is this going to be here for my grandchildren? he's not being held accountable. if we have the vote, like we have for election day, they will impeach him. times square is the crossroads of the world. we need everyone to go and put their name down at needtoimpeach.com. we need to speak up together and demand an end to this presidency. so find a venus smooth that contours to curves, the smoother the skin, the more comfortable you are in it. flexes for comfort, and has a disposable made for you. skin smoothing venus razors. the president made her murder the rallying cry of his campaign. the alleged killer the face of his central issue. beautiful kate as the president

calls her. a jury acquitted the undocumented immigrant on all charge charges pertaining to her death. the trillion dollar hole the tax cut could put on the country's finances. >> the tax bill today on the floor. what happened? >> what we saw is something that was hours of frustration building up in a single senator boiling wide open. all of the leaders of the republican party senatoring around bob corker, trying to get him on board, to vote against an amendment that was considered pro forma. the issue, the debt. the deficit. senator corker has not made a secret of the fact that he has with that.

tax increases would snatch into place. one problem with that, the senate rules do not allow it. releasing a report that showed the dynamic growth in the bill. that is the key issue for republicans. their plan, even though it costs $1.4 trillion. it could pay for itself. not so says the joint committee on taxation, it would only create $450 billion in added revenue, the plan would still cost a trillion dollars. senator corker needs a solution, and he needs it quickly. the republicans at this point in time, thought they may be on a glide path to passage are on the drawing board. >> where do things stand now? >> senators and their staff negotiating behind closed doors as we speak. these options are options that republican leaders never wanted to go down. the corporate rate dropping from

35 to 20%. republican leaders said they would not be willing to come off that number. >> keep an eye on other senators. senator corker is withholding his vote. his issue? also the deficit. he's been problematic for senate leaders for a couple weeks now. his issue is different. llc's that pay through the individual side. this is what they're grappling with right now. they think they can figure this out, but they have real work to do, anderson. >> phil, stick around, i want to bring in the panel.

paul begala, christine quinn and mike shields. republicans are supposed to be concerned about the deficit, how big a deal is this for you? >> it's interesting to see these scores coming out, when the bush tax cuts passed, the four years after they were made into law. the government got more money. $785 million more. and the deficit went down 57%. at the end of that, the housing crisis happened. and a lot of things aren't talked about. the bush tax cut. i think the republicans in the senate need to stick to their guns about what they know about economic policy. when you take the money, you give it back to the people, you stimulate the economy, gdp goes up people get jobs, that's been proven to be true. it's something we beat democrats on over and over again. it's why the country trusts democrats over republicans on the economy right now. the senators are getting caught up in these scores that are coming up. they need to go back to their

principles that work. >> the score that the republicans asked for, they didn't want the static score, they wanted the dynamic score now they don't like it. you kind of laid out a tax cause and effect. it doesn't just happen because you do what that one action is, it's how you do it, how deeply you make the cuts, at what time and in what way. clearly what we see here is that yes, there may be a half a billion dollars in money -- generated, but you're still down a trillion dollars into the deficit. and what i think the republicans don't like is it sheds light of day on the real truth here the republicans are going to put in big tax cuts that weren't going to pay for themselves. that were going to necessitate everyone to come back to the table. i think the truth is coming out, when the republicans or president trump don't like the answer to their question, they

go bhak and change their question. >> the trigger mechanism not being a possibility, could be a real road bump over them. for republicans in the past few weeks, those that are concerned about the deficit had been going back to this trigger mechanism, saying, we're going to have a few years to take a look and see whether the economy is going to grow the way the administration is projecting it. if it doesn't, we have i safety mechanism. >> they may have lost votes. ed trigger mechanism is was going to cause tax increases. there were a bunch of republicans that didn't like that in the first place. here's the big difference this year, the democrats had their turn. right? their economic stimulus bill was the stimulus bill that president obama passed. donald trump said no i want to cut taxes to stimulate the

economy. this is how you stimulate the economy. it's proven to work before. >> that's just -- as george h.w. bush said, that's voodoo economics. when bill clinton raised taxes on the rich and some in the middle class, the economy boomed. what this is is a giveaway to their donors. the republicans have been pretty honest about that. i helped bill clinton raise those taxes, this bill, a tax cut is less popular it's got 29% support, and it's supposed to be cutting taxes, this should be easy. this is like giving away candy? >> why. people know if you leave republicans in a room with the lights out, they're going to help the rich. the cbo score, if you make between 40,000 to 50,000. when this is fully implemented, those folks are paying 5.3 billion more in taxes.

people who make over a million, they get 5.3 billion decrease. >> there haven't been any hearings on this, is that the way this should be done? >> i was with the president yesterday when he gave the speech in missouri, i went into that having said on this show and other places, i thought it was confusing that the american people were going to be unhappy with it, in the long run. i think there's a lot of truth to that. what is happening, we don't really trust you. >> i recommend people watch the speech. he laid out the part about our businesses need to be competitive with china. by the way, china's corporate rate is 25%, not 20. what the president said was about the cuts, he acknowledged some of the cuts were swampy. i think what he did say was the vision the confidence in his vision about where we're headed,

people do believe in. ivanka wanted to go lower on some cuts and wanted tax credits. what they see, i think ultimately is more money for more people. and a focus on businesses being able to get money back. >> i was talking to senator angus king last hour, he said no one's seen the bill, there hasn't been a hearing. >> it wasn't full hearings. >> this is moved quicker than anybody expected. i think the most interesting element you're seeing right now, you can dig through the various parts of the plan, regardless of where republican senators stand on the analysis on the joint committee on taxation, the vast majority of republican senators just brushed off the analysis today, said they didn't believe it, they believed the modelling

was wrong. the fed wasn't going to be that aggressive on interest rates. the highwire act republicans are dealing with right now. it only takes two or three to sink this plan, and it only takes one to create real problems right now. if one senator has deficit problems and gets a coupp el of his colleagues to come with him. mitch mcconnell has a math problem. i think there's a lot of issues here, and the most interesting element may be over the last month or so, republicans have been able to brush off what they would view as negative analysis. something that paul was talking about. and they've still gotten to this point, yet they're not quite there yet. they have more work to do, and the reality of that is, that work is going to come tonight, largely tomorrow, and then they're going to vote to pass this, and it's going to move forward. >> when we return, significant breaking news on the president,

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on a night full of breaking news, we just got more. trump pressed tom republicans to end senate russia inquiry. >> what my colleagues and i are reporting tonight, over the summer, president trump phoned several top republicans in the senate. including mitch mcconnell and richard burr, who is the chairman of the senate intelligence committee, to lean on them pretty hard and in pretty explicit terms to wrap up the russia investigation. the words as he used at the time, were move on. >> how unusual is that for a sitting president to pressure members of congress about investigations they're

conducting into his campaign? >> well, dianne feinstein, the democrat, former chairman of the senate intelligence committee said this was obviously inappropriate. we are clearly in unchartered waters in general here, the senators who heard from trump did fined it surprising, did find it unsettling, told their colleagues, told their leader and tried not to put themselves after that, in situations with the president, where he would be easily be able to raise this issue privately. >> can you reiterate the time line in this. when were these calls being made. were they calls and how many senators received them? >> the calls that we are reporting happened over the month of august. and in addition to calls there was an in person conversation with senator roy blunt of missouri. who's another member of the intelligence committee. he called burr and mcconnell earlier in the month, around the time that congress was also passing new sanctions on russia.

and one republican senator was proposing a new bill that would have limited the president's power to fire special prosecutors, that was an issue the president also raised with multiple senators. >> i guess the other obvious question is, if the president's campaign did nothing wrong, why wouldn't he want a thorough vision to find out what russia did and with whom? >> the observation that senator mcconnell made at the time, there was a bigger breach between him and the president where they stopped talking for a period of several weeks. his sense was that the president made no distinction between how all the issues touching on russia, and questions about collusion in the presidential campaign. if it was a debate about sanctions, you saw it as a debate about his own political legitimacy, that was frustrating to mcconnell, to other republicans in the senate,

because their view was, this is a party that's had a hawkish view of russia for a long time. >> and the fact that these members of congress, some of them are going on the record with you, that seems significant. what do you -- did it surprise you? what do you read into it, do you believe they're trying to send the president a message? why would they go on the record? >> it was surprising that they were so direct about describing the conversations they had with the president. some of the folks we're mentioning right now, did not go on the record senator mcconnell did not go on the record to talk about his interactions with the president. for senator burr and folks that know senator burr, he kneels his own reputation and integrity are at stake. if you are asked point blank, did the president call you evading that question would not be a great look for the chairman of that committee.

back with the panel joining us also, jeffrey toobin. is this appropriate? >> it's not appropriate. the question is where does it fit into the obstruction of justice investigation that robert mueller is conducting. the reason he was appointed was the firing of james comey was in one interpretation, an effort to shut down the criminal investigation of russia, this is an attempt to shut down the legislative investigation. i don't know if that is obstruction of justice in and of itself, but it's evidence of intent on the part of the president to stop the investigations of him. >> and it's just bad. i mean, it's just bad behavior on the part of a president. i'm not a lawyer so i can't vet out whether it's fully obstruction or justice or not, but it's bad behavior for

presidents to call senators and ask them to stop the investigation. >> these people don't work for him, so he can't obstruct something if they don't work for him, and they said no. you've had republican senators saying, respectfully mr. president? >> why do you think it's bad? politically, for everything you said, if nothing happened and i don't believe it did. i don't think this campaign could have included with anybody. they had had a hard time including with the rnc. i think the president gets frustrated he knows he was the campaign manager, the finance director, and he doesn't think he did anything. why don't you stop this stuff, because i didn't do it. he gets himself into trouble when he does things like that. and generates a whole new round of stories. i find it hard to believe that's obstruction of justice. >> everybody in america that voted for him. somebody can vote out not the

majority or whatever. knew they were getting a guy that was not a normal politician. what he's saying is, get this over with, it's overshadowing what i'm doing. not bury it because we did something. that's exactly the opposite of your question. if you did nothing, wouldn't you want this to go forward? >> if you did nothing. >> russia did something. >> i'm watching cnn every night. he's watching cnn every night. why are they talking about russia, we didn't do anything. when roy blount brings up, i didn't see anything sinister in this. let it end. i don't want this, i don't want that. he's proven he's not a dictator, he has to live with a congress and a judiciary. >> it seems he's still trying. >> he loves to persuade people.

>> he clearly didn't learn his lesson from his incident with comey. you would think, he would say, maybe i shouldn't ask people to be dropping investigations. >> that's the executive branch, comey works for him. >> there are statutes against obstructing a federal investigation. i don't work for congress at all. that would be a crime. you can't just say, congress doesn't work for me. he can't obstruct them, he can saying you want it to be over -- >> i didn't interrupt you. >> we have run out of innocent explanations. they remind me of the old saturday night live sketch. oh, i'm just from the place. i don't know your ways. bologna. he knows exactly what he's

doing. i think he's tried to obstruct the investigation through comey. and told us on national television, that he fired him. there's no more innocent explanations for 21 meetings with the russians and -- >> even if you believe it's an innocent explanation. do you not agree with mike that it just doesn't look good? given the history? it's not like this is -- >> it may not look good to people who watch this stuff like you do. to americans they're hearing a guy say, get this over with. my whole first six months has been overshadowed by something i didn't think happened at all. >> you're saying people aren't paying attention? >> when people are being investigated and they really believe they are innocent. that's not a reason to stop an investigation.

he's so frustrated because he knows he's innocent. it's not up to him to decide. we have independent branches of government that are not subject to his control. >> jeffrey, you know we have a system, that if a prosecutor investigates someone unfairly. they didn't have enough information or it goes on too long. it's not the way the system works, the best way it can work. in this case, what the president is saying, i've seen you guys talk about this, get it over with. he didn't even say shut it down. he said, get it over with. >> for a republican senate investigating a republican president, that's unfair to him? >> more ahead.

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we're talking about the new york times report which is just out. president trump over the summer pressured top senate republicans to end their russia probe. the president had not acted improperly. mr. trump at no point has attempted to apply undue evidence on committee members. these investigations must come to a fair and appropriate completion. back now with the panel. saying it's got to come to a fair and appropriate completion. that is not the same as saying, get this thing over with. >> that's what the white house spokesman said today. the president did not say that. the president said get it over with. i don't know precisely what he said in the times story while excellent is not a transcript of what the president said. >> but remember, this is an investigation for obstruction of justice, for shutting down the

fbi investigation. for attempting to shut down the fbi investigation of the russia situation. here it is a precisely analogous investigation by the legislative branch. it's true he doesn't have the same kind of control over congress that he does over the fbi director. but certainly as evidence of his intent it is something that will be relevant to robert mueller. >> even if you believe the president was completely innocent. there was no collusion. if you believe russia attempt to the influence the election, which most of the intelligence committee believes, wouldn't you want this investigation to continue to figure out what russia did, and how to stop it in the first place? >> i don't think -- the senate committee is investigating whether there was obstruction of justice, they're investigating russia, there's a russia question they have. >> that's right. >> is the president obstructing that investigation? >> we're back to that same

thing. he's in the executive branch, they're in the legislative. >> so the president can't obstruct. >> well, you can make -- he could do anything. i'm saying the facts that we heard, and only some -- there's no transcript, jeffrey's right. what we've heard, this has been hanging over my head, and we didn't do anything. get it over with. >> there's no way for the president to exert undue influence? >> the reporting tonight stops short of any line saying they have transcript or proof of what happened. this is hanging over my head, get it over with, finish it up ah, enthe white house saying, what he meant was, finish it up. there was no sinister motive, this is a guy saying i'm sucking the air out of the oxygen, come out and say what we all know. >> what the news covers every night is not a relevant fact to the pace of an investigation or the severity of the investigation. so the president or anybody else doesn't like what's in the news. i didn't like what was on the

cover of the new york post. it didn't give me the right to call people and say, stop doing what you're doing. the investigation is around russia, which the president is a pivotal figure in. if you are the focus of an investigation. you better think hard and twice with legal council when you're going to pick up the phone and influence people who are running that investigation. because you run the real potential of obstructing justice, it's not based on how you feel, it's based on the structure of an investigation. and the laws and procedures that define that. >> out in places like missouri, when we look up and see the times, cnn, all of them, everyone talking russia, russia, russia. there's a point where the president says, get this over with. that sounds plausible, i think that's as plausible as this notion that he was sitting there -- >> saying get it over with doesn't -- aren't they trying to get it over with? aren't they having -- to have an

investigation, it's not just like you have it in an afternoon, it takes time, there's lawyers involved. >> we've seen the things in the senate and house can take forever, he's saying get it over with, this is a hassle. >> we in new york look up at those headlines and we want congress to move judiciously and quickly as well. i want to know the facts and the truth of this investigation, investigations take time. if this investigation was to happen like that, trump would criticize them for being too quick. >> nothing does more self-harm than going after burr. burr was adamant about coming across as independent. and had said in interviews, right around this time, he thought he was going to be wrapping up this investigation by the end of the year. >> when we've exhausted this investigation, we will finish. >> we established it wasn't a good move for the president.

it wasn't effective, if he thinks he did nothing, there's nothing improper about saying to someone, another constitutional officer. >> not someone. >> if he went to one of his rallies and he said, this is terrible and this should wrap up. i'm all for that, if he's calling individual senators and leaning on them. that's certainly improper. here's his problem. and frankly injures. all of ours because donald trump is our president. he's our president because a hostile foreign power tried to effect the election to get him elected. >> we don't know that. >> the best thing, intelligence community believes it's true. >> paul decided it. >> this is what -- we know that russia tried -- >> russia -- >> tried. >> he said that at the beginning. that puts a taint on mr. trump's election, he should want if he's innocent to have that taint

removed, instead he's acting every day like a guilty man, maybe because he is. >> mike? >> i think this is really the heart of what drives him crazy about this, is that -- >> good, me too. >> it becomes a partisan issue, i think where he has gotten to is, and i'm guessing, we're trying to figure this out, but he believes he won because the voters voted for him. democrats don't want to accept that hillary could have lost any other way than the russians had to do it. it's a pin brick for something you need to do. ridiculously small amount of what was done. see the russians elected him. if you want to go after him, it's apparently working. oh, yeah, the russians elected president trump, and he gets upset. >> if he were the unintended beneficiary, he should be acting

with righteous indignation. >> it doesn't help -- >> there's no evidence that it changed a single vote. >> it doesn't help that the entire campaign -- >> three minutes ago, it was the republican elite of washington, messing everything up by the president, by not moving quickly enough, that's what had the president annoyed. and now it's the democrats annoying the president. >> no. >> i'm actually sort of -- i'm not arguing the democrats are causing this. i'm saying well done for continuing to lie that the russians elected donald trump. it's clearly frustrating the hell out of him. >> let the investigations go and we will get confirmation about the truth. the president doesn't want to let them go, because he wants this smoke screen. the kate steinle murder, the trial verdict and reaction to it.

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as we mentions at the top of the broadcast, a san francisco jury has acquitted the undocumented immigrant in all major charges of the murder of kate steinle. candidate donald trump made his killing among his campaign issues. explain the verdict, how you think it came about? >> well, anderson, first of all, this is the case that made the term sanctuary cityvocabulary. before this happened, no one had heard the term, and they had no idea really what a sanctuary

city was. that all changed on july 1st, 2015, you had kate steinle taking a stroll along pier 14, a popular dowerist spot in san francisco. she's walking along this pier with her father, the bullet goes through her back and servers a major artery. an hour after the shooting, police had their suspect in custody. jose inez garcia. this was an intentional shooting. but the defense maintained from the start that this was an accident. the shot was a ricochet shot. it travelled 12 feet, and travel ed another 78 feet before hitting kate steinle. they made the argument, if you hadn't had this ricochet, kate would still be alive. he did not know kate steinle,

there was no history of violence with the suspectp despite the fact that he had been deported five times. no history of violence. and the defense also tried to show that this gun. this 40 caliber pistol was prone to accidental discharges. the very last thing that this jury did today, they deliberated for approximately 30 hours over 6 days. the last thing they did is they all tested the weapon, they all pulled the trigger to see how easily it might fire, and perhaps that influenced their decision. this was basically a full acquittal. >> i know prosecutors were trying to say this weapon required a certain amount of power or force in order to actually pull the trigger. what happens to the defendant now, does he remain in the united states? i know he was convicted of a lesser gun charge. >> he was found guilty of being a felon in position of a firearm. that carries a light sentence

here in california, maybe two years in prison. the fact that he served all this time, and with prison overcrowding, it's possible he may not have to do any jail time at all, therefore, he would be deported back to mexico, remember, he's coming to this country five times, some might make the argument he would attempt to try to come into the country again. also just in terms of where the steinle family goes from here, we should point out, they do have a wrongful death lawsuit pending against the sheriff's department, and the city of san francisco for letting garcia go free. >> appreciate that. no reaction from from the president. jeff sessions did put out a statement, it says in part when jurisdictions choose to turn criminal aliens back on the streets, instead of turning them over to the federal government, they put public safety at risk. >> it wasn't as if they said

this has to be first degree murder and the jurors couldn't find enough evidence for that. it seems like they gave the jurors a lot of options. >> they did, but the facts of this case are so odd, of the death of kate steinle are so strange. this long ricochet. the stolen gun, the gun that was ranned in a towel. it's just a very strange set of facts. but politically, you can certainly understand why this had so much resonance around the country, this was a maddening awful case, this man is deported five times, he keeps coming back to the city, he gets arrested and they release him right away? that was a maddening situation. and with horrible consequences. >> the -- i didn't quite at first understand the importance of the ricochet, it goes to intent on whether he intended to shoot kate steinle or someone in particular. >> first degree murder, there was no evidence for first degree murder. the question here, and i have a

question of why he was acquitted of manslaughter, the issue is, even for manslaughter, you have to have some intent to behave wrecklessly, and the jury apparently believed that the dropping of the gun which apparently is what set it off, was not enough intent -- did not display enough intent even to be manslaughter. you know, i -- that's a debatable proposition, i don't know the facts of the case well enough to parse out exactly how they reached that conclusion. the real question is why he was out on the streets at all. >> i want you to listen to something the defense attorney said, let's listen after the verdict. >> for those who may criticize this vert. there are a number of people that have commented on this cases the attorney general of

the united states. the president and vice president of the united states. let me remind them, they are themselves under investigation. by a special prosecutor in washington, d.c.. and they may themselves soon avail themselves of the presumption of innocence and beyond a reasonable doubt standard, i would ask them to reflect on that, before they comment or disparage the result in this case. >> it seems hard to imagine the president will not say something about this. >> i've been watching his twitter feed, he has not yet as of this moment. but it is why -- i mean, i work in the white house. this killing talk place before donald trump was president. i think a politician has a full right to comment on cases like this. once you're the president, you really shouldn't it's another one of these norms the president doesn't seem to follow. you are the chief executive of the federal government, and i do think he would be wise to hold

back. i thought the attorney general's comment which was about a policy debate was fine. they don't like sanctuary cities, a lot of law enforcement people say they need them so they can deal with crimes and report crimes. i didn't think jeff sessions was out of line with his statement. i am hoping the president will put away his twitter machine away for once. they lost their daughter, nothing can bring her back, it's an outrageous set of facts that caused this, i do hope the president doesn't continue to weigh-in on criminal trials while he's the president of the united states. >> i think it's a great -- if paul's open to the conversation about policy, that if we had a wall, if we had a secure border, the people won the get back in. i think congress should immediately pass laws that say if you're here illegally, you don't have rights. you don't have rights to protest your detention. noncitizens do not get habeasus

corpus. >> habeas corpus? >> yeah, for none citizens? >> kate steinle shouldn't be dead because of our policies. >> both parties have fallen for this nonsensical thing that's causing -- and the sanctuary's city fight next. >> the legitimate debate i was looking for. >> if the judge decides to do a ban on the sanctuary cities laws. they should rung him off the bench. >> we'll just label him untermench? >> no, we'll label them noncitiz noncitizens, and when they break the law we'll deport them. >> more people are leaving

mexico -- immigrants have a lower crime rate than native born immigrants. >> i don't care. you're a citizen, you're allowed to commit a crime and go to prison. someone who is not a citizen is not allowed to be here and commit a crime. >> your point is drama to make distractions from the tragedy here. this woman is dead is a tragedy, quite frankly, i believe that she became a political football in the campaign was tragic, because her family should have been focused on their mourning, and preparing for this case. the ruling in this case is confusing. as a lawyer, it's confusing to me that the man was not found guilty of anything. though i agree first degree murder would have been -- >> he was found guilty. >> ed, wait. >> he was found guilty. >> of a minor weapon. >> two years in prison. >> i think he should have been

convicted of something worse. let's not take this individual tragedy, and apply the horrible actions of this man to all undocumented immigrants, the fact is, far fewer crimes are committed by undocumented immigrants. >> i have to get a break -- >> we have no right to break the law. >> i'm sorry, i have to get a break in. an incredible report about the largest ice sheet in the northern hemisphere, what it means for the planet. global warming, arctic melt next is this a phone?

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. a federal government study released earlier this month, found no convincing investigation for the change in climate than human activities. there were concerns the president would try to interfere with that report. he's nominated climate change skeptics. some of the evidence is obvious, warmer temperatures, rising sea levels, more forest fires and heat waves. other evidence is further away from washington. with alarming indications for the planet. part one of global warming, arctic melt. >> reporter: imagine a world where you can sail right up to the north pole. where the largest ice sheet in

the northern hemisphere is simply melting away. >> the melt is winning this game. >> we've now broken all time records for three consecutive years. >> as oceans continue to rise. flooding the streets of american cities half a world away. >> what happens in the arctic doesn't stay in the arctic. >> imagine a world where hurricanes and heat waves wreak havoc. >> this is cnn breaking news. >> hurricane irma continues to show no -- >> just a helstorm. politicians denied the problem as temperatures continued to rise. >> it's a hoax, i mean, it's a moneymaking industry. >> what if i told you this is already happening. right here, right now. we are the primary cause and that only we have the power to stop it.

this is greenland. though you will find very little greenery here. home to some of the most stunning wildlife on the planet, the world's largest island is more than 80% made up of pure ice. it's only from the air that you really get a sense of the scale and the enormity of this ice sheet. and what's just staggering to imagine is that in the center of the island, this ice is two miles thick. it looks as though time has stood still for thousands of years, but this environment reflects the big changes in our world's atmosphere, as the planet gets warmer, the arctic is heating up at double the rate, and greenland in particular is warming even faster. jason box is an american climate scientist, who has been coming to this remote corner of the world for more than 20 years.

>> the amount of water that's produced all across this landscape has increased, like doubled in the last 50 years. >> doubled in the last 50 years? >> reporter: everywhere you go in greenland, you can see and hear the ice sheet melting. sometimes a drip, sometimes a roar. its surface is etched with fast-flowing rivers that carry the melt water deep down to the bed. >> this water cascades down thousands of feet and eventually makes its way to the bed and it's heating the bed of the ice sheet. everything's kind of stacking up, the ice is going faster than forecast. >> reporter: and no sign of slowing down? >> the melt is winning this game. >> reporter: and the more greenland melts, the more it speeds up the melting process. take a large melt lakes that are forming on top of the ice sheet. stunning to look at, but bad news for the ice.

these lakes are deceptively beautiful, because whereas white of the ice actually reflects the sunlight, the piercing blue of the lakes actively absorbs it, heating them up and then accelerating the rate of melt. perhaps the clearest example of this vicious melt cycle can be seen in greenland's many glaciers. a glacier is a mass of thick ice that moves under the force of its own weight, like a slow river into the sea. but as melt water moves through the ice, it softens it, draining to the bed, where it then lubricates the movement of the glacier. we got a rare, close-up view of one of greenland's fastest-moving glaciers, named hellhime after the viking realm of the dead, it is vast and unforgiving. >> this is one of the most producti iive glaciers in

greenland. it's about three golden gate bridges wide. and it drains on the order of like 40 billion metric tons per year. it's like almost an astronomical amount of water that this is delivering from high on the inland ice sheet down into the sea. >> reporter: between august of last year and august of this year, new york university scientists say hellhime retreated a whopping two miles, the furthest retreat inland they have seen in a decade. you can see vast chunks of it crashing into the water, a process called calving. and what does that mean for the sea? >> there's hundreds of glaciers like this in greenland, and many of them have doubled in speed. so the rate that greenland is decanting into the ocean has really gone up in ways that surprise the science community. >> reporter: and it's not only scientists who have been surprised. 56-year-old tobias has been hunting with his dogs in

greenland his whole life, just like his father and grandfather before him. only these days, there's far less ice for dogsledding. >> years ago, all, maybe from here to 500 meter and more, is dpla glacier. so we can start dogsledding from down from sea. >> reporter: is that something you have seen with your own eyes? >> yeah, i can see this. now we cannot hunt until a month, only boat. >> reporter: this year, tobias has to take his dogs off the ice and back to town for the summer. he doesn't know if his grandsons will become hunters. but if the recent past is anything to go by, the future looks bleak. warming in the last century has been faster than at any time in the past several million years.

how concerned are you by the scientific data that you've collected, by the changes that you've seen here? >> what concerns me most is this concept of committed loss. so the amount of co2 excess in the atmosphere due to humans burning fossil fuels, mainly, that commits us to more than one meter of sea level rise. >> that's roughly 3 feet. and this is where the rest of the world comes in. greenland doesn't play by las vegas rules. what happens here doesn't stay here. as temperatures increase and the melt accelerates, greenland has become the largest source of sea level rise globally. this year, after decades of decline, the amount of ice lost in greenland was roughly equal to the amount gained, but box says this is an anomaly and that even drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions won't be enough to stop the continued

melting. >> some have said if greenland is the canary in the coal mine, the canary is dead. >> the canary is dead in that it indicates that it's time to get out of the mine. in other words, we have a problem. and now's the time to start developing that response. >> reporter: at summit station, weather patterns and climate change are the focus of much of the research. a remote american outpost funded by the national science foundation, it is perched at 10,600 feet on the very top of the greenland ice sheet. the only way to get there is on a u.s. military plane, a two-hour flight from the nearest airport, it lands on a runway of snow using giant skis. all equipment and personnel have to be flown in at the great

expense. >> it doesn't get much more remote than this. and with the high altitude, the science that is being done here at summit station requires enormous resources and sheer physical effort. but this place is uniquely positioned to answer a crucial question. has the arctic reached a tipping point? engineer zoe korville explains that its isolation is, in fact, its greatest asset. >> it's a very pristine site. and it's free from local influences of pollution. >> reporter: do you think summit is important to the study of climate change, specifically? >> we've been making measurements since 1980 here, but we've also drilled to bedrock. so we have an ice core that extends back 140,000 years -- >> 140,000 years? >> yes. 140,000 -- so we're actually standing on two miles worth of ice below us.

and we can use the ice cores like you would use tree rings, to get an idea of what past conditions of climate were like. and we can use what happened in the past to try to predict what's going to happen in the future. >> reporter: but summit's hefty price tag has made it a possible target for proposed budget cuts. the trump administration wants to slash funding to the national science foundation and many fear that summit could be the first casualty. >> i think that's the politics of short-term game, long-term environmental pain. >> reporter: box says he is frustrated by the white house's lack of commitment to climate change studies and its decision to withdraw from the paris accord. >> some people will say, listen, look back over the history of the planet. there have been ice ages, there have then been huge heat waves. there's a natural extreme fluctuation in temperatures, and that's just part of living on planet earth. what do you say to that? >> it's true that there are natural cycles in climate, but

what's happening now is human activity has become the dominant agent of change, for about the last 150 years. the climate change we observe today is at least 80% due to human activity. we are now a force of nature. >> and not a force for good. >> for millennia, mankind's presence in greenland has been dwarfed by the dramatic scenery and by the kpraextraordinary li creatures we share this unique habitat with. but in recent history, the balance of power has shifted and with it, responsibility to do something. clarissa ward, cnn, greenland. >> we're going to have part ii of clarissa's report, "global

warming: arctic melt" tomorrow night. thanks very much for watching. time to hand things over to don lemon. "cnn tonight" starts right now. this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. we have some new news on the russia investigation. president trump eapparently urged senior senate republicans to end their investigation into russia's interference in the election, that is according to "the new york times." more on that in a moment. i promise you we will get to it. plus this, members furious with senator bob corker for reportedly throwing a monkey wrench into plans for a vote on the gop tax plan. a plan that would add more than $1 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. something corker opposes. now the gop scrambling on the bill they've staked everything on. that comes on the day the white house said this. >> the president was pretty definitive yesterday when he said, you would pay more and his wealthy friends would pay