>> please join me in remembering all those killed in the holocaust. may their memories be a blessing. "erin burnett outfront" starts right now. outfront next, president biden tells the president of ukraine that russia could invade in weeks, as we have exclusive new satellite images tonight that reveal putin's military tonight is on the move. some significant changes there. and the president's team expected to meet with potential supreme court nominees in the coming days. biden recommitting to making a historic nomination. cnn learning tonight that

mark meadows' former top aide did not plead the fifth during an interview with the january 6 select committee, answering the questions. that staffer was in the west wing during the insurrection, so what did he say? let's go outfront. good evening, i'm erin burnett. outfront tonight, the breaking news, at odds over war. president biden speaking with the ukrainian president tonight. according to a source, this call did not go well. biden is said to have made it clear that ukraine will not be getting u.s. troops or sophisticated weapons systems. president biden told president zelensky there's a distinct possibility that the russians invade in february. of course it is january 27th today. all of this is very grim for ukraine. and zelensky we are told pushed back on biden, saying team biden's rhetoric about an imminent invasion is not helping. >> we've long said that an incursion could be imminent. >> an invasion could come at any

time. when we said imminent, it remains imminent. >> if it's imminent, it remains imminent and ukraine doesn't want to hear it despite evidence russia is moving even more troops into position along the ukraine border. >> as for russian buildups, we continue to see, including in the last 24 hours, more accumulation of credible combat forces arrayed by the russians. we've always said, and said for quite some time, that another incursion by russia could be imminent. imminent means imminent. we'd like to see a de-escalation, we'd like to see those troops go back home. >> but imminent means imminent. i can't say it enough. and those troops are clearly not going home. tonight we have some exclusive new satellite photos to prove it. in a moment i'm going to speak with seth jones who shared those images with us. he has had so much of this and we'll go through them with him one by one. first i want to show you a few

of the key ones. in the first image here that seth provided us you see putin constructing eight new army compounds in a town less than 200 miles from the ukraine border. the compounds are highlighted in green and contain 460 vehicles, trailers and structures. let's zoom in here. when you zoom in, you begin to be able to quantify it, quantify the increase in putin's buildup. specifically what you see here, seth explains, is a 45% increase in the number of vehicles, trailers and structures since november. and in the image on the left side of your screen, approximately 450 tanks, rocket launchers and short-range ballistic missiles. again, the specifics matter. that's a 24% increase since november. on the right-hand side, tanks and other vehicles. 25% increase, 500 tanks now. that is just in one area. so there's a lot of new information about troop buildup

in belarus and in the black sea as well. look at this map. you see where russia has ground forces. those are the boxes, air bases and naval bases as well. completely surrounding on three sides ukraine. the u.s. says it is still waiting to hear back from putin after the biden administration responded to putin's demands regarding ukraine. >> the response that counts is president putin's response. to the best of our understanding according to the russians, these papers are on his desk and we'll look forward to his response. >> we understand he's read them, but needs time to think about it. matthew chance is outfront live in kyiv, ukraine, has he has been. matthew, what more are you learning about this call between biden and ukraine's president? certainly not a good headline for either one that the call did not go well. >> reporter: no, not at all. in fact publicly, you know, both

sides are being very careful to sort of sing the praises of the other. the ukrainian presidency tonight thanking president biden for his continuing military support of the country. but that's definitely not the message. we've seen this repeated the past couple of weeks, that's definitely not the message you get from ukrainian officials familiar with those contacts, familiar with this conversation behind the scenes. one of them sort of characterized this telephone call between president biden, president zelensky of ukraine tonight as something that did not go well. there was disagreement, the official said, over the risk levels facing the country on the one hand the u.s. president saying the risk of a russian invasion was, was imminent and was very high. on the other hand, the ukrainians pushing back on that, saying that's not been their intelligence assessments. as far as they're concerned, the threat from russia remains somewhat ambiguous and an

invasion still might not happen. there was some hope expressed by the ukrainians as well. this is before this call, that there could be a stepping up of military aid, sanctions imposed on russia before any invasion takes place to punish it for its aggressive behavior. we've been reporting this for the past couple of weeks that the ukrainians want this sort of front footed. there was some disappointment on this call today, though, because it seems according to the ukrainian official that i've spoken to that president biden made it clear to the ukrainian side there wouldn't be u.s. troops deployed on the ground here. we already knew that but that was reiterated in this telephone conversation. there would be no sophisticated weapons given to ukraine. we kind of already knew that too, but that was again restated. sanctions would not be imposed on russia until any such point that it invaded the country. and there would be no progress on nato. and so some -- some disappointment, i think, on the

part of the ukrainian side, erin. >> certainly. they wanted preemptive sanctions and they, i'm sure, hoped that they would be getting those weapon systems and troops, no matter what biden said publicly. maybe privately he said something else. obviously he didn't and i know that's got to be a big start wi mentioned at the top of the show which is the breaking news you shared with us, these new satellite images. you have a lot of them because you've been monitoring the russian buildup and you've gone in and counted the tanks, the h tanks and artillery. tell me what it means. >> thanks, erin. the situation looks pretty dark.

again, whether or not putin actually goes in and if he goes along the border of russian forces. same kinds of equipment, main

battle tanks, howitzers, artillery. and the concern on the belarus border is that kyiv is in extraordinary danger, both coming from the north and flanking maneuvers both from the west and the east. so kyiv, the capital, is in extraordinary danger. >> yeah, it would seem so. obviously all those missiles that you talk about, all of them would put kyiv well within striking distance from either the ukrainian border and obviously from the belarus border which is much closer to kyiv. ambassador, when you hear what seth is laying out and you hear matthew chance's reporting, a senior ukrainian official telling him that that call today between biden and zelensky, quote, did not go well, is this a problem, ambassador? >> i wouldn't exaggerate, erin. i think that part of the purpose of these calls between heads of state is to sit down and talk frankly, candidly, about what

happens. i'm a little bit worried that disclosing a lot of this in the public is nohing, because it wi mr. putin. but i think that we've seen even over the last few days, and seth knows this very well, different assessments by both sides. ukraine has to worry about their own people and trying to maintain calm and focus there, while we are obviously worried about ukraine. many in europe are worried about ukraine. this is a crisis manufactured by russia. and really putin has no business doing this. ukraine is an independent country, and putin wants to basically take away its independence. that's the fundamental underlying goal. >> seth, of course putin did start this by putting his troops along the border, but it's not just that military buildup that i know that you're seeing. you also are seeing evidence of what you're calling irregular activities on the part of the

russians. let me just mention one thing, seth, that you talk about because i want you to explain why this is important and i bet very few people watch, if anyone, are expecting me to say this. plans to conduct naval exercises 240 kilometers off the coast of southwest ireland. what is that all about? how does that play in? >> well, there are the fiber optic networks that connect europe and north america. there have been russian military vessels off the coast of ireland. it's been reported in the press. nato has become increasingly concerned that the russians are signaling that they could cut those fiber optic cables. about 97% of the digital information between north america and europe comes under the atlantic ocean through those fiber optic networks. they do pose a grave strategic level risk. so the broader issue here is if there is escalation between the

russians and the u.s. and nato, that this -- this will potentially expand well beyond ukraine, and that may include offensive cyber operations as well. so i think this is where john is right. i think it would be great if we could de-escalate and find an off-ramp but i do worry if that's not the case, this may spill well beyond ukraine. >> ambassador, to this point that it could spill well beyond and that you do have each side preparing for if this, then this, the step effect here goes, we do know that the u.s. provided written responses to russia's demands, as did nato. today russia said putin has read the responses but it will take some time to analyze. that's what they're saying formally, ambassador teft. is there a real diplomatic track to ending this as you see it where both sides save face? if everybody can't save face, then you're not going to get a diplomatic solution. >> you're right, erin.

i think that the key issue here is that we've still got a diplomatic track going. i was struck today by the foreign ministry in russia saying that we'll have some more talks. now, obviously the situation is very, very dangerous. a russian invasion or military action of any kind could easily get out of control and it's something that we would want to try to stop. obviously the united states and nato don't want the situation to blow up. but i'm not sure it's in putin's interests to see this blow up either. i think many of the analysts, including many of the people i watch from moscow, are indicating that they do not want to see this get out of hand. so we've obviously got a high stress pressure game going on here, and none of us really knows. i think many of the russian officials, at least the ones that i've seen, or seen quoted, they don't know exactly what president putin is going to do. >> it's a pretty incredible moment. thank you both very much.

ambassador teft and seth, thank you so much for that, all those breaking images as well. next, president biden says he's on track to make a supreme court pick by next month. again, it's january 27th. but republicans are already planning to resist his choice. plus a blockbuster report on the economy. gdp growing by 5.7% last year which is the best in nearly four decades. of course there are still major headlines. along with that growth has come a surge in inflation and interest rates to come. a member of biden's economic team is outfront. and dr. fauci touting a universal vaccine that could put an end to coronaviruses, plural. what are the odds that something like that is created? our dr. sanjay gupta reports.

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new tonight president biden's team could start meeting with possible supreme court nominees as early as next week. biden honoring retiring justice stephen breyer during a white house ceremony this afternoon where the president recommitted to nominating the first black woman to serve on the court to replace him. >> the person i nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity. and that person will be the first black woman ever nominated

to the united states supreme court. it's long overdue in my opinion. >> biden also revealing he plans to name his nominee before the end of february. manu raju is outfront from capitol hill. you have some new reporting on senate republicans plan to oppose whomever biden nominates. what more do you know about that? >> reporter: they're setting a high bar for supporting president biden's pick. they are saying they'll keep an open mind but making very clear that they're very unlikely to support whoever joe biden puts forward. they're saying that the ones on the short list they contend are far to the left. they also say that using this as a way to argue that joe biden is going to undercut his campaign pledge to unite the country. some of them are even pushing back on the time frame. chuck schumer wants to employ which is the same time frame the republicans did in confirming amy coney barrett in 2020, which

is to get biden's nominee confirmed in one month, the same time republicans pushed barrett's nomination through as well. a number of republicans are not swayed that the history-making pick of this nominee being the first african american woman to serve on the court is enough to sway them. i asked one member of the senate judiciary committee, josh hawley, about this earlier today. he told me about the fact that she would be the first african american pick. i think the important thing is that this is someone who will uphold the constitution faithfully, regardless of their ethnic background, gender or anything else. i think it sends the wrong signal to say that, well, if a person is of a certain ethnic background, we don't care what their record is, what their beliefs are, that would be extraordinary. mitch mcconnell, the republican leader, also today was asked about biden's comment that it is long past time to have a black woman on the supreme court. he didn't answer that directly, but said he would assess the nomination very carefully here. but erin, the republicans don't need to support this nomination

to get through. the democrats need to have all 50 democrats in line to get their nomination through. it's still possible they can pick off a few republicans, but probably not more than a few, just showing how polarizing the confirmation process ultimately is, erin. >> thank you very much. i want to go to van jones, former special advisor to president obama. van, you hear manu reporting, rips seem to be ready to oppose whomever biden chooses. you hear josh hawley making his argument this is going to be about the constitution and someone's substantive point of view, who cares what they look like. is this a smart political move for them or not? >> look, i expect the opposition party to oppose, that's what they do. but this is a very big moment for this country. can you imagine having 100 plus justices and never having one african american female ever? it's ridiculous. and we have so many qualified black women. it's almost embarrassing to

start looking at the number of people who could get on the supreme court and do a good job. i think the republican party, they keep doing this thing. they say they want more minorities an want to be more open and they cannot wait to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to be excited about something that would make history for this country. >> president biden, van, as we know, when he was running said this is what he was going to do so he's not doing it now because he has a problem with black voters, i want to make that clear. however, he may be hoping it re-energizes black voters because black voters are the most reliable supporters but biden has seen a 21-point drop in his approval among that group in the latest quinnipiac poll compared to april a year ago. that is a plunge. biden has failed to pass voting rights. but i think it's more than just that, it's complicated. does saying loud and clear i'm going to pick a black woman for the court actually move those numbers in a significant way?

>> you know, it could in combination with other things. what's interesting is for the republicans, a lot of republicans were frustrated with trump, kind of embarrassed by trump, but they said, look, we love what trump is doing with the courts. he was putting a bunch of conservatives on the courts and ramming them through. biden, trying to counterbalance that, has put forward a bench that is unbelievably diverse. i don't know if democrats and progressives respond as well when our presidents do a good job of putting diversity on the bench. but we could over time. i think you're right. i think black voters, like a lot of voters, are just tired, fatigued, disappointed that a year later things aren't better. i think biden can get some of those folks back and this is a good way to start, just reminding people that not just the supreme court but throughout the bench, biden has been unbelievable in putting women and people of color in positions to be judges and to be justices. >> thank you very much, van. always love talking to you. >> thank you. next, the u.s. economy

growing faster than expected last quarter. there are signs, though, that that growth, you know, could take a hit. a member of biden's economic team is next. plus a former top aide to mark meadows speaking to the january 6th select committee. tonight we're learning about a shocking text that he sent that day about trump's response to the riot. it was a tragedy. with knockoff batteries, little miss cupcake never stood a chance. until, energizer ultimate lithium. who wants a cupcake? the number one longest-lasting aa battery. yay! case closed. cough cough sneeze sneeze... [ sneezing ] needs, plop plop fizz fizz. alka seltzer plus cold relief. dissolves quickly. instantly ready to start working. so you can bounce back fast with alka-seltzer plus.

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comcast business: powering possibilities. new tonight, no market boom for president biden despite a glowing economic report for his first year in office. the dow closed down 7 points, essentially flat, but it's been a wild ride lately because of uncertainty in the economy. just hours after the bureau of economic analysis said that the economy grew by 5.7% in 2021, that is the best number we've seen since 1984, nearly four decades ago. that's when it grew by 7.2% during reagan's first term. when you look at numbers like that, that is great news. jobs are plentiful, that is great news. but, and it's the but that may matter most tonight, okay? the but is that the surge in

output was mostly due to restocking, not a surge in new demand itself. and compared to before the pandemic, there are 3.6 million more americans who chose to leave the labor force and said they didn't want to work. that's an issue. and inflation is a giant and ugly problem. today's economic report shows that consumer prices rose by 6.5% in the fourth quarter alone. i want to give you some context on that. that is more than three times greater than what we saw before the pandemic began and it is the biggest increase in prices since 1981. the time of stagflation. and for the millions of americans who are living paycheck to paycheck, it is a problem that cannot be overstated. when milk doubles in price, that's a problem. gas prices are up 50%, yes, from pandemic lows, but that affects people. prices for used cars up 37%, and other food staples, i mentioned an anecdote about milk, but meat, poultry and fish up 12.5%. we all know that it's everywhere. it's everywhere. and president biden himself knows it's everywhere and it's a

serious problem. you don't need to take my word for it, take his. >> we face some real challenges. we've got to get prices in check for working people out there. >> well, the main way to stop real inflation, traditionally once it's real, once you admit it's not a transitory thing, which took this administration a long time to admit, is to raise interest rates. that would make borrowing money to buy anything from a car to a home or to use a credit card more expensive. and here's the big idea right now. really nobody under the age of 50 remembers what high inflation, high interest rates feel like, right? you don't remember that 1981 time, right, when you had high double-digit interest rates to get a mortgage. because ever since the early 1980s, the fed was like we're never going to let that happen again, that was terrible. they started to raise interest rates before inflation hit the generally accepted target of 2%. so any time prices started to get near 2% increase, the fed would come in. that did not happen this time

because the chairman of the fed all the way through last spring was saying that the price increases were transitory and they would go away. so now what happened is they accelerated and the price increases are three times greater than that 2%. three times greater than what economics has traditionally considered to be stable prices. by that measure, the fed is behind big-time. the chairman of the fed, jay powell, seems to admit it. >> i think there is quite a bit of room to raise interest rates without threatening the labor market. >> quite a bit of room to raise interest rates. that's part of what's whipsawing the market because those are ominous words. when the only thing that stands between us and long-term inflation is plenty of room to raise interest rates higher and higher, that could be very bad for americans' standard of living and very bad for whoever is in political power. outfront now is jared bernstein, part of biden's council of

economic advisers. let's start on the face of it, the good news. economic growth that is significant, that is the best we've seen in decades. is that really how you see this, that simple, or do you share some of these fears about inflation? >> certainly that's the way i see it because that is the fact. we're talking about a gdp growth rate 5.7% on average over 2021, the fastest growth rate as you've said in almost 40 years, but that's not enough for this president. if gdp is growing and it's not reaching middle income families, that's not enough for him and, therefore, the other key trend here that we're highlighting is just how tight this job market is. you heard jay powell just say room to raise interest rates without hurting the labor market. that's what's so critical here because it's one thing to grow income through higher gdp and we're growing at a rate we haven't seen in decades. to make sure that income reaches the middle class, they have to

have great job opportunities and that's coto this labor market. of course you mentioned price pressures. it is not the case the fed is the only detailee on that case. this president has dispatched his economics team to do everything we can to help ease those price pressures. i can take you through those activities. in fact i think it would be a good idea. >> okay. but let me ask you, and i know you're doing things, you're working on companies and working on the supply chains. >> right. >> but are you frustrated -- what i laid out is true. the fed has never waited so long or for prices to go up so much before doing anything. does that concern you that they could be behind? or do you not share those fears people like larry summers have been open about having? >> i'm paid to worry about everything and i do. this is a fed that has performed extremely admirably over this

crisis. you heard the president i think last week talk about supporting the fed's pivot, adjusting as you heard jay powell talk wabou yesterday. so yes, i have faith in the fed of maintaining these tight labor market conditions while achieving more stable prices. but here's the thing that you don't get from your introduction which is that every single forecast i've seen, including the federal reserve's, has inflation growing about half as fast at the end of this year as it was at the end of last year. now, we are not sitting on our hands and crossing our fingers and hoping those forecasts turn out right. the ships, the ports, the trucks, chips, trying to make sure that the legislated infrastructure plan is implemented as effectively and efficiently as quickly as possible, all of those, try to expand the economy's near-term economic capacity by unsnarling

supply chains and investing in chip production and infrastructure. >> let me ask you about -- obviously who knows what happens from here. there are concerns out there, as you know as well, jared, about -- we go through these hot numbers. a lot of this growth is inventory restocking as opposed to necessarily new demand and you end up in a recession. you end up with that bad combination. you have rates going up, you have inflation, you have a recession. cnbc obtained a letter from david einhorn, hedge fund manager with green light capital. he says in part we believe inflation will cause a recession regardless of what the fed chooses to do. the higher prices of necessities will ultimately cause low income consumers to cut back on other things. there are signs this is already happening. and he's not alone. some big democratic supporters and others are saying that as well. here's steve rattner and jeffrey gunlock. >> the key issue that we have at

the moment is how to land the plane and get inflation down without affecting the rest of the economy. it's going to be tricky to land that plane safely and not end up in a recession. >> i think the bond market is showing enough of a recession indicator that by 2023 it seems pretty likely. i think it's -- it's certainly a non-zero probability that you get a recession in the later part of 2022. >> i know you say you're worried about everything. are you worried about that? >> well, those are some very bearish views. again, if you look at the forecast, it's nothing like that and in fact expectations for growth next year are about 4% on gdp. expectations are for the unemployment rate to continue to fall and for inflation to decelerate as well. i want to underscore something you were just talking about. you were talking about this inventory buildup. i don't want to make too much out of one quarterly data point, but in fact our supply chain

team was talking to me this morning about that buildup, and they thought they saw, again we're going to have to see another few quarters to make sure that this is in train, they thought they saw some improvements there in the supply chain. basically you don't get an inventory buildup adding almost 5 percentage points to gdp if your supply chains are as jammed up as they have been. and we have a bunch of data from our supply chain team showing that in fact things have been moving through the ports a lot more quickly. dwell time, if i may get particularly granular, the amount of time that containers are spending in ports, it's down 60% over the past few months. goods are moving from ship to shelf. we saw that in the holiday season, and that inventory is actually a potentially positive indicator of some unsnarling of those chains. >> all right. jared, i appreciate your time. thank you so much. >> thank you. and next, a former top white house aide testifies before the

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tonight, cnn learning new details about a very revealing text message sent from someone inside the white house on january 6th. the text was written by a top aide to former white house chief of staff mark meadows, complaining that trump's response was, quote, completely insane. a source also telling cnn that same aide is now cooperating with the january 6th committee and did not plead the fifth as so many other trump allies have done or not go like meadows himself. ryan nobles is outfront from capitol hill. you have reporting about this aide, this text message. tell me what you know. >> reporter: yeah. ben williamson is the aide to the former white house chief of staff, mark meadows. we know that he met with the committee earlier this week for somewhere in the range of six to

seven hours and did not plead the fifth that entire time. williamson's role in what happened on january 6th is significant because he was in the white house. he was near the oval office as this all played out. and we've now learned that a text exchange that he had between alyssa farrah and himself was used as part of a letter to ivanka trump asking her to cooperate with the select committee. this is what the text exchange read. alyssa farrah texted williamson is someone getting to potus? he has to tell protesters to dissipate, someone is going to get killed. and williamson responded i've been trying for the last 30 minutes, literally stormed in the outer oval to get him to put out the first one. it's completely insane. williamson we're told had conversations with the committee about the video message that the former president trump eventually put out on his twitter feed, telling people to leave the capitol on that day. he was part of the process of filming that video. he also just talked about the

mood inside the white house at that time. also the conversations that you had with not only meadows but the former president as well. it's important to keep in mind, erin, the fact that williamson is willing to cooperate is significant because meadows, who initially talked about cooperating, is now facing a criminal contempt charge because he's refusing to cooperate. so it appears that the committee is still getting the information they're looking for, even if some in trump world are unwilling to talk to them. >> ryan, thank you very much. so i want to go to gloria borger now, our chief political analyst. gloria, you hear ryan reading that text message. quote, i've been trying for the last 30 minutes, literally stormed in the outer oval to get him to put out the first one. it's completely insane. you know, the context here is meadows said he would cooperate and isn't, but his top aide now is and answered six to seven hours of questions without once pleading the fifth. that seems to be very significant, right? this is a person who knows a lot

about meadows and the president. >> yeah. he knows a lot because he was there. he's an eyewitness. and, you know, there are a lot of people in the white house who are cooperating. they're not politicians. these are people, like williamson, who's young, who was working for mark meadows, shown there, and he was in a lot of meetings. you know, these are the people, and you know this, erin, these are people who stand against the wall when the big folks are sitting around the table and they observe everything. and you look at that email exchange and you can just feel the tension and the horror from mr. williamson, right, to alyssa? you can just sense that. and i think that this all goes to the president's state of mind. what was going inside the white house that day, what was going on? and what was trump saying? if mark meadows is not going to

talk about it, maybe williamson will talk about what he overheard not only from mr. trump but from everybody inside the white house, because i'm sure it was insane. >> so, you know, i want to ask you one thing here before we go. congresswoman zoe lofgren is on the committee and she was talking about the timeline, where are they. we know it's been, what, 400 plus people that they have interviewed. >> absolutely. >> they have been working for seven months and the comment was we're moving quickly and i think we're more than halfway through for sure. okay. let's hope so, right? because seven plus seven gets you way too close to the midterms. how close are they to finishing public hearings being done? >> those of us who are trying to cover the committee ask that question about every day. we are trying to figure out when they're finally going to get to public hearings. they're very well aware of this timeline. and what they're going to do is try and map out every minute of

the day before january 6th, january 6th, those 187 minutes that it took for the president to finally say something, and the days after. and so i would have to say that, you know, maybe this spring sometime. it's very hard. i get different answers on different days. all i know is that they have got an awful lot of testimony and they're trying to figure out if one person says this and was a witness at a meeting, what does the other person say? you're a reporter, you know this. you can get different reads from different people on the same meetings. so they're trying to figure out exactly what happened. >> right, right, and to map it out. >> and that takes time. >> it sure does. a law firm would have an army of associatings working on that sort of thing. >> i think they do. >> thank you very much, gloria. next, dr. sanjay gupta with an inside look on the race to develop the vaccine of all vaccines. and winter storm warnings

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to be a thriver with metastatic breast cancer means asking for what we want. and need. and we need more time. so, we want kisqali. women are living longer than ever before with kisqali when taken with an aromatase inhibitor or fulvestrant in postmenopausal women with hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer. kisqali is a pill that's significantly more effective at delaying disease progression versus an aromatase inhibitor or fulvestrant alone. kisqali can cause lung problems, or an abnormal heartbeat, which can lead to death. it can cause serious skin reactions, liver problems, and low white blood cell counts that may result in severe infections. tell your doctor right away if you have new or worsening symptoms, including breathing problems, cough, chest pain, a change in your heartbeat, dizziness, yellowing of the skin or eyes, dark urine, tiredness, loss of appetite, abdomen pain, bleeding, bruising, fever, chills or other symptoms of an infection, a severe or worsening rash, are or plan to become pregnant, or breastfeeding. avoid grapefruit during treatment.

ask your doctor about living longer with kisqali. tonight dr. anthony fauci touting efforts to have a coronavirus vaccine that could protect against any future variant and possibly put an end to the pandemic. >> innovative approaches are needed to induce broad and durable protection against coronaviruses that are known and some that are even at this point unknown. >> how realistic is that? dr. sanjay gupta has tonight's inside look. >> right now, it's a race. >> there's going to be variants for a long time. >> the virus against the vaccines and the boosters, and possibly more boosters. >> the company is forging ahead with an omicron-specific vaccine. >> but scientists have been working on what could be a better solution. >> the urgent need of a

universal coronavirus vaccine. >> it's just what it sounds like, a vaccine that covers the circulating virus, yes, but also future variants we haven't even seen yet, and potentially other types of coronaviruses as well. >> that means not only targeting sars-like viruses but targeting mers-like viruses and also targeting cold-like viruses. >> kevin saunders is the director of research at the duke human vaccine institute, one of the many groups racing to create a universal vaccine. >> what we try to do is really target a specific part of the virus, for instance, that we know is its achilles heel. >> now, remember, viruses mutate all the time, so the trick is to find a stable part of the virus, the part that doesn't really change from one variant to the next, a common denominator. saunders calls it a conserved site. creating antibodies to that is one path to a universal vaccine.

>> so typically that's a place where the virus is binding to a specific protein on the host cell that it's targeting. if it changes that site, then it's no longer able to infect. >> a big clue came from someone who was infected with sars all the way back in 2003. >> what is dh-1047? >> the antibody dh-1047 is an antibody that we found from a sars-cov-1 infected individual. >> 17 years later, in 2020 in the midst of the current outbreak, they found dh-1047 was also protective against covid, protective against a virus that didn't even exist when these antibodies were first made. >> and so we took that antibody as a template to say there must be some site that's common between sars-cov-1 and sars-cov-2 and let's figure that out. then we would know that needs to be in the vaccine. >> there are a number of pan coronavirus vaccine strategies in the works.

but unlike the mrna vaccines we've come to know, at duke they're working on something called a nanoparticle vaccine. >> there's multiple sites that can be recognized by antibodies. >> think of it like a soccer ball with tiny proteins stuck to the surface, each with a key site of the protein. so far in primates the vaccine seems to work. and now a similar vaccine prepared pie military scientists has made it into human trials. but as exciting as this science is, it's going t take time and patience. >> i don't think anyone to think that pan coronavirus vaccines are literally around the cornner a month or two. it's going to take years to develop. >> much of the work being done today on covid is built on the back of similar research on other viruses. f influenza, hiv. >> we've been working on an hiv vaccine now almost 30 years here

at duke. hiv is one of the most rapidly evolving life forms on earth. >> that's because hiv mutates much faster, and that's one reason why dr. barton haines thinks developing a universal vaccine for coronaviruses may be easier. >> developing that platform for hiv over the last five years allowed this to happen when the need arose very quickly. >> the most challenging part is that the virus is always changing. how do you predict what's coming in the future so that your vaccine can be effective against it. >> and he's not just talking about coronaviruses that are infecting humans right now, but also novel ones that could still spill over from animals, ones we don't even know about yet. >> that's the type of vaccines we're going to need in order to prevent the next pandemic. >> i've got to tell you, erin, it is absolutely fascinating science. they're using computational modeling to try and figure out what are these conserved sites on these viruses, what do they basically all have in common.

then they find these antibodies that target those sites and that's the path to the universal vaccine. now, it would be a very broad vaccine, potentially, you know, working against all coronaviruses, potentially. it doesn't necessarily mean it would be a one and done situation, but these vaccines potentially could last for years as well, erin. >> it is pretty amazing. what we learned about vaccines and all of the types and the frontier of that, it's just stunning. thank you so much, sanjay. >> thank you. >> special report from dr. sanjay gupta. next, a bomb cyclone with the power of a hurricane heading for tens of millions on the eastern united states. (wife) hi, honey! (man) like what? (burke) well, you'd get a discount for insuring your jet skis... and boat...rv...life... ...home and more. you could save up to forty-five percent. (man) that's a whole lot of discounts. (burke) well, we offer coverage for a whole lot of things, and you could save a whole lot of something with farmers policy perks. (kid) sup, dad!

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like a lot, a lot. america is getting ready for a bomb cyclone this weekend. 35 million people in its path. winter storm watches are already up from the eastern carolinas of the united states up to maine. heavy snow, damaging winds,

coastal flooding, all in store. and there's still the big question about where exactly the storm is headed. it's been so wide ranging because it will form, right, will, future, off the coast of georgia. but it's going to happen and then rapidly strengthen. it's a particular storm system called a bombogenesis so, boom, it forms and then it moves. they expect boston to get 20 to 30 inches of snow. thanks so much for watching. anderson is next. good evening, we begin tonight with a warning about the state of democracy. it comes from retiring supreme court justice stephen breyer. though he spoke today at the white house with the warmth and gentle humor for which he's known, his message was unm unmis unmistakable. american democracy cannot be taken for granted. it is not self-sustaining. >> i'll tell you what lincoln thought, what washington thought, and what people today still think. it's