maybe you want to keep those seat belts fastened. the lead starts right now. major questions raised today about your safety in the air as senators grill the faa why the agency cannot be so sure there will not be more runway near misses and grounded flights. plus, nikki haley officially kicks off her 2024 campaign, bringing a pledge to bring in a new generation of leadership. but how long can she maintain this delicate dance, throwing subtle shade at trump while not alienating his supporters? and hayashi, you know, that first flying object shot down, the one that was deemed a chinese spy balloon. u.s. intel says maybe it wasn t supposed to be over the continental u.s. after all. welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper. we start with our politics lead and the airport chaos taking over capitol hill after the series of near collisions and the nationwide ground stop that led to thousands of delayed and canceled flights. the acting head of the federal aviation administration
gillian: most major u.s. airlines are rebounding from the holiday blizzard, southwest airlines continues spiralling downward. the company ceo says the communications network was thrown off by the historic storm. that was not the only challenge. southwest memo out of denver airport warned of a staffing crisis just days before christmas. gillian: according to bloomberg, the v.p. of ground operations declared a state of operational emergency at the airport after an unusually high number of employee absences. sending a message to workers december 21st. anita: fox team coverage, jacqui heinrich what the white house is saying this hour. gillian: first with fox weather, katie is at philadelphia international airport. what are passengers telling you today? gillian, anita, the situation is very real for people still dealing with stranded luggage or not able to rebook their flights. i just met a family that was trying to travel from california to here in philadelphia, and t
if you re interested in reading the report by jimmy and his class, there is the link at the bottom of your screen. bit.l-y/yale.20year war. be sure to tune in saturday, 8:00 p.m. eastern for the one hour special. the news continues. let s hand it over to sara sidner and cnn tonight. the message behind the special master donald trump asked for in his battle over classified documents is basically this, put up or shut up. and you have a deadline to do so. and that deadline is next friday. michael cohen, donald trump s long-time personal lawyer, turned nemesis, is here. i ll talk to him in just a few minutes about the former president s many legal battles, including one of the vital new developments tonight putting donald trump under quickly increasing pressure. that special master, judge raymond dearie, now says team trump has to back up any claims of the fbi planting evidence at mar-a-lago during last month s search. and they have to do it in a sworn declaration. they als
security adviser, highly involved in international priorities from the trump/kim summits to china policy. will be impossible to dismiss as a low level staffer. and steve bannon s contempt of congress trial, the former white house senior adviser is charged with defying subpoenas from the january 6th committee, for months. we begin with new information we re learning about the former trump national security official, who will testify in thursday s january 6th primetime hearing. cnn justice correspondent jessica schneider joins us now. high level, one of the most senior trump administration officials to resign in the wake of january 6th. what more do we know about what s going ting to happen on thursday? we know the two former officials will be testifying, not only pottinger, but matthews, both resigning shortly after january 6th. matthew pottinger was the deputy national security adviser and we re told at the time of his resignation that he stepped down in response to trump