0 "new day" is done but the good news is cnn's "newsroom" with carol costello is only beginning. >> i love that. thank you very much. you made my day. have a great day. "newsroom" starts now. happening now in "newsroom" crisis in syria. president obama steadfast. >> the syrian government, in fact, carried these out. there needs to be international consequences. >> as the drums of war grow louder meeting criticism. >> i don't want to see boots on the ground or us mired in a conflict. >> ahead a former weapons inspector joins us. also, fast food fiasco. >> my name is pamela powell i make $9 an hour. >> pay in priorities. a nationwide strike happening now. plus, made in america -- >> this car is amazing. >> the best story of the day. the ford fusion now completely made in detroit. >> out with the old, in with the ford. you're live in the cnn "newsroom." and we're happy for detroit. we'll talk about that in a minute. good morning, i'm carol costello. we begin in syria, washington and its allies are facing growing concerns at home and abroad. so, today, the focus shifts to building a consensus. here's the latest. president obama is reportedly bending to the demands of lawmakers and will consult with congress. senator john cornyn will hold a conference call today to brief them. we'll hear from the president in just a minute. in the meantime, britain deployed a half dozen warplanes to cypress just off syria's coast and russia moves ships into the mediterranean. the region goes on alert and the uk goes on record sharing intel on last week's chemical weapons attacks. u.n. inspections team try to gather new evidence. u.s. intelligence sources as saying the case against the assad regime is no slam dunk. those inspectors, we learned, will leave syria by saturday. president obama says he has not yet made a final decision on using military action against syria. but he is convinced the assad regime gassed its own people and now must pay. here's some of his interview on pbs' "news hour." >> i have no interest in any kind of open-ended conflict in syria, but we do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us that they are held accountable. >> but mr. president, with all due respect, what does it accomplish? the signals the american people are getting, this would be a limited strike, limited duration. if it's not going to do that much harm to the assad regime, what have you accomplished? what's changed? >> again, i have not made a decision, but i think it's important that if, in fact, we make a choice to have reprecussirepr repercussions for the use of chemical weapons will have received a pretty strong signal that, in fact, better not do it again. that does not solve all the problems inside of syria. you know, it doesn't, obviously, end the death of innocent civilians inside of syria. and we hope that, in fact, ultimately, a political transition can take place inside of syria and we're prepared to work with anybody. the russians and others to try to bring the parties together to resolve the conflict. but we want the assad regime to understand that by using chemical weapons on a large scale against your own people, against women, against infants, against children, that you are not only breaking international norms and standards of decency, but you're also creating a situation where u.s. national interests are effective. and that needs to stop. >> a growing mix of lawmakers, both republicans and democrats say this is not a decision for the president to make alone. they say given the painful lesson of prolonged wars in iraq and afghanistan, congress should have to authorize any use of military force. >> i do think we'd be so much better off if the administration would come to congress, call everybody back and let congress authorize this activity. i really do think that this is one of those cases where time allows for congress to come back to give an authorization that i do think they've met the test. i'm talking about the administration from the standpoint of what the war powers resolution says and that is that they must consult with congress. i believe that they are doing that, but i think we'd be on so much stronger footing with this if they would call us back in and ask for a real authorization from congress. >> jill dougherty is our foreign affairs correspondent. she's at the white house this morning. so, is it possible that the president might call congress back from vacation? >> well, he could. in the meantime, he is consulting, there is a flurry of phone calls. there will be one, we understand this evening at 6:00 p.m. with the top members of congress and the top members of the committees to brief them on what the administration says it has in terms of intelligence and, also, to, as they have been, talking about the rationale and what should be done about it. that is really the question, carol. what do you do about it? you heard the president talking about these limited objectives. so, that's, that is a very important subject and it came up, also, from the united kingdom today. great britain talking about its rationale possibly for military action, as well. >> let's talk a little bit about the end game here because you heard judy woodruff ask the president, so, you bombed syria, but your goal is not to take out assad, right? so what then? >> well, number one and you hear them repeating this over and over again. it is really important. what they're saying is if you use chemical weapons which they allege the regime has, you have crossed, you have carried out an act that is very, very serious, according to international law. and, according to just the humanitarian nature of what happened. so, you have to send a message that that is not acceptable. it cannot be condoned. and it can even affect, not only syria. u.s. national interests. because chemical weapons are very serious. number two, you prevent future attacks. and what they would try to do piecing together what we heard from administration officials is hit the people who carried out the attack. these would be forces that are able to use chemical weapons, not all forces can necessarily safely. and prevent further attacks by taking out most of the hardware that will deliver them. then, you get into, no, it's not regime change. they're not trying to get assad and they're not trying to solve the entire deal in syria. that is very important because it's far more complicated. but, carol, just briefly, the results could be there are some dangerous side effects to this. what if they hit chemical weapons? they're not totally sure where they are right now at any given moment, they are being moved around. could they possibly hit chemical weapons and make things worse? and then, also, what about retaliation? what does assad do? does he take this as a lesson from the united states, you shouldn't do it or does he strike back even stronger more strongly and what happens to iran? does iran want to take some type of action? so, gets very complicated, very fast. >> i'm sure the president is thinking about all of that. behind closed doors in the white house today. jill dougherty reporting live for us this morning. fast food workers plan to go on strike today. it could be their biggest walk out yet. workers at mcdonald's, burger king, wendy's and other fast food outlets have hit the picket line and their protests appear to be gaining steam. they are demanding the federal minimum wage be raised to $15 per hour. that's almost double the current rate of $7.25. and they want the right to form unions without retaliation. alison kosik is live at a wendy's now and she joins me now. good morning, alison. >> good morning, carol. some of those protests here in new york started this morning and other protests started across the country, as you said, thousands of these fast food workers are expected to walk off the job today as a protest for higher wages. they are looking to get paid double. more than double the federal minimum wage. the federal minimum wage sitting at 7:25 right now. as you are about to see in this piece, some of these fast food workers say they're barely making ends meet. >> i work at kfc in brooklyn and i make $8 an hour. >> my name is pamela powell, i make $9 an hour. >> reporter: tale of two people, but one story. they're just 2 of the 3 million workers living on a fast food wage. >> should i pay my light bill or my gas? i can never pay it all at once. >> reporter: she says she has to prioritize. >> right now the gas is off. i had lights to be cut off, too. but, you know, it's kind of hard to live without lights. >> reporter: how do you make ends meet? >> we have to sacrifice. my husband eat today and i eat tomorrow or, you know, just make sure my kids eat. >> reporter: they both work less than 40 hours a week, neither of them get benefits. >> kind of hard to build a future if you don't know what it's going to bring you next week. you don't quo what's going on this week. it's kind of hard. so, this is like a struggle for me. >> reporter: because of that struggle, fast food workers across the country are taking to the streets. in july there were strikes in seven cities, including chicago, new york and st. louis. and they're spreading. >> we don't want handouts. we don't want pity. we just want everyone to understand our reality. >> reporter: the average fast food worker makes just under $19,000 a year. the government's poverty threshold for a family of four, $23,000. the national restaurant association these jobs teach invaluable skills and a strong work ethic that are useful for workers throughout their professional careers. we welcome a debate on fair w e wages that the majority of workers who earn the minimum wage in the united states are not employed in the restaurant industry. as for -- >> fast food business. i love food. i like dealing with people, too. >> i'm not ever going to stop dreaming for my children. they want to be ballerinas and we can't pay for it right now, but we're going to give it to them one day. >> reporter: and, raising their pay -- >> okay, problems with alison's shot. she'll join us later in the show. 27 schools in minneapolis are closed until tuesday. teachers and students simply could not take the intense heat. leading to concerns about their health and safety. >> what looked like was an okay situation on monday and tuesday, we have more people that are feeling tired and sluggish today and we feel like we need for our teachers and our students to have a couple days break. >> wouldn't that be nice to have a couple days break, indra petersons? >> imagine, carol. we worry about heat and record breaking heat by the temperature alone, but also how long you have to deal with these high temperatures. in fact, dealing with this heat since sunday. let's talk about what they're dealing with. states in the midwest dealing with heat advisories. temperatures already 15, 20 degrees above normal. been dealing with this all week long. in des moines, 98 degrees. expect it to be even hotter than today. so, we're expected to break that record at 101 tomorrow in des moines. looking about almost 20 degrees above normal, thursday, friday, saturday, we're still sticking with this heat wave. what we want to know is when we'll see that relief. finally a hint of that relief seeing a system make its way through the area. minnesota and wisconsin today and even more importantly behind that. we'll start to see relief. minneapolis 92, des moines 97 on saturday. by sunday, finally, we're going to see those 70s and even some 80s come back in the forecast. so, perfect timing for that labor day weekend, carol. >> i like that. indra petersons, thanks so much. time to think about what really matters now. college football. hey, it is exciting and gives everybody a chance to tailgate. that's what fans will be doing here the chic-fil-a kickoff game has been sold out since july 16th. that means the georgia dome at full capacity, 71,000 people. if you want a ticket, stub hub is offering 878 tickets ranging from 91 bucks to $1,199 apiece. which explains in part why critics say the ncaa dulled out such a lame punishment for johnny football. he'll be on the sidelines, but only for the first half of the texas a&m football game on saturday. the ncaa and university have announced a half-game suspension for heisman trophy winner johnny manziel because apparently the signing of those autographs was accidental. >> that's right, carol. that's why they can't get him for a major suspension. no evidence he got paid to sign these autographs. no money trail saying he got paid thousands of dollars to do so. so, that's why we're getting this mini half-game suspension. the half-game suspension is only because the ncaa says he should have known not to sign all these autographs for free because he was ncaa players are not permitted to profit or let other people profit off their likeness. >> so he could never sign his name to anything. that's stupid. >> there's a rule. they're going to reevaluate this rule and say, hey, you shouldn't be signing thousands of autographs, maybe limiting to one or two per person. if additional evidence comes to light in this case, they will review it and then there could be further punishment. >> a lot of things in this stratus sphere making fun of johnny football this morning. >> funny commercial coming out of norman, oklahoma. sooner fans still having nightmares of what he did it them in the cotton bowl, beating them by 30 points. they came up with this funny commercial, take look. >> i love making money, partner. but i also like saving money. >> you just got to live life to the fullest, johnny savings. >> who was that? hold this. >> they're making fun of some of johnny football's sayings. that's a great, great commercial. >> i think johnny is going to be just fine and there's got to be some change happening soon. because that's just dumb. i'm sorry to be so blunt. but, andy schols, thank you. still to come in "newsroom" -- fire storm. yosemite on edge and now using predator drones to battle the flames. also, hacked and still down. >> hacked against security awareness. >> "new york times" website shuttered and suffering. and why won't this story go away? miley cyrus now the beebs wants in on the twerking action. this is getting ridiculous. "newsroom" back after a break. [ female announcer ] a classic macaroni & cheese from stouffer's