you will be a balancing act today for graduating students at marjory stoneman douglas high school. on one hand they will be joint health and on the other pain and reflection for the classmates and teachers who are not at the graduation. phil keating joins us live from florida with more. hi, liz. for about 800 high school seniors summit today is finally the day and in about an hour they will be receiving their high school diplomas, capping 12 years of education and marketing the new beginning of life, college careers in adulthood. of course, this will be a bittersweet celebration ceremony and historically in celebratory nature. certainly, this one is going to be sad throughout especially as for would-be seniors who should be graduating today are no longer here. the students and parents request the ceremony has been closed off to the media.
every company in america knows if they announce some economic good news right now after having got that tax cut, the president s going to give them credit. in fact, yesterday at that celebration ceremony at the white house, the president read the news about at&t which of course as you alluded to has a merger pending before the u.s. government. this calls to mind what happened after the election last year when companies started announcing factories that were already in process were in process. and the president said i just got elected and now we re building a plant. it s going to play out in the long run, not 24 hours after the tax cut passes. this reminds me of right after the president got elected. companies were jumping to say they re not moving their companies to mexico or overseas. it didn t have a long-term effect. it didn t work.
celebration ceremony, senator susan collins. reporter: right. do you have any understanding of why that happened? reporter: nothing definitive from her office whether she skipped it because she s upset about what happened up on capitol hill. essentially, she was promised by the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell he would make every effort to get some obamacare bills put in place that would shore up that program and that did not happen. the so-called stabilization bills that are pending up on capitol hill, that did not happen and she made no bones about it, she was not happy with that, although she did put out a statement with lamar alexander saying we understand this is going to be taken up next year and, as a matter of fact, mark short, legislative director over here at the white house, told cnn earlier that the president would sign some of these obamacare stabilization rules, which may become very critical, john. as you know, the president, as part of this tax reform bill,
tonight in still confident on thousand plays out. it s confident how they are playing out. they re watching this unfold on the senate floor. i was told a short time ago this is a proforma. they are watching it but for the worried. they know they have the votes. it s interesting, john, a few weeks ago president trump talked again and again about getting democratic support and votes. that will not happen. we do know the democrats oppose this lock step. republicans, though, they believe they have enough votes. one reason we know i m told by an official here they are planning the celebration ceremony tomorrow afternoon here at the white house. inviting republicans from capitol hill up here to celebrate the passage of what is going to be the biggest legislative victory. of course they have to go back to the house and have a vote tomorrow morning if it passes the senate tonight. that s just procedure. the white house is intending to take a victory lap tomorrow. the president will not sig
that are on him that are slowly imploding the economy in russia need to be addressed with a change of behavior. as you know he has now basically confirmed, admitted that he ordered the takeover of crimea from ukraine to annex it make it part of russia but is that territory, all the territory he wants? are you fearful he s going to try to grab some more? if you recall what he said at the celebration ceremony it was that as a russian, he viewed the ukrainians as russians. you can imagine how that s going down in kiev right now. they do not view themselves as i shared with you, i was in eastern ukraine and i talked with a lot of the russian speaking ukrainians and all across russia you know, there is this attitude now as people begin to follow the dictator and listen to putin, that he s very menacing for the people of ukraine. i want you to stand by. we are getting more information on the phone call that president