nonsense once and for all. that's from the president. this comes as he is preparing for this crucial international trip this week to the g20 summit, hamburg, germany, where his face to face meeting with russian president vladimir putin has gone from a more informal sidelines talk to now this full fledged bilateral meeting. so we begin the hour with ryan brown. the launch triggered an emergency meeting here of president trump's national security team. what are you hearing from the pentagon about the launch in terms of the precise missile that was used, and next moves. >> reporter: well, that's right, brooke, in fact, this meeting was convened in part to make an exact determination as to what exactly was fired yesterday by north korea. initially, the u.s. military put out a statement calling it an intermediate range missile, something we've seen before, but now in a revised assessment, the military's now saying that it's highly likely that it was an icbm, intercontinental ballistic missile, that had two stages, so it fired, and then it had this

booster rocket that fired again. so, something that a little bit more technological sophistication being displayed by pyongyang in this most recent test. so now that they've identified it as an icbm, options are being considered. we're told potentially diplomatic options, attempting to increase sanctions, kind of rally the international community to enforce tougher sanctions against north korea, something that's been tried before. also military options, potentially deploying additional assets, ships, troops, airplanes to south korea to the region in order to reassure japan and south korea in the face of that north korean threat. some kind of show of force, potentially, from the u.s. these with the kind of things potentially being considered as options now that north korea has displayed this pretty new capability, this two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile test that travelled, as you said, into the sea of japan. so this is all something that military planners are looking at carefully. >> ryan brown, thank you very

much. in washington. all of this happening as we learn that presidents trump and putin will no longer have a brief on the go sidelines meeting. instead, it will be this face to face sitdown at the g20. michelle is on this. she's our cnn senior diplomatic correspondent. what do we know now with this new wrinkle being north korea. what's on the table at this talk? >> reporter: we know it's going to focus on syria, obviously. that's one area where russia can really have some sway and work with the u.s. in the fight against isis. what's complicated that, of course, are many, many things. not the least of which is russia's continued support for syrian president assad so that's such a weighty, complicated subject to discuss, but then there's plenty else. there's the situation of continued violence in ukraine, the fact that russia has not given back crimea to ukraine and the u.s. has insisted on that. there's the sanctions involved. there's, of course, the russian meddling in the u.s. election, but it is doubtful, at this

point, according to white house sources, that the president is planning to bring that up. now, what we also know is that there's no set agenda at this point. it's going to be a formal bilateral meeting that gives them a lot of time, so it could come up. but that sort of, at this point, informalized set of discussions has also caused some concern, even within the president's own national security council as to, you know, is putin going to be steering the ship here. >> right. >> is president trump going to be able to get his points across without giving too much to putin or legitimatizing some of the behaviors that the u.s. is, frankly, furious about, and you know, should do something about. so, you hear opinions on both sides as to how important it is that president trump bring up the russian hacking. you know, it's not as if things

would change considerably if he didn't bring it up, and it is true that it can be brought up in other ways, but there are a lot of voices out there right now, including republican voices, who feel it's important to really get that out there on the table and establish some boundary as to how president trump himself feels about this. >> there is much to deconstruct ahead of this big putin/trump meeting, which we'll do here in just a second. michelle, thank you so much. but first, for more on this north korean launch, bruce joins me now. he's a former cia deputy division chief for korea. so, bruce, thank you so much for being with me, and as we're learning, as ryan was just reporting out from the pentagon, it was a probable two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile. explain to us what that means, how there was a second stage booster, and how that's significant. >> well, any kind of more complicated missile, such as a second or third stage, if it's

successful, shows that north korea has made technological developments. in the past, north korea has had other two or three-stage missiles that they've launched in the past. what's particularly significant about this is although the actual range was short, it was lofted to a very high trajectory and experts are assessing that had it been flown on a normal trajectory, it could have gone, perhaps, 6700 kilometers. anything over 5500 kilometers is considered an icbm. that's likely not the full range of the missile, maybe just this flight. >> and i should point out that one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is that you were just not too long ago over there. when were you over there? >> well, i met with north korean officials last month in sweden where they emphasized that denuclearization is totally off the table. there's nothing that south korea or the u.s. can offer, and then

they concluded with, accept us as a nuclear state, willing to either talk about a peace treaty or fight. >> wow. we'll get to options in a second. but with the news today, bruce, do you think this officially puts the u.s. on notice that they are capable, could be capable, of hitting u.s. mainland? >> certainly. four u.s. four-star generals in the past have said that they either assume or have to assume for planning purposes that north korea already has the capability of hitting the united states with a nuclear weapon. they have another missile that was be launched from a fixed site. this is a road mobile, the launch yesterday. that fixed site, the missile, that's estimated to have a range of 10,000 or even 13,000 kilometers, which is all the way down to miami. so they've had the capability in the past but from a fixed site, we still don't know whether

they've been able to miniaturize and mount a warhead to those longer range missiles. >> that's the thing. it's one thing to have a missile with this kind of range. it's another thing to actually miniaturize a nuclear warhead and attach it. that's the fear, right? that's the question, when that is a real possibility. >> well, experts assume or assess that the medium range ballistic missile is already nuclear capable and south korea and japan are under a nuclear threat today. north korea has had successes in a submarine launch ballistic missile, two different intermediate range missiles that can hit guam. so if those aren't nuclear capable yet, we know they're on that path of development. but certainly south korea and japan are under a nuclear threat today. >> well, despite what you're saying, i know that you know that the president of the united states has said that an icbm wouldn't happen. today his response to this missile was questioning kim jong un, essentially saying, does this guy have anything better to do with his life.

you having just talked to north koreans, do you think, a, bruce, that he's still sort of coming to grips with north korea's intentions, and b, what do you think kim jong un is thinking with this sort of taunt from the president? >> there's always been a lot of, i think, disagreement about, you know, north korea's actual capabilities, and we have to, you know, make certain assumptions, even within the intelligence community. so again, we may not know where they are on the development path, but we certainly know what their objectives are, and the president can say it won't happen, but obviously, this one did. you know, this test doesn't mean that it's actually deployable, but clearly, they're going to be doing a continuing test. we also expect another nuclear test, which would be their six, which would be providing additional progress on their nuclear weapons systems. so, i think, you know, the president and others are always trying to consider what options we have. some have suggested a preemptive attack to prevent north korea from completing development of

the icbm. that would significantly raise the risk of an all-out war on the peninsula. some have advocated a return to diplomacy but we've had eight international agreements with north korea, all failed. south korea has tried diplomacy repeatedly. they have 240 agreements with the north. they've all failed. >> what are our options? what are u.s. options moving forward? >> well, we have certainly, we need to make sure that ourselves and our allies are sufficiently defended against the spectrum of the north korean military threat. and that includes conventional forces as well as a nuclear umbrella guarantee to our allies and also ballistic missile defense. that's the thaad missile defense system the u.s. wants to deploy in south korea as well as having sufficient ground base intercepters in alaska and hawaii as well as reviewing the strategic missile defense systems president obama cut. but also, we need to increase the pressure. there's a lot of misperceptions about that north korea, as president obama said, is the most heavily sanctioned, the

most cutoff nation on earth. he's flatout wrong. the u.s. has been holding back on a number of sanctions and only last week, the u.s. sanked a chinese bank and we know there's evidence for a lot more. >> right. in talking with the north koreans, just last month, bruce, what else did you take away from that? that you can share. >> right. that they were just very emphatic that they were not interested in denuclear azing or returning to negotiations. and that when we tried to offer different options or suggest options, they became irritated. they just said, stop thinking of different options. we are a nuclear state. and they were much more self-assured self-assured, even cockier given the recent successes in their nuclear missile test. >> did they say anything about otto warmbier or the other americans that were over there. >> our meetings were in between times that state department official was meeting with them. we didn't know that at the time but certainly in the meeting we

raised not only mr. otto warmbier but the other three american detainees and pointed out that they were on trumped up charges, excessive punishments and if north korea wanted to improve the atmosphere for any kind of negotiations, that releasing them would certainly improve the atmosphere. >> did they appear open to that in. >> i think they took it on board, but it didn't seem to gain any traction. >> okay. bruce klinger, thank you so much. happy fourth of july to you. coming up next, why vladimir putin and not president trump may be the one bringing up election meddling in this highly anticipated face-to-face. hear why. also, more than 40 states now defying president trump's request for voter information in his controversial quest to investigate fraud. is this over before it even begins? and at one point, republicans were begging him to run for president. thinking he was the next star of the party and now, chris christie, sunbathing with a 15% approval rating.

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booking.yeah! the president is spending this fourth of july getting in some private time before his public events. moments ago, he left his golf club in sterling, virginia. this will be the 36th day of his presidency that he's gone to a property bearing his name. for more on that, let's bring in cnn's diane gallagher who is

live on the national mall in washington. diane, how is the first family spending the fourth of july? >> reporter: yeah, so, after coming back from virginia, president trump is going to join the first lady and parts of his family along with military families for a picnic. about 5:00 on the white house lawn and then afterwards, they're going to watch the fireworks show from that area, brooke, just a select number of military families chosen, kind of a low key event compared to years in the past at the white house. >> in terms of the festivities tonight, let's talk about everyone else who will be squeezing into the national mall. what's security like? what will bit be like? >> reporter: brooke, this is sort of the opposite of low-key here. they're talking about at least 500,000 people squeezing into this area and they have set up security accordingly. we noticed a difference. there's a lot more fencing and i talked to park police, capitol police. they won't go into what changes they have made but brooke, they said they did take into

consideration those soft target attacks that have been happening around the globe over the past year. of course those vehicle attacks into crowds of people that we saw in nice, that we've seen in other parts of the world right now, and so they have taken that into consideration. there are at least ten different security checkpoints you have to go through. they search your bags. they will only allow certain types of thing to be brought in to watch the fireworks here on the national mall as well as that concert over closer to the capitol and so security pretty tight but there are a lot of people. they've been out all day. they're enjoying festivals, the parade earlier. we were expecting a little bit of weather. it might be okay so we could be looking at even larger crowds a little bit later this afternoon. >> looking at that pretty, pretty picture of the washington monument there. just gorgeous. enjoy your fourth, everyone. just stay safe but have fun. have fun. diane gagge diane gallagher, thank you. meantime, president trump getting set for his second foreign trip after a rocky debut

at nato headquarters earlier this year. he will finally meet face-to-face with the man who meddled in the 2016 presidential election, vladimir putin. the two will sit down at the g20 summit friday in what could prove the most important meeting of that time. happy fourth of july to you, my friend. >> you too, brooke. thank you. >> thank you. first up, you know, the president's meeting with putin this week. this whole thing went from this more informal sidelines chat to this full-fledged bilateral meeting, no longer that pull-aside that we knew happened between president obama and putin two years ago. that said, what message does this kind of meeting send to russia? >> i don't know that the format of the meeting sends any particular message to russia, but i do think it gives the president a better opportunity here, a more structured meeting with a more concise and concrete agenda, more people at the table, a chance to get into a deeper discussion on issues. i mean, if you're looking for a content-heavy meeting, then this is probably the best way to do that, rather than an informal

pull-aside so i think the white house should take full advantage of this and really use it to try to drive the ball a little bit forward on some of these issues with russia. >> what we're hearing from the white house, the influencing the election thing, won't be brought up, at least on behalf of, you know, the president trump's piece. apparently with syria and cryo ukraine to be the priorities and i think north korea will be a piece of that. >> i think north korea will be on the agenda now. i honestly don't think it's going to be a major part of the agenda between putin and trump but it will something more between xi and trump, probably. i don't know that it will be a big issue. you can expect the russians to bring up old complaints. they will bring up the compounds that president obama kicked them out of. they'll bring up concerns about counterterrorism and cooperation. >> let me actually stop you, admiral, because on those compounds in long island and maryland, that belonged to the russians, they were taken by the obama administration precisely

because of the influence in the election. so in this funny twist, it's not like the president trump will be bringing up meddling but it will actually be president putin. >> he actually will. >> you with me? >> i think you're right. and i've said this before. and i know i've seen the reporting that he has no intention of bringing up election meddling. i hope that that changes. i hope that he does use this. he has a prime opportunity, his first sitdown with president putin to say, look, we know what you did, we can't tolerate it going forward and i'm okay if he doesn't want the bring it up in the past because of his own concerns about legitimacy. i don't agree but i get it. we have elections come up in '18 and '20 and then move off and get to other issues. clearly there's a lot of things between the united states and russia that are in disagreement that we need to work through. >> you mentioned xi a second ago. let me ask you about china because we know russia and china, putin and xi will be meeting today apparently to work on the korean crisis.

and i think the timing is noteworthy, admiral, because, you know, this is just days before the putin/trump meeting. do you think at all, as calculating as putin is, that he is, you know, looks to be cozying up with china and not the u.s. on north korea. >> yeah. clearly, i don't think the timing is coincidental given the g20. i agree with you there. but look, i mean, russia and china have been sort of doing this little dance for quite some time, even before trump was president, to try to leverage what they think is a diminished u.s. influence in the region and in the world writ large. so i also don't think, those two countries don't share a lot of common interests. there are some, but not a lot. and i wouldn't think that you're going to look at some sort of now new alliance between them. this is really more a messaging opportunity for them than it was anything else and if you look at the statement that they put out today, nothing in there, it's kind of high handed, it's a little bit preachy, and nothing in there is really going to

stick with respect to affecting our alliance commitments with south korea. this whole freeze for freeze thing is not going to happen. there's no way the united states is going to stop operating with the south koreans or pull back the thaad deployment. it was really more a statement of, you know, to annoy, i think, than anything else. >> okay. admiral kirby, as always, thank you so much. >> you bet. just in, we are getting word that 44 states are now defying president trump's question for voter information as part of his fraud investigation. we'll sort out fact from fiction with a woman who has studied voter fraud extensively. plus new jersey governor chris christie still taking heat for lounging on a closed beach, a beach he closed himself, but he says at least he wasn't caught with a blonde. we'll take a look at the incredible fall from popularity for the man once considered a presidential front runner. ♪ ♪oh, my love ♪my darlin'

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it's a new kind of network. xfinity mobile. now to a conflict some are saying is partisan, others just contend this is about privacy. more than 40 states, we're counting now 44 and growing, defying this request from the president's commission to study voter fraud and it's not just democrats here. it's not just democratic officials balking at giving over information like voter names, addresses, birthdays, political affiliations, criminal history, last four digits of your social security number, but also republicans. republican secretaries of state are also refusing to comply, like the one in louisiana. he is saying, and let me just quote him. the president's commission has quickly politicized its work by asking states for an incredible amount of voter data that i have time and time again refused to

release. you remember this question of voter fraud. it's come up because of president trump. let me just take you back and remind you. >> so you brought in congressional leaders to the white house. you spoke at length about the presidential election with them. telling them that you lost the popular vote because of millions of illegal votes, 3 to 5 million illegal votes. >> that was supposed to be a confidential meeting, and you weren't supposed to go out and talk to the press. >> but 3 million to 5 million illegal votes. >> well we're going to find out but it could very well be that much. >> that has been entirely unfounded. myrna perez is with me. she is back. thank you so much for coming in. >> glad to be here. thank you. happy fourth of july. >> thank you. you too. explain to me what the president's commission can actually collect. what's okay? >> well, part of the problem is that the whole structure behind the commission is one that is dubious and people are very skeptical of it. it was created basically to

justify the president's outlandish claims that massive voter fraud -- >> where there's no evidence. >> right, when there's no evidence. and he staffed it with like a who's who of vote suppressers. certainly a commission, a presidential commission, can conduct research, they can conduct hearings. and nobody objects to being -- nobody objects to that kind of research. what people are concerned about is that the requests that were sent to the states last week were vast. they implicated issues of privacy and state law. >> on the issues of privacy, and i can understand the frustration because the premise is unfounded according to you and other people i've talked to. that said, mark lawsuitter says we're not asking for anything that's not already out there. if it's public, what's wrong with us asking about it. >> this is a great thing to clear up for the public. every state allows some sort of way to have inspecting their voter rolls. but most states have limits on

what information you can get, how you can get it, how you can use it. whether or not you can distribute it to other people, and once a state passes this data over this commission that then has to make everything publicly available, they can't enforce their own state laws. so one very concrete example is if you had a law in your state that said you can't use the information for commercial use, once they give it to the commission, what's to stop a company from looking at it and sending promotional material to everyone. it's different >> sure and therein lies some of the frustration. i remember when the story first came out, i think it was last week and you had governors and secretaries of state saying this isn't okay, i'm not giving you my information, terry mcauliffe of georgia wrote, i have no intention of honoring this request. virginia conducts fair, honest and democratic elections. now you have republican secretaries of state saying no, no, no, federal government, don't you medal in my state processes so this seems less

like a partisan issue and more like a states' rights issue. >> maybe. i think the commission put the states in a terrible position. one, it caused a bunch of legal problems for them because again they can't enforce their own laws about how you maintain certain privacy aspects of the voter rolls, notwithstanding the fact that in some ways they're public. two, it created a political problem for them. voters do not understand why some politician in kansas is asking for their social security number. they know that the voter rolls can be inspected, but this feels funny. it feels invasive. all the military members that are suddenly getting identified as military members and having their addresses, and so to put that on these states is putting them in an untenable position. >> no, i know, and i just could hear the white house saying it's not just some politician in white house, it's kris kobach. that is what they would say. myrna, thank you so much. we'll stay on it and see what happens. 44 are saying no, does this even happen? we don't even know yet. thank you very much for coming

in on the holiday. but let's talk chris christie. absolutely unapologetic, the new jersey governor, once a republican star, caught on camera relaxing in the sun on a state-run beach that he himself closed because of this budget battle with new jersey lawmakers. he didn't close beaches on just any summer weekend, keep in mind. this is the fourth of july. perhaps the summer's biggest celebration, and social media criticism exploded. here is how chris christie dismissed it. >> sitting there with a baseball hat and shorts and a t-shirt, talking to my wife and talking to our guests. i don't apologize for it. i don't back away from it. and i think my poll numbers show that i don't care about political optics. now if they had flown that plane over that beach and i was sitting next to a 25-year-old blonde in that beach chair next to me, that's a story. >> that's a sound byte of the day. michael singleton is with us.

he's a cnn political commentator and a republican strategist. sher michael, my goodness. how the mighty have fallen. i mean, i remember hurricane sandy and the embrace between president obama, governor christie, that was a real moment and at one point, he was seen as white house feramaterial, republicans were begging him to run. >> he was, brooke, and if you recall, he also was the chairman of the republican's governors association. i mean, governor christie for a lot of republicans, particularly establishment republicans, was someone that a lot of us looked to, including myself, as a potential candidate for the white house. and what you have seen is a complete fall from grace. i believe his approval rating is around 15%, the lowest of any governor in 20 years and it's honestly sad when you look at it brooke, because at this point, i watch the press conference and i've read several articles about it, and what it shows is that it's someone who's given up. he's essentially given up.

he ran for president and he failed. he wanted to be an appointment by president trump. jared kushner made sure that did not occur. and now his own state has had a government shutdown, which does not look good for him who's had a career where he said i'm a strong leader, a decisive leader. well, mr. governor, if you're such a strong leader, you should have been able to work with your state legislator to keep government open and unfortunately, he was not able to do so. >> but shermichael, help me understand this. when you think of governor christie, he was blunt and let me tell it how it is before even candidate trump, you know, rolled on to the map. and so, you know, the whole, let trump by trump, this is a man who wound up in the white house. but chris christie, being chris christie, left him with that 15% approval rating and on an empty beach. why? >> well, look, i think new jersey is slightly different. i would not use new jersey as an example to extrapolate across the entire country, which would indicate why president trump did so well with his brash style. >> but you know ha i'm saying.

>> and i guess one could correla correlate, he's similar to trump, why is his approval rating at 15%. i was talking to a good friend of mine and she mentioned something that i did not think about as a republican and amongstly in my moments of reflection, i had to deeply think about this. a lot of people in this country are so sick and tired about what's going on in government, they're tired of leaders who are saying it's my way or the highway, i know what is good for you, i know what's best for you, and if you look nationally across the country, a lot of americans are upset with president trump because of that same attitude. we're divided. there's a lot of division. there's a lot of strife and i think new jersey is representative of the country by and large. >> maybe that is where some of this angst and frustration is coming to, just using new jersey as this microcosm. shermichael singleton, we'll see what happens to him in a couple months when he is out of this office. happy holiday to you. >> you too. thank you. we do have more on our breaking news today on north korea

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the missile may have landed right around here. it's about 200 miles off of japan's coast. in the hours after the launch, the president responded by mocking kim jong un on twitter, asking if he, quote, has anything better to do with his life. to discuss, i've got david sanger with me today. cnn political and national security analyst. he has been writing about north korea for 30 years for the "new york times." david sanger, nice to see you. let's talk about this. because we're hearing now that, you know, experts are saying it's likely a two-stage icbm. it was the highest altitude ever reached by any north korean missile, so in your assessment, does this officially put the u.s. on notice? >> it pretty much does. this is exactly the pace we thought they'd be on, brooke, but it's just moving faster than i think most american intelligence officials suspected that it would. the fact that it landed only 500 miles or so from where it took off is not the meaningful

statistic here. it's, as you indicated, that it went to such incredible height, about 1,700 miles in just a very sharp parabola, and if you flatten that out, you'd get to something that could reach alaska. couldn't reach hawaii. couldn't reach los angeles. but clearly, given the kind of progress they've made, that day may not be all that far away. >> that day may not be all that far away because the real fear is having a missile with this kind of range but then also miniaturize a nuclear warhead and attach it. you wrote a piece for the "new york times" today where you said kim jong un could probably do this in the next few years, david. so what is the u.s. do about that? >> well, there are a couple of ways to think about this, brooke. one is, we've been within range of russian previously with that soviet missiles, chinese missiles, for some time. decades. and we followed a path called

containment. the reason we don't want to follow that path with north korea is we don't believe they're necessarily rational actors. but more importantly, anything that we would try to do in the pacific to come to the aid of our allies, the calculus would change by virtue of the fact that we know that they could well possibly reach our shores. and we don't have that much confidence in our missile defenses. so that's what's driven every american president to look at this problem. and then when they look at it, what they discover is that the cost of doing an attack on their missile or nuclear facilities is so high, including the potential counterattack on seoul, which you'd probably lose a city of 10 million people, that no american president's been willing to do it. >> yikes. you saw the president's response. i read the tweet. i think this is before we knew this was this icbm where he said, does this guy have anything better to do with his life. you know, you've been covering the leaders in north korea.

how does that sit with kim jong un? does the president appreciate the threat? >> well, you know, i think kim jong un would say, no, i don't have anything better to do with my life because this is all about survival for kim jong un. his view of the world is completely different than ours. his view is that the united states is out to topple his regime. he looks at a country like libya, which gave up most of its nuclear technology. it was in a very nascent stage. and then when the people turned against him, the united states as allies came in and helped finish him off. he said, i'm not going to do that. so when we go into this discussion of having a negotiation, which i think may well be the only option the united states has left, but the goal of the negotiation is to get kim jong un to give up all of his nuclear weapons and his missiles, which is the refrain of many american administrations, that's not

likely to happen. he views this as his only ticket to survival. >> but what about china? because you know, what was it, a couple of weeks ago and the tweet from trump and how he had been trying, but it wasn't so successful with north korea, but today, we know that putin and xi met. where does president trump stand in this whole world leader triangle? >> well, president trump's had quite an education in the past six or seven months. when i interviewed him during the campaign, he said, china can solve this problem overnight. and when he met xi jinping down at his resort in florida, the president said, i'm pretty confident xi jinping will solve this problem for us. he's now not so confident. and he's not confident about it because he has discovered what each one of his predecessors have discovered. the chinese don't want north korea to have a nuclear weapon but they really don't want chaos on their borders, they don't want a collapsed north korea, they don't want south korea and

american allies against the chinese border. and as a result, they're not likely to push kim jong un to truly give anything up. and kim jong un knows this. he's figured it out just as his father and grandfather figured it out, so the chinese influence may be great, but i don't think the chinese are willing to use it. and that's what will make this meeting between president trump and president xi and then a separate one between president trump and vladimir putin at the end of the week in hamburg so interesting. >> you are good, david sanger. you are good. thank you so much. >> thank you. coming up next -- thank you. coming up, the pope steps up his support for the parents of a terminally ill baby in the uk making a big, big offer today. we'll talk to a leading expert in medical ethics about this just heartbreaking story.

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a british baby at 11 months old and dying of a terminal illness is raising questions all around the world over how far medical science should go to prolong life and now the pope is offering the vatican hospital as a possible means of keeping charlie gard on life support. this offer comes after the european court of human rights ruled in favor of a london hospital and its decision to turn off the machines that keep baby charlie alive. the vatican hospital releasing this statement, "we know that this is a desperate case and apparently there is no effective therapy. we are close to his parents with our prayers and if they wish so, we are ready to welcome their child in our structure for the time he has left to live." i want to bring in jonathan moreno, he's a director at the pennsylvania center for biomedical ethics. if you were advising this mother

and father, just from what you know, what you've read about this case, what would you have them do? >> you know, the tragedy here, brooke, is not only that this is a baby that is dying but also that this has gotten to this point. i mean, what normally happens when a baby is dying in the hospital is that the hospital does a full court press, brings in clergy, brings in counselors, meets with the family. i believe what is happening right now, brooke, is that they are trying to plan with the parents how this baby will die. you know, will it be disconnected from the ventilator, and then the mother and the father can cradle the baby while he's dying. i have a feeling that's what's going to happen now. >> we know president trump has also stepped in. apparently the white house is in touch with these parents. he's also saying, hey, we'd love to help you here in the u.s. i mean, jonathan, is it such a bad thing that the u.s. has a

reputation of wanting to help prolong a life at any cost? >> well, you could perfectly well understand that everybody wants to show compassion. lot of ways my guess is that the doctors, very uncharacteristically for doctors to take care of a very sick baby, feel that going full bore and extending the life of this baby may be causing the baby suffering right now rather than helping the baby. and that's a very hard, intricate balance and they believe -- i think the doctors believe that really the best interests of the baby do not involve extending his life. >> do you even know if there is a hospital or a specialty center here in the u.s. that specializes in might connoe oe

mitochondrial dna replacement program? >> there is one that tries to learn more by seeing this baby, but in general the talk of transfer happens in these cases, but then when you come down to it, it really doesn't happen. the transfer turns out not to be possible for one reason or another, the baby may not survive the transfer. i'm afraid really what we're talking about now is keeping the baby comfortable, and as the doctors seem to believe, making sure that the baby does not suffer unnecessarily. >> finally, from a sheer human standpoint, and i know we're both thinking of the parents here, they know their little baby is going to die. how do you prepare for that? >> well, brooke, what's unusual

about this is that it's become such a public matter. and i feel like the parents -- it's harder for them because there are these very generous offers that are being made and are emotionally complicated and probably complicating for them. that's why it would be the best thing as always to keep as close to the patient and within the confines of the family and the caregivers as possible. i do think that's what they're trying to do right now, is to draw together and be supportive for the baby's sake. >> our thoughts to that family, jonathan mareno. thanks very much. coming up next here, a critical victory in the fight to push isis from syria. u.s.-backed forces breaking past a key wall now advancing deeper into the terror group stronghold in raqqa. cnn takes you there next.

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fourth of july parades and celebrations are under way across the country. for a number of the congressmen, the controversial health care bill is hanging over their heads and they're hearing about it from their constituents. this is where people are gathering over senator pat toomey's office, meantime in maine, susan collins has expressed concerns about the medicaid and planned parenthood funding cuts. she talked briefly to reporters after walking in a parade today. >> reporter: for all talk of when senators can go back to their districts, they'll hear about it, what, in fact, are you hearing from your constituents? >> what i've been hearing the entire recess is people telling me to be strong, that they have a lot of concerns about the health care bill in the senate,

they want me to keep working on it, but they don't want me to support it in its current form. >> reporter: what i saw when i was walking with you was it was almost like 100%. i heard nothing to the contrary. does that surprise you at all? >> it really doesn't. maine is a state that's really heavily dependent on medicaid funding. when people realize that the senate bill over the next two decades would reduce funding by 35%, they know that it affects their rural hospitals, it affects the rural nursing homes and that it would affect the most vulnerable of our citizens. so i found that mainers are very well informed about the legislation and they're deeply concerned about what it's going to mean for themselves and their

neighbors. >> reporter: still in the know. >> i'm still in the know unless the bill is dramatically changed. >> congress comes back from recess next week. [ gunshots ] gunfire in the streets of raqqa as u.s.-backed forces close in on the self-declared isis capital of syria. they just breached an ancient wall, a big strategic blow. cnn senior national correspondent nick paton walsh on the push to penetrate the heart of the city. nick? >> reporter: brooke, it is potentially a key moment in the move to take raqqa. it's about 8 kilometers and 6 miles long, the wall, and goes around the whole city in the heart of raqqa. they said they breached two substantial holes in that wall enabling the group of syrian kurdish and area fighters for

support to push on through and basically go past all the booby traps and defense positions that iraq laid out there. they've moved in very quickly in the last month or so, and they're now, it seems, about 3 kilometers away from the city center. the question really is, is this pace of progress going to sustain, or are they going to get bogged down in the dense urban areas of raqqa? there seems to be less civilians inside, for example, in mosul and iraq, people that have to deal with booby traps. there could be 150,000 less, but most importanting about 2500 isis fighters. that's not very many given the sheer ranks of opposition fighters around the american fire power at play right now.

it could be lengthy, it could be bloody, but so far it seems to move quite quickly and raqqa has lost its power center in iraq and syria. still some distance off, though, brooke. that does it for me. i'm brooke baldwin. happy fourth. "the lead" starts now. thank you, brooke. not the kind of fireworks we were hoping for. "the lead" starts right now. breaking now, the request -- news that north korea fired an intercontinental missile and how can president trump respond? countdown to the showdown. new details about the president's upcoming meeting with vladimir putin. what the ground rules will be and what it says about the relationship between the two men, the two nations right now. plus,