charges against meadows after he refused to appear for a deposition. and while the doj makes that decision, the house ways and means committee is one step closer to getting its hands on former president trump s tax returns. a federal judge on tuesday throwing out a lawsuit that trump hopes would block the release of those documents. his lawyers quickly appealed the decision. i m joined now by capitol hill correspondent leeann caldwell and pete williams. so leeann, that house paging the contempt vote overnight. what happens now and how quickly? reporter: hey, chris. so it goes to the department of justice where the department of justice decides on if case or n. what they re going to do, that is probably a better question for pete than me. but we saw this process play out with steve bannon just a few weeks ago and it did take some time for the department of justice to say that they were going to take up the case trxt
testify about material that he s already given them. that he himself said in nonprivileged. so that is another issue the justice department has to wade through. we only have 30 seconds left because you don t have a crystal ball, but the federal judge tossing out the lawsuit and the appeal, where does that go now? it does go to the d.c. court of appeals. they ll now decide this. this is a decision, remember, written by a trump judge who said that as long as there is a law, and there is one, that said congress can get tax returns from any individual, the treasury department has to turn this over. so, if the trump legal team loses in the d.c. court of appeals, their next stop would be the supreme court. but there is no guarantee the court would even take the case. so this will all play out though over the next this is going toik a couple of months to resolve. pete williams and leeann caldwell, thank you. lawyers for prince andrew in a filing in u.s. district court argued that a
this comes as democrats are confronting divisions in their party. president biden spend his entire afternoon in meetings to come up with an agreement on the major spending bill. progressives are clear they will not vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill until the spending bill passes the senate. moderates are balking at the price tag and provisions in the bill including drug price reforms and taxing on the rich and climate action. we re waiting to hear what exactly came out of the discussions today. joining me now is capitol hill correspondent leeann caldwell, jason johnson professor of politics and morgan state university and jennifer ruben, washington post opinion columnist and author of the book, resistance how women saved democracy. leeann, i want to go to you first. what is the status of the democrat side of trying to decide what they can get done by
america. this translates, by the way, into appreciately 90% of the annual gross domestic product for the united states. the annual total of everything we do economically. these staggering numbers raise the question of what happens the next time we encounter a pandemic of this magnitude and how much should be set aside in advance for pandemic preparation. nbc news capitol hill correspondent leeann caldwell has more on the debate surrounding that question. reporter: the country was unprepared for covid-19. ppe supply diminished. testing capabilities nonexisting. democrats blamed the trump administration. unfortunately, up until now the trump administration has an o. the last administration left us nothing. reporter: the funding cuts
would save money and lives. the current pandemic has cost trillions of federal dollars. more than 600,000 people have died. defunding pandemic preparedness during a pandemic is a little like defunding counterterrorism after 9/11. it s so irresponsible and unconscionable and unthinkable. thanks to leeann caldwell for that report. the stunning ruling on texas anti-abortion law has brought uncertainty to a battle but still have lots of fight in them. we ll discuss what comes next inside and outside of the courts. urts and savings like that will have you jumping for joy. now, get new lower auto rates with allstate. because better protection costs a whole lot less.