immoral, genocidal way to defend themselves. and i wish he would -- i wish he would reconsider this. again, to me the biggest point is, when you are -- i mean, this is on ukrainian territory. it's not like he is using this capability to attack russia. the ukrainians are using it to defend themselves from tanks, troops, artillery. to me that is not he is cla totory whatsoever. >> well, scott kelly, so happy you could join us this morning to talk about these things. i wanted to get it the spy balloons. thank you, scott kelly. >> thanks. "cnn this morning" continues right now. ♪ ♪

ho not a student, faculty, staff, and we have no idea why he came to campus to do this tonight. that is part of our ongoing investigation. >> good morning, everyone. a busy news day. poppy is on assignment. we will talk about a gunman opening firing on michigan state university's campus. three people are dead. the news conference to begin in moments. we will take you there. and nick patkki haley is ru for president. she is the first to challenge trump for the republican nomination in 2024. we are waiting for the news conference at michigan state university to get underway, we want to talk about this development in the to 24 race this morning. as nikki haley is now running for the white house, obviously, you know her as she served as the united nations ambassador for trump. she announced in a video this morning she will be running for president.

>> you should know this about me. i don't put up with bullies and when you kick back, it hurts them more if you are wearing heels. i'm nikki haley and i'm running for president. >> all right. we will begin with kylie this morning to talk about this. kylie, here we go. the election season is beginning right now. >> indeed it is. nikki haley coming out with this video previewing her announcement in south carolina saying for the first time she is running for president. what this video does is sort of tell her story, talk about growing up in south carolina to indian immigrants saying she wasn't black, she wasn't white, she was different. talking about growing up then and becoming governor of south carolina and standing up to fear when there was that awful shooting at the church in south carolina. one of the things that nikki haley really does in this video is talk about how great america was and she said even growing up, when she faced challenges, her parents reminded her every

day how lucky she was to have the opportunities here in america. they moved to the united states from india. it wasn't always easy for them. she makes that very clear in the video. but this video for her is really introducing herself to the american people. she talks about the republican party. their values. she says that they have lost the popular vote in many of the recent presidential races and that is something that needs to change. so it's clear she so positioning herself as the new generation here, talks about not wanting to look back to the old leaders of the party, but -- >> we have to get back to you. we want to get to michigan to that press conference. the governor of michigan standing by speaking. >> beautiful souls today. and pray for those who are continuing to fight for their lives. every spartan student, parent, and staff member should know

that michiganders and americans are thinking of you today. president biden and i spoke last night. he pledged his support and the thoughts of an entire nation and we will work together to do what is necessary to help msu community heal. we're all broken by an all too familiar feeling. another place that is supposed to be about community and togetherness shattered by bullets and bloodshed. we know this is a uniquely american problem. today is the fifth anniversary of the parkland shooting where mere weeks passed the lunar new year shooting at a dance hall and a few months past the shooting of an elementary school in uvalde. looking back at a year marked by shootings at grocery stores, parades, and so many other ordinary, everyday situations, we cannot keep living like this.

our children are scared to go to school. people feel unsafe in their houses of worship or local stores. too many of us scan rooms for exits when we swer them and many of us have gone through the grim exercise of figuring out who our last call would be to. last night a lot of kids on this campus made those calls. they worried for their lives and for their friends, their fellow spartans. parents across michigan were on pins and needles calling their kids to tell them that they loved them. adds parents, we tell our kids it's going to be okay. we say that all the time. but the truth is words are not good enough. we must act, and we will. but today let's hold the msu and east lancing communities close and let's think of the families and friends of those who have lost those fighting for their

lives and the countless mi michiganers whose lives are forever changed. we will do it with the full support of the state of michigan and the u.s. federal government. with that i would like to hand it over to our congresswoman. >> thanks, governor. i want to echo what the governor said about the response of law enforcement. those of you who might have been listening on the scanner, you heard how deeply complex this operation was yesterday with young people calling in tips, cons constantly with just an unbelievably difficult area of environment to navigate, law enforcement did an incredible job. we had hundreds respond from across the state and i just -- i think it's a testament to those who hold the thin blue line for us, the ones that hesitate, do

not hesitate when we need them, and i think we should recognize how desperately they were needed last night, in our society in general. i want to thank the doctors and nurses and staff at sparrow hospital. they were on it. no one wants to live through a mass shooting like this. they were prepared and handled it with grace and humanity. as a representative of oxford, michigan, i cannot believe that i am here again doing this 15 months later. and i am filled with rage that we have to have another press conference to talk about our children being killed in their schools. and i would say that you either care about protecting kids or you don't. you either care about having an open honest conversation about what is going on in our society, or you don't. but please don't tell me you care about the safety of children if you are not willing to have a conversation about keeping them safe in a place that should be a sanctuary.

now, the spartan community is incrediblying connected and proud. we have already seen people come together. but for me the most haunting picture of last night was watching the cameras pan through the crowds and seeing a young person wearing an oxford strong sweatshirt, handed out after those kids lived through a school shooting 15 months ago and we have children in michigan living through their second school shooting in under a year and a half. if this is not a wake-up call to do something, i don't know what is. in the meantime, i feel confident that our law enforcement is doing everything that they can to understand the situation. i am thrilled that federal law enforcement is on scene bringing their resources to the fight. we are not going to rest until we understand. but i think the fact that we are having this conference so quickl quickly another mass shooting in our state should be a statement, in and of itself. fords thanks very much.

>> on behalf of the community, i'm mayor andy shore. >> mayor ron baker, east lancing. >> this is the morning that nobody ever wants to have. this is the day that nobody ever wants to be standing up at a lectern. you want to talk about the great things in our community and not this. but here we are. i do want to thank the lancing residents who stood up these many, many tips you heard about, came in from many of our residents and as a result the shooter was identified and the threat was neutralized. so we are very proud of our citizens in lancing. there is going to be so much fear. it's not just the students. it's the community. i heard from parents and citizens who didn't know what was going on. so i want to share, we have a community mental health resource that is open 24/7.

it's a crisis services 517-346-2800. and i also want to share in the incredible job that was done by our law enforcement. lpd, elpd, state police, ink up county and msu. this is what they train for. and today and yesterday they were able to show that they are prepared. it's not something you ever want to do when you train, but they were prepared and they were excellent. >> as of today, east lancing center will be available to students in need of resources and counseling will be available all day. we will be working with the department of health services today as well to extend other additional things to the community. just want to say as mayor of east lancing, when i introduce myself i am the mayor of east lancing, home of michigan state university. we are indivisible.

this spartan will thing is raem. me deepest regrets and remorse to the families that lost children. the fear stricken in the children at michigan state for my children, i am dad here in this community, it's like a playground for them. it's where you go and have your first experiences and taste of college life and fun and all those types of things, and i'm just shattered today. my heart aches for our community and it will be present, we will be here in support, present woodruf, the entire community of michigan state university will stand hand in hand. this is just the beginning. we will find the way forward. i don't want to try to communicate we have the answers at that point, but as we are going to find the answers and figure some stuff out here. this has gone far enough. thank you.

>> good morning. i am dr. denny martin, interim president, i think a lot of dry mouths up here this morning. bear bear with us. last evening we cared for five individuals who were brought to sparrow hospital from east lancing campus. the team and our level one trauma center with our emergency medicine physicians and trauma surges ens were waiting for them upon their arrival. i will give a lot of thanks to the individuals, the first responders on the scene. our ability to care for these individuals starts in the field. and they did a fantastic job. four of those individuals required surgical intervention to treat their individuals. one individual did not and was taken to the critical care unit. after being triaged in the emergency department, all five

individuals remained in critical condition this morning. i want to thank the overwhelming response from our team. everyone in our level one trauma center, this is something we talked about this morning that we practice for very often, but never want to have to do. and we did it amazingly well. very proud of everyone. the team was led by our emergency department physicians again with our trauma surgeons. but can't forget we had general surgeons, cardiothoracic surgeons, neurosurgeons. so many people that just came

in. we received a lot of texts that were just, you know, i'm on my way, just people showing up, where do you need me? it was a sad but very proud moment for all of us here. i can't speak to anything about the identity of the individuals, but i'm sure we will have some time for questions afterwards. but again everyone is in critical condition at this time. but, you know, actively being cared for by the team at sparrow. thank you all. >> good morning. i'm theresa woodruff, i am the interim president here.

our spartan hearts are broken. we are grieving. as a community we are grieving together. we struggle to comprehend. we lost families, friends, classmates, and our hearts go out to the victims and families of this senseless tragedy and we offer to each of them the peace and understanding. we continue to thank our medical professionals at sparrow. we know they are taking the best care possible of our students. to our students, we have available to you the support that you need at the hannah community center as mentioned by mayor bacon. this includes counseling and psychological services as well as employee assistance programs for our faculty and staff. and we are deeply appreciative to the governor for reaching out directly to president biden and for the author of additional

mental health services for our community. as a university, we also thank our law enforcement, colleagues, both here and in multiple jurisdictions, who responded immediately and continue to protect our community today and each day. i want to thank the staff on campus today. msu is on modified operations. we are on essential personnel only for today and for tomorrow. and those staff who are here to support our 17,000 students on campus and 50,000 students across this great university, we thank you. i also thank directly our students, faculty and staff who complied with the request to shelter in place for hours on end without knowing exactly what was happening. we thank you for your courage to maintain that shelter, which allowed our law enforcement to take the actions that they did.

we ask each of you to honor your feelings and to take care of yourself and each other and together we will come back more resilient than ever and more ready to face what is needed in this society, which is the courage of all of us to ensure that this never happens again. >> good morning. i'm marlin lynch, vice president for chief of place here at michigan state university. you heard in regards to the first responders last night. there were continued through the night, processing crime scenes, obtaining additional statements, additional evidence, tireless work hours. we are not only bound by our duty, but a large percentage of us are invested in our

community. we went to school here. we have children here. we have family. this is us. this is part of us. t these partnerships are great. our processes will continue with this. we will continue lusly be joined by our partners as we are here today with the fbi, state police, lancing police department and east lancing and i hate to even go down the list because there are so many agencies that responded last night. continuously responding and asking how can they help. it was all in a timely manner. very timely with that. you will hear a recap of the incident and as well as updates based on events that have occurred overnight in regards to our students that were involved and also the suspect.

>> good morning. deputy chief cris ross man with the michigan state police public safety. as you can tell, it this has been a long night for a lot of us. we have been committed from the beginning to being as transparent and getting as much information out as possible, and we are going to continue to do that throughout the day and as this investigation moves forward. i am going to start with a brief recap of the incident yesterday. this tragic situation unfolded shortly before 8:30 p.m. the first call that we received was from burkey hall, an academic building on the northern campus that borders downtown east lancing. initial calls reported shots fired in that building and there was an absolutely overwhelming

police response to that initial call. we had officers in that building within minutes. and in that building they encountered several students who were injured. we can confirm that two of the deceased were in burkey hall. along with several of the victims. while the officers were managing that scene at burkey hall, we began receiving additional reports of another shooting at the msu union building just to the west of burkey hall right on the corner of abbott and grand river. officers redeployed to that location where we did locate one additional victim.

we have three deceased and five victims at the hospital. we can confirm all three deceased were msu students. we can also confirm at this time that all five of the injured victims at the hospital were also msu students. we will release the names of those students later today. once we work through some notifications and make sure that the families are aware that we are going to release those names. the suspect in this case was located at approximately 11:35 p.m. in the city of lancing. the suspect was located by units that were assisting in looking for that suspect after the shootings. the suspect is deceased due to a

self-inflic self-inflicted gunshot wound and we are prepared to release the name of the person who committed these homicides at this time. we have previously confirmed he was 43 years old, a male. his name is anthony, last name is mccray. mcrae. anthony dwyanecrae. mcrae. anthony dwyane mcrae. we would like to thank you or community for their help. because of our quick release of the photograph from the campus security cameras and help from our community, it was a caller's tip that led law enforcement to that suspect in the city of lancing. we cannot thank the public and the community and the person who called in that report in enough for being observant, for

following our messaging, and for being vigilant in contacting us immediately. we will continue to share resources for the msu community through our institutional website and our msu police and public safety social media pages. we know that this news may be difficult for those within our campus community and beyond and it's important to remember that some -- it's important to remember that the grief that some individuals may be experiencing is normal and there are a number of ways in which individuals can seek support, including talking with friends, family, and colleagues to process this, and taking advantage of many of the resources that we have provided.

we are prepared at this point to take some questions. we will turn is over to special agent in charge, jim. >> good morning. i am the special agent in charge of the fbi in michigan. first of all, our hearts go out to all of the victims, the families, the students in the community. this happens much too often. i'd like to thank our partners and law enforcement, chief, once again, thanks for your leadership. just great examples of leadership last night from all of the agencies that showed up short notice and showed selfless sacrifice to attempt to identify, find the subject and eliminate the threat. last night when this occurred,

many agencies arrived on season. the fbi deployed agents, analysts, and specialty teams to help in the effort to help the victims and community at large to come tog together, and we will continue working in the future hand in hand to mitigate these threats and try to make michigan as safe a place as we can for families. thank you. >> we are prepared to take some questions. this is still fluid, still ongoing. there are still crime scenes being processed.

and we still are in the process of putting together the pieces to try to solve -- to try to understand what happened and why it may have happened. so we're still working through that. so we will go ahead and take some questions at this time. >> were seven -- >> hold on. >> go ahead. >> thank you. there was a large police presence on creston avenue in lancing. was that the suspect's home? >> so i can't confirm the actual location or address. we are aware that there was a search warrant executed on a residence that was connected to the suspect in this case. we are not prepared share that specific location at this point. >> do you have any information on the firearm and whether it was registered to the individual who is suspected of using it? >> at this point we have no additional information on the actual weapon used in the incident. those are things that we will continue to process and look at today as part of our investigation. >> did you recover the weapon?

>> we did recover -- we did recover a weapon, yes. >> seven of the eight victims are berkey hall, the eighth at the union and the union victim passed away. is that correct? >> there were two of the victims from berkey hall are deceased. one victim from the union is deceased. there are five additional victims that are at sparrow hospital. i cannot confirm where all five of those victims, which building they were in. i believe most of them were from berkey hall. i can't confirm that. >> yes? >> i understand the first -- you said officers arrived shortly after the call. the second building, can you describe the tame table? officers were [ inaudible ]. >> the msu union is within very

close proximity to berkey hall, within walking distance. i would describe it as less than a block to the west of berkey hall. all indications at this point, point to the fact that the suspect exited berky hall and walked over to the msu union. when those calls initially started coming in from the union, we were able to quickly redeploy resources to the union and the suspect quickly fled that building. he was not in the building for that long. >> when you say redeployed, how much of a timetable? >> i can't get into the specifics on the timeframe right now, but that will be part of the investigation that we will look as is the time between those two incidents. >> has the suspect had previous interaction with law enforcement? >> that's part of our investigation today is to look at the suspect, his background, his history. those are things that are occurring with our state and federal partners right now who have really taken the lead on helping us with identifying the suspect, especially since that incident did occur off campus.

but those are things that we are looking at today and those will be integral to the investigation. >> can you shed any light as to the why, why this happened? what his motive was? why he chose michigan state? >> we had the same question last night and we have the same answer this morning. we have absolutely no idea what the motive was at this point. we can confirm that the 43-year-old suspect had no affiliation to the university. he was not a student, faculty, staff. current or previous. so that's an unknown right now. and that's what we're trying to understand, is why this incident occurred. i know everybody wants to know what the motive is. we don't have an answer right now. and that's the honest truth. >> was anything found inside of his home that might help with that? >> i can't comment on what was located in the residence as part

of that search warrant but that is part of the ongoing investigation. >> last week several schools opened and other schools across the state were shut down for -- determined to be a hoax. is there any connection to that at this point? >> i won't get into that. we are looking at the possibility of any connection. there doesn't -- what i will say is there doesn't appear to be initially. but those are the types of things that our state and federal partners are really going to look at. but initially, it is does not appear there is any connection. in the back right there. blue. >> i understand that -- made contact with the suspect before he shot himself. can you explain what that contact was, the timeframe? >> i don't have any additional information on the sequence of events when law enforcement contacted the suspect. there was a tip called in from an alert citizen that reported

the suspect. that call was dispatched to resources that we had deployed in the field. we had so many police officers on campus as part of our unified command structure, we started deploying resources -- >> you have been listening to a press conference in east lancing, michigan. you see the person in charge of the department of public safety, and many folks are giving emotional -- being emotional this morning, a little bit more emotional than we see in these situations. but saying that alyssa slotkin, a congresswoman there, saying you should be outraged, gretchen whitmer speaking, and the person in charge mof hospital staff breaking down. as well as theresa woodruff, who is the interim president of the university as well becoming emotional. what we found out is that the three people who died are students. the five in critical condition

are students. we found out the name of the gunman, 43-year-old anthony dwayne mcrae. >> this is a close-knit community. i think that's why you saw so much emotion there and hearing they are all students. we learned about the suspect, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. john, you were listening with us. what stood out to you? >> well, the fact that there is no association with the university, no known motive. what we do know about the encounter last night is police put out the photo of the suspect that you're looking at right now. and one of those photos you can see what appears to be a pistol in his hand as he is coming in the door, which he seems to be putting away. and the next photo you see him moving closer. there was a third photo of him from behind. they put those out on twitter and they urged the public, if you see this person, call. the call comes in from someone

who sees him walking. there is a state police unit that's on patrol that picks up that call. resources from all over the county, state police and other departments were there outside the campus while they were focused inside the campus. they roll up on him. they ask to repeat the description. they said black pants, jean jacket, backpack, red shoes. they approach him. he fits the description head to toe, and when they engage with him he pulls out the weapon and shoots himself. they separate him from the gun, start cpr. in a backpack, they found a second weapon and numerous magazines loaded with ammunition. >> do we know what kind of weapons? >> we don't. >> they said in the press conference they did not give the information. >> we know two handguns. one in the backpack, one he used on himself. we don't know which or both he

used in the school shooting. atf will be tracing those weapons to their source. what do we know about anthony dwayne mcrae? he has a criminal record in and around lancing kz, michigan. a gun arrest from 2019. he was charged with a felony for post session of a loaded weapon in a car. that was pled down to a misdemeanor. we are still going through those records, but it appears he got probation. and not being a convicted felon, it's possible that he could legally purchase firearms and get through a background check. but atf will be going through where did the guns come from, when they were purchased, by whom, how did hethem, so on. >> the question is motive. they didn't talk about motive at this point. they still don't know. >> that's a blank. but the search warrant they conducted at that house on howe avenue in east lancing is to get

any weapons, any evidence, any computers, any phones, anything that they can get into and look for the planning process, possible indicators of motive and so on. so there will be a lot unfolding today that may give them a richer picture, but that's not certain. >> yeah, and they said it was a caller's -- someone who called in to tell them what they had seen, that actually is what they had led them to him. >> they released that photograph and caller's -- >> they started to get a lot of calls and sightings-of people who weren't him, but fit the general description. but this call was the golden ticket, it was the right call, right description and it turned out to be the right suspect. >> the white house this morning saying last night president biden spoke with governor whitmer on the shooting, the fbi and additional law enforcement deployed to support local efforts there.

you saw the head of the michigan fbi, special agent -- >> jim, yes. the fbi will bring a lot of resources to this. you heard deputy chief rozman saying we are working on the crime scene and the campus and so on, but the fbi and the state police are doing that deep dive into the suspect's background to see, you know, who is he, what can we learn about him and how do we connect him to this incident in terms of motive since there is a total lack of any rene apparently he never worked at the school, never taught at the school, never went to the school. so why was he drawn to that school specifically and those two buildings and those victims? >> a lot of big questions. you mentioned whitmer's call to biden. she went to msu. she knows this community, obviously. >> she was a part of the plot -- >> when you think of the drama here, don, the governor was targeted by a plot of right-wing white supremacist who wanted to take her and her family hostage

in the governor's mansion and they were from multiple states and they met in online chat rooms. they are talking about the oxford high school shooting where you had numerous -- you had four children killed and seven shot in a case where you had a troubled young man and even his parents were charged for negligence. so i think what you are seeing is a lot of revisiting of all the trauma that's been going around the people who are supposed to work us through the trauma. >> old wounds. that's hwhy so much emotion. >> really valuable insight you will be staying on top of this. >> thanks. as we are tracking the developments that are coming out of the michigan state university shooting we are learning new developments on the political front. nikki haley confirmed she will be running for president in 2024. we are going to talk with a congresswoman who represents her own district, nancy mace. she is next. verizon has business internet solutions nationwide.

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♪ ♪ . nikki haley is in. the former south carolina governor and trump's ambassador to the united nations is now running for president in 2024. so who better to talk about this than her hello south carolinian republican congressman nancy mace who represents hale's home district. good morning. and thank you for joining us on this. nikki haley endorsed you and your republican primary. are you going to endorse her in this republican primary? >> oh, that's a great question. it looks like i may or may not have multiple constituents from south carolina running. nikki haley is a very good friend of mine, a mentor, she works harder than anybody i

know. when i had my republican primary last year with the former president coming after me vigorously, i was one of the only republicans to beat him in a primary last year, she was one of the only people to return my call and she was one of the only elected officials with as high a profile she has two endorsed me, supported me, raised money for me and took that on with me. and so i have tremendous respect and gratitude and love for her, and i want to see, you know, how the field shakes out and see how it is set. i have great love for her and you i am excited to see her enter the race. i said this multiple times before. i believe republicans need to have a woman on the ticket ain one way or another and i think she could be fantastic. >> she once said she wouldn't run for the republican nomination if trump was running. obviously, he now is and she is running as well. are you glad she changed her mind? >> i am. i am glad. in fact, i said to her

personally, you know, a year ago i hope that she would run no matter what because it's important for us. i have a daughter. i want to see our daughters have someone to look up to who can be in the white house one day as a woman. i believe it's really important for us to take that step and to be the ones to elect a woman to be president. from that perspective, i think it's exciting. she is more than qualified for the job. she's got experience on the global scale. she has experience in the executive side of things as a former governor, from a u.n. ambassador. she has all the qualifications to run for president. >> and you mentioned that you may have multiple constituents in the race. that's because senator tim ask the, also from south carolina, is taking the steps you would take if you are going to run for president. if he enters the race, do you think a big primary field is going to actually benefit former president trump? >> i think it could. i'll tell you, south carolina is the most important state in the republican primary. to see someone, you know, see.

so leadership coming out of south carolina is exciting, but i have concerns if there are too many people on the ballot by the time it gets to south carolina that, you know, lessens the chances of anyone else coming out in this thing. so that's a concern from my perspective about the number of people running. i'd like to see it small. but south carolina is the first in the south, and generally speaking, traditionally, for the last few decades, if you win south carolina you win the nomination. so the fight for the nomination will be in our state and i look forward to a vigorous series of debates and seeing the candidates that come out. >> how many is too many, do you think? >> i mean, i'm not a pundit here. i would say great if there were less than six. i don't think that's going to happen. but i think we will see, you know, upwards of ten a dozen potentially. it will dwindle down by the time it gets to south carolina, should be less than ten.

>> congresswoman, i know you have questions about what we are seeing with the biden administration's handling of these downed objects that we have seen following the downing of that chinese spy balloon off the coast of your home state. are you satisfied with how the white house has been handling this so far? >> i am not. i have more questions than i have answers. i thought the press conference yesterday was a little bungled. you know, we were told a week ago they didn't shoot down the chinese balloon across the united states, they wanted to wait until it got to the atlantic side and atlantic ocean yet this weekend there were three other objects that were shot down over u.s. territory, over land, and so from that perspective, too, i have many questions. also, any suggestion that the administration doesn't know what these objects are or where they came from is simply not true. they won't shoot an object down without verifying that it is and where it came from. so we do have an unclassified

briefing today with congress. i am looking forward to getting in a skiff and getting real answers to questions that we can talk about in classified setting. >> were you worried about the recovery? cnn is learning that the united states and canada may not be able to recover the debris of these throw objects. that would prevent them from being able to find out what they were making looking for with those objects? >> certainly that's a concern. i am glad they are out of u.s. and canadian skies. again, they are not going to shoot anything down that they have not verified what it is. they have radar. they have satellite. they have other slaclassified ms to verify what is in the sky and what it's doing. i am concerned. i would like to see that debris collected. again they know what it is. they are just unwilling to share it with congress yet. >> they are using missiles to shoot these objects down. we actually learned that the one they tried to shoot down over lake huron they missed. are you comfortable with the u.s. military scrambling fighter

jets, using missiles to down objects over u.s. airspace? >> it's concerning. we want to make sure that the debris doesn't hurt civilians. we are jets scrambling all the time. we have jets that our u.s. airspace all toot the time. so that in my experience and knowledge is not an anomaly. the anomaly is shooting these objects down after we were told a week ago that they wouldn't shoot them down over u.s. land because they were worried about civilians getting hurt. again there is mixed messaging and they could clarify what's actually going on and i wish they would. i wish the secretary of defense would come out and the president of the united states potentially if we shoot any more down, i am worried about the concerns that american citizens will have and the fear we might be smoking by doing this without providing more information. >> all right. congresswoman nancy mace, thank you so much for weighing in on that important presidential announcement from our home state

and what's happening on capitol hill today. >> exciting. so exciting. thank you. >> thank you. and this happening right now. a key inflation report is just released. christine roman standing by to break down the numbers. hi, christine. immune health, i choose airborne. unlike some others, airborne gives you vitamin c and so much more. it's an 8 in 1 immune support formumula. airborne. do more. - custom ink helps us motivate our students with custom gear. we love how custom ink takes care of everything we need, so we can focus on the kids. - [narrator] custom ink has hundreds of products to helyou feel connected. upload your logo or stary at customink.com if your moderate to severe crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms are stopping you in your tracks... choose stelara® from the start... and move toward relief after the first dose... with injections every two months. stelara® may increase your risk of infections,

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romans is here so talk about that. so what do the numbers say? everyone is worried about inflation. >> inflation has been issue number one for american families for a year now. we're seeing overall moderating inflation but still too high. i think these numbers tell you the fed still has work do do. over the past 12 months consumer prices soaring 6.4%, a little bit hotter than economists had expected and when you look at the month over month, up 0.5%. it is shelter and food and gas are the big reasons here. when i show you the chart, you can see the peaking we've been talking about, really important to show that, but it has been a slow peaking here. honestly this is still an uncomfortable feeling number. gasoline prices up again, they had fallen in december, they were up in january. you can see that food prices are up double digits over the past year, every family feels that, and shelter was the big driver of these numbers. inside the numbers, look, if you go to the grocery store in your

shopping cart you are feeling inflation every day, hotdogs, i call them hotdogs, government calls them frankfurters up 11%, eggs up 70%. wholesale egg prices have fallen in the past week and a half so i'm hoping this is rearview mirror. lettuce, a head of lettuce up 17% over the past year, coffee up 13% and butter, i mean, those little sticks of butter in front of me are like gold at the moment, up almost 30% over the past year. some of the things are feeling intractable here in family budgets, people trying to figure out how to shift around and buy other things, it's hard to switch shelter every month, you can try to drive less or try to carpool, you can try to manage gasoline prices, but shelter is a real problem overall. i say these numbers show, i think, the fed still has work to do to slow the economy, to get inflation under control. going in the right direction, really important, seven months in a row of that head line number that 6.4% you see, seven

months in a row of that getting a little bit smaller every month, but still 6.4% doesn't feel great when you go to the grocery store or fill up -- you know, buy anything really. >> and those are things people are buying every time they go to the grocery store it's not like something they're buying once a month. the message seems to be long road to recovery, right? >> i think the fed chief had told us this last week, it's going to be a bumpy road and inflation is starting to come down, but we have more work to do. i think that's why it's sort of frustrating at this point because we've seen these numbers every month get less bad, but when are they going to be good? we still haven't turned that corner yet quite yet. the fed has more work to do, that means higher interest rates, they raise borrowing costs and so the family budget feels it either way, either in the higher cost for buying things or in the higher interest rates, you know, to finance lifestyle. i'm cautiously optimistic that we are going in the right direction here and i'm really hoping that egg prices over the next couple of weeks reverse. >> i like that you say you're

cautiously optimistic. remember we had this whole discussion about talking ourselves into a recession. >> exactly. >> we don't want to do that. i see you've got the food there, but you have an interesting story about toilet paper. >> the toilet paper story is fascinating. the downturn in the housing market has slowed building construction and has slowed some of these mills that make the tree products, they also make paper products so, because of the slowing in the housing market you are actually seeing toilet paper prices go up, they're up 20% over the past year or so because of the slowing housing market. isn't it fascinating how the economy is intertwined? >> if you want that and paper towels come to my house, we are on the automatic renewal thing, i had to stop it -- >> you're overbuying. you are the reason that the price is so high? >> all really important. christine romans, you are the best. >> thank you. >> thank you, everyone. we appreciate you joining us. "cnn newsroom" is going to start right after this quick break.

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