as trump ally push to release surveillance of the search. and mike pence today doubling down on defending the fbi. the emotional day in court. vanessa bryant, the wife of kobe bryant, breaking down on stand, describing her pain after first responders leaked photos of the helicopter crash that killed the nba legend and their daughter. reporter: after a summer of travel chaos, the department of transportation cracking down. our exclusive with secretary pete buttigieg, the ultimatum he s giving the airlines ahead of labor day. danger in the water. two shark attacks at the same beach on the same day. and uniting for ukraine. the music with a message inspiring america. announcer: this is nbc nightly news with lester holt. good evening. we are reminded again tonight just how high the stakes are in the war in ukraine as focus turns to the state of the ukrainian nuclear power plant now in the hands of russian forces. ukraine official making some pretty disturbing claims
reporter: after receiving billions in taxpayer support during the pandemic the nation s airlines are tonight under intense pressure. improve their customer service or the government could soon impose tough new passenger rights. transportation secretary pete buttigieg. so now you re kind of laying down the law for the airlines. they can either pony up on their own or you re going to enforce this for them. that s right. i m giving them an opportunity right now. we can do more rule makings and even more enforcement. reporter: in a letter to airline ceos buttigieg writes the level of disruptions americans have experienced this summer is unacceptable. 23% of u.s. flights delayed an average of 52 minutes. contributing factors weather and air-traffic control problems, but the faa insists airlines get most of the blame for booking passengers on flights they didn t have the pilots for. now the d.o.t. wants airlines to provide
historic investment of almost $3.5 billion. that s because we know people need they need to be able to protect themselves today. and we re doing everything we can while we re looking at the hill to actually make investments that are going to make this shift possible. we need the investments to build our ev infrastructure. we need the investments to support our investment in our cleaning our forests and designing our new strategies for water. let s talk about these electric vehicles and the president signing this executive order, trying to, by 2030, make sure that half of the vehicles sold in the u.s. are electric vehicles. i went back and looked at the june numbers, 4%, less than 4% of the vehicles sold in june were electric vehicles. 50% by 2030, is that realistic? how do you get there? well, first of all, we did a couple of rule makings as well
nothing else, that infuriated the people inside the white house, i think including the president, who also didn t like the fact that pruitt went on fox where, by the way, he was hammered by ed henry in that interview yesterday. they just don t like the whole scene right now. even the koch brother who s are out there defending pruitt, i don t think are going to be enough here. the other thing is that pruitt has jammed through a whole lot of rule makings and proposed changes. it s now maybe inconvenient to have him around as those things go through the process. right. the koch brothers want the bottom line, not the drama. howard, what you re speaking to is what s known as the two scoops of ice cream rule there in the trump white house. only one scoop unless you re president, chai. look, throughout history, powerful people have always used ice cream as a form of social right. ice cream is delicious. it s delicious. it melts quickly. it s the one luxury everybody
kentucky yesterday which is his home state, scott pruitt was born and raised in kentucky, going down there and heating with the senator rand paul and so on, if nothing else, that infuriated the people inside the white house including the president who also didn t like the fact that pruitt went on fox, where he was hammered by ed henry in that interview yesterday. they just don t like the whole scene right now. even the koch brothers who are out there defending pruitt, i don t think they re going to be enough here. the other thing is that pruitt has jammed through a whole lot of rule makings and proposed changes, it s now inconvenient to have him around as those things go through this aprocess. the koch brothers want the bottom line not the drama. you re speaking of the two scoops of ice cream rule in the white house. only one scoop, unless you re president. and throughout history, powerful people have always used ice cream as a form of