi Jewish women have a higher risk of breast cancer and especially because they have a higher risk of certain genetic issues that you've heard of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. And this is something really good to know. The American College of Radiology, they recommend that every woman or every person with breasts actually has a risk assessment like this by age 25.
- [12:32]
Yasmin Vesugian
That's early.
- [12:33]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
That's early. But it doesn't mean you're having a mammogram or ultrasound. It just means you're having a risk assessment. Because the guidelines for mammogram is that you start a mammogram at age 40 if you are at average risk, but if you are higher risk, meaning the things we talked about, like a family history, you might need to have a mammogram or a supplemental ultrasound or an MRI at an earlier age. So every woman should have this kind of tool done. They could do it on their own if they're not getting it done in the doctor's office, because as you see it from the computer, you can sit there and do that on your own.
- [13:04]
Yasmin Vesugian
So if you take this risk assessment test and you get above 20%, what are you supposed to do? And why is 20% the marker?
- [13:13]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
So our lifetime risk as women in America is 13%. Once it's above 20%, that means we want to be more proactive to find it, because we might not just find it if we only do the annual screening tests. So the supplemental screening typically would be a breast mri. And then going forward, you would do a mammogram and ultrasound once a year. Six months later, you would do an mri, which would also be once a year. So that essentially at every six months, you'd be getting something surveilled. So that if we find something, we're catching it early. Now, here's the hard part. The insurance company might still very well say no, and then you pay for it yourself or you don't get it done. And you and I both know in this country what ends up happening. A lot of people do not have the resources to get it done because it is not an inexpensive test. So one way around that some of us find, and this is, again, depending on the resources in any demographic area, is that if we send a patient to a breast surgeon, which are specialists who only, only, only operate and take care of breasts, they are often the ones who also do screening programs for patients at risk. They do physical exam as well as sending people for these tests. And they're sometimes able to get this covered differently with the insurance companies because they're able to write more aggressive letters and things like that. But it is a common problem.
- [14:31]
Yasmin Vesugian
What I'm hearing from you is essentially, this is about advocating for yourself. At the end of the day, yes, it's getting a good doctor, but you have to advocate on your own behalf. What is problematic with that statement, Dr. Giffrani, is that what if you are a person of color? Childbirth, for instance, the data is out there that women of color die at a faster rate, and you're. And you are dismissed.
- [14:54]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
Yes, that's true.
- [14:56]
Yasmin Vesugian
So what if you are in that position? You're advocating for yourself, and yet you are not being trusted by your doctors or your healthcare providers.
- [15:03]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
There is no easy way around this other than to. And I say this knowing that many people, whether of color or not, regardless of age and even regardless of resources, as we know from cases like Serena, Beyonce, that the only way around this is if you believe you need something. A test, an assessment, something, and you don't feel that your clinician has adequately told you why you do or do not need something, you need to find another clinician. And that is not an easy thing to do. But there's no way around that.
- [15:34]
Yasmin Vesugian
Let's end on the positive, which is even if you get a diagnosis.
- [15:38]
Julia Ainslie
Yes.
- [15:39]
Yasmin Vesugian
Even if there seems to be something problematic in your screenings, it is likely, very likely, you will be okay.
- [15:49]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
You will be okay. That is the good news. That is a fact. Breast cancer in America is incredibly survivable when found early, and the vast majority are found early. Right now, breast cancer diagnosis is over 90% survivable, and that's sitting in all all breast cancers. If you look at early, like DCIS, early stage one, it's as high as 99% survivable. So get your test done, be proactive, know your family history, check your own breasts, but do not fear.
- [16:21]
Yasmin Vesugian
Ladies. Breathe. Men, you breathe, too. Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani. Thank you.
- [16:25]
Julia Ainslie
Mm.
- [16:26]
Dr. Shiva Ghaffrani
Thank you.
- [16:29]
Yasmin Vesugian
And as always, we gotta say, listeners, if you have any questions, be sure to talk to your doctor. All right, we're gonna move on to some headlines now. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with the Russian foreign minister today and says Russia is presenting a, quote, new and different approach to ending the war in Ukraine. But he said he's still frustrated with the lack of progress in ceasefire talks. Earlier this week, Trump said he'd resume weapons shipments to Ukraine and lashed out at Russian President Vladimir Putin for intensifying Russian strikes on the country. Putin launched a massive aerial assault on Kyiv early Thursday with more than 400 Russian drones and missiles.
- [17:12]
Julia Ainslie
That's it. Amanda Edisimova has done.
- [17:21]
Yasmin Vesugian
It is an all American day at the All England Club. Wimbledon is approaching championship weekend with American tennis stars Amanda Anissimova and Taylor Fritz still hanging tough on the grass. Anisimova overtook the world number one, Aryna Sabalenka, to reach her very first Grand Slam final. She took an extended mental health break from tennis back in 2023. And she's back now, hungry as ever for a comeback across the pond. On the men's side, Taylor Fritz, the highest ranked American, facing off tomorrow morning against Carlos Alcaraz, who just happens to be the two time reigning Wimbledon champ. Fritz also wants to clinch his first Grand Slam title after losing out in the US Open last September. The anticipation though building for American domination. We hope to report on another American victory tomorrow morning. Go Taylor. That's going to do it for here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugian. My long lost co host Brian Chung is finally back from vacation and he's going to be in the chair tomorrow with whatever the day may bring.
- [18:38]
Dan Snow
So folks, you might have noticed the weather's changing out there. The sun appears to be out. The days are longer. This is in the northern hemisphere, of course, and it's got me excited for road trips, days out exploring and long walks to castles on windswept crags. And if you're looking forward to all that too, I've got the perfect companion podcast to join you on your adventures this summer. I'm Dan Snow, host of the Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast where I whisk you away into the greatest stories in history. Join me on the high seas as we follow the swashbuckling escapades of Francis Drake. On the Spanish Main, we unravel the myths of the Spartans. At the Battle of Thermopylae, I'll tell you everything you need to know about how the American Revolution started and what it would have taken for you to survive the Black Death in medieval Europe. Rackets, luck. This is the podcast you need if you seek to escape into history. And we can all use a little escape at the moment. Check out Dan Snow's history wherever you get your podcasts.