infrastructure, is it up to date? >> yeah, i think it begs the question the situation begs the question about the current state of the technology infrastructure at the faa. we're going to need to take a look at that. we have an opportunity with the federal aviation administration authorization bill coming up this year to examine this very question and hopefully maybe if we need to make some improvements, make some funding increases so that they can improve the system. >> okay. we will be following that closely. congressman rick larsen, i know you ran over here to comment on this and give us important perspective after your conversation with secretary buttigieg. thank you for that. >> thanks. appreciate the opportunity. >> don, poppy, obviously a lot of questions here as this ground stop now has been lifted effective immediately. big questions for the faa going forward about what was behind this. >> the ground stop has been lifted but they didn't lift the lawn mower stop behind you, kaitlan, that was also part of that interview. kaitlan is in washington, we are here in new york. kaitlan, are you back in washington again tomorrow as well? >> i will be back. not flying back to new york, i

am taking the train. >> kaitlan, thank you very much. we appreciate it. "cnn newsroom" starts right now, of course, with the breaking news as well. ♪ good wednesday morning to you, i'm jim sciutto. >> and i'm erica hill. we are following the breaking news this morning after u.s. flights were grounded, the faa now lifting that ground stop. u.s. flights resuming here. there is, though, as you can imagine a huge mess unfolding at airports across this country and, frankly, around the world. a key faa safety system went down earlier this morning, that led to some scrambling from coast to coast. here is where we stand at this hour, the faa says it is set to resume more flight departures this hour, but in terms of the backlog, the damage that we're seeing, the delays and

cancellations, understandably rising by the minute. >> new york lines are growing, atlanta and chicago delay warnings taking over departure screens. they may be the lucky ones stuck in the airports that are already in their seats, that's what's happening in london where passengers say they have been stuck on the tarmac for hours waiting to take off. the president has been briefed as the faa is still working to find out exactly what caused the outage. >> i just spoke with buttigieg, they don't know what the cause is. [ inaudible ] i told him to report directly to me when they find out. air traffic can land safely just not take off right now. they don't know what the cause of it is. [ inaudible ] -- in a couple hours [ inaudible ] and we will respond at that time. [ inaudible question ] >> we don't know. we will find out. >> cnn aviation correspondent pete muntean has the very latest from reagan national airport.

>> reporter: jim and erica, the faa has just lifted this nationwide ground stop that was anticipated to be lifted at 9:00 a.m. eastern time. they lifted it a little bit early because of this major meltdown behind the scenes. it's the notam system that stands for notice to air missions, formerly notice to airmen, that is the system that puts out a bulletin board of critical information that pilots need to read before they take off, whether or not runways are open or closed, whether or not key navigational aids are in working order. the fact that the faa lift this had early is really critical, but we know from the history of what airlines go through and the aviation system goes through that there will likely be a to domino effect here. the airlines may put into place their own ground delay programs meaning that they will delay flights on their own issuing that order to the faa and then the faa putting it out system wide because of the fact that planes and crews are out of

position because this had a delay has lasted so long nationwide. think about this, the planes are in the wrong spots, the crews are in the wrong spots and they are mandated by federal regulations that makes them essentially time out if they have been on the clock for a certain period of time. so even though this ground stop is over, the delays may linger here and that is the big question as we go forward, jim and erica. >> absolutely. pete muntean, appreciate it. thank you. also with us cnn anchor and correspondent amara walker who is at atlanta's hartsfield-jackson airport, athena jones is at newark national. athena, we often talk about atlanta as the world's busiest airport, what are you hearing from airlines and passengers there? >> reporter: well, it's been pretty muted here and i think that's because it's not such a busy travel day. i did talk to several passengers, most of them dealing with flight delays. i spoke with one woman who was flying southwest, she had a flight that was supposed to leave at 8:55 that got delayed

until noon and she got on to another flight for 2:00 p.m. and that got delayed until 6:00 p.m. she said, forget it, i'm not going to wait around here hoping that the system glitch is fixed quickly. she decided to go home and wait it out. i also spoke with a young man who is supposed to be in new york today, his flight was supposed to be at 10:00 this morning and it got delayed which means that he will be missing a very important family gathering. listen to what he had to say. >> i was supposed to be like 11:00 or 12:00 when we landed and now it's 2:00 and we are missing the first wake for a funeral. >> you are missing a funeral? >> yes, ma'am. right now. >> what are you going to do when you get on the ground? >> i mean, today there's two luckily, so that's where we're going to go, to the second one. >> reporter: yeah, just a bad situation for him, he's actually still waiting out here with his 2-year-old nephew. so the faa say, and this is some good news, about a half an hour ago that flights have begun resuming here at atlanta

international airport. we don't know what that means for the backlog and if that will continue to cause some delays here, but if you look at the departure board behind me, yes, there are several delays, just a few cancellations, but of course the advice is that everyone who is flying today to call their airlines or at least check the flight status before they head out. back to you. >> athena jones is at newark, one of the other busiest airports, where they were lucky enough, i suppose, they were one of the first to get things going again. i wonder how quickly are things picking up there or is it going to take a lot of time? >> reporter: hi, jim. well, things are -- the activity around this terminal has picked up quite a bit since last hour when we last reported. you can see a lot more people stepping up to these kiosks not just international flights which were not being affected earlier on, but folks flying to miami or fort lauderdale are able to check in. immediately right here they will find out if their flight is delayed. we have spoken to folks at spirit airline, you can see the counters, the lines filling up,

there was no one here an hour ago, almost no one standing in line to check in and the folks at spirit tell us that most of their flights are -- they're showing some delays, but most of their flights are getting back on track. you heard pete muntean mention that the domino effect, the ripple effect of some of these earlier flights causing future delays. some folks we spoke to said they're delayed a couple of hours and the boards are showing that as well. an hour, two-hour delays. we do know from flight aware as of the last maybe 15 minutes ago the last update more than 4,000 delays, nearly 700 cancellations. so while things are beginning to get back to normal here there is clearly going to be an impact. i want to show you video of what passengers have been experiencing this morning as this faa tries to deal with this issue. this is from state college, pennsylvania, watch this and listen to the pa announcement and how passengers have been kind of -- what they've been having to deal with this morning. listen. >> we are also not rebooking because that means all flights

even your connecting flights are all going to be not departing or not starting to move until that time. this is a nationwide issue, it's not just a local issue. and, again, we will offer some snacks up front here. help yourself. >> reporter: so that's in state college, pennsylvania. but here in newark things are beginning to get back to normal. this was one of the first airports right here at nuke and atlanta hartsfield-jackson the first airports to get flights going again because of the backlog that was present. we will definitely see more delays here, but in terms of people being able to check in and hopefully by the end of the day get to their destination that has now resumed here at newark. >> keep your fingers crossed. appreciate it. thank you both. of course, the issue when the flights don't come in then they can't go out which can add to this chain reaction. cnn aviation safety analyst, former safety inspector david

sucy joining us in the conversation. we don't know the exact cause at this point but this system that we've been talking about all morning, this notam system, just walk us through what it does and why it is so important for pilots. >> well, what it does is it centralizes all of the information that a pilot might need, any kind of things that are abnormal in the system. it doesn't tell them the system is ready to go, it says if you are going from denver to d.c. then anything that's in between there, you could have cranes that are in a local area around an airport, you might have any kind of information about construction at the airports, you might have anything in between there that might affect your flight but the important thing to point out is that it only points out the abnormal things, it doesn't say the system is good to go. here is the problem, so if you don't have -- if something abnormal happens and you don't get that notice, then you don't know if it's safe or not. so that's why the faa made a precautionary effort to say, look, there's other ways to get this information, but this is how everyone realize -- everyone

relies on the notam system, always have, in my 30, 40 years in aviation i have never known this system to go down. so i think this is a significant problem right now. >> so to that point, david, what vulnerabilities in this system could this expose? and, again, we're early, they haven't figured out what brought it down, but the idea that a system like this could bring basically the whole air transportation system down and very quickly, listen, that's worri worrisome. >> it's very worrisome and even more so worrisome to me is i just went on to check my notams because we use these for pilots up and down the row, even drone pilots use this notam system to see what's going on in any particular operational area. here is what bothers me, the faa says, it's okay, go ahead and fly, however, when i go to the notam search and look at it right now it says due to system processing delays recently entered notams may not be

displayed. it has you confirm that you read t it says, yeah, i read this, i know that. so it's shifted the responsibility now over to the pilots and the dispatchers. so we're going to continue to see delays because they're going to now have to check every airport, every route 25 miles both left and right on that route to see if there's anything that might affect that flight. so there's going to be continued delays. >> so, david, early on this morning as we were watching this, we saw that -- we've heard from passengers in london sitting on the tarmac for three hours but we know of flights taking off from europe. my mom is in the air right now, she took off from new haven just before 7:00 this morning, no notice in the airport, in notice on the planes. so pilots can fly without this information. what does that mean, though, when they are in the air? who is communicating with them? is it just the air traffic control towers? >> yeah, your mom is safe, first of all, let's say that because when the pilots take off what they can do rather than rely on the notams which is a

centralized database for anything that's abnormal they can also do their own checks, they can reach out to the airports, look at the individual airports to see what's going on at the receiving airport or any alternate airports that they might have selected and they can also do some end route information as well, but it's very time consuming. once they do that the big shift here is the fact that the pilots themselves and the dispatcher are taking on that responsibility to make sure that there's no abnormal situations. so the chances are that with your mom and i'm 100% certain of this that the pilots would not have taken off if they weren't sure that it was safe to do so. >> listen, i'm glad your mom is safe, that's important and it's good for folks who may be flying now who might be saying, wait a second, should i believe taking off right now in light of this. >> right. >> david, there is a lot of talk with a lot of these systems, legacy systems, that do air traffic control, et cetera, some of them are old, some of them aren't quite up to date. does this expose -- this system

as well needs an upgrade? modernization? >> most definitely, jim. you know, this system is immeasurably complex and it gets bigger and bigger and more and more overloaded. so what happens is people think there's plateaus in technological advancements and i think that we're stuck at a plateau here. i know there's still air traffic control equipment that was in use back in the '60s that's still at their air traffic control centers. these type of systems that are data driven that just include data, not operational day to day, but store data and report data, those types of systems, there's so many more advances now that could be taken advantage of, but because of budget constraints and what the faa can and cannot do it's put a burden on them. so your technology is advancing as far as the volume is advancing very rapidly, but the technology is having a hard time keeping up and the people that run that technology, that's the most difficult thing because technology moves much faster than the human brain can adapt

to it. so that's one of the things that we really concern ourselves with. >> a lot of reminders of these systems and how kind of fragile they are. you have this and the southwest meltdown over the holidays and a lot of folks traveling pay the price. i'm glad erica's mom is safe. that's important. david soucie, good to have you on. >> that's because jim those how much my mom loves jim sciutto. but in all seriousness that is important. jim, your points about cybersecurity questions and safety with the software are key as well. >> so it doesn't happen again. we will keep on top of this story as we get updates on additional delays as airlines try to catch up from this outage. if you are watching and you are out there traveling, we will bring you all the information as we know it. also ahead, president biden says he was surprised to learn that classified documents were found by his attorneys in one of his offices here in d.c. >> people know i take classified documents and classified information seriously. how he says it happened and

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right now in california rain continues to hammer parts of the state. dozens of communities are dealing with this massive flooding, with mudslides. oh, these pictures. >> it's amazing. just to be clear, there is a human toll here. so far the storms have killed at least 17 people. cnn's camila bernal has more on the devastating effects of the storm. >> reporter: california needs water, but not like this. creeks turning into raging rivers, mudslides barreling through neighborhoods and sinkholes swallowing cars.

>> these storms hit us like a water balloon exploding and just dropped water down through our rivers and creeks, so it's been this excessive amount of flooding. >> reporter: blast after blast of torrential rain and wind gusts exceeding 70 miles per hour on california's central coast. >> we're soaked. this place is soaked. >> reporter: santa cruz county tuesday was in cleanup mode after the most recent storm. >> it's just from water everywhere and it's just rushing through. it was going fast. we had a canoe strapped up we thought if we needed to you can canoe out but it was moving too fast. >> reporter: rachel has lived here for 20 years, her neighborhood and home now covered in mud. >> it's back-breaking labor and, you know, a lot of us that live here in the neighborhood are elderly and can't actually physically do the cleanup. >> reporter: there's been little rest for emergency workers. dozens rescued in santa cruz

earlier this week and a similar story has played out across much of the state. in los angeles, it's flooded and not north in santa barbara county crews responding to more than 200 incident calls. and it's not over. forecasters say four more storms are expected to strike california over the next ten days. >> you know, more rain, more flood, more mud, more cleanup. >> reporter: and a lot of cleanup is expected today, whether you are in the mud and having to deal with all of that and the debris or whether you're having to deal with the water. there's still a lot of standing water as you can see here in this neighborhood a lot of the residents telling me, look, it usually drains if it floods but that is not the case this time around. so they're having to deal with all this water driving through flooded streets and the county

telling me they are assessing the homes that have been damaged. there is at least 135, more or less, that have significant damage. they say those numbers are likely going to go up as they continue making those assessments throughout the day. erica? >> wow, it is -- i mean, there is so much cleanup there and that of course just one community. we are seeing this across the state. we appreciate it. thank you. this morning more stunning discoveries in the disturbing case of the missing massachusetts mother of three ana walshe. law enforcement sources tell cnn that investigators found a hacksaw, torn up cloth material and what appears to be blood stains while combing through a trash facility they were searching. earlier in the week investigators put crime scene tape outside and around dumpsters located in an apartment complex in swamp scott, massachusetts. that near the home of the mother of walshe's husband brian. he is being held on a felony

charge of misleading a police investigation. joining me now to discuss a attorney and legal affairs commentator ariva martin. good morning to you. >> good morning, jim. >> so, first, when you look at the collection of evidence so far, he's being held but purely for misleading police, but since then we've learned he bought cleaning materials, nearly 500 bucks worth the day after she disappeared, he was doing internet searches for how to dispose of a body and now this, they're clearly searching this disposal area here and they found some things that could be connected to the case. do you see investigators moving in the direction here of charging him? >> a lot of moving parts at this time, jim. obviously prosecutors can file murder charges even in the absence of a body, but it makes it very difficult to get a conviction in cases like that. they have to rely on circumstantial evidence and the circumstantial evidence here looks bad for mr. walshe, but it doesn't establish, first of all, that there's even a dead body.

the blood could suggest there was some kind of domestic violence, some kind of altercation that resulted in someone bleeding out, but it doesn't establish that mrs. walshe is actually dead. so i think that's the dilemma that the prosecutors have at this time. do they wait and try to find her or find a body because we know there's a statute of limitations with respect to a murder charge. >> i wonder from a legal perspective is it that they might be able to get an indictment here but they're trying to build a case, again, if it gets there, for conviction, right? i mean, aware of that very challenge you're discussing there, which is that without a body it's much harder to get there. >> yes, and as you know, jim, the prosecution has the burden of proof of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt and that's a pretty high burden, a pretty high legal standard and without a body, again, they will be forced to rely on circumstantial evidence, obviously they have the forensic evidence, in this case the blood, they have what may be a

weapon that was used with respect to any kind of harm that was done to her, but the question remains, is she just missing? is this someone that was involved in some kind of altercation with her husband and walked away? now, not likely given that she is the mother of three small kids, this type of activity based on what we've heard from her mother is unusual, but the prosecutors have a lot of work to do to try to establish, again, is this just a case of someone who is missing or was she actually murdered? >> these are all important provide so hes, it's early in the investigation, we shouldn't be jumping to any conclusions here. tell us what the defense strategy would be at this point. >> yeah, the defense obviously is going to take a position that there's no evidence that she is dead and that without a dead body, without someone who is actually deceased you can't bring murder charges. they may in some cases like this we see people hire their own investigator to try to find the individual. again, letters written to the court not involving this case but involving the fraud case

that mr. walshe was charged for, for selling a fraudulent artwork, she wrote pretty compelling and warm letters to the judge talking about her husband in very kind and favorable words. so the last evidence that we have of sorts relating to the condition of their relationship doesn't suggest that this was someone who was afraid of her husband, who thought ill of her husband. the letters, in fact, suggest to the judge that she thought very highly of her husband. so the defense is going to be point to go that letter as evidence that this is not a marriage in turmoil. >> understood. you referencing of course the case that he had prior to this related to fraud, unrelated her disappearance. good to have you on. >> thanks, jim. we are staying on top of the breaking news this morning. the faa lifting its ground stop after a major outage. the airlines, though, say the delays, buckle up, those could continue throughout the day as they're trying to catch up here

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more now on our breaking news, perhaps some relief for travelers. the faa has lifted a ground stop after a system outage forced it to stop all departures in the u.s. for hours this morning, causing headaches for, gosh, a whole bunch of travelers. >> a whole bunch of travelers. so the good news here, flights are now starting to take off, but, of course, all of those headaches could mean thousands more delays across the country. cnn national correspondent athena jones is at newark

liberty international airport which did start moving some flights, just a short time ago. i know you're getting a better sense of what this could mean for passengers, what that ripple effect is throughout the day, athena. >> reporter: hi, erica. there are still a lot of delays listed on the board, but things are getting back to normal. you can see the activity behind me, this is a pretty long check-in line here at spirit airlines and i just spoke to this family you're seeing over here, they're going to miami. people are being able to check in, they may be at check in, may be made aware of a delay. we spoke to a young man named carlos a few minutes ago as he was finished checking in here. here is what he had to say about his experience. >> we're going to miami. our experience has been a little hectic just because we got here a little late, we should have gotten here a little earlier to get everything situated, but hopefully there is no delays and hopefully we will get to where we have to go. 10:05 and we are able to check in. hopefully everything from here

on is good. >> reporter: and their flight, that flight was not listed as delayed, in fact, they needed to hurry because that was only a few minutes ago, but just a sign of things beginning to get back to normal. we've also heard from united airlines, this is a hub for united saying their customers may continue to see delays because of this ripple effect. you can't have problems with planes taking off for the first few hours of the day and not have a ripple effect. so some delays and cancellations united a warning its passengers they will see as they work to restore their schedule. they say united has activated a travel waiver for any customers who need to change their plans, including offering refunds. they're doing the best they can to try to make sure that this is as painless as possible for the travelers affected, but bottom line here at newark airport and nationally no more ground stop, flights are resuming, there's going to be some ripple effects, but at least people are going to eventually get to their destination. erica and jim? >> that's the good news, they will get there eventually. appreciate it. we hope carlos made his flight.

this just into cnn, new house oversight chairman republican james comer is requesting information about the biden family's financial transactions, requesting that information from the treasury department, also calling on several former twitter executives to testify at a public hearing. >> comes as republicans have accused the social media company of suppressing the hunter biden laptop story in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. cnn's sara murray joins us now. this is of course your reporting here. what specific financial family financial documents are republicans asking for? >> well, look, they are looking for a raft of stuff. they are looking for bank activity reports known as sars, they are looking at those for hunter biden, looking at those for james biden, hunter biden's brother, as well as a variety of companies and associates. they also want any communications between the white house and the treasury department and they're also looking for public system from a trio of former twitter officials, again, as you pointed

out about sort of the hunter biden laptop story, what they say is this effort to suppress information around the 2020 election. in a statement that went along with this james comer said now the democrats no longer have one-party rule in washington. oversight and accountability are coming. as we know, a top priority as he says in this statement for them is this hunter biden investigation and, you know, they hope it's going to lead to joe biden who is sitting in the white house. >> specific to what allegation about dealings with china or just a sort of general -- >> so the sort of theory that james comer is going on is this notion that there is some sort of compromising activity that the biden family was engaged in, that there may have been some kind of foreign influence that is now impacting the sitting president. again, these are allegations, this he have not proved this, these are based on sars, which are reports that banks file and there are millions filed a year and very few lead to law enforcement activity. just because there may be some of these suspipicious activity reports does not mean there is

wrongdoing. >> thank you so much. joining us to discuss cnn political analyst and senior contributor for axios ma margaret talev. julie, what potentially in requesting these records, what could be in there? >> hi, erica. the records -- i'm sorry, which records are you talking about? >> sorry. i wasn't sure if you were able to hear sara murray's reporting, she was reporting that james comer is saying he is going to be requesting information about bank activity specifically for the biden family from the treasury department, these sars reports. >> they're look to go see whether or not the bidens had any foreign influence during the election, there they had any contact with foreign entities especially in the hunter biden case they're interested in china. >> okay. margaret talev, when we look at the targets, right, of

republican investigators now that they have the house under their control, another one of their targets already of course is going to be biden's handling of classified documents and i want to just play james comer given that he is at the forefront of the financial investigation here, what he said when he was asked by our pam brown in november about republicans' interest in trump's handling of classified documents. have a listen. >> okay. so i don't know much about that. that's not something that we've requested information just to see what was going on because i don't know what documents were at mar-a-lago. so, you know, that's something we're just waiting to see what comes out on that. >> but is it fair to say that investigation will be a priority? >> that will not be a priority. >> somewhat of a different tune from what we're hearing now given the disclosures about biden's handling of documents. is there consistency in the way republicans have handled these two cases? >> you picked up on that subtle difference, right? i mean, look, comber and

republicans have sort of couched their disinterest in the investigation into classified documents in mar-a-lago saying that trump is no longer in office, they are not interested in a former president. of course, these documents now relate to when joe biden's time as a former vice president. we know the differences based on current reporting very well, it's a fraction of the number, he and his legal team were immediately disclosing of these, they came forward with them, they have not resisted. we know they are tremendously different cases. the republicans are kind of testing two approaching here and one approach is to try to equate the two and say, look, all presidents somehow end up with classified documents they shouldn't have and the other is to say biden must be investigated. >> right. >> i think there's going to need to be some kind of a reckoning here but here is the potential problem for president biden, we

don't know what is in these ten or so documents. they're reporting -- cnn's own reporting says that they touch on ukraine. republicans hear ukraine they think, ah-ha, hunter biden. we don't know that. but if there is any connection, obviously that takes this into a completely different political realm. iran, the uk. it's important to know. it's important for merrick garland to know what is in those documents. he may already have been briefed by the prosecutors, but we don't know. it doesn't mean that republicans will not target this politically and they're already starting to. >> julie, there's both the contents, right, which we're just hearing about which are important in those documents, it could also as we're hearing so much outrage, right, from republicans about what happened with these documents and they're pointing as to what had happened with former president trump and were talking about obstruction. these are not exactly apples to apples, but what will be very important here and in both cases frankly is intent, julie. whether there was some intent to take those documents when joe

biden was the former vice president and to have them. how do you prove that? >> well, the prosecutors would look at the actions of each camp basically when they found the documents and, you know, if the reports are true and we have no reason to think they're not the biden documents were found in a locked closet, they were found by lawyers who immediately notified the white house and on the same day the white house notified the national archives. you know, these cases do happen. people do mistakenly take documents. it has a lot to do with how they respond and, you know, you compare that with just the slog that the national archives had to go through, including getting a subpoena and then a search warrant to get the documents from mar-a-lago, they're very different factually. >> let me ask you this, though, julie, because with the trump case you had two investigative paths, right, one was the fact that he had the documents, the other was his lack of cooperation with handing them back and a potential obstruction charge there, which some lawyers

have said was the more likely path for indictment. is that your view as well and would that -- is that fundamentally different, right, from biden's handling this? >> yes, and i think the reason they're looking at obstruction is they really don't have to get into as much of what the classifications were and what was in the documents but just the fact that they were repeatedly requested and then not -- and then not given over, sure. i do think one issue that's still outstanding is whether or not the republicans are going to demand that there be searches or investigations with regard to other locations where the -- where president biden may have had documents. >> yeah, good point. >> julie and margaret, great to see you both this morning. appreciate it. thank you. still ahead, confusion in the new year as the biden administration unveils a new proposal to lower student loan payments even as the forgiveness program remains up in the air. we're going to try to clear up some of that confusion, particularly if you fall into

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now out of the airport in los angeles. the faa says flights have resumed this hour after a massive system outage, but, boy, a lot of planes still parked there. hope more are taking off soon. >> looks a little quiet. i don't see a lot of activity at lax, but i do see a lot of planes. more than 4,000 trips already delayed as the airlines say likely more to come because they have to try to get back on track. we still don't know the cause of the outage but we will of course update you on that as soon as we hear more. the biden administration is unveiling a new student loan proposal that would lower federal payments for some

americans as well as pause payments completely for others, but it comes at a time when there's still confusion about biden's previous student debt relief plan. >> there's also of course the case before the supreme court that could really just torpedo that plan this morning. we are going to go to christine romans to answer some of these questions. christine, starting off with this, this case, the supreme court is set to hear it in february. in the meantime payments were paused. where does that stand this morning? >> this is a lot of limbo for people. you've got 45 million student loan borrowers this this country, $1.6 trillion in student loan debt and a president who made a promise he was going to relieve some of that debt, $20,000 in student loan forgiveness for low and middle income borrowers. a decision is expected in the supreme court cases by june. until then borrowers' payments are on hold. how long will that last? this is something that started

in march 2020 because of the covid -- the covid pandemic, but borrower balances have been frozen since march 2020. payments were set to resume in january but now they are paused again. here is what we know, we know that the pause will last either until 60 days after that court case is decided, guys, or 60 days after june 30th, whichever comes first. >> so now you have this new way to ease payments, introduced yesterday. can you explain the difference between them and how they would interact? >> sure. i mean, this is essentially the white house trying to relieve the burden of two big student loan payments for people -- so the proposed changes are something called the income-based repayment problem. it would lower student loan payments for everybody and for some people it would wipe away their need to pay them back. it's roughly 8 million people it would impact. it caps payments at 5% of the borrower's discretionary income, right now it's at 10%. you would have to pay less. for singer borrowers making

$36,800 a year you don't have to make any payments. it forgiveness remaining balances a after ten years instead of 20 or 25 years. these are ways to tweak the income-based repayment system to get borrowers out from under these big heavy debt burdens so they can live their life, right, they can invest in their retirement, try to buy a house. it's not just the student loan burden that is holding them back from the middle class. >> look at those changes there, that adds up to real money for a lot of earners in this country if they come to effect. christine romans, thanks so much. you're welcome. still to come here is your gas stove set to become a thing of the past is this up next, why the government is considering regulating the appliance and the pollutants that studies show that burner is bringing into your home.

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gas stoves could soon get 86'd from kitchens across the country. the u.s. consumers product safety commissioner is considering a ban on the appliances for new builds. it says the appliances can be a source of indoor pollution,

sometimes linked to childhood asth ma. >> cnn's chief climate correspondent bill weir is here. people are up in arms. there seems to be a sense i'm going to take that stove out of your kitchen. >> not exactly what's happening. >> but it speaks to the emotion of food, how we prepare it, certain styles, and this is 100 years of advertising. you're cooking with gas now was a deliberate campaign from the american gas organization when they were up against gas and cold in the '30s. electric is much more efficient, the new induction stoves are safer, they've banned it in new york city in country, out west

in california, in washington state. a lot of states have preemptively banned gas bans. you can imagine they're typically red states. they say it's an existential threat to that business, but the science is showing us having a gas stove, in a small apartment especially with bad represent lace, is like having a car idling there. if you have kids, it can affect cognitive abilities. >> new york is now considering doing the same for gas heating. you have often heard that gas heating is a better option that heating oil as an interim step here. i wonder, where does that go? all of this is about, i suppose, what you can do now, right? versus what you might be able to do in the future. is this going to affect states trying to transition away from gas heating as well? >> i think the request around

the stoves is more around ventilation, warning valves, so you don't have accident rather than end them. i did this story on a place outside of denver. they tried to create a net-zero community, no gas, but half of the development got sold to a developer that put it in. so all zoning is local. what you're making is a 20, 30-year decision. the technology now is so much advanced beyond that, but it's setting up more of an ideological fight, but more people are aware -- we're out of time, but -- i'm sorry. >> look at trump's reaction to incandescent bulbs. >> or low-flow showers. >> but no gas lines in construction, is it about foss

the fuels -- i'm sorry. i'm getting in trouble. pleth aniis 80 times more powderful than methane, but in small paces, it's personal health. >> appreciate it. almost 5,000 flights canceled in the u.s. the faa is lifting the ground stop from this morning, hoping the impacts are solved in the coming hours. we'll have the latest from the faa. ♪ the only thing i regret about my life was hiring local talent. if i knew about upwork. would have hired actually talented people from all over the world. stead of talentless people from all over my house. in 99% of people over 50.

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