this morning a damning report by the doj calling the police response to the uvalde school shooting, quote, a failure. the biggest mistake they say officers made while responding to the shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead. that is ahead. and right now, e. jean carroll is under cross-examination from donald trump's lawyers pressed about the money she made about writing her book and essay about trump's alleged assaults. details from inside the court. moments ago, nikki haley punched back at donald trump who

has attacked her on everything from her conservative credentials to her ethnicity, so she just got in the game. is there time enough for it to make a difference? i'm john berman with sara sidner and rahel solomon who is in for kate who speaks much better than i do. this is "cnn news central." ♪ pass. >> we have new office for you now. a new justice department report offers very harsh criticism of the law enforcement response to uvalde, texas. a mass shooter attacked the robb elementary school in 2022, left unchecked, us a will remember, for 7p minutes inside the school, despite the arrival of hundreds of law enforcement officers on the scene. 19 children were killed along with two teachers. the new report bluntly calls

that police response a failure. cnn's shimon prokupecz has been following the story since the very beginning, breaking news on the story again and again. you have ahold of this report, an early look at what it says thanks to one of the families who shared it with you, and i know you've been close with them throughout this time. what are some of the most important takeaways when you've read it because you've seep the failures in person and talked to some of the players in all of this as well. >> reporter: right, and talked to some of the players sadly in the confrontational way because for so long law enforcement has refused to answer questions. there's been no transparency here, and -- and much of the work that we here at cnn that our team has been doing here is working with sources and family members to put together what happened here for, you know, a year almost, where we spent time here digging through information that we were obtaining. and essentially what this

department of justice report does is it holds up all that reporting. it shows that law enforcement here lacked leadership, that they lacked training, the policy was all wrong and just one mistake after another, top to bottom, just everything, sara, quite frankly was a mess, the response, the way they treated the crime scene, the way they treated the victims on the day, the little kids that they pulled out of the classroom. i mean, this report goes into detail about how they were taken out of the classroom, and it was wrong the way they did it, and they may have actually injured them by doing that, and i have seen that video, and it is awful of what happens in the moments after that classroom is breached and the gunman is killed and the way kids are brought out of that classroom, and the department of justice report touches on that, but essentially they put all the blame on local law enforcement officials. it's the acting uvalde local

police department chief. he was acting that day, mariano pargas. the former school police chief pete arredondo who was ultimately fired and then the sheriff here, nolasco, the sheriff here who he with some interesting conversations with, but he was the leading law enforcement official in the county here in uvalde, and they take issue with his response that day and his inaction that day, so those three individuals are the key people in this report, but, remember, there were hundreds of other law enforcement officials, from the texas department of public safety, the state police who were here, well-trained, well-equipped, senior leadership. the report barely touches on anything that they did that day, and that is certainly not something that families are happy about, because they want more accountability with every agency that was here, and we'll see what the attorney general has to say here in about an hour

when he holds his press conference. the other thing that families are waiting for is the district attorney to make her decision in whether any of these officers are going to face charges. they are happy to see this report. they are happy that there is more transparency, but i can tell you guys that the fight is not over. we you're pecting to hear from them as well later today after the attorney general speaks. >> shimon, can i just mention the thing that really sent shivers down my spine just now. i had not heard this before. in all your reporting, each and everything that you've reported has been confirmed in this report, but the idea that the children could have been injured by the officers because of the way in which they were treated and taken out is just mind-blowing. what a moment for the families to have to hear that. i just cannot imagine all that they have gone through this all of this with all of the loss and then with this report seeing their fears confirmed as well. shimon, thank you and your team

for the great work you've been doing on this throughout. john? >> with us cnn law enforcement analyst john miller. got our hand on this report about an hour ago, not even officially released for some time. we're poring through it. what's the science now on mass shootings, and based on what we've seen from this report, where did they fall short? >> so the science in the post-columbine world on active shooter was immediate action, rapid deployment. it was get on the scene, don't wait for the s.w.a.t. team, form a contact team, you, me, two other overs, okay, we're together. we've got a radio and we've got radios and push to the shooter. distract, isolate, neutralize, and some of that happened, many overs showed up with a large array of weapons, long guns, body armor, but this is a command and control issue which is there were officers there who were willing to go in, but there

wasn't that single commander, whether it was the police chief, the school's chief or the sheriff who said i'm giving the orders here and this is what to do except telling them on multiple occasions, well, wait. wait, why in because we think the shooting has stopped and he's barricaded. they advanced towards the door and the shooting starts again and they retreat without pushing forward again. that's why the doj report, which really doesn't tell us anything new, but its value is it's not from texas law enforcement, it's not a self-examination. it's an independent look by a disinterested party far away. validate all of shimon's reporting from -- from, you know, the past year plus about what didn't happen that day. so i think it's -- it's going to be a value to the family members. the other problem here is going to be their expectation of accountability, because while you have failures of leadership here in command and control, what you don't have is anything where somebody is going to be facing criminal charges or going

to jail. it's confusion. it's delay. you could argue it's incompetence. it can be driven by fear, but none of those are a crime. if you're the sheriff, your consequence is either you get re-elected our don't. the police chief is already gone at the school system and, you know, their accountability is kind of out there, but outside of civil suits, i don't think we're going see that kind of thing. >> if you're one of the family members is, the consequence is you lost your child, and you feel you've been mistreated ever since this happened. there's very little that can be done now that will make them feel better. i understand from people who have gone through this report, it says there were were at least ten stimulus events i guess or the 77 minutes that should have caused law enforcement to go in but didn't. that's not one missed opportunity. that's a huge pattern. >> right. that's where the leadership piece real comes in.

do you have different police agencies there that are arguing, well, let's, you know, make entry and then we'll like slow things down. do we have keys to the room. >> does it turn out to be locked? where's the jan tore with all the keys? all of this is eating time until you get to 77 minutes when finally in some measure, john, actually acting against instructions, bortac, the s.w.a.t. team of the u.s. border patrol that responded to the scene as a resource gets together a team and makes an entry and confronts the shooter, and the rest, as they say, is history. but it really goes against everything from immediate action, rapid deployment. it lacked the immediacy, it lacked the rapid, and icv part about who was in charges and this is the nouns which is if you're in charge of, you know, the six-person school police, are you real the right incident

commander even though you're a primary because it's your venue. at what point do you say i'm going to creed this to the town police or dps and this never happened. you had a tremendous resource of people on the scene ready to go and properly equipped and not the leadership to say here's the plan and now let's move. we'll continue to look through the support and thank you so much for being here. are a snell. >> john, moments ago, e. jean carroll finished her second day of testimony. last hour trump eats lawyers really focused in on the money that carroll made after she accused krump of rain and slaumpt let's get right to the courthouse and cnn's kara scannell. now that e. jean carroll has finished her testimony, what happened next? >> well, e. jean carroll just finished her cross-examination. we're taking a break in the trial. it's unclear if her lawyers will do any redirect, that is, their opportunity to ask her anything

that they want to clean up after the defense had their turn asking her questions. the defense spent most of the time focusing thon question of how was e. jean carroll harmed? that's because this trial is not about the assault but about damages that carroll may recover from the jury so they were focusing in on whether or not carroll was better off since she went public with her allegations that trump raped her in 2019, and they -- they brought out in her testimony that she currently makes about $100,000 a year from a substack that she write along with royalties from some books, and she said when she was working at "elle" magazine back in 201 she made about $60,000 a year. now at her peak, way back in the '90s she said she made as much as $200,000 a year so they are trying to get at this question of whether or not she is better off. they also showed her twitter in saying that her followers went in 2017 from about 10,000 to 20,000 to today about 282,000 followers, and -- and part of this is, you know, to try to

question that carroll is better off year, and one of the closing questions from alina habba, trump's attorney was just that. your reputation in many ways is better and carroll replied no. my status was lowered. i'm partaking in this trial to bring back my old reputation and status back. that's where they ended the session this morning we'll waiting to sigh when this break is over whether carroll's lawyers were questioned or if they will move on to call their next witness. rahel? >> keep us posted as to what happens after the break. thanks so much. sara? >> ahead, it's that time. we're just five days out after the first primary in the 2024 presidential race, but there's only one candidate campaigning across the granite state today, and you know who it is and she's doing pretty well so far. details ahead.

. a partial government shutdown coming tomorrow unless congress takes action, so will they? with us now is the house minority whip, democratic congressman kathleen clark from the commonwealth of massachusetts. congresswoman, thank you so much for being with us. what is your understanding of the timing on votes to keep the government funded? >> well, john, it's good to see

you and good to be back on the show, and what we are hearing from the senate is that their vote is imminent on the continuing resolution which is what will be the temporary budget to prevent a shutdowns, and can i tell you that house democrats are ready to play the role that we have had to play since the majority took over, and that is of being the adults in the room, putting the american people first and preventing a shutdown. it's what we did in the manufactured debt ceiling crisis back in june. we did it in october. we did it in november, and we stand ready to do it today. >> so that vote in the senate could happen shortly. is this a feel-good moment fending off a government shutdown? >> nothing feel-good about this. we've had this agreement in place in june where we took a

bipartisan vote coming out of a negotiations with the president and then speaker mccarthy. when the republicans held our economy hostage over the debt ceiling. they used that -- that hostage-taking to extort this deal. we agreed to it, and ever since then they have put their own internal chaos, their quest for power, their quest to turn the capitol and the business that we should be focused on here in congress into a campaign arm for donald trump instead of fulfilling this most basic requirement of having a federal budget, and what's at stake again is another shutdown that is bad for small businesses, bad for veterans, bad for federal employees. this is such a core obligation of congress, the fact that we're here again just speaks to the chaos and division on the other side of the aisle.

>> you just mentioned as a campaign perform for donald trump here. we heard yesterday from house speaker mike johnson that he's consulting with donald trump on the issue of border negotiations. these negotiations are largely happening in the senate right now, but house speaker mike johnson who over the weekend reportedly said that whatever bipartisan agreement comes from the senate is dead on alively in the house said he oats talking to donald trump about this. how do you feel about this? >> well, it's absolutely no surprise. donald trump and maga extremism has taken over the house republican party and this is what we get. we are in divided government. we need to come together in a bipartisan way to create solutions for the american people, and the border and bothered security is one of the most pressing issues that we are facing as a country, so this rejection of any kind of bipartisan coming together to

meet this need, address this crisis is at odds with exactly why we're sent to congress, to do the people's work. and national security is at the top of thosep responsibilities, and we have seen this president, the biden/harris administration, coming to the table, working in a bipartisan way in the senate to create solutions as the president has done around the border since the first day of his presidency, and this rejection before even seeing a deal just speaks to where the house gop is. they are fighting amongst themselves, and they have forgotten the american people, and what they are asking us to do which is help them, help them lower the cost of health care, help them address gun violence, help them secure our boarders. >> i do want to ask you. you were talking about what the

president has done on immigration, because right here on the show just a few days ago i heard from a democratic member of the house, vincente gonzalez, listen to what he said. >> the president needs to do a whole lot more. we need to are do more on the southern standard. >> are you saying the administration is not getting the job done? >> i don't think this administration or the past administration have done enough on our southern border. >> so what do you say -- what do you say to that criticism, and how far would you be willing to go in terms of changing asylum laws? >> here's what i'm going to say is that the administration has acknowledged, vass all house democrats, that we have a broken immigration system, and what we have seen also at the same time as administration put forward their different proposals, let's

just look at the budget at the end of last year, where the administration working with democrats put forward hundreds of millions of dollars in technology to help us address and stop the flow of fentanyl that we know comes through our ports. that's where fentanyl comes through. not a single republican vote, and we fast forward to today where the administration is in discussions about issues around asylum, around setting up the ability to process people in their home countries. they are willing to come together to address this crisis, and what we are seeing are comments from the speaker that if it is about bipartisanship, they are not interested. in fact, marjorie taylor greene

said bipartisanship a lot, this was her quote, means she would be open to moving forward with a motion to vacate. that's where they are. >> it's about finding sugss. >> would you be personally willing to vote for a bipartisan agreement that raises the credible fear safior what we just remembered from -- >> we're waiting to see texts. i'm not going to get ahead of our caucus on any specific proposal, with you are here meeting with solutions. very part bills that we put forward and together support from around our caucus. we are open to ideas that promote national security, but let's look at the situation. we are going to hold up funding for ukraine, for humanitarian

aid, for national security, for border security. the administration says okay i'll come forward and work with you to get to a solution. they preempt that in the house and say whatever solution you come up with is going to be bipartisan, and we tap out. that is where they are, and that is really a dangerous place, not just to put our politics but to put the security of the american people in. >> it's already upsetting republicans in the senate as well. congresswoman katherine clark from the commonwealth of massachusetts, go celtics. thanks for being with us. rahel? >> go celtics. >> all right. still ahead for us, a tit for tat on the campaign trail. donald trump says a vote for nikki haley is a vote for joe biden as she calls trump's attacks on her a temper tantrum. more on that coming up next. millions of people have been

displaced in gaza as the humanitarian crisis grows even worse. secretary of state antony blinken says that the suffering breaks his heart. coming up, we'll have more on this. we'll be right back.

welcome back. this morning nikki heal sebak on the campaign trail in new hampshire after former trump

escalated his attacks against her. haley telling her supporters that it's time to move on from trump. take a listen. >> do we want more of the same or do we want to go forward in a new direction, and more of the same is not just joe biden? more of the same is also donald trump. when you think of more of the same, more of the same is the fact that over 70% of americans don't want a trump/biden rematch. >> all right. with us now is washington correspondent for "the atlanta journal constitution" tia mitchell plus cnn analyst and white house report for the asso associated press, sung ming kim. there's a turning of the party or page and some are saying they

are still holding back but these are not strung enough. does she take the gloves off as some have said she needed to long ago? >> so, i think nikki haley is walking a really fine line because she does want to show her appeal, how much she could possibly perform better than donald trump in a general election and be a more palatable republican candidate that a lot of people think donald trump is in a general election. however, she also realizes the dynamics of a republican primary. most primary states are not like new hampshire where she can depend on independents to help her surge in the polls, so she's speaking quite frankly to two different audiences at the same time which is why we see her kind of going only so far in her critique of president trump. i think she has to possibly mick

a choice eventually if she's going to go harder or pull back completely. one will benefit one group. one will benefit the other. >> what do you make of this reporting that some voters in new hampshire seem to be disappointed that haley seems to be taking direct questions less from voters. her camp denies that, but your thoughts about this strategy, of course, comes at moments when she's asked about race. is that the safest or smartest strategy for nikki haley? >> i will tell you that iowa voters and new hampshire voters, they very, very used to having these direct access to candidates. they are in their living rooms. they show up for town halls in every corner of the state so, okay voters are going to demand a high level of access and ask questions on any given topic and basically any point of the day, especially this close out to the primary, but you're right that

nikki haley has had unforced errors over the last couple of weeks or moments where she was a little too carefuled and really opened herself up to critics, the slave risch uwith the cause of the civil war is the one that stands out most in her mind, but nikki haley and her campaign have been incredibly careful, sometimes to a fault which seems to be a part of that, but certainly new hampshire voters who are so, again, used to this up close and personal contact and communication with presidential candidates are certainly going to demand more. >> yeah, one person who perhaps is not thinking as much about new hampshire voters is ron desantis who seems to have put the state in the rear view. we have some data showing that he's run no ads there since november, and now he's turning his sights to south carolina, of course, her home state. let's play it forward. if desantis is able to outperform haley on her it your inform a few weeks, does this change things for him in a

meaningful way? >> so i think if desantis is able to outperform nikki haley in south carolina, this is going to further prolong the desantis and nikki haley battle for second place. now i think as a result this may help accelerate the perceived inevitability of president trump. if he continues to win outright quite frankly while haley and desantis keep trading second place, then he can say, hey, why are we still focusing on who is second place. i'm the clear winner. so i think it would not be great for nikki haley if ron desantis is able to do well in south carolina. i think if he doesn't do well, that's probably the end of his campaign. >> well, we will see soon. good to see you both, ladies. thank you.

>> and tonight nikki haley makes her case directly to new hampshire voters five days before they go to the polls. the cnn republican presidential town hall moderated by jake tapper airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern. sara? >> all right. thank you, rahel. back-to-back winter storms slamming parts of the united states, killing at least 40 people. ahead, when this deadly weather will finally warm up. plus, the humanitarian crisis in gaza is growing by the day. steps of thousands have been killed. homes in ruins and we'll speak to a doctor who treated patients at hospitals there next.

as millions of people are displaced in gaza, a humanitarian crisis is just growing exponentially, and the united nations is warning that the entire population of gaza now faces the risk of famine. earlier this week secretary of state antony blinken spoke about the toll while speaking at the world economic forum in davos. here's what he said. >> what we're seeing every single day in gaza is gut-wrenching, and the suffering we're seeing among innocent men, women and children breaks my heart. the question is what is to be done? >> that is the question that is on many people's minds. with me now with someone who has been treating people in gaza, dr. jelani, a pediatrician and senior technical veras for emergency health with the international rescue committee.

thank you so much for being here. i do want to ask you, you know, having been on the ground, what are you seeing in hospitals? >> i bore witness to a staggering failure of humanity is what i would call it. in the first three hours of my work at the emergency room, i treated a 1-year-old boy with a bloody diaper and no right arm and no right leg. he was bleeding into his chest cavity. he needed a chest tube and needed to go to the operating room, something in a united states hospital he would have gone straight to the o.r. the orthopedic surgeon bandaged him up and said we have so many other emergency pressing cases which sets the stage and made me wonder what could be more pressing than 1-year-old without a arm, a leg and who is asphyxiating on his own blood, and it tells you the scope and severity and magnitude of the human suffering there. >> how does one deal with that? i mean, you go in. you get to come out, but you have doctors there who are

palestinians, that live and work in gaza and cannot leave, who have been working since the beginning of all of this. how are they? >> they are a monument of colossal bravery is all i can say, and i learned so much from them. they have been -- many of them have about forcibly evacuated, not once, but twice but three or four times. they spend their evenings looking for safe shelter, food and water, and they show up to work with a stethoscope in hand and some scrubs and they get to work. some of them pronounce colleagues dead overnight and continue to see patients even so. some are volunteers that have been displaced from other hospitals that i met and are still coming in to see patients and to serve of their communities. >> it is quite incredible when you think of the toll that's taking on not just the population but particularly on the doctors seeing this over and over, and there's nothing they can do but try to treat patients, and they can't treat everyone as i understand it. i do want to ask you about a specific incident that happened and that's the attack on an ambulance that was going to a

hospital, as i understand it. where were you -- were you there during that attack? were you on the ground in gaza? >> i would say, and this is a sad statement, would you have to be more specific when we're talking about attacks on health care in gaza so i can't place that event. i can tell there you was a bullet that went through our intensive care unit. we were forced to leave. the route was deemed unsafe, and israeli authorities dropped leaflets in surrounding areas indicating that the surrounding areas were red evacuation areas which rendered us unable to provide life-saving services to critically ill patients. >> we just heard this as well that the u.n. is saying that gaza and gazans, palestinians are on brink of a famine there in gaza. are you seeing evidence of that? >> i certainly saw children that were undernourished or malnourished. they had been in the hospital for several days so it's a challenge. they also had lots of co-morbidities, but i don't

doubt that there are severe food shortages. >> i do want to ask you this because we hear this back and forth all the time. israel says the, look, we're sending more aid in, and then they say, but hamas takes some of the aid or -- or, be aabscon with some of the aid. have you seen or heard anything on that level in that capacity, obviously you're in hospital trying to treat people so it's not necessarily that you may hear all of this but you may hear things while you're there? >> myself and irc were never daned to work in a sfalt that had any evidence to suggest that that would be the case, and i've personally not seen that. >> okay. i also want to ask you about something that "the jerusalem post" and others have been reporting now, that prime minister netanyahu has said that the operation in gaza, we're talking about the war in the gaza area, is going to potentially continue until 2025. that is a year from now. what do you think gaza will look like, and what will happen to

the hospitals in florida are already collapsing if it goes on for another year? >> i want to ask our communities when we think -- when we decided it was okay for hospitals to be attacked. we used to talk the follow of mosul and saigon and now we're talking about the fall of hospitals. we're talk about the fall of al shifa and al nas rah hospital. those should be unequivocally safe and protected under international law. we know that. what gaza will look like is an even worse apocalyptic scene than we have witnessed to date. >> it is very, very stark in the terms that you put, it especially the story about that 1-year-old. no one will get that how the of their head, and i've been seeing the pictures, we all see them. it is devastating and devastating for the families who have hostages there who have no idea if they will ever ever be able to leave. thank you, dr. jilani for the work that you've done to try to

take care of patients and for coming on trying to plain it all. >> thank you. >> john? >> new reporting on the federal review of the uvalde school shooting response. we're standing by to hear frfro attorney g general m merrick gad any mimin.

so back-to-back brutal winter storms blamed for the deaths of at least 40 people across nine states. more than two dozen of those deaths were in tennessee. several in or gone and more in the northeast. snow is hammering western new york right now. we sent alyssa rafah life in buffalo right now in the middle of it all.

you win the snow lottery. >> yeah, we've got like four feet of it and counting. we have the snow that's already picking up again today. that snow band keeps moving up and down, back and forth, up and down lake erie. it was south of us this morning. it's back over buffalo this morning. and the snow had really picked up earlier. we could be looking at snowfall rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour as we go through the afternoon, which the weather service says is lighter than it was yesterday, and we'll tack on another foot. we already have storm totals of 30 inches or more for some of those suburbs around buffalo, like west seneca. and if you look behind me, we're going torun out of places to put it. there are mountains of this stuff everywhere all over the city as they're trying to plow it out of the way. the buffalo fans are going to have to shovel out that stadium again before sunday.

as the bills have another game. the hockey team postponed their game, and they have to try to play it tonight in another foot of snow. so i want to show you what the radar looks like. you can see the bands that are just continuing to pump out there, over lake erie and ontario with the hefty snowfall rates. and it's picking up that moisture over the lake and just dumping with all that cold air. looking at some of the snow depth, you can see where we have feet of snow up toward watertown and buffalo. it continues to come down. so we're going to add to that map. and then i want to show you the lakes because this is what is so important, what i find so fascinating about this event. we're in january. these lakes should have much more ice on them. we had a record warm december for a lot of these cities and states around the great lakes. so the ice didn't get enough coverage, and i have all of this moisture and it's dumping all of that moisture. ice coverage should be about 20% and we're only at 8%.

>> that's crazy. that is a huge difference there. in the meantime, there is nothing like the lake effect snow. you're going to get a taste of it right now. good luck. get a sled. thank you very much. >> just enjoy it while you're out there. >> i like those bono style goggles you have. i'm going to call you, find out where i get a pair of them. thank you so much for joining us. happy to have you here, rahel. this is cnn news central. you, too, john. my bad. inside politics starts right nn now.

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this is cnn breaking news. >> welcome to "inside politics." we start with breaking news. we're standing by for the attorney general of the united states to address a scathing new doj report on the failed response to the 2022 uvalde school massacre. cnn obtained a copy of the report detailing what it calls, quote, cascading failures from law enforcement. the haunting conclusion, the gunman who killed 19 children and 2 adults could have and should have been stopped much sooner. instead, the shooter was left alone for 77 minutes where he was able to carry out mass murder. the report says this, in part, officers on the scene should have recognized the incident was as an active shooter scenario