down more than predicted, dropping to 3 .9%. we ve got a great team of experts lined up to try and make a little more sense of the data. any second now president biden expected to talk about those numbers. there s a live look there at the presidential podium in the white house. as soon as the president starts, we will take you there. meanwhile, we re also keeping a close eye on this georgia courtroom. that is where the three men convicted of killing ahmaud arbery are set to learn their sentence today. all three face mandatory life sentences, but the judge still has some say in the matter. we re going to get into that in a few minutes. right now president biden s federal vaccine or testing mandate facing its most critical test yet. at the supreme court. as we speak. the justices are hearing oral arguments over whether some private businesses have to require employees to get the shot or be tested. we re going to have the very latest from the high court in a few minutes. let s s
closings that came with the big surge in cases, that didn t even start until mid-december meaning we probably won t see the real impact until next month s report. that said, the economy right now is as fluid and unpredictable as it has been in decades. we learned earlier this week that a record 4.5 million americans quit or changed jobs in the month of december, part of the so-called great resignation. and it makes sense. if you can take advantage of high demand from employers, either get a better job or start your own business, great, but if you can t you can be falling behind. for lots of people, though, the real problem is inflation and even the wages have been up and they were up again in december, lots of those gains get completely wiped out when everything costs more. in fact, despite all of the positive news about the economy, only a fraction of workers say they came out ahead in 2021. so let s discuss. i want to bring in cnbc s senior economics reporter steve liesman,
numbers we have not seen in a year. but my next guest, dr. adjad says cases are no longer the major metric. first, to steve harrigan with the very latest on this. steve? trace, president biden meeting with the white house covid response team along with a number of governors. the president saying the omicron variant was cause for concern but he said it s not a cause for panic. he also said that the federal government needs to do more when it comes to ramping up testing. the lines have gotten very long in some states. that s why i order fema to set up pop-up sites in places with high demand. in many major cities across the u.s., there s huge lines for testing that go around block after block. people waiting for hours to find out whether or not they have the virus. we re traveling tomorrow. we want to make sure that we re clean. we vaccinated and everything. we didn t feel well, so we want to get tested. so the numbers of new cases continues to go up. many states inc
tornado hit. the girls got in to the bathtub in preparation for the tornado doing everything that they should. but the family was about to be thrown in to the air with a force that nothing could stop. and tragically anniston, the 9-year-old of the three sisters didn t survive. her two sisters miraculously did. 7-year-old avalyn on the left, hours later, described to her aunt what it felt like. she said yes, i was flying around in the tornado. i prayed to jesus to take care of me. he spent me out. the tornado spit me out in to the minus. martha: incredible story of that family and this little baby, oakland, two months old made it through the weekend, but she passed away monday. succumbing to her injuries. they think she had a stroke in the middle of this. we tell you these stories so we can remember these little ones and also to impress on you the shear unbelievable force of this historic tornado that our country is in the process of recovering from. you have 100 people th
the next few minutes. let s begin with cnn white house correspondent fphil mattingly. reporter: when you talk to u.s. officials leading up to the phone call, it s equal parts an update, letting the president know about the details with president putin two days ago. obviously their teams have been in touch since then. also coordination, i think that s increasingly important in these very tenuous days right now with that russian troop build up on three sides of ukraine s borders, making clear where the u.s. stands, what the u.s. is intending to do, and laying out in detail what the u.s. and its allies are planning if russia decides to move on the offensive. obviously president biden made clear in his warnings to president putin in that two hour and 1 minute phone call, there would be severe repercussions if russia moved forward with an invasion, not just unilateral repercussions on the united states side, it would be in concert with u.s. allies in europe, when sanctions have