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Bone-Chilling Cold Sweeps U.S.; Utah's Same-Sex Marriage Halted; Obama's 2014 To-Do List; More Than 1,300 Flights Canceled Today; Liz Cheney Drops Senate Bid; Clinton Considering Campaign; No U.S. Troops to Iraq

Aired January 06, 2014 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, right now, the coldest temperatures in 20 years sweeping across the United States. Memphis, Tennessee, get this, colder than Anchorage, Alaska in Atlanta. Colder than Moscow. How dangerous are these bone-chilling temperatures?

Right now, the Supreme Court calls a halt to same-sex marriages in Utah, at least temporarily. We're going to talk about what happens next and what this means for newly married same-sex couples in that state.

And right now, President Obama is back here in Washington, D.C. with a long to-do list on his desk. At the top, fighting for jobless benefits and figuring out if he needs to fix the NSA. Just how big are the obstacles in his path?

Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting from Washington. We start with a severe winter cold that's gripping much of the country. The snow, the ice and the brutally low temperatures, they've caused school closings from Minneapolis to Birmingham. Chicago, Cleveland and Kansas City, they're also among those cities with no school. This is what it looks like. Look at this, in Indianapolis, the city's travel warning at level red for the first time since the 1970s. That means no one is allowed to drive unless it's an emergency.

Looking at the airports, more than 3,000 flights have been cancelled, and you can expect certainly that number to rise.

We're covering all angles of the cold blast. Stephanie Elam joining us from Minneapolis. She is watching the Midwest. Victor Blackwell is monitoring the situation from the south. He's in Atlanta. Alexandria Steele is checking the forecast from our Severe Weather Center. And Renee Marsh is here in Washington, D.C. She's checking the nation's airports for us.

Let's start with Stephanie though. Stephanie, the temperatures are well below zero. What is being done to reach a lot of these folks who may be in real danger from this weather?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Wolf, it actually feels like it's getting colder here. It's really -- it doesn't take long for the shivers to start setting in. We've been out here for maybe about five, seven minutes now, and already you can start feeling the chill come in, even though we have on so many layers.

And what they've been doing -- we talked to the police department. They said they've been out patrolling really looking for people who were in danger, who needed to get inside, taking them to hospitals, taking them to shelters, whatever they needed to do. They say crime has gone down a lot because it's just so cold. What they see more of are more domestic disputes because people are kind of caged up at home dealing with this. They're also very concerned about people driving here because if you're out, if there's any issue, if you don't have gas in your car, and you run out or if you don't have enough antifreeze, it is severe. It's so quick, Wolf, how cold. And you feel it so deeply.

If you look at the river behind me, you can see where there's mainly frozen and there's a little bit of water going through where you can see, like, the steam coming off of you. You know it is cold when you can see that happening off a river outside. I know you're used to this, being from the northern climates, but it is very severely cold here and they continent don't want to take chances. They even shut down the zoo, because since all the schools are closed for the first time since anyone can remember for just cold, they want to make sure that families don't try to go do anything else because it's just too cold to be outside -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, you better get inside, Stephanie. Thanks for that report.

Let's check the situation in the south right now. Victor Blackwell is joining us from Atlanta. How prepared are folks in the south where they could also see some record low temperatures, Victor?

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a coat, gloves, and a hat is -- even with those, it's still hard to prepare for the temperatures we're seeing today and we'll see tomorrow. Atlanta public schools has decided that for the safety of their students and employees, they will close schools tomorrow on January 7th.

We can also tell you that the city was prepared for black ice. Let's take a look at the roads. We're looking at I-75 and I-85 here where things are moving along smoothly. But there was this fear that overnight all of yesterday's rain would freeze, and there would be black ice over the roads today.

The good thing is that the wind that came through that's also making it very cold, it dried the roads before temperatures dipped below freezing so no major concern for black ice. But right now, in the mid-20s, it feels like about 10 degrees. Tomorrow, the weather is forecast to be just as windy, with temperatures at about seven degrees. That would break a more than 40-year record and it would feel like 10 below zero this far south in the city of Atlanta -- Wolf.

BLITZER: That's cold for any place especially someplace like Atlanta. Victor, thanks.

Some parts of the United States could see a 60-degree temperature drop today. Alexandria Steele is monitoring the situation for us from the Severe Weather Center. Explain what's causing all of this, Alexandra.

ALEXANDRA STEELE, AMS METEOROLOGIST: All right. Well, Wolf, this is some rarified air. It's called the polar vortex, and it's air that normally circulates around the globe. The northern north pole. So, certainly the pole is not much farther south. But when the polar vortex gets weak, this kind of deep cold is allowed to drop into the northern hemisphere and that's a piece of what we're feeling. So, it's really the coldest air in the northern hemisphere hasn't been in this part of the woods. If you're younger than 40, you've never felt it before. So, we're going to watch this drop south, drop east. It'll modify some.

But looking at these numbers, 44 below in Duluth. Just a few moments ago, it was at 50 below. When it gets that low, frostbite happens in five minutes; 35 below, frostbite happens in 10 minutes. And you know, in some of these cities like Indianapolis, there's no driving. Now, it's not because they don't want you to go anywhere. It's a combination of a few things. One, of course, the snow that has fallen, the cold temperatures, the winds, and say your car gets stuck. Motor oil freezes at 15. Antifreeze at 35 below. And even the tire seals will leak.

So, you get out there, something happens to your car and then you're stuck in that life-threatening air. We're having that be called a PDS, something very rare. It's called a potentially dangerous situation because the air is so cold.

All right, we're going to watch that cold not only in the upper Midwest. Today, Indianapolis, look at this, 46 degrees colder than normal. Nine below will be the high temperature. In Atlanta today, 30 degrees colder than average. The high of only 26 degrees. But watch what happens. The northeast has been enjoying kind of some pretty balmy weather. That front passes them today and temperatures there will cool off dramatically tonight. Current temperatures, much below average. And I'll talk about Atlanta and how low it's going to go and when coming up and how rare that is as well in the Deep South -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All Right. Alexandra, thanks very much.

As you can imagine, the weather is making a mess of air travel today across the country. Thousands of flights already have been grounded because of the snow and the cold. Rene Marsh is joining us with more on this part of the story. So, how bad is it, today, Rene, for flyers?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Wolf, if you're one of those passengers and you are waiting to get on your flight and you just can't, it's pretty bad. Right now, the snapshot, it looks a little bit like this. More than 3,000 delays and nearly 3,500 cancellations.

We want to drill down just a little bit and take a closer look as to what the situation looks like at specific airports. You can see Chicago, lots of red there. They're seeing so far, according to FlightAware's Misery Map, within this time frame from 10:00 this morning until 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, they've seen the most cancellations and delays.

However, we want to put this in perspective for you. According to Mass Flight, which they collect lots of aviation data, they say on a normal day, you see about 200 cancellations, and 84 percent of the flights are on time. So, there's some perspective.

But if you're at the airport, you're delayed or cancelled, you know that already. So, you want to know, what do I do if I'm delayed or cancelled? We have some tips for you. What the first thing you want to know is if you have your boarding pass in your hand, you want to go ahead and scan that boarding pass at the kiosk because a lot of times these airlines will automatically rebook you. So, you'll get this kind of information if you have been automatically rebooked. That's good to know before you stand on that line, very long lines, as we have seen in video.

Also, if you want to have -- get information about your flight, tweet the airline. A lot of them are on social media and you will get a quick response. And then lastly, you know, this is a really good tip. All those people we saw sleeping on those ground -- on the ground there in the airport, what they recommend sometimes is buy a day pass to one of the lounges. You're a lot more comfortable. There is food. And they also have staff there. The lines are a lot shorter and you may get through a lot quicker.

And just -- Wolf, just one bit of news that's coming into us right before we came up here. JetBlue. So, if you're on a JetBlue flight, you might want to know that the airline is telling CNN that they plan on reducing its operations totally by 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. They're just stopping operations. The reason they're doing this is because they want to bring things back up to speed, so this will be in place. They'll start bringing operations back tomorrow. They hope to be at 100 percent tomorrow. They're saying that flight rules, as far as rest rules for pilots, is playing into this as well -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Rene, good information. Thanks very much. We'll have a lot more on the bitter cold weather and the impact it's having across the country. That's coming up later this hour.

But there's another important story we're following. A significant decision by the United States Supreme Court just a little while ago. It's been a little more than two weeks since a judge allowed same-sex marriages to go ahead in Utah, but now the high court has put any new marriages in that state on hold.

Our Justice Reporter Evan Perez is joining us now with more on this ruling, what it means. It's not a permanent ban, necessarily.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: No, it's a temporary hold. And Justice Sotomayor kicked it over to the full Supreme Court, and they issued a ruling putting a temporary hold on this ruling from the -- from a -- from a district court judge in Denver, about 17 days ago, who allowed these marriages to go forward.

Now, Utah voters passed a law back in 2004 that ruled that same-sex marriages were banned, were illegal. And in light of last year's Supreme Court ruling, this federal judge in December decided that that court ruling -- the federal court ruling essentially made the state law unconstitutional. And that's how this all came about.

BLITZER: What happens, Evan, to those couples that got married the last couple weeks in Utah when it was allowed?

PEREZ: Well, about 1,000 people, couples, same-sex couples, managed to get married in the 17 days that this ruling stood. Those people are still married. Legally. This ruling today only puts this on hold so that there are no more new licenses that are going to be issued in the state of Utah. But those people are still married. Now, we'll see what happens as the state goes through its appeals process and this -- you know, whether or not this becomes permanent or not.

BLITZER: So, it goes to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. They will make a decision. Potentially, though, it could go all the way up to the Supreme Court.

PEREZ: Right. Well, it all depends on what this -- the appeals court rules. If they decide that the judge in Denver was right, then this may not come back to the -- to the Supreme Court. We'll see. It does appear that there's a -- that there's enough of a majority on the Supreme Court, based on the rulings last year, allowing marriages, gay marriages in California to continue. And overturning the federal ban, that there might be enough that this could stand, if -- you know, depending on how the appeals court rules.

BLITZER: Even Perez, thanks very much. An important story out of Utah that we're watching.

Other news we're watching including Liz Cheney. She's now bowing out of a contentious race. It's a story you saw first here on CNN. She's dropping her Senate bid for family reasons. We're about to take a closer look at her campaign, what it meant for the Republican Party. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: A controversial Republican primary challenge is now ended with a big name dropping out of the race. You heard it here on CNN first. Liz Cheney, the eldest daughter of the former vice president, Dick Cheney, has dropped out of the Wyoming Senate race citing family health reasons. Erin McPike is joining us now.

This was a pretty rocky campaign from the start against a relatively pretty popular incumbent in Wyoming, but what's the latest, Erin?

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, it was very rocky and that's understandable because it was no surprise when she announced this campaign in the first place. You may remember, she moved her family across the country to take on a low-key but powerful Republican incumbent senator, and then she picked a family fight along the way.

Now, this incumbent, Mike Enzi, complained that he was a friendly fishing buddy of Dick Cheney's, but the former vice president said none of that was true. Well, the whole race turned into a major distraction for the Republican Party.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're proud of our family secrets in Wyoming.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're proud of our grandma and our grandpa.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was vice president of the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we're very proud of our mom, who's running for the United States Senate.

MCPIKE (voice-over): But she's not running anymore. Liz Cheney's famous family helped catapult her political career, but it's also the reason she's ending her ill-fated effort to unseat fellow Republican, three-term Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi.

In a statement this morning, she explained, "my children and their futures were the motivation for our campaign, and their health and well-being will always be my overriding priority."

Details are scant. Cheney, who is married with five children, states that serious health issues in her family have caused her to drop her bid. That wouldn't have been her only challenge. Her claimed deep roots in the cowboy state raised eyebrows from the start.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, the state of Cheney, where who cares where you actually live. Liz Cheney today announcing that she will try to unseat Republican Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, even though she has never lived in Wyoming! She is from D.C.

MCPIKE: She moved her husband and children out of the Washington suburb in 2012 to launch her Senate bid, which led to this local editorial. "Hey, Liz Cheney, if you want to run for U.S. Senate, try it from Virginia or some other state."

But it was a public spat over same-sex marriage with her lesbian sister, Mary, and her wife, that caused a scene on the national stage.

LIZ CHENEY: I love Mary very much. I love her family very much. This is just an issue on which we disagree.

MCPIKE: It spiraled from there with feuding statements between sisters on Facebook, causing dad to intervene.

DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.: We, you know, are -- were surprised when there was an attack launched against Liz on Facebook. And wished it hadn't happened. It's always been dealt with within the context of the family. And, frankly, that's our preferences.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCPIKE: And CNN has now learned from multiple sources close to the family that health issues involving at least one of Liz Cheney's children are the serious health issues she's referring to in her statement about ending this campaign. She was, of course, pulling well behind Enzi in the primary race, but still we didn't expect this move.

Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, certainly not given the passion, the excitement she showed earlier, even though she had a really uphill struggle ahead of her. Erin, thanks very much.

So let's bring in our chief political analyst, Gloria Borger, for some analysis of this and some other political stories.

She did have a major uphill struggle.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: She did.

BLITZER: The polls showed in Wyoming she wasn't doing well.

BORGER: I mean there were some polls that showed her as much as 50 points behind in the primary. Look, Mike Enzi was very conservative, very popular inside the state. And so it wasn't exactly a fight between a conservative and a liberal Republican or a moderate Republican. These were two conservatives. And when you talk to people inside the state, they couldn't figure out why she was running to unseat somebody they had considered pretty satisfactory and just as conservative as she is.

BLITZER: Yes, he was a -- he's a real conservative, Mike Enzi.

BORGER: Yes.

BLITZER: There's - he's got all those conservative -

BORGER: And well-liked. And well-liked in the state.

BLITZER: Credentials and very well-liked in Wyoming.

The feud that we saw unfold in recent weeks within the Cheney family -

BORGER: Right.

BLITZER: Over same-sex marriage between Liz Cheney and her sister Mary Cheney, is there a similar feud going on, on a bigger notion within the Republican Party?

BORGER: Yes, I think so. I mean the irony here, of course, is that Liz Cheney put herself far to the right of her own father, Dick Cheney, who, when he ran for vice president, said, look, I think it's up to the states. And, you know, said that he had a gay daughter, and that he believed that it was an issue to be decided by the states. Liz Cheney positions herself to the right of that and said she didn't approve of gay marriage.

Now, in the state of Wyoming, that's a popular view. So it's not as if she hurt herself in the state. She actually helped herself in the state by positioning herself against her sister. So I think the Republican Party has the -- what Ronald Reagan used to say, the big tent problem here. And the question is, if you want to bring in younger people, different kinds of people, into the Republican Party, this could be one of those cultural issues that comes up again, certainly in the next presidential race.

BLITZER: Yes, and I know it was very painful for the parents to see this public -

BORGER: Sure. They had to intervene, right?

BLITZER: Yes.

BORGER: I mean you saw Dick Cheney there. He's a man of few words. And I guarantee you that this was not something he wanted played out on national TV.

BLITZER: Let's talk about another political subject. On the agenda today, the former first lady, the former secretary of state, the former U.S. senator -

BORGER: Let me guess.

BLITZER: Hillary Clinton. Yes. There's a major article in Politico by Maggie Haberman. Among other things she writes this. "Early last summer, Hillary Clinton met with a handful of aides for a detailed presentation on preparing for a 2016 presidential campaign. Three officials delivered a dispassionate, numbers-driver assessment. They broke down filing deadlines in certain states, projected how much money Clinton would need to raise."

So a story like this shows clearly she is obviously very seriously thinking of running for that nomination.

BORGER: Sure. I would be surprised if this had not occurred, OK? The fact that Hillary Clinton is meeting with people who are talking about what she would need to do, how much money she would need to raise, seems to me to be a very pragmatic decision on her part because people have to get these things in gear if, indeed, you're going to run. And I think having that kind of an assessment early on is sort of what a smart candidate would do.

On the other hand, Wolf, the more we talk about this, the more there's the sort of question game going on and the less that really helps her because the last thing she wants to be again is the presumptive front- runner. But, guess what, that's what she will always be in the Democratic Party right now.

BLITZER: She certainly will have the - she'll be the front-runner no matter when she announces, assuming she announces at some point.

BORGER: Right. But I guarantee you that other potential Democratic candidates, like say Joe Biden, are probably having these same kind of clear-eyed meetings with their own advisers.

BLITZER: Political advisers. All right. We'll talk a little bit more about this later in "The Situation Room."

BORGER: Sure. BLITZER: Maggie Haberman is going to be joining us, as well, from Politico.

BORGER: Great.

BLITZER: Other news.

Violence clearly on the rise in Iraq right now. It's gotten worse since U.S. troops pulled out. Are they needed again to try to regain control? The secretary of state says they're not going back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Violence clearly on the rise right now in Iraq, now that U.S. troops aren't there to try to keep a lid on what's going on. In the Anbar province, for example, the situation has clearly gone from bad to worse. But make no mistake, American troops are not going back into Iraq. So says the secretary of state, John Kerry.

And recent polls show America's changing mood. CBS News tracked the trend from November 2011 to December 2013. The top and bottom lines show a steady number who say the Iraq War was not worth it, and a drop in those who say it was worth it. Republicans call it more worthwhile than Democrats or Independents.

A CNN/ORC poll shows similar results. Sixty-two percent of Americans now say the U.S. made a mistake sending troops to Iraq. Back in 2006, it was 55 percent.

Fouad Ajami is joining us from New York right now to talk about Iraq, what's going on. He's a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Fouad, this was all predictable, this violence, this battle that's unfolding right now between the Shiite leadership of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and his forces and the Sunni insurgents, if you will, some of whom are al Qaeda linked.

FOUAD AJAMI, SR. FELLOW, STANFORD'S HOOVER INSTITUTION: Well, you know, it's a -- you can say on one hand it's a chronicle of a war foretold that we should have expected this impasse between the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq. But mistakes have been made, decisions have been made that lead us to this point. And some of these decisions were made by none other than Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Nouri al Maliki has come to treat the Sunnis of Iraq, a very proud minority, located in the Anbar, right next to Syria, touched by the Syrian rebellion and by the trends of politics in Syria. He treats them like a conquered population. And we see what we see.

BLITZER: I was there in Fallujah, Fouad, back in 2005, right at the tail end of the fighting that was going on. General Petraeus was there, General Satler (ph).

AJAMI: Right.

BLITZER: I was there with General Abizade (ph) and you see some video of me walking around there in Fallujah.

AJAMI: Right.

BLITZER: But even then, and correct me if I'm wrong, the main reason why those Sunni tribal leaders were working with the U.S. and the friendly Iraqi forces is because U.S. taxpayers were putting literally millions of dollars of cash into their pockets to buy them off. Is that right?

AJAMI: Well, that's exactly right. We bought them off, we hired them, we retained them. And the idea was that once we left, we'd pass them on to Prime Minister Maliki. He would put them on government payroll and thus create loyalty to the Baghdad government in the Anbar among the Sunnis.

He did nothing of the sort. I mean he has really ruled the Anbar as a kind of alien territory. And that's really - that's the tragedy of this. And then come the Syrian rebellion. Come the winds from Syria. Come the Sunni rebellion in Syria, I think we were - we were bound to get to this point.

BLITZER: You know the U.S. decided during the final years of the Bush administration to withdraw by the end of 2011. The Obama administration went ahead and did so. They tried to get that status of forces agreement deal that would allow a residual U.S. military presence in Iraq. But Nouri al Maliki and his government, they were not willing to give any U.S. troops who remain in Iraq immunity from their own domestic prosecution. And that was unacceptable to the U.S. That's why the U.S. pulled out. Why wasn't Nouri al Maliki willing to work out a deal to keep 5,000 or 10,000 American troops in Iraq?

AJAMI: You know, Wolf, that's one of the great controversies of the Iraq War. Not how we went to Iraq, that's controversial enough, but how we left Iraq. In truth, there is an argument and there's real evidence for it that the Obama administration made Nouri al Maliki an offer he was meant to refuse. They offered him a small force, a residual force, that could hardly defend itself, let alone be of use to him. So we never really negotiated in good faith - we, the Obama administration. And let's face it, that was the democratic verdict of the election of 2008. The Obama (INAUDIBLE) was hell-bent on leaving Iraq. We left Iraq and I think we see what we see.