Top Story with Tom Llamas - Thursday, June 4, 2026

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Tonight's Top Story has the latest breaking news, political headlines, news from overseas and the best NBC News reporting from across the country and around the world Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tonight, the first legal victory in President Trump's push to target his enemies. Ex-national security advisor John Bolton agreeing to plead guilty to mishandling classified docs, he could get five years in prison. Plus, the president announcing his former personal attorney is his nominee for Attorney General. Also tonight, the high school track meet murder trial igniting a racial debate, a black teen accused of killing a white student, what surveillance video of the stabbing reveals. Highway explosion of bomb squad descending on an expressway outside of Chicago. A car with windows blown out?

So what happened here? The dramatic explosion in Mexico sending a fireball to the sky. Children running in fear what set it off. Dangerous tick warning. The new strain of Lyme disease just found on the East Coast, what you need to know about. Protest erupting over plans for a luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. In Albania, police use. using water cannons to break up crowds why people they are so upset.

Movie ticket meltdown, the new Christopher Nolan film that's crashing AMC's website. Plus, throwbacks are dominating the Spotify charts why more and more people are streaming songs from the past. Top story starts right now. Good evening. We begin tonight with the first major legal victory for President Trump and his quest to punish his enemies. John Bolton, one of his fiercest critics now facing up to five years in prison, and it $2 million fine. Bolton served as the national security advisor for Trump during his first term, but later became an outspoken opponent of the president. He was charged last fall for storing and sharing classified material. Now, sources tell NBC News he plans to plead guilty to one count of retaining

national security information. For the past year and a half, Trump's Justice Department has made targeting the president's so-called enemies a top priority. Most either failed to get an indictment like you see here, were thrown out or stalled. Until next, And it all comes as Trump taps his former personal attorney, Todd Blanche, to permanently lead the DOJ. He's been serving as acting AG for just a few weeks and has already jump started investigations against the president's enemies. Also under scrutiny, Trump's choice for acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte. There's growing bipartisan concern tonight over his lack of experience when it comes to national security. Our Garrett Hake tracking it all and leads us off from the White House.

And John, I want to thank you. Tonight, a major reversal for a former top Trump official charged with mishandling classified information. Two sources familiar with the matter tell NBC News, President Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton, will now plead guilty to one count of retaining national security information in a deal with federal prosecutors. Bolton, a fierce critic of the president. I think it is a retribution presidency. We'll now pay more than $2 million in restitution and faces up to five years in prison. President Trump had blasted Bolton after his October indictment. I think he's a bad guy, yeah, he's a bad guy.

It's too bad. The plea deal marks a first legal victory in the administration's multifaceted campaign against Trump critics and comes after President Trump announced he'll nominate acting attorney general Todd Blanche wants his personal defense attorney to become the permanent AG. Todd is very popular. He's doing great. That announcement meeting with stiff opposition from Democrats. Tadblan should not be Attorney General. He is the personal attorney of the president.

But Republicans predicting he'll make it through a confirmation battle. He's honest, as ethical. I think he'll do a good job. And amid bipartisan pushback to his pick of housing chief Bill Pulte to be acting director of national intelligence, the president saying today that posting will be temporary. It's not a permanent position. We're looking at, we're interviewing people right now.

All right, Gary, joins us tonight once again from the White House. Garrett, I know you're tracking another story there. The president and his ongoing renovation projects throughout the nation's capital. This one now involving the Lincoln Memorial. Yeah, Tom, that's right. The president says he next plans to build a pedestrian bridge, which he calls a promenade that would allow people to walk from the Lincoln Memorial down to the Potomac River. It would cross over the roads you see here, major thoroughfares in Washington, D.C.,

making this a major construction project. The president also today touting his rebuilding, re-sealing, and refilling now today of the reflecting pool on the other side of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. A lot of projects ongoing there. Garrett, thank you. We want to turn out to a murder trial in a case that has sparked racial-fueled debates far beyond the community where it happened. A black teenager on trial for stabbing and killing a white student at a track meet. Surveillance video of that deadly encounter played for the jury for the first time. NBC's Ryan Chandler has more. Tonight, tensions boiling over outside the courthouse as a teen's murder trial begins in North Texas. The racially charged trial drawing crowds outside. 19-year-old Carmelo Anthony pleading not guilty to murder after fatally stabbing 17-year-old Austin Metcath in the chest at a high school track meet last year.

Prosecutors calling Anthony's actions unjustified provoked murder, alleging he goaded Metcalf into pushing him, then killed him. defense argues Anthony acted in self-defense when Metcalf made physical contact first. In the courtroom today jurors shown surveillance video of the stabbing. Metcalf's mother wiping her eyes as jurors watched. Reporter Maria Guerrero from our NBC Dallas station in the courtroom. You can see someone pushing someone. Then you see the figure that is identified as Carmelho Anthony moving up into the bleachers farther up before running down. And you can see him running away, than walking away before he is apprehended. The prosecution says the case has nothing to do with race.

But the trial now sparking backlash. The pool of 12 jurors and six alternates is made up of five women of color and 13 white men and women. There are no black jurors. Some say it raises concerns for fairness. We are tired. We're saying enough is enough. Not one black. The trial expected to run two weeks.

Ryan Chandler joins us tonight live outside that courthouse in McKinney, Texas. Ryan, take us into the courtroom today. Metcalf's coach took the stand. He did. This was one of the most striking emotional moments of the day, Tom. We heard from Coach Robert Starr, and he recounted in front of Metcalf's family the moment he saw the commotion in the tent and found Metcalf dying surrounded by his teammates in his team tent. He's just one of the many, many witnesses who were on the scene that day that the jury will have to hear. from to piece through to get a fuller picture. What exactly happened that day, Tom? Okay, Ryan Chandler for us, tonight for the first time we are learning what the pilots said to each other last month when that United plane collided with a light pole on the New Jersey Turnpike

smash into a bakery truck. Tom Costello with the NTSB report just released. New NTSB photos show the deep gashes to the belly and tire of a United Airlines plane after hitting a light pole on the Jersey Turnpike while landing at Newark Airport last month. Dash cam and surveillance video captured the moment the pole crashed through the windshield of a tractor trailer. The driver suffered minor injuries. Now a new NTSB report says as the plane was coming in for a landing in gusty winds, the first officer warned the veteran captain, hey, you are slow. Then moments later, you're still slow and a little low.

The captain told investigators he looked outside and I think, thought we were low, but the warning came seconds before landing. That's when he heard a thump. Flight detentants reported a loud bang as the Boeing 767 crashed into a 15-foot pole. They should not have been that low. No question about it. On this graph, this line shows what the plane's descent slope should have been, while this red line shows its actual descent. Pilots on approach look to a runway's landing or pappy lights like these. Two white and one or two red mean they're lined up properly. But the NTSB reports the United crew would have seen four reds, a big warning they were too low. If you see all red,

it says that you're going to land and touch down the four of those lights. And that is not good. So Tom, pilots the NTSB, we all learned something from accidents like this. And this was such a strange one. What did the NTSB say about preventing incidents like this from happening in the future? Well, and this runway is a bit unique there because of course, It's runway 2-9, and planes come right over the New Jersey Turnpike, and it's a short runway. So the bottom line is pilots need to be hitting the touchdown zone. And you heard Captain Cox there talking about those papy lights. There's an adage that all pilots know.

We talked about the lights, right? So two reds, two whites, you're all right. Four reds, you're dead. The idea being, if you come in too low, you could die. Now, thankfully, nobody did, but that's what's at stake here. United says that it's been cooperating with the investigation, and it's told the NTSB that it has reminded all of its pilots do not undershoot a runway, Tom. Okay, Tom Costello, we thank you for that one. Now to the critical primary elections in California, we've been covering all week long.

Ballots still being counted with Spencer Pratt's political future hanging in the balance. Steve Kornacki has been at the big board since Tuesday night. He's still watching the votes coming in. Steve, let's talk about that mayoral race. NBC News that has already projected Karen Bass will move forward. We were just talking during that last story. You have a bit of an update here, and this next batch of votes were getting critically important in this race. Yeah, I mean, look, you see some gap here.

Remember, top two advancing to the general election Bass is through. You see a gap between Pratt and Rahman, but the thing to keep in mind is what they're counting up now in L.A. and in California is the late arriving vote by mail. The stuff that arrived on election day and later, it can come in for up to a week after. And that vote, at least initially, what's been counted of it has been a lot more friendly to ramen and less friendly to Pratt than what you see here. And so it raises the possibility. And this is going to come into focus in a big way maybe in the next hour when we expect our next update from L.A. Does that next update bring ramen closer to Pratt, bring Pratt further down?

Does it show continued momentum for ramen? Because if those late arriving vote by males do continue to break more for her than for Pratt, As you can see, there is still a lot of vote left here in this race, not out of the question that Rahman could end up catching Pratt for second place. He's got a pad on her. We're going to get some clarity when we get this next vote update. Folks in L.A. are telling us sometime this hour they're going to give their next update, get some clarity there on whether that pad is going to be safe for him.

As we break out the Kornacki calculator, right? We know the spread is about 35,000 votes, if you will, right now. You got 62% of the vote in. Do some of the math for me. How many more votes are we waiting for out there? Do we know tens of thousands, 100,000? Yeah, no, this could be a quarter million votes, 200,000 votes, you know. And part of it is you don't know because the votes are still coming in.

Up until a week after the polls closed, if the ballot was postmarked, they still count it. So, you know, look, if it was 200,000 votes and Rahman is leading by 15 points over Pratsday, just as a sake of argument there, she'd make up 30,000, you know, doing it with that. So what's been counted so far in that late arriving mail, she's been more than 10 points ahead of Pratt in that. If that continues with that many votes left, this could get tight. We'd rather be right and be second than be wrong and be first, obviously. When do we think we'll call this one? Do we have any idea?

Well, what we know is what they're telling us in L.A. County, and this applies to the city, too, is an update this hour, you know, this hour right now, sometime. It could change while you're looking at it right here. And then there's going to be nightly updates. the 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific hour every day, and they've got this out now for two, three weeks. They're planning to do these. So there'll be a fair amount of vote coming in tonight in the next few days, but it will still continue to come. So if this gets real, real close, I wouldn't expect it for days. Again, remind our viewers, this is L.A., the second largest city in the country. It's been around for a while.

Why is it taking so long? Yeah, it is. It's the late arriving vote by mail. California made that decision a while ago to go, first of all, to like a heavy vote-by-mail system for their state. Like 85% of all the votes now in California are cast by mail, but not many, you know, go to the polls and vote in person anymore. But there's also that critical rule that the votes can continue to come in. The ballots can continue to come in if they're postmarked well after election day. And so it ends up at these polling places that they just, at these election offices, I should say, they just have big, big piles of vote-by-mail ballots that come in. And when those ballots come in. Every single one of them, you got to take it out, you got to go verify the signatures,

check to make sure it's a valid ballot. You got to go through a pretty lengthy processing procedure here. It's not like when somebody goes out in person to vote. They check off the name in the box and it gets tabulated by a computer. It's a much more lengthy process for mail. When you've got that many vote-by-mail ballots, it's going to clog things up and slow it down. Easier to do because you can do it from your couch, but then you've got to be patient, right? What can you tell us about the governor's race. Yeah, so it's really a similar story that a story there. Actually, we just got, okay, Tom, we just got an update there. Okay, now remember we saw we had 62 before, yeah. Right, so we did, as you can see, that it's a chunk. There's still a lot more to come.

And you can see that that Pratt margin now sits at 33,000. Yeah, it came down. Yeah, it's shrinking. See, it did come down. Right now. That's a six point gap between them. And again, you still have a ton of vote to come there. So again, you just saw it. We went from 62 to 66. This came down to six points, came down to 33,000. And there's going to be a lot more updates like that. That continues that trend there of ramen getting closer, which suggests as these continue to come in, this suggests this is going to continue to tighten, and this could get close. Steve, we're going to keep going. Our producers, my producers are going to hate me because we're going so long in this, but I'm fascinated by this. I want to keep going on this. Explain to me why with Spencer Pratt, it seems

to be like he was surging late in this race. His sort of AI ads, his social media campaigns were taking off. Why would those votes, we don't know what they're going to be, but why would the mail-in votes, the later votes, break for ramen, possibly? Because that is the pattern in California with this system. I mean, we've seen this now probably for about a decade out there. It's those votes that get tabulated after election day, they tend to be almost always are heavily, heavily Democratic. We've seen this in congressional races. in California now over the last decade or so, where on election night, we've had cases,

a number of them, where the Republican candidate is ahead at the end of election night, and then it's a process over days, sometimes even weeks in these key congressional races, where just with every one of the updates, like you just saw right here in LA, the Democrats get closer and closer and closer and end up pulling ahead.

It's that the Democratic vote, for whatever reason, tends to use the mail, a lot more than the Republican voters do, and they tend to send them in much later. than the Republican votes do. We've seen this for a long time in California, and it appears we're seeing it again here in this mayor's race. So we got more voting.

We were about to talk about the governor's race. Can you update us there? Yeah, take a look. So this is going to be new to me, too, when I take a look here. And you could see here... He's catching up again, right? Yeah, we got... Let's show you this.

Again, a ton to come in a governor's race. I think the basic dynamic is this. So, you know, L.A. County is a big, as you can see, Blue, Javier Bacera. This is where he's from. It's an overwhelmingly Democratic county. also the biggest vote-producing county in the state. What we're seeing in a governor's race, this is a similar story to what I just said in the mayor's race. You see the Republican

here, and remember, top two advance here to the general election. So you see the Republican Steve Hilton in first place. You see two Democrats, Bacera and Steyer, second and third. But again, we're talking about late arriving vote by mail. Heavily pro-democratic vote is what we've been getting here. And what that means is Bacera has been inching up with each one of these updates. Hilton has been inching down. And I think there's a strong possibility just based on this trend that what ends up happening here is Bacera, as more and more of that late vote by mail comes in, moves into first. Hilton falls

behind Bcerra. And I think the real question is becoming Hilton and Stey. You see, Steyer is sitting in third place. It's pretty distant here. Steyer to Hilton. That's a pretty big gap there. But these late arriving ballots are so heavily democratic that again, it's sort of like I was saying there with Pratt and Rahman in the L.A. Mayors race. I think ultimately the question is going to be, are they so democratic that not just Bacera leapfrogs Hilton, but Steyer does too. So I think that's honestly the big suspense here in this governor's race here.

Hilton and Steyer, who's going to land in second place? And I mean, we'll see where it goes. It's still early. We can't talk about this yet. But the headline might be sort of a red mirage in California if the trends that we're seeing hold up. Yeah. And Tom, I guess this has been like a source of nightmares for Republicans in California, because like I said, this has happened to them in a number of key congressional races. You know, statewide, we always think California, it's a democratic state. We don't, we don't talk too much about like the presidential election there, Senate races there, but there are competitive house races in California. And this has just been a thing that we've seen a number of times now over the last decade or so

where that late arrive, it's just like a slow bleed for Republicans. It plays out over days. It plays out over weeks sometimes. Congressional race in California back in 2024, where at the end the Republican was overtaken and lost was a month after the election. That race was called on December 8th, 2024. The last race in the country called, and it was this exact dynamic that we're talking about right here. Steve Korniak, so great to have you on nights like this. We appreciate it. We will stay watching this critically important state and what's happening with the governor's race and the mayor's race. Thank you. We do want to turn out of Chicago where there was a tense situation of folding on the

highway there. The bomb squad investigating a blown out car stopping traffic for miles and stranding other drivers. NBC Shaquille Brewster reports. Tonight, this dramatic scene, the bomb squad investigating a blown out SUV on the suburban Chicago expressway. Watch as these three officers carrying a shield and long gun cautiously approached that vehicle. The front windshield gone. We're sending a guy up with a rifle with the bomb squad. State police requesting help from many agencies, including federal ATF officers who quickly arrived on the scene. Law enforcement sources tell NBC Chicago the vehicle was being tracked by federal drug agents and that there's no evidence this was a targeted attack.

Investigators can be seen sifting through the vehicle and lining the road looking for any evidence as law enforcement prepares these robotics. Illinois State Police say the incident began just after 10 a.m. on Illinois's I-290. We're going to need some cars to divert. They're shutting down bulls. both ways. Both directions of the three-lane highway shut down, snarling traffic for miles. Oh, it's terrible. Very frustrating. Very frustrating. Drivers even standing outside of their cars on the major highway, with state police telling motorists to avoid the area. And Tom, going into the evening rush hour, you see that highway is still closed. You see the car is still there. And FBI

agents processing the scene, setting it down and picking up evidence markers. Tom, going to You know going into the evening now that the drug enforcement agency is involved in assisting this investigation. Tom? Okay, Shaq Brewster for a shack. We thank you for that. Now to the major warmup for 150 million Americans, potentially record-breaking heat on the way, stretching from the mid-Atlantic up to New England. Meteorologist Bill Kierman joins us down. Bill, after a cool stretch, and we were complaining about the long cool stretch. Now we're complaining about the heat. I'm not. Talk to you about why people need to know about this. Yeah, if you don't like the heat, this is the type of heat most people can deal with because it's not the humid heat. We're not dealing with the horrific heat index. So what we're going to be dealing with over the next couple days is a lot of sun, very little in the way of clouds.

And we already have weather alerts for air quality. We call these air quality alerts. This is for ozone. It goes from Milwaukee to Indianapolis and anywhere in the I-95 quarter. The air is just not mixing. And then, of course, we get the pollutants from all the cars and the vehicles. And that air just sits right by the ground. And that's why if you're very sensitive, you may notice some problems with air quality

in the next couple days. Record highs are possible areas where the red dots. We're not shattering records. It has to get pretty hot this time of year. But it's going to be a little mini heat wave. Philadelphia is 90 today. You're going to be 92, 93. New York City, hottest day, Saturday, 94, DC 94, Raleigh, a 95 and a 96.

So you get the idea. We're pretty warm just about everywhere. But it's almost like a desert heat. It's like if you're retiring and living in areas like Arizona. This is what they deal with. It's just hot. But at least that night, it cools off nicely. Then as we look towards Saturday, some showers and storms in the south.

And then by Sunday, still dealing with those storms in the south. South. Tom, we're not really looking at too many issues as far as bad weather goes across the country this weekend. Okay, we will take it a nice great weekend. Bill, we thank you for that, my friend. We're back in a moment with the stunning new twist in the Karen Reed saga, why she's now suing the police departments that investigated her. Plus, the dramatic explosion caught on camera, gas tanks erupting into flames. Look at this. Sending little kids running for their lives. That video ahead on Top Story. We're back down with some shocking allegations from Karen who was cleared of murder last year.

She's now suing police over investigators apparent racist and sexist messages that we should warn you contain offensive language. Our Emily Aketa reports. A year after Karen Reid walked out of a Massachusetts court acquitted of murder. I could not be standing here without these amazing supporters. The 46-year-old is leveling her own bombshell allegations against the police departments that investigated her for her police officer boyfriend's 20. 22 death. Unerthing decade-old vulgar voicemails that reads lawyers say demonstrate a culture of bias and

corruption. You want a filthy pig that you just do dirty things to, you don't want something like dope baby, you get a whine and dine. That was the case's eventual lead investigator Michael Proctor, according to the complaint, who you can hear also use racial slurs describing a multi-car accident. Take your time. I saw a n-h-it-was involved. So, That wouldn't rush if you're working. Let them die. While Proctor's attorney says years old comments had no bearing whatsoever on the investigation, Reed's lawyers say they show an embedded culture of bigotry, misogyny, systemic failures,

and institutional rot within Massachusetts State Police and Town of Canton Police, which they allege ultimately led to Reed being wrongly accused. She was drunk. She hit him and she left him to die. The new lawsuit also lists a trove of disturbing texts from Proctor and Canton Police Sergeant Sean Good. Good allegedly calling the Boston mayor a little C word and writing the governor can suck my. Good, who did not respond to our request for comment, resigned from his position this week and Proctor was fired last year. Emily Aketa joins us now. Man, these cops were texting a lot. Those are shocking exchanges.

What are those police departments saying? So the town of Canton says that the department has made significant strides. in the last couple of years. We also heard from the Massachusetts State Police Department, which says they called the messages disturbing and abhorrent saying that they underscored their decision to fire Michael Proctor last year. But it's not just the anti-Semitic, the racist, the derogatory remarks that we were just listening to there. But also, Reeves' legal team is building a case around things like Proctor saying, no idea how I passed the background check, which is kind of getting at their argument that the Massachusetts State Police was negligent in

hiring the training and the oversight of these officers, which they say doomed the investigation into Karen Reid from the start, Tom. Okay, Emily Aketa first. Emily, we thank you for that. And you can see Karen Reid in an exclusive interview tomorrow morning only on today. She will be on the show. Coming up, the big 180 from Kevin O'Leary. Remember Mr. Wonderful? He was right here on top story. Now he's scaling back his plan for that massive AI data center. We'll explain. Plus movie ticket turmoil, the film that's not even out yet sending fans into a frenzy. and appearing to crash the AMC app will explain. That's next.

Okay, we're back now in just T-minus eight days away from what could be the biggest IPO ever. Elon Musk's SpaceX going public next Friday, and we're learning more tonight about just how massive this could be. SpaceX says it plans to sell shares at an initial price of $135 with more than 550 million shares. That means a total value of nearly $1.8 trillion. Wow. NBC Business and Economy reporter, Ali Canal has been tracking this for us.

Ali, so I want to run through the numbers here. So I get this and our viewers get this. SpaceX generated a little over $18 billion in revenue in 2025, but actually posted a net loss because of its investment into AI. Got that. But they're saying tonight they're worth nearly $2 trillion. So do the math for me. I don't get it.

Yeah, the math ain't math in here, Tom. And really, that's the million dollar, maybe even trillion dollar question. What is SpaceX actually worth? And it's different depending on who you ask. So according to SpaceX, they believe that they are. worth $1.77 trillion. That's how they priced their IPO. In the private market, SpaceX was recently valued at $1.5 trillion. But then you go to some Wall Street analysts. Morningstar has the

company pegged at $780 billion. That's roughly half of that private valuation there. So there are varying opinions, especially when you consider those financials. You have a company that's only generating about $19 billion in revenue. They are not yet profitable. It's really hard to just to justify that $2 trillion. But it could change the world. It could be another Tesla. SpaceX could be like the business of the future. The future, the potential.

And they say the AI opportunity, that's closer to $27 trillion. So that's the case that they're using to argue. And you may be booking SpaceX to go to Mars, right? That could happen. Maybe in our lifetime. SpaceX is the first of a few mega IPOs. As you were mentioned, we're talking about this. Open AI, Anthropic, are also looking to go public.

All three companies are competing in the AI sort of space race in one way or the other, at least the AI space. How do they stack up against each other? Yeah, so we take a look at valuation. We were just talking about SpaceX, targeting an IPO valuation of $1.77 trillion. Then you have Anthropic. That's the parent company behind the Claude Chap, by $965 billion. That was the last private market valuation.

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGBT, GBT, $852 billion. Now, this represents an enormous amount of capital just waiting on the sidelines for these public markets. And we really haven't seen a lot of public debuts in recent years. And I want to pull up this chart that shows what's been happening over the past several years. So there are these U.S. IPO proceeds by year. And you can see that the market essentially froze after interest rates jumped in 2022. Companies pulled back. More companies decided they were going to stay private for a longer period of time.

And since then, IPO activity has been steadily, slowly rising. But now look what happens when we add in that expected IPO from SpaceX. 2026 proceeds, they jump from about $34 billion to $111 billion. And that doesn't even include Open AI and Anthropics. So it's very likely that 2026 could be a record-setting year for the public markets. However, the caveat here is that this isn't really a broad-based recovery. We have this activity concentrated in just a handful of companies, and they're all companies that are focused on AI.

Okay. Allie Canal, so great to have you. We thank you for that. We're going to turn out of Top Stories news feed. We start in Mexico with a massive explosion caught on camera. You can see that first blast, then a towering fireball erupting into the sky. Local officials say it happened when four gas tanks exploded. A crowd of school kids sent scrambling.

We're told around 2,000 people were forced to evacuate the area, but no word yet on any injuries. An update on celebrity investor Kevin O'Leary and his plans for that massive AI data center in Utah. He's now saying he's willing to shrink the 40,000 acre project. It's a major reversal from what he told us just last week, right here in Top Story. We do have about 40,000 acres of which we could use as much as 25%. But remember, this is not farmland. This is arid desert, and it's used for graze land. And most of the ranchers that have sold this are leasing it back to continue grazing.

It's not in anybody's backyard. Now, O'Leary says he has no choice but to slim down the campus after facing a new way from political backlash. In a letter obtained by NBC News, O'Leary writing he could cut the size by about half. And so many people tried to score tickets to Christopher Nolan's new film, The Odyssey, that it appeared to crash the AMC website and app. The movie doesn't even hit theaters for another six weeks, but it's already causing a frenzy. Many fans reporting getting error messages, others encounter glitches. And some said they waited for hours to try to snag some ticks,

but we reached out to AMC for comment right now. The app seems to be back up and running. Good news there. But there's still a pretty long wait time. The movie is being distributed by Universal, which has Comcast as a parent company, just like guess who? We do. NBC News. Got a Top Stories Health Check and a warning as we head into the summer season about a rare type of Lyme disease that appears to be spreading. There are two types of Lyme disease in the U.S., both spread by these insects, deer ticks.

But one of the strains carries more severe symptoms and is more rare. It had only been identified in two states, Minnesota and Wisconsin, until now. That bacteria has been identified for the first time in New York State. Joining us now to break this down is Dr. Eric Asher. He's a family medicine physician at North Wales, Lenox Hill Hospital here in New York. Doctor, great to see you again. Walk us through why this new strain is more concerning. So it's a similar disease with overlapping symptoms.

So what we used to see was headache, fevers, muscle aches, that flu-like illness. But with this new version that is new to us here, We're seeing GI symptoms, so think nausea vomiting, upset stomach, diarrhea, constipation, as well as neurologic symptoms. So it could be dizziness and forgetfulness as well. And what we were typically used to seeing with a rash of that target bullseye rash is now a little bit different. And we're seeing a diffuse full body rash with red pinpoint dots on the entire body. Those are some of the symptoms? Walk us through the symptoms.

Those are the symptoms of what we would see with the main. Okay, when you get a tick bite, I mean, what's the first thing that you should be aware of to let yourself know or maybe like, you know, your parents know that you have this tick bite? So if you see a tick on your body, and ticks could be as small as a poppy seed, and early detection as with most things is key. So you want to have it removed as soon as you see it, hopefully less than 24 hours, anything more than 24 hours, the tick bacteria can be passed on to you. If you see it right away, you want to grab some tweezers, you want to get as close to the skin as possible, and you want to do one swoop up, no twisting movements, no nothing. You just want to pull it up. If you don't feel comfortable doing so, head to urgent care speak to your provider. Are you worried this new strain is going to spread to other states? You know, we may see it spread to other states. With ticks, we're used to seeing things of this sort. It's not surprising. It's unexpected, but not surprising. And we know that because of climate change. Ticks love the tri-state area. They love these long, humid seasons,

these wooded, grassy areas, the wildlife we have here. So it's not surprising. What are the best tips to make sure you don't get ticks? So to avoid tick bites, you want to make sure that if you are going for a hike, that you're making sure you're on the path, you're avoiding tall, grassy areas that are somewhat uncapped. You want to use a tick insect repellent,

and you want to cover your extremities. So wear light-colored clothing, and you want to tuck your pants into high socks, and you want to make sure that afterwards, you take your clothes off, you shower, you have somebody do a tick check, if not yourself, and then if you do see a tick on you right away, speak to your provider or try to remove it yourself.

All right, Doctor, so great to have you here. Dr. Ashwood, we always appreciate you. We thank you for that. Still to come tonight, chaos and protest erupting in Albania, while President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner is at the center of it. Stay with us. Tonight plans for a luxury resort

backed by President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, sparking protests in Albania. The government there says the project could transform the country's economy, but critics say there are environmental concerns. NBC's Ralph Sanchez explains. Across Albania, days of mass protests, with police turning the water cannon on demonstrators filling the streets of the Capitol. Their anger sparked by plans for a vast luxury resort being developed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. I'm working on an incredible project with my husband in the Mediterranean. It's massive in scale. President Trump's son-in-law has said the plan could include 10,000 villa and hotel rooms,

releasing these images of his vision. But the resort, spread across this island and parts of the neighboring coastline, means construction in one of Albania's most environmentally sensitive areas. The Vosanarta Delta is famous for its wildlife, a stopping point for migratory birds, country's only breeding ground for flamingos, which have now become a symbol for the demonstrators, who fear the Kushner plan will lead to environmental devastation. From the renders that we have seen, everything seems terrible. Yoni Vorpsi is an environmentalist and part of the effort to stop the resort. So you're worried that fragile ecosystem will be disrupted?

Yeah, it will be completely destroyed. Chichard Kushner and Ivanka Trump are in a very comfortable place, I would say, very far from the catastrophe that they are motivating and creating. Kushner's investment firm, Affinity Partners, did not respond to a request for comment. But in a podcast interview this week, Ivanka Trump promoting the project. It's an unbelievable, beautiful 1,400 hectare private island in the middle of the Mediterranean. That interview, drawing mockery from The Daily Show. Oh, I'm sorry. Do you guys not have Hechtare money? Kushner had planned another major development in Serbia,

but pulled out of the project last year in the face of widespread opposition there. Protesters in nearby Albania hoping their efforts will lead to the same result. Ralph Sanchez joins us tonight from London, and Raf, Jared Kushner is juggling this private real estate business while trying to cut some of the biggest deals for the second term of the Trump administration. Yeah, that's exactly right, Tom. Kushner doesn't have a formal position in the White House anymore, but he's been very involved in the negotiations with Iran. He traveled to Pakistan for ceasefire talks back in April. He also sits on President Trump's Board of Peace, which administers Gaza, and critics say that this creates a potential conflict of interest, that foreign governments might try to do favors for Kushner's business interests in an effort to curry favor with the White House. That is an allegation both and the Trump administration deny. Tom. OK, Ralph Sanchez, great to see you tonight.

Raf, we thank you. Now at Top Stories, Global Watch and a check of what else is happening around the world. In Germany, dramatic video of a plane's nose gear suddenly collapsing, leaving it lying flat on the ground. Luftanzah Airlines saying several workers on board were hurt. It happened before any passengers got on the flight, which was supposed to be heading to Los Angeles before, obviously, it got canceled. Investigators are now looking into what happened there. In Australia, the search is on, forget this, a missing Tasmanian devil. We are not joking that apparently broke out of a popular theme park.

Here you can see it outside its enclosure. It's still unclear how the animal escaped, but park officials say it might have jumped out. Teams have been using drones and sniffer dogs to try to track it down. Tasmanian devils are an endangered species and don't live in the wild on mainland Australia. Okay, and quite the sight for a swimmer in Switzerland. This one is crazy. Look at this. a man jumping off a high dive in Geneva,

hitting the water, and coming face to face with this massive catfish. He says he thinks it was down there protecting her eggs. Now to our serious business in America. Tonight, the woman who runs the biggest car company in the country, GM, under the leadership of CEO Mary Barra. It has nearly doubled in value over the last two years. Barra sitting down with our Christine Romans to talk about the rise of electric vehicles, AI and global competition.

Take a look. In the world's largest automotive wind tunnel, decades of aerodynamic vehicle testing is shifting into the future. General Motors CEO Mary Barra says artificial intelligence is moving car design into the fast lane. Just a click making small tweaks to the roof here with instant results. We have an AI tool that allows us to do and estimate what the arrow is going to be on a concept, really dial it in. And then when we get the design, then we take it into the actual wind tunnel and do the final work. Bara is a 46-year veteran of GM. At 18, she started as a quality inspector. She rose to chair and CEO, a position she's held for 12 years. She's the only woman to lead a major global car company.

To dream, to design, to style for you. Celebrating its 70th anniversary, GM's design center sits just outside Detroit. This is where we literally design what the vehicle is going to look like in. and outside. Here, old school clay modeling side by side with modern machines and sketches from automotive artists transformed using AI prompts for a realistic rendering of a new Corvette, even envisioning it on the road. This is something that used to take weeks and now is being done in minutes. Wait from weeks to minutes. Weeks to minutes. It allows us to explore more concept, more ideas to make sure we get the right one. Is AI going to allow you to make cars with fewer people?

do you think? I think it's how we give the tools to the people to be able to do better work. And to me, it's how do we do more with the people that we have because we're using AI tools. She says higher gas prices aren't denting demand. The GM is squarely focused on affordability with six models starting at $30,000 or less, including its all-electric bolt, a price on par with Chinese EVs from manufacturers like BYD. Tom recently test drove one of those cars, while reporting in China. If you could buy this car in America, how much would it cost? So $25,000 here, you had about $10,000, $35,000.

Still a pretty good deal. But Bara is among American auto execs saying that deal shouldn't be an option in the U.S. citing unfair Chinese government subsidies and the connected technology that could lead to spying on Americans. General Motors needs to have a level plane field and then we need to compete. I think we have to look at it and the jobs that are provided from an economy perspective. and then also look at it from a national security perspective. What would the level playing field look like for you? You know, equivalent tariffs and not being subsidized.

In an industry changing faster than ever, Barra says GM is poised to win. I'm confident that we can compete and we're working every day to continue to make our business more efficient so we can give the customer more. After more than four decades with GM, Barra, still excited for the road ahead. Christine Romans, NBC News, Warren, Michigan. Extended Sit Down with Mary Barrow with an NBC News subscription. Become a subscriber to get more extended interviews, exclusive content, and fewer ads. You can scan the QR code to download the NBC News app now and subscribe. All right, when we come back, a blast from the past, why do some hit songs from decades ago?

Now top the charts again. We'll explain next. Top story is coming to you live from Poiraz, Mexico. Reporting over the skies of Mahina. Every weeknight, it's your news playlist. Top Story with Tom Yamas, streaming weeknights at 7 on NBC News Now. If that song by The Killers took you back, you're not alone. I did not know Eric Roberts was in that music video, but apparently what's old is new again,

and it's the latest trend in music streaming. And a headline in the Wall Street Journal, Carter Eye recently, was titled, The Biggest Hits on Spotify right now are a blast from the past. The reporter interviewed a spokesperson from Spotify, who called 2026 the most nostalgic year in the history of the platform. And take a look at this. These are just some of the songs dominating Spotify's top 50 tracks globally today. You see it right here. Billy Jean by Michael Jackson, Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, and Crete by Radiohead. For more on the so-called retro revival in music, I want to bring in Rob Harvilla. He's a music critic and host of the podcast, 60 songs that explain the 90s.

It is a phenomenal podcast. I'm a huge fan. Rob, great to have you on this show. So what do you think's behind this resurgence? I have my own theories on it, but explain it to me as somebody who lives as in this world and it really is your business. What's going on here? I think there's a cultural story, a social story, but I think you have to start with it being a technological story. I am talking to you right now, but also,

I can make Michael Jackson's thriller start playing in this room in 10 seconds, right? And that is not new information to you. That's pretty mundane, like 15 years now after Spotify came to America. But as a child of the 80s, as a teenager of the 90s, it is a, eternally shocking to me, the ease with which I can play pretty much anything, pretty much

whenever I want, through Spotify, through YouTube, through the internet in general. The idea that you can listen to anything from any time period at any point in your day is just shocking to me in its mundanity now. Everybody does it. Everybody knows that. But it's never not going to be weird to me, and I do think that's what's driving, you know, you can listen to all the old music you want now, and you could not do that in 1995. I agree with you, but there was always all these radio stations, right? We grew up with them, you could listen to them. They were a different spot on the dial, but here is what I think's happening also, right? Radio stations are gone. DJs are not breaking records like they used to. There's the college radio station. I don't know

what that looks like anymore, right? But these are places where you would hear new music or you'd go to venues to hear new bands. DJs would break hip-hop records here in New York City's at clubs. Is it that people are going out and experiencing live music less in the sense of new artists? That's number one. Number two, you don't have the countdown shows as you did when we were growing up on radio stations as much. You have Spotify and you have XM. And XM is everything is a vertical on XM, right? It's 90s music. It's 80s music. There is like the new music. But I don't know. I wonder if the whole industry has changed. And that's why people are going back to these classics because the algorithm, essentially, this is where I'm going, the algorithm,

the big scary algorithm, is feeding them this. Exactly. The algorithm, you know, quote unquote, like that's a technological story, but it's also a cultural story because it's scary and it's evil and it's telling you what to like and what to listen to even if you're not aware of that fact. I mean, I think a lot about the 80s and the 90s when you were, you know, I grew up in small town, St. Louis, Missouri, and I was limited to what was on MTV, what was on the local radio stations, what was playing in Walmart, you know, what my friends, what records, albums, LPs, and tapes my friends had. I just didn't have access to that much music. So of course I'm going to end up listening to Michael Jackson, Prince,

you know, Bruce Springsteen, Guns and Roses, whatever it is. Like the idea of a monoculture, you know, that we used to have, you know, in the 80s and the 90s, and then it slowly died or quickly died when the internet came, when you could go and do your own thing, where each of us had our own individual algorithm. You know what I mean? Like, I do think the internet is responsible for a lot of this. Like, you don't have to listen to the same thing everyone else is listening to anymore.

Yeah, I want to get a little more deep into this with you. This is an article which you may have read. It was in vultured, New York, Mag. It was basically talking about sort of the music industry and the promotion of the music industry. And here's a quote that really stuck out to me. The feed is fake. is what the article is called.

And the quote here is basically talking about how these songs become popular. And here's just a quote, most cultures streamed inside apps that lock their consumption data in a black box, report whatever proprietary matter is flatters in the most, and refuse to be audited or to convert their stats into anything that can be compared with any of those competitors. Even the artists whose work, all this machinery is supposed to be serving, no longer have a reliable way to know what real audiences actually want, since whatever feedback reaches them may already have passed through the same apparatus built to distort that feedback in the first place. Where am I going with this right here? In that vacuum, fakery thrives. When nobody knows what's

actually popular, the appearance of popularity means more than popularity itself. So, Rob, where am I going with this? Basically, I mean, it's not like, hey, this is really popular because the masses love all the song. It's because, oh, it has this many hits, but it has that many hits because the algorithm already fed you. So if you're a Nirvana, right, and it's 2026, how do you become popular? How do you get discovered? I see Nirvana T-shirts in Target now, so that's one answer. You know, my children know who Nirvana are without ever having heard a Nirvana song. I think of the band Geese, right? This New York rock band, very cool, you know, sort of vaguely indie rock in music, if not in conception. And they were one of the biggest critical hits of 20.

And this article came out earlier this year. I think it was Wired, who said that they had hired this digital company called Chaotic Good. And they have a lot of online accounts that talk about geese, you know, and they interact with each other about geese. And they're doing this on TikTok. They're doing this on Instagram. And so geese is rising up the algorithm, and it gets to me. And I, as a rock critic who like to think that I'm like plugged in to what people are talking about, I see people talking about geese. I'm more likely to check them out.

You know, there's a point, they're a great band, and that was one of the biggest critical success stories at 2025, and rock critics do not like to be told that the thing they like is not a result of their superior taste. It's because the internet tricked them into liking it, right? There's a point at which that you have, it has to become organic. You're listening to Geese because you like it. But there is a degree to which geese got put in front of a lot of people,

you know, via fakery, you know, that doesn't make them an industry plant or any of these sort of slurs that we use for bands, you know, who get popular out of nowhere. But there is, everything on the internet is fake to some degree. It's just something that we all live with now. Back in the day, there was peola. Of course. That did happen. But I feel this is different. Let me ask you this, and this is something I struggle with, and I think young people are as well, how do you, what's the best way to discover real new music? Not just what the Algo wants to give you, but like real new music of talented musicians and artists and bands. What's the best way do you think?

The image that popped into my head is go hang out at the local mall with your friends. And that is, I am the oldest person alive, having just said that out loud. Like, that is not actually how the world works. That's the way it used to be, though. That's the way it used to be. It's the way it used to be, man. The food court, you go to the arcade, you go to BDoh, whatever. That's not the way the world works now. I think we have to talk about TikTok.

you know, as a placeholder for the Internet in general, but I do think that the way that songs get popular now often is viral. Like you think, you know, Fleetwood Mac does not need any help, you know, being put in front of people. But there was the dude drinking ocean spray, you know, and skateboarding off the back of the truck to the Fleetwood Macsaw. And it becomes this huge viral moment. Like that can happen in an old school kind of way.

Like when Kate Bush is running up that hill is in Stranger Things, one of the biggest TV shows. Like that's understandable. to me. It's less understandable when a random song gets popular on TikTok out of nowhere. Like Jeff Buckley, like a very popular 90s artist, like people who love him,

love him, but he was not a chart-topping superstar. You know, he has this tragic death. He has this one album, Grace from 94, I think, that everyone loves. But he was never at the top of the charts. But suddenly last year, Jeff Buckley is a big hit on TikTok

for reasons that no one understands, or at least I don't understand. And now, lover, you should. should have come over by Jeff Buckley, a song from 1994, is on the charts now. And that's awesome. I think that's beautiful. And I think it's even more beautiful, the less I personally understand how that happened. I do enjoy the randomness of the virality and the way that can work now and who it can work

for. I agree. And I'm with you on that. I just want to find more new music. And I find it's really hard to find new music. It is. But maybe I'm getting old. Yeah.

Anyways, you can listen to Rob, of course, his podcast that highlights music from the 90s, but it's actually expanded. It's now, it's the 2000s, too. And you can listen to it on Spotify, The Ringer, he's everywhere. He's a super talented guy and great writer. Rob, thank you. I've wanted you on the show for a while, so thank you for that. That does hope for us. Thanks so much for watching Top Story.

I'm Tom Yamis, New York. Stay right there. More news on the way.