assist hospitals where needed. we're tracking all of these developments from coast to coast. a school district seem to be doming up with their own solutions on whether to return to the classroom now that chicago teachers union is now being sued. what are you hearing? >> reporter: all these school districts try to figure out how to be in person safely. here in atlanta the governor is slashing those guidelines saying even if you have covid-19, you test positive, a teacher can come in the classroom and teach as long as they are asymptommatic and wear a mask. he's leaving the guidelines up to each school district to decide how they will move forward. the school district is requiring mandatory testing, twice week for teachers and it's up to students and their parents to decide if they will be tested. there are bigger issues in city of chicago as we see yet another round, a contentious battle. the mayor says she wants in person learning. she says it's best for the kids safety. that's where many of the children get meals and allows for the parents to continue working. the school district teachers union says not so fast. we don't feel safe coming back to classroom. hee here is what they want to do instead. >> our teachers are ready to work. they have been ready to work remotely under safe conditions. our officers are still at the bargaining table, bargaining for our student t our teachers, for the community. that's what we're asking for. testing, contract tracing, vaccination, testing, testing, testing. >> reporter: that's still an issue woe're seeing in san francisco. teachers staged a sick out. they say there's a lack of testing and masks. we're seein ing other battles i new york city. >> thank you so much. adding to this is the rising rate of child hospitalization. >> it all equals staffing shortages. we continue to see. we talked about this for week and yet health authorities continue to warn as long as the numbers continue to rise, then that stress will continue on some of the nation's health care systems. not all but just look at numbers again that issued a little while ago. we see the spike in hospitalizations. the governor now becoming the latest state in the nation to turn to national guard to supplement personnel at health care facile tills. -- facilities. in terms of what might help, when you hear from one health expert who has more -- it's a little more confident in mitigation efforts that we can take right now versus ongoing vaccination efforts. here is why. >> unfortunately, if you vaccinate today the people who are unvaccinated who account for about 75% of the hospit hospita hospitalizations, it's not going to make a big difference over the next month because they need a second shot. those are really important measures in order to get past omicron. you need to plan today for three months for now so we're not caught in the same problem. >> planning ahead, we can break these back here to new york where governor recently announced that they will be requiring now for health care workers to be boosted. that's those who have not yet received that third dose. s >> all right. thank you so much. appreciate that. with so many schools determining what to do next, the white house is weighing in. jasmine wright joins us now. the white house has reached out to illinois governor. what is being said? >> reporter: the white house is walking a fine line offering support to illinois officials but showing a bit of deference to the chicago teachers union as they continue to say they are the most pro-union administration in a long, long time. on friday, deputy press secretary told reporters that yes the white house was in touch with illinois governor. that was after the media was told he had came to the white house, asked them for more testing capability. now, she told reporters that the white house had conveyed to light foot privately what they have been saying publicly for a while which is the president wants to see kids in school and they feel that the administration and the federal government has provided and has the tools to keep kids safe in their schools. the bottom line is the president wants the o see them in their ss and their school. it remains to be seen what this intervention from the white house, whether or not that is going to kind of ease the lock jam between the two parties as hundreds of thousands of kids continue to stay out of school. for the president's part he wakes up this morning in las vegas but yesterday when he was here in d.c., he tried to inject a bit of optimism to this administration's current fight battling the latest surge of the pandemic. when he was asked by reporters whether or not he feels that the covid in this ite ration is here to stay. take a listen to his answer. >> no, i don't think covid is here to stay. having covid in the environment is probably here to stay but covid as we're deealing with it now is not here to stay. the new normal doesn't have to be. we have so many more tools we're developing. >> reporter: there was some positivity from the president as they shift their strategy to acknowledge that covid and living with covid is the new normal. fred. >> all right. something we're all trying to grapple with. appreciate that from the white house. let's talk about there now with dr. tyson bell. he's an assistant professor of medicine of infectious diseases at the university of virginia. good to see you again. >> thank you. >> in what form do you think covid is here to stay? you heard what the president had to say. sd >> we're in a crushing spike now. the nature of the pandemic is a common wave. i do think at some point the omicron wave will pass. we have to be worried there can be further waves down the road. >> how is that affecting front line workers that you're working with. >> i mean, health care is decimated now. there's really no better way to describe it. we are near our max patients of 132,000 from last year because of our staff leaving, exhausted. we cannot provide that same quality of care to 130,000 patients now that we did last year. it's devastating. it's important the try to do whatever we can to try to mitigate this spike. >> you said decimated. that's pretty powerful. health officials have been warning too that next few weeks will get worse. is the only way to get through this the issue of vaccination. people have to get vaccinated if they haven't been or is there another way through this? >> it is true that it takes time for people to get vaccinated to build up immunity. it takes about two weeks and that's after the first vaccine and you get a second dose. in the meantime, the mitigation measures of wearing mask, avoiding crowded indoor spaces, those will be that much more important to try to stop the chain of transmission. the people of today are affecting people of tomorrow. we got to stop that chain right now to try to bring these cases down. >> schools are a big concern right now for parents, teachers, students, everybody. we're seeing a will the of different answers to the same question about whether schools should reopen. what do you think is the solution, if there is one solution, universal solution for school districts across the board? what do you see? >> i'm answering this as a father, physician, public health professional. this is extremely hard. i think that pblanket statement that children should be in school or virtual are not helheld f -- helpful. i think the question is what do schools need. most of us would want children in school. what does the mean? that means increasing rates of vaccination among staff and students. we only have 16% of students. 5 to 11 who are vaccinated. i probably count my 8-year-old in that group but we need to get that up. schools need access to testing and providing high quality masks to students and staff. we have to get it on the front lines and get these to schools. >> teachers who test positive and asimymptommatic can be in school. you're already shaking your head. the message is you don't tra transmit. set the record straight for us. two responses that the dpoef would have that order and is the message that you're asymptommatic and test positive is you cannot transmit in. >> i think the real message is you don't care about people. i said i would not be surprised by anything coming out of the states that are coming out with these crazy policies. i stand corrected. this one caught me off guard. i know we're having an active school debate pu can we agree we don't want teachers who test positive in front of our students right away. right at the most infectious period. this is not a sound policy. it's utter madness. luckily local school districts can make their own isolation and quarantine protocols. i just hope they take this guidance and throw it directly in trash right where it belongs. >> school districts will be able to make their own decision. follow up question is it's a political answer or remedy. is this one the governor think will bring some real good solutions for the community? those questions still up in the air. i wonder, too, the cdc keeps trying to clarify the new isolation quarantine dpguidelin down from ten days to five days. it doesn't recommend testing before leaving isolation. what do you think needs to happen next? >> cdc is in a tough decision. any decision will be under a lot of scrutiny. i think ending isolation at five days without a test is not quite the right way to go because at that point about a third of people are still infectious. we know people are inconsistently using different mask and those are different quality. i think if you're doing it at five days, that should be accompanied by a rapid test. if not, extend it out to 7 days when about 16% of people are infectious. >> thank you. good to see you. be safe. >> thank you. straight ahead, will former vice president pence appear. the january 6th select committee is considering asking the former vice president to voluntarily appear before the panel in the next few weeks. life in prison. details on what the three men who killed ahmaud arbery face. a look back at the life and legacy of sydney poirtier. 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(excited yell) woo-hoo! ensure max protein. with thirty grams of protein, one gram of sugar, and nutrients to support immune health. i recommend nature made vitamins, because i trust their quality. they were the first to be verified by usp, an independent organization that sets strict quality and purity standards. nature made. the #1 pharmacist recommended vitamin and supplement brand. the house select committee investigating the capitol riot is considering asking mike pence to voluntarily appear before panel. secret service agents rushed pence out of the chambers on january 6th as the violent mob breached the capitol. he later returned and certified the 2020 presidential election despite an extensive pressure campaign led by president trump and his allies to halt the process. annie grayer joining us now. so good to see you. tell us more about this potential next step by the committee. >> the chairman tells us the committee wants to hear directly from mike pence. pence, as you said, certified the 2020 presidential election despite an intense pressure campaign from trump and his allies. that pressure campaign, who was involved, how far it went is a key focus of the january 6th committee. pence was at the capitol on january 6th during the attack and he was in the white house privy to some important conservations that can fill in a lot of threads for the committee. thompson tells us that the committee will be meeting this week to discuss next steps about when they want to make this voluntary reach out to pence. this is a voluntary ask that the committee is going to make. it's not a legally binding subpoena like they have done with some of the other witnesses. is committee will be meeting to discuss those next steps. in the meantime, sources tell us that multiple pence aids close to the former vice president have been meeting with the committee and cooperating and filling in a lot of investigating holes for them. >> the committee has said they are not ruling out the possibility that trump's actions amount to a crime. is that something that it can prosecute? >> members on the committee have been emphasizing this for a while. they're focused on what trump was doing on the days leading up to and specifically on the attack. they keep talking about these 187 minutes when between the violence at the capitol start and when trump released a message to call out the violence. they have first hand testimony an documents detail in ing what happened. if it comes across the crime it has to defer that over to the department and justice and they have to decide if that he want to prosecute. no ability to prosecute here. we're a long way away from talking about the crimes committed by trump on january 6th and the committee. it's important to note the members of the committee are really focusing on this as an angle of their investigation. >> all right. still to be determined whether the department of justice would be engaged in this and take it to the next level. thank you so much. this quick programming note. join fareed as he investigates the fight to save american democracy. the new special begins tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. we'll be right back. what does a foster kid need from you? to be brave. to show up. for staying connected. the questions they weren't able to ask. show up for the first day of school, the last day at their current address. for the mornings when everything's wrong. for the manicure that makes everything right, for right now. show up, however you can, for the foster kids who need it most— at helpfosterchildren.com a judge sentenced three pl men to life in prison. we break down the emotional day in court. >> reporter: the emotion in court was just as strong as it was a few months ago. people wanted to know how this would end up. for one family, they have been waiting for this moment of justice since the day the shooting happened. >> today the defendants are being held accountable for their actions. >> reporter: two of the men sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison. >> after he fell. the mcmichaels turned their backs to get a disturbing image and they walked away. the th was a killing. it was callous. >> reporter: william bryan junior sentenced to serve life with the possibility of parole after 30 years. >> he had grave concerns that what had occurred should not have occurred. i think that does make mr. bryans situation a little different. however he's been convicted of felony murder. >> reporter: before reading sentences, the judge paused for one minute. >> i want us to get a con sent of time. what i'm going to do is sit silently for one minute. i kept coming back to the terror that must have been in the mind of the young man running through. >> reporter: the court heard powerful statements from the family. >> i laid you to rest. i told you i love you and some day, somehow, i would get you justice. >> reporter: his mother spoke directly to her son and the men responsibility for his death. >> these men have chose to lie and attack my son and his surviving family. they each have no remorse and do not deserve any leniency. this wasn't a case of mistaken identity or mistaken fact. they chose to target my son when they couldn't sufficiently scare him or intimidate him. they killed him. >> reporter: taking aim at a defense attorney's comments during the trial. >> his long, dirty toenails. >> reporter: about her son's toenails. >> i wish he would have cut and cleaned his toenails before he went out for that jog that day. i guess he would have if he knew he would be murdered. >> reporter: the family was clear they wanted the maximum sentence possible. >> me and my family we have to live with he has death the rest of our life. we'll never see ahmaud again. i feel they should stay behind them bars the rest of their life because they didn't give him a chance. >> the loss of ahmaud has devastated me and my family. i'm asking that the men who killed him be given the maximum sentence available to the court. >> reporter: last november they were convicted of murder after chasing 25-year-old ahmaud in their vehicle, killing him after they thought they saw him inside an unfinished home on february 23rd, 2020. it took two and a half months before arrests were made after video bryant took of the murder was released and went viral. these three men face dagsal federal charges. the case is scheduled to be heard in february. it's not over for them just yet. a lot of people are paying attention because the prosecutor originally involved faces her own set of charges that are connected to this case. bryan young, brunswick, georgia. the deat a timbate between learning and returning to school is surging. i'll talk with the superintendent of indianapolis public schools about her plans as she remains determined to get kids back in the classrooms. nyquil severe gives you powerful relief for your worst cold and flu symptoms, on sunday night and every night. nyquil severe. the 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your eyes bother you? my eyes feel like a combo of stressed, dry and sandpaper. strypaper? luckily, there's biotrue hydration boost eye drops. biotrue uses naturally inspired ingredients. and no preservatives. try biotrue! a debate is raging in schools across the kcountry ove whether to keep kids in the classroom or return to online learning as the omicron variant spread. it comes as the rate of hospitalizations is the highest it's ever been. in indianapolis the superintendent of public schools says she's determined to keep kids in the classroom. dozens of kids signed up for shots at two vaccination clinics held by the school. mr. superintendent, good to see you. why is it so important if your view to keep kids in the classroom as covid hospitalizations soar again. >> right. absolutely. thanks so much for having me this amp. i think what we know and what we experienced over the last nearly two years now is that when we are able to have our students together with their peers and teacher, in person for learning, that's the best environment in which we can provide the instruction that they need. from my point of view, our job and our north stoar is to provie inperson learning even as we're navigating really high community transmission here in indianapolis. >> if there's high community transmission, wouldn't that lead to potentially high transmission within the school, the kid, the staff, the teachers in the community? >> excellent question. what we know from the mitigation strategies we put in place, we had low transmission with our students. we're a district where masks have been required for the entire school year. we are promoting vaccinations with our student, with our staff. we have put in place and reinstituted some of the strategies we used last year because we know they help to support eliminating that spread. we moved all of our staff meetings and adult gatherings to being fully virtual during this time. we're pausing on field trip and extracurricular a thletic activities for elementary. we know testing right now can be hard the come by. we ordered additional rapidtist tests that we can have those on hand for our staff and family as well. those are the things we're doing prior to hitting the surge. we put those things back in place because we know they made quite a difference in our schools last year. we believe they will do the same this year. >> other than testing, how are you gauging whether it's safest for kid and staff to be in school rather than remote learning, not on the best days but the worst days? >> we have contract tracing still in place. we have a tracker on our website for family and students and staff can see the prevalence of cases. positive cases as well as quarantine cases happening in our schools so we can be clear about what's happening in term of transmission or just the number of cases. oftentimes we know that's happening from gatherings outside of our schools but our schools are not in bubbles. what's happening in our community affects what happens in our schools. we want to make sure our family and community can see where those incidents are occurring. >> what are the options that you're considering for your school district as the numbers continue to vary? >> like i said, our north star is we're able to, across our district, educate as many students in person as possible. we need to be ready to make pivots as necessary at the classroom level. perhaps even a school if we run into situations where we cannot safely staff our building because of illness or if students absences are high. we are prepared to do that. we've had to do that already this week and through classrooms. when you hear the debate of open or not, i feel like it's nuance that's lost in that. we can have this north star of keeping our school district open. understanding there will be individual cases that might require us to pivot to virtual learning to ensure our students and staff are safe. >> okay. then just about every district wishes the vaccination rates were higher. your district set up vaccine clinics this past week for students and families. how did that go? did a lot of people turn out? what kind of reception did you get? >> it's going well. we know we will have to continue to educate our young people and their families about the importance of being vaccinated and make those opportunities available. we posted a number of clinics since the beginning of the school year. we will continue to partner with our local and state health departments to offer those clinics. most importantly to educate. continue to talk about why t important to be vaccinated and our district and the state if you're vaccinated and close contact, you don't have to miss school. there's real opportunities to continue learning when our students and staff are taking advantage of those vaccination opportunities. it's really important. >> have any of families relayed to you whether their reluctancy has changed at all? what are some of the reasons they are reluctant? >> sure, absolutely. we have heard from families given the higher rates of transmission in our community right now who are nervous about students coming back into the school building. then we have heard from families who are trusting in and supportive of those mitigation strategies we put in place. we they're happy we kept masks in place because they ins how they help the staff and students. it really depends on the family and the experiences they've had thus far and we're trying to communicate what we're doing, why we're doing it and respond when those questions come up. >> all the best the you. all the pest to your entire school district. thank you so much. >> thank you so much. thank you. coming up, legendary, director and long time activist sydney poirtier has died at the age of 94. his extraordinary legacy, straight ahead. savings goals, allowances and chores from your chase mobile app. all with no monthly service fee. chase first banking. 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to be able to institute choices on roles because he talk about his journey when he received his award of distinction back in 2002. he described it as a journey but it wasn't easy. he wasn't necessarily taken seriously as an actor. he was criticized by many about his acting and then he would with elevated to this incredibl. how did he do that in your view? >> in my view it's because this man pete the odds from the beginning, he was born two months prematurely at a time when we didn't have nicus. he could fit in his father's palm. early on he decided even when it came down to before he was famous, he had an opportunity to play a broadway role that he didn't agree with, that was going to be a black man that he didn't feel like was an excellent role model for black people and so even though it offered a tremendous amount of money at the time, $750 a week, he said i'm not going to take that role. he made choices, decisions, even before he was a powerhouse in hollywood, which i think paved the way for the incredible and remarkable career that we saw him have. >> it was important for him to be part of the civil rights movement, human rights movement. he was a social activist. here we're seeing, you know, in 2009 how president obama helped underscore, i mean, really his legacy with that medal of freedom award. >> yeah, sidney poitier was a good friend of harry belafonte, he had been an understudy of him in a play. it was in his influence that he came to be actively involved in the civil rights movement. he understood that as a person who was famous, he had an incredible platform. so if you saw him at a civil rights march, it carried a lot of weight. so he understood that he was someone that could make a difference just by virtue of the fact that he was famous. and he did a lot behind the scenes. he gave money. he wasn't always the one that was there with the bull horn, but he was extremely supportive. at the end of the day one of the most important things that he did was he represented black people in such a way that you could not deny their humanity and he did it with such elegance and grace and like i said before, dignity that you could not ignore him. >> absolutely true. i feel like if you didn't know him, he was in your household. i know he was in my household growing up since the '60s all the way until his passing. what a hero. what a giant for so many inside and outside of hollywood and throughout our families. lisa france, thank you so much. good to see you. >> thank you. good to see you, too. take care. because every great play starts the night before. my sleep number 360 smart bed tracks my circadian rhythm, average heart rate, and breathing rate so i know how well i'm sleeping. it's also temperature balancing so i stay cool. and it senses my movement and automatically adjusts to help keep me comfortable all night. sleep number takes care of the science so i can focus on other things. the sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now. only from sleep number. ray loves vacations. but his diabetes never seemed to take one. everything felt like a 'no'. everything. but then ray went from no to know. with freestyle libre 2, now he knows his glucose levels when he needs to. and... when he wants to. so ray... can be ray. take the mystery out of your glucose levels, and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free. visit freestylelibre.us when you have xfinity, you have entertainment built in. which is kind of nice. ah, what is happening. binge-watching is in the bag, when you find all your apps, all in one place. find live sports faster just by using your voice... sports on now. touchdown irish! [cheering] that was awesome. and, the hits won't quit, with peacock premium included at no additional cost. all that entertainment built in. xfinity. a way better way to watch. all right. senator ted cruz is apologizing for actually telling the truth. on wednesday the texas republican called january 6th a violent terrorist attack, but his comments drew a lot of criticism from the far right, so he went back on tucker carlson's show thursday night and tried to walk back his comments, practically begging for forgiveness. >> the way i phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy and it was frankly dumb. >> i don't buy that. whoa. whoa. whoa. i've known you a long time since before you went to the senate. >> i wasn't saying that thousands of peaceful protesters supporting donald trump are somehow terrorists. i wasn't saying the millions of patriots across the country supporting president trump are terrorists and that's what a lot of people have misunderstood that comment. >> what you just said doesn't make sense. >> i was talking about people who commit violence against cops and you and i both agree if you commit violence against cops you should go to jail. >> all right. let's bring in cnn's daniel dale for a fact check on this. so this was a mess, just all over the place. >> it was. and it's rare for me here on cnn to say that tucker carlson was right about something, but tucker carlson was right in this case to disbelieve senator cruz. senator cruz was trying to portray what happened here his use of the phrase terrorist attack to describe the capitol assault as some sort of one-time error, a slip, an inadvertent mistake. it is not. in fact, that is the precise language he used over and over for months. i did some research here. before this wednesday comment he is calling a sloppy error i found 17 different occasions on which senator cruz used that very same language. either broadly calling the capitol assault a terrorist attack or broadly calling the rioters terrorists. now, he did this in official statements, there was an official statement the day after the riot where he used this kind of language, there was another official statement more than a month after the riot where he used this language, there was a third official statement more than four months after the riot where he used this language again. he did it in tweets and comments to media outlets. listen to two separate remarks he made the day after the capitol assault to texas television stations. >> well, what happened yesterday in washington was horrific. it was a terrorist attack on the united states capitol. it was despicable. it's a dark day in our nation's history when terrorists can assault the citadel of democracy. i do think it's really cynical for them to be trying to take advantage of what was a tragic event that occurred yesterday in washington. the terrorist attack on the capitol, it was despicable. >> in hindsight on january 6th what operational steps should the capitol police and other law enforcement have taken to prevent the violent terrorist attack from successfully breaching the capitol? >> that was a comment in a senate committee in june. senator cruz's spokesman told me that the premise of my story is false. he said of course senator cruz has in the past called people terrorists after they have assaulted cops, but, come on, as you have heard here senator cruz was using the phrase terrorist attack far more broadly than just for police assaults. that was his go-to term for the capitol riot in general. >> right. still confusing why would he feel like he needs to retract that? daniel dale, thanks so much. >> thank you. ♪ all right. hello again, everyone, thank you for joining me, i'm fredricka whitfield. we start with the u.s. scrambling to keep up with a surge in covid hospitalizations. the number of patients across the country quickly rising in the last few weeks, nearly t