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China Says U.S. Spy Plane "Deliberately Intruded" Into Its Training Area; 54 Percent Of U.S. Teachers Think Being Armed Would Make Schools Less Safe; Now: NASA Holding Meeting On Unidentified Objects. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired May 31, 2023 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a mid-air confrontation between the U.S. and China increasing tensions between the two countries. The Chinese military now says a U.S. plane "deliberately intruded" into its training area in the South China Sea.

Now, that claim comes after U.S. officials released a video showing the moment that they say a Chinese jet carried out an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver. The U.S. plane shaking a bit, apparently. The U.S. says -- you can see it right there. The U.S. says that was caused by turbulence from the close call.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand has the latest on this for us. What do you hear from U.S. officials, Natasha?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, we actually just got a statement in from the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken about this, John, who said essentially what other U.S. officials have said about this incident, which is that the pilots -- the Chinese pilots in this instance were acting very dangerously. And that this really underscores why it is so important for the U.S. to have ongoing military-to-military communication with the Chinese. Something that the Chinese have rebuffed repeatedly over recent months including as recently as this week when U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin actually requested a meeting with his Chinese counterpart while they are in Singapore this week, and it was rejected. It was just outright rebuffed by the Chinese.

So, really, the U.S. response to this incident -- just the latest incident of provocation they say by the Chinese against a U.S. aircraft that was operating in U.S. airspace is that they will continue to do so. They are not going to be deterred by this kind of what they described as a dangerous intercept by the Chinese fighter aircraft because they say they're operating in international airspace. Now, the Chinese have a very different perspective on this. They say according to their foreign ministry that the U.S. was acting in a very provocative manner and the Chinese military actually said that the U.S. was interfering in training exercises that the Chinese were carrying out at the time.

[11:35:04]

But just to give you a sense of what Indo-Pacific Command is saying here. They released a statement along with this video yesterday saying that the United States will continue to fly, sail, and operate safely and responsibly, wherever international law allows and the U.S. Indo- Pacific Joint Force will continue to fly in international airspace with due regard for the safety of all vessels and aircraft under international law.

So, all of this really underscoring for the U.S. anyway, why it is so important to keep these channels of communication open. The Chinese, of course, seeing it very differently at this point, saying that they don't want to talk to the U.S. as long as tensions remain this high and as long as the U.S. isn't willing to lift some of those sanctions that were imposed back in 2018, John.

BERMAN: Natasha Bertrand, keep us posted. Thank you very much. Kate?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hundreds gathered at a contentious Florida School Board meeting last night. This is all over the investigation into a teacher showing a Disney movie to her fifth-grade class. The community members in attendance were divided about what should happen here.

The teacher, Jenna Barbee, is at the center of this whole thing. She spoke out at this meeting to defend herself. At one point, reading from a poem. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNA BARBEE, FLORIDA TEACHER UNDER INVESTIGATION BY STATE: Let the students read and learn. Let the teachers teach. Everyone deserves to be represented and that's what we need to preach.

We are the destruction when we can be the light, so be kind to each other. Be powerful in this life. Power does not come from what you own, but the energy inside you, the power of love alone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: CNN's Amara Walker is following this one for us. Amara, what else happened at this -- at the school board meeting?

AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Kate. This was an extremely heated meeting. And as you said, dozens of parents and students and people from the community packed into the Hernando County School Board meeting on Tuesday night.

They came to speak out in support for both the teacher, Jenna Barbee, who is under investigation by the Florida Department of Education for showing that Disney movie called A Strange World to her fifth graders, which had an LGBTQ Plus character in the main role and also for Shannon Rodriguez, the mother, and the school board member who reported Barbee for doing so. During the public comments section, we heard from several students. One who said that parents are -- excuse me, teachers are afraid that they're tiptoeing around their words for fear of losing their job. There was plenty of blame and some indirect criticism at the Parental Rights and Education Act also known as the Don't Say Gay law that was put in place by Governor Ron DeSantis, which basically bans in any instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation for classrooms K through three. But as we said, there was also support from parents for Shannon Rodriguez who insisted during this meeting that schools need to be kept traditional.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHANNON RODRIGUEZ, MOM & SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER WHO REPORTED "STRANGE WORLD" SHOWING: We're not going to stop until all these books are removed and our schools are safe for our children to go the libraries again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How you parent is your business? You want to treat -- you want to teach them about transgender? That's fine. They can learn that at home. If you want these books that they -- they're complaining about being taken out of the schools, buy them yourself on Amazon, but leave my children to learn how they need to learn.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, you need to listen to us when we say that the rainbow in our classroom is not indoctrinating us. Seem to girls together in a Disney movie is not brainwashing us and your policies are not protecting us from anything. It is very clear that you are targeting irrelevant problems that only exist in your eyes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: In the meantime, there is a change.org petition pushing for the removal of Shannon Rodriguez or -- Rodriguez from the Hernando County School Board. So far, there are 26,000 signatures that have been collected. The goal is to get to 35,000. As for Barbee, she maintains that she showed the movie -- the Disney movie to relate to an earth science lesson.

The Florida Department of Education's investigation into her alleged inappropriate conduct -- inappropriate conduct is still ongoing. However, the Hernando County School Board closed its investigation concluding that the movie was indeed connected to the curriculum being taught and that Barbee had obtained permission from parents to do so but she did not seek administrative approval, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Amara Walker, thank you. Rahel?

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Kate, as communities nationwide grapple with how to make schools safer, teachers are now weighing in on the option to carry weapons. What they're saying? Coming up next.

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[11:44:02] SOLOMON: Welcome back. A new report finds that more than half of American teachers think being armed at school would make it less safe. The report focuses on how K through 12 teachers view school safety.

CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now. Elizabeth, arming teachers, of course, always a very controversial issue. But what are teachers saying?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, this is such an interesting survey, Rahel. The RAND Corporation, they surveyed more than half a million teachers in the United States. Teachers of grades kindergarten through 12th grade.

And what they found is that 54 percent of them said that arming teachers, giving guns to teachers would make schools less safe. 20 percent of the teachers said that doing so would make teach -- would make the schools more safe. And the remainder said it wouldn't make things less safe or more safe.

So, it was very interesting to hear from these teachers what they thought of this idea. This idea gets batted around quite a bit. That's what the teachers thought, more than half said they did not think it would make schools safer. Rahel?

[11:45:06]

SOLOMON: Well, Elizabeth I also thought it was really interesting that according to this report, active shooter situations were apparently not the top concern for teachers. What worries them most?

COHEN: Right. It wasn't even near the top, Rahel. In fact, it was number seven on the list when RAND said what's your top concern? That ranked number seven.

The top concerns were bullying and fighting and drugs. Bullying, Rahel, I will tell you, was the top concern by a lot. It was listed as the top concern by about half of the teachers. So, bullying, cyberbully bullying, that's what has teachers the most worried. Rahel?

SOLOMON: It's a tough job. Really fascinating developments. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you. John?

BERMAN: A first-of-its-kind meeting on UFOs is now underway. What NASA is revealing to the world right now about the mysteries of the cosmos?

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[11:50:30]

BERMAN: All right, happening now. A NASA Task Force is holding its first meeting on UFOs -- public meeting I should say. UFOs or as the professionals call them, UAP. That stands for unidentified anomalous phenomena. A group of experts who spent nine months studying the data on these UAPs, they are sharing their findings, including, I am told, a brand new video.

CNN's Tom Foreman has been watching all the dramatic twists and turns in this hearing. Tom, why don't you tell us what you've learned?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Can you imagine the excitement, John, when they showed this video? I want to show it to you now where it was taken by one plane and they saw against the night sky those three little dots there.

Look at them. They're moving in concert. The airplane that spotted them said we don't know what that is. They tried to chase it down. They could not chase it down. And this was rolled out today.

And now spoiler alert, the NASA scientists study this. And eventually, they said when you put all the evidence together, what this was, was three commercial aircraft in a typical flight corridor. The reason it couldn't chase them down is because they're much further away than they thought.

And they were simply lit up that way. The movement that you see there, that's the plane taking the pictures over that distance. That's why it looks like they're moving back and forth.

So, their point is to say, there's a lot of stuff out there, which actually can be explained if you can get enough information. They did say there are some typical reported characteristics of UAPs when you look at all of these out there. And this was sort of interesting.

And this is the report. It is what people say they saw. They typically say they are round and small. They tend to be white, silver, or translucent. They tend to be somewhere between 10 and 30,000 feet in the air, either stationary or up to Mach two or twice the speed of sound, and no thermal exhaust.

But here's the problem with all of that, John. The problem with that is that is largely anecdotal. That's just people saying that's what they saw, or it's being measured with all sorts of crazy different instruments out there.

And here's what's important. There are a lot of these reports. Listen to what was said at this conference about the sheer volume of these reports that are coming in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At the time of my open hearing, we were at 650 cases-ish. We roughly get -- I mean, you can do the math, you know, it depends anywhere from 50 to 100-ish new reports a month.

Now, the reason we had such a big jump recently is because I got FAA's data integrated in finally and so we ended up with like a hundred and some odd new cases. The numbers I would say that we see are possibly really anomalous are less than single-digit percentages of those.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: So, John, the real issue here that NASA is saying is what we really need is a plan going forward. A way to systematically take that tremendous amount of information, all those videos, all those reports, all those claims, and somehow subject them to the kind of scientific rigor that NASA is known for. And maybe a lot of this will become explained.

But through all of this, again, nobody is yet saying at the government level that they think any of this is from outer space. Maybe advanced weapons systems, maybe new communications or travel systems, some of it may just be a mystery, but they don't think it's aliens.

BERMAN: It does sound like this hearing maybe had a little higher dose of skepticism than some of the other speculation there. We had that wonderful chart up on the screen where you had the characteristics of these sightings. The last one was no thermal exhaust.

Well, I'm wondering that if these are all electric vehicles, right? I mean you know like a -- like a Tesla has no tailpipe. Maybe the -- you know the Martians are using EVs?

FOREMAN: Well, maybe. Maybe they -- well, you think they might be a little more advanced than us because, after all, they made it here. We didn't make it there. So, I don't know.

BERMAN: Range anxiety. You're right. Right.

FOREMAN: Its --

BERMAN: If they were EVs, they wouldn't be able to get this far because of the range issues.

FOREMAN: Yes, it's great -- I will say, when you say skepticism, I don't even know if it's skepticism, John. As much as -- these are scientists who are saying science can explain this stuff. But you can't explain it based on a shaky iPhone video that somebody took while camping. You need something more involved.

[11:55:05]

BOLDUAN: What?

FOREMAN: And that means coordination of actual scientific -- yes, this is why Bigfoot is still missing. Because he was going to turn out --

BOLDUAN: I don't understand, Tom Foreman.

FOREMAN: It's going to turn out that Bigfoot --

BOLDUAN: I'm going to be jumping into this. I'm sorry, gentlemen, I'm jumping into this -- we're jumping into this.

SOLOMON: We have more questions.

BOLDUAN: What do you mean we can't --we can't solve all the questions of the universe on my shaky cell phone video during camping, Tom?

FOREMAN: Well, we can try. Personally, I think what they're going to find out -- I heard this somewhere. They're going to find out that Bigfoot, for example, is actually a blurry creature. Not quite it always looks like.

BERMAN: All right.

FOREMAN: I think they were flying spaceships and they're all going to be very grainy.

BOLDUAN: Near perfection, Tom Foreman.

BERMAN: Thank you for explaining it all, so --

SOLOMON: Thank you, Tom.

BOLDUAN: It all makes total sense now. We are done. You're welcome, everybody.

Thank you all so much for joining us. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. "INSIDE POLITICS" is up next.

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