Supreme Court Kicks Off a New Term; Latino Voters Swing Away From GOP

0:00So the last time Tom Cruise had a movie open this badly was nearly 20 years ago. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Basugin. So I'm going to bet this weekend you did not see the movie Digger, or maybe you were one of the few that actually did. It stars Tom Cruise and turns out in its opening weekend, it is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, flop of Tom Cruise's career on its opening weekend, making only$8 million. So we're going to talk about why, what the movie's about, if it was marketed well, and then also what this means when it comes to the Skydance merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers movie studios, which, by the way, is happening tomorrow.

0:44Also, we're looking at this new poll because over the last couple of elections, Latino voters have been swinging in favor of President Trump. But in this new poll out, they are swinging away from President Trump in some big ways. So we are going to get into what this could potentially mean for control of Congress come November.

1:08Up first, though. So the Supreme Court is kicking off a new term today. And over the next nine months, the high court is going to hear cases on things like voting access, religious rights, and President Trump's crackdown on immigration. Trump appointed three of the court's nine justices, and the court has mostly upheld his agenda. But they also dealt him some big losses on some of the issues at the top of his priority list. So to talk about what the court is looking at this term and the role the president is going to play, I'm going to bring in NBC News senior Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley.

1:43Hi, Lawrence. Hi, good to see you. Good to see you. All right, before we get into what you heard today, give me kind of the broad overview of this term and what are kind of the landmark cases that this court has added to the docket? Well, as we've seen in the last few months, the big theme is obviously the Trump administration and its aggressive use of executive power. We've seen that come up in a whole series of cases about executive orders, about the president's tariffs, his attempt to end birthright citizenship, his immigration agenda. So this new term, we're seeing more of that. So they're still pushing this broad version of executive power.

2:23We've got a couple of immigration cases that the justices have already taken up. There's probably more cases coming up down the line, including another immigration case about his asylum ban at the southern border. So all those cases are going to be coming. And then there's a few cases that aren't directly about the Trump administration, including challenges to bans on AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, which obviously have been used in some very high-profile mass shootings, but also extremely popular amongst gun owners. So we're going to see lots of kind of, as usual, cultural kind of touchstones, hot topics, and a lot of cases about executive power.

3:01So the justices actually started the term today with kind of a novel climate change case. The city and the county of Boulder, Colorado, are saying that ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy should pay damages for the impacts of climate change. You were in the room today. How did those arguments go? It's a bit of a head-scratcher, to be honest. I think there's lots of different arguments being raised in this case. It's a little complicated about whether these kind of state lawsuits alleging that oil companies deceived consumers by withholding information about the impact that their products would have on the climate.

3:41Can these even be brought in state court? the people that are bringing these suits are saying that it's similar to the cases that were brought against big tobacco or against the opioid companies but the trump administration that is has joined the oil companies and saying these cases shouldn't be brought they're all saying these cases can't be brought under the clean air act to the federal law that regulates air pollution and also just the constitution as a whole doesn't allow something as global and national in scope as air pollution and as climate change to be handled via these state lawsuits.

4:18So they were wrestling with all these issues today. And to be honest, after two hours, it wasn't really clear to me which of those arguments they were kind of hanging on to. It wasn't clear which way they're going to decide the case. And also, there's only eight of them sitting because Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court's conservatives, recused last week, didn't say why, but maybe because he owned some stock in oil companies. And so there's only eight justices. That raises the possibility of the court being equally divided four to four, which would leave all these issues unresolved. So then along with that, the court was doing some work over the summer while they were in recess.

4:57They actually made some key decisions on immigration enforcement, voting maps, and the president's ballroom. How did these decisions set the stage for the term? Well, I think one key issue, of course, is that we've got the midterm election coming up. And so the court was clearing the way for that in a way. They did not allow President Trump to go ahead with his plan to exert federal control over mail-in ballots, which was an extremely important decision. They also didn't allow Republicans in Missouri to move forward with a new congressional map that would have drawn out one of the Democratic congressmen in Missouri.

5:36And so they sort of sent a message in those two cases that they potentially aren't open to attempts to kind of last-minute changes to election laws meddling in elections right at the last minute, which is something they've said before as well. and we're sure to get more election cases coming up ahead of the election, maybe even after the election. But they've sort of sent a message that some of these more aggressive attempts to bring cases up there, they're not going to be super receptive to. And then, of course, they did allow the ballroom to be constructed, which was a big win for the president.

6:14And there's been a stream of these kind of emergency decisions over the summer. I actually wrote about seven different Supreme Court decisions in September, which is when technically the court isn't even supposed to be in session. So that tells you something about how this kind of what they call the shadow docket has really taken off in the last few years. I want to talk about kind of the Trump of it all, because this court has ruled in favor of the president many times throughout his time in office the second time around. And they have also, though, ruled against him. What do we know about how the court is approaching the president's agenda this time around?

6:57Well, I think one way of looking at it is that even though this is a conservative court, 6-3 conservative majority, that has three people who Trump himself appointed on the court, their agenda is not the same as his agenda, right? So that they are conservative. They don't always agree on everything, but there's certain lines where they do agree on it, including things like not liking the federal bureaucracy and wanting to increase presidential control over independent federal agencies, which was the subject of one of the big cases last term. So in that case, for example, that was one where the Trump administration and the conservative justices were on the same page, and Trump won that case.

7:39but on things like the tariffs which you know a lot of these justices came up in the era of free trade under president reagan president bush um that's not really something they they that's been key to their kind of legal world coming up you know as it were and so that's one of the reasons why he lost that case but you know so when he's in his sync with the justices he's got a good chance of winning cases when he's not he loses and there's some issues coming up this term like on immigration where he may be more in sync with them because the conservative justices think that the president has a lot of authority on immigration, especially when it comes to maximizing immigration enforcement as opposed to being more lenient on it.

8:24That doesn't mean he's going to win all those cases, but it just means going in, they might have a better chance than otherwise. Lawrence Hurley, thank you. Thanks a lot. All right, coming up. A new NBC News poll shows a key part of President Trump's coalition, Latinos, may be turning against Republicans, how they could shift the midterms. That's coming up. And also, while you're listening to the ads, don't turn against us. Do us a favor and share this episode with a friend and then let them know why they should subscribe to Here's the Scoop as well. All right. I'll see you on the other side.

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10:09And we are back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So President Trump hit the campaign trail this weekend with rallies in Ohio, Alabama, Texas, all states that he won in the 2024 presidential election. And now, with less than a month before the midterm elections, he is telling voters. Just close your eyes and pretend I'm on the ballot. But that may not actually help. The president's approval rating is at around 39 percent. And a new NBC News Telemundo poll shows that it's even lower amongst Latino voters, a bloc that helped carry the president back to the White House in 2024. So could this bloc cost Republicans control of Congress?

10:49For that, I'm going to bring in NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki. Hi, Steve. Yes, how you doing? Good. Okay. We're, what, less than a month out at this point? Okay. In the last few election cycles, we have seen Latino voters go more towards the Republicans and the GOP, right? Mm-hmm. Now there is this new NBC News Telemundo poll in which, and I want to make sure I'm getting this right here, a bigger share of Latino voters have negative views of the Republican Party than at any time since 2016. and they give the current president, President Trump, a 27 percent approval rating. That is actually lower than his overall approval rating.

11:33Walk me through these numbers more and why this swing that you're seeing? Yeah, I mean, I think, look, the big picture story is that traditionally, historically, Latino voters, you're talking about a Democratic-friendly, you know, block of voters. So we say Trump, you know, was carried back to the White House on the strength of Latino support. He did extremely well historically for a Republican. He lost the Latino vote by three points to Kamala Harris. But, you know, he had been losing it by like 35 points the first time he ran against Hillary Clinton. He did better in 20, better still in 24. He closed the gap.

12:08Right. So his approval rating now, what you're seeing is a big step back from that 2024 high watermark. So like you say, now he's got a 27 percent approval rating with Latinos. In our most recent NBC poll with voters overall, it was about 41 percent. So it is lower. But of course, you'd expect to be lower because it's a more, generally speaking, Democratic friendly, you know, slice of the electorate to start with. But I think one way to look at it is this. They call it the generic congressional ballot. Right. We ask these we ask voters, which party do you want to see control Congress in the midterm elections?

12:40So right now among Latinos, the Democrats have a 24-point advantage in our poll. Right. And compare that to two years ago, 2024, when we polled the generic ballot at the same point, the Democratic advantage was 12. So it's doubled from 2024. Now, here's the other thing that's simultaneously happening. So if you also went back and looked at Trump's first midterm in 2018, our polling then had the Democratic advantage among Latinos at 34 points. So it's sort of like Trump and the Republicans, the big picture story of the last decade has been improved Republican performance with Latinos that peaked in 24, that's fallen back from them.

13:20But it's also it's not fallen back to the level that it started. The floor has been raised for Republicans and Latinos. So he's retained a bit. Yeah. What are the issues that are driving them right now? I think even more so than voters overall, it's the economy and it's inflation. Combination when you ask Latino voters. So not immigration. I think this is an important thing and a key finding in our poll because I find this. I think a lot of people, when we talk about the Latino vote, intuitively and sort of reflexively assume immigration must be driving this. Obviously, the stepped up ICE enforcement from the Trump administration.

13:52It's not popular when we ask in our poll, has ICE gone too far? Has the enforcement gone too far? Overwhelmingly, the answer on that is yes. We also find that with voters overall, that the enforcement has not been popular. But when you ask voters what is the most important issue to you, Latino voters, some combination of inflation and economy is 43 percent. Choose that. Immigration, 6 percent. Wow. And actually, if you tick voters overall, some combination— So, I mean, that's like—yeah, that's similar to most voters. And it's even more. Inflation and economy with voters overall comes in at 37 percent, and it's 43 with Latinos.

14:29Wow. And we say Latinos are 6 percent in immigration. Voters overall, 7 percent. It's even a tick less on immigration. So we saw kind of these districts in states like Florida and Texas, like heavily red because of the Latino vote, right? Bringing that up. Where could we see this swing pan out across the country this time around? Look, in South Texas, three congressional districts really in South Texas, one held by a Republican that Republicans are trying to hang on to. Then there are two Democratic held seats. This is right down, you know, Rio Grande Valley by the border. There's two Democratic seats there that Republicans, when they redrew those maps, remember this whole mid-decade gerrymandering thing started in Texas last year.

15:09The theory that Republicans applied to that gerrymandering in Texas was, look at this big Trump performance with Latino voters in 24. Let's redraw these congressional maps to take advantage of it. I think they're now in a situation where the one Republican district down there, Texas's 15th district, is in serious, serious jeopardy for them to hold on to it. We'll see how it happens. And then in Florida, take a look like Miami-Dade County, right? 70 % Hispanic. This is, you know, Trump has, Trump won Miami-Dade comfortably in 24th. Does his support, does the Latino support sort of fall back enough there for Republicans that the 27th district, Maria Elvira Salazar, is she in trouble there?

15:47And then I'd look at one south of Orlando. Darren Soto is a Democratic incumbent. They also redrew the maps in Florida. It's a Democratic incumbent, but it's heavily Latino. Does it recede enough, that surge in 24, that Soto the Democrat can hang on? Are the Democrats, have the Democrats kind of done anything to gain support back from Latino voters? Because you say in this polling, they say they'd rather have the Dems control Congress versus Republicans. Or are they just gaining popularity now because Republicans are losing the popularity because they're in power? Yeah, I think it's the second one.

16:18I think they're the beneficiaries of a backlash here to Trump and the Republicans. And where you can see that in the poll is you mentioned, we ask about do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of the two parties? And you mentioned the Republican unfavorable number has surged in this poll. I think it's 62 percent negative right now. The Democratic numbers, favorable, unfavorable, are really unchanged from two years ago. And they're basically even. I think it's 41 favorable, 42 unfavorable. So I have some kind of overall questions I want to ask you as we look ahead to the midterms. And you're preparing to go toe-to-toe with all those results.

16:54What races are more competitive than you had anticipated? We'll just use the Senate side right now. Look, I think Alaska, I think if you went back at the start of the year, did I think Alaska was going to be a battleground? No. Democrats succeeded in getting Mary Peltola as their candidate. You know, she's up against a Republican who I think is on a bit of shaky ground with the voters there. And it's a tough read. Alaska is always a tough read. But I think Texas, I think that surprised me a little bit. The resilience of of Tallarico there. Obviously, you know, Paxton is incredible. Yeah. And the negatives there have obviously not gotten any better for him.

17:31They're severe. The flip side of that and where there's still room for this to be a bit of a funky election is, are there any Democratic seats that are competitive that weren't on my radar? I'll give you one. Minnesota. Minnesota is the one Democratic held seat that I'm increasingly. We're talking about the Senate? Yeah, curious about why. Because Klobuchar is not running again. The Democrats have nominated the lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan. And I think she's got two things that are complicating her candidacy here. Number one is that benefit scandal that's playing out in Minnesota. It's why Tim Walls didn't run for re-election.

18:09Walls' numbers kind of collapsed. She's his lieutenant governor. She's also really leaned in publicly and identified herself publicly with very kind of aggressive, cultural, progressive messaging. And then meanwhile, the Republican nominee is Michelle Tafoya. She was an NBC Sports sideline reporter, you know, for years. Has some visibility to voters before this in a different context. I think this gives her some strength as a candidate. I'm only saying it because the polling's been a lot closer than I've anticipated. Steve Kornacki, thank you. You got it. All right. We're going to take a very quick break.

18:46But when we are back, Tom Cruise just had one of his biggest opening weekend flops ever. We're going to dig into Digger's disappointing debut after a break.

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20:35And we're back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So for the past few weeks, it has been pretty hard to escape that Tom Cruise has been on a PR blitz for his latest film, the climate change satire digger. He did his first GQ cover in two decades, made his way down the Jennifer Hudson spirit tunnel, and even spoke to the Kelsey brothers on their New Heights podcast. You want to tell the audience just like what the movie is about? Just a little sneak peek. It's absurd. Yes. It's about humanity. It's not human. It is a story as old as time, but told in such an original and engaging way. But all that promo did not pay off.

21:21Digger made just$8 million at the U.S. box office in its opening weekend. It's one of the biggest flops of Tom Cruise's career, and it is the last theatrical release for Warner Brothers before it merges with Paramount Skydance, which is supposed to happen tomorrow. So how did things go so wrong for a movie starring literally one of the biggest Hollywood stars ever? And what does this mean for the new Skydance? For this, I want to bring in NBC News Managing Editor for Business and the Economy, Mike Callia. Hi, Mike. Hi, Yaz. How are you doing? Good. How are you? Great. Help us put this in perspective.

21:56How big of a flop is Digger? So the last time Tom Cruise had a movie open this badly was nearly 20 years ago. 2007, a Robert Redford movie called Lions for Lambs. Now, Tom Cruise was not the star, but he was featured prominently in it. I've never heard of it. So, well, there you have it. So Lions for Lambs. By the way, just because I've never heard of it doesn't mean that it was a flop, FYI. Meryl Streep was in it too. No, it was a flop. It was both a flop with critics and audiences, but we don't need to get into Lions for Lambs. So that movie made$6.7 million in its opening weekend. Digger made$8 million.

22:33Now, if you adjusted Lions for Lambs for inflation, it actually ended up making more than Digger, which would put it over$10 million. So this is a really bad flop for Tom Cruise. Why do you think people stayed away? I would say the marketing had a lot to do with it, to be honest with you. It was selling kind of a bizarre, over-the-top satire, but also positioning it as Tom Cruise's latest and greatest chance to win a competitive Oscar. He's never won a competitive Oscar. And then when people actually started seeing the movie, they started revealing that there was actually a lot more to the movie than the marketing let on, but that it wasn't necessarily good.

23:18So, yeah, it just didn't seem like they had something marketable here, and they spent over$150 million for it, which is a lot. Yeah. I mean, if you remember a year ago, Warner Brothers released a movie called One Battle After Another that also had a huge budget. Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah. Leonardo DiCaprio went on to win six Oscars, including Best Pictures. Didn't make a killing at the box office, but made a decent amount. Yeah. And the critics loved it, and the audiences loved it. But they were banking on this with Digger this time, and it didn't work. I'm glad you brought up One Battle After Another because, okay, so this is a Warner Brothers film.

23:56Yes. They're going to be merging with Paramount under Skydance as of tomorrow, I think. A matter of hours. Yeah. By the way, you just looked at your wrist and you have no watch on. I know. That's the joke. So 2025 was actually kind of a big year for Warner Brothers, right? One Battle After Another, Sinners, a Minecraft movie. and then this year you got Digger. This is insane because it's more than just Digger this year. Like last year, Warner Brothers had a year for the history books. They killed it in the box office. They had Minecraft. They had weapons, sinners. You had Superman too. Like it was heralded as the rebirth of the DC brand.

24:39And then you get to this year and it's night and day. Supergirl tanked with audiences and critics alike. really shed a lot of doubt on whether the DC universe is back and rocking. You've had Digger, of course, but then you still have a few more movies coming out this year that they have coming up. Clayface hasn't really been generating a lot of buzz. It's a DC comic thing. Okay, got it. A villain origin story. Then there's a Cat in a Hat animated movie, which should do okay. Yeah. And then Dune 3. So, you know, there is a chance for some success here, but it almost doesn't matter at this point, at least when we're talking about the old Warner Brothers.

25:22The new Warner Brothers is going to come under Skydance. They're going to keep the two studios separate, Paramount and Warner Brothers, but do not lose sight of the fact that it's all under Skydance. So let's talk about what this new merger could potentially look like with film releases, because the two people who oversaw Warner Brothers film studio, Michael DeLuca and Pamela Abdi, they are reportedly leaving once the Paramount Skydance merger goes through, which is tomorrow. Most of Paramount's releases this year have been already existing IPs, right? Like Scream 7, Scary Movie Reboot. But when you see kind of a flop like Digger, is there a question of like maybe that's the direction a merged Warner Brothers Paramount is going in, right?

26:13The reboots of things that they already see as being successful that they know can draw audiences. That is one of the biggest concerns that we're going to see here, that we're going to see a doubling down on IP, unfamiliar kind of properties. And in turn, we'll lose some of that original artistic vision that has generated big hits. If you look at Tom Cruise, he's made eight movies in the last decade. Yeah. Three of them were Mission Impossible movies. And then Top Gun Maverick, which is the biggest movie of his career so far. but four of his movies and he's been one of the biggest cheerleaders for this merger by the way were based on existing IP and there's a new Top Gun sequel in the works and he's working on a sequel to Days of Thunder another one of his old favorites so the appetite in Hollywood for these big risky kind of things is probably going to shrink a bit over the next few years and then we're going to see more sequels, prequels, remakes franchises.

27:15My call, yeah. Thank you. My pleasure, Yaz. All right. That is going to do it for us. Here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vasugan. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also subscribe to our daily newsletter, The Inside Scoop. It is a deeper dive on the main stories of the day that comes out every weeknight straight to your inbox. You can sign up for The Inside Scoop as part of our paid subscription at NBCNews.com. We'll see you tomorrow.

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