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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

White House: Trump Fired CDC Head After She Refused To Leave; New: Police Say 116 Rifle Rounds Recovered At Minneapolis Scene; Rioter Killed On January 6 To Get Full Military Funeral Honors. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired August 28, 2025 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:24]

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: A showdown at the CDC. Some of America's top public health officials escorted from their offices.

Let's head into THE ARENA.

The White House confirming that President Trump fired the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That leading to a wave of resignations, leaving the agency without critical leadership.

Plus, new details on the investigation into the church shooting in Minnesota. Authorities now saying the shooter was, quote, obsessed with the idea of killing children.

And then why the Pentagon now says it will grant full military honors to a January 6th rioter who was killed trying to enter the area where lawmakers were evacuating.

Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's wonderful to have you with us on this Thursday.

Right now in Atlanta, demonstrations in support of CDC officials who are resigning to protest the firing of the agency's director. This afternoon, the White House confirmed that President Trump has removed Dr. Susan Monarez as the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Monarez's lawyers previously denied the administration's claim that she had agreed to resign following clashes with the Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

This morning, some of her top lieutenants were escorted from the CDC's headquarters after the announcement of their resignations. They include the CDC's chief medical officer, the head of its vaccine and respiratory diseases program, the head of the National Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the CDC's public health data chief.

All of this leaving Americas public health agency without critical top leadership. And despite the fact that Dr. Monarez was nominated by the president, by this president, she was sworn in less than a month ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Look, what I will say about this individual is that her lawyer's statement made it abundantly clear themselves that she was not aligned with the president's mission to make America healthy again and the secretary asked her to resign. She said she would. And then she said she wouldn't.

So, the president fired her, which he has every right to do. It was President Trump who was overwhelmingly reelected on November 5th. This woman has never received a vote in her life, and the president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission. A new replacement will be announced by either the president or the secretary very soon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. Our panel is here. They'll weigh in shortly.

We're going to get started, though, with CNN's Alayna Treene. She is at the White House for us.

Alayna, what more is the administration saying about this firing and the wave of resignations that's left the CDC leaderless, functionally?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah, we're starting to hear, Kasie, from top White House officials and even the health and human services secretary, RFK, Jr., today about this.

And you're right. This move has left, you know, we've seen now four top officials four leaders at the agency resign abruptly because of the ousting of the CDC director and kind of the through line from all of the comments we've heard from people at the White House, has been -- look, anyone at the CDC, the director, but also anyone else, really employees, if they do not share the president's vision, particularly when it comes to the Make America Healthy Again agenda. Their jobs could be in jeopardy.

And that's what Karoline Leavitt reiterated on the podium during the briefing. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEAVITT: People that are not aligned with the president's vision and the secretary's vision to make our country healthy again. Then we will gladly show them the door.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Now, Kasie, we did, like I mentioned here from RFK, Jr., as well, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and he said, essentially, I mean, he was on "FOX & Friends" this morning. He didn't go deep into some of the details of this, saying he didn't want to discuss personnel matters, but he did acknowledge that. He said if there's a deeply, deeply embedded malaise at the agency, we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on the president's agenda. But look, what I would be watching for is next week, we know that

Kennedy is going to be before the Senate Finance Committee for a hearing. This is going to be front and center. And I think specifically from what we've seen is some of these statements from those four top officials at the CDC. They described a culture of censorship, communication failures and the weaponization of public health by the Department of Health and Human Services.

All of that likely to be a key line of questioning from some of these senators, who are already raising concerns about this firing.

[16:05:00]

HUNT: All right. Alayna Treene for us at the White House -- Alayna, thank you very much.

All right. I want to go now to Dr. Tom Frieden. He has served as the CDC director himself from 2009 until 2017.

Doctor, thank you very much for joining us here. I'd like first for you just to tell us what your reaction is, what you think the implications are of the president firing the CDC director he installed after Robert Kennedy Jr. asked her to resign.

DR. TOM FRIEDEN, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: This is unprecedented. In the 80 years that CDC has been protecting Americans from health threats. There has never been a CDC director fired. But what's even more concerning is what is coming out about the reason, which is that Dr. Monarez, who's a respected scientist appointed by the Trump administration, was being asked to do things that are not consistent with the facts. She was being asked to rubber stamp recommendations made without due process that would endanger the health of our children.

This isn't about disagreement with the president's policies. These are individuals, the leadership of CDC, I know all of the individuals who resigned in the past 24 hours, all of them are dedicated scientists, doctors who have dedicated their whole careers to protecting Americans. This isn't about disagreeing with the goal of making America healthier.

This is about standing up for Americans, being able to understand how decisions about our health are being made, and making sure that those decisions are made on the best available facts, not on some theory that Secretary Kennedy has been espousing.

You know what we've heard from the secretary since the day he joined is a series of false statements, things that are just not true about vaccines in particular.

HUNT: So speaking of vaccines in particular, we, of course, had the new recommendations around the COVID vaccine that came out yesterday. How much do you think that had to do with it? And it does sound like you have some kind of nuanced understanding, perhaps have been in touch with some of these players, which vaccine issues do you think specifically are driving this? I mean, what more can you tell us about that.

FRIEDEN: Really, just from all of the statements of Secretary Kennedy, we see the repeated statements of falsehoods. I will give just one example that hit me hard. When Secretary Kennedy announced that the U.S. would be withdrawing its support from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance that has provided vaccines for hundreds of millions of children around the world and prevented millions of deaths. He recorded -- this wasn't off the cuff remarks. He recorded a three- minute video in which he stated multiple falsehoods, things that are deeply misguided, deeply misleading and that are going to result, quite possibly, in kids around the world not getting the vaccinations they need and dying. In the U.S., if the advisory committee, the ACIP, doesn't recommend a vaccine, then a program called the vaccines for children program doesn't provide it, that provides half of all the childhood vaccines in this country. We're talking about the risk that our kids are going to be more vulnerable to disabling and potentially deadly diseases because of beliefs that the secretary appears to have that have no basis in fact.

HUNT: Doctor, speaking of things that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said in public, I want to play something for you that he said in the cabinet meeting. He does not make a tie explicitly with vaccines in what he says here. But I think that context we can talk about that on the other side is important.

Let's watch it. And then I'd like to ask you for your reaction. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR., HHS SECRETARY: We're finding, interventions, certain interventions now that are clearly almost certainly causing autism. And we're going to be able to address those in September.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So there has to be something artificially causing this, meaning a drug or something. And I know you're looking very strongly at different things, and I hope you can come out with that as soon as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Do you have any idea what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is talking about?

FRIEDEN: No, there has been decades of research on autism. We know first that there's better recognition of the problem and that this is driving some of the increase. And from superb studies done by a center at CDC which this administration closed, we know also that there's also a true increase in autism. There are some things that are proven to increase the risk, for example, increasing paternal age.

[16:10:01]

And there are other theories about it.

One thing that we know for certain is that it is not related to the measles vaccine. That's been studied in hundreds of thousands, or more than a million children, and no association, but something that was asserted, proven to be false and continues to be stated.

This is really very concerning. I have worked with families with autism. It can be a very challenging condition to deal with. And we do want to find out what can be done both to prevent autism and to better support the people with it and the families dealing with that.

HUNT: Before I let you go, sir, the one thing that has stood out with the CDC in the pandemic era and the post pandemic era is a loss of trust. There are a lot of Americans that didn't, you know, had a lot of questions about public health officials and how they made their decisions during that period of time.

There was a feeling on the part of some conservative, not conservative, that perhaps the agency wasn't being as forthcoming as they wished it would be with the American people about what they knew and what Americans should be doing.

How do you think about that period of time? Were there mistakes made? And can they be rectified?

FRIEDEN: Absolutely. There are many things that were gotten wrong during the administration. The past two administrations, the first year of the pandemic, under the Trump administration really was a catastrophic failure of public health response. CDC was silenced for much of that time.

In the Biden administration, some things went well. In the Trump administration, some things went well. The Operation Warp Speed led to life saving vaccines that have saved millions of lives around the world, and hundreds of thousands in the U.S.

In the Biden administration, I feel that the administration kept CDC too close to it, and that meant that people who didn't vote for President Biden were less likely to get vaccinated.

So what we saw is not just a loss of trust in the CDC, a loss of trust that very much broke down on partisan lines. And I'm afraid what you're going to see now is you may have lost some part of the country over the last four years. You may lose the rest of the country.

And quite frankly, speaking personally, I never thought I would see the day when I couldn't get on the CDC website and rely on the information that's there. I know how that information used to get produced enormous effort to make sure it's the best available information. You're clear on how you know it, what you know, what you don't know when it went up, who put it up, what's the process? All of that gone.

HUNT: All right. Dr. Tom Frieden --

FRIEDEN: We need to find --

HUNT: Sorry. Finish your thought, please. FRIEDEN: We need to find sources of information we can trust and we need to get the CDC back to where it is an institution that bases what it says on facts and shares that openly with the public. Thank you.

HUNT: All right. Dr. Tom Frieden, we really appreciate your time today, sir. Thanks very much for being here.

FRIEDEN: Thank you.

HUNT: All right. Our panel is now here in THE ARENA.

CNN contributor, "New York Times" journalist, podcast host, Lulu Garcia-Navarro; the host of NPR's "Morning Edition", Steve Inskeep. You'll know him by his voice. CNN political commentator Xochitl Hinojosa, and former speaker pro tempore, Patrick McHenry.

Welcome to all of you.

Mr. Speaker, welcome back to Washington. Nice.

XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Are you really, though?

HUNT: Welcome back.

PATRICK MCHENRY, FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: Oh, yes.

HUNT: I really would like your perspective on what we've seen happen today because, you know, there clearly has been so much -- I mean, politics has just slammed into public health in recent years in a way that has created a lot of consternation among the public, has created a lot of questions. But what has happened today, remarkable in that this is someone that was put in by this president now being fired by this president, the whole leadership going with it. What do you think Americans should be thinking and believing right now about whether their public health is actually being put first?

MCHENRY: Well, everybody is judging for themselves as they always have been. Parents have been making judgments for their kids on what vaccines, when do they give it, whether or not they get boosters, right? Going into flu season where flu shot, family, others don't make that same decision. But everyone's been making public health, personal health decisions for themselves with guidance.

HUNT: I was going to say they rely on the information. A lot of the information the CDC gives them, right?

MCHENRY: The tipping point gives them -- the tipping point on this was in COVID, which was the vaccine mandate. I took all the vaccines. I'm a believer in vaccines, but for many of my friends it was too much. It was a bridge too far for the government to have a mandate on something that has been now, we know was helpful, but was not as helpful as sold.

We also know that six feet was a completely made up, fictitious nonscientific creation on us being socially distanced. So, all this, there's skepticism of these mandates and the -- and the federal government telling people what to do with their personal health. That has been underlying which has made things hotly political.

And the merger between what is the RFK, Jr. approach to health and the MAGA movement was something that was created in the fall of last year. This was a known, known going into this administration. The CDC director in particular, I am sad that congress is not in session. So, we can't we don't see the 47 Democratic senators that voted against the CDC director a month ago rallied to her cause.

This was a partisan decision, 51-47 vote in the United States senate a month ago to put the CDC director.

HUNT: Doesn't that raise that many more questions about what the administration has done today?

MCHENRY: But it also says that there has been a failure in this process on nominations. When you take somebody and it's the first year in office and you're cycling through senate confirmed positions, Senate Republican leadership's heads should be exploding right now because they wasted floor time on somebody who's out of a job is not following the president's agenda at this agency. That's the that's -- that is, in my view, this political overlay as well.

HUNT: Well, yeah. Lulu, I can see you're itching to jump in.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well --

STEVE INSKEEP, NPR'S "MORNING EDITION" HOST. Imagine.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Imagine. I would say that this is nothing to do with science and everything to do with political partisanship. I just want to actually read a little bit of "The New York Times" reporting right now, that says that the secretary called in, the head of the CDC and told her that she needed to fire career agency officials and commit to backing his advisers if they recommended restricting access to proven vaccines or risk being fired herself. This basically -- she was told by him, you do it or we're going to fire you. You have to -- it's my way or the highway.

And we know that no scientific endeavor ever works like this. If you believe in science, there needs to be consensus. It is not my way or the highway. We know that the -- Secretary Kennedy has always had a particular view on vaccines that is not supported with science at all. This is not something that came during the pandemic.

This is a long-held belief that he has and that he is now trying to force on the CDC itself and the rest of America.

MCHENRY: He is the Senate confirmed cabinet official. She knew going in what the whole environment was out. There was no secret information here. She took the job to go fulfill this agenda. And she was --

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And clearly this was a bridge -- and clearly this was a bridge too far.

HINOJOSA: Well, I just want to say that the reason that you have career professionals at HHS or at any other agency is to be a check on the political appointees and what Trump essentially learned from the first administration is that he wanted loyalty across the federal government in order to get whatever his agenda passed through, regardless of whether career professionals disagree with it.

And so, this is just another example of them politicizing decisions like, you know, our vaccines and other things. But it is -- it's something that I think that this is why the American people have total distrust for things like vaccines and others because of the rhetoric from this administration.

INSKEEP: This inevitably is going to be political as well as scientific. But there's more than one player here. There's more than one power here. And this is an opportunity for Congress to begin doing its job on this subject. The Senate deferred -- Senate Republicans deferred in the confirmation of RFK, Jr.

Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor believer in vaccines, set aside his own doubts, believed he had a particular promise from RFK on vaccines and went ahead, crucially, to support that nomination. Senators were then concerned, as RFK said, I promise nothing and began pursuing his agenda. They've expressed more and more concern.

One of the reasons that Dr. Monarez was the CDC head is because Trump nominated someone else that senators found not acceptable, not qualified. She was put in instead. Still, the Senate has not done much about RFK, but Senator Cassidy himself said yesterday, this calls for oversight.

HUNT: Yeah, he put up on -- we can show that these high profile departures will require oversight by the health committee.

INSKEEP: Which is a polite sentence. But there's a lot of power they have there if they want to.

HUNT: Well, and it's also in some ways a warning, a warning shot.

Congressman, let me give you the last word here. I mean, one of the things obviously, and I think you were hitting on this in your answer is Americans want control and some choice about their own health choices, right? Their own bodies. You were saying a lot of conservatives didn't trust the CDC that was trying to tell them what decisions to make. If they start to mess around with the childhood vaccination schedule, which is again, recommendations, the former CDC director made the point that it will mean that these vaccines will not be provided to millions of people who otherwise would not be able to afford them.

Is that not taking away a choice from parents?

MCHENRY: That's a separate question of the funding of this versus the recommendations. The recommendations --

[16:20:01]

HUNT: Recommendations will effectively eliminate -- MCHENARY: Are downstream, potentially downstream on the decision

making. The -- for my children, it's the mandate from the state and locality that drives the vaccines for access to schools. That is the case across America, that states make these decisions.

The first federal mandate -- attempted federal mandate on any vaccine in the United States history was the COVID vaccine. It was a bridge too far, politically. We know that based off of public opinion surveys and what the populace is saying, this is not my view on vaccines, but there is a substantial group in the left and the right and everywhere in between on vaccine.

HINOJOSA: The uptick in measles in Texas, because of the -- there's not a mandate there.

HUNT: And it is a -- it is a fair point that this is a political spectrum that seems to meet in the middle on a lot of this, and it is, as Xochitl points out, presenting a lot of challenges that I think a lot of us thought were well behind us.

All right. Coming up next, a courtroom showdown now on the calendar over the president's attempt to fire another -- a different top government official.

But first, new updates are coming in right now on the mass shooting in Minneapolis. What law enforcement are saying about the victims, the investigation and their search for a motive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF BRIAN O'HARA, MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT: The shooter appeared to hate all of us. The shooter's heart was full of hate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:25:42]

HUNT: All right. We have new details coming in on the mass shooting in Minnesota in just the last few minutes. Police in Minneapolis giving dramatic new information about this tragedy, offering a sense of the immense scope of the investigation into what happened and why.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'HARA: During the processing of the scene at Annunciation Church yesterday, three shotgun shells were recovered, along with approximately 116 rifle rounds. One live round was recovered from a handgun that appears to have malfunctioned as the shooter attempted to use it and became stuck in the chamber. There were four search warrants that were executed yesterday. Additional evidence was recovered as a result of these warrants. Literally hundreds of pieces of evidence have been recovered thus far.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: All right, let's get straight to CNN law enforcement analyst John Miller. We also have CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem with us.

John, can you take us through these new details that the police have laid out here? And I know you've got some new reporting on the shooter's planning ahead of the attack.

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So, the new details are some of the numbers, which are remarkable and frightening, 116 rounds from the rifle. That's the equivalent of basically going through a full magazine with the rifle, reloading, and then reloading again, and then reloading again and then reloading again. Then there's three shells from the shotgun, which is probably when he exhausted his rifle ammunition. And interestingly, he fired once from that pistol and had a malfunction which he had to clear a jam. And then he fired again. That is likely the weapon he used to take his own life as police would be arriving within minutes after his initial volley of shots.

So that gives us a picture of what that was like. Over 100 rounds coming through the windows in rapid succession to a church full of children. But the other thing we've been probing today in this new reporting, and that the police chief cast a little more light on today as Chief Brian O'Hara described that the shooter arrived after the mass had begun that the church procedure there was to lock those doors.

Some of our other new reporting from a senior law enforcement official who said the shooter had been to the church some time ago weeks, perhaps months earlier, where he had engaged people there saying he was there because he wanted to return to his faith, get a feel for the place again. They believe that that may have actually been a pretext for an early reconnaissance of that as a target when the shooter went to visit, because we also know from the shooter's own video post that he created a hand drawn, quite an extensive, diagram of the church, which the shooter showed on video that they believe may have come from that visit.

So, in sum, the shooter likely intended to go into the church and to open fire where he had a free field of fire in a church filled with children. The shooter, of course, according to authorities, had already barricaded the doors from the outside with these wooden boards with smoke bombs on them that the shooter had meant to use to either keep the children inside as the shooter fired from outside, or in the other scenario, keep them from escaping as he had them trapped inside, shooting from inside.

Either way, it could have been so much worse than the terrible events we saw yesterday.

HUNT: It absolutely could have. So, Juliette, I want to show you a little bit more of what we heard last hour about the shooter and how we got -- got here. And then I want to ask for your reaction on the other side. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'HARA: This is an individual who, unfortunately, like so many other mass shooters that we have seen in this country, too often and around the world, had some deranged fascination with previous mass shootings and very disturbing writings that demonstrate hatred towards many different individuals and different groups of people.

[16:30:10]

And he fantasized about the plans of other mass shooters. Ultimately, the purpose of the shooter's actions was to obtain notoriety for the shooter themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Juliette, what do you make of all that? So this is consistent with what we believed, which is basically this is someone who self- radicalized for violence, but also was part of a network of people that he believed he had allegiances to, or alliances with, which is these other mass shooters.

And this is one of the problems or challenges of radicalization is they're learning the techniques and the notoriety of these previous mass shooters. What was interesting is that these guns were bought lawfully, but as the police chief said, there was nothing. He says there was no substantive police conduct -- interaction between the shooter and the law enforcement that would have raised any alarms whatsoever, including in the lawful purchase of these guns.

And so, a lot of the press conferences where a lot of us are now, which is in the absence of gun legislation, which we can't expect in this country, we have to get people comfortable coming forward, their social network, their family, whoever else. Because he wasn't a lone wolf.

He's advertising this. He's on social media. He's purchasing guns. He's telling people who he's obsessed with, all of it means that that we need to, you know, basically, in memory of all these children that are killed year after year begin to feel comfortable going forward, that the unimaginable could happen by someone within our network?

HUNT: Yeah. All right. John, Juliette, stand by.

I want to bring in CNN's Shimon Prokupecz. He's live for us in Minneapolis.

And, Shimon, I know that you spoke exclusively with an 11-year-old who was inside the church at the time of the shooting.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, this was quite remarkable. This is 11-year-old Chloe, who was a student at the school. She was in the church, and she -- we spent, I don't know, close to two hours with her this morning talking about everything that happened. And she described the events in such remarkable fashion and just her poise and her strength. And the reason she wanted to speak to us. And I want to make this very clear. We were expecting to speak to her father. Her father had agreed to talk to us. And when we went there, he said, Chloe is feeling much better this morning, and she actually wants to speak. And then she just told this tale -- the story of what happened inside that room. It was so powerful and so remarkable.

Let me play some of that for you from this little 11-year-old girl.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHLOE, 11-YEAR-OLD: So my mind, for some reason, keeps on replaying that exact scenario when the teacher started, like, the teacher was in the middle of saying our prayers, and then we heard a just one shot. It felt -- I smelled smoke before everything, but I heard one shot. I thought it was a firework like everybody else.

The second shot was just everybody just covering their ears. The third shot was when everybody started ducking low, and all these shots were like slow, until the fourth shot. It started getting faster and faster, and then that's when everybody took into action.

PROKUPECZ: What was -- what was that action?

CHLOE: When some kids, they hid under the pews the whole time. And some ran off to the pre-K room. That's what I did. And in the pre-K room, we everybody started to help, especially the kids and all the older buddies. We all started to help, like putting tables on the doors, locking the doors, putting -- putting all the stuff on the doors. As much as we could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: You know, her father was so -- was so hopeful by listening to her and so impressed by what she described and how she handled herself. And you can hear just the idea that these little kids would know what to do to try and protect themselves. And Chloe said she's so thankful to her teachers, to her buddies, to her classmates, to the police who came inside and rescue them and to the community and the hope that they now have in this gathering -- these gatherings that they've been doing, and they're all just leaning on.

[16:35:06]

But they are so blessed and so -- they're so -- she feels so lucky to be alive. But she's also very sad about her friends who died. And she told me that she now knows that they're in heaven.

HUNT: Yeah. I mean, I got to tell you, I just I'm like, listening to these sentences come out of your mouth and just feeling like, like, how can we be even -- how can we be speaking like this? You know, I mean, of course, she said she watched her friends die in front of her. I mean, she walked into the pre-K classroom to get away from a gunman. It's all -- I mean, as a parent, it's just very, very, very difficult to deal with. And I know that you have been doing so much work covering this for so many years, and I can't imagine that it's any easier any time that you have to do it.

Shimon, thank you very, very, very poised young lady.

PROKUPECZ: Thanks, Kasie.

HUNT: Yeah. John Miller, Juliette Kayyem, thanks to you as well.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:40:16]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

We do have another story we had planned to cover out of this break, and we're going to get to it in just a second. But I think certainly I and I think a lot of other people sitting with me at this table were just so struck by what we just heard. And I know I think we're all parents here. And the question that came to mind, you know, I mean, she was just so poised talking to Shimon.

Lulu, I'll give it to you. I mean, my son was two years old when he had his first active shooter drill. It's obviously something I never had to do in school. And listening to her talking about, I mean, clearly, they work. I don't know what it says about us, though that an 11 year old girl goes through that and has to -- I mean, she's so calm. She's calmer than I feel right now.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: She -- it says about us that this is wrong and shouldn't happen in this country, that we shouldn't be in a place where people get those kinds of weapons and can murder children as they're praying and how many times do we have to go through this? And how many testimonies of 11-year-olds and younger do we have to listen to before we realize that this is madness?

HUNT: Congressman, do you think it's -- that this is doing something about this is hopeless? I mean.

MCHENRY: No, but we see things like this, and it's downstream from culture. It is. And we do have a mental health crisis that we've not addressed in this country. That is true.

And weapons are used in the -- in the -- in committing violence. That is true.

We can deal with this. We can address this. But unless we deal with the underlying pieces of this mental health and cultural issues, the cultural piece of this.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: He got those weapons legally.

MCHENRY: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: He got those weapons legally.

MCHENRY: And no one flagged his mental health issues for --

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You can flag everyone's mental health issues in this country. I mean, is that -- is that really something that is possible?

MCHENRY: But you can't get all the weapons off the street either. So, two things can be true at once. One is we have --

GARCIA-NAVARRO: We try to do both though. I mean, can you split the middle?

MCHENRY: So, Minnesota has restrictive gun laws. This is not like Texas, where I don't say this is because --

(CROSSTALK)

HINOJOSA: I'm from Texas, but I don't live there.

MCHENRY: But Minnesota does have restrictive gun laws. So we don't -- I haven't heard the story. I haven't seen coverage of how this person got -- got the weapons. But there is clearly something much deeper that it's a problem here. That's not just changing a law that we've talked about for decades, by the way.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: My daughter was five and a half years old. the first time she heard gunshots at a park. There was a party. Everyone had to hit the ground and she had nightmares for months afterwards.

This is not an abstract thing. This is not something that is pretend. This is for every parent who sends their child to school, understands that they might send their child to school, and something like this could happen.

HUNT: Yeah. And, Xochitl, you know, I really actually -- I want to stay with, with the kids. I completely understand there is a very significant political debate here, and we are going to have it. We always -- we always do. And the number of times we have it, because of the number of times this happens is awful.

But just as a parent, like the feeling of helplessness, what do you -- what do you do about it? How do you grapple with it?

HINOJOSA: Well, and also that interview where she said that they then sprung into action like the kids knew what to do? I will say, when I was in school, I never -- I would not know what to do. I'm not sure what the protocol is. I actually don't really know what they teach children in these active shooter drills now, but my son is going to have one tomorrow, and it's not because of the shooting, it's because there's shootings all of the time now. It is constant.

And the fact that, you know, just in dc a couple blocks away, there was a shooting on a football field. I mean, these things are happening constantly. And large cities and small cities, and we have babies -- these are babies, Kasie. These are babies. And this does not this is not okay.

And whatever the political debate is, either way, it is unacceptable. And everyone has to speak out at this point.

HUNT: Steve, you have the last word.

INSKEEP: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There is a couple of different ways that I experienced this. One of them is as a parent, and the other is as a journalist who covers these shootings occasionally. I've been on the scene of them more often. I'm anchoring.

And you notice that we use the same language again and again and again about vigils and mourning.

[16:45:04]

The same rituals again and again.

HUNT: Thoughts and prayers.

INSKEEP: It's thoughts and prayers, other things. Nothing changes, it doesn't change.

And that really strikes me now because we're in this moment of tremendous change where we as a country have voted and chosen to take all of our institutions and throw them in the air and see where they land. And people wanted big change. People, in fact, across the political spectrum, seem to want things to change in this country. This is a thing that has not moved at all over the last decade at all.

HUNT: There have been some small signs. There was legislation pushed by Chris Murphy and others in Congress that made some incremental changes. But the extent to which we consider that progress --

INSKEEP: Yeah.

HUNT: -- is quite something.

All right. We're going to turn to another piece of news here, the Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, formally filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration after the president attempted to fire her earlier this week. The president on Monday accused Cook of having committed mortgage fraud. The allegations that have not been taken to court.

The White House asserting today that they have the right to remove her.

CNN crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz joins us now.

Katelyn, what are we learning about this lawsuit?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, already, Kasie, it is fast moving and it is going to be about the independence of the Federal Reserve board from the White House, the executive branch, and what the implications could be with Donald Trump firing Lisa Cook, a governor of the federal reserve board.

On the economy, Cook's attorneys are arguing that the implications could be profound. They write in a court filing today, the equities and public interest both weigh in favor of keeping Governor Cook in her position as her purported firing would jeopardize the independence of the Federal Reserve and ultimately, the stability of our nation's financial system.

So, there will be debate around that. The Supreme Court even has acknowledged that the Federal Reserve is different. It's in line with the long history of central banking in this country. Donald Trump has tried to fire others in independent agencies before.

People on labor boards, inspectors general who received whistleblower complaints, foreign aid organizations that are part of the executive branch, the Supreme Court, has allowed those people to be removed by Donald Trump.

But is Lisa Cook going to be different? That's one of the questions. The other question, can Donald Trump define what a "for cause" termination is? Lisa Cook's attorneys pushed back that the real reason here she's being fired is that it's political and there is no cause -- Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Katelyn Polantz for us -- thanks, Katelyn, very much for that report.

Coming up next, a controversial move by the Trump administration today, another one, moving to give full military honors.

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[16:52:05]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

New today, the U.S. Air Force will provide full military funeral honors for Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, and pro-Trump rioters who was shot and killed in the Capitol on January 6th as she attempted to breach that sensitive area where members of Congress were evacuating. That's the speaker's lobby, specifically. The honors had previously been denied under the Biden administration.

My panel is back.

And, Congressman, I'm going to give this one to you. I was there that day. My producer was in the gallery with your colleagues. That speaker's lobby again, you served as speaker pro temp of the House. What is your reaction to the president doing this?

MCHENRY: It's not deserved. The full military honors are primarily for those who gave their lives in defense of their country, and are truly defending our country. And this is not an act of bravery. This is an act of cowardice, and should not be rewarded with military honors.

HINOJOSA: Well, and this just goes in line with Trump trying to erase history. And that's what he did with the pardons of those who were convicted, who involved in January 6th that day. I also want to point out that DOD is very clear about who is not eligible for this. And one of the points on their website is a person who is found to have committed, but who has not yet been convicted of a federal or state capital crime by reason of their not being available for trial due to their death.

And so, this is a -- this is a clean cut matter when it comes to the rules. And when you provide military funeral honors. And so, the fact that they're reversing this just says a lot about this administration.

HUNT: Well, and, Congressman, I mean, the president did pardon them all for all of these crimes.

MCHENRY: This is not deserved. This is not deserved. You have brave men and women that have defended the United States in battle or, and have come home with or have come home with wounds or not come home at all. They deserve these honors. Not somebody who committed an act like this.

INSKEEP: I think we can just go back to remember who said the January 6th attack was wrong at the time. The people who said at the time that the attack was wrong included the president of the United States. Although his arm had to be twisted considerably by his staff before he said that. It included all the leading members of Congress, including Republican leaders who voted to object to the election.

To come back now and completely reverse this requires a lot of Republicans to change what they said at the moment, particularly in the hours after they themselves were under attack. It's really remarkable, and it does add to the pardons in an amazing way.

[16:55:03]

HUNT: And there is -- there is a long historical log of what was said then, what has been said since.

INSKEEP: Yeah.

HUNT: All right. We'll be right back.

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HUN: All right. Thank you all very much for being here today. A couple -- couple tough stories. So really appreciate it.

And, of course, if you missed any of today's show, you can always catch up listening to THE ARENA's podcast. Just scan the QR code below and follow along wherever you get your podcasts.

"THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" is up next. It starts right now.