Danny Funt (2:15)

What this Senate is about to do.

Ryan Nobles (2:18)

Is make a horrific situation even worse.

Yasmin Vasugian (2:22)

For more on this, I gotta bring in chief shutdown correspondent Ryan Nobles.

Ryan Nobles (2:27)

Maybe maybe for only one more week.

Danny Funt (2:29)

That's my title.

Ryan Nobles (2:29)

Let's hope.

Yasmin Vasugian (2:32)

If I spoke to you yesterday and you were all over the TV yesterday, especially on Meet the Press you said you didn't think this was gonna happen, but here we are come Monday and it looks as if the government will eventually be reopened in the coming days. How they get here?

Ryan Nobles (2:45)

Yeah, this is how these things always happen. Yaz. It looks as though it's never going to happen and then all of a sudden it happens all at once. You know Saturday, they spent all day Saturday trying to come up with this version of a minibus combined with a continuing resolution. It looked as though the negotiat not very fruitful that Democrats were not getting the type of concessions they were looking for. So Sunday morning the posture was very much like we're not anywhere near this happening. And then all of a sudden somewhere around mid morning you started to see the pieces kind of come together. And I think what it came down to was there were about five or seven Democrats who were pretty firmly in the camp of it's time to end the shutdown no matter what it takes. And then they had to find three or four more others that were willing to also say that it was time to break. One of the figures I think was pretty key in all this was Tim Kaine, the senator from Virginia. He obviously has a huge federal worker population in his constituency and Kaine had been pretty much a no all along. And he actually said I was focused on the election in Virginia, I wasn't a part of these negotiations. As we got through the election and I started to see the impacts of all this, I decided to get involved. And he basically became the eighth vote because this got through with the exact 60 vote threshold that it needed. But no one in this fight really got what they wanted. And newsflash, that's how shutdowns always end is that nobody gets exactly what they want. And everybody kind of has this icky feeling about this whole process and especially this one cuz it lasted so long.

Yasmin Vasugian (4:26)

Well I mean Democrats obviously holding out because they wanted to make sure those premiums weren't gonna go up. The premiums are now gonna go up. So what exactly is this deal? Did anybody get what they wanted? Is there anything that Republicans and Democrats can walk away from saying okay, we got this for voters?

Ryan Nobles (4:41)

So they are gonna fund portions of the government for the entire fiscal year through September, including military, construction, veterans, agriculture. They extended funding for the government through the end of January. So that means we're not gonna have another one of these standoffs right before Christmas. They got a guarantee that all federal workers would get back pay even though we thought that was already ensconced in the law, but the Trump administration made you think that that might not happen. And then probably the biggest concession Democrats got, which is probably not much of a concession for their base, is that they got any laid off worker who was laid off during the shutdown, their jobs are coming back. So that was a significant concession, but not anywhere near what they were looking for. The argument that the group of moderates are making to their Democratic colleagues that are so upset about this is we now have them in a position where they have to negotiate on healthcare. They have guaranteed that we're gonna have a vote on this in the middle of December. They now have another deadline by the end of January where they have to do something. It seems like a pretty weak concession, and I think that's why you're seeing so much angst among kind of the base of the Democratic Party.

Yasmin Vasugian (5:51)

You know, after the election, we talked and it seemed as if Democrats had momentum on their side. They felt as if the voters had gone to the polls and told them they were doing the right thing and holding out for these health care subsidies. Is there a part of these moderate Democrats that are hoping that the voters will remember that it is Republicans, in fact, who made their premiums go up come the midterm elections next year?

Ryan Nobles (6:13)

I mean, that's the gamble that they're making. And I know from my conversations with Democrats, one of the biggest worries they had was that there was pretty much universal agreement among Democrats that they were winning the messaging war here. And that reflected in the election results on Tuesday. But there was also a real degree of angst that they were gonna overplay their hand, that they were gonna push it too far, and that there was gonna come a point where there was a diminishing return on this. And if you look at the eight people that voted for this, they're either not running for reelection. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire is kind of led the charge here. She's not running for reelection. Her colleague in New Hampshire, Maggie Hassan, just got reelected. Tim Kaine just got reelected. Angus King is not really in any sort of worry. Cortez Masto. And Nevada just got reelected. And plus, Nevada has been especially hit hard by the shutdown because of the travel concerns and the way that has all worked out. So these were eight people who had the least amount of political risk to vote yes on this. And everybody else who has any degree of political risk, Chuck Schumer included, voted no. And my guess is you're gonna see 98, 0.9% of the house Democratic Caucus vote no as well, when it goes over to the House side.

Yasmin Vasugian (7:25)

Okay, Chuck Schumer voted no, but this thing wouldn't have gotten through without his blessing, even if he voted.

Ryan Nobles (7:29)

Well, it would really depend on how you define blessing the Senate, especially given how the margins are right now in that they're, you know, the majorities are not that tight. There isn't all that much that Chuck Schumer has the power to do to block one of his members from doing something that they want to do. What we're told is. And I talked to Jeanne Shaheen just a few minutes ago, and she said that leadership was made aware of every step that they were taking. So the question is, how much did Chuck Schumer try to influence that outcome? An argument could be made that Jeanne Shaheen and several of her fellow moderates did not want this shutdown to happen at all, and he at least got them to get to this point of 41 days or whatever it ends up being. But if you are a base Democrat, you know, you think of these things in the Nancy Pelosi model of. Nancy Pelosi ran her conference with an iron fist. Nobody got by without Nancy having a say in what you do. And they feel that Chuck Schumer should be running this conference the same way.

Yasmin Vasugian (8:30)

And that takes us to our last question, which is the people and the people that have been acutely affected by this history in the making shutdown. When is the food assistance gonna get back up and running? When are folks gonna get paid? When are flights gonna get back to normal? When is the government gonna get back open?

Ryan Nobles (8:45)

Listen, I think it's such an important part of this conversation, Yasmin. It's not like when President Trump signs it into law that all of a sudden all these folks who get these benefits are gonna see the direct deposit in their account immediately. It doesn't work that way. It takes time for this process to get back up and running. And it's really gonna depend on which state you're in as to how quickly your benefits might come back. So that's one issue. And it's not gonna release the valve of concern that food banks have. They're still gonna have a need for people to get that. That assistance because they've gone without for so long. And then if you're a federal worker, you are gonna get back pay, but that's gonna take time. The flights and air traffic delays, there's still gonna be some fallout from this, even though these air traffic controllers and TSA officers are eventually gonna get paid. They're still dealing with the lingering effects of going 50 days without a paycheck. And there's still gonna be people calling in sick as a result of it. There's still people probably working second gig worker job. It's certainly not gonna be as bad as it could have been on Thanksgiving. But I still, I would be nervous about traveling during this period of time just because there's gonna be a fallout from this as a result of it all. And not to mention the fact there's just tens of billions of dollars that were wasted over this period of time. There's taxpayer money that was wasted. The airlines said today that they have just lost billions of dollars as a result of this shutdown. I mean, the impacts of it are cute right now, but they're gonna be macro here over the next couple of months as we see the fallout from all of this.

Yasmin Vasugian (10:22)

Ryan Nobles, who's gonna lose his title as chief shutdown correspondent in the coming days.

Ryan Nobles (10:27)

Hopefully there's no one that is more excited about me losing that title than my wife. So she's, she's relieved to see the 15, 15 hour days come to an end.

Yasmin Vasugian (10:37)

He's coming home, kids. Ryan Nobles, thank you.

Ryan Nobles (10:40)

Thanks, Yaz.

Yasmin Vasugian (10:42)

All right, we're gonna take a quick break. When we're back, a couple of baseball players are accused of their pitches.

Trey Farrow (10:51)

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Trey Farrow (12:08)

This week on Meet the Press after.

Danny Funt (12:11)

Democrats swept key races on election day and amid a record breaking government shutdown.

Ryan Nobles (12:15)

Kristen Welker sit with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senator James Lankford. Plus a Meet the Moment conversation with John M. Chu this week on Meet the Press. Listen to the full episode now wherever you get your podcasts.

Yasmin Vasugian (12:33)

Welcome back to here's the scoop from NBC News. Another gambling scandal is shaken up pro sports, this time in Major League Baseball. Federal prosecutors have charged two Cleveland guardians pitchers Emmanuel Claes and Luis Leandro Ortiz in a sports bet vetting indictment brought by the same office that filed last month's sweeping NBA indictments. According to the U. S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York, the pair allegedly rigged their own pitches, intentionally throwing balls instead of strikes. While co conspirators place bets on their performance, netting the betters roughly $450,000 over two years. Claes and Ortiz now face charges of conspiracy, fraud, bribery and more. Lawyers for both players deny any wrongdoing. Joining me now is Danny Funt who is a sports betting reporter and author of the upcoming book everybody the Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. I cannot tell you, Danny, how many times I've been done sports gambling stories in the last couple of weeks. I mean, it is, it is running rampant it seems. Walk us through this latest alleged scheme.

Danny Funt (13:42)

Yeah, on the one hand it's kind of mind blowing and on the other hand, the people who I've been talking to inside Sports said it was a matter of time before something like this happened. So two relief pitchers on the guardians, one of whom is one of the best closers in major league baseball, an all star who makes signed a $20 million contract. Wow. So these are not fringe players. The two of them colluded with bettors to influence what are called micro bets. So in the old days, as in just several years ago, you really were betting on who was going to win the game, maybe how many points or runs were scored. One of the opportunities that online sports betting offered and now more than 90% of bets are placed online. So that's the lion's share of the business. One of those opportunities was that you could carve up games into live bets placed as the game is being placed, not just beforehand and also these micro bets on how the next play will go, whether the batter will get a hit or record an outcome. In this case, whether a pitch would be above or below 98 miles per hour or call it a ball or a strike. That level of micro bet, it's intuitive that it's so easy to manipulate because it's just one player influencing one play. And that's what these two pitchers are charged with doing.

Yasmin Vasugian (15:03)

The amazing thing, though, is. And you brought it up, the money that is being made, right, because you would think that the people that would be most susceptible, and we've had this conversation about basketball, too, are. Are the people that are not making as much money, right? The guys who are not necessarily household names. And these guys aren't. But you mentioned clays, right? $12 million over his career so far, set to make another $8.4 million in 2026. Ortiz has a lower salary, but still making a heck of a lot of money. $782,000 in 2025. Why blow that all up for less than half a million dollars? What is in it for them?

Danny Funt (15:41)

The leagues and their gambling partners assured us that today's athletes simply make too much to be susceptible to corruption. They would never risk throwing that all away just to get involved with gambling. We know from decades of experience with gambling scandals and from looking overseas, where match fixing and other types of corruption are rife in soccer and cricket and other sports, that this presumption that if you would make a lot of money, you're not gonna make bad decisions falls apart under closer examination. For one, no amount of wealth makes you immune from gambling addiction. That doesn't seem to be what affected these two players. But Jontay Porter, an NBA player who was convicted of colluding with gamblers to influence his play, has said he was addicted to gambling and that's why he developed huge debts. Which then prosecutors say the gamblers he partnered with, it used that as leverage to extort him to say, hey, you're in debt. You shouldn't have been gambling. Now we're gonna pressure you into working with us to do even more bad things by, in his case, taking himself out of game. So addiction is a huge risk. Phil Mickelson, the golfer, has made about a billion dollars over the course of his career, both in tournament prizes and in advertisements. A guy who's made a billion dollars still came clean a couple of years. He's suffered from gambling addiction.

Yasmin Vasugian (17:11)

I want to note that Phil Mickelson has never been accused of a crime. But these are the same prosecutors who filed sports betting indictments against people involved in the NBA last month. And there are differences in the way in which the MLB and the NBA are handling these separate cases. The mlb, for instance, with these pitchers, Claes and Ortiz, they even put on leave since July when the investigation began. Walk us through some of the other differences that we're seeing here.

Danny Funt (17:36)

I don't know what to make of it because these two pitchers immediately, a sportsbook said, whoa, we should not be getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in action on a handful of pitches. Something might be up here. They were placed on administrative leave and that allowed these investigations to go forward. In the NBA's case, Terry Rozier, another high paid player at the time on the Charlotte Hornets, subsequently traded to the Miami Heat, who he was playing for this season. When he was arrested, he was flagged for suspicious betting activity in 2023. The NBA apparently cleared him or at least said, you can go back and keep playing with your team and the Heat can trade for you while we investigate and while the FBI investigates. And a lot of people are upset about that, saying the whole argument for legalization was you're going to catch players doing something wrong and ban them from the game. How was Rozier allowed to play for two more seasons after his bets were flagged? The House and the Senate have sent letters to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver saying, you got to help us make sense of this. Something doesn't add up.

Yasmin Vasugian (18:49)

You're literally, Danny, writing the book on the rise of American sports betting. How has legalized sports betting changed professional sports in America? And I can't help but wonder, is it ruining kind of the love of the game if folks are watching these games going, oh, he threw that. Oh, he's probably making money off that pitch. You can't necessarily trust what you see anymore.

Danny Funt (19:12)

Yeah, I would say there's so much fallout from legalization. Just a week or two ago, YouGov published results from a survey that 65% of Americans now believe professional athletes alter how they play to help gamblers win bets. That's exactly the sort of cynicism that the commissioners of major sports used to warn would be a consequence of making gambling so accessible. And that has some really ugly side effects that people in and out of sports are increasingly worried about.

Yasmin Vasugian (19:44)

Danny Funt, thank you.

Danny Funt (19:46)

Thank you. My pleasure.

Yasmin Vasugian (19:47)

By the way, if you or someone you know has a gambling problem, help is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can call the National Problem gambling helpline at 1-800-522-4700. All right, let's get to some headlines. President Trump issued a sweeping round of pardons over the weekend granting, quote, full, complete and unconditional clemency to dozens of close allies, including former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, ex White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and conservative lawyers Sidney Powell and John Eastman for their roles in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The pardons apply to any potential federal crimes tied to those election challenges. They are also largely symbolic, as none of the people listed were charged with federal crimes, which is what the presidential pardon covers. In a proclamation released by U.S. pardon attorney Ed Martin, the administration framed the clemency orders as a step forward, ending what it called a, quote, grave national injustice and advancing a, quote, process of national reconciliation. The president has not yet publicly commented. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal from former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who was seeking to overTurn the landmark 2015 ruling that legalized same sex marriage nationwide. By declining to hear the case, the justices without comment reaffirmed the constitutional right to marriage equality, despite calls by Davis attorneys to revisit the decision and shield her from paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to the gay couple that she refused a license to. A quick health roundup for you. The U.S. department of Health and Human Services announced a major step in women's health. After more than two decades of fear and misinformation around hormone replacement therapy, or hrt, the FDA is removing broad black box warnings from menopause related treatments. The change affects hormone based products including estrogen and progestin pills, patches and creams, after new data showed lower risks of stroke, heart attack and dementia for younger, newly menopausal women compared to those who do not receive HRT therapy. The FDA said the move aims to bring labeling in line with current evidence and reduce fear around hrt, while reminding patients that risks vary by age and by health. And new research is turning old caffeine warnings on their head. A medical trial found that patients with atrial fibrillation afib, which is an irregular heartbeat that can cause palpitations and fatigue, who drank at least one cup of coffee a day had a lower risk of recurrence than those who abstained. The findings suggest moderate coffee intake may be safe, even protective, thanks to its anti inflammatory benefits. Still, doctors say patients should monitor their own symptoms since caffeine can be a trigger for some. So get this, a 34 year old woman is not taking her ex to court, but she is taking her case to the court of public opinion. Writing anonymously on the Telegraph's Moral Money column, she asked whether her ex boyfriend should pay up, accusing him of, quote, stealing her childbearing years after their decade long relationship ended with him choosing career over commitment. She argued that he owes her big time and should help cover the cost of IVF or egg freezing to make up for lost time. The columnist offered sympathy but a reality check as well, noting there is no legal tab for heartbreak or for years spent waiting on the wrong guy, and urged her to instead invest in her own future. Maybe that means a solo vacation, maybe a little dog or just some good old fashioned therapy. That got us at here's the scoop thinking should she be compensated? A decade long relationship is a long time everybody. It is longer than some marriages and unlike our male counterparts, our childbearing years come with an expiration date. So does she deserve a little something for her lost time? Let us know DM me on Instagram at Yasmin Vasugin and I will reveal the results here. All right, that is gonna do it for us at here's this group of NBC News. I'm Yasmin Bisugin. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard, then like us back. If you didn't like what you heard, I'm not gonna compensate you. We'll see you tomorrow.

Trey Farrow (24:15)

On the night before Halloween in 1975, 15 year old Martha Moxley was murdered, but police failed to make an arrest until in 2000 her one time neighbor Michael Skakel was arrested. He was also a cousin of the Kennedys. The Kennedy connection is the reason that most people know about this case. But the deeper I dug, the more I came to question everything I thought I knew. Search Dead Certain the Martha Moxley Murder on Apple Podcasts to listen to the latest episodes each week.