emissions from coal plants's the regulation could have wide-ranging implications on governments and john harwoodoins us with more, john, what do they propose? >> they will propose regulations using the authority the supreme court has recognized to regulate the carbons under the clean air act, not under the cap and trade segment that congress rejected a couple of years ago. but they will do it by setting goals on achieving the reductions. >> john, you just mentioned cap and trade, and how is that really different? >> well, the way it could end up being similar, susie, is the method a state could choose to comply with the regulations could be a cap and trade system. remember, we already have those systems in california and in several states in the northeast. so there is precedent for that. and one of the questions that we'll be watching is whether or not the one option for states will be to join one of those existing cap and trade systems so western states could join with california, for example, states in the midwest and northeast could join the ones that are already operating. >> john, how much

. >> john harwood joins us now from washington with more on this story. john, i guess now the search is on for a new chief of the v.a. and given all the problems there that have been going on for decades, all the dysfunction, what is the key skill he needs to have in your view? >> well, i think you will need to have a high energy leader and somebody with tremendous management skills. sloane gibson who has been put in place, somebody running a military family and also has a masters in business administration. they has management skills, but they will look for somebody permanent and get on the job. that job is so important given the political pressure that is mounting and the revelations of the difficulty and care. the president said today he simply couldn't afford anymore distractions by having shinseki take so much fire. here is the president. >> he has worked hard to investigate and identify the problems with access to care. but he told me this morning that the v.a. needs new leadership to address them. he does not want to be a distraction because his pr

john harwood of cnbc and "the new york times." molly ball of the atlantic. and john dickerson of "slate" magazine and cbs news. >> award-winning reporting and analysis, covering history as it happens. live from our nation's capital, this is "washington week with gwen ifill." corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> we went out and asked people a simple question. how old is the oldest person you've known? we gave people a sticker and had them show us. we learned a lot of us have known someone who's lived well into their 90's. and that's a great thing. but even though we're living longer, one thing that hasn't changed, the official retirement age. the question is, how do you make sure you have the money you need to enjoy all of these years? >> additional corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by boeing. brigham and women's hospital. additional funding is provided by the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to to pbs stations from viewers like you. thank you. once again live from wash

our chief washington correspondent john harwood is here, hey, john. >> hey, mandy.ublicans the last two senate elections have been a story of blown opportunities. the same tea party centering that fueled republican battles with president obama also pushed forward some candidates who for mainstream voters just went too far. >> i'm not a witch. i'm nothing you've heard. >> remember this ad from a candidate in 2010? but the tea party is still out there challenging the republican establishment. >> good afternoon, rchz. >> reporter: in fact this year it's taking on the most powerful senate republican of all. >> i voted for mitch mcconnell for years. over time he's changed. >> reporter: what's different this year is that republican leaders are hitting back, hard. mcconnell allies have used their huge financial advantage to pound his opponent in advantage of tonight's primary. >> he fail to pay taxes, then got a taxpayer bailout. bailout bevin. >> also tonight a conservatee backed by sarah palin is trailing, too. >> the conservative who has walked the walk. cutting budgets

john harwood. john harwood. is that what we need, super tuesday to see harwood? >> wait a minute. he comes on with the poll and some of the other things. >> what does he do when we don't see him for a long time? >> he analyzes the ratios. >> like what? what other shows? >> of course there are none, right? >> i don't know. he has a pretty -- i'm not just saying. he'll join us in the next half hour, make an appearance. and have details on key races in the major political story lines. let's check on the markets this morning. yesterday turned out okay. the markets heading up, looking down about six points or so on the dow. home depot at this point is still -- can't really tell if it's going to do anything. if anything it was pretty much in line with that. pretty flat. we'll see what changes as we move ahead into the -- get closer to 9:30. check out the oil, the ten-year, the dollar. see if anything is happening. there's oil. nothing is happening there. it's above 100. ten-year at 2.539. a quick look at the dollar board versus the pound, the euro and the yen and finally -- i haven't ev

john harwood joins u now with what he knows about the story. john. >> this is wholly unlike the situation with eric shinseki who was resigned under fire bipartisan group of lawmakers calling for his resignation. he's been in this grueling job for a couple of years now, succeeding robert gibbs. jay had spent the beginning of the obama administration as the press secretary for vice president biden which was a good training ground for this, but it's a very difficult job that involved press corps and very, very long hours and they came in and said jay wanted to spend more time with his kids. it's been a strain on his family to be in this job and now he's goinging if out something to do in the private sector. we don't know what that job is. josh hirsh is someone also who has been with the administration interest the beginning. he's been jay carney's deputy. his wife is the communications director over at the treasury department, so part of an experienced and loyal obama team and this fits the pattern that the president has shown in picking loyal you

have a great weekend, everybody. >> any minute now we'll hear from john harwood on the resignation of press secretary jay carney, but in the meantime my head is spinning from old and new highs being hit in this market. is the air just getting a little too thing up here? oh, snap. i bet snapchat's boss would wish all those e-mails would just disapeople. did zack make another

signature on the status of forces agreement they will all come out by the end of this year. >> john harwood very much for the wrap-up there. let's take a quick look at what's happening at the markets. s&p at a record high, dow transports at a record high, intraday rodd high for the dow drills is 16,735. we're not there yet, but we're not far away, only a stone's throw away. the s&p is up this year so far 3.2%. >> as we pointed out at the top of the show, find us something that's not up. high yield, bond is up treasuries up, gold is up, but bare barely. money is just pouring into the united states. i thought one powerful thing the president said is afghanistan is not a perfect place. >>> and welcome to "closing bell," everybody. how is that for an introduction? i'm kelly evans down here on this tuesday after a long weekend, bill, at the new york stock exchange. >> i'm bill griffith. we are looking at the dow up 62 points right now. you can see we're roughly 30, 40 points away from an all-time high. the s&p is in all-time high territory right now. we close at a new high on friday, first time

let's get to john harwood at the white house with more. john? or the business community elsewhere in europe, but i expect them to talk about trying to maintain a united front on sanctions. the nsa. they will have a news conference, a press availability after their meeting around 11:45 and i think you can also expect, carl, the president to have some sort of remarks off the top about these stronger than expected jobs numbers. >> all right. john, we'll come back to you for that later this morning. john harwood at the white house. another sign of the economic recovery. the ceo of host hotels, the country's largest lodging reit, says group bookings are up. he'll join us live in just a few minutes. later on, the ceo of expedia will join us with the first reaction to earnings last night. a lot more "squawk on the street" with dows close to session highs up 48. ♪ [ banker ] sydney needed some financial guidance so she could take her dream to the next level. so we talked about her options. her valuable assets were staying. and selling her car wouldn't f

john harwood.s for summarizing what happened at the white house today. >> despite the turmoil ravaging ukraine. the impact on the u.s. markets has been pretty minimal thus far and as the tension mounts some market watchers feel ripple effects could be in store. >> more on the market implications on the moves. breathsling in bill broderick. you're no fan of vladimir putin, but let me ask you why you feel the markets really haven't reacted the way you think they would. i mean, gold popped a little bit today. not a whole lot. the treasure market is up, the dollar is up, but why hasn't the market really responded to what's become an escalating crisis there in that part of the world? >> well, it -- it really comes down to the way in which vladimir putin is sort of executing what i would describe as a war that's currently under way. so there were historic wars where countries would invade other countries with their armies, but the way that putin is going about it he's sending in like 500 or 1,000 of his

cnbc's washington correspond john harwood breaks it all down for us. hi, john. >> hi, sue.the fall of election years, congress has a tradition of running down the capitol steps, leaving want and hitting the campaign trail. this year they don't need to do that, because this year washington is the campaign trail. republicans agree on this much -- there's little chance of new laws on any of the big issues they're talking about. they're talking about driving -- so for democrats, president obama calls for raising the minimum wage. >> a wage you can live on implts he does it because nine and ten democrats are in favor. senator chuck schumer hammers republicans on immigration -- >> the house has failed to do anything -- >> reporter: because 7 in 10 democrats want legal stat fuss for those already here. and leader nancy pelosi demands action on equal pay for women, because most democrats want new legal guarantees. for the opposing team. john boehner whacks away at obamacare, because 3 out of 4 republicans believe it could be fixed. congressman trey gowdy will direct a new benghazi

john harwood has more on what we can expect as the president, john, breaks his silence of this scandal the president has been getting hammered over the past few days for not speaking out more assertively on this issue. eric shinseki, his choice to head the v.a., has been hammered for not expressing enough anger about the situation. this is a long-running bureaucratic nightmare at the v.a. that has not been solved in the five and a half years of the obama administration. and so, having dispatched a deputy chief of staff, rob neighb nabors to work with shinseki, on the backlog, resolving some of the allegations of secret waiting lists, people losing their lives because of not being able to get appointments, he's got to come out and express to the american people pretty clearly that he's trying to move more rapidly to get his administration on top of the situation. >> all right, john harwood, we'll continue to monitor. of course, we'll take the president live for you as soon as he comes to the podium. >>> in the meantime, we're looking at the dow still up triple digits, 143 points. janet

we want to go to john harwood for his analysis of what's gone on in the rose garden. john, what was interesting is they made it clear it was be up to russia, it's on russia's shoulders to decide what the next course will be. >> yes, and i think there was no surprise in this press conference. they pointed toward the may 25th election and said that was going to be critical to deciding the stability and the ability of ukraine to hold that election. it will be critical to their decision on whether we move to the third phase. we also had some discussion of nsa and the fact they have not been able to reach an agreement on how the two sides will work together, cooperate on intelligence sharing and what sort of protocols they will follow for spying on each other, but i think this was mainly, as we expected, and ukraine dominated with -- but it was inconclusive in when the next steps will take place. >> john heart wid, thanks for that. >>> let's take a quick check on the market before the break. not too much reaction against in the bond markets. the gold market seemling a sligh

and john harwood had praise for general shinseki, in his words, at this stage. >> reporter: exactly. you saw a president there, carl, with three different goals. one, to defend himself. two, to neutralize partisan opposition. and, three, to buy time for further action. defending himself by saying that from the beginning of the administration, he's understood there have been problems at the v.a. wait times are too long. said he's been working hard at it from the beginning but overwhelmed by the volume of cases from soldiers returning from iraq and afghanistan. neutralize partisan opposition by saying this shouldn't be a political football, republicans and democrats ought to work together on this. and buying himself time by saying we have this review going on. rob nabors, deputy chief of staff, is going to phoenix today, and said he did not deny or dispute the idea that shinseki may have offered his resignation, but would remain on the job pending results of this review and trying to get everybody on task to figure out exactly what happened, and then try to get more resources to solve

. >> our john harwood is at 1600 pennsylvania avenue with the details. of a surprise. where do you begin? >> reporter: well, sarah and bill, this was building towards a day like this, at least part of it for several weeks. eric shinseki has been under mounting pressure to democrat and republicans as we've had more and more disclosures and problems with the veterans. not able to get timely care and eric shinseki came with the president and met with the president's chief of safe. came into the briefing room and explained why eric shin seccy is stepping aside. >> he has worked hard to investigate and identify the problems with access to care but as he told me this morning, the v.afrmgt needs new leadership to address it. he does not want to be a distraction because the priority is to fix the problem and make sure that vets are getting the care that they need. >> reporter: but, of course, just a couple of hours after that announcement, you had jay carney walking into the briefing room and announcing he's stepping aside. jay carney was not under any sort of p

john harwood. >> now, a quick look at markets, shall we?> sure, up 63 points right now on the dow industrials. the s&p if you're joining us is in record territory by three points, up eight points at 1900. mary notchson is with thompson n the floor of the new york stock exchange. >> reporter: on may 13th that's the last time the s&p was at a new closing high on mai 13th. the all-time high for the s&p also hit that day at 1902.17. here's some stocks leading the s&p higher today. of course, hack yard up on the news it's cutting an additional 16,000 jobs and after reporting strong free cash flow as well, its stock getting a lift. trip adviser up as well, ahead as we start the unofficial start to the summer season. a lot of vacations evidently not booked yet so some feel that will be good for trip adviser. better than expected results and lennar up on better than expected new home sales for the month of april. the dow up 63 and the s&p is what we're watching at 1900. should we close above these levels for the first time ever. >> a little bit lat

john harwood joins us right now from washington. >> what? holy cow, two days a in row, wow! >> the headline, becky, the tea party as an independent movement is officially out of gas. they lost all the elections yesterday. mitch mcdonnell easily beat his primary opponent, matt beven. >> by 27 points or something. >> if you're the senate minority leader you'd rather not have a primary that gets 35% of the vote. nevertheless, mitch mcconnell won easily. in georgia, the more conservative candidates within the republican party all trailed and the two leaders who go to a runoff in july are david purdue, a businessman, jack kingston, a congressman. that is the result the republicans wanted in george yornl. they got the nominee they wanted in the state of oregon. monica wehbe beat an incumbent. john boehner easily defeated his tea party challenger. this is what the republican establishment wanted. this is what the chamber of commerce want. they sent out a note, flexing their muscles saying they exerted a significant influence over these outcomes. so republicans are bringing the best