lemon's birthday, baby. we've got you, donny. >> thank you. thank you. by the way, i hate surprises, but, any way, i was looking at the slide that you had, i think it was like presidents who wrote books. >> yeah. >> i voted in every one of those elections except for carter. carter and the first ronald reagan. i was thinking, man -- >> do you know what, you grow more beautiful with age, don. that's what i have to say. >> thank you very much. >> you even surprised us with that. we know you hate surprises. >> yeah. >> i hope that was a nice surprise. >> do you not think i would have had a cake with candles out here? >> on the night show they surprised me one and rolled the breaking news thing and i was like what is going on? what's happening? and they were like it's your birthday. i was like i hate surprises, don't do this. >> thank you. >> thanks, harry, appreciate it. >> happy birthday. >> thank you. have a great day, everyone. "cnn newsroom" starts right now.

♪ very good wednesday morning to you, i'm jim sciutto. >> and i'm erica hill. happening right now, more than 4,500 civilians are stuck in the ukrainian city of bakhmut, this as russian forces launch a barrage of attacks on the fiercely contested area, president zelenskyy calling it the country's most difficult situation. as of now, though, ukrainian forces are still holding the line. cnn is on the ground in eastern ukraine and we will bring you the very latest. plus a political -- >> sorry, go ahead. >> it's all yours. >> plus a political shakeup in chicago. mayor lori lightfoot the first mayor in 40 years to lose an election bid in that city as concerns about crime and public safety rattle voters. we're also watching the alex murdaugh murder trial. take a look at this, aerial images from southern california where a winter storm has already dumped feet of snow, that's

southern california, another 12 to 24 inches expected today. we do begin, though, in ukraine where 48 children are among the thousands still trapped in the city of bakhmut as war rages all around them. officials say they are urging everyone to get out, but some are in areas that are no longer accessible. >> cnn's alex marquardt is in eastern ukraine this morning. give us a sense what is the reality there in and around bakhmut at this hour? >> reporter: well, tens of thousands of residents have left bakhmut but it is just extraordinary to think there are still that many civilians in the city. that city has just been pulverized. it is the site of the tiersest fighting in the country according to president zelenskyy and top military commanders. ukrainian forces appear to be on their heels as russian forces press forward. there has been no decision whether to pull back by the ukrainians, whether to surrender the city according to a military spokesman in this part of the

country, but the russians do appear to be trying to encircle the city, they have taken some areas north of bakhmut. those forces have been primarily made up of those mercenaries and convicts for the past few months leading that fight, they have been backed up by regular russian forces. now the ukrainians say that these are the top fighters that are leading this push. we did hear from an ukrainian soldier yesterday who said despite the dire picture painted by ukrainian officials the actual situation is 100% worse. so ukraine trying to hold on as their defensive positions get pummeled. if russia were to take the city it would be a significant victory as you know we've been talking about this fight for bakhmut for months now, it would be a boost for russia, a real blow for ukraine. both sides have lost thousands of men. it would give russia another foot hold here in the donbas, in

eastern ukraine, but ukraine will try to make that as much of a symbolic victory as they can rather than a strategic victory. if russia were to push them out ukraine would digs in just to the west of the city and at this point in this very bloody fighting they are trying to weaken the russian forces as much as possible so that even if they did take the city, that there wouldn't be in any kind of condition to press forward after that. but the fight is still very much ongoing, russians trying to stand their ground. jim and erica? >> alex marquardt, thanks so much. joining us now to discuss retired u.s. army major mike lyons. good to have you on. thanks for faking the time this morning. >> hey, jim. great to be with you. >> you've been watching this battlefield closely. ukrainian officials say they have not yet made a decision to pull back from bakhmut, they are clearly placing a lot of importance on this. there is a view that there might be room for strategic retreat as it were. what's your view? should they hold that ground?

is it worth the price they're paying? >> well, there is not a lot of evade while the enemy is strong and ukraine has to take a hard look at that. they cannot afford to lose young men and women in this fight given the fact they will have to be deployed someplace else. bakhmut does not hold any strategic value on the ground really and they have to recognize that and understand that their forces are better used elsewhere at this point. it's a hard decision, likely to take, and it would not necessarily mean retreat or a loss and let russia do what it wants with it, but it's more of an evade when it enemy is strong. they have a lot more of that firepower. >> we were back once again in a space we've been many times since the start of this war more than a year ago and that is a new weapons system is going in, a capable one, in this case tanks such as the lee pardons and the u.s. made abrams tanks but the focus is another weapons system, this one the f-16 which u.s. officials have said since

the beginning of the war that that's not the weapon that ukrainian forces really need right now. i wonder do you agree with that assessment or should the u.s. and its partners send them in? >> no, i do agree with that. i think applying f-16s to the battlefield right now immediately, first of all, just couldn't happen, it would take nine months to a year to train ukrainian pilots to fly them and to coordinate a combined arms battlefield with tanks and communication systems and infantry on the ground would be very difficult. the f-16s, though, give ukraine attack capability inside of russia. in this war of attrition right now the side that wins attacks the other side's capability to wage war. right now ukraine doesn't have that capability. russia does. russia is inside ukraine and is attacking their infrastructure. so the f-16s while they might solve a problem in the short term, if they're there right now they're just not going to get there on time and i just don't believe they will have any impact on the battlefield. >> i want to ask you about nato

expansion last june, we were in madrid as nato announced the accession or their support, unanimous support of finland and sweden joining. since then turkey has again stood in the way, turk i didn't and hungary of sweden's accession. finland is preparing to take steps forward. do you think it is smart to split the two? start with finland, possibly move on to sweden if the turkish or hungarians allow that to happen or is it better for them to go together? >> i think it's better for them to go together. nato has to be strong here. the turks have a number, whatever that number is that they want concessions to make it happen, that's the down side of the alliance and the fact that each nato country has to approve acceptance into it. i was never one for bringing actually a lot of those nato countries that are close to russia into nato in the past because we can't have membership

to nato to be everybody but russia in europe because that creates the same problem we had during the first world war and that's what russia -- one of russia's sticking points to be, but now the situation has changed on the ground, i think that both of them need to go in at the same time, the alliance has got to be strong. and then eventually now i could even see go five years down the road, once there is a peace settlement that ukraine does get more security assurances from nato eventually and maybe eventually ten years is in the alliance itself. >> major mike lyons, thanks so much. >> thanks. at least 36 people are dead, dozens more injured after two trains collided in central greece. officials say a passenger train, a freight train hit head on late tuesday after that passenger train crossed into a cargo lane. a desperate search for survivors continues at this hour. more than 150 first responders there on the scene looking through the twisted train cars to hopefully find anyone who may still be trapped inside. more than 350 people were on board that train and passengers

are now talking about those panicked moments after the cr crash. >> translator: it was panic for 10, 15 seconds, it was chaos, tumbling over, fires, people screaming, people trapped. it was 2 meters high from where we jumped to leave and beneath that was broken iron debris, but what could we do? >> earlier this morning greece's prime minister visited with rescue workers at the crash site and the country has announced three days of mourning for the victims. back home for the first time in more than 30 years chicago is saying good-bye to its incumbent mayor. lori lightfoot lost her bid for a second term after failing to make the top two in a race of nine candidates. >> the top two vote getters, paul vallas a public school chief and county commissioner brandon johnson are headed to an april runoff. joining us to take a closer look at what happened "chicago sun-times" washington bureau

chief lynn sweet. when we look at what happened here what stood to me is lori lightfoot specifically touted her record number of guns -- getting a record number of guns off the streets, reduced homicides and progress on public safety is what she noted. it's impossible to ignore these are the things that she faced backlash over, crime and public safety. you spoke with voters, what did they tell you? >> well, public safety or crime is public issue one, two or three. that's how paul vallas' campaign manager explained the issue to me and their focus on making law and order a major issue. lori lightfoot didn't catch a break in the four years she was mayor. she had the covid pandemic, where at one point she almost seemed like a hero, closing the lakefront, issuing this order and that, but it was that kind of dictatorial style that played well at the very beginning of the pandemic that ended up

hurting her. and then she was hurt during much by the civil unrest and the backlash after george floyd. that left the city throughout many neighborhoods on edge, big parts of the downtown area obviously where you walked down that you see retailers gone, and there is many places just more fear now than ever of carjacking. so there's a perception about crime and numbers and that's what she was up against. >> well, the crime numbers are real, and we have seen in other cities, look at eric adams in new york, for instance, a democrat but someone who had a tough on crime message. i wonder is this -- when you look at developments like this in chicago -- a warning perhaps to other mayors of cities like this as to what that could do to their political prospects? >> well, yes and no, because we also have in chicago, as new york and los angeles does, all

cities led by black mayors, by the way. we also had some intra issue here between unions. paul vallas ran with the endorsement of the fop, the fraternal order of police, jim, that's the police union. brandon johnson, who is a paid staffer for the chicago teachers union, ran with the backing of the chicago teachers union. so you have in this backdrop two unions at odds with each other running in the background of this race. and that might not be true if we want to carry what happened in chicago too far. brandon johnson was bank rolled by millions of dollars from the chicago teachers union and it's parent american federation of teachers. paul vallas will go into this general election being backed by a union whose president is a big backer of president trump. so you have these political

dynamics set in place that may not exist other places. >> lynn sweet, fascinating political results there. thanks so much. >> thank you. coming up next, the faa is now investigating a fifth close call this year involving u.s. airliners. details on what led to a near collision between two planes at boston's airport. way too close. plus cnn's bill weir will join us from argentina's southern tip with alarming details about how quickly the sea ice is meltsing in ant arc at that. president biden set to announce his nominee julie seoul. we will bring you those remarks live. that's what you get from the morgan stanley client experience. you get listening more than talking, anand a personalized plan built on insights and innovative technology.

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this was on monday night. >> so the two planes came within 565 feet of each other. a little too close for comfort. cnn aviation correspondent pete muntean explains what went wrong. >> reporter: it is the latest incident of a near collision at a major airport. monday night a jetblue flight and a private learjet nearly running into each other on crisscrossing runways at boston logan international airport. >> this was a mistake that was made by the pilot and it was caught by air traffic control which is their job. they were able to catch it. >> reporter: the federal aviation administration said as jetblue flight was coming in to land on runway 4 right the learjet took off from the intersecting runway. air traffic control ronald d recordings direct the jet pilot to abort the action. >> runway heading up to --

sorry, sitting in altitude. >> 3,000. >> 3,000. jetblue 206. >> reporter: worse yet the faa says the learjet did not have takeoff clearance, instead the crew was told to line up and wait on the runway for the landing jetblue flight. the faa says the learjet pilot read back instructions clearly, but began a takeoff roll instead. air traffic control brought the jetblue flight back in for a landing, all on board unharmed. t >> the pilots did an inn dread i believe job, we came in, it was a scary situation but it was very smooth, like it wasn't like it was a jolting experience, it wasn't a jerky experience, we just went back up into the air and came back around and landed. >> reporter: the incident is the fifth of its type this year following similar close calls at new york's jfk, austin, honolulu and burbank. last month the faa's acting administrator told congress that recent events remind us we must

not become complacent and vowed a sweeping safety review. >> there's a lot of pressure right now on our air space so we need to make sure that our regulatory system is as safe as it can be, that the aviation system is as safe as it can be. >> reporter: the ntsb is not investigating this incident just yet but we do have preliminary data from flight radar 24. it says at these plane's closest they were 565 feet away from one another. put that into context, that's about two football fields, not even, jim and erica. so, so close in this close call. the good news here is the safety system worked but the disturbing part is this has happened so many times, something likely to come up in the biden administration's nominee to lead the faa phil washington. he's having his senate confirmation hearing this morning. >> 565 feet at that speed, that's nothing. >> yeah. >> pete muntean, thanks so much. coming up next, we are live

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as parts of the northern hemisphere experience another winter with near record warmth, the effects of climate change also resonating further south. >> scientists are warning

antarctica's sea ice is at its lowest point since 1979. cnn's chief climate correspondent bill weir is live with us this hour, he is in the southern tip of argentina, this is before you make your way to antarctica. are you seeing any signs even where you are in argentina in terms of this change and its impact? >> reporter: well, no, we're a good five-day boat ride from antarctica which is on the other side of those cloudy mountain peaks, that's the chilean national park. we are a ways from the antarctic peninsula. what they are seeing are melting fwlas years on land and the floods in communities that live below melting glaciers. this new report is making headlines as we make our way there with whale scientists we got new word out of the national snow and ice center in colorado that for the second year in a row antarctica set a record low for summer ice extent. this is the bottom of the world

here, so their peak summer is in late february and that is when the ice around this continent at the bottom of the world shrinks so its lowest level. in 2014 that ice was about 7 million square miles but now it's less than 700,000 square miles, over 90% disappearance there, which opens up the ice shelves around antarctica to more sea wave action and weathering which attacks those shelves that keep all that land ice in place. if that melts and slides into the oceans, it will forcibly rearrange every coastal city from miami to shanghai to boston and new orleans. that's just for start e, not to mention the ecosystem collapses at the bottom of the food chain and all of that. scientists once again sending a warning that we have to pay attention to this most remote corner of our planet. we didn't discover antarctica until 40 years after humans discovered the planet ur rain news and we are just learning about what's going on down there

and all the learning signs as they put robotic cameras under these glaciers and seeing how they're melting from the bottom and from inside out. it really is another red -- blinking red light at the bottom of the planet. meanwhile, the top of the world, the arctic melting twice as fast as the rest of the planet, all adding up to some pain. >> the way you describe it there, forcibly rearranging coastal cities. that's what we need to prepare for with ocean rise. let's hope folks hear those warnings. bill weir, good to have you there. travel safe. well, we've been talking about this sort of crazy winter we've been having in the u.s. as jim noted in some areas, much warmer than usual. then you have southern california, which is expected to get hit again today with a whole lot of snow. this latest winter hit with these back to back storms, parts of the golden state as you know at this point already buried under more than 6 feet of snow. that storm system is now moving across the southwest and it's increasing the threat of severe

weather east of the mississippi. >> it's hard to keep track, hotter in some places, colder in other places where you don't expect it. cnn's stephanie elam is joining us live from san bernardino, california, not a place i normally associate with parkas. tell us what you're seeing there and icy roads, et cetera. what are the effects of all of this? >> reporter: i'm trying to use up al the verbs we have, it's blanketed, it's snowing intensely. that's an adverb, i know. you can barely see the top of the san bernardino mountains, in fact, you can't. we were up there yesterday and the roads in a lot of places were one way through because there's so much snow and they're plowing it. this last system that came through dropped about 7 to 8 feet of snow and then this system we are in right now, overnight it has been going to town. so another 3 feet is expected here and that's just in san bernardino. we know up by lake tahoe some 40 inches have fallen there as well. just a ton of snow that has

fallen making it very difficult for people to get resources up there. we saw that it was hard for trucks to get up. the reason why this road block is here is because they are not letting anyone up right now, but when they do open up they are making sure that everyone has chains so that they can get up there. we saw a bunch of cars going towards crest line that were just on the sides of the road. i talked to one group of friends coming up here to celebrate their buddy's 26th birthday and they had to ditch one of the cars because they needed to get into the bigger truck that could make it all the way up the hill. they were digging it out to try to get out before this system came in today. so all of that making it treacherous in the mountain roads. they're trying to get supplies up there but they're asking people to stay away. just to put this into perspective of how much snow has fallen here in the southern california san bernardino mountains, they're saying right now it's at about 220% of snow pack average for this time of year, jim and erica. >> it is really something.

it does, it kind of makes your head spin. appreciate it. thank you. well, any moment now president biden was expected to officially nominate his pick for labor secretary, this of course amid significant attention to the u.s. economy, labor market, where is it all going? we will bring that to you live. to where they're going. and at chevron, we're working to help reduce the carbon intensity o of the fuels that keep things moving. today, we're p producing renewable diesel that can be used in existing diesel tananks. and we're committed to increasing our renewable fuels production. because as we work toward a lower carbon future, it's only human to keep moving forward. ben isn't worried about retirement. his personalized plan is backed by the team at fidelity. his ira is professionally managed, and he gets one-on-one coaching whehe needs it. so ben is feeling pretty zen. that's the planning effect om fidelity

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6th riot before releasing it publicly. >> are you not at all concerned about the fact that carlson downplayed this attack. you thought it was a very serious attack. >> has very serious attack. >> why give it to someone that has downplayed it. >> i think sunshine matters. i don't care what side of the issue you are on, that's why i think putting it out to the american public they can see the truth, see exactly what transpired that day. >> the concern there of course is will it all be put out? joining us now to talk about it cnn senior legal analyst elie honig, former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. good to see you as always. we talked a lot about this decision to give the footage to tucker carlson, also getting a lot of attention, though, is this new decision, right, to give attorneys for defendants access to that video. full disclosure, elie and i talked about this last night. you said to me this is basically the same thing as what would happen during discovery,

prosecutors have to make that evidence accessible. is it that simple in this case? >> yeah, so, erica, it's certainly very unusual to have a sitting member of congress providing troves of information to large groups of criminal defendants. that said, there's nothing necessarily wrong with it. every prosecutor in every case has an affirmative obligation to hand over all the evidence against the defendant, especially evidence that may be helpful to that defendant. that's an obligation i'm sure doj is taking seriously by all indications they have satisfied those obligations on these january 6 cases. every defendant in any case has the right to get that evidence and to do his or her own investigation and gather whatever information they can do. if they're going to congress, if congress is making information available to these defendants, they should take advantage of that. the thing that respected is the limits on the information that might pose a security risk. >> we did see the january 6th committee, as i remember it, share evidence it found,

interviews, et cetera, with the doj in its criminal investigation so members of congress in that case a special committee sharing information, evidence, i suppose you could describe it. is this similar? i mean, in other words, is there precedent for this kind of thing? >> it is similar in a lot of respects. look, the view of any prosecutor should not be i want all the information, i want the good stuff and don't give it to them, don't give it to the defendants. that's not the way prosecutors work. in reality and the doj has done a good job of it all the information should be in play, the judge will filter out what's relevant and not relevant and the judge may put restrictions as the judges have done here in some information that may pose a security risk but by and large you want a defendant to have this information. again, it's really unusual that it's coming through the speaker of the house, but there's nothing necessarily improper or illegal about that. >> what about those security concerns, elie? >> yeah, so the judge in many of these cases the judges have said that defendants can review this

footage and they can still use the parts of the footage that have been determined by prosecutors to pose a security risk, but that's under what we call a protective order meaning the prosecutors can use it, the defendants can use it, it could become evidence at trial but it's not going to become available as part of the public record. of course, cnn, i thinking, is part of a group of media organizations that have sued to get access to all of that video footage and it will be up to the judge ultimately who gets to see what. >> i mean, i wonder as a lawyer what effect do you expect this to have on the cases. you already have hundreds of participants in that riot who have already been convicted with video playing a very big role in it, establishing them at the scene, establishing them doing things like attacking police officers or breaking windows in the capitol building. i mean, is there -- if you have evidence of that on video, what could be the potential effect of other videos? how could that be exonerating i guess is the question. >> it's a great question, jim. i can certainly see the value

from the prosecutor's point of view. here is this defendant breaking a window, here is this defendant assault ago police officer. i mean, it's game over. it's hard for me to imagine a scenario where you would look at footage, surveillance footage and say that helps the defendant. maybe just speaking hypothetically here, maybe footage could prove somebody who you couldn't tell who it was, maybe it was another person, maybe there's some larger picture around an assault that a defendant would want to argue he was maybe acting in self-defense. i'm trying to think outside the box here. you're right, the value to prosecutors is more obvious and apparent than it would be to defendants but defendants get to make that decision, how do they want to use information to defend themselves. >> elie honig, thanks so much. a note the second season of elie's podcast "up against the mob" premieres today. this morning as millions of applications for student loan forgiveness hang in the balance several conservative supreme court justices seemed to be very clearly skeptical of president biden's loan relief plan.

yesterday as you know justices heard arguments in two cases brought against the biden administration's program to fore i have up to $20,000 per person in federal student loans for those who are eligible. >> cnn's senior supreme court analyst joan biskupic joins us now. one thing that stood out to me was justices roberts leading the way asking about the cost of this. it just struck me as an odd question for a supreme court justice. that struck me more as a question for, say, a member of congress debating a piece of legislation rather than the legality of this. what's the context? >> sure. good morning, jim and erica. you know, first of all, the costs go to kind of the significance of this program that the justices suggested by the chief's questions and others that it was one that should be left to congress in explicit manner than the open-ended way that the conservatives say that congress did for the secretary of education. just to remind you in dispute is a 2003 statute that was passed

after 9/11 called the heroes act that gave the secretary of education the authority to waive or modify federal student loans. the biden administration has used this to try to forgive up to $20,000 for individual borrowers affecting as the chief kept saying, jim, nearly half a trillion dollars here, and that's why he kept hitting on it because his argument was that with something that substantial, both economically and politically, it should have been explicitly detailed for congress. now, just as alaina kagan stressed to counter that was, look, this law was to address emergencies, it couldn't be explicit about every emergency and every detail of when any kind of loan modification would happen. she said, you know, that the court is used to dealing with confusing laws and this wasn't one. so trying to put up a fight to what the conservatives were

saying here, but there was an element -- another element that came in here, not just that there was an overreach on the part of the biden administration that could doom the program, but a question of fairness. the chief justice and justice neil gorsuch and several others kind of talked about just how fair is it to be forgiving the loan balances for people who were able to go to college, when taxpayers who might have not had the opportunity to go to college and not had the earning power that results from it, will not have it. so we will see a decision later this spring, but a lot hangs in the balance. >> yeah. we are going to of to interrupt you. let's go straight to the white house, president biden officially introducing his nominee for labor secretary, the current deputy labor secretary julie su. let's listen in. >> i'm going to close my eyes and pretend you are clapping for

me. please, have a seat. i think they like you. that's what i think. >> you see the -- right here. if, in fact, you were not picked to be the next secretary of labor i would be run out of town. first of all, let me say i don't know -- i see a lot of members of congress here who are -- and, by the way, they have a full day today, they're supposed to be in baltimore for a caucus up there and i don't want to start reading out names in case some aren't here, but there is overwhelming support in the caucus in both the house and the senate, i might add. i'm joined by vice president harris and -- who chairs the house -- white house task force on work organization and

empowerment to ensure that every worker -- every worker has a voice and the ability to exercise their sacred right to organize. that's a big deal, the right to organize. [ applause ] >> we have had -- we have had no better partner in this effort and so much more that he's done than marty walsh from boston. marty, stand up. [ applause ] >> marty has several -- has several claims to fame. he is a proud son of irish immigrants, mayor of boston, was there for the last two years secretary of labor, and i assume he knows something about hockey.

i asked if he would take me with him, but he wouldn't. chris, he thought i would be the hockey puck. anyway, look, it matters. i promise to be the most pro-union president in presidential history. i'm going to put this down. [ applause ] >> so folks -- thank you. the reason -- thank you. the reason i ran was to rebuild the backbone of this nation, the middle class, and grow the economy from the bottom up and not from the top down because, look, when, in fact, you build it that way everybody does well. the rich still do very well.

they don't get hurt. it's not a punishment, you know, but when it trickles down not a whole lot dropped on our kitchen table when i was growing up, not much trickle there. and we're changing that. there was a law passed in the early '30s saying not that unions could organize but we should have more unions. we should have more unions. encouraging it. >> president biden there introducing the new labor secretary. cnn senior white house correspondent mj lee at the white house. m.j., su's appointment comes at a time of intense attention certainly on the labor market for the labor secretary, concerns about whether interest rate rises are going to lead the economy to a hard landing. what's on her plate going forward? >> jim, this is a significant nomination for president biden for a number of reasons. first and foremost, this is the first cabinet turnover that we have seen in president biden's

white house. marty walsh is expected to leave his post as labor secretary later this month so that is just kind of remarkable that over two years this is the first time that we are seeing a cabinet member leave the biden administration, and secondly, there is just the historic nature of this nomination, as you know very well, julie su, if confirmed, would be the only asian official serving in a secretary-level position in president biden's cabinet. we have seen a whole lot of lobbying from asian lawmakers and others to sort of make good on president biden's famous promise to make his cabinet as diverse as possible. and then, as you said, you know, the timing of this is so critical. this nomination comes at a really important moment, not just for the u.s. economy, but for other sort of workforce issues as well. you know, this is an administration and a president who have really made efforts to reach out to labor unions and labor leaders and really foster that relationship, and this president has very much leaned on marty walsh to navigate and

foster those relationships, and julie su for that reason, because she has been marty walsh's deputy, really does enjoy widespread support among union leaders and labor leaders and this is one of the reasons that she was seen for a long time as sort of the shoe-in to get this role. for a whole bunch of reasons, the historic nature of her nomination and also just for political and economic reasons, this is a significant nomination that the president is making official right now in the east room. >> absolutely. m.j., appreciate it. thank you. we are keeping a close watch on south carolina this morning. the jury in the murdaugh double murder trial is now at the scene of those brutal killings in south carolina. what the defense is hoping jurors will take away from this visit to the crime scene. no matter your purpose, at pnc private bank we will work with you every step of the way to help you u achieve it. so let us focus on the how. just tell us - what's your why?

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will soon deliberate and decide whether they believe alex murdaugh shot and killed his wife and youngest son are at the scene of their murders. >> it's a remarkable moment. the jury is actually touring the

family's hunting property pictured there as the defense and prosecution prepare to deliver their closing arguments. soon, this visit to the scene there at the request of the defense, cnn's diane gallagher outside the courthouse in south carolina. diane, can you tell us exactly what the jury is seeing here and i'm curious who is guiding them on this tour. >> yeah, jim, erica, the jury based on when our cnn producers saw them leave this morning should just now be arriving at mozell that is where the murders happened back in 2021. they are going in essentially law enforcement vans. they are being escorted there by law enforcement and judge clifton newman gave them explicit instructions yesterday before they were dismissed from court that they are not allowed to discuss this with anybody while they're on the trip including jurors, law attorney, the only person they can ask

questions to or talk to is judge newman. the defense wanted them to go to mozell to see the property themselves because this is a place that we have been discussing. it's where the murders happened to get a feel where the dog kennels where the murders happened are from the home where alex murdaugh claims he was when his wife and son were shot. the state objected to this visit. it's been a while, 20 months since the murders and the judge gave the jury some guidance about that before they left. >> things have changed and most likely have changed and it's a different season of the year. the change of circumstances as far as the property is concerned so you have to take that in mind and consider that, but it's still the same location, and i've determined that it would be

beneficial to you to be able to observe the scene that everyone has been talking about. >> now there will be no media with the jurors when they are visiting the property, although they are allowing a pool media system to go to the property after ward. jim, erica, once the jury returns we will begin closing arguments in this trial. >> all right. diane, appreciate it. just a reminder you don't want to miss the cnn prime time special inside the murdaugh trials at 9:00 p.m. eastern tonight. soon, attorney general merrick garland is set to testify on capitol hill for the first time since the new republican-led congress was sworn in. the questions he will face from senators coming up.

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