i'm jane paulie. "face the nation" is coming up. please join us when our t mpet sounds again next sunday i'm margaret brennan in washington, and this week on "face the nation," more severe weather across much of the u.s., and former president trump prepares for his arraignment on criminal charges tuesday in manhattan. powerful storms and tornadoes ripped through several states this weekend killing at least 26. we'll have the latest. and as the former president prepares to be formally charged in a new york case involving hush money payments to a porn star, his political allies and his republican presidential rivals are publicly standing by him, and focusing on manhattan district attorney alvin bragg. >> they're trying to do all these legal gymnastics toacike i

he has an agenda. that is not the rule of law. >> the indictment and facts of the case are still under seal, but we'll talk with the former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york and bragg's former boss, preet bharara, and we talk to a key witness in the case, mr. trump's former attorney, michael cohen. >> this is really about accountability. i went to prison in part for another man's dirty deeds. >> and of course, the politics of the case. will the indictment hurt the former president's chances at winning the republican nomination or help? >> i think the magic of 2016 has passed. >> but so far two key campaign components, fund-raising and poll numbers among republicans are both up. former trump national security adviser and potential republican presidential contender, john bolton will be here. then washington's at an

impasse on what, if anything, will work to stop mass shootings, particularly in schools. we'll talk to democratic senator chris murphy. he's one of many who have not given up. it's all just ahead on "face the nation." ♪ good morning, and welcome to "face the nation." we begin with the severe weather that affected millions this weekend in the south, midwest, and northeast. dozens of tornadoes touched down in at least eight states, and there are more severe weather alerts for later today and parts of north texas and southern oklahoma. cbs news correspondent omar franca is in arkansas this morning. omar? >> reporter: good morning. we are 100 miles east of little rock, a town that took a direct

hit from this tornado, and let me show you what rez sidents ha to clean up. we're talking about trees that have been knocked down, and this is turf from the high school football field which is about a quarter mile away. the police chief says this town suffered, quote, total destruction. at least a dozen tornadoes sliced through arkansas on friday, but the one that hit basically cut the town in half. four people that died in arkansas were killed in this town. >> we will ensure that every arkansasan has what they need. >> we had no idea it was doing this much damage out here. it was so fast. >> reporter: jane smith, an 80-year-old grandmother surveyed what's left of her home. when the tornado hit, she huddled inside with neighbors. drone footage showed the devastation caused by a tornado in this little rock

neighborhood. the massive storm system u unleashed over 50 tornadoes across the south and midwest on friday, killing at least 26 people. >> this is where that tornado came across. >> reporter: tennessee officials confirmed the largest number of storm-related deaths at seven. in illinois, 90-mile-an-hour winds brought down the roof of the apollo theater where over 200 people were inside at a rock concert. people were injured, some severely, and one person was killed. the storm system moved northeast last night. delaware was hit by at least one tornado, and a 13-year-old girl was killed in ohio when a tree fell on her home, and the weather down here in the south is not over. there's a possibility for more storms early this week. margaret? >> omar villafranca, from arkansas, thank you. the storms resulted in at least seven deaths. governor bill lee said yesterday that the storm capped the worst

week of his time as governor. his week, of course, began with the horrific shooting at covenant school, a private elementary school in nashville. our mark strausman reports. >> please hurry. i'm hearing more shots. >> they're coming. >> reporter: another muzzle flash point about guns in america. six people killed, three of them 9 years old. >> these large, mass public shootings, they represent about 1% of gun violence nationwide. >> reporter: michael runs new jersey's gun violence research center, one of its inescapable conclusions -- >> where there's more firearms, there's more firearm injury and death. >> reporter: america has roughly 400 million guns in private hands. gun violence like heart disease or opioids, qualifies as a public health crisis. during the covid pandemic, the u.s. firearms homicide rate spiked by 35%. on average, gun violene kills more than00 amecans a day.

just as unsettling, guns are now the number one cause of death among children. >> every shooting has this vast ripple effect that affects so many more people and tears apart families and communities. >> reporter: nashville is now one of those communities. like parkland, like buffalo, like uvalde. so much indiscriminate carnage in a country polarized about what to do about it. thousands of tennesseeans last week demanded state lawmakers limit access to guns. one rights are expanding. at the federal level -- >> it's not just legislation that solves these problems. >> reporter: -- it's paralysis. >> i have done the full extent of my executive authority to do on my own, anything about guns. >> reporter: nashville's shooting sparked up this dustup between jamar bowman and thomas massey.

>> are you listening to what i'm saying? children are dying. 9-year-old children. >> reporter: nashville's grief is still raw. weekend memorial services for evelyn, and william. >> reducing violence should be the number one priority for our country. anything less would be our failing our children. >> mark sjoining us from nashville. we're joined by senator chris murphy. good morning. >> good morning. >> we have had another shooting. this time three were 9 years old. this was a catholic church tat -- school attached to a church. do we need to shift the conversation to supporting more tr trauma treatment? is that where we are? >> i think we have to do all of

the above. i mean, there's no doubt that our kids are going through something unique today. i just don't understand why we choose to live like this, why we choose to make our kids fear for their lives when they walk into their schools, why we choose to have children who grow up in violent neighborhoods fear for their lives when they walk to and from school. only in americ does this happen, and you can't explain it through a prism of mental illness or a lack of school security. the thing that's different in the united states is the number of guns, the number of high-powered weapons of mass destruction, and the ease with which we allow criminals and dangerously ill people to get those guns. we've got to change the nation's gun laws and put more trauma resource resource into our schools, but doing nothing cannot be an option. more school shootings than days in the year so far in 2023. >> one of the things you said this week is you would look to require more training for people

buying automatic weapons. explain that because, would that require more vetting of the person doing the buying? >> last year we passed the first gun safety measure, bipartisan, in 30 years, and we did that because we found common ground. >> after uvalde. >> after uvalde. i want to ban assault weapons. i think it's just absolutely unconscionable we allow these. >> there are not enough votes to do that. >> there are not votes to do that. we have to explore what's possible. before we said you have to show you are responsible, that you know how to operate it. what if we appliied background checks to the purchase of those weapons? ultimately i want those weapons off the street, but i think we would be a safer nation if we required just a little bit of training before you bought the most dangerous weapons commercially available. >> so the shooter in tennessee apparently went to five different places, bought seven

different places. tennessee doesn't have a red flag law. it's unclear if it would have made a difference here since the parents of the shooter here claim not to know the guns existed, but shouldn't the purchasing itself, stockpiling weapons, set off some kind of alarm somewhere? >> i think that the different states have different laws that would require some of those triggers for law enforcement, but -- >> not in tennessee? >> not tennessee, and i do think that a proper red flag law in tennessee could have made a difference here. if parents know that they have the opportunity to take firearms away from an individual in their family that they know is in crisis, then they are frankly going to be more vigilant about searching for that potential connection to a weapon. in tennessee, they couldn't do anything about it even if they knew about the weapons. so what we know is that in states that have red flag laws,

they are used responsibly and frequently to take guns away from people in crisis. florida, a red state, has a red flag law that's been used 8,000 times to take weapons away from people who are contemplating violence against others or against themselves. they work, and if tennessee had a red flag law, and the parents knew about it, maybe this situation wouldn't have happened. >> the bill that you co-sponsored provided financial incentives for states to create red flag laws. tennessee apparently just doesn't want one. >> yeah. tennessee's moving the other way, right? tennessee is talking about allowing you to carry loaded assault weapons on the streets. the states that have tougher, tighter gun laws, have dramatically lower rates of gun violence, and so in connecticut, our rate of gun violence is half that, one-third that of tennessee. so my hope is that this new federal funding that we passed on a bipartisan basis last year will prompt states like tennessee to take a look at red flag laws. they're wildly popular. 80% of americans want them.

there's no political risk in enacting a red flag law. if tennessee had it, maybe this wouldn't have happened. >> tennessee's governor, a republican, is reportedly proposing funneling millions now into school security measures, including grants for schools like where this happened to have armed guards. this has come up on the floor and you had a heated exchange with senator ted cruz, but explain why you think he's wrong when he says this. >> i do not understand why our democrat colleagues in this body do not support having police officers keep our kids safe. why when it comes to this issue, the only thing that interests them is disarming the people at home who pose no threatat than our kids s sz opposed our bipartisan legislation last year that would take weapons away from domestic abusers.

so when he says that our interest is only in taking weapons away from people who pose no threat, he's squarely out of touch with the american people who don't think that domestic abusers should have guns, and what senator cruz's legislation is talking about is not just putting police officers with guns in schools, but teachers in our schools with firearms. my constituents in connecticut, they want school security. they want door locks. they want more physical protection, but they do not want their teachers to be handed ar-15s, or schools loaded up with weapons, and we know in this country that more weapons don't equal less crime. then we would be one of the safest places in the world. >> his fellow texas senator who was your partner last time -- >> correct. >> -- said, we've gone as far as we can go unless somebody identifies some area we didn't address. we heard president biden say, i'm done here. >> yeah. >> so is this really up to grassroots groups and state governments at this point? is that the reality? >> listen. i think if you had asked pundits

two months before we passed last year's bipartisan bill whether congress was going to act on guns in 2022, people would have said it wasn't going to happen. things changed pretty quickly in washington, and my goal is to try to find that common ground that john cornyn is talking about. i'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. we've got to show parents and kids and families in this country that we can make bipartisan progress to try to make our country safer. that's why i'm talking not about an assault weapons ban this year, but around training, around raising the age, around background checks. just trying to make some progress to make sure that weapons are only getting to the hands of law-abiding citizens. i'm open for any discussion with republicans about how we can show this country that we take their kids' protection seriously. doing nothing for republicans on both sides of the sle, conservative parents and progressive parents right now, is not an option. >> senator murphy, thank you for your time today. >> thank you. we want to turn now to the

historical first, former we do not yet know the charges t against him, but he will be arraigned tuesday in new york city. arrangements are under way to handle security and processing, but it is likely to be quite a spectacle. since word of the indictment came out thursday evening, mr. trump and his allies have controlled the narrative on this case as the indictment remains under seal. a person familiar with the matter told cbs news that former president trump is being charged with falsifying business records in the first degree, a felony. our robert costa is in new york this morning. good morning to you, bob. we know this is 2:00 p.m. tuesday in manhattan. you have spoken with the trump attorneys. what is their strategy at this point? >> good morning, margaret. the trump lawyers say they want to immediately move to dismiss this case. that is going to be point number

one, and there are discussions among some trump allies about thinking about a venue change at some point, though at this early crossroads, they're not officially talking about that on the legal team because they have not yet seen the indictment, but you can expect a very aggressive strategy both in public relations and legally from the trump team at this point. >> we know there are roughly 30 counts against the former president, and you have spoken with one key witness here who spoke to the district attorney 22 times. this is former personal attorney michael cohen. what did he share? >> sitting down with michael cohen yesterday in new york city, it's evident that he is going to be the crucial witness for the district attorney, alvin bragg, in this case, especially should it go to trial, but cohen told us that this investigation is about far more than him. let's listen. >> yes, i lied to congress at the direction of, in coordination with, and for the

benefit of donald j. trump, and if there's anyone out there that thinks that that lie is going to prevent me from being the credible witness that i am based on the documentation, the testimony, the emails, the recording, it's not going to happen. >> you brought you have an interesting point. in your view, this case is bigger than michael cohen's testimony. >> yes. i have never said that it was about me. this is not what so many people want to make it look like. oh, it's michael cohen's vengeance against donald trump. that's not what this is about. this is solely about accountability. i should not be held accountable for donald trump's dirty deeds. let him be held accountable. let those in his orbit that are truly accountable like bill barr, right? who he used to weaponize the justice department against his critics. let them be held accountable because it saves and it >> are you ready to testify? >> yes. >> bob, to date, republicans have largely circled the wagons

around the former president, and this includes florida's governor ron desantis. they've done it by attacking the manhattan district attorney, but then this morning, we have the former governor of arkansas, asa hutchinson on abc news saying he's going to run for president, and very clearly saying that mr. trump needs to drop out of the race. what's happening inside the party? >> it's a fascinating political moment. that republican outrage publicly is also coupled privately with a lot of political calculation. could there be an opening for a trump critic, whether it's former governor hutchison or someone else to now enter this 2024 republican primary, and seize on this new dynamic in the race where trump has legal and political challenges, and florida governor ron desantis isn't in the race yet, but talking to donors this morning, it's not just hutchison who's on their minds. they're also thinking about

trying to draft virginia governor glenn youngkin to think harder about this race this year. >> this is a fascinating race, bob, and we're going to be very s busy. "face the nation" will be back in one minute. stay with us.

for more on the indictment of former president trump, we go to cbs legal analyst, rikki clingman. good morning to you, rikki. can you hear mae? >> good morning. >> glad you can hear me. walk us through it. we have never seen anything like this before, literally. what are the next few days going to look like literally with the arraignment of the former president? >> we expect the president to fly into new york city on monday night, and what will happen on tuesday as he will emerge from his residence at trump tower, he may or may not speak at that cuody o t nypd and his own

secret service. i expect that there will be a motorcade that will take him from trump tower down to the courthouse and at the courthouse is also the district attorney's office. the nypd as well as the secret service who will never leave him by the way, they're not supposed to. he is within their protection, and it's really within their circle. so they go into the d.a.'s office. he must be processed like any other defendant. what does that mean? he will get a picture taken which becomes a mugshot. in new york, mugshots are not usually released to the public. he will also be fingerprinted electronically, and he will be given a booking number. at the time that he receives that booking number, he is nyndanwould, for the quote, fingerprints to go through the electronic process of review. they'll go up to albany. they'll bounce back.

that takes usually a couple of hours. right now we are told that the arraignment itself is set for 2:15. he is then in the custody of the court personnel as well as his secret service people and the nypd. i do not expect him to be handcuffed. he will be brought into the courtroom. the indictment will be unsealed, and for the first time, the defendant, donald j. trump, and his attorneys, and the rest of us will learn what the charges are. >> well, that's a great tiktok, rikki, of what to expect. it seems the former president expects to be able to hold a press conference that evening to discuss what happened back at his home in florida. so can he expect to give that round of remarks or will there be some sort of gag order? >> well, i think one of the things that the president -- former president ought to consider since he does like to

give speeches, is perhaps he would rather give that speech before he goes to court at trump tower. once he goes to court, in addition to the question of bail, there will be no bail here. it's not an offense that demands bail, but there may be some conditions that either the district attorney's office wants or the judge himself wants, and if the judge himself or the d.a. decides that there should be conditions, they're simple ones like turning in your passport, perhaps reporting on your travel, but the real question here in light of the potentially inflammatory continuing statements of mr. trump, that the judge or the d.a. may ask the judge to impose a gag order on donald trump, on his lawyers. if a gagrdn place, ju can sp him from speaking, period, but the judge can certainly stop him from in

any way talking about the case. >> okay. >> a gag order would go to both sides. both sides would have to remain silent. >> okay. so the former president would be able to continue to campaign, but not in theory, talk about the details of the case. we'll see what happens. rickie klieman, i know you'll be covering it. thank you, this morning. we'll be right back with a lot more "face the nation." stay with us. there's been c

pope francis would not be able to participate in holy week due to his being hospitalized for severe bronchitis, but we're happy to report the pope's out of the hospital and he presided over palm sunday mass this morning, addressing thousands. we'll be back in a moment. be ba. , "john legend, how do you keep your voice sounding so legendary?" ♪♪ honey! and how do i keep my protection against covid-19 up to date? with an updated booster designed to help protect against recent omicron variants. ♪ the fresher, the better. ♪

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