tennis legend billie jean king on the game changing moment for women in sports 50 years ago. this is nbc nightly news with lester holt. good evening. president biden tonight announcing his new plan to bring down high fuel prices the president calling on a somewhat skeptical congress to suspend the federal gas tax. that s currently around 18 cents a gallon for gasoline. 24 cents for diesel. a federal gas tax holiday will provide only minimal relief from the price at the pump which has trickled down to a still staggering average of $4.95 a gallon and the president is asking states to suspend their fuel taxes, too. gas prices are up nearly $2 a gallon in the past year helping to fuel soaring inflation. with limited levers at his disposal, the president faces increasing pressure to show he s trying to do something to blunt the impact of runaway prices but at what cost chief white hous correspondent kristen welker leads us off tonight. reporter: under pressure with gas pri
chairman acknowledged rate hikes could trigger a recession. it is not our intended outcome but a possibility. kristen, energy secretary granholm will meet tomorrow with the ceos of the big oil companies. what can we expect that s right. the secretary will push for more refining capacity saying the president could invoke the defense production act. and granholm says she will pressure the oil companies not to absorb any savings from a gas tax holiday so the money instead goes to every day drivers. lester thank you. this just in from uvalde, texas. school police chief pete arredondo on administrative leave this after the state s top cop blamed uvalde to the slow response to the deadly school shooting sam brock joining me now. sam, why now reporter: yeah. lester, initially the school district said they were waiting for the investigation to finish before making personnel decisions.
with officials and the first lady is driving chief of staff john kelly to leave the white house soon. seven people familiar with the discussion say kelly has been on the wrong side of melania trump over staffing issues and travel requests and some of the disputes have escalated to the president s attention. melania trump raised concerns with her husband earlier this year at the height of the stormy daniels controversiessy that kelly repeatedly denied her request to promote some of her had aides. who white house officials telling that to nbc. saying, quote, i don t need this blank. a furious trump told kelly familiar with the conversation. there have been instances where the east wing staff were not treated as equals to the male dominated decisionmakers in chief kelly s office. promotions were denied and then granted after months of requests. the white house declined to comment on this. carol lee, let s pick up your reporting here. so it looks to some people like the first ladies of the
the fact that there is not a single piece of evidence that demonstrates that the trump campaign had any illegal or even improper relationships with russians. it s that simple. okay. left, right, and center everyone is guilty of conflating multiple issues. but matt whitaker cannot say the truth is there was no collusion. the truth is he has no way of knowing. matt walsh, what is your take on all of this? matt whitaker has some serious opinions and made them clear. and those opinions got him the job. his friend encouraged him to become a cable news contributor because that s how you get on president trump s radar screen. because he s a cable news junkie. which already says something we should pause. he s making personnel decisions based on who he sees talking on tv and defending him. speaks very badly. i think it s going to be an early litmus test of the new senate. the senate is going to extend its majority by a bit but it
campaign trail. i m glad that general kelly did what he had to do in this case. maybe the president s intuition fails him occasionally when he s making personnel decisions. look at michael flynn and paul manafort and omarosa. you know, the media is treating this like blockbuster bombshell headline news which is nonsense on stilts because there s nothing in the audio tapes that reveal anything that we didn t know already about how the president would deal with a firing or john kelly would deal with it. and you re right about john kelly. the fact that he is the mastermind and the president is a puppet, i mean, weren t there reports that john kelly wanted to leave because he couldn t control the white house? i mean, so it s sort of undercuts the narrative about omarosa trying to sell her books with this. said the same thing about steve bannon. but astonishing that a recording device was brought in there and she was recording. melissa: here s the thing that is interesting. they k