War threat to a new level. Announcer this is cnn breaking news. Good afternoon. Welcome to the lead. Im jake tapper. We begin with breaking news in the politics lead. Senator republicans sending a message to trump they are not going to stand with him on his new policy resulting in thousands of immigrant children taken from parents at the southwest border. Moments ago Mitch Mcconnell said they are united in ending this practice. I support and all of the members of the republican conference support a plan that keeps Families Together while the immigration status is determined. And that would override the new Trump Administration zerotolerance policy that took effect in the spring prompting criminal prosecution of every Single Person app apprehended at the border. Complete with heartbreaking images and haunting sounds of frightened and screaming kids. President trump december pratly trying to regain control of the story. Tried to change the conversation to the largest topic of illegal imm
Is slowing down which presents even bigger problems such as the wind. For instance, take a listen to this. These kind gusts are getting quite intense. Some people are going to feel hurricane horse winds for 24 hours, Tropical Storm force winds could last for three whole days and then theres the rain. Take wilmington, North Carolina. It could get eight months of rain over the next three days and shatter its alltime rainfall record. We have folks here on the coast and in the Severe Weather center. Ill start with Diane Gallagher in newburn, North Carolina where waters are already starting to rise. How fast and how quickly are conditions escalating . Reporter jake, were starting to get pretty Severe Weather. At this point weve been dealing with flooding the past few hours and the wind and rain is kicking up. To give you an idea of how fast the water has been rising, where im standing now, it was up to around my ankles or so about. I was initially around 1 00 p. M. Out there where gates are
Flooding. Were going to get the latest this hour from the directors of the National Hurricane center and National Weather service as well as our correspondents and experts. They are all standing by. First, lets go straight to cnn meteorologist Jennifer Gray. Shes in the cnn Hurricane Center right now. Jennifer, theres a new forecast for florence thats just been released. Update our viewers. Wolf, the storm has put on the brakes. Its only moving about five miles per hour, and this is the fear. This is the storm that is going to basically sit over the carolinas for the next 24 to 36 hours, just shredding the coast, bringing relentless rain and a lot of wind and storm surge and flooding for days. Were getting gusts around cape lookout and North Carolina with 100mileperhour winds and gusts of 120. This storm is not going anywhere fast. Only moving at 5 miles per hour. The track has actually slowed a little bit. Not making a landfall until tomorrow afternoon, and if the storm decides to jus