more charges, including possibly hate crimes. we are watching that we are also watching on the hill senators getting their chance to question dr. fauci and other top health officials who are warning of another potential spike in covid cases. it really is going to be a race between the vaccine and the potential new reporting from the white house, president bind could meet his goal of 100 million vaccine shots in 100 days as soon as today. plus, we are live on the border with details about a dispute with mexico, when it comes to dealing with the surge there, we will hear from house speaker nancy pelosi as well as latino lawmakers in about 30 minutes or so ahead of some key votes today on immigration reform. we will have an exclusive interview right here, my virtual sitdown with top women on the white house, with news on the relief law, how to make sure moms aren t left behind and what to do about the senate filibuster. kate, be clear, how far is the president willin
will commit additional acts of violence, it s more a question of when. welcome to thursday. this is meet the press daily. i m chuck todd. six asian women are dead when gunman aaron long went on a two-county rampage targeting spas in the area. while a motive has not yet been determined, the reality is this happened to have happened during a massive rise in asian american violence in this nation. a year after the prior administration referred to the pandemic as the china virus or the kung flu. now our leaders are being forced to recon with a ugly reality. two senior administration officials tell nbc news president biden and vice president harris will meet with asian american leaders when they visit atlanta tomorrow. flags are being flown at half-staff in honor of the victims and members of congress did something they said they have not done in more than 30 years, held a hearing on violence against asians and other americans. sitting and testifying about their experiences, i
authorities say they are not ruling out that this was possibly a hate crime. president biden has ordered all federal flags to be flown at half staff in honor of the victims, and he will head to georgia tomorrow. and as the president said, as vice president harris said, as atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms said, whatever the motivation here, the fact is attacks on asian americans are on the rise. people are rightfully scared and we need to do more to combat that bigotry and violence and stand together. to that point, today in congress a house committee held its first hearing on the rise of anti-asian discrimination in more than 30 years. but things quickly took a turn when republican congressman chip roy of texas first said that all americans deserve protection and to live in a free and secure society. then he said some more things, and i want to warn you, some of this language is offensive. we re only going to play it once, and we re going to play it once because it not
looking at everything to make sure that we discover and determine what the motive of our homicides were. again, it s just very important to let you know that we are not done. in most cases of homicides, we don t have a quick apprehension. there s usually a lengthy investigation, especially when there s involving multiple victims. and so again, we re still working very diligently to ascertain all the facts so we can have a successful prosecution because that s what s most important now. so i was hoping that we would be able to release the names of the victims, but we are not able to do that at this time. and the reason is we need to make sure that we have a true verification of their identities, and that we made the proper next of kin notification. so again, i thought we were going to be able to do that, and out of respect of the lives and of the family, we want to make sure that we do that privately before we release the names of our victims publicly. again, you know, we can
the shooter told investigators according to a sheriff who spoke at a press conference today that the attacks were not racially motivated. it is fair to ask whether we have any reason to believe or take on its face that an accused spree killer said but that is what authorities are telling us so for now that is the official word. what we can t deny is that some attacks against the asian-american and pacific islander communities, something we ve reported on extensively on this show and something that president biden and kamala harris herself a member of the community underscored today. whatever the motivation here, i know that asian-americans are in very very concerned, because as you know i ve been speaking about the brutality against asian-americans for the last couple of months and i think it is a very, very trouble some. it is tragic. our country, the president and i and all of us, we grieve for the loss. we re not yet clear about the motive. but i do want to say to ou