thursday. there is a deal in congress to avoid an economic calamity. but don't celebrate yet. the short term fix likely means a nightmare before christmas. also shocking new details about what sounds more and more like an attempted coup by donald trump at the department of justice as he desperately tried to cling to power after the election he lost. it comes as the clock ticks down on deadline day for trump aides to cooperate with subpoenas from the january 6 committee. meantime, pfizer officially asks the feds to approve its vaccine for kids ages 5 to 11. how soon could we see kids getting shots in arms? we begin, though, with a striking order from a federal judge slamming that texas law that bans almost all abortions across the state. in a sharply-worded ruling, the judge ordered the law to be suspended, calling it, quote, an offensive deprivation of a constitutional right, and a, quote, contrived and unprecedented transparent statutory scheme by texas republicans. the ruling also appears to take aim at the conservative-leaning supreme court, with the judge concluding, quote, other courts may find a way to avoid this conclusion and that is theirs to decide. this court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right. joining us now are nbc's pete williams, julia ainsley, and former state prosecutor and new england boston law professor wendy murphy. welcome to the three of you. pete, what does this judge's ruling mean for women in texas today? pete, you can't hear me, so i'm going to turn to julia and toss the same question to you. effectively what does this ruling do for people across the state? >> it's a good question because it could be so temporary. we just heard from judge robert pitman last night in the western district of texas. he lifted this, he had addressed an effort for a temporary stay, but it was immediately appealed to the fifth circuit, arguably the most conservative in the country, so they very well could reverse that. in fact they've already had the chance to weigh in on this before and they have said that they've allowed it to go forward. so what this means for women in texas is, yes, for now they may have their rights back, but maybe for a very short glimmer of time, which is hard for women who were maybe trying to make such an important decision. >> and wendy murphy, if you can hear me, and we should say we have been having some technical issues here at msnbc, hopefully our viewers will stay with us, you told our team this morning you believed the judge's harsh editorializing in this instance is appropriate. why? >> because i think we've all known from day one that this was extremely clear that it was unconstitutional. like, no one thought this was constitutional ever. and it's so arrogant, frankly, for any legislature to boldly pass a law that they know is unconstitutional. and i think for people like me and for people who care about roe v. wade, it's one thing to see a legislature, especially in a conservative state, sort of peck away at the edges of roe by imposing minor restrictions on abortion rights, we've seen that over the years. but this was a wholesale attack on all abortions, so unconstitutional that for a judge in a federal court reviewing the matter to use language like, this is offensive, this is unacceptable, i will not stand for this for another minute, that's what the judge should have said, absolutely. >> wendy, we know in september the supreme court will hear the legality of mississippi's ban on abortion at 15 weeks. what are the implications of this judge's ruling last night affecting texas, for that spirit case, given that, as julia mentioned, they both came through the same federal district court, the fifth district in texas? >> that's right, the fifth circuit district court of appeals, already a very conservative court, has already struck down from mississippi another abortion restriction. and that one limited abortions at 15 weeks, which the fifth circuit said violates roe v. wade. roe v. wade asks about viability. it is not a numerical measure the. roe v. wade doesn't want to hear about weeks, it wants to just know about viability, which a doctor can decide. so when the fifth circuit had a chance to review that mississippi law that named the limitation at 15 weeks, the fifth circuit said this is unconstitutional and that was appealed. that's the case that's going to be heard in december. what's interesting, in my view, in terms of the texas law, is that because the fifth circuit has already struck down a 15-week restriction, i think there's no question the fifth circuit would also strike down the texas law. but because the supreme court has agreed to hear the mississippi case, it's likely the fifth circuit in the texas case will wait until the supreme court rules. so that in the event the supreme court in the mississippi case overturns roe v. wade, that would have substantial impact on what the fifth circuit thinks about texas. so i think the point is, if the supreme court overturns roe v. wade in the mississippi case, the texas law will probably be upheld. >> so pete, if you're back with us, if you can hear us now, what does this new ruling, this ruling from this judge in texas, what does this mean for other states that are trying to go down the same path as texas with this abortion restriction? >> well, it's certainly a yellow caution light, if they're thinking about doing this. one thing to remember is this doesn't open the doors to texas abortion clinics necessarily, because there's peculiarity in the texas law that says if this law is put on hold, and that's what happened last night, and someone performs an abortion, and then the law is later determined to be proper and it goes back into effect, somebody who performed an abortion in the interim can still be sued. so i don't know the extent to which texas abortion clinics are going to start performing abortions again because they still are potentially on the hook if this law is ultimately upheld or if the fifth circuit lifts the stay that was imposed by the judge last night. >> julia, as pete was talking, i saw you nodding your head, and you said "that's true." of course everyone in this building agrees with everything pete has to say. >> of course. that is true, that's why they call this a challenge-proof law, because they took it away from state enforcers. most abortion laws rest with the power of the state government to enforce that abortion law and that's where, over and over again, those laws are struck down. in this case they put it on private citizens. so a citizen who has no connection with an abortion at all can actually file a civil lawsuit, get $10,000 in one lawsuit and continue to sue anyone who is connected to a woman's abortion, a woman who they might not even know. what pete points out here is even when it's on hold, those people could still be found liable at a later date if this does indeed lift. so of course it doesn't mean that all of those places would open their doors right at once. >> hey, wendy murphy, i think it might be instructive for our audience, we're using words like "peculiar," "new," and "novel" to describe this texas abortion law. can you help us understand the ways in which it was written to make it hard for people to bring cases in court, it was written to make it difficult to find legal standing in the court of law? >> yeah, i would use far more offensive language than "peculiar," frankly. this was, as judge pitman ruled last night, a scheme and an evil scheme at that, because the texas legislature knew what they were doing was unconstitutional, and that it would only work to prevent women from exercising their rights if no one ever brought a legal challenge. so they added language, very unusual and, frankly, unprecedented and i think unconstitutional, i don't think this is actually legal, that they had the authority to do this. but what they said was -- what they did was, by giving the authority to private persons to file lawsuits against abortion providers and support persons, they were basically preventing courts from becoming involved and from what's called judicial review from overturning this clearly unconstitutional law. so if you want to pass an unconstitutional law and you set it up so that the courts never have a chance to get involved to overturn it, then you've basically usurped the constitution but in way that is deeply anti-democratic, because there's no opportunity procedurally for a court to get involved unless a lawsuit is filed. so why is that important? because if you're antichoice and you pass a law like this in texas, you could just tell all the antichoice people to never file a lawsuit. if they never file a lawsuit, then there's no standing on the part of the person who gets sued to respond in court and to complain. you can't sue me because it's unconstitutional. that's the scheme. that's the kind of devious backdrop to this law that's so -- it's just infuriating. but i also think it's illegal. and one of these cases, the direct challenge to whether texas has the authority to usurp the constitution in this way by preventing judicial review, that's going to be one of the important questions the courts are going to have to wrangle with. >> wendy murphy, julia ainsley,u three for starting us off this hour. next, a deal in congress to avoid a catastrophic debt default and the nightmare before christmas that could soon follow. stay with us. follow stay with us instead of burning our past for power, we can harness the energy of the tiny electron. we can create new ways to connect. rethinking how we communicate to be more inclusive than ever. with app, cloud and anywhere workspace solutions, vmware helps companies navigate change. faster. vmware. welcome change. baaam. internet that doesn't miss a beat. that's cute, but my internet streams to my ride. adorable, but does yours block malware? nope. -it crushes it. pshh, mine's so fast, no one can catch me. big whoop! mine gives me a 4k streaming box. -for free! that's because you all have the same internet. xfinity xfi. so powerful, it keeps one-upping itself. can your internet do that? there's news of a deal today in congress to do what congress seems like it does best -- kick the can down the road. it looks like the u.s. will avoid an economic meltdown of congress' own making for now. but we could be right back here at the height of the holiday season. joining us now from capitol hill is ali vitali and with me is nbc news correspondent garrett haake. garrett, what's the deal they've settled on to avert this economic calamity? >> this was floated by mitch mcconnell yesterday. the deal is a $480 billion extension of the debt ceiling limit which democrats and republicans think they'll get to sometime in december. we'll have this entire conversation again in december. this removes pressure from democrats who were going to be forced to solve this on their own for now, it gives them more time to work on the president's agenda and republicans say it removes the excuse the democrats have been using which is to lift the debt ceiling on a long term basis through reconciliation would be too long, too difficult to do before this deadline. mcconnell says, we've given you more time, please do this now. >> politically how do democrats walk away from this by saying we're not playing on mcconnell's terms and how does mcconnell walk away from this and say he didn't blink? >> we're seeing the spin machine happen in both directions here, because mcconnell is out there trumpeting the fact that he feels democrats didn't have a plan to go forward so he gave them one. on the other hand, when i was talking to senate democrats yesterday, almost all of them said some version of this is mitch mcconnell folding and realizing that he couldn't continue to play politics with the national debt. both sides are seeing what they want to see in the spin game. the thing that i would say is that this has been less about democrats doing the debt ceiling on their own and more from republicans about democrats doing the debt ceiling on their own through reconciliation. it's the mechanism that has always been the foundational thing here for mitch mcconnell. so he's offering this deal saying, as garrett said, now you can do this through reconciliation. the thing i heard yesterday from every single democratic lawmaker i talked to is, there's no way we're doing this through reconciliation. that's the next battle. right now we have the "what" on capitol hill, which is the deal. what we don't have is the "how," which is how they're going to push forward for this. this is the senate, all 100 people can agree to do whatever they want, whenever they want to do it. had a we don't see right now is all 100 senators agreeing they want to have this vote in the next few minutes. democrats would do that but republicans right now are trying to figure out how they're going to do this, if they're going to use a 60-vote threshold on a procedural motion that would allow them to get to an actual vote to avert the debt ceiling crisis. it will require ten republicans not to vote with democrats to raise the debt ceiling but to allow them to get to the vote to raise the debt ceiling. that's the next hurdle procedurally on the hill as they're figuring out how they'll actually enact this deal. >> can i ask a question about the mechanics of this? which i normally wouldn't do, i normally try to stay out of the weeds, but to me it's interesting. when you talk about democrats potentially using reconciliation to raise the debt limit, this this same measure they would use to also pass the social spending plan, right? or are these two separate things, they would use the reconciliation once to raise the debt ceiling and use it again to pass biden's human infrastructure agenda? >> they are two separate things. but the reconciliation process that we've been talking about for the last few weeks on the build back better agenda, that 3.5 or no longer $3.5 trillion price tag, social infrastructure spending, that's its own thing right here. the reconciliation measure they would use to raise the debt ceiling would be its own thing in and of itself. these are two separate things that use the same budget measure can do them so democrats can do them by a simple majority, 51-vote threshold, all 50 democrats vote for it and kamala harris comes in and breaks the tie. >> that's our schoolhouse rock moment. ali, i want to ask you about this other cliffhanger at the capitol day. it's deadline day for the four trump confidants to comply with the subpoenas from the january 6 committee. politico says it's seen this letter from a trump attorney telling the trump aides not to cooperate. what is this panel going to do if they don't comply? >> that is really the question here. we've seen members of the committee say that in the instances where witnesses don't comply, and in this case they're only running up, in the cases of these four people, they're only running up against the document deadline today. next week is the deposition deadline where those four members of the trump orbit are supposed to come and sit with the committee. we knew there would be very little chance that they would comply with documents and that they will come to the committee. in regards to the letter that's being reported that trump sent to them, we haven't seen or confirmed it but it does sort of track with the expectation here, that this was always going to be a fight over executive privilege and whether or not a former president, who is no longer the sitting president in the white house, can actually assert executive privilege over documents that are retroactive, effectively. this was a fight we always knew was going to go to court. in terms of the what the committee can do about it, they say now that they have a doj that can back them up and give the teeth to this investigatory committee, they can enforce and compel more compliance with these subpoenas. but we're not there yet. >> garrett, we can call this a lesson learned for the democrats. this january 6 committee, they're not messing around, they said in certain cases they'll skip past the "will you please cooperate and will you please send us these documents" and go straight to the subpoenas, because they knew. >> there are impeachment veterans on this team, most notably adam schiff. they went through all this, they knew they weren't going to get cooperation. remember, when this committee was being set up, republicans said in some ways they were concerned this would drag up until the midterms and it could be designed to cause a political problem for them. failure to comply with these subpoenas almost guarantees this will continue to be an issue leading up to the midterms and perhaps even through it if democrats retain control of the house. they want this fight, republicans don't. >> i want to ask you about this 400-page report today from the senate judiciary committee which really fills in the blanks about donald trump's efforts to overturn the election he lost. i know both you and ali have been reading through this document. what are the top lines? >> this is pretty narrowly focused on conversations between the white house and the department of justice during the interim period between the election and the inauguration and really leading up to the insurrection attempt on the capitol. and in it you see a lower level doj official shopping around ideas that maybe we could send letters to states about how they could throw out their election results, trying to push that up the chain of command. it culminated in this oval office meeting on january 3 in which you had higher level doj officials including the acting attorney general at the time engaging in what the report calls a murder/suicide pact, basically saying if any of them were forced out or this lower level official were installed, officials would resign en masse to prevent it. a perilous moment in that specific meeting. it also has tendrils in other places like georgia where a u.s. attorney was forced out by the president, essentially, for not aggressively investigating to the president's satisfaction reports of election abnormalities there that turned out to be nothing. democrats are saying this could provide a roadmap to potentially putting some kind of legislation in place to sort of build up that firewall between the white house and doj. >> and not to cut you off, but that's the question. there have been so many reports, and each committee is investigating its own thing. the question is, what is anybody going to do about it? >> look, the challenge here is there may be constitutional questions. how much can congress legislate around how two different executive branch offices work together? maybe they can try to provide more transparency. i think perhaps the authors of this report, the democrats who have been talking about it, hope by bringing this back out, it can build transparency over what happened here as a warning for the future. that may be all they're able to accomplish with it. but pretty nervewracking moments subscribed in this report. >> garrett haake, good to see you as always, man. >> ali vitali, fist bump to you too, virtually. 18 former nba players under arrest in an alleged health care scam. they're accused of defrauding the league's health and welfare benefit plan to the tune of $4 million. let's bring in nbc news investigations correspondent tom winter. so tom, we should say, this is a different case, but comes after a similar scheme among a number of nfl veterans who pleaded guilty to charges against them. so walk us through these allegations against these 18 former nba players. >> right, so specifically and according to the indictment and what the u.s. attorney spoke about today, terrence williams, one of the people charged in this, is essentially named the ringleader or the person who, quote, orchestrated this whole setup. and these former players, some of whom we're looking at onscreen, what they would do in some instances is provide a kickback to williams but in all instances, according to the charges, williams would provide them with fake invoices for them to then submit to the nba's health and wellness program for the players to get paid directly. so what happened here is that they would pass along these fake invoices. and by the way, geoff, this was not a well-thought-out scheme because some of the invoices, according to the indictment, were not on official letterhead, had grammar and spelling issues, and on top of that, a number of the invoices were submitted when players were in entirely different countries or continents or perhaps scored 12 or 20 points on the same day they got a root canal. so not exactly a -- a fake root canal. so not exactly a well-thought-out scheme. they would submit these invoices and said they paid for these treatments and needed to be reimbursed directly because it was out of pocket. all told $2.5 million were paid out by the nba. they did ask for some of the money back over the course of the scheme which began in 2017 and went to 2019 according to the indictment. they were able to claw back some of the money from some of the players but some of the players ignored requests from the nba to pay them back for those sham invoices. 16 of the 18 former players are currently in federal custody. arrests coast-to-coast. sebastian tellfair who was more of a high school standout than an nba standout, he'll be in court later this afternoon. glenn "big baby" davis won a championship with the boston celtics, earned $30 million over the course of his career, so tough to see why some of these players at least would need this amount of money. but it was a scheme that went on, and today they face federal charges by the u.s. attorney's office for the southern district of new york. >> wow. and we mentioned at the start of the segment, a similar scene among the nfl players. is this a trend? what's happening here? >> well, i think the overall trend of fraud is actually out there. i mean, we've spent a lot of time focusing on the ppp program, some of the stuff tied to the coronavirus relief. the massive amounts of fraud there, which is in the billions upon billions of dollars. it's just easier these days, given the enormity of a lot of programs, given the enormity of the paper process, particularly when we get into the health care system. it's just ripe for fraud. when you have a system like this, and the u.s. attorney did not say how they came upon this scheme, but it does appear at least in several instances where the nba got a whiff that something was up here, particularly when a number of players submitted fake invoices according to the allegations for the same teeth, for the same procedure, on the same day. so it would be as if garrett, ali, myself, and you all submitted for root canal, all for the same teeth, all at 2:27 eastern time on thursday afternoon. somebody might get suspicious. but these systems are ripe for fraud, so it's not surprising that we continue to see these charges. >> i'll tell you, fraud is not funny but that example you gave sure is. tom winter, good to see you, buddy, thanks for that update. next, news that parents around the country have been waiting for. we're now another step closer to the first covid-19 vaccine for younger kids. stay with us. get ready. it's time for the savings event of the year. the homeandautobundle xtravafestasaveathon! at this homeandautobundle xtravafestasaveathon, there's no telling what we might bundle! homeandautobundle xtravafestasaveathon! bundle cars, trucks, colonials, bungalows, and that weird hut your uncle lives in. so strike up the homeandautobundle xtravafestasaveathon band for the deal that started forever ago and will probably never end. homeandautobundle xtravafestasaveathon. -say it with me. -homeandautobundle-- no one's leaving till you say it right. homeandauto... we are following breaking news from pfizer this afternoon. the drug maker has asked the fda for emergency use authorization of its covid-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. right now it's only approved for children ages 12 and older. if approved, the lower dose shots would expand vaccine access to roughly 28 million children in that age group. that's a potential game changer and a really big deal with children already back in school. joining us now is dr. peter hotez. he's the co-director of the center for vaccine development at texas children's hospital. it's great to have you back with us. so i think the question a lot of parents is, you know, realistically, how soon could we see these vaccines for younger kids now that the emergency use authorization has been submitted? >> assuming that the fda and the fda vrbpac committee and the cdc advisory committee on immunization practices agrees and all the stars align, potentially around halloween or early november, that could happen, that we could start being able to vaccinate young children. and then what the uptake will be and whether parents will accept vaccinating younger kids will once again vary by geography. for instance, if you look at the adolescent vaccination rates, if that's any indicator, there's a huge disparity. we're looking at one-third of the adolescents or the 12 to 17-year-olds are vaccinated in some of the southern states whereas almost 80% up in the northeast. and i would imagine the pediatric vaccines, 5 to 11 might fall along a similar pattern. >> do you have a sense of when vaccines might be accessible for kids 2 to 5, when parents can get kids that young vaccinated against covid-19? >> i think that my take a little longer. and then there's going to have to be some decisions about it, what's the age cutoff on the lower end, do we do the six months and up like an influenza vaccine or do we do it like measles vaccine, at 1 year of age, because there will be a lot of vaccinated mothers, hopefully, and there's maternal antibodies potentially that could interfere with the vaccine when we give it before 6 months. that's why we give the measles vaccine at 1 year of age. so a lot of that will have to be worked out. i would imagine that's -- hard to imagine a pathway where we start vaccinating the 2 to 5-year-olds before the end of the year. >> i have a big picture question for you about the pandemic, and i want to play something we heard this morning from dr. ashish jha on the "today" show and get your thoughts. take a look at this. >> in the next few weeks we'll hear the fda authorize johnson & johnson. i think they'll authorize moderna. >> for booster shots. >> booster shots, absolutely. kids will get authorized for vaccines. and then the pill. boy, we go into thanksgiving and the holidays with a whole new set of tools, it's really going to be helpful. that's what makes me optimistic that we'll have a better holiday season. >> do you share his optimism? do you think the worst is behind us? >> well, you know, i share his optimism in the sense that it is exciting that we'll have these new tools. and with each of these new interventions, we come one step closer to getting ourselves out of this epidemic. you know, i think the biggest problem is compliance and acceptance of these new technologies, and that's where we see this pretty high level of resistance, refusal, in regional areas of the country. so things are going to look very different in the northeast and the west coast than they will up in some of the mountain west states and the southern united states. there we still have to conquer this terrible political divide and antiscience aggression that we're seeing coming from the political right. it all depends on that, really. it's no longer -- we're no longer limited by biotechnology and science. we're now limited by antiscience. >> i want to ask you about this study published in "the new england journal of medicine." we talked about this among our team this morning as we were planning this show. the takeaway is that women experience a higher level of immunity after a second dose of the pfizer vaccine than men, but that both groups saw waning protection after six months. what should we take away from that, if anything? >> well, it's hard to say, if you're a man or a woman, whether or not you should hold off on getting the booster shot. i would not make that assumption. but the point is, immunity is waning with the pfizer biontech vaccine, as we expected, because the first two doses were given so close together. so it's going to be really important to get that third immunization. and the way the advisory committee immunization practices and the cdc have signed off on it is that most americans between 18 and older should be able to have access to that third immunization. but no question, immunity is waning. you want to do this not only to keep yourselves out of the hospital but also to prevent more long covid effects. we're learning more about that as well. >> dr. peter hotez, thanks as always for your insights, good to see you. >> thank you. things are starting to look up in the fight against covid-19. cases nationwide are down nearly 40%. the vaccination gap is closing too as more mandates take effect. hospitalizations and deaths across the country are falling. that's all good news. but not so much in alaska where infections continue to range. hospitals are being stretched beyond capacity. there's a sharp divide on issues like masks and vaccinations which has escalated into an all-out animosity toward the state's medical workers. let's bring in nbc news correspondent ellison barber who is in anchorage, alaska. so ellison, you have been getting firsthand accounts of some of the harassment that anchorage health care workers have experienced. and they've been experiencing this for months, they say. what more are you hearing? >> reporter: yeah, i mean, we spoke to health care workers here in anchorage who say that they are being berated, physically attacked, just for doing their jobs. and they say it's not necessarily a new thing, though recent events in the anchorage area have really shined a light on some of this harassment. they say this has been building for quite a while now and they say a lot of the harassment and hostility they're seeing stems from misinformation, disinformation, and politics. listen. >> i got assaulted when i swabbed somebody for covid who was literally on the verge of dying from covid. she didn't believe she had it. and she struck me and another nurse after we swabbed her. >> sometimes when i go to work, i feel okay when i go home. other times i can't stop thinking about what i had to deal with. >> those comments and obscene gestures and threats, that's what sticks with us, even more than the lives that we save. and that's one of the reasons why a lot of folks in the er and the icu quit. >> we just need you to calm down and maybe step back and really reevaluate where this anger is coming from. >> reporter: so again, there has been in recent days some very contentious assembly meetings here in anchorage over an indoor mask mandate. and physicians who spoke out in favor of an indoor mask mandate at some of those meetings, they were berated and harassed in person and then some of them, we've been told by local hospitals, even felt so uncomfortable afterwards that they were asking their employers to take their names down from photos on websites because they were getting so much online harassment that they didn't feel safe. we had people who didn't want to do interviews with us because they did not feel comfortable. but again, they say this has been building for quite a while now, and kind of the big picture question is what does this mean for the industry at large. we already have a nationwide nursing shortage. it is really hard to recruit health care workers to places like alaska. when you're dealing with an unprecedented health crisis in addition to verbal and physical assaults, a lot of people are just walking away, geoff. >> ellison, in these instances where you have these ungrateful patients who are assaulting nurses, assaulting health care workers, have they been charged or did the nurses, among the people that you talked to, did they just let it go? >> reporter: not in terms of people that we talked to, as far as i'm aware. they said they had security come in and try to help deal with it. one er nurse said she was assaulted when she was nine months pregnant and she and another employee put a cart between herself and another patient to protect them. they say they have security, their management at the hospitals have been helping them, giving them security, giving them tools to try to deal with this but they say frankly they feel like they're so overwhelmed with this animosity that they really don't necessarily have enough protection, geoff. >> those health care workers are the saints among us. ellison barber, great reporting as always. great to see you. up next, an early christmas gift from the u.s. postal service. the holiday price hike coming to a post office near you. also coming up, potential homebuyers beware. how wall street investors are bidding everyday americans out of the american dream. bipolar depression. it made me feel like i was trapped in a fog. this is art inspired by real stories of people living with bipolar depression. i just couldn't find my way out of it. the lows of bipolar depression can take you to a dark place... ...and be hard to manage. latuda could make a real difference in your symptoms. latuda was proven to significantly reduce bipolar depression symptoms and in clinical studies, had no substantial impact on weight. this is where i want to be. latuda is not for everyone. call your doctor about unusual mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts. antidepressants can increase these in children, teens, and young adults. elderly dementia patients on latuda have an increased risk of death or stroke. call your doctor about fever, stiff muscles, and confusion, as these may be life threatening... ...or uncontrollable muscle movements, as these may be permanent. these are not all the serious side effects. now i'm back where i belong. ask your doctor about latuda and pay as little as $0 for your first prescription. i'm still drawn to what's next. even with higher stroke risk due to afib not caused by a heart valve problem. so if there's a better treatment than warfarin that's a trail i want to take. eliquis. eliquis reduces stroke risk better than warfarin. and has less major bleeding than warfarin. eliquis has both. don't stop taking eliquis without talking to your doctor as this may increase your risk of stroke. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don't take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. while taking, you may bruise more easily or take longer for bleeding to stop. get help right away for unexpected bleeding, or unusual bruising. it may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. the number one cardiologist-prescribed blood thinner. ask your doctor about eliquis. before we talk about tax-smart investing, what's new? -well, audrey's expecting... -twins! grandparents! we want to put money aside for them, so...change in plans. alright, let's see what we can adjust. ♪♪ we'd be closer to the twins. change in plans. okay. mom, are you painting again? you could sell these. lemme guess, change in plans? at fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan. with the median home price at an all-time high, there are mounting questions today about the billions of dollars that big financial firms are pouring into the housing market and whether they're pricing out first time homebuyers. here's nbc's gabe gutierrez. >> living room here. >> reporter: for toni carr, the dance had become all too familiar. see a house, fall in love, make an offer. >> i was like, oh, my god, this is the one, i want this one. >> reporter: and then? >> and then my offer was declined. >> reporter: the navy veteran was preapproved with a loan, hoping to move to gwinnett county, georgia, to be closer to her mother. how many offers did you put down? >> 30. >> reporter: she was offering full asking price if not more. but kept losing out to all-cash offers. while toni don't know who the buyers were, the atlanta area is one of the hottest markets for large financial firms often backed by private equity that buy up and rent out single family homes. >> they're very aggressive. their offers come in, all cash. they come in sight unseen. as soon as the house hits the market, you get an offer from them, okay? and they're ready to close within a few days. >> reporter: atlanta real estate agent earline holder says the companies use computer algorithms to identify properties so they can bid quickly. one of them is invitation homes which owns 12,000 single family houses in the atlanta area. nationwide, more than 81,000. the company says it provides choice and flexibility to the growing segment of americans across all generations who are opting to rent instead of own. three other large firms own more than 100,000 homes combined. one of them just announced a $5 billion fund to buy more. >> the pandemic has really accelerated this business. >> reporter: ryan has been following this housing trend for years. he says for buyers, there are few legal options when they're competing with investors with deep pockets. >> people start to think, what if i want to sell to one of them, what if an investor pays the highest price for my house when it's time to sell. and when people get to thinking about it, they don't want to restrict their market. >> there's about 25 to 35% of the houses in this neighborhood are owned by wall street landlords. >> reporter: it's why in places like this suburb outside nashville, investors can build up huge inventory, says tennessee state university professor ken shelton. >> this is mining equities out of communities and sending it back to people who are already wealthy. >> reporter: is this the american dream? >> no. >> reporter: after 30 officers, toni carr finally closed on a house by going farther away from where she hoped to be. >> everybody can't just walk this the door with $250,000 cash to buy a house. so my dream house i can't have because i don't have $250,000 cash. >> reporter: she may not, but big investment firms have billions. gabe gutierrez, nbc news, gwinnett county, georgia. neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will stop the u.s. postal service. but it can be slowed down thanks to a change in delivery times that took effect on october 1. the three-day delivery window for first class mail is now five days long. it's the biggest slowdown of mail services in a generation, since the 1970s. this is just one part of the ten-career plan from postmaster general louis dejoy. a surcharge for delivery from now until december 26 in some cases is as high as $5 more per package. joining us is a senior fellow with the public policy think tank lexington university. paul, we've got a series of service cuts, price increases, now a major reduction in airmail. you've looked at dejoy's ten-year plan. i've looked at it. in your estimation is this sustainable or is this the end of the postal service as we know it? >> what's most disappointing is the postal service is effectively abandoning what its mission before the american revolution the postal service has been focused on delivering mail and periodicals, and, in fact, mail still accounts for 16 times the volume that the postal service has compared with packages. what the postmaster general and other leaders at the postal service have done is to repeat a very bad plan that went into effect in 2014. it's almost a carbon copy of it, and the results were disastrous then, and they are going to be disastrous now. it amounts to slowing down the mail, lengthening the standards that the postal service has. in fact, they set their own standards for when mail will be delivered. it's not going to result in cost-savings. even the projected cost savings from the postal service are a pittance compared to what they need to address, and it's just going to drive a lot of customers away from the mail and the mail is still quite huge. there's 50 billion pieces of first class mail a year. 20 billion pieces are affected by this change, and it's the poor. it's the elderly. it's those who have been victims of identity theft who are most negatively impacted by this proposal, and it's time for the postal service to get back to its core mission. >> paul the stidler with the lexington institute. sorry our time was so short time. love to have you back on to talk more about this. thanks for your time this afternoon. coming up next, the netflix show that has everybody talking, but what is quid game, and why has it become so popular? stay with us. has it become so popular stay with us if you haven't watched it yet, you've probably heard about it. the netflix hit "squid game" is everywhere and what is it and why does it have everybody talking? here's a brief explanation from nbc's joe fryar. >> reporter: you'd be forgiven if you thought "squid game" was a cooking competition. you'd also be very wrong. the series is in fact a korean thriller, a violent dystopian tale about people debut in debt playing a bunch of children's games in the hopes of winning millions of dollars. if they lose the game they lose their lives and netflix says it's the biggest chance it will be our biggest show ever. >> and with us is npr tv critic eric daggins. looking at this uber violent foreign series, what do you make of it? >> it's a bunch of -- a bunch of trends coming together at the same story. if you want an action kind of thing, you can watch it for that, but it has a message about inequality and messages about the struggle to retain your values in a world that's constantly challenging you to -- to subvert those things to survive. it's coming along as netflix is cultivating an international audience which shows like "lubin" among others. part of it looks like a video game so it makes sense that people would turn it into memes online and i'm betting there will be a ton of halloween costumes based on "squid game" and the weird workers in the show that have very distinctive overalls and masks. >> frankly, you wouldn't find a show like this anywhere other than a streaming platform like netflix. i mean, do you see a greater democratization of tv and film thanks to platforms like netflix? is this a permanent change, a permanent trend? >> well, netflix in particular has a corporate priority to develop programs in other countries. it needs to constantly grow a subscriber base and key to that is attracting people outside of the u.s., so they develop productions in latin america and in france and in other places. those shows are popular with those audiences, but they have also realize that had they can be popular with their entire audience, so a show like "narcos" about narco traffickers in latin america can be popular with americans or be popular anywhere. >> since eric you work in radio i know you can take a cue. we have 30 seconds left. quickly give us your streaming recommendations. i want to hear from one of the experts. what are you watching? >> there's a new show called "may" on netflix about a young single mother who is trying to get away from an abusive relationship, and that talks a lot about class and, of course, i'm still finishing "ted lasso." i think the final episode of that is dropping soon so that's on apple tv plus and there's going to be a show called "dope sick" which debuts next week on hulu about the opioid crisis starring michael keaton and rosario dawson. very well done and i highly recommend you check that out. >> eric deggens with npr. that does it for us this hour. ally jackson pucks up more coverage next. r. ally jackson pucks up more coverage next. when caught in , it's more treatable. hey, cologuard! hi, i'm noninvasive and i detect altered dna in your stool to find 92% of colon cancers even in early stages. early stages. it's for people 45 plus at average risk for colon cancer, not high risk. false positive and negative results may occur. ask your provider if cologuard is right for you. 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[ sneezing ] it's time for, plop plop fizz fizz. alka seltzer plus cold relief. dissolves quickly. instantly ready to start working. so you can bounce back fast with alka-seltzer plus. we are following several breaking developments from capitol hill as we come on the air with deadline day today with former trump aides to cooperate with the january 6th committee, but now a new report on what the former president might be asking them to do, and we have new details about what a senate committee is saying about the former president's pressure campaign to get justice department officials to help him overturn the results of the

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