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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Police Say, 2 Children Killed, 14 Children and 3 Adults Hurt in Shooting; CDC Director Ousted Weeks into Her Tenure; Trump Administration Plans to Takeover of D.C.'s Union Station. Kremlin Rejects Idea Of European Troops In Ukraine; Delta To Pay $78.75 Million To Resolve Fuel Dump Lawsuit. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired August 27, 2025 - 18:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.

We start tonight with breaking news. Police in Minneapolis say they do not yet have a clear motive, but they're reviewing an apparent manifesto after a horrific mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis by a former student. Police say children were praying inside a Catholic church during a mass marking the first week back at school when the gunman shot through the windows.

[18:00:00]

Two children, ages eight and ten were murdered. 17 others, 14 children and 3 elderly adults in their 80s were also wounded. All are expected to survive, we're told. Police say the lone gunman then took her own life. Listen to one shooting survivor, a ten-year-old fifth grader named Weston Halsne, describing how his friend, another child, shielded him from the gunfire.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WESTON HALSNE, TEN-YEAR-OLD FIFTH GRADER: I was like two seats away from the stained glass windows. So, they were like, the shots were like right next to me. I think I got like gunpowder on my neck.

And I just ran under the pew and then I covered my head. My friend, Victor, like saved me though because he laid on top of me, but he got hit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Police say they, they're evaluating a series of videos that the shooter apparently posted on YouTube this morning. Various racial and religious slurs were written on the weapon's psycho killer, suck on this, kill Donald Trump, 6 million wasn't enough. One of the gun magazines also listed the names of six previous notorious mass shooters. There were also, as I mentioned, some horribly anti-Semitic writings seen in the video, including Israel must fall, 6 million wasn't enough, an apparent reference to the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is near the crime scene in Minneapolis. Shimon?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Jake, this was just day three of the new school year. There are signs welcoming students back, one of them reading a future filled with hope. That message tonight clearly has ended and yet another school shooting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHIEF BRIAN O'HARA, MINNEAPOLIS POLICE: The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible.

PROKUPECZ (voice over): 2children are dead and 17 others wounded in Minneapolis after a gunman fired through the windows of a church.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any troopers respond, we need a lot more medical.

PROKUPECZ: Police say dozens of children and worshipers were attending a morning mass to mark the start of the school year at Annunciation Catholic School.

O'HARA: Two young children, ages eight and ten were killed where they sat in the pews.

Principal Matthew Deboer says teachers were crucial in saving lives.

MATT DEBOER, PRINCIPAL, ANNUNCIATION CATHOLIC SCHOOL: Within seconds of this situation beginning, our teachers were heroes. Children were ducked down, adults were protecting children. Older children were protecting younger children. And as we heard earlier, it could have been significantly worse without their heroic action.

PROKUPECZ: Of the 17 people injured, authorities say 14 of them were children. All remaining victims are expected to survive according to police.

DR. TOM WYATT, CHAIR OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, HENNEPIN HEALTHCARE: Two of them were adult patients, nine pediatric patients. Four of them required the operating room.

PROKUPECZ: The shooter was armed with three weapons, according to police, a rifle, shotgun, and a pistol. Officials say all three weapons were legally purchased by the shooter recently.

O'HARA: The coward who fired these shots ultimately took his own life in the rear of the church.

PROKUPECZ: Ten-year-old Weston Halsne, a fifth grader at the school, described the unimaginable.

HALSNE: It was like shots fired and then we got under the pews. It kind of -- they shot through the stained glass windows, I think, and it was really scary.

We waited like ten to five minutes. I don't really know. And then we went to the gym and then the door is locked just to make sure he didn't come. And we waited in the gym for more news.

My friend got hit in the back.

REPORTER: And did he go to the hospital?

HALSNE: Yes, he went to the hospital.

REPORTER: What went through your mind when you saw that?

HALSNE: I was super scared for him. But I think now he's okay.

PROKUPECZ: Some neighbors also rushed to help after hearing the gunfire. Patrick Scallen comforted three young victims.

PATRICK SCALLEN, NEIGHBOR: I told them and I assured them, I'm not leaving you until the ambulance gets here and they're going to take good care of you, you're going to be okay and you're going to be with your parents real soon. And I think that's all I could do.

PROKUPECZ: The mayor of Minneapolis clearly frustrated after yet another all too familiar American tragedy.

MAYOR JACOB FREY (D-MINNEAPOLIS, MN): Don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PROKUPECZ (on camera): And, Jake, those stories from those little kids and the stories that we're hearing about the teachers and the other officials here who tried to come in and rescue and help anyone they could, we're going to hear so much of those stories tonight. There's a vigil planned here, the scene out here. Police continue to go over the scene. Crime scene investigators have been here now for several hours as investigators continue to do the work that they need to do to try and figure out exactly why this happened.

[18:05:05]

Jake?

TAPPER: Shimon Prokupecz in Minneapolis, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Let's bring in CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller, also with us, retired FBI Agent Steve Moore.

John, police are saying -- the Minneapolis Police are saying that the rifle and the pistol and the shotgun that the shooter used were all purchased completely legally. As for a motive, this is what the Minneapolis Police chief, Brian O'Hara, said investigators are looking into. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'HARA: There was some sort of manifesto that was time to come out on YouTube. It's been taken down and our investigators are going through that to try and develop a motive from that. Additionally, there are these three search warrants happening in residential locations, and we may very well, you know, find more information or writings that could give some sense to that, but we don't have that now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: John, what are your sources telling you about the shooter's manifesto and the bizarre videos posted on YouTube that investigators are now looking into?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, looking through the manifesto that's a lot of pages of kind of rambling. A lot of it is his self-pity for how his life is going, that he has been depressed for a long time, that he has been planning to do this for a long time, that he knows it's wrong, that he knows his friends are going to hate him for it, that he knows he's going to take his own life at the end of it. He said it was better to die standing up than kneeling down for all the injustices he appears to believe he has suffered during his life.

This is not foreign territory for us. Basically, I look at this guy and I know this guy because we've seen this guy before. He has written messages all over his rifles to homages, to the New Zealand shooter who killed 51 Muslims in mosques while they were praying, to the Norway shooter who killed children in a camp, and is known as the biggest body count, very much like what we saw among the Buffalo shooter.

These are individuals who -- you know, we look for that specific motive. There won't be a specific motive. He's got problems in his life. He has decided to blame everybody else. He has anti-black messages, anti-Semitic messages, anti-religious me messages, anti-God messages. In other words his motive is he hates everybody because his life's a mess and he figures it's not his fault.

TAPPER: Steve, according to a yearbook obtained by CNN, the shooter graduated from this school, Annunciation Catholic Grade School, which goes up to eighth grade, in 2017. And according to social media posts, the shooter's mother previously worked there from 2016 to 2021. How might those connections factor into the investigation?

STEVE MOORE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CONTRIBUTOR: Well, just playing off of what John said, when you feel aggrieved, when you -- when the whole world is against you, you tend to go back at the one place where you felt most maligned, most punished, most put upon and go back and do your damage there. I suspect that there are some issues with Catholicism and the fact that he was transitioning, and I think you have to go through all of this.

The tough part is going to be when the FBI pros -- or not prosecutes, determines motive and hate crime status is which hatred will they choose. This guy hated everybody.

TAPPER: Yes. And, Steve, what's different about the investigation now that the FBI is investigating this as an act of domestic terrorism and as a hate crime targeting Catholics? How does that change the investigation, if at all?

MOORE: Well, it's not going to change it as far as a prosecutor's situation, Jake, obviously, as you know, but what it will do is help in the profiling, the behavioral analysis part of this thing. So, that hopefully, one day, we can start getting people into treatment before they do this kind of thing. If they show danger signs, if they show predilection for this kind of thing, we can do something about it. I think we're kind of in the Stone Age at this point, but one day who knows where we can get. And each step along the way is going to be unfortunately, like they say, written in blood because you learn only by tragedy.

TAPPER: Steve Moore, John Miller, thanks to both of you.

Let's bring in Minnesota State representative Emma Greenman. Her district includes Annunciation Catholic School.

[18:10:01]

Representative Greenman, what's going through your mind as you reflect on the trauma your community's going through right now?

STATE REP. EMMA GREENMAN (D-MN): Well, I am grateful for all the outpouring of support that we have had in our community. We are obviously grieving. This just happened this morning. Kids and families, the parishioners who are impacted, it is a shock and a shattering that so many other communities and families have experienced, this idea that gun violence can shatter, you know, come into your school or your church and frankly your grocery store or your theater, and it's just -- it's incredibly painful right now.

TAPPER: Do you personally know people who were impacted today?

GREENMAN: It's hard not to. So, at Annunciation, yes, and Annunciation is right in our community. People go by their Christmas trees there. I was just there last year talking to the girl scouts who are working on their playground. So, it is -- the ripple of this is much more than just the kids and their families. These people in our community, we are all grieving for them, the ones we lost and the ones that are impacted and victims and still working on injuring and their wounds.

TAPPER: Take a listen to the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, just a short while ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FREY: I think the impetus has to be on all of us as leaders to do a whole lot more, to recognize that we've got more guns in this country than we have people. And it's on all of us to recognize the truth and the reality that we can't just say that this shouldn't happen again and then allow it to happen again and again beyond that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: What realistically can be done, do you think, to prevent this type of violence from happening in this country, whether schools, places of worship or whatever? What can be done to keep these weapons out of the hands of people who will do harm to themselves or others?

GREENMAN: We owe it to these kids, to their families, to folks in our community to not become numb because of this violence that is disrupting and destroying people's everyday lives. We cannot say there's nothing we can do. And, in fact, countries around the world do not have the same issue because they have taken action.

The principal at Annunciation School or earlier today said, when we pray, move our feet, and we have to at every level of government. Communities need to demand it. We need to move our feet because it's epidemic of gun violence here in Minnesota today, but we have seen it in Florida, in Texas, in Colorado, in probably every state in this country. It shattered our community today, but there are lots of things we can and need to do, and we can't become numb because that would be letting down all of the victims in the past, the folks who died and are suffering today, and the future generations of Minnesotans and Americans who deserve better.

TAPPER: So, I believe Minnesota has red flag laws. I'm not sure how effective they've proved to be. But red flag laws depend upon parents and friends and community members to make the call and say, this person appears to be in some sort of crisis, and we should make sure that he or she is not able to buy a gun at least until we've made sure the person's okay. Does Minneapolis have the resources for that? It's one of the most famously progressive cities in the country.

GREENMAN: So, the red flag law is a state law, just like we passed universal background checks recently. It took years and years to get there. But what we know is we can't solve a national epidemic just here in Minnesota. We are working our best to keep up. But this is a national epidemic and it is a national epidemic that centers and has to do with high capacity weapons of war that are being used against people in their everyday lives, in this case, children.

And we had a national assault weapons ban. We had less of these incidences. I was in high school when Columbine happened. It is a travesty and a failure of our state and our country that we are still having these conversations and asking, is there -- can we do anything? We can. We know that there are tools. We need to think about the weapons, not just the people. We need to do all of these things because you should be able to go to school, you should be able to go to church.

[18:15:00]

You should be able to go to the grocery store and not worry about being a victim of gun violence. And right now people around the country, not just here in Minnesota, but people around the country have that fear and have personal experience with that kind of gun violence. That's what we're talking about, not becoming numb to and doing it.

And so there is more we need to do. We need to make sure that those laws we do have worked. But this is a national epidemic, not just an issue here in Minnesota. We're just the most recent victim.

TAPPER: No, of course, it's a national epidemic. I just have much more faith in local communities to try to solve these problems than I do in Congress. That's the only reason I asked.

Minnesota State Representative Emma Greenman, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it.

We're continuing to following the breaking news out of Minneapolis where two children were killed, more than a dozen others injured, specifically 14 children, 3 elderly citizens wounded in a mass shooting at a Catholic school. What police are now revealing about the multiple weapons involved, and we're going to bring in the timeline of today's events as they search for a motive.

Thank you. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I ran in as the police were there -- getting there kind of alongside. It was just chaos. I then just started helping kids out. You know, I saw a lot of injured kids. It was tough. It was -- and I was just, you know, selfish. It was just like, where are my girls? Where is (INAUDIBLE)? That's all I could think about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Obviously, that's not selfish at all.

We're back with the breaking news, sound there from a dad who rushed to Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis when he got word that shots had been fired at his children's school. This is a moment no parent, no child should ever have to experience in America. It happens again and again.

Let's bring in our friend, Steve Guttowski. He's founder and firearms reporter with TheReload.com, an excellent news site that you should subscribe to if you have an interest in these issues.

Stephen, police say that this gunman had a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol all purchased legally. You've seen images. Can you identify what kinds of firearms they are?

STEPHEN GUTTOWSKI, FOUNDER AND FIREARMS REPORTER, THERELOAD.COM: Yes, certainly, at least from the pictures, it appears to be an AR-15-style rifle, pump action shotgun, and then a semi-automatic handgun, so some of the most popular firearms in the country.

TAPPER: The Minneapolis Police chief said the weapons used today were recently purchased also legally. Minnesota does have a red flag. So, apparently, nobody had reported this individual to authorities. What else are you looking for to learn in the coming hours and days? GUTTOWSKI: Yes. I mean, certainly, as far as the legality of the purchases or the laws involved here, we kind of know everything we already need to know, which is that the person who committed this act didn't have a criminal record or a mental health record that would've disqualified them from owning guns. They purchased their guns relatively recently. These are not uncommon things in these sorts of attacks, unfortunately. It's difficult to disarm somebody if they don't have that criminal record or mental -- you know, the history of being committed to a mental health facility or something of that nature. If nobody has intervened at the sign of red flags in this person's life, then there's -- under the law, really, regardless of what state you're in at this point, there's not a lot you can do to keep them from owning firearms.

TAPPER: You study why shooters commit crimes like these. And these days, shooters also study each other. I mean this person, this disturbed murderer, referenced other shooters, the New Zealand shooter, the Sandy Hook shooter, the Tree of Life shooter, et cetera. Have you observed any sort of common themes that we should be focusing on or looking at?

GUTTOWSKI: Yes, absolutely. I mean, if you look at research on this from the universities, places like the violence project is a very good source on this. What you'll see is a thing called social proofing, where these shooters tend to copy, or, you know, a lot of -- maybe more common term for it is copycatting. You'll see them explicitly reference other shooters in the past. You'll see them do similar acts, like just the existence of a manifesto, for instance, is very common in these kinds of attacks, but that's not something that really existed in popularity until the Columbine shooting, right?

And a lot of the shooters today are still echoing the things that happened in the Columbine shooting and a number of the shootings since then have also referenced those shooters and then other shooters that they take inspiration from. It's sort of a, you know, game plan that you'll see these attackers follow. And it's -- we're seeing a lot of the same symptoms of that in this attack.

TAPPER: All right. Stephen Guttowski, thank you so much, always great to have you on.

We're going to have much more on our breaking news out of Minnesota in moments. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to join us to try to explain how hospitals prepare for these type of mass casualty events.

Plus, a follow-up to a story we brought you on Monday. The White House has now put several FEMA employees on leave after they signed a public letter, a warning about Trump's cuts to FEMA that they think could put the American people at risk. They're being punished for it. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:25:00]

TAPPER: And we're back with our breaking news out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where a gunman murdered 2 children and wounded 17 others at a Catholic school. Of those 17, 14 are children and 3 are elderly adults in their 80s. Police are calling today's mass shooting literally in mass a, quote, deliberate act of violence. Two children, eight and ten killed, 17 others, 14 children, 3 elderly adults wounded, they are expected to survive.

Let's bring in Toronto neurosurgeon and CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, you have written op-eds speaking about your own personal experience treating gunshot wounds, including one where you operated on a patient with a gunshot wound to the head. You wrote, quote, it was a handgun injury, and we were able to quickly control the bleeding and relieve the pressure on the brain. The patient spent one day in the ICU for observation, was discharged, a few days later. Had it been a rifle injury, there was hardly any chance he would've survived, end quote.

How do different weapons change the type and severity of gunshot wounds?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's the size of the munition and the force of the blast.

[18:30:00]

I mean, when you're talking about these high-powered rifles, it is a very different injury. And I remember even back during my residency looking at the impact of different types of munitions, we went out to this field and our professor shot watermelons with these different types of guns, rifles, and we saw the impact. With the handgun, it's almost the same amount of energy on the entrance and the exit, almost like makes a pinhole sort of injury.

With a high-powered weapon, it's hard to talk about, Jake. And in terms of what you see there, it causes almost a cavitation within the body. So, the exit wound is much larger. There's a lot of energy that's sort of distributed in the body. And I think when the E.R. doctors in Minnesota were talking about the fact that all these different resources were necessary, it's because an injury like that might affect the chest, might affect the abdomen, might affect several different organs. So, it is just far more devastating than a handgun. Both can be bad, but it's far more devastating.

TAPPER: It is tough to talk about, and we don't show the images though, sometimes I do wonder if we talked more about it and showed more of these images, if laws would change to keep these firearms out of the hands of people who mean to causes harm, if there would be more action. But many of the victims are children. And so continuing with this difficult conversation, I wonder if that changes the approach for surgeons like yourself.

GUPTA: Well, you know, there's a lot of dedicated children's hospitals. You have one in D.C. There's one in Atlanta. Children are not just little adults, meaning that there's many things about them that are different in terms of their physiology, how you'd care for them. But I think the big thing is just consider what I said in terms of the devastation of a big cavitation sort of injury, creating a cavity in the body, essentially as a result of this wound. You might need pediatric surgeons, trauma surgeons, neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, anesthesiologists, all these people sort of to be able to manage all the different things that a wound like that would cause in anybody, but especially a child.

TAPPER: The hospital were most of those wounded in today's shooting were taken to, it's the same hospital that's dealing with the aftermath of other shootings that happened just yesterday. Take a listen to what the chair of Emergency Medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center said earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WYATT: We've had two mass casualty events happen in the last 24 hours. I mean, that does take a toll. But we also have to recognize that we are here as a critical resource for our community and we have to take time to process, you know, the care that we deliver in these situations, and we have to be able to move forward because we are obviously needed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: How does it impact an emergency room, that kind of traumatic wound over and over coming in, two mass casualty events in just hours?

GUPTA: Well, psychologically is one thing, Jake, and that's probably a much longer conversation, but in terms of the procedural aspect of this, sadly, they're really good at this because they do this all the time, you know? So, at 8:46, the call comes in. All these things go into place at that point, O.R.s that are already underway. They're basically told we're going to delay the next case, keep lots of operating rooms open. Blood is sort of mobilized. There's an all call that goes out to the community to try and get more blood. Other surgeons may be called in. It's a process. I mean, just this weekend in Atlanta, there was a mass casualty shooting. We know hundreds of rounds were fired at the CDC a few weeks ago.

These hospitals, I didn't used to see these types of injuries early in my career. I remember seeing them only on the battlefield when I was covering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now you see them all the time, and I don't think I'm exaggerating, all the time in many of these urban hospitals, Jake.

TAPPER: Yes. I remember covering the war in Ukraine a couple years ago, and there were American doctors, surgeons that had come to Ukraine to help them with the war wounds that they were experiencing and their expertise was from living and working in the United States, not from being in the military.

Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much, I appreciate it, as always.

Joining us now to discuss, Congressman Greg Stanton, a Democrat from Arizona, former mayor of Phoenix. You're also on the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. Police say the Minnesota shooter was carrying three different types of guns. Is there any appetite in Congress at all to deal with this real problem area we have where most people that have guns are not a risk to anybody, most people that have mental illness are not a risk to anybody, but there is this overlap and keeping guns out of the hands of these people who mean harm to others or themselves? That's the area that Congress and lawmakers should focus. Is there any appetite to do that?

REP. GREG STANTON (D-AZ): Tragically, we were heading exactly the wrong direction on this key issue, Jake. Look, what happened today is a horrific tragedy. I'm a parent. I can't even imagine kids having to cover up other kids in church while bullets are flying and the teacher's trying to keep the kids safe by pushing them under the pews.

[18:35:07]

It's unimaginable. And we can't look away and we can't get numb to it.

But right now in Congress with this administration, we're heading in the wrong direction. They're eliminating, they're decimating the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, mental health healthcare that you've talked about. I mean, with the bill that -- the big bill that just passed, we're going in the wrong direction on healthcare generally and mental health in particular. They're getting rid of the Department of Education, which helps to fund mental health support for students that need it in schools. This is such an important issue, and yet we are heading in the wrong direction with this administration.

TAPPER: Speaking of this administration, switching topics, you're the ranking member of the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA that deals with natural disasters in this country. The Trump administration just put several FEMA employees on leave, paid leave, but still on leave against their wishes. This was because, or at least after they signed onto a letter sounding the alarm warning that because of actions taken by the Trump administration and FEMA leadership and unqualified individuals, American lives were at risk during hurricane season.

What is your take on what they did here in terms of putting these people on leave? You met with FEMA employees today.

STANTON: Yes, I did. I'm here in Washington now a little early. Congress will go back in session next week. But I came here because I wanted to meet with those employees face-to-face. They're whistleblowers. They are sounding the alarm that the changes made by this administration puts Americans at risk. They believe that we are less prepared for a natural disaster that even before Katrina, 20 years ago, where the 20-year anniversary, the tragic anniversary of Katrina, is happening right now.

TAPPER: Yes.

STANTON: They believe in particular that this decision by the Department of Homeland Security that contracts as low as a hundred thousand dollars have to be personally signed off by Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, has slowed down the response. It certainly slowed down the response with the tragic flood just recently in Kerr, Texas, the ability to respond telephonically to a call center. The call center contract lapsed because of this need to sign off on each and every contract delayed action. We're not even doing pre-mitigation disaster plans with local communities. If local communities have some support necessary to plan for these disasters, the impact could be so much less.

We're in the middle of hurricane season and we are in danger, and these brave, heroic employees wanted to come forward. They risk their own careers to warn the American people that we're at risk. FEMA is not prepared. They're trying to pass off this responsibility to the states and not accept the responsibility the federal government has to have that we support our states and our communities when there's a tragedy that goes beyond their capacity, and we're heading in the wrong direction, sadly, with FEMA at this moment.

TAPPER: Congressman Greg Stanton, Democrat from Arizona, thanks for being with us today. I really appreciate it.

Coming up next, we're digging into President Trump's latest attempt to exert power over Washington, D.C. This time, it sounds like the mayor is on board.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:40:00]

TAPPER: We are following more breaking news. Sources tell CNN, this is an update to a story we brought you a few minutes ago, that not only has the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, Susan Monarez, been ousted, but three of her top deputies have also announced they are leaving the CDC. They are the CDC's chief medical officer, the CDC's, director of immunization and respiratory diseases, and the CDCs director who oversees infectious diseases. Monarez was sworn in less than a month ago, and, obviously, with all of the anti-science, anti-medicine things that the director of the HHS, Secretary of HHS Robert Kennedy Jr., says, this is a story of a lot of interest.

Also in our Politics Lead, the Department of Transportation is taking over Washington D.C.'s iconic Union Station, the train station, part of the White House's latest push to exert power over the District of Columbia. Amtrak is currently in charge of the day-to-day management of the transit hub, which has been passed among public and private partnerships for years.

CNN's Pete Muntean now takes a closer look at this latest Trump administration takeover,

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT (voice over): And the military already patrolling its halls Washington, D.C.'s main train station is the newest target in the takeover of the city by President Donald Trump.

SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: He wants Union Station to be beautiful again. He wants transit to be safe again, and he wants our nation's capital to be great again. MUNTEAN: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made the surprise announcement in Union Station as Amtrak unveiled its new Acela trains. Now, the Department of Transportation will run Union Station, which Duffy says it already owns and needs to clean up.

DUFFY: We're going to take Union Station back under DOT Control. Not a power play, we've always had it. We are going to make the investments to make sure that this station isn't dirty.

MUNTEAN: Protesters shouted down Vice President J.D. Vance as he visited Union Station last week.

J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: But I'll tell you, a couple years ago when I brought my kids here, they were being screamed at by violent vagrants and it was scaring the hell out of my kids.

MUNTEAN: It is the latest move impacting D.C. by the Trump administration now in its third week of controlling the city's police department and deploying the National Guard. Trump insists the city is plagued by rampant crime, even though statistics show crime here has been going down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think taking over Union Station is a stretch. I don't think Union Station needs like too much assistance.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it's great. I think it's a beautiful landmark.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think Trump is trying to take over everything he can. Anything that he thinks he can take over, that's what he's going to do.

MUNTEAN: 117 years old, Union Station has been owned by the federal government for more than four decades, but station management has been dogged by a complicated history of private partnerships.

[18:45:06]

Last year, Amtrak took control of the entire station, vowing to revitalize retail space gutted by the pandemic.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser says it could cost billions to revamp Union Station, and a federal takeover is a good thing.

MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER (D), DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: It's an important asset for the nation, so it is appropriate in my view, for the federal government, to make the necessary investments in the transformation of Union Station.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MUNTEAN (on camera): D.C. Mayor Bowser says it could cost $8 billion to rejuvenate Union Station, and the city simply cannot afford that. It could be even more.

The federal government has not made clear what they will do exactly with Union Station. The Trump administration has been pretty low on details, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says President Trump has been clear. He wants D.C. to be beautiful -- Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right. Pete Muntean outside Union Station looks pretty beautiful from here. But inside, I don't know.

Coming up, when will it end? A top White House official concedes it might take months to end the fighting in Ukraine. We're going to take you to Russia next, where Kremlin leaders just laid out their new red line.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:50:02]

TAPPER: In our world lead, 12 days since the Alaska summit and nine days since European leaders met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House -- at the White House. And still, no deal, not yet to end the fighting in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says the delegation will meet with U.S. officials in New York on Friday to try to speed things up, but some in President Trump's orbit, such as Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, concede that a deal might not come until the end of this year.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen is in Moscow.

Fred, what are the Kremlin's sticking points?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Jake. Well, the Russians are saying that they're not per se against security guarantees for Ukraine provided by European nations, but what they are against is European countries putting boots on the ground in Ukraine. That's because the Kremlin says they don't consider these to be European troops, but to be troops of European countries.

And the spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov, he said that most of those countries are, of course, members of NATO and the Russians, of course, have been pushing that narrative that they say the current conflict in Ukraine has some of its roots in the expansion of NATO, which happened in the decades after the end of the Cold War.

Now, the Russians today also not really offering a timeline as to if and when a meeting between Vladimir Putin and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, could happen. One of the things, of course, that the Russians have been saying is that such a meeting needs to be well-prepared and that it needs to have real results. The Russians obviously saying that they believe a lot of those tough issues, like, for instance, territorial questions, but also security guarantees for Ukraine need to be worked out before Vladimir Putin would be willing to sit down with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

All this, of course, Jake, as Vladimir Putin in the next couple of days is set to travel to China to further bolster ties with Xi Jinping -- Jake.

TAPPER: Fred Pleitgen in Moscow, thanks so much. Joining us now, founding partner and Washington correspondent of "Puck", Julia Ioffe.

Julia, thanks so much for being here. So, Russia continues to relentlessly bomb Ukraine. Zelenskyy says Russian strikes knocked out power to more than 100,000 households overnight. Russia is clearly continuing to send the same message. They want Ukraine, they want it all.

JULIA IOFFE, FOUNDING PARTNER AND WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Well, and they're sending a message that they're winning and that they could take this all by force if necessary, that if they don't get it at the negotiating table, they'll get it on the field of battle.

But that's not necessarily true, and Russia is not doing as well as they would want us to believe. Ukrainian attacks, Ukrainian drone attacks have taken out quite a few Russian oil refineries. There are now gasoline shortages and gasoline rationing in parts of Russia.

The Russian economy is not doing that well. Sanctions are having an effect. Again, they're not, you know, the silver bullet, but they are working.

And the reason that Putin is asking for all this stuff at the negotiating table, like the last little piece of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions is because he's been -- he hasn't been able to take them in literally 11 years of active fighting.

TAPPER: Yeah.

IOFFE: So. You know, he's trying to kind of do some smoke and mirrors to convince you -- Putin, excuse me, to con --

TAPPER: Convince Trump.

IOFFE: Convince Trump that he is, you know, he's the big dog. He can win this anyway and he's just going to throw him a bone by negotiating. But that's not totally true.

TAPPER: I want you to get your reaction to something we heard from Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE WITKOFF, U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY: His proposal on the table, it involves Donetsk. It may not be -- it may not be something that the Ukrainians can take. But no one's ever made that kind of progress here. And it's because of his force of personality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Force of personality. Theres no way Ukraine would ever agree to those territorial concessions, would they?

IOFFE: Not as things stand now and not without ironclad security guarantees. But there's a problem as I've written. There's a problem with these security guarantees from the West, too. If the West was willing to offer real ironclad security guarantees to Ukraine, they would have done that three years ago. They could have done that yesterday or today. But in fact, Europeans don't want to send their boys to die in Ukraine, right?

And Russia knows that. And so Russia is also pushing and saying that, oh, we can't have this, we can't have that. I think both sides know that there's no -- there's actually no peace deal on the on the table, I think Steve Witkoff is trying to CYA a little bit --

TAPPER: Right.

IOFFE: -- and preserve face for Trump. But people are telling me that, look, this is some progress for the Ukrainians and the Europeans that if Trump understood in Anchorage that Putin is not serious about peace, which he seems to have understood, then that in and of itself is progress.

TAPPER: All right. Julia Ioffe, thanks so much. Always great to have your insights.

You can check out her writing on "Puck".

Coming up next, why Delta Airlines has just agreed to pay millions of dollars to resolve a class action lawsuit.

Stay with us.

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[18:59:02]

TAPPER: Our last leads begin in our law and justice lead. A federal judge ruled today that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland undocumented immigrant, cannot be deported until at least early October. The judge in the case is planning to have the Trump administration testify on October 6th about its efforts to deport Abrego Garcia. He is expected to remain in ICE custody until then.

In our money lead, Delta Airlines has agreed to pay more than $78 million to resolve a lawsuit over a 2020 fuel dump that covered tens of thousands of properties in California, including homes and schools. In January 2020, a Delta flight jettisoned about 15,000 pounds of fuel to reduce the risks of an emergency landing. Several dozen people on the ground were treated for minor injuries in the fuel dump.

And our health lead, the FDA approved updated COVID-19 vaccines. But for a more limited group, adults aged 65 and older and younger people who are at higher risk with this and the rescission of emergency use authorizations, it may be significantly more difficult for certain people, such as infants or young children, to get COVID vaccines, despite being especially vulnerable to COVID.

You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and on TikTok @JakeTapper. You can follow the show on X @TheLeadCNN. If you ever miss an episode of THE LEAD, you can listen to the show whence you get your podcasts.

"ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" starts right now. I'll see you tomorrow.