want the plant back, with everything it had? or what you re going to have. i will be dumbfounded if you find anybody other than for pure sentimental reasons saying i d rather have a coal plan. i ll end by telling you another quick story. when we move from scranton, when coal died in scranton, everything died in scranton. and my dad wasn t a coal miner. my great grandfather was a mining engineer but my dad was in sales, and there was no work so we left to go down to delaware. i told you where those oil plants were. but i remember driving home when you take the trolley in scranton, going out north washington and adams avenue, within 15 blocks we didn t live in the neighborhood, the most prestigious neighborhood in the region, in the town where the scrantons and other good decent people lived, there was a you d go by a wall that my recollection was somewhere between 15 and 18 feet tall. and it went essentially a city block. and you could see the coal piled up to the very top o
wants a long sentence for his son. he claims he did not see a lot of signs of his son s troubles, but police reports prove otherwise. but first, moments from now, president biden will present the medal of freedom, the highest civilian honor, to 17 recipients. the prestigious list includes olympians, actors, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, and the first american to receive the covid vaccine. cnn s phil mattingly joins us now from the white house. what do we expect from today s ceremony? reporter: it s a buoyant moment to some degree. this is a particularly difficult moment for this white house, but the opportunity to present the highest civilian honor to an array of individuals from former lawmakers, olympic athletes, civil rights kind of people at the highest level of the civil rights movement, is something i think the president enjoys and i think the white house looks forward to, to some degree. yes, there are definitely celebrities here. denzel washington will b
now, they are saying that s a historical context, in part, inspired biden to deliver this address, at that venue, on this evening, just ten weeks from the midterm elections, as mike just noted. last month, the president of the group of historians, presidents do this from time to time, understandable, they want a little perspective, and that group of historians who, met with the president in the white house warned him, america s democracy is teetering. just think, for the first time in the history of this nation, a president disrupted the peaceful transfer of power. nothing like it had happened since the cannons fired at fort sumter. that same individual, who interrupted that peaceful transfer of power, led to the bloodshed there. eacefu transfer of powebut one of the , leading extreme movement, that threatens violence, and promises to overthrow the next election if that autocrat, aspiring autocrat, does not pass. tonight, the united states president, joseph biden, will out hi
evening, just ten weeks from the midterm elections, as mike just noted. last month, the president of the group of historians, presidents do this from time to time, understandable, they want a little perspective, and that group of historians who, met with the president in the white house warned him, america s democracy is teetering. just think, for the first time in the history of this nation, a president disrupted the peaceful transfer of power. nothing like it had happened since the cannons fired at fort sumter. that same individual, who interrupted that peaceful transfer of power, led to the bloodshed there. but one of the autocrat, leading extreme movement, that threatens violence, and promises to overthrow the next election if that autocrat, aspiring autocrat, does not pass. tonight, the united states president, joseph biden, will out his vision for how to safeguard, and defend, american self governance against its enemies the fish. will be the continued battle for the so
anything more to the point tonight. 67%, two in three, say american democracy is in danger of collapse. the percentage of democrats and republicans who believe it, identical. however, don t go looking for a bipartisan silver lining. the poll doesn t ask people to give a reason why they believe this. so it s possible, even likely given such other recent polling that a deep partisan divide exists over what people think is wrong. to use a political science term, ain t good. it does not bode well. but it certainly sets the stage for what the president will say tonight. and the backdrop, significant new developments in the court battle over documents seized from the former president s mansion and what he said today about pardoning january 6th defendants. let s go first to cnn s jeff zeleny who is at independence hall in philadelphia. jeff, what more are you learning about the speech tonight, which begins in just a few minutes? reporter: john, we are berning that president biden