- [announcer] do you have an invention idea but don't know what to do next? call invent help today. they can help you get started with your idea. call now 800-710-0020. ♪ mass shooting in southwest philadelphia, police say one person is in custody. >> this male was wearing a bullet proof vest with multiple magazines in the vest. he also had a scanner and an

ar-style rifle and a handgun. >> two children, a 2-year-old and a 13-year-old are injured. a new lawsuit takes aim at harvard's legacy admissions policy. this is hot on the heels of the supreme court's decision to dismantle affirmative action. >> we've done a terrible job of preparing our black and brown kids to be able to go to college. >> the question is how do you continue to create the culture where education is the goal. one of the things that harvard could do to make that even better is to eliminate any legacy programs. hundreds of israeli soldiers dissending on jenin. >> we want to break of the camping of safe haven of terrorist. >> israel is warning that its new military operation in the occupied west bank is not over yet, after the most intense military raid in the territory in two decades. >> we are unarmed people. we don't have anything in the camp to respond to this force. ♪ he would just do stuff and

say stuff with this conviction -- >> daddy desantis? i mean, it's all joking. >> of course. >> because we're like desperate women who had tried everything that we could do in our own power, in our own community. we weren't getting anywhere. >> i'm george, i approve this burger. some of the best burgers i've had in my life have been with you guys. >> i realize the people who were making these burgers didn't realize themselves their own importance. ♪ well, good morning, everyone. it's july 4th. i'm sure burgers in many of your futures. audie cornish is joining me now. usually holidays are slow for news. there's a significant amount of news. to following breaking news including three mass shootings in just two days during a violent fourth of july weekend. brand new overnight, police in ft. worth, texas, say two people are dead and six are wounded after a shooting following a neighborhood festival.

in philadelphia, police say a gunman wearing body armor went on a shooting ram page on the city streets. two people are dead, two children are wounded, including a 2-year-old toddler. >> investigators say the suspect had an a rrk-15 style rifle and handgun and multiple magazines packed in his body armor when police officers arrested him in an alley. the hunt is still on for suspects after two people were killed and 28 injured. many of them teenagers at a block party in baltimore. now we're going to have team coverage on all the latest developments. we start with danny freeman live outside the philadelphia police headquarters. danny, to start, what is the sense of a motive here. again, this is the suspect who is walking the streets, right, in gear. >> reporter: yeah, that's right, audie. really police have not answered that question. it's unclear if they know the answer to the question as to why this suspect, why this man opened fire in otherwise a

relatively calm neighborhood the night before the fourth of july. here is what we do know about the suspect. he is in his 40s. he was taken into custody and was carrying multiple weapons and also that body armor. but as of last night, police said to us we just don't know why this man started firing last night. but i will tell you a little more about how exactly this came to be. it all started around 8:30 last night. philadelphia police got calls from multiple gun shots. officers arrived. they did find gunshot victims but then they also heard a number of gunshots. the police commissioner really described this chaotic moment of officers arriving on scene, hearing gunshots and chasing the gunman by listening to the sound of his gunfire. eventually officers were able to apprehend him. i should say they did it without firing a shot. something that police commissioner danielle outlaw mentioned and highlighted last night. take a listen. >> thank god our officers were here on scene. they responded as quickly as

they did. they showed -- i can't describe the level of bravery and courage that was shown in addition to the restraint that was also shown here. we unfortunately have six victims here. but it could have been more had not been for the officers at hand. >> reporter: and i'll also add commissioner outlaw noted like you heard in the beginning, they found on this suspect a bullet proof vest, an ar-style weapon, handgun, multiple magazines and a police radio scanner. the other thing, too, is so as you heard commissioner outlaw said initially six victims including four people who were killed and those two children who were injured. then we learned overnight there's actually a fifth -- rather a seventh victim, a fifth person who died in this shooting. he was found dead on the floor of a nearby home. and police said that he is likely connected to this particular shooting. one thing audie and phil i just want to add in this particular case is just some perspective. homicides in the city of

philadelphia, they're actually down almost 20% compared to the same time last year. but that other bit of perspective is that it is still, the homicide level here in philadelphia, still much higher than the pre-pandemic levels. so, again, heading into the actual fourth of july holiday, a lot of folks on edge after this mass shooting in the city. audie, phil? >> thank you for that context, danny. now joining us at the table, joseph, republican strategist and political commentator. natasha alford, senior correspondent at the grillo and elie honig, former assistant u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york. welcome to all of you. >> good to be here. >> these are tough stories to open the day with. and so far what they have in common, of course, is the connection of weapons, right? different motives, different things going on. we had the mayor of baltimore on yesterday. and he talked about illegal guns in his state, not always the

issue. but what difficulties does this pose for city leaders around the country who are trying to get a grip on these bouts of violent crime? >> well, look, i think for me certainly as tragic i think it has become almost a tired trope where we have these holiday weekends that basically end in bloodshed. and so what you're talking about what we just saw here, whether we're talking about the 28 people that were shot in baltimore, whether we're talking about the over 30 people shot in chicago, we know for a fact there's a small sliver of people who are committing the vast majority of these crimes all across this country. so the question becomes what are the policies that we could be putting in place that keep the criminals off the streets? what are the policies that we could be putting in place to keep guns in particular out of the hands of those criminals? certainly we could have a conversation about those guns as the mayor of baltimore was talking about, but the overwhelming majority of these issues deal with the fact that we have people that do not follow the laws any way. so what are the policies that are actually going to result in us actually stopping the crimes

that spur the conversation in the first place. >> natasha? >> i think it's appropriate that today is the fourth of july because this is -- this is america now. this is the american sort of way of being. it's a state of constant fear. it's a state of even as you go out to celebrate you have to sort of look over your shoulder and wonder what will happen. and so, joe mentions crime, what comes to mind for me is terrorism, this idea of domestic terrorism and whether the united states has really grappled with this unique form of american violence that is not just about sort of petty criminals trying to get their way, but it's about inflicting fear on the american people. and so, from a policy standpoint, how you legislate, how you address that, i'm not really sure. but i think it's something that we actually have to confront head on. >> so, the problem with gun violence in this country i think is complicated and multifacetted. you can't point to any one

factor. there's a legislative piece of it, a gun culture and also a leadership and frankly law enforcement aspect of this. i was a prosecutor for a long time. i think i have to say the d.a. in philly in particular has been an abject failure, larry krazer in, in office since 2018. danny said exactly correctly, rates of shootings and homicides spiked from the time he took office until now. they're down a bit this year from last year but nearly doubled from when he took office in 2018, up through 2019 on through 2021. and at a certain point, you have to ask a leader in a position like that, you've been in office now five years. and these rates are unacceptable and the culture in philadelphia, i have relatives who live in philadelphia right near where danny lives. >> correlation is not causation. there is also a conflict at the state level about what the gun policy should be in pennsylvania. >> right. >> they say local ordnances cannot be passed -- >> pennsylvania has -- right, exactly.

there's two questions here. how strict are the gun laws? secondly, how are they being enforced. i always be skeptical of any public official who says crime rates went up or down and solely because of a or b, but it's a factor and i don't think it can be ignored here. >> look, also i just think that we have this conversation and kind of this either/or comparison. either you're for guns, either you're against guns. what gets lost in the conversation is what are the policies that we should be putting in place to prevent the violence. i think again, yes, we can talk about people being terrorized, but i don't think that we can talk about it in the sense of traditional terrorism. we have people who do not feel as though they have a reason to live. we have communities -- >> has there ever been a republican policy aimed towards the things you're talking about? we hear people talk about systemic issues, mental health, is there any republican agenda that addresses those factors you consider that are outside? >> absolutely. there's a three strand chord of dispair in this country that

starts with a lack of educational opportunities -- >> are you hearing that from candidates? >> certainly we hear that interest candidates all the time. it's not necessarily the substance of the policy but how it's messaged. if you look at historically the type of message that resonates with communities of color, it always starts with what is the program? and so if you're not talking about a -- >> and with outside communities that crime is the problem and people are the problem. >> right. if you're talking about things through a program centered view, then it's very difficult for people to necessarily receive a message about a policy view that tackles the educational inequality that we have in this country, tackles the cycle of poverty that stems from that educational -- >> to be clear, that's not what we're talking about the factor in philadelphia and elsewhere. >> in philadelphia, the details are still coming out, but this is someone who had magazines on them, yeah. >> i want to make sure we're not inflating the difference. this is what makes it such a difficult issue to untangle. >> the reality is you can focus on the magazines. the reality is what left that

person with a sense of personal despair that they were willing to throw away their own life and take the lives of others? those are the underlying issues that i do think republicans and people across the political spectrum do talk about. but when we have these conversations they get ne flekted. they don't get spoken about forcefully and we all suffer because of it. >> why don't they get spoken about forcefully? i can go through at least the republican candidates in the primary that i covered on capitol hill, tim scott being the one that comes to mind, very specific policies to address the issues you're talking about and yet in terms of a primary, what the primary voters are talking about, what the people are talking on the stump on a regular basis. you never hear about it, why? >> you can't help anybody from your couch. there's a political reality to the fact that there is not a proliferation of african-american historic primary voters. >> republican primary voters. is there no way to repeal -- you're saying there's no way to appeal to a predominantly white electorate. >> if you're trying to have a

conversation about the issues that are overwhelming impacting urban america, there are not a lot of people from that section of the electorate that are participating in republican primaries. >> that's the only way it matters? >> certainly that's not what i said. i think the reality is that democrats talk about the issues that are going to be impacting primary voters, republicans talk about the issues that are going to be impacting republican primary voters. and then, as always, we have a general election, a pivot, the triangulation it was called during the clinton era. look, i think certainly we should never be trying to segment the conversation. we should be talking about the broader american people, but it's dishonest for us to pretend we don't live in the world where partisan politics does impact the primary process and the issues that get brought up during those periods. >> guys, stay with us. we have a lot more to come throughout the course of the next hour. also new this morning, russia says it intercepted five ukrainian drones near moscow. while there are no immediate reports of casualties or damage, the kremlin claims it thwarted a terrorist attack and said many of the targets seem fixed on

civilian infrastructure. i want to bring in army major -- retired army major mike lyons. we have seen a couple incidents like this. they seem to be to some degree accelerating. what do we know about these five drones? >> so, russia claims ukraine has struck two targets, one basically surrounding moscow. airfield on the west side and then a special forces group on the east side of moscow. conveniently doesn't hit moscow. had the capability to do that. color me skeptical on this one and the fact that the only capability ukraine has to do this are the turkish tb2 drones. given their counteroffensive right now, this is not worth it. this is not them wasting this resource. if you see this video the russian media releases, some guy pointing at the sky at something that we can really hardly see is what's out there, we could try to think that's a tb2 turkish drone, ukraine inventory or not.

i'm skeptical that the ukraine military would waste this kind of resource ginn what they're trying to do with their counteroffensive right now. >> at this point, is there any sign that this is actually connected to the counteroffensive? and why wouldn't it be given the vulnerabilities of russia after the wagner rebellion? >> i think that ukraine has to be concerned about what's happening -- what's still coming from russia's perspective. we saw overnight there was an attack from russian drones into ukraine. this one had casualties. if the ukrainian president needs to get to the nato summit here and get more what's called short range air defense platforms, this would kind of prevent this from happening inside of ukraine right now. but again, the confusion that's taking place inside of russia, russia needs a win. so this is what they do to try to create a win on their side, say that the ukrainians are attacking them from a terrorist perspective. but at the end of the day, tactically, the kind of help that the ukraine president needs is this, short range missile

defenses that will help him defenses coming against the russian drones. >> major mike lyons, thank you. coming up next, we have supreme court ruling against affirmative action in higher education. advocacy groups are taking aim at admissions at harvard. how strong is their case? the panel is going to weigh in. and live images out of tel aviv israel where a car just rammed through pedestrians in what police are calling a terrorist attack. new details coming into cnn. stay with us. ♪ a beach house, a treehouse, ♪ ♪ honestly i don't care ♪ findnd the perfect vacation rental for you booking.com, booking. yeah. okay everyone, our mission is complete balanced nutrition. together we provide nutrients to support immune, muscle, bone, and heart alth. everyone: woo hoo! ensure with 25 vitamins and minerals. enter the $10,000 nourishing moments giveaway.

♪ welcome back. preferential treatment is coming under fire at one of the nation's top universities. this just days after the u.s. supreme court gutted affirmative action and the upper hand it says it provided. now three minoritied a voe ka groups filed a lawsuit challenging harvard's legacy admissions program. athena jones joins us at the table. athena, felt like this was coming to some degree. what's the lawsuit actually say? >> well, this is about two kinds of legacy applicants. applicants who have a parent or relative who went to harvard and applicants related to a donor. these groups are arguing the

preferential treatment that these kinds of applicants get goes largely to white students because they make up 70% of these legacy applicants. a district court the preferences they're given to be sizable and significant. and this complaint includes a lot of data. they use admissions numbers to try to make their case. here are some of the things they found. they found in the class of 2026, nearly 2,000 were admitted out of an applicant pool just over 61,000. if you were donor related, related to a donor, the admission rate for you was seven times higher at 42%. this was for a period from 2014 to 2019. the numbers are kind of looking historically. and then this admissions rate for legacy applicants, someone who had a parent or relative who went to harvard was six times higher. so, about 33.6%. and as you mentioned, the timing of this is important because it's coming less than a week after the supreme court limited

the use of race in college admissions. so these groups are arguing that given that ruling, now it's even more imperative to make sure they eliminate any policies that disadvantaged students of color, they argue that's what this legacy admissions preferences do simply because so many of these legacies are white. and part of this is because college admissions is a zero sum game, of course. if a legacy applicant gets a spot that means that someone else who may not be related to someone who went to har var, may not be related to someone who donated to harvard, in on their own merit, they can't get in if that spot is taken by a legacy applicant. they said experts have concluded that removing legacy preferences would increase admissions for applicants of color and that approximately one quarter of white students admitted would not have been admitted if the donor and legacy preferences among others did not exist. and so they say if harvard gets rid of these legacy preferences, then they're going to see admission rates for black,

latino and asian american students rise by 4 to 5% with each of those groups and see admissions among white students fall by 4%. so they're saying, look, other schools have done this. other schools have gotten rid of this unfair treatment. it's time for harvard to do the same. >> you know, in neil gorsuch's, i think, opinion on the affirmative action case, i see the ground work laid for this conversation about legacy admissions. is that right? do you remember reading this? >> yeah. look, flows naturally logically and legally from the opinion last week that legacy admissions are on their last legs. i guess i will say, though, two caveats. number one, the courts including the supreme court, are going apply more scrutiny to an explicit discriminatory system, affirmative action, whether one likes it or not. they explicitly say what's the person's race and assign certain value to that versus a system like this disparate impact. doesn't on its face say we're going to make differentiations.

the second thing, let's remember, the supreme court does not have to take any case it does not want to take. and so, the question is will they have the need four votes to take a case, will they have those four votes? but i think reading even the majority opinion, striking down the affirmative action practice last week, i think it's clear if you sort of do the logical math that it's hard to justify legally or logically on going legacy admission policies. >> this strikes me as political gold in the sense of there's actually overlapping circles between republicans and democrats who are looking around and maybe trying to strike a populous tone and say i'm not going to defend legacy admissions unless they went to one of these schools an want their kids to get into it. i think you saw republicans and democrats come out after the supreme court ruling and agree from a 30,000 foot level that perhaps legacy admissions should be next. what's your sense of things? >> well, look, i think we've got our legal scholar here, but i think if we're just talking politically and as a human,

either you're for merit or you're not. and so if you're somehow trying to say that you were opposed to affirmative action or at least manner in which it was being implemented because it was not effectively giving merit where it was due, then you certainly have to say that if you're granting people a benefit towards admission, rooted in the racial inequality that predated the need for the policy in the first place, then somehow you're doing a great disservice to the process of merit. so look, i think there are republicans that will hop on it, but i also think there are always people who are willing to turn a blind eye to the policies that benefit them while hopping up and down and banging the table and talking about a policy that benefits a different type of individual. so, i think it's not quite as simple as we would hope it would be, but i think from my perspective and i think perspective of most americans, legacy admissions to your point probably has seen its better days. >> i think this goes back to what ketanji brown jackson said which is there's the impact of race in real life and then

there's the way you approach it in the law. for legacy admits they had a head start in this race and the reality is that they are more likely to be white. the institution discriminated against african-americans for the longest. the first three african-americans who came in the 1850s had to be expelled because their white classmates refused to take classes with them. so, it was never necessarily about merit or whether you qualified to go to the institution. it was about whether the institution was willing to have you there. privilege compounds like money in a savings, account, right? there's a population right now that has this advantage. and so you have to address it. we have seen the impact at other universities. and the truth is that admission rates do drop for legacy when you take that off the table. >> athena, thank you so much. natasha, joe and elle stay with us. stay with us. we'll have more details coming up next about a car in israel. retired right? oe

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♪ >> this just in to cnn, live images out of tel aviv, israel, where a car just rammed through

pedestrians in what israeli police are calling a terrorist attack. police say seven people were injured at a tel aviv shopping center. officials say the driver then proceeded to get out of the vehicle to stab civilians with a sharp object before he was killed by police. >> that's all unfolding as israeli forces continue to operate in jenin, a day after launching its largest military operation in the occupied west bank in more than two decades. the air strikes killing at least nine people and injuring about 100 others, according to palestinian officials. israeli officials say it was targeting a militant command center part of an extensive counterterrorism effort. joins us now is former state department middle east negotiator aaron david miller. i appreciate you joining us. in part because, you know, you made a point on social media a week or two ago, i can't remember when it was, about they're in a bloody cul-de-sac with no way out at this point in time. you could see this accelerating over the course of the last

several weeks. on the political, on the military, on all the dynamics geopolitically as well. my question is given the scale of the military operation under way, where does this go from here? >> you know, i make a lot of predictions. most of them frankly are wrong. the problem here, i think, is the notion of a cul-de-sac. you have three factors that are driving this train, this very bloody, volatile and tragic train. number one, you have a palestinian authority that is weak, divided and simply unable to assume responsibility, particularly in the northern west bank, jenin. thurm two, you have the most right wing fundamental government in the history of israel committed literally to pursuing policies which they're doing now to basically enact the west bank in everything but name. third, you have a new

phenomenon. informal groups of young palestinians roughly between the ages of 15 to 25 in jenin supported, facilitated, encouraged by organized group such as jihad and hamas, which are demonstrating a fierce determination to resist israelis and to plan attacks in the west bank and in israel proper. and the problem is that there doesn't seem to be any way to counterbalance this. the international community has checked out. governing is about choosing with respect to the biden administration. they have other priorities. and it's hard to see this not necessarily blowing up to a third, there are reasons i think may prevent that but you have a new normal here, which is this bloody -- when israeli defense

forces armed groups -- [ inaudible ]. it's a veritable cycle of violence so much as it is -- [ inaudible ]. >> there's different context here. we talked about the abraham accords earlier, different diplomatic ties for israel and also israel itself had been rocked by protests and people's concerns about its own government. are there any other kinds of unknowns, unknowns, other factors here that could provide some kind of path out diplomatically or at least off ramp from escalation? >> you know, it might take an external catalyst in order to at least create a pathway to try to calm the situation. but frankly that would involve a very difficult choice on the part of the biden administration. having worked for republicans and democrats, presidents don't

like to tangle with israeli prime ministers. it could be very politically costly particularly when in the administration's view there's very little that they could do in order to counter these deeply-entrenched factors. so i'm afraid, audie. this is hardly going to come as a surprise, that this situation in the west bank and in jerusalem and perhaps in israel proper is going to get worse frankly before it actually gets worse. one final point, the prime minister is -- wants to pursue judicial reform, judicial overhaul and he's blocked. protesters were in the airport yesterday demonstrating that the president made democracy, 24/7 proposition. it's a marathon. it's not 100 yard dash. and because it's blocked, he's rewarding the more extreme ministers with its own government. he's paying them in annexation as coin.

the idf, the israeli defense forces did not want to launch an operation that was this large. i think in large part politics also colored the breadth and depth what the israelis are doing. >> all right. aaron david miller, really appreciate your time, sir. thank you. >> thank you. next, a group of suburban parents from across the country finding their political hero in florida governor ron desantis. they say his handling of the pandemic hooked them, but it's his focus on culture wars threatening that support. a cnn report ahead. ♪ you mean? these straps are mind-blowing! they collect hundreds of data points like hrv and rem sleep, so you know all you neneed for recovery. and you are? i'm an investor...in invesco qqq, a fund thahat gives me access to... nasdaq 100 innovations l like... wearable training optimization tech. uh, how long are you... i'm done. i'm okay.

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florida governor and republican presidential hopeful ron desantis, like some his rivals, will be hitting the campaign trail this fourth of july. be reaching out to voters in new hampshire. cnn's elle reed recently spoke with a group of women, several of whom are lifelong democrats about why they stand with deeg. ♪ >> if desantis were to run tomorrow, he would win. and that would be such a hard pill to swallow i think for many people. >> reporter: back in 2021, vanessa was the first person who told me she was a fan of florida governor ron desantis, and that there were more like her. when we first spoke to you in 2021, you mentioned that you had this group of mom friends you met on twitter who were just obsessed with desantis. and it just stuck in my mind for years. >> he would just do stuff and say stuff with this conviction. we were all lake thank you. >> reporter: did you have a nickname for him? >> daddy desantis.

i mean, it's all joking. >> reporter: of course. >> because we're like desperate women who had tried everything that we could do in our own power, in our own communities. we weren't getting anywhere. >> he was very vocal starting in the summer of 2020 about the need to open schools in particular. >> reporter: during the covid lockdowns in 2020, these frustrated moms built an informal twitter network of people angry about closed schools and the difficulty of remote learning. they were from all over the country but saw desantis as a model of what they wanted in their cities. >> school is a safe haven. >> when i started advocating for kids to go back in person, i was called a granny killer, a teacher killer, selfish on twitter. oh my god, it was awful. >> reporter: stinecamp is a teacher in dallas and warned early on that lockdowns would hurt kids, especially poor kids. >> we can't forget our most vulnerable. and we just created the single largest inequality generator in a generation by having some schools opened, some schools

closed. >> reporter: on twitter, stinecamp connected with a levi's executive who moved from san francisco to denver in early 2021 so she could send her kids in school in person. >> we quickly sort of found a community online and i found it really interesting that she was a teacher that was advocating for in-person school. in san francisco, you could go to a bar or a strip club, but my high school student couldn't go to english class. >> reporter: she says she was forced out of levi's in 2022 because of the covid tweets undermine its own health and safety policies and sewed confusion among employees. >> 90% of what i wrote about was playgrounds and schools. there's nothing embarrassing about that now. >> reporter: there were several active group chats the moms shared news about covid and desantis. they travelled to each other's homes. >> many had been lifelong democrats including julie who has three kids and lives near l.a. you voted for obama? >> yeah. twice. >> clinton? >> yes. >> did you vote for biden?

>> yes. i have never voted for a republican presidential candidate. i have always considered myself very socially liberal. but as we became more vocal on twitter, we were really demonized. >> reporter: in 2022, she ran for school board and won. >> so i'm going to fight back. >> reporter: and was an active defender of her twitter friends. they aren't crazy. data from the education department show kids have been hurt by long-term remote learning. black and brown students more than white. in august, 2020, desantis was early to open schools compared to other u.s. states but not the world. many european countries went back under national policies. in may, 2020, for example, a finland health official cited data that kids didn't play a significant role in spreading the virus. but in the last two years, desantis has launched his presidential campaign and focussed more on the culture war. >> we will make sure as president we leave woke ideology in the dust bin of history where

it belongs. >> reporter: the twitter backlash they experienced made these women more receptive to parts of desantis' fight against wokeness. but not all of it. >> i'm wondering if you think that desantis', you know, very public war on woke distracts from the message that you like about him? >> a little bit, i do. yeah. because i mean, to be honest, i do feel like it would be really good to have a big public debate about what did we get wrong in covid. >> the left doesn't want to have that debate. they're never going to allow that debate. i think there's a lot of incendiary tactics being used to smear him. i think there's -- >> he did sign a law that restricts transgender care for adults as well as kids. >> i have greater concerns about the six-week abortion ban. >> reporter: tell me about that. >> i think if he made it clear that he's a state's rights person and that he's not looking to pass a national law in this regard, i would be less

concerned. >> reporter: not everyone in their twitter orbit agrees on his tactics, but these three do think florida's new six-week abortion ban is bad. >> i think that's dangerous. that's something that i cannot get behind. and i don't think that's going to bode well for his presidential campaign. i think that might be a real impediment to bringing in moderate women. >> reporter: none of these women like the idea of a 2024 rematch between biden and trump. they're open to voting for desantis but are not sold. >> so there's been criticism from republicans that desantis is like too on line. that his campaign is too influenced by stuff that's popping on online but isn't affecting people in real life. so someone struggling to pay their bills isn't thinking about pronouns. is it possible that's true? >> oh, i don't think so. i've been down all over florida. you know what they say, he helped my business open up. he helped my kids go to school.

the media fixates on the culture war pieces. >> is it possibly you're too on line? >> yes, for sure in the beginning. not more. do i need to fight with random online? no. >> i would love to be off twitter but i feel there are discussions that need to be had for all the bad that comes with it, there's also a good. i've connected with all these like-minded women who are not alt-right demons. they're moms who have been unseen and unheard. >> elle reeve, cnn, dallas. we have our panel back with us. natasha and joe, always love elle's pieces. what was your take away from watching that? >> look, i think you saw a snapshot of a man who built a broad, non-partisan coalition and then engaged in a legislative session that in many ways marginalized himself with many of the people that had come to count on him as their champion. and so you listen to people talking about the six-week ban. you listen to people talking about some of the things that

happened in the legislative session that were supposed to be burnishing his record in anticipation of this launch. i think that's reflected in the numbers where you saw this was a man that, again, first republican going all the way back to jeb bush to win miami dade florida in 20 years is ahead of trump in iowa in december, is effectively right on his heels nationally in january. and now you see where he is now down 30 points. and i think it is because of some women, like the ones you just heard from, who feel as if the person that was their champion has now in many ways forgotten all the things they liked about him. >> natasha, i interviewed moms for liberty mothers, they were very radicalized by the covid era. this is a vulnerability for democrats in certain respects. so what is the countermessaging that they're developed? >> well, first when i see that package, i just think that there have always been women in conservative movements in particular who are approaching politics from a personal lens, right? but also a lot of the women in

that package were not women of color, right? so these women are coming from a privileged position in society and they don't like sort of being called out for that privilege. they don't like the ways in which they were -- they say they were attacked on twitter. but a lot of that is sort of a defensive reaction. so they found community in other women who feel the same way that they do. but again, it's sort of finding people who will repeat back what you already believed. >> but they're not lost to democrats, right? they were just talking about abortion, talking about areas where they felt like, well, we don't feel quite comfortable with x, y and z, the republican saying. is that not some kind of opening? >> i think there's an opening. also i think if you're willing to support ron desantis who has been so extreme, so harmful to so many different groups, right? whether it be, you know, students of color, efforts for diversity and inclusion in the employment sense, i mean, all of those things to me signal that there's potentially a lack of

empathy, a lack of seeing sort of the coalitions that the democratic party tries to build. and so, again, i just think that many of those women reflect what we've seen in different moments in history in terms of women who come from sort of perch of privilege being unwilling to give up that privilege and trying to find a spokesperson who will back up sort of their experience. >> all right, guys. stay with us. we're hanging out the entire day with you whether you like it or not. happening today, of course, nathan's famous hot dog eating contest. audie, you love -- no. set to kick off in a matter of hours. t the reigning champ back-to-back-to-back joey chesnut trying to eat 80 hot dogs. we'll discuss. but before we go to break -- >> e.t. home phone.

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sleepovers just aren't what they used to be. a house full of screens? basically no hiccups? you guys have no idea how good you've got it. how old are you? like, 80? back in my day, it was scary stories and flashlights. we don't get scared. oh, really? mom can see your search history. that's what i thought. introducing the next generation 10g network. only from xfinity. is it possible to protect my business from cyber threats?

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is possible. >> 80 possible? >> oh, my gosh, in practice, things would have to be perfect. i am not saying -- you know what? it's possible. >> those are two legends, joey chestnut, 15 heim mustard belt championship winner of the nathan's famous hot dog eating contest. 63 hot dogs in ten minutes, which for elie is like tuesday, to some degree. this is going to happen. it's a little bit gross, i think, to some degree. >> we brought in a panel of really smart political and legal people to weigh in, which is, you know, is the record of 80, because i know you spent a lot of time thinking about this, preparation, whether or not we could get there, is the record possible today? >> if you put your mind to it, if you have done it before, you can do it again. i come from upstate new york where we have hoss man's hot

dogs. so that is our thing. if you love hot dogs enough, you can push through and probably break that 80. >> mr. chestnut,s he should be referred to, sounded a little doubtful in that interview whether he could hit 80. >> that's inner prosecutor talking. >> this is a professionalized, 1990, the winner had 15. the prime of the kobayashi era, 75, 2020. >> that's amazing. >> people find methods. >> i think you reach the limits of human capacity on this. >> is this disgusting or wonderful american tradition? >> i lean towards the latter in a sharp manner. i can see the other. >> i think there was more intrigue when we had the international element, was america about going to retain the title as the nathan's hot dog epicenter of the world. look, i don't know.

i can't imagine eating 76 hot dogs in a month much less in ten minutes. we will help you because we have a graphic. what is the ideal body type -- >> can you be awesome at this? you need -- credit to "the washington post," short neck, long torso, wide ribcage, wide build. kids, if you are watching this and you see this as a pursuit in the future, i did like when chestnut overtook kobayashi and america -- >> america's back. >> yeah. i am here for it. >> you kind of are, right? it's a little nicer, gentler and we are winning still and i appreciate that. >> the best quote from the che quote, i am not at all anti-vegetable. >> he did a vegan cleanse. >> stay with us. we got a lot more coming up in the next hour. for the moment, a live look at

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♪ good tuesday morning. elie and phil mattingly. breaking news throughout the morning. last night into the morning, we are following three mass shootings during a violent july 4th weekend. breaking had morning, the death toll rising in fort worth, texas, where police say three people are confirmed dead and eight others wounded in a shooting in