of the military authorities in cairo. very differing opinions across the region today. back to you. jim clancy in jerusalem. thank you for that insight. senators john mccain and lindsey graham is saying what s happening to civilians in egypt is as a massacre. they say it s still considerable. they add, quote, whether it is egypt, syria, iraq or the wider region, the failure of the obama administration to use influence to shape events that this critical part of the world has only diminished our credibility, limited our influence and constrained our policy options. the events now unfolding in egypt and the middle east will directly impact the national security interests of the united states and we cannot remain this engaged. president obama has condemned that aid, but the u.s. aid continues to trickle in. dan loathian is in martha s vineyard where the president is on vacation.
u.s. would be taking and canceling the biannual enter sizes with the egyptian government. susan rice, his national security adviser has been here on the trip with the president, also giving him regular updates as well. brianna, martin. dan loathian, thanks very much. now to idaho. fresh hotshot teams are rolling into the resort area around sun valley. a wildfire has scorched 100 square miles. it s still growing. authorities ordered 1600 families to evacuate. usa today is reporting one home has been burned to the ground and a second damaged. there are a number of celebrities, including tom hanks, bruce willis, who have got homes in sun valley. now from heavy rain and the possibility of flooding, you are looking at a live shot of panama city, florida. storms expected throughout the day all over the southeast. let s bring in meteorologist jennifer delgado in the cnn weather center. what are you looking at? anytime you see a beach, it s taking me there.
dan, why did the president decide to step up that between egypt and the u.s.? well, there had been impact for the obama administration to do much more. there and of course, was that delay of f-16s to the egyptian air force. but what the obama administration is not seeing is this quick transition to the elected government in egypt. so they really wanted to send a strong message to the egyptians to put pressure on them. they began, according to a senior administration official, talking about pulling out of this biannual meetings known as bright star, about the time in june when they decided to cancel the f-16 jets but when the violence really began escalating that s when the president
decided late wednesday night that in fact they would pull out of the those joint exercises. do they believe that will have direct impact on the ground, even a state department official saying there are limitations to this move but they do believe it will send a strong message to the current government there in egypt. so, dan, the other leverage that administration has over egypt is this more than $1 billion in aid. the administration is not calling what happened a coup, because that would obviously trigger a pulling out of that aid. but how are they going to use this as leverage? what happens to the aid? and you re right, brianna, that s the key thing. it really is sort of the biggest stick if you will, leverage, that the u.s. has in trying to push the current government there along to this transition. the administration does not want to label what happened in egypt a coup because they have said
it s 7:00 here on the east coast. welcome to this new day saturday. we begin with new developments about edward snowden. he admitted to leaking secret information on the nsa surveillance program. and now the government has leveled charges. those charges are theft of government property, willfully communicating classified communications and unauthorized communicates of information. cnn s dan loathian is here with us this morning. dan, these are the charges that we re hearing. are those the only ones that he s going to face? the only charges so far. it s still in the justice department launched an investigation after the leaked information became public. and this is sort of the first step in the legal fight to get snowden back into this country and in the courts. snowden who is still believed to be in hong kong specifically unknown where he is at this point. he doesn t believe that he has