americans have arrived on the egyptian side of the crossing so far today. ambulances have been lining up to pick up wounded palestinians who are also being allowed to leave. >> all of these people have been trapped in the war zone as israeli ground troops close in on gaza city and airstrikes rain down. this is the latest video from the idf of israeli soldiers, tanks pushing deeper into gaza. hamas' defensive lines are collapsing and militants are retreating into central gaza. this is the devastation from the second airstrike in two days on gaza's largest refugee camp. the idf says it was targeting hamas command center but the united nations human rights office is warning the high number of civilian casualties from the strikes on densely populated jabalia refuge camp could amount to war crimes. president biden is now saying he supports humanitarian pause to save hostages held by hamas in gaza including americans. >> at a campaign fundraiser last night a protester interrupted biden. you hear her calling for a ceasefire. according to reporters in the room, the president responded, quote, i think we need a pause. a pause means give time to get the prisoners out. we start with jim sciutto live in northern israel. jim, you have been on the ground there particularly in the north, particularly because of the risk of hezbollah getting involved in this. explain to us what's going on behind you. >> reporter: so, poppy, this is a measure of how seriously israel is taking the risk of a new front opening up in this war. we are right at the syria border, lebanon border a couple miles away. this is an israeli exercise combined tank unit here. another one off in the distance. these are israeli idf special forces here. they are ytraining for the real thing in the event they have to defend the northern border from greater involvement from iranian backed forces inside syria and in lebanon, of course, hezbollah chief among them. to date, we have seen a lot of clashes along this border, exchange of artillery fire just in the last 24 hours, hezbollah forces say they shot down an israeli drone. the worry is that it becomes bigger. that is, that you have hezbollah fighters attempting to come across the border in numbers or firing missiles in greater numbers and exercises like this one are designed to keep them on edge, keep israeli forces on edge in case they have to come to the country's defense in the north much like they have had to do in the south. and this is a daily event here, right, because you have some 70,000 idf forces now based in the north to defend against the possibility of such an attack. >> jim, this is one day before the expected public remarks from the leader of hamas. you keyed in on this yesterday. been talking to people about it the last 24 hours. the anxiety level, level of attention awaiting those remarks. any idea where he will land in his public statements? >> reporter: we don't know. 3:00 tomorrow local time, 9:00 eastern time, he has been largely silent since october 7th attacks. words of support, but not a public speech where he in effect announces what hezbollah's gonna do in all this and it's possible he doesn't show all his cards. but there is an enormous amount of attention focused on that speech to see if he says hezbollah's gonna get more involved. that could happen in a number of ways, on the ground. there have been a few small attempted ground incursions. it could happen by lobbing more missiles particularly at tel aviv and hezbollah armed by iran, we should note, has many thousands of missiles, medium and long-range missiles, that if they were to be launched in numbers could overwhelm israel's air defense systems like hezbollah did by firing so many rockets at the iron dome that some got through. that is another way that hezbollah can strike, either on the ground or in the air. and these operations here as they get ready to go underway are intended to be the defense against any sort of ground portion of such an attack. >> great point. a dramatically more advanced weapons capability from hezbollah than hamas. jim sciu thank you. live images where hundreds of foreign nationals are expected to be able to leave gaza today. one of the first americans to leave yesterday, dr. barbara zin, now safe and in cairo this morning. pictured here waiting it cross into egypt yesterday. she is an american pediatrician. she went to gaza for children's relief. it was organized by the palestine children's relief fund where she volunteered for years and she spoke with us earlier this morning about her experience in gaza for the last 26 days. >> i'm doing pretty well. i think i am in a hey owe of relieved to be here. i feel like feel awful for the devastation the people are going through. >> of course. we are delighted to see you are okay, you're out, but all the people you went to help and save, the children, they are not out and they may not be able to get out. how do you wrestle with that? >> well, it's difficult. i mean, part is just getting the word out about what the situation is like in gaza is important. and i think what you guys do is important and know that there is not much i can do if i stay. i wasn't able to do any pediatrics while i was there. and so my staying wasn't really helping anything. the night before last i was just woke up in the middle of the night, was checking my, you know, messages and i had an email. i can't check the email, but my husband sent me an email saying for americans to be ready the next few days, we will be notified when we are on the list for that day. i never got any other notification. i started contacting my state department contact at that point and asking is this, you know, will all my group -- we were a group of eight then with four americans. will all the americans in my group be able to move at the same time? because that was our plan. or the internationals we were with who were also sharing the same transportation be able to move at the same time. and asking all those questions and she didn't know. meantime, simultaneously, other people in my group, especially the internationals, were getting calls from their embassying saying about at the border at seven. so we got there a little before seven. 12 hours later, it was a long process, but it was a process that moved slowly. we were out on the egyptian side heading towards the -- and last night we drove to cairo. >> can you talk about how dire the conditions became especially at the end? i mean, we heard one toilet for 800 people, for example. very little food. very little clean water. >> right. right. so, so, yeah, we left gaza city. we stayed at three u.n. facilities and then at the end we were staying at a kindergarten. probably appropriate for a pediatrician, right? but they in the beginning we were in gaza city and told to move south, there were going to be intensive bombing in gaza city and there was. that's when i had that initial interview. moving south, there was still a lot of bombing. so there is really no safe place for the gazan people. we ended up for two and a half weeks in basically a parking lot that was away from the rest of the people that were -- the rest of the gazans staying there. and we were relatively lucky. but we were running out of food and water also. >> running out of food and water and sleeping in the car at the end? >> well, you had your choice. sleep in the car. you could sleep on a phone pad w foam pad with a blanket on the ground. i preferred the ground. yeah, praefrm camping the last several weeks. in the last two weeks we kept running out of water, water to flush the toilet. we were fortunate to have drinking water, which is not true of the gazans just outside the fence from us. they were running out of drinking water. and but we ran out of water for washing and sanitation. we were having more and more cases of diarrhea show up in our community of 50. so i can't imagine what it was like outside the camp, outside in the general camp area. and then at one point we -- our food, we only had enough for two days. >> so glad she is out. you can feel the burden she still bears because of all the people that can't get out. the people she went to help. >> right. her point even as we move south there were still strikes in the south, there is no safe place for the gazan people, despite the people that are in the north facing what we're seeing every single day, our colleague, who is down the south and they are showing videos every single day in his video diaries of the strikes, this is real and it's very serious and there are no safe places right now. >> so true. we are wishing her a safe flight home to her family though. and wie will fe developments. back at home, donald trump jr. expected back opt stand today. what he told prosecutors and what his brother erik could say next. and republican senators blasting their republican colleague, senator tommy tuberville over his months long hold on military promotions. >> no matter whether or not you believe it, thisis is dodoing g damagege to our mimilitary. i don't sasay that ligightly. republicans voicing frustrations with alabama senator tommy tuberville on the floor of the senate for the first time over his pushback on the pentagon's abortion policies. they accuse him of holding up key military appointments at an important moment particularly in the middle east. listen. >> generals and admirals being held up, hang in there. some of us have your back. we have your back. >> xi jinping is watching us going, i can't believe they are not letting these guys command. >> no matter whether you believe it or not, this is doing great damage to our military. >> to undermine the safety and security of the american people doesn't make any sense to me. >> simply a, in my opinion, abuse of the powers we have as senators. >> i really respect men of their word. i do not respect men who do not honor their word. >> that was iowa's joni ernst, noting tuberville suggested a willingness to consider individual poimments and then proceeded to object again and again. live on capitol hill with much more on this. it's just so notable to hear, particularly those republican senators, calling out their republican senate colleague over this. >> reporter: that's right. it certainly was very striking. this was a four-hour dramatic confrontation made even more dramatic by the fact that senator tuberville was on the floor of the senate while his republican colleagues were standing up and trying to push these nominees through. and what he did in response is stood up one by one and tried to rebuff and reject etach and evey one of the nominees one by one as they were brought up. here is a little bit of how he responded last night. >> i respectfully disagree with my colleagues about the effect of my hold on readiness. my hold is not affecting readiness. but i will keep my hold in place until the pentagon follows the law or the democrats change the law. every day this continues is a day that democrats think abortion is more than the nomination and our military. >> now, the process of confirming military nominees is normally very routine, very typically a very easy process, but tuberville has been holding this up for months because of an unrelated opposition to a pentagon policy of abortion, expanding access to abortions, to service members and their families and support of thouse abortions. interestingly, while many republican colleagues here might agree with him on the policy, this policy change that went into effect in the pentagon in february, they definitely disagree on the approach here and that was clear on the senate floor last night with all that frustration boiling over. >> certainly was. thank you for the reporting from the capitol. donald trump jr. expected back in a courtroom today for a second day of testimony in the civil fraud trial against the family and the trump organization. the lawsuit accuses don jr. and his brother eric of a scheme to inflate their father's net worth to gain benefits like loans and insurance terms. it's one the many court cases involving the former president and the recent legal proceedings are giving the country a window into his mindset as he fights for a return the white house. trump on the attack criticizing the process. democrats, even judges. that rhetoric has cost him in the courtroom to some degree but has been fueling his campaign. jeff zeleny has more. >> reporter: the inflammatory rhetoric that's gotten donald trump into hot water in the courtroom -- >> this judge is very partisan judge. >> reporter: is the fuel of his political campaign. >> you have to get out and you have to fight like hell because he ithese are dirty players. >> reporter: the former president is waging a campaign of vengeance. attacking judges, going after prosecutors, and raising the spector of violence. >> we will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. shot. >> reporter: in his third presidential bid, retribution has become a far louder rallying cry. he suggested mark milley, the former chairman. joint chiefs of staff, should be executed for treason. he joked about the attack on former speaker nancy pelosi's husband. implored supporters to drive away his enemies. >> 2024 is our final battle. we will demolish the deep state. expel the war mongers, get them all out of our government. >> reporter: while the legal challenges are linked with his presidential campaign, the disconnect is jarring. even major court developments lie i can a tearful guilty plea from his form layer -- >> i would have declined to represent dupt. i look back with deep remorse. >> reporter: hasn't changed the view of many loyal trump supporters. >> there is more than you think that are in favor of trump and felt that the last election was stolen and we just want what's ours. >> reporter: lorie saw the former president this week in iowa. she is unbothered by criticism and dismissive of his republican rivals whom she believes should step aside. >> they are nothing but a distraction and annoyance, like a mosquito or a fly. you just want to -- yeah, poof them away. let's get down to the meat, the real politics. let's get down to what trump has to say. >> reporter: and trump has a lot to say, stoking anger and rallying supporters to his defense. >> i promise you this. if you put me back in the white house, the reign will be over and america will be a free nation once again. >> reporter: jeff zeleny, cnn, washington. >> let's bring in scott jennings. scott, the opponent of the former president, ron desantis, made an interesting point i think which is one that we all know, but the candidate saying it outloud that the legal cases starting with the new york d.a.'s case really shifted the dynamics of this race when that first happened and he never has recovered sense, paraphrasing to some degree. is that going to change at all? >> not in the republican primary. if you look at the national surveys and you look at some of the state by states, trump continues to go up and up and up. republicans don't believe it and they think that this election in general is a chance to get vindication for these court cases, for the impeachments, for russia, policy disputes. now, the question is, will general election voters view it that way? i have my doubts. i think if trump is convicted of a felony in any case, there will be a cohort of voters who don't want to associate that i franchise with a convicted felon. that could be enough to scramble his re-election plans. of course, on the democratic side the scrambling could be if the third-party candidates have ballot access in enough states. sosia situation here where the electorate could find themselves very unsatisfied with either a convicted felon or president they think is too old to serve a second term. >> what about the president disregarding the gag orders that judges placed on him in some of these cases? clearly, i think making the calculations, scott, that the legal price is worth the political gain. >> yeah, no question. that would be off brand to follow the rules and to do what, you know, the people who are persecuting us want us to do. i mean, i think he will continue to violate it. i mean, that's the brand. it's worth it for him to thumb his nose at the system here. so i am not surprised at all. i think it's part of the strategy. i think republicans who for him strongly appreciate it. that's what they want him to do. they think something is weird if he didn't. >> even if it lands him in jail? ty cobb, one of the president's attorneys way back when, said he thinks if he keeps violating the gag orders, the president could spend a little time in jail. >> if they throw donald trump in jail, if you think people -- his people support him now, throw him in jail and see what happens. i mean, the argument he is making is they are using the legal system to try to keep you from, you know, having your day at the ballot box next november. that would be further evidence. so, i mean, i think he ought to face the same laws and consequences any of the rest of us in the same circumstances, but the reaction to that, the political reaction to that to me is quite obvious. >> scott, i don't want to go off brand myself and ask about policy instead of politics here in these dynamics in the race, but as all this is going on, we have written some of it, "the new york times" wrote great stories about the outside group of former trump advisors planning for the 2025 inauguration, how different it will be, how they will have loyalists willing to do what very conservative republican lawyers in the last administration were not willing to do. i know thur familiar with those republicans and laws and also the policies they are talking about here. what your read on it when you see that? one of the biggest weaknesses of the first trump administration it couldn't deliver from the executive branch unless there was some agency issue. they are saying now they will be able to. >> well, i think what they are saying is, is that in the first term we didn't go far enough because we didn't have the right people in place and maybe didn't have the full understanding of how to go far enough. now they are saying we will get smarter people, better people, and, frankly, people willing to challenge the norms and guardrails that exist, you know, for most presidential administrations. i think what you are referencing -- i read that they are saying federal list society lawyers -- >> yes, exactly. >> we will find lawyers who will go beyond that. >> i mean, that's one way to run a railroad. and i worry about it because we have argued -- republicans argued that democrats have challenged norms, challenged institutions, have tried to go around the constitution. so if you are also promising to do that, to me it portends a very unstable future. part of the waye run the railro in the u.p.s., this is the way things work, operate inside that. sometimes you win. sometimes you don't. to say you are going outside of that, it's a troubling thing. >> the fed sock squishes. >> oh, phil. >> always. >> always how everybody thinks of -- scott, appreciate you, man. thank you. ahead, a group of muslim leaders in minnesota announcing they will not support a biden re-election bid over his handling of the israel/hamas war as the senate grapples with getting aid to israeael. senator r dick durbibin here ne. we are going to continue to -- it israel has the right to -- and a responsibility to defend citizens from terror and it needs do so in a manner consistent with international and humanitarian law. the prioritizes protection of citizens. >> that was president biden speaking yesterday in minnesota. biden and his top officials increasingly facing tough questions about the mounting civilian deaths from israel's strikes