potentially hit. plus congresswoman liz cheney says she is ready to part ways with her party if donald trump becomes the nominee in 2024. we ll tell you how she plans to keep fighting to prevent the former president from running for the white house. and making a direct appeal to russian fighters being called up into harm s way. plus, a hollywood actress st stalked for more than a decade. we ll tell you about the dna technology that helped solve this crime. the start of a new week, sunday, september 25th. thank you so much for waking up with us. amara, good morning. it s always so refreshing to hear you say it s the start of a new week. we are watching one storm, all of florida watching the caribbean this morning as tropical storm ian continues to gain strength. the latest forecast shows it s growing to a category four hurricane over the gulf of mexico before slamming into florida. it would be the first major hurricane to hit the state in four years. so yesterday f
you re live in the cnn newsroom. hello again, everyone. thank you for joining me. i m fredricka whitfield. right now in the state of florida a state of emergency is in effect statewide, and the governor is calling up the national guard as tropical storm ian gains strength and moves closer to florida s west coast. ian is expected to intensify into a cat gather 4 had and making landfall as early as wednesday night. governor desantis is urging people to prepare now. expect heavy rains, strong winds, flash flooding, storm surge and even isolated tornadoes. make preparations now, and i know a lot of people have been doing it throughout the state of florida and the things you should be prepared with food, water, batteries, medicine, fuel. anticipate the closer you are to where the eye of the storm makes landfall, anticipate power outages. that is something that will likely happen with a hurricane of this magnitude. cnn s patrick ottoman is in havana, cuba, where warnings ar
hook for some of the statements that were made. so i m sure it s anxiety inducing for a lot of them and on top of everything else that they re watching politically, which if you look at any of the national polls that have come out lately, even though his base has remained solid, you see incremental degradation with the general electorate. losing to joe biden. i m sure some republican is going to come along and make that point in the primary. we ve seen very bad weeks for him before and he s managed to publicly at least in the court of public opinion he s been able to skirt around it. this feels different to me. and it may be different. first of all, when it comes to public opinion, something like 60%, 61% of the country does not want him to run in 2024. his base is solidly behind him and the republican voters are solidly behind him but the independents have walked away. in fact, the number goes up to 67% for independents don t want him to run. so things are not working th
collision course. tropical storm force winds could hit florida tuesday. in puerto rico, further south, they are still dealing with property damage and washed out roads after hurricane fiona ravaged the island nearly one week ago. and fiona is not done yet. it could become one of the strongest storms canada ever experienced. it made landfall in nova scotia. allison chinchar is in the cnn weather center. it could slam florida in the coming days. right. it is expected to get to major hurricane strength. let s break it down. you have two significant storms to talk about. this is tropical storm ian. sustained winds only at 45 miles per hour, gusting up to 60. but the potential is there as it makes its way to the cayman islands, which is where we forecast this is likely to get up to hurricane strength. category 1, maybe even cat going 2 over the islands. it will make its way over cuba, into the eastern portion of the gulf of mexico from. there that system is expected to make the
ready to discuss a prisoner swap. former u.s. ambassador to russia michael mcfaul and the executive director of the wnba players association will join us to break down the latest. also ahead, democrats reach an agreement on their economic package helping president biden make good on a major campaign promise. we ll have the latest from the white house. that is because, and willie, my gosh, our economy later job numbers have just come out. you talk about a resilient economy, man. it keeps rolling. this is an incredible jobs number. the july jobs report is in and much stronger than expected. the u.s. economydded 528,000 jobs last month. with the unemployment rate ticking down to 3.5%. that jobs number notably higher than what we ve seen in recent months. economists are expecting gains to slow this month and in months to come. let s go right to nbc news senior business analyst stephanie ruhle. by my count, this is about twice as many jobs as most analysts expected to be added