okay. very good advice, guad venegas, thank you for the update. more breaking news to share with you on that major winter storm that could cripple travel from the mississippi valley and in fact all the way into the northeast for this holiday weekend. parts of the midwest are right now digging out after the storm buried parts of iowa, north dakota, and minnesota yesterday. now as the storm is heading southeast, 66 million people are under some sort of a winter weather advisory. we ve got a couple reports on this major storm for you. nbc s sam brock is joining us from nashville. once again, nbc news meteorologist michelle grossman will give us the forecast. let s go to sam in tennessee and that s one of the states in line of the storm so what are preparations like there, sam? reporter: well, right now, it s kind of business as usual, alex. you re looking at broadway street over my left should, the honky tonks are full, the party buses are out, but yes, this is going to be problemat
end of today, frustration potentially on the russian side who have already expressed concerns that they re not going to get what they want at this round of talks. let s go to sam. and, sam, you know, we heard at the top of the show, we were talking about that, russia wants a guarantee that nato won t expand to include ukraine. john stultenberg has already talked about it. what does ukraine want to see from nato here? reporter: well, ukraine is not a member of nato, as you observed there. yes. reporter: it would like to be because it would like to be like the baltic states, under the nato security blanket that would have meant that if any territory was invaded by any country, there would be an automatic collective defense of that country. that s exactly what ukraine is looking for. the ukrainians are meeting today. the deputy prime minister is
this could come in two waves. absolutely, as we re looking right now, we were showing them westport, washington, and there s a lot of dense fog as well, so to your point, it is not a day to go to the beach, and it s january. but anyway, let s go and talk about everything with voting rights and the like. there s been, of course, the big, you know, push, the big momentum this last week, but it appears and i don t want to sound like negative nelly, but it appears like this legislation is heading for failure, unless something surprising happens. it has zero republican support. senate democrats do not have full party support for changing the rules relative to the filibuster and there s a new quinnipiac university poll that shows a majority of americans are definitely worried about the future of the american democracy. so, congresswoman, when you see numbers like this, does it surprise you there s not more support to shore up voting rights? i mean, do you ever hear your republican collea
decision to use these forces against ukraine. he clearly now has that capability. and there are multiple options available to him, including the seize your of cities and significant territories, but also coercive acts or provocative political acts like the recognition of breakaway territories. these two pentagon leaders were also united in saying that there is time for diplomacy to work here. and that is the option that putin should choose. milley said it would be horrific and terrible if putin decided to conduct an all-out invasion of ukrainian and to topple the current country to take the country and it would be unnecessary and a mistake. there are diplomatic talks in the future. there is still time for diplomacy and both of them say this should be where putin takes all of this. but as sauft said, it is unclear what putin will decide to do even after they ve watched this for months. let s go to sam now. and sam, we got, i would say, a
like kabul and so many other cities. you can see now that people and youngsters within these large cities are standing their grounds against the taliban and waving the national flag. yep. it s a different country. and that must be noted. amiri, thanks for the work you re doing. sami mahdi, thanks as well. we re glad you re safe. let s go to sam. tell us what you re seeing in numbers. we re hearing thousands upon thousands waiting there. is that still the situation? reporter: yes, it is, and things are moving much more quickly. there isn t an accurate amount