should follow california on this issue. kyung lah, cnn, los angeles. hey there. thank you so much for joining me on this july 4th holiday weekend. i m safra sidner. we begin with controversial supreme court rulings that will have a broad impact across the country. the nation s highest court started off this week by gutting affirmative action in college admissions. by a 6-3 vote, the supreme court ruled that colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a basis for admission. the conservative court dropped two more landmark rulings on friday. in one case the court said with a christian web designer in colorado who refuses to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings out of her first amendment rights.
insist on chinese intelligence efforts. more than four million americans are expected to take to the sky this july 4th holiday weekend. that would be a new record. but many of them will be dealing with the same old problems, flight delays and cancellations due to weather and staffing issues. corrupt courtney teeingle is at dallas fort worth. reporter: early fireworks at the airport as independence day travel gets off to a bumpy start. this isn t organized chaos this is just chaos. we re trying to make the best of it but i have kite sucks because we re stuck here. reporter: triple a says more than 4.1 million people are expected to fly for the holiday shattering the record of 3.9 million. the additional traffic comes as airlines are trying to catch up after a week of severe weather and air traffic controllers
saturday, it is a lot better. it is still going to be high. your parts per million will be 100 to 150. there still may be orange or yellow in some spots, but at least it gets better from here. and it is also an impact on air travel ahead of the july 4th holiday weekend. hundreds of thousands of customers were stranded due to canceled or delayed flights with more than 1100 cancellations, nearly 7,000 on wednesday, and already about 300 cancellations and more than 400 delays today. but storms were only one factor behind the travel nightmare. staffing shortages at both u.s. airlines and the federal aviation administration s air traffic control operations made a bad situation even worse. here is more from pete buttigieg speaking wednesday. tomorrow will be a big test. we think tomorrow will be the busiest day of this holiday travel weekend.
after they experience a major disruptions, worse than other airlines. pete muntean joins us this morning from reagan national this morning. i have folks coming in the, are they arriving angry? reporter: they probably will. depending on the airline they re on at least. we re not out of the woods just yet and the busy period is still ahead of us. today the faa says it will handle 52,000 flights across the country. that s the highest number going into the july 4th holiday weekend. the big thing to underscore here is the problems, the mini meltdown happening in slow emot motion at united airline. so far they ve canceled 300 flights, delayed another 17 7. 10% of the flight canceled today. but since saturday they ve cancel 2,500 flights in total,
tonight, millions of americans are on the move ahead of the long july 4th holiday weekend. today was expected to be the busiest day for air travel, adding pressure to an already stressful week at the nation s airports. cbs s kris van cleave reports that nearly 51 million will travel by plane, train, car, or crews, according to the aaa. reporter: tonight, the fourth of july holiday weekend has a potential record number of americans hoping for independence from travel troubles. hopefully we make our flight. [laughs] hoping i can get to florida without any delays. reporter: aaa predicts the number of holiday fires will soar over last year. but the rush comes as airlines recover from a series of storms that delayed about 45,000 flights and forced the cancellation of over 8,000 more since saturday. united airlines is the hardest hit, canceling around 14% of its flights just today. and in denver, a sea of bags wait to be claimed as a flood of passengers try to get somewhere