angeles announced today it will begin operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. this follows the port of long beach's commitment to 24/7 that it had announced weeks ago. 24/7 system, what most of the leading countries in the world already operate on now, except us, until now. this is the first key step toward moving our entire freight transportation and logistical supply chain nationwide to a 24/7 system. here's why it matters. traditionally, our ports have only been open during the week, monday through friday, and they're generally closed down at nights and on weekends. by staying open seven days a week, through the night and on the weekends, the port of los angeles will open over 60 extra hours a week will be open. in total, that will almost double the number of hours that the port is open for business from earlier this year. that means an increase in the hours for workers to be moving cargo off ships, onto trucks and rail cars to get to their destination. and more than that, the night hours are critical for increasing the movement of goods because highways, highways are less crowded in the evening, at night. in fact, during off-peak hours in los angeles, cargo leaves the port at a 25% faster pace than during the day shift. so by increasing the number of late night hours of operation and opening up for less crowded hours when the goods can move faster, today's announcement has the potential to be a game-changer. i say "potential" because all of these goods won't move by themselves. for the positive impact to be felt all across the country, and by all of you at home, we need major retailers who ordered the goods and the freight movers who take the goods from the ships to factories and to stores to step up as well. these private sector companies are the ones that hire the trucks and rail cards and move the goods. on this score we have good news as well. today, walmart, our nation's largest retailer, is committing to go on in on moving its products 24/7, from the ports to their stories nationwide. specifically, walmart is committing as much as a 50% increase in the use of off-peak hours over the next several weeks. additionally, fedex and ups, two of our nation's biggest freight movers, are committing today to significantly increase the amount of goods they're moving at night. fedex and ups are the shippers for some of our nation's largest stores. but they also ship for tens of thousands of small businesses all across america. their commitment to go all in on 24/7 operations means that businesses of all sizes will get their goods on shelves faster and more reliably. accordingly, according to one estimate, together fedex and ups alone move up to 40% of packages in america, up to 40%. and other companies are stepping up as well. they include target, home depot, and samsung, that have all committed to ramp up their activities that utilize off-peak hours at the ports. so the commitments being made today are a sign of major progress in moving goods from manufacturers to a store or to your front door. i want to thank my supply chain disruption task force, which we set up in june, led by secretaries buttigieg, raimondo, and vick vilsack. i especially want to thank joe pecari, and i think joe has done one heck of a job, my envoy especially on ports, who has been working this issue with all the stakeholders for the past several weeks. i also want to thank the port directors, gene and mario, again, and the mayors of los angeles and long beach, mayor garcetti and mayor garcia, for their leadership. i think the private companies that are stepping up, i want to thank them, but i particularly want to thank labor. willie adams of the longshoremen and warehouses union who is here today, the teamsters, the rail unions from the brotherhood of railroad single men, and the international association of machinists, to the american train dispatchers association, to sheet metal, air, rail, and transportation workers union, known as s.m.a.r.t. i want to be clear. this is across the board commitment to going to 24/7. this is a big first step in speeding up the movement of materials and goods through our supply chain. but now we need the rest of the private sector chain to step up as well. this is not called a supply chain for nothing. this means that terminal operators, railways, trucking companies, shippers, and other retailers as well. strengthening our supply chain will continue to be my team's focus. if federal support is needed, i will direct all appropriate action. if the private sector doesn't step up, we're going to call them out and ask them to act, because our goal is not only to get through this immediate bottleneck, but to address the long standing weaknesses in our transportation supply chain that this pandemic has exposed. i might add parenthetically, one of the reasons why i think it's very important that we get the infrastructure plan passed, my infrastructure plan. that supply chain system is almost entirely in the hands of private business. the world has changed. prior to the crisis, we cheered the focus on lean, efficient supply chains, leaving no buffer or margin for error when it comes to certain parts arriving just in time as needed to make a final product. our administration, barack and ours, just in time was the focus. we didn't have a pandemic and other things at the time. we need to take a longer view, though, and invest in building greater resilience to withstand the kinds of shocks we've seen over and over, year in and year out, whether it's the pandemic, extreme weather, climate change, cyber attacks or other disruptions. in fact, research tells us that a company can expect to lose over 40% of one year's earnings every ten years due to supply chain disruptions. a longer term view means we invest in systems that have more time built in and our ability to produce, innovate, and partner with our allies. it also means companies throughout the supply chain like maritime, air freight, and trucking companies reduce their carbon emissions and help to meet our climate change goals. it also means creating and supporting good paying jobs, so folks want to stay in these jobs, so they can build their skills and careers and make a decent living. it means more opportunities to join a union, especially for truckers. these steps are critical. they allow companies to pivot quickly when a disruption hits, because they've invested in workers' skills and training up front to be able to adapt. we need to invest in making more products right here in the united states. never again should our country and our economy be unable to make critical products we need because we don't have access to materials to make that product. never again should we have to rely too heavily on one company or one country or one person in the world, particularly when countries don't share our values when it comes to labor and environmental standards. i've said before, we're in the competition for the 21st century. we are america. we still have the most productive workers and the most innovative minds in the world. but the rest of the world is closing in, and we risk losing our edge if we don't step up. in order to be globally competitive, we need to improve our capacity to make things here in america while also moving finished products across the country and around the world. we need to think big and bold. that's why i'm pushing for a once in a generation investment in our infrastructure and our people, with my infrastructure bill and my build back better act. these bills would transform our ports, there's billions of dollars for ports, highways, rail systems that sorely needed upgrading and would bring products faster and more efficiently from the factory to the store to your house. let me be clear. we're proposing to make the biggest investment in ports in our history. the bill would also make investments in our supply chains and manufacturing and strengthening our ability to make more goods from the beginning to end right here in america. the bottom line, we've seen the cost of inaction in the pandemic, and the delays and congestion that affect every american. but it's fully within our capacity to act, to make sure it never happens again. it's going to take a little bit time, and that we've unlocked the full might and dynamism of our economy and our people. that's what we're going to do. god bless you all and may god bless the longshoremen, rail workers, truckers, and all the workers keeping our economy going. may god protect our troops. thank you all very much. >> president biden, as you just heard, making the case for why his agenda would be best to make progress long term on some of the issues facing the supply chain in the short term and also laying out some of the immediate actions that he says we will see to help provide some relief to americans who are waiting for their things. i'm hallie jackson in washington along with our nbc news team. monica alba is in the white house. jake ward is outside the port of oakland. we're joined by senior business correspondent stephanie ruhle. good afternoon to all of you. i wanted to listen there at the end in case president biden took any questions. interesting that he linked -- and this was not unexpected -- that he linked his agenda to what he wants to see longer term as it relates to progress here on the supply campaign. >> absolutely, hallie, that stood out to me as well. the president talking about the news in the top of his speech, the fact that with an agreement of these ports, they will be able to be operating close to 24 hours a day and seven days a week. the president is touting the fact that by bringing these ports together and working with the private sector, there will be about 60 more hours per week where these cargo ships can be unloaded and goods can be moved, even though there is a whole separate trucking issue with getting these to the private companies. and that's why he is asking them to step up, meeting with the heads of walmart, of fedex, of ups, home depot, a number of companies. and very notably i thought there, hallie, the president said he wants to see if the private sector can step up first. if they can't in some respects, he said if more federal support is needed, he would be prepared to go in that direction. so there are a couple of levers at his disposal. he could potentially declare a national emergency. there could be more resources directed there. so that's something to keep an eye on and watch for. the president thanking all of these different entities coming together. you see there these meetings, this task force had been established since earlier in the summer. they have been trying to lay out the steps. and now today is the announcement of what they hope will alleviate the backlog. but the other really big notable thing i thought the president said there is that this has the potential to be a game changer. he's not promising necessarily that this is going to fix the massive backlog we've seen in recent weeks and that they expect to continue in the weeks and months ahead, which is why this is such a tricky time given the holidays are fast approaching. but then yes, he reserved the last third of his speech to pitch his infrastructure agenda, which currently remains quite stalled in congress as they still try to figure out what's going to go in it and how much it's going to cost. >> mon, stand by. steph, let me turn to you here. the president name dropped not just walmart, but samsung, target, other big corporations, as working with the administration on this public. >> they are. listen, they're desperately trying to solve these issues. jpmorgan's ceo jamie dimon said earlier today, there's not a company out there that's not feverishly working to solve for this. but here's one of the main issues. these ports can be open an extra 60 hours. who's going to be working there? whether you're talking ports or the trucking industry or any of these big companies, they've got tens of thousands of open jobs that aren't filled. we know in the last month, we saw a huge number of americans quit their jobs, leave the workforce, and many aren't looking to return at this time. so you're dealing with the supply chain issue that's linked to the labor shortage. and, you know, we're sort of in this vicious circle. throw in these two factors pushing prices higher, and it's a complicated problem. while the president can say it could be a game changer, it's not like there's a single lever to pull. this is a complicated part of this economic recovery. >> and it's going to take some time, regardless, fair? >> absolutely. >> steph, thank you so much, appreciate you joining us. jake, let me turn to you here. you're posted at one of these ports, a little further away from the port of l.a. tell us what you're seeing. obviously president biden just delivered his speech, but we knew the contours of what he was going to say earlier today. how is it being received where you are? >> it's extraordinary to look at a system that's been for so long the thing we relied on in the united states for getting whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted it. we expected that global capitalism would simply bring it to our doorstep. but as president biden pointed out, the supply chain was built not for resilience but for cost. that's why the white house has to ask the private sector to step forward. the port of oakland behind me is an example of this. it tried to do its best but got overwhelmed by the influx of imported goods over the summer. it got to the point where ships began not coming to this port because there was such a backlog. since then they put in new ships, they've been jamming containers on outbound ships, and put in fast new cranes to move it all. you have to think about the variables, hallie. we live in a world in which algorithms at the major retailers try to predict what you and i are going to buy. covid blew all of that apart, you could not predict what people were going to do. then you have covid backups, you have labor problems. then we get to this place now where you can't get things off the ship in time. as monica pointed out, it's still a crisis when it comes to trucking. so we're seeing the nation having to do what the private sector would normally do. >> just to give some anecdotes here, and steph, jump in here, toys. lol dolls and lil' tykes, the maker says he's trying to get them into stores for christmas. apple cutting its new iphone by 10 million units because of a chip shortage. nike's time to get shoes in stores has doubled. lululemon says factory disruptions in vietnam are causing disruptions. the head of the national tree company says if you're looking for artificial christmas trees, look now. then you have costco putting limits on toilet paper again partly because of supply chain bottlenecks, partly because of some panic buying, along with bottled water and cleaning supplies. this stuff has real world consumer impact, steph, i'll turn to you. >> i talk all the time about how you need to do your holiday shopping now, but i haven't done a single ounce of shopping, and i need to. what's the takeaway? shipping costs, whether it's from getting from asia to here or in the u.s. trucking transportation, air transportation, the pricing is through the roof. the takeaway for the consumer, not only shipping delays, but the price of things are going up because so many of these products have razor thin margins as it is. remember, we live in a consumer-based economy, where especially over the last 20 years, as we look at price sensitive and price competitive, there's not big margins. so now it's being passed on to you and me, the consumers. fortunately the u.s. consumer is doing pretty well economically, we've saved a lot of money, so we're weathering this blow. but stuff is expensive, if you can get it. >> thanks to all of you, for staying with us here as the president wraps up his speech. we'll be talking more about supply chain issues throughout the afternoon. another breaking story to tell you about, this one on covid vaccine booster shots. if you're planning to get wrurn one, listen up. a highly anticipated study just out says you may be safe mixing and matching different vaccine boosters from your initial dose. if you go that route, the study shows moderna and pfizer boosters provide better protection than a johnson and john shot. dr. natalie azar, nbc medical contributor, dr. azar, if we hadn't been listening to president biden and talking about that important story, we might have come on the air talking about this one. talk to us about the highlights of this study, which a lot of experts and professionals in your field have been looking to see how this was going to lay things out. >> i think the first take-home message is that mixing and matching is safe and it works. i think the most highly anticipated outcome, if you will, is what you sort of did in the lead, which is that it does appear that boosting with a mrna is superior if your primary series was a johnson & johnson, than by boosting with johnson & johnson itself. let me make a couple of points. this has not been peer-reviewed yet. the presentation happening on friday. vrbpac, the advisory committee to the fda, has 48 hours to really dissect this. a really important point is this study was not necessarily designed to directly compare the response between regimens. i want to state that kind of unequivocally. this is not like -- although they have it in columns, there are nine different ways to boost. you take your three primary series, and each vaccine gets one of the three boosts, if that makes sense. there's a little bit of math in there, right? i really am interested to hear what they have to say about this. you can imagine johnson & johnson is not going to be happy about this, because the 15 million people who got johnson & johnson, hallie, in this country, are going to say, see, we kind of knew that maybe our vaccination, our vaccine wasn't necessarily as effective. i want to point out that the booster was given four to six months after the primary series and all we have are what are called serologic data, antibody data, measured four weeks and six weeks after the booster. we don't have effectiveness. these are just the immunogenicity data. i can imagine the fda will have their hands full in the next day and a half to really get their brains around all of this. i'm still in the middle of getting through it all. it's pretty complicated. >> i bet, it is. and listen, this just came out this afternoon. it is developing as we speak. can you put this, though, dr. azar, as you do so well, like if you got a vaccine other than pfizer, does this mean you should feel comfortable going ahead and getting a booster now? >> you know, no, i don't. i still think that we need to wait to hear, because what we want to hear tomorrow with the conversation on moderna and what we want to hear friday from johnson & johnson is who is a candidate for those boosts. we already know now that the data is quite compelling that the durability of the moderna antibody response is probably superior to its pfizer counterpart and to the johnson & johnson, which means that for the general population who is not at significantly increased risk for exposure and disease and infection, if you got your moderna, you're probably still good to go. maybe more so than if you got the pfizer or the johnson & johnson. so i think we just need to sit tight. we're really talking about a matter of another two days before the advisory committee can really look through all the data and give their recommendations, hallie, i think people need to sit tight for a couple of days. >> good advice, dr. natalie azar, we shall sit tight. back here in washington, you heard the president talk about his infrastructure bills, right? both the bipartisan roads and bridges bill, that broader climate/social spending bill. today we had the debt limit deadline averted for seven more weeks. the next infrastructure deadline, a self-imposed one, just 18 days away. during that time, the goal is to figure out what will stay and what will go from the bill. and now, whether a long term debt limit increase is part of the process. then the votes, the floor debates, et cetera, to get any framework to become a done deal. and here on your screen are three emerging portraits of the dilemma on the senate side. senator bernie sanders putting expanded medicare coverage in the must-have list. and climate provisions are complicating things with joe manchin, and prescription drug pricing reform complicating things for kyrsten sinema. joining me, congressman jim clyburn, thank you for being back on the show. >> thank you very much for having me back. >> we appreciate your patience, with the president unexpectedly running a little late, dipping into our broadcast. we want to talk to you about what we heard from president biden there, really linking progress on managing longer term supply chain issues with the passage of his agenda in congress. do you think that will make a difference, what we just heard from the president, with your democratic colleagues who have still been unable to coalesce here? >> i think so. i think we're all aware that these things are linked. what we have got to do now is decide how we get to the switch box, that is, somewhere between 3.5 and 1.5, we've got to land. and that's what we're working on. i think that nancy pelosi is right, if the numbers are going to be smaller, we have some decisions to make. i would hope that we would come to agreement within the next several days so that when we get back next week, next tuesday, i believe, we can start voting on these things and the american people will feel much better about them. and we'll solve some of the problem with supply. >> are you still working under the operative framework of the 31st, end of the month, to get some of this stuff done as it relates to reconciliation? and if so, when is kind of the last day, if you work backwards, do you need to get a deal for you to get everything done by the 31st? >> i am working on that. i've been in conversations with the speaker. that's where she is. you know, she decides what is in this package. steny hoyer decides when it comes to the floor. and then i go to work trying to get the votes. so i'm not in the negotiations. she's been keeping me apprised of what's going on. and i feel pretty good about where we are. >> do you have a better sense today than you might have maybe a couple of weeks ago on the senate side, where senator manchin and senator sinema are? i don't know if you're having conversations with them directly but obviously their input matters as to what ends up in or out of the bill. >> no, i've not been talking with the two of them. i've been talking to the speaker and to the white house as well. as you know, about three weeks ago i said at the time that we ought to find some balance here. you know, these numbers that we through around are ten-year numbers. and people get all concerned about that. and they should. so i've been saying we ought to speak about some of these things in shorter terms. like medicare expansion. it's a good thing. but i think expanding medicaid is a good thing. so rather than wrestle with which one should be done for ten years, let's do both of them for five years. and so i believe that we can do that. i believe we should do that. circumstances will change dramatically in the next four or five years. and some of this stuff we may do for ten years, you may not need to do them for that long a period of time. so that's what i hope we would do, to get a good number. >> quickly, before i move on, what are the odds the debt limit increase winds up in the reconciliation bill at this point? would you put it over or under 50%? >> once again, that will be the speaker's call. but i said a week or so ago that that's something that i would hope we would consider, because i do believe that there will be games played from december, that we ought to do it in such a way that democrats can once again demonstrate that we are mature enough to know that you should not threaten the full faith and credit of this country and republicans seem to be okay with doing that. >> i want to turn now to some news that you are talking about first on this show, i believe, about an investigation by the covid select subcommittee which you chair, looking into the trump administration's handling of the usda's food box program. you shared with our team a letter you sent to the inspector general calling for a review, saying the program was, quote, operated in a manner that created significant risks of fraud, waste, and abuse. talk to me about that, congressman. did you find any evidence of fraud and abuse? >> well, let's put it this way. if you're giving out $39 million to a company to do this work, and the company has never done anything but sponsor wedding receptions, that's not the kind of background and experience that's needed to do this work. and one company got around $30 million and had only ten employees. and that includes part-time. they had no capacity to do this work. and still another company got over $40 million and when the alarm bells were raised, the trump administration took the money back. so yes, there is a lot of indication here that something is amiss. and we need to have the inspector general pick up where we are now and move forward with some recommendations and not think it will end, and these people need to give this money back. >> are you comfortable will attorney general will investigate this? >> in something like this, inspectors general seem to be really good at doing this kind of work. >> house majority whip jim clyburn with that news for us here on this broadcast this afternoon. congressman, thank you very much, we appreciate your time and flexibility this afternoon. a lot of news this afternoon related to the aftermath of the january 6 attack on the capitol including, this just in, politico reporting that former acting attorney general for president trump, the former president, jeffrey rosen, will show up this afternoon in front of the january 6 congressional panel, according to two sources familiar with the schedule. again, this is according to politico, a friend of the show, betsy woodruff swan breaking that news. today is the deadline for individuals who organized so-called feeder rallies around the capitol, to turn over documents to the house committee investigating the insurrection. whether any of them will deliver, that's still up in the air. and in the dc federal court earlier today, two men who participated in the riots were sentenced to jail time for what they did. both pled guilty. let's bring in capitol hill correspondent leigh ann caldwell with the latest on the subpoenas. nbc investigative reporter scott macfarlane. we're also joined with politico's betsy woodruff swan, a friend of the show. jeffrey rosen has already testified on topics around trump's efforts to overturn the election. >> that's right, rosen has been extraordinarily forthcoming about what he knows about the last weeks of the trump administration. it's not clear what new angles the committee will be asking him about. the senate judiciary committee put out a big report just a week ago citing in part some of the information that rosen had shared with them. i expect, though, that the select committee is going to have questions about what exactly happened during that 24-hour window when the attack on the capitol played out. were there calls between the white house and the justice department? what role did the justice department play in efforts to bring in reinforcements to try to secure the capitol building after rioters had taken it over? and does rosen have knowledge of any communications between senior white house officials and other folks who may have had connections to the way that that day unfolded as a whole? i would think those are some questions that will be front of mind for investigators. >> leigh ann, the deadline, we talked about the subpoenas for rallygoers, is coming and going as we speak. any indication they'll cooperate? >> essentially they have until midnight tonight to cooperate. the people caught up in these 11 subpoenas include people who are supporters of the former president, have been surrounded by the former president, including people like amy kramer who is the founder of women for america first, if you remember her from 2010, she led the tea party patriots. people like maggie mulvaney, the niece of former chief of staff mick mulvaney, and katrina pierson, a former trump administration official. it's unclear if they are cooperating, but it's another day, another deadline. representative jamie raskin is reminding these people through twitter that if they don't cooperate, there will be repercussions, hallie. >> let me turn to you, scott, and those two january 6 rioters sentenced today. what kind of sentence was handed down, how does it compare to previous jail terms, any tea leaves we can read there from the judge's decision? >> definitely, hallie. it was a small case but a big deal today. bower and hemingway, two of a growing number of defendants who pled guilty to the lowest level of misdemeanor charged for january 6, for unlawfully being on the grounds, no accusations of assault or damage, but both got jail time, not a lot, 45 days, but we're seeing this sea change. the first set of defendants who pleaded guilty on that charge got home detention or probation. now we see judges taking a harder line. the question is will that continue for the higher level cases, the assault, the conspiracy. there's been a lot of concern, including an injured u.s. capitol police officer who told me, it's ridiculous that anybody here unlawfully on january 6 would escape jail time. now we're seeing low level defendants get some time behind bars. >> scott, one more quick story connected to this today, a dc federal judge holding two local jail officials in contempt after he says they mistreated an accused january 6 rioter who was being held. talk us through what happened here. >> this could be a big problem for the feds. the dc jail warden was found in contempt of court for not responding to court orders and how he treated prisoners in jail. we've had defense lawyers for nearly all of the 46 defendants in the dc jail complaining about the conditions in there, including the medical conditions. this could clog the courts with more complaints from lawyers and potentially force the courts to act and potentially release more defendants before trial. >> before we let you guys go, betsy, can i go to you quickly on this idea of former trump aides, we've talked about kind of the most high profile of them, mark meadows, dan scavino, kash patel -- who am i forgetting -- steve bannon who says he's not going to cooperate. the committee has said meadows and patel seem to be engaging. how does that affect whether they'll come in and do interviews, et cetera? >> what we do know for sure is there is an immense appetite on the committee to use the toughest tools possible, to perhaps make an example out of bannon. bannon is the first one off the iceberg, to perhaps use an inappropriately cute metaphor, when it comes to defying the committee's subpoena. they will have to decide do they go to doj, do they make this criminal referral, do they make it quickly, so they can send a signal to all those other defendants or all those other folks who have been subpoenaed, and trying to decide whether or not to cooperate. that's really the hot potato for the select committee right now. they'll have decide soon. >> betsy woodruff swan, we never mind an inappropriately cute metaphor on this show. leigh ann caldwell, scott macfarlane, thank you as well. coming up, my interview with the acting fda commissioner, an agency that's been without a permanent head since president biden took office in the middle of a global pandemic. >> how frustrating is it to you that president biden has not named a permanent head of the fda and do you think he needs to do so asap to help with morale here? or crohn's disease, i was there. be right back. but my symptoms were keeping me from where i needed to be. so i talked to my doctor and learned humira is the #1 prescribed biologic for people with uc or crohn's disease. and humira helps people achieve remission that can last, so you can experience few or no symptoms. humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections, including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections 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tsarnaev. he was sentenced to death in 2015 but an appeals court voided that sentence last year, saying there were issues with jury selection and that permitted evidence deprived him of a fair trial. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams joins us. tell us why the justices are leaning towards bringing back this sentence for dzhokhar tsarnaev. >> the defense offered two arguments and the appeals court agreed with them on why they thought he should have another sentencing hearing. they say the judge improperly restricted the questioning of prospective jurors about their exposure to pretrial coverage. that didn't get a lot of traction today. the justices seemed more concerned about the second point, which is the judge would not allow evidence of a triple murder two years earlier in the boston suburb of waltham that investigators believe was carried out by dzhokhar tsarnaev's older brother. the theory was that would show how violent he was, that he had the younger man under his thumb, that would make the younger man less responsible for the bombing. the judge didn't allow any of that in. some of the court today seemed to think that that was a concern. stephen breyer said basically that was the whole defense case in the sentencing hearing. elena kagan said this is a jury question, not a question for the judge. but it did seem like a majority of the court disagreed and thought the judge made the right call here, that there were no living witnesses to what happened in waltham two years before the bombing, that the evidence was undependable, and it would simply confuse the jury without adding much to the question of who carried outer the bombing. >> can you explain, pete, what seems to maybe be some dissonance between the biden administration looking for the death sentence but at the same time a moratorium on that type of thing in place? >> in fact, amy coney barrett did ask that very question today. the biden administration is taking the same position the trump administration did, defending the death sentence for dzhokhar tsarnaev. this is a moratorium on federal executions, not the federal death sentence. and what the lawyer told the court today is that while this is still on moratorium, who knows how it's going to work out, perhaps the protocol question of how to carry out lethal injections will be resolved. nonetheless the government does believe the jury properly returned the death sentence in this case. as you know, hallie, victims in boston are divided on this question of whether there should be a death penalty for dzhokhar tsarnaev. it would put the government in a tough spot, if the supreme court rules in favor of dzhokhar tsarnaev, the government would have to decide whether to have another sentencing hearing or let the life in prison sentence stand. >> pete williams, thanks for breaking it down for us. the biden administration is trying to fix those supply chain problems we talked about, they're also talking about easing restrictions at borders. alejandro mayorkas is set to announce today people who are fully vaccinated will be let in from mexico and canada. border towns and states are hoping it will revive their tourism industry. nbc's julia ainsley is following this for us. julia, why now? >> they say, hallie, it's because of covid vaccine numbers going up in canada and mexico, that now the u.s. government feels comfortable being able to put these restrictions or in some places easing of restrictions in place. basically it's now easier for people who are coming in to see their family or go on a tour of the united states, for tourists, those people were considered nonessential travelers previously and hadn't been allowed into the united states since the pandemic began. but in january, things will get harder for people like truckers, people who are doing essential work. they will now have to show their vaccination status to get into the united states. so we'll see across the board, customs and border protection officers at both those land borders looking at vaccination cards. we're still waiting on details of exactly what kind of proof people will have to show and when in november and january these rules will go into effect. we understand it will affect a lot of people, including people in these communities that really feel like one community, hallie, even though they're separated by those borders either on the mexico side or the canadian side. >> julia ainsley, thank you for that, from our washington newsroom, appreciate it. now to a nbc news exclusive you're seeing right here first. part of my conversation with acting fda commissioner dr. janet woodcock on the impact of the absence of a permanent commissioner. she's still acting. there is no permanent one, nine months into the biden administration, a time period that has had the agency front and center. it's raised questions why nobody has been able to slip into that role on a permanent basis so far. inside, it's creating, quote, uncertainty among staffers, according to woodcock. watch. >> how frustrating is it to you that president biden has not named a permanent head of the fda and do you think he needs to do so asap to help with the agency's function, to help with morale here? >> again, i'm not going to answer that question. but let me just say, i'm running the fda, i'm very experienced, i have worked at the fda for many decades. i know what needs to be done. we're getting done what needs to get done. and, you know, of course i can't comment on any nomination or anything like that. >> but are you confident that the fda is running as it should, even in the absence of a permanently-named commissioner? >> well, i believe that certainly some of the staff feels some uncertainty. however, i believe that the leadership of the agency is functioning at a very high level. >> nbc's senior white house correspondent shannon pettypiece is in washington for us. shannon, i'm glad you're here joining us. i know, so our viewers know, you and i have been talking in the run-up to this interview and after about this story. there's reporting out there that dr. woodcock is not going to be the one getting the job, i know you're looking at that, as well as when the administration is up against a deadline to basically figure something else out. you asked the press secretary about this yesterday. >> hallie, i wish i had a better answer for you on who it's going to be, when there's going to be some sort of nomination. i'll say, i've been asking people this question since probably april. in the spring, it seemed there was a bit of a rumor mill about who it might be, who had been talked to. but by the summer, that rumor mill sort of dried out and there's not even much speculation. you noted that there's this conventional thinking it won't be janet woodcock because if it was going to be her, she would be nominated by now. i don't have any reporting to indicate even that she's off the table to any extent. so a big mystery around washington. i asked press secretary jen psaki about this yesterday, as you mentioned. here is what she had to say. >> we are very focused on ensuring there is an fda commissioner in place, nominating exactly the right person. i don't have an update on the timing. i understand why you all are asking about that. but i'm not going to get ahead of the president. i would say the overemphasis on a nominee takes away in some ways, unintentionally, from the fact that there are people doing their jobs every day and we have an acting fda commissioner doing that as well. >> and, you know, to that point, of course the staff of the fda are working every day. we have seen them approve vaccines, drugs for covid, tests. and as well as doing all the other work. but one thing, when i do talk to people close to the fda who are familiar with how the federal government works, they say at this point it's crucial for the fda or any agency to have some sort of permanent leadership, because that's what enables the stability for them to bring on a staff that's going to be there full-time, to do some sort of a longer range planning, to maybe reorganize the agency in a way they would like to see. so while as experienced as the acting commissioner can be, people familiar with what's going on at the fda and other federal agencies in the past, say you really need to get someone in there permanently to have the agency fully functioning. >> shannon pettypiece, live for us, thank you very much. coming up, another nbc exclusive. for the very first time, hearing from the first victims of so-called havana syndrome, revealing who they are and what it's like to actually come down with this. his. >> i'll play it for you so you can hear. >> it was a lot worse earlier. 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