good morning. hopefully you re awake. making breakfast having your coffee coffee? welcome to cnn this morning. it is sunday. i hope you re not drinking coffee? actually me just coffee it off because you don t drink coffee. you don t want anyone else to do it right. morning. tea would be nice, right? i don t like taste. there we are. i m victor blackwell. thanks so much for spending part of your easter sunday. what? what would you recommend? just a nice green tea. maybe an earl gray something with cinnamon. maybe. i ve got something. my office. maybe i ll swing by the wild. it s okay. it s all right. here s what we re watching this morning. top democrats are vowing to make abortion a central issue in the lead up to the 2024 election after a judge ordered the suspension of a drug used in medication abortions. what senate majority leader chuck schumer is telling his caucus about the fight ahead a weekend of religious celebrations and escalating tensions in the mideast. the israe
easter sunday from new york. i m fredricka whitfield and we begin this hour in the middle east, where israel says it has carried out air strikes in syrian territory. israel s defense forces releasing a video it says shows strikes on a syrian military compound radar systems and artillery posts. the strikes were launched after israel says rockets were fired from syria toward the golan heights and in the west bank today, a funeral was held for two two british israeli sisters who were killed in an attack on friday. days of violence erupted following an israeli police raid on the al aqsa mosque compound in jerusalem last week. cnn s fred pleitgen is in jerusalem fred what s the latest? fredricka. well, certainly pretty big incident that happened there today on the border with syria when you had those rockets that came flying over from syrian territory, the israel defense forces say they say that those came flying towards the golan heights, which, of course are held by israel and t
washington. we begin this hour with the tempers flaring in nashville. where emotions are raw politics, much like the rest of the us bitterly divided republicans in the state house there voted to expel lawmakers were breaking decorum during a raucous but peaceful protest demanding gun reform that protest ignited by the nashville school shooting that left three adults and three young students dead. how the expulsion vote ended, has only added to the anger representatives justin pearson and justin jones. who are black, were expelled their fellow protester and colleague gloria johnson, who was white kept her seat by one vote. cnn correspondent isabelle rose salas joins us now with the latest isabelle what happens now? i guess there is some hope that these two lawmakers who were expelled might get their seats back. and that is certainly a very real possibility. here, jim. right now the spotlight is on filling those two vacant statehouse seats, and what we re seeing is local lawmak
drought, the lowest it s been and about three years. compare that to 2022 when large swaths of the state we re in severe or extreme drought. we ve never met snowpack this big to get a more accurate picture of how much snow california is under. airborne snow observatory flies over the mountains, providing its findings to the state s department of water resources. we measure snowpack wall to wall over mountains from aircraft, using lasers and spectrometers, and from that information, we can then know the full distribution of how much water there is in a mountain snowpack. and also how fast it s going to melt. and that s allowed us then to change forecast errors from being pretty large to very small and really dramatically changed water management in the west. look at esos imagery of the ptolemy basin, your yosemite valley at this time last year,
using lasers and spectrometers, and from that information, we can then know the full distribution of how much water there isn t a mountain snowpack. and also how fast it s going to melt. and that s allowed us then to change forecast errors from being pretty large to very small and really dramatically changed water management in the west. look at imagery of the ptolemy basin near yosemite valley. at this time last year, there s barely any snow. now look at this year. the bright yellow, showing most of the same area buried under more than 10 ft of snow that s nearly 640% more snow than in 2022 painter says the central and southern sierra and, in particular the southern tier are just crushing the record. these scientists say, despite the deluge of moisture this wet season, drought concerns haven t dried up. this is proof that western weather