of course the biden administration is going to be under pressure to take some kind of decisive action against this balloon that satisfies the hawks on the hill who have already been saying that the biden administration has not been harsh enough on china. it will be interesting to see how this plays out throughout the day, guys. we re going to bring you that live. anytime now the fbi could search the home of former vice president mike pence for any additional classified documents. up next i m going to speak to a bipartisan pair of congressmen who have drafted a bill to make the penalties tougher for mishandling classified material. also ahead, a killing without a known motive. a new jersey city council woman gunned down inside her own car. i will speak to a friend of hers about what they ve learned about the investigation so far. and later an italian mafia boss on the run for 16 years is finally captured. turns out he was hiding in plain sight, get this, as
top of the hour. i m jim sciutto. in short, it is cold. the powerful winter storm battering the u.s., expected to grow even stronger and colder today, covering nearly half of the u.s. population. parts of the country could see the coldest christmas in decades. sub-zero temperatures hitting hard out west. here is the owner of a local towing company in montana speaking with cnn this morning. it is cold up here. if you ain t prepared for it, it could be really bad. i ve been here 20 years and this is the worst i ve ever felt. wow, tough time to be a towing company. right now hundreds of thousands of people are without power. that is tough in the cold. many of them in the southeast. travel plans upended for many going to the holiday weekend. more than 3500 flights canceled already today and counting. here is the transportation secretary pete buttigieg. lots of things are so important to us around the holidays. our traditions, our loved ones. but of course, the most importan
residents of sanibel island today will be able to return to see what is left of their homes. residents have to access that barrier island now by boat. it remains cut off from the mainland. ian ripped apart a causeway. cnn s layla santiago just arrived a few moments ago and is able to file this report. reporter: this is west gulf drive, one of the main streets here on sanibel island. it s also a place where the residents tell me was the worst hit. this is now a street that s lined with debris. can you see straight into homes and see personal belongings everywhere. you also have part of a roof that is sitting on the side of the street. to make the point of exactly how powerful this storm was, residents tell me that this was actually across the street. now you can see straight in what was once a kitchen, a family room, no longer here. the equipment and refrigerator now partially on the the door. not much left to be salvaged. i believe we have leyla you want live. what more a
sequoia, known as the grizzly giant, to protect it from the flames that are ripping through at this hour. this tree, the national park service says it s the second largest tree in yosemite. what we know about this fire is that it has doubled in size in the past 24 hours. nearly 1600 acres have already burned and fire officials are warning that they do expect this fire to continue to grow as they are also expecting continued hot, unusually hot temperatures. escalating drought, climate change, a horrible combination, also adding to this yearly threat of wildfires. how are federal officials dealing with all of that? we have been talking to, on the federal level, the national park service. this is something they are very concerned about as far as the impact of climate change on places like these national parks. most of the national parks across the united states are impacted, if not by extreme temperatures, wildfires, it s the sea level. they are working, on the federal level
class. there is either extreme rich or extreme poor and the rest of us just kinds of fall through the cracks. it is exactly those kinds of voters that democrats and the white house are trying to reach. we heard the president just yesterday insisting that americans should trust that he has a plan to help working families. but those families are feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. and, in fact, we saw a little of president biden s own frustration in a letter today where he lashed out at oil companies for making huge profits while gas prices hit record levels. for him, his administration, and the entire democratic party, this economic problem has become an escalating political problem. consider the stakes w more than two dozen states holding primaries over the next three months. voters are making decisions based on what they are feeling now, not what might happen down the line. if you like $8 a gallon gas and you like continued rising costs on every single type of goods that