Return to Transcripts main page
Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Judge Rules DOGE's USAID Dismantling Likely Violates the Constitution; Judge Who Trump Says Should be Impeached Gives DOJ Another Deadline for Details on Deportation Flights; Pentagon Removed Webpage On Iwo Jima Flag-Raiser Ira Hayes As Trump Administration Cracks Down On DEI; Astronauts Splash Down After 9 Plus Months In Space; Astronauts Return To Earth, How 9 Plus Months In Space Impacts Their Health. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired March 18, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HARRY ENTEN CNN, CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Post graduate degree.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: And this isn't the -- there are more conspiracy theories as we were talking about. People believe them.
ENTEN: Yes, absolutely. I mean, look, we mentioned the JFK one, but how about Obama not born in the U.S., a quarter of Americans? How about vaccines cause autism. That's nearly a quarter of Americans and then you get 10 percent of Americans who believe the Earth is flat.
BURNETT: Stop.
ENTEN: It's crazy.
BURNETT: Two of them are here.
ENTEN: I don't even know what to say but the numbers are the numbers.
BURNETT: It's hallow Earth under the flatness.
ENTEN: Whatever.
BURNETT: All right, thanks so much and thanks to you. Anderson starts now.
[20:00:35]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Tonight on 360, Breaking news. A federal judge blocks the dismantling of USAID, saying Elon Musk's DOGE likely violated the Constitution. What it means for DOGE now.
Also, a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts after the President demands Congress impeach a judge who ruled against him. The latest development in a rapidly developing fight between the administration and federal courts.
And splashdown, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are now safely back on Earth. How they're doing after more than nine months in space. Good evening, We begin with a number of breaking legal developments. Late today, a federal judge issued one of the first rulings limiting Elon Musk and his chainsaw team at DOGE. The judge ruling that DOGE, "likely violated the United States Constitution when it gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID."
He placed a preliminary injunction on DOGE. He's not stopping them from accessing personal data of USAID employees, but ordered DOGE not to share it outside the agency. And he says they can't fire any more people who work in the rubble of what was USAID.
Now, the judge clearly is not buying the notion that Elon Musk is simply an adviser to DOGE. Citing numerous instances in which president Trump said Musk was leading DOGE. And the judge pointed out he has not been confirmed by the Senate to lead anything.
This is what the judge said in his conclusion: "Defendant's actions likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways and that these actions harm not only plaintiffs but also the public interest because they deprive the public's elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when, and how to close down an agency created by Congress."
Well, tonight, Trump told Fox he plans to appeal. We'll talk more about what that ruling means in a moment. The other legal battle we saw develop today is related to this, the shipping of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, where the U.S. will be paying the government millions of dollars to lock them into a massive prison complex, and perhaps make more videos like this highly produced one released by El Salvador's President promoting the prisoners arrival and detainment.
Yesterday, another federal judge demanded Department of Justice attorneys provide him with more information about the flights bringing them there and exactly who was on the plane. He temporarily ordered the administration to halt deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
Now, the administration responded today, but the judge is now seeking more information. This morning, President Trump went after the judge on social media. "This judge, like many of the crooked judges, I'm forced to appear before, should be impeached," he wrote.
Well, shortly after that post, a Republican Congressman from Texas said he'd introduced Articles of Impeachment against the judge for high crimes and misdemeanors.
It's not the first time, by the way. At least four such articles covering at least three judges have been filed and referred to the judiciary committee since last month. Elon Musk has also pushed the idea of impeachment for judges. He tweeted this more than a month ago: "There needs to be an immediate wave of judicial impeachments, not just one," he wrote.
But the President today calling for a specific federal judge's impeachment that was different. In less than three hours after the President did it, something happened that's pretty rare. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the highest court in our country, Justice John Roberts, issued this statement, and I am quoting "For more than two centuries," he wrote, "it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."
Well, tonight, President Trump responded.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: He didn't mention my name in the statement. I just saw it quickly. He didn't mention my name, but many people have called for his impeachment -- the impeachment of this judge. I don't --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, now, as the President indicated, Justice Roberts did not mention President Trump at all in his statement. And while it's rare for Justice Roberts to make this statement, it's not the first time.
In 2018, Justice Roberts criticized President Trump for disparagingly referring to a judge as an Obama judge. Roberts responded, "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," and went on to praise the country's independent Judiciary.
By the way, Roberts also was critical of comments made by a Democratic Party leader five years ago. He criticized Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer after he stood outside the U.S. Supreme Court during arguments in an abortion rights case, and said of the President's then two appointees to the court, "You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price." Roberts called those remarks threatening.
So, Roberts is a Chief Justice willing to ignore much of the heated rhetoric surrounding the nations Judiciary, but also, from time to time, willing to take on a top leader from either party whose comments he sees as out of bounds, particularly when it concerns threats of impeachment, something President Trump claimed he detested as well, by the way, here he is on the campaign trail back in August.
[20:05:16]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The radical left harasses our judges and harasses our justices. They scream at them. They call them names. They say they're incompetent, they're horrible. They're this, they're that. They should be impeached. They're constantly saying they should be impeached, but they're screaming.
And you know what? It has an effect on some people. But so far they've been very strong. It's really horrible. I believe it's illegal what they are doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, it seems times have changed. Joining us with more, CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins will be joined by Senator Bernie Sanders tonight at the top of the hour on "The Source."
So, we see the President there talking on Fox just in the last hour or so, citing that that Chief Justice Roberts did not mention him by name. That seems important to the President. And it's very clear Roberts did not mention him by name, but was clearly referring to what he wrote.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, it would have been extraordinary if Chief Justice John Roberts had referenced him by name.
I mean, the statement in and of itself, Anderson, is so rare to hear the Chief Justice coming out and issuing this rebuke of Trump very clearly directed toward him, since it was only hours before this morning when President Trump called for the impeachment of this judge because he issued a ruling that, frankly, Trump did not like on Saturday night when it came to the effort to use those wartime powers to deport these alleged members, gang members of a Venezuelan gang.
And so when Trump issued that call, we certainly heard it from people on the right. We had heard it from Elon Musk and others. But as the White House made clear in the briefing yesterday, President Trump himself had not gone that far yet.
He had just been saying that the Justice Department on Friday that that criticism of judges he thought unfairly influenced them. And then, of course, he himself comes out and not just criticizes the judge this morning. He goes much further than that by saying that he should be removed from the federal bench. And so, it was very clear --
COOPER: Do you think, what Roberts said -- do you think it matters to anybody in -- do you think it matters to the President? It matters to people in Trump's circle?
COLLINS: I think it matters to the President because, I mean, as we have seen as his relationship with the Supreme Court has gone up and down in waves. I mean, just remember, it was a few weeks ago when he was at his Congressional Address and he saw Chief Justice John Roberts, and he thanked him for what he did, which seemed and he said he would not forget it, which seemed to be a very clear reference to the immunity decision by the Supreme Court as the President was in the middle of several indictments, and they were testing whether or not he could be prosecuted for acts that he did while he was in office the last time.
And so, certainly, you've seen that relationship. Trump himself has criticized the Chief Justice before. But going as far as to call for this judge to be removed because he did not like this order, essentially took things to a new level clearly for the Chief Justice here. And so it was very obvious who he was referencing. Kind of surprising, actually, to see Trump dismissing it and just really shrugging it off as the way that he did in that interview just now. COOPER: Yes, and he sort of how Roberts during the meeting in Congress saying, I won't forget it, that was picked up on audio as you referenced.
Kaitlan Collins, thanks very much.
Joining me now is CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig; former chief judge for the middle district court of Pennsylvania, Johnny Jones, and CNN political commentator Xochitl Hinojosa former Director of Public Affairs at the Justice Department.
Judge Jones, how big a deal is chief justices rebuke here?
JOHNNY JONES, FORMER CHIEF JUDGE FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA: It's a very big deal, Anderson, because this is something that the very, I think, taciturn and mild mannered Chief Justice doesn't normally do. As was noted, he did it back in 2018 as you said earlier, and it happened to be again triggered by Donald Trump.
It's very remarkable. The court typically doesn't wade into these types of disputes. And the constant drumbeat of impeachment threats. And in fact, filings by the Congress, I think, now have hit a nerve at the Supreme Court. So it's very, very remarkable.
COOPER: Elie, I mean, the President's -- we're you surprised that he did this?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I was. I mean, he's done it now three times in 20 years. I don't think the Chief Justice's purpose here was to give us a primer on impeachment. I think we all understand that we don't impeach federal judges because we don't like their rulings.
I think the Chief Justice decided that this was a moment when he had to stand up for the Judiciary and think about all that's going on right now. We have these almost daily verbal attacks by the President and many others on judges.
We have other judges whose orders are either being intentionally defied or at least sort of recklessly disregarded by the Justice Department. So, the very decision by the Chief Justice to come out and say something like this, that in itself is politically fraught. But I think in his judgment, this was the moment, and that's what was called for.
[20:10:08]
COOPER: Xochitl, do you think the Justice Department has partially put out this fire by giving Judge Boasberg some of the details he wanted? They haven't -- he wants more. There's going to be another hearing tomorrow. Do you think this is going to escalate if they don't ultimately provide everything for -- essentially he wants to know who is on the flight, which they went into more details today, but not really about everybody on the flight. XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, they need to provide this. I mean, this is something where they've said that it can be sealed. The judge is willing to work with them if there is information that the public can't necessarily see. I think that the Justice Department is trying to escalate this. They like a fight with the court, especially when it comes to an issue like this.
You saw that on the filing, if the filings are not only coming from the line attorney who's working on the matter. It's everyone in leadership at the Justice Department is signed on to these filings, that is unprecedented.
COOPER: Why did they do that?
HINOJOSA: They do it to essentially escalate it a bit more and to get the attention that they're getting. I also believe that this is an issue that is close to Trump. This is something that he has promised to do. He promised to crack down on violent criminals. They like the visuals of deporting these people. I believe that the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General and the leadership there are sort of at a race and racing each other to please Trump.
And so, this is all part of the theater around it. It's interesting to me that their filing yesterday really asked the judge to sort of deescalate, and they believed that the judge was sort of taking things to the next level.
Well, I would say the Justice Department is the one escalating it. They're the ones that are picking the fight with the judge. They're the ones out there calling for impeachment. They're the ones out there bashing the judge. Something, by the way, that the Justice Department normally doesn't do.
And whenever you have a President commenting on a matter before a court, it is working at the Justice Department. You normally cringe when that happens. If I were working at the Justice Department and Joe Biden would have called for the impeachment of a judge, I can assure you that there would have been a public statement from the Justice Department saying that we disagree.
COOPER: Judge Jones, I mean, White House aides have been saying in recent days that federal district judges don't have the authority to rule against the President on a host of issues. Stephen Miller said, judges have no authority to administer the Executive Branch. What do you say to that?
JONES: I think Mr. Miller probably needs to take a Civics lesson, because that's just patently untrue. I saw that interview and, you know, he got himself overheated talking about his version of what he thinks judges can do and what jurisdiction they have.
And, Anderson, I got to tell you something else that I think has been a little bit forgotten, and I find this interesting. President Trump's late sister, who passed away a couple of years ago, Maryanne Trump Barry, is a former United States district judge and then was put on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
I happen to know her a bit. She was an excellent judge, very decent person, and, you know, Donald Trump knows judges and he understands what judges do. And to intentionally misstate, as Mr. Miller and others in the White House have done, what judges have the jurisdiction and the power to do and to trivialize federal judges the way the administration is doing, they're playing a dangerous game here with Judge Boasberg, you know, who set another deadline tomorrow and this is like, you know, the force continuum. This is escalating day after day.
So, tomorrow is going to be another showdown. We'll see what happens.
COOPER: Yes, Elie, two things I just want to quickly go over with you. We mentioned on the DOGE ruling, what happens? I mean, this is limited to USAID, what does this mean for Elon Musk in DOGE?
HONIG: It's like, how do you put the broken vase back together, right, because DOGE has already been dismantled. What the Judge --
COOPER: USAID has.
HONIG: USAID, exactly. What the judge does, in the opinion is basically say, first of all, Elon Musk was acting as a Cabinet official when he has no presidential nomination and confirmation.
And second of all, it's up to Congress, not the Executive Branch, to dismantle an agency. What the judge tries to do, though, is freeze the status quo, she says, basically, all current employees and people on administrative leave, they can come back. They're to be given back their offices, their e-mail. But it really doesn't do anything for people who've already been fired.
COOPER: Also, just there's a ruling on transgender troops.
HONIG: Yes, very big ruling that just came down from a federal district court judge. This is going to be the next major discrimination case to make its way through the courts, I think, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The federal district judge said the policy of banning transgender troops is unconstitutional, appears to be unconstitutional discrimination without a good reason for it. Therefore, this district judge has put that policy on hold. That will be appealed very quickly.
COOPER: That literally happened just moments ago. Elie, thank you, Judge Jones, appreciate it and Xochitl Hinojosa also as well, thank you.
[20:15:12]
What Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to do in Ukraine during a two-hour phone call with President Trump today. We'll have that.
And Clarissa Ward takes us to a frontline city in Ukraine, Kherson, where the streets are virtually empty because Russian drones in the sky, residents there say they are hunting for targets.
Also tonight, why is the heroic history of the Tuskegee Airmen, America's first Black military pilot, suddenly something our government doesn't want you to learn about? That's ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:02]
COOPER: A high stakes two-hour call today between President Trump and Vladimir Putin ended without a full agreement to implement a ceasefire, but the Russian leader did agree to a temporary halt to attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure as long as Kyiv agrees to do the same.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country is going to support the pause as well. But later, Zelenskyy said Russia had launched a barrage of drones toward Ukraine in an attack aimed at civilian infrastructure across the country and included a direct hit on a hospital, he said.
Clarissa Ward reports from Kherson, where the streets are often empty and residents say they're targeted daily by drones in the sky.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): On the streets of Kherson, anyone is fair game. Every day, swarms of Russian drones glide across the river on a deadly hunt that locals have dubbed a human safari.
They target the old and the young, men and women. Flying low, they taunt and terrorize their prey.
A man crosses himself, preparing for the worst before the drone buzzes on. Others are not so fortunate.
Russian social media is awash with these videos, complete with heavy metal soundtracks and gloating comments. But to the people of Kherson, this is anything but a game.
WARD (on camera): So this is the central square here in Kherson, and you can see it is eerily deserted. Just a few people out on the streets. It was raining and cloudy earlier, which means sometimes more people go out because that's not good weather for flying drones. But now again, just a handful of people, all the stores you can see over there are basically boarded up.
WARD (voice over): The one supermarket open is heavily fortified. For Kherson residents, the simplest daily errand is the riskiest part of the day. Some can't even get to the supermarket. We drive to meet volunteers from the local administration.
WARD (on camera): So we are heading now to the eastern outskirts of the city. This is one of the most dangerous parts of the city, and they're getting ready to distribute some aid. They have to do it quickly and efficiently to ensure that they don't get seen by the drones.
WARD (voice over): The area is very exposed. We're told to hide our body armor under our coats.
WARD (on camera): Okay, so, we've just arrived at this point. You can see they're starting to distribute the aid.
WARD (voice over): Beleaguered residents emerge from their homes where they live, largely stranded. They grab supplies for neighbors who need help. They've lived through Russian occupation, then liberation, now this.
Eena (ph), and her granddaughter tell me that life is so hard here but there's no time to be afraid. She goes to collect her box of supplies.
(EENA speaking in foreign language.)
WARD (on camera): So, I told her that she's very strong. And she said, everybody here is very strong. We have to be.
WARD (voice over): A man sets about repairing the roof of his home, undeterred by the near-certain prospect of future attacks.
WARD (on camera): So, they're saying that they have heard from the Army that Russian drones have taken off from the other side of the river. So, they're telling us to move on now.
WARD (voice over): We speed through the roads back to a safer part of the city. Nowhere in Kherson is really safe. The local hospital is surrounded by sandbagged barriers.
)UNIDENTIFIED MALE speaking in foreign language.)
WARD (on camera): He says, they hit here quite a lot. That's why there's all these protections outside.
WARD (voice over): Across Kherson region, there were more than 2,000 drone launches just last week. The aftermath of that staggering statistic, clearly seen here.
Elena Shigereva (ph), says she and her friend were walking home from work when they were hunted.
(ELENA SHIGEREVA speaking in foreign language)
WARD (voice over): "We were two women, all made up without hats, carrying flowers and wearing white jackets," she tells us. "They could see we were women, not soldiers. It's just horror."
WARD (voice over): In another room, 19-year-old, Boris is recovering from lung and leg injuries, after the minibus he was traveling in was hit by a drone. Two people were killed and eight wounded.
(BORIS speaking in foreign language.)
WARD: "They are Russians, what can I say?" He tells us. "They're animals, nothing else to say."
WARD (on camera): Pretty much every room in this entire ward has someone in it who has been injured or maimed by a drone. The doctor says they have 28 drone injuries that they are treating at the moment. This is just one of three hospitals that serve this city. And he said the number has just been going up and up since last August.
(DR. ANDRII FEDOTOV speaking in foreign language.)
WARD (voice over): "We steadily received 90 to 100 patients injured in drone attacks a month," he says, "And there were 20 attacks in one week on the hospital's generators."
WARD (voice over): Russia has frequently targeted Ukraine's power infrastructure in this war. Rarely has it so flagrantly pursued civilians.
(MAYOR ROMAN MROCHKO speaking in foreign language.)
WARD (voice over): "We can call it a hunt for civilians," Mayor Roman Mrochko explains. "The Russians send fresh drone units to Kherson region and they train by attacking ordinary people with drones, then send these units to Donetsk and Lugansk. Then they send another new unit here to continue the human safari."
WARD (on camera): What can you really do to protect people here?
(MAYOR ROMAN MROCHKO speaking in foreign language.)
WARD (voice over): "There's no panacea to fully cover the city because the Russians are developing their technologies," he says. "There's no jammer that can fully close the sky."
WARD (voice over): And so the people of Kherson suffer on as outside powers bargain for an end to this war, nowhere are Russia's intentions felt so intimately.
Clarissa Ward, CNN, Kherson.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Well, CNN has reached out to Russian authorities for comment on Ukraine's allegations that Moscow's deliberately targeted Ukrainian civilians and have not received a response as of yet.
Up next, more evidence the Pentagon and others are purging their websites of references to American history when that history specifically references the accomplishments and the struggles and sacrifices of Black people like Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers. We'll explain ahead.
Plus, they are finally home. NASA astronauts landing safely off the coast of Florida after nine months in space. Incredible images of their touchdown there. The latest on how they're doing tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [20:31:15]
COOPER: There's a famous saying attributed to a Spanish philosopher, George Santayana. He said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And it may be a cliche, but it also happens to be true. History matters. But as we've been tracking, the Pentagon has been methodically erasing parts of our history from its websites. Any mention, photograph, or video that Pentagon officials believe promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Now they're doing this to apparently comply with the Trump administration's anti-DEI mandates.
And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave the order with a deadline of March 5th. Initially, more than 26,000 images had been flagged for removal across all military branches, according to the AP, including this one of the Enola Gay, the famed B-29 aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb -- bomb on Hiroshima. It had apparently been initially flagged because, apparently because it mentions the word gay.
That's what the plane was named after, Enola Gay, which is the name of the mother of the pilot. Gay caught the eye of someone tasked with complying with this anti-DEI initiative. The discovery of more purge content continues, though, with many cases so extreme, it has some veterans groups and military scholars, historians, leveling accusations of whitewashing the complicated history of the U.S. Armed Forces and of this country.
Take this, for example, this iconic image of six Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. The photo is still accessible on Pentagon websites. What's not is an article that used to be there about one of the Marines in that photograph, the man all the way to the left in the image.
His name was Private First Class Ira Hayes. He was Native American, an ethnic group that per capita serves at a higher rate in the U.S. military than any other, five times the national average, according to some estimates. The article celebrating this man in honor of National Native American Heritage Month has been removed.
We could only see it through an Internet archive of deleted web pages. According to the now deleted article, he's buried at Arlington National Cemetery. On that note, the website for Arlington has also been purged of content that the Pentagon apparently equates to diversity, equity and inclusion.
That includes a section honoring black Americans who fought in the nation's wars and are buried there like civil rights icon Medgar Evers, a World War II veteran who was assassinated by a white supremacist in 1963. Some web pages about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first group of black aviators in the U.S. Armed Forces who fought racism and segregation within the military, not just in society, within the U.S. military, while also fighting the Axis powers to win World War II. CNN spoke to one of the Tuskegee Airmen at a ceremony honoring them back in 2008.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Lieutenant Colonel Alex Jefferson came to Tuskegee at age 22.
CALLEBS: At the time did you realize you were making history?
LT. COL. ALEX JEFFERSON, TUSKEGEE AIRMAN: Hell, no. I was surviving. I was surviving. The war is going on.
CALLEBS (voice-over): Until then, no one had given blacks a chance to fly in combat.
JEFFERSON: You're too dumb, you're too ignorant, you're too stupid. When you tell me I'm stupid and I'm crazy and I'm black, but I'm a college graduate, something is wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, Colonel Alexander Jefferson died in 2022. He was 100 years old. One can only imagine what he would think today. He suffered the indignity of racism, as so many black Americans did, while risking his life serving his country. Colonel Jefferson got shot down on a mission, spent nine months as a prisoner of war, and survived to see his country eventually desegregated the military he so honorably served.
That didn't happen until 1948, and it had a huge impact on American society over time. For more, I want to bring in Sherrilyn Ifill, former president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and currently the Vernon Jordan Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University Law School. Professor, I appreciate you being with us.
[20:35:04]
Is this actually about diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, or is this an effort to erase the history of black people or Native Americans or gay and lesbian Americans or others?
SHERRILYN IFILL, HOWARD UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: It's even more than that, Anderson. And thank you for having me on. It's a -- it's notable that Trump's executive order abolishing DEI doesn't really define what DEI is. Diversity, equity, and inclusion, for your viewers, is a program or a way of approaching policies really in corporate America of hiring, of procurement, of contracts, to ensure that groups that had been formally excluded or were un -- underrepresented in many of the corporations' practices, employment and otherwise, would be included.
And that meant casting a wider net, looking at the pools of people that you were doing business with or that you were planning to interview for jobs and making sure that you had cast a wide enough net that you were including those who were from underrepresented groups. That's diversity, equity, and inclusion. Nothing that has been removed from these Department of Defense websites are diversity, equity, and inclusion.
They are just black people, Native American people, women, gay people, or just the word gay. So this is not an effort to remove some program that is in some way harming the military. It is, yes, an effort to whitewash history, Anderson, but I think it's even worse. It's an effort to brand. It's designed to inculcate in Americans the idea that when you see a black person or a Native American or a gay person excelling, piloting a plane, being a CEO of a company, being a four- star general, you should presume that they did not earn that position based on their qualifications and merits.
It's a poison pill designed to reach into Americans' minds and to encourage Americans to believe that those people that they see who are from underrepresented groups, who have achieved success, and who are of positions of power and authority in our country, did not earn those positions.
COOPER: It's interesting to me, I mean, it seems to me the segregation in the military and the overcoming of that, the service of the Tuskegee Airmen and so many others, so many people who were secretly gay but wanted to serve anyway and did so sacrificing their personal lives for decades and decades so that they could serve their country, all these sacrifices, that's a sign of strength of this country and acknowledging it and seeing how society changed and -- and embraced ultimately in history these groups, these people and their sacrifices.
That's a sign of strength and kind of the -- one of the great things about America. It just seems like this is something, you know, in the old Soviet Union they used to erase leaders who had suddenly, you know, were no longer in -- in favor and just erased them out of history. I don't understand. This seems insane to me.
IFILL: Yes, it seems insane to you and to me, and you're right, it says something, it says the best things about this country, right, that to -- to acknowledge the incredible contributions of all of the people who have made up this country, but it also says something about Americans.
You mentioned Medgar Evers in your opening. Think about a man born and raised in Mississippi, you know, kept from, segregated, compelled to drink at separate water fountains, go to separate public bathrooms. He was the field secretary for the NAACP, fighting for the right of black Mississippians to vote who could not vote during this period and was relentless in his civil rights work.
This is someone who served, who was a veteran. This is someone who, even though at home he was not treated as a full and equal citizen, put his life on the line to protect and serve this country. That is true of the Tuskegee Airmen. When they returned to Tuskegee, Alabama, they were not full first-class citizens by the laws of Alabama, but they had served and had protected this country.
And that tells you something not only about America, but about Americans, about these people who, even when America was not giving its best to them, were giving their best to this country. And so the idea of erasing that, as I said, I think it is doing something else. I think it is about trying to create a narrative that of -- that -- that tries to snatch away the heroism of people who contributed to this country when, by all rights, they should have been resentful of this country, they should have been unwilling to give their lives and to give their all to this country, but it was quite the opposite.
And so to steal their nobility, to steal their heroism, that's what this is about. And I -- I have been saying for some time, Anderson, I think there's some kind of traumatic response to the noble story of the Civil Rights Movement and those who worked in the Civil Rights Movement, that those who are right-wing and white supremacists feel the need to -- to break down or to copy or to disparage.
[20:40:08]
And I think this is part of that. There's something about that narrative that so captures the American imagination of people standing, for example, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and fighting for the right to be true citizens nonviolently. There's something so compelling about these narratives that I -- I think that President Trump and others like him and those who have carried forward this ideology of white supremacy feel the need to try and break it down and to erase it. And I think this is part of that.
COOPER: Sherrilyn Ifill, I appreciate you being with us. Thank you.
IFILL: Thank you, Anderson.
COOPER: We have more breaking news ahead. After more than nine months in space, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are home. We talked to former astronauts Scott Kelly and Katie Coleman about the mission and what it's like to reenter Earth's orbit and how they're doing tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:45:35]
COOPER: NASA's Commander Suni Williams and Captain Butch Wilmore are back on Earth after 286 days. Here's the moment of splashdown.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And splashdown. Crew 9, back on Earth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And SpaceX Freedom, splashdown. Good main release.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Copy, splashdown. We see main chutes cut. Nick, Alex, Butch, Suni, on behalf of SpaceX, welcome home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: The astronauts landed safely off the coast of Florida just before 6:00 p.m. Eastern. Williams and Wilmore made the journey back to Earth along with two other crew members, one American and one Russian. You can see, I've got a shot of Commander Williams waving here as she exits a capsule. Captain Wilmore was the fourth and final crew member out. As was expected, they were taken out on stretchers as they get accustomed to being back on land.
Williams and Wilmore arrived at the International Space Station more than nine months ago for what was expected to be a roughly week-long stay. That week turned into nine months because of technical issues with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that they arrived on. Joining me now are former commander of the International Space Station, Scott Kelly, who spent 340 days in space as part of NASA's twin study.
His brother, Senator Mark Kelly, also an astronaut, remained back on Earth. Also with us, former NASA astronaut, retired Air Force Colonel Cady Coleman, author of "Sharing Space: An Astronaut's Guide to Mission, Wonder and Making Change." Commander Kelly, what stands out to you about tonight's splashdown? And what are those astronauts likely doing right now? What are they going through?
SCOTT KELLY, FORMER COMMANDER, INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: Well, Anderson, thanks for having me. It's always a great day when we bring people back from space. It's -- it's a little bit of an engineering miracle, you know, the amount of energy that's involved going from 17,500 miles an hour to zero in a matter of 45 minutes. I haven't flown on the Dragon, but I did fly on the Soyuz a couple times in the -- in the space shuttle, and it is an incredible ride coming back.
I -- I like to say if I hated every minute of being in space for nearly a year, which I did not, I enjoyed it. If I hated every minute, I'd do it all over again for the last 20 minutes.
COOPER: Why? What's the last 20 minutes -- what's so great about it?
KELLY: It's just a wild ride. I -- I think I -- Cady and I have been in space before. Maybe -- maybe Cady can answer that question, how I described it on Earth.
COOPER: Cady, how --
CADY COLEMAN, RETIRED NASA ASTRONAUT: I was going to say, I never forget --
COOPER: Yes. Go ahead.
COLEMAN: -- forget that, you know, usually we have the crew that's already landed coach us and remind us what landing's going to be like. I remember Scott just going, Cady, it is like the best E-ticket ride you will ever go on. And then he looked at me, Scott, he looked me right in the eyes, and you go, parachute opening shock. It is big, and you do not want to be talking, Cady. I don't know if he did the finger thing here like this, right? But anyways --
COOPER: What -- what does -- what does that shock feel like?
COLEMAN: You're going so fast. It is just so abrupt. I mean, because you're going so fast, and then when those chutes come out, it's like stopping, even though you're still going really fast. And -- and then you are spinning and swinging, which I understand they have calmed down for the -- the dragon ride. That's what I heard about it from Mike Barratt, it's a -- it's a much calmer ride after that parachute opening shock. But Scott was saying I better set a clock and make sure I wasn't talking.
COOPER: Commander Kelly, I read that while you were on your 340-day mission, one of the longest space flights, by the way, of any NASA astronaut, some of your genes actually changed. What -- what's it like returning to Earth physically and -- and mentally?
KELLY: Yes, so I had a change of gene expression, I think 7 percent. Some of the genes are DNA, RNA, protein. Cady might know more about this because she's a real scientist. I'm just science adjacent and true science at times. But yes, the expression is whether they turned on or off. There was really no symptoms of that. And I don't know if I have any health effects. But coming back, especially the difference between, like I've flown four times, eight days, 13 days, 150 something, 340. And even the difference between 150 days and 340 days is significant when it comes to recovering.
[20:50:00]
I mean, you're more nauseous, you're more dizzy, you're more tired. And then I had symptoms that I had not even experienced on my first long duration flight like when I would stand up, I could see my legs, my ankles just swelling up like water balloons.
COOPER: Wow.
KELLY: It's pretty -- and that's because your -- your cardiovascular system is -- is deconditioned. I lost 25 percent of my heart mass on that last mission. As my wife says, good thing I started with a big heart, right? As my wife says, good thing I started with a big heart, right? It's, Earth is, and coming back to gravity, the longer you've been in space can be really challenging.
COOPER: Yes, Colonel Coleman, for you, what -- what are some of the challenges what was it like?
COLEMAN: Well, I like to say the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And I came back, I had a shorter mission, 159 days. Actually came back feeling really, really terrific. But that doesn't mean there's not a lot of adapting to do. I mean, I think we, what's confusing sometimes is we come back in really good shape. I mean, we're quite strong. We exercise, you know, five, six, seven days a week. And I really came back in the best shape of my life. But your head is not like connected to your body and you're used to a whole different set of norms of every time I want to go someplace up in space, you fly there with the touch of a finger.
You can fly all the way down the space station and that's the length of the 50 yard line, right? So, you know, these tiny, tiny forces, and then when you are getting up and walking, the whole world is just going like back and forth and it's pretty violent really. And most people, many people, at least I'll say I was nauseous when I got back, but we have some really great medicine for that.
COOPER: Wow. It's so fascinating. Scott Kelly, Cady Coleman, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
KELLY: Thanks for having me, Anderson.
COOPER: Yes, we're also going to hear more from Scott on how all those months in space mean for the astronauts returning. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:56:07]
COOPER: More now on our breaking news. After more than nine months in space, Commander Suni Williams and Captain Butch Wilmore are home safe and sound. Their SpaceX capsule landed safely off the coast of Florida this evening. Incredible. Let's watch again. I love this. We're going to hear from them in a second.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And SpaceX Freedom, splashdown. Good main release.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Copy, splashdown. We see main chutes cut. Nick, Alex, Butch, Suni, on behalf of SpaceX, welcome home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: They were then brought out on stretchers, a common practice as they settle back to life on Earth. Dr. Sanjay Gupta talked with astronaut Scott Kelly, who we were just talking to, and others, about the impact of space on the human body. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's been 286 days since astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have felt the pull of Earth's gravity.
BUTCH WILMORE, ASTRONAUT: Gravity is really, really tough.
GUPTA (voice-over): Tough, learning to live with it, but also without it --
JOHN DEWITT, BIOMECHANIST: Our bodies were really built to work in gravity.
GUPTA (voice-over): At NASA's Countermeasures Lab, exercise routines and equipment are designed to help prevent astronauts from losing bone and muscle mass while they're in space.
DEWITT: Force is what helps our muscles get stronger. Force is what helps our bones to stay strong. Force is what helps our heart to stay strong by having to pump the blood against gravity. So when you take that force away, you all of a sudden lose a really important stimulus that's important for health. It would be the same thing as if someone was confined to a bed because they had an injury for a long time. It's -- people lose their muscle strength, they lose their bone strength.
GUPTA (voice-over): That's why astronauts spend hours each day exercising while on the space station. In fact, back in 2012, Williams even showed me how she was preparing to do a triathlon from space so that she could compete with me while I was doing a triathlon on Earth.
GUPTA: You're going 17,500 miles an hour.
SUNI WILLIAMS, ASTRONAUT: Yes, I'll be done like that. What am I saying? I'll be done way before you. So I'll base it on time.
GUPTA (voice-over): But again, we are talking about an unnatural environment for humans. When you're in space, body fluids shift from the legs to the head and upper body as much as 2 liters of fluid. NASA says a natural reaction to this is a decrease in the total amount of blood in your blood vessels. That can result in low blood pressure or hypotension.
We've even started to see how long-duration flights directly impacts the brain. Look here. You can see that the brain shifts up ever so slightly in the skull, and the fluids surrounding and protecting it expand.
KELLY: To, you know, have, you know, me being there for such a long time, they can see how that, you know, environmental effects affect us on a genetic level and what that means to our -- our health.
GUPTA (voice-over): Astronaut Scott Kelly knows this better than most people. He spent 340 days aboard the International Space Station for NASA's twin study. That's where they compared his physical state in space to his twin brother, Mark, back on Earth. They found that space impacted a host of things like his eyes, his balance, his gut microbes, his cognitive abilities, and even his gene expression. But then --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Touchdown.
GUPTA (voice-over): -- the body has to adapt again when it is thrust back to Earth.
WILMORE: When you get back, gravity starts pulling everything, your lower extremities, the -- the fluid that is shifting, I got a little puffy face. It's always that way when you were -- when I'm in space. And all that fluid is going to be pulled to my lower extremities, and it's really going to be different. Even to lift a pencil, you don't even feel a pencil when you lift it. When we get back, even to lift a pencil, we will feel the weight.
GUPTA (voice-over): And it will take time to adjust. In fact, when Kelly landed back on Earth in 2016, he was actually 2 inches taller. But then, as gravity took hold, his height, along with most of the other physical changes, did eventually go back to baseline. It took about six months, with the study concluding that human health can be mostly sustained for a year in space. Kelly did, however, find some benefits.
[21:00:20]
KELLY: When I got back on my previous flight, I was getting a massage at one of these massage envy places. The lady goes, you have the softest feet I've ever felt in my life. And she did not know I was in space. And I was like, thank you. I'm very proud of them.
GUPTA (voice-over): Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: That's it for us. The news continues. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now.
