If it's Friday, more breaking news.

White House and Pentagon officials revealed just moments ago that a second flying object about the size of a car was shot down in U.S. airspace this afternoon.

We'll get the latest details about what we know and a lot of what we don't know ahead.

Plus entitlement fights in political peril. President Biden puts Republicans on the defense over the question of cuts to Medicare and Social Security,

and it makes it clear how far Republicans have strayed from their party roots.

And the death toll in Turkey and Syria tops 23,000,

while survivors are still being pulled from the rubble nearly five days

after this catastrophic earthquake shattered cities and millions of lives.

Happy Friday, welcome to Meet the Press now. I'm Chuck Todd reporting from Washington, where we begin today with the breaking news about a second object being shot down over U.S. airspace in Alaska.

Moments ago, the National Security Council coordinator, John Kirby, speaking from the podium in the White House briefing room, confirmed that the U.S. began tracking this object yesterday and then shot it down at a high altitude, flying over Alaskan airspace this afternoon.

The Department of Defense was tracking a high altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours.

The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight. Out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered

the military to down the object. And they did. And it came inside our territorial waters. Those

waters right now are frozen, but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters.

Fighter aircraft assigned to U.S. Northern Command took down the

object within the last hour. Well, the White House and the Pentagon this afternoon said they

believe the primary threat, as you heard there, was to civilian aircraft and that the U.S. does

not know who owns the object and that it's full, and they don't know what the full purpose of the object was just yet

We're calling this an object because that's the best description we have right now

We do not know who owns it

Whether it's a whether it's a whether it's state owned or

Or corporate owned or privately owned. We just don't know.

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