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Search For Answers After Sub Disaster Kills 5; Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Biden Immigration Policy; Controversial Tech In Spotlight After Sub Disaster. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired June 23, 2023 - 11:00   ET

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

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[11:00:09]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The effort now turns to recovering debris from the Titan submersible from the ocean floor as investigators search for answers. But authorities warn retrieving those vital pieces of evidence more than two miles below the surface is incredibly complex.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And a key focus for officials now putting together a timeline of the deepwater tragedy and what led to that catastrophic implosion.

SIDNER: In the last hour, a major wins for President Biden as a Supreme Court dismissed as a challenge to his border policies. We're live at the Supreme Court with more on that and much more on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

We all want to know why OceanGate's Titan submersible suddenly imploded killing everyone on board. Investigators are searching for answers now on the ocean floor looking for debris as experts pieced together Titan's final moments. Here's what we know. Experts believe the sub suffered a catastrophic implosion, which is a sudden inward collapse of the vessel due to the tremendous amount of pressure that was on the Titan at those depths of the ocean.

Officials say the implosion would have happened in a fraction of a millisecond. For example, by the time you count to one, it would have already happened when experts said no one inside would have even realized there was a problem before their deaths. As far as timing goes, the U.S. Navy now says that on Sunday, they detected an underwater sound consistent with an implosion. But at the time, it was not definitive.

The Navy says at least five different major pieces of debris have now been located. But experts say it's unlikely that any bodies will ever be recovered. CNN senior international correspondent Miguel Marquez is there in Newfoundland. Thank you so much for joining us again, Miguel. You've been, you know, on this story for so long, can you give us a sense of what it is like there now, now that we know that these five souls will likely not be recovered? MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there's a real sense of mourning here, flag at half-staff here at the park next to the harbor that some people are starting to bring flowers down to various areas of the park here. They were awaiting the arrival of the Polar Prince. The Polar Prince was the mothership for the Titan, it took it out over a week ago and then dropped it into the sea on its skids.

And then the Titan went off of that into the ocean in order to get down to the Titanic wreckage. There was real, real hope, even if it was minor, even though everybody knew the stakes here and the risks, there was hope that they might find them alive. And you know, that's what this enormous search and rescue effort was undertaking that the effort in the event that they survived whatever event happened there and they were under the water in icy conditions, running out of oxygen pitch black that sort of stuff of nightmares was certainly driving a lot of the hope here that they would find them in that situation and the urgency of the search for them that it didn't happen and that their end came so quickly and merciful, I think that at least gives people a little bit of solace here today, but it is really a day of sort of reckoning. Sara?

SIDNER: All right, Miguel Marquez, thank you and your crew out there for all the great reporting. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And when this catastrophic implosion happened remains something of a question. The U.S. Navy says that the sound picked up on Sunday, consistent with an implosion was not definitive at the time. Now CNN's Jason Carroll is following this angle for us. He joins us once again. Jason, what was the Navy saying about the timing now?

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, from what we're learning that in terms of timing, the Navy had informed senior commanders who were on the scene on Sunday, about this acoustic signature that they had picked up, which had been consistent with they say with some sort of an implosion, but again, not definitive that data though was used to help the searchers who were out there to try to narrow their search for the Titan.

But at the time, because there was no physical or visual evidence of an implosion or an explosion. And for other reasons, namely, if there was any hope, Kate, that they could try to find someone alive. They kept the search going. That information, though, about what the Navy had discovered was kept private. But that doesn't mean that information was not getting out there, it was. When you talk to, when you hear what James Cameron had to say, he spoke to CNN's Anderson Cooper, James Cameron noted film director, a noted deep sea explorer in his own right. He was hearing as early as Monday about some sort of noise that was consistent with an implosion.

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[11:05:20]

JAMES CAMERON, DEEP-SEA EXPLORER, "TITANIC" DIRECTOR: First, I heard of it was Monday morning, I immediately got on my network, because it's, you know, a very small community in the deep submergence group. And found out some information within about a half hour that they had lost comms, and they had lost tracking simultaneously. The only scenario that I could come up with in my mind that could account for that was it was an implosion, a shockwave event so powerful that it actually took out a secondary system that has its own its own pressure vessel, and its own battery power supply, which is the transponder that the ship uses to track where the sub is. So I was thinking implosion, then that's Monday morning.

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CARROLL: And so Kate, that sort of begs the question then, what were the families told, I can tell you that the Coast Guard has made it very clear to us out here earlier this week that they've been in close contact with family members throughout all of this. And so once again, it begs the question, did the Coast Guard then inform privately, any of the family members about this information that the Navy had been receiving, at the very least to manage some expectations there? We put that question to the Coast Guard. And this morning, they tell us, we do not have specific details regarding that communication. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Jason, thank you for the reporting. Sara?

SIDNER: All right now, the Supreme Court a big win for the Biden administration there, the justices have dismissed a challenge on immigration enforcement. Republican officials from Texas and Louisiana had argued that the new policies prioritizing who should be deported conflicted with federal immigration law, the court didn't see it that way. CNN justice correspondent Jessica Schneider joins us now. Jessica, what does this ruling mean?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, it means that immigration officials will now in fact be able to prioritize who's arrested who's deported based on these 2021 guidelines. It's something that they've been blocked from doing for the past two and a half years because of this court fight that was playing out. But today, it was an eight to one decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, where the Court said that the attorneys general of Texas and Louisiana they just never even had the legal right to bring this challenge, saying that essentially, these Republican officials didn't have the power to force the Biden administration to make the maximum number of arrests at the border.

So here's one part from the opinion, saying the states have brought an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit. They want a federal court to order the executive branch to alter its arrest policies to so as to make more arrests. Federal Courts have not traditionally entertain this kind of lawsuit. Indeed, this state cite no precedent for a lawsuit like this. So this was a battle to give you some idea where these conservative states they were trying to thwart the Biden administration in laying out the most important people to target at the border. It was a 2021 memo from the DHS Secretary.

It said that border officials should essentially focus on three groups of people when deciding who to arrest who to deport, first of all, those who are a danger to national security, those who pose a threat to public safety, and also those who are a threat to border security. So Republican officials they sued. And they said that, no, you shouldn't prioritize that all illegal immigrants should be deported. Biden officials responded, but that's really impossible. They say that there are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. DHS just lacks the ability to deport them all.

So Sara, today, the Biden administration has prevailed. This, you know, they're allowed to have these guidelines go into effect. And in addition, this ruling does significantly strike down the power of Republican-led states to sue administrations, or really any political party for certain policies that they don't agree with. So a big win for the Biden administration. And now those guidelines can take effect. Sara?

SIDNER: Jessica Schneider, thank you for explaining all of those details to us. We appreciate it. All right, I want to bring in the president of the Brennan Center for Justice and former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, Michael Waldman. Thank you so much. You are also the author of Super Majority: How the Supreme Court Divided America. And there are cases that the Supreme Court has decided when it comes to the redistricting issue, but we're going to stick now with the immigration issue.

Let me ask you about this idea of the fact that they're saying, look, the court is saying, look, there is no precedent for this. Does that mean that Texas was unable to show that there was anything remotely like this that has happened in the past?

[11:10:00]

MICHAEL WALDMAN, PRESIDENT, BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE: Last term of this super majority of six very conservative justices they pushed really hard on some big conservative priorities. In this case they're saying, standing stops states just from going to the federal courts and saying, hey, could you do this for us? It's a political thing. You have a lot of red states trying to challenge the Biden administration. It's -- you also have other states challenging Republican administrations, when they're in office, it's actually been a kind of a conservative judicial crusade to limit standing in the past.

So it would have been a big reversal of the ideas if they had done it, but it is a win for the Biden administration. What kind of clues does it offer for the big cases coming up next week, it's hard to say. You've got affirmative action and other things, which, which will have very, very big impact.

SIDNER: The Biden administration has another big case when it comes to student loans. And that's also sort of a fight between states and the federal government. What do you think might happen? Does this actually give us a little bit of a clue when we hear something like, they don't have standing to make this decision?

WALDMAN: That is very possible. That case, the standing was also very fuzzy. The question is who, who really got hurt by the government forgiving the loans of somebody else? You can't just go to court and say, hey, I don't like this. Here's my op-ed, could you rule on it? You have to be able to say, I am somebody who got injured and I need a court to rule on it.

So it's possible that the court could be saying even as they move in a conservative direction as a lot of matters, you know, we want to limit how many people come to us there was a little bit of a touch of annoyance in this ruling today, hey, why did you come to us with this case? I think it's also interesting that this was something where one federal trial judge tried to set the rule for the whole country. The Supreme Court has never ruled before and whether that's allowed, liberals use it, and also conservatives use it. So they may be trying to rein in some of the kind of cowboy behavior around the rest of the system.

SIDNER: I'm curious about this, because everyone says, look, the Supreme Court is not supposed to be political. But a political person, the president, appoints them, and then tries to get them through Congress. In the end here, are you surprised that this Court, which is considered very conservative, heavily conservative, has made some of the decisions that it's made, including the one today that favored the Biden administration?

WALDMAN: I don't think this was so much of a surprise, even though it favored the Biden administration, because as a matter of law, it was really clear cut. The Voting Rights Act case, a couple of weeks ago was a real surprise, because John Roberts reversed his position on that act. They are political, they already illogical but they also have to be well aware that public support for the Supreme Court has collapsed, it is now seen by many more Americans as just a political body. And if they just ruled, you know, in a way, like they're just expressing their political rulings, their credibility will be entirely out the window. This may be part of them drawing a bit of a line saying, we'll go this far but no further.

SIDNER: Let me talk about the political issue here are states trying to use the Supreme Court as a political football that whoever they think is in charge of the court, whether it's the Conservatives or the Liberals, they're trying to sort of use it as something they can just say, all right, now we can, we can do some things, because we've got our people in place.

WALDMAN: In the last couple of years, on the abortion cases, on immigration, on voting rights, you've seen some of the most conservative Republican states saying, you know what, let's give it a try. Let's go to the court with untested arguments, and things that really fly in the face of precedent and see if we can get them to go along with us. They're on our team now. That's what happened with the abortion case. But on this case, and maybe on others, you might see them pulling back.

It doesn't change the overall very conservative direction. But I also do think, again, that the court has to be aware that their credibility with the broad public depends on them looking like a court and not just like a panel of pundits. And they really risk looking that way if they just kind of go all the way on some of these things.

SIDNER: Rule the way that people are expecting a court like this to rule. Thank you so much for joining us. That was really interesting. I appreciate you coming on.

WALDMAN: Thank you.

SIDNER: All right. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, OceanGate's safety practices are facing real scrutiny right now in the wake of the Titan tragedy. What the co- founder is saying now about safety at the company, and the CEO who died aboard the sub.

Plus, a new charge in the case against the armorer of the "Rust" movie set. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed now accused of tampering with evidence.

[11:14:38]

And NASCAR to the rescue, the unusual request from Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation and what it has to do with rebuilding I- 95. We'll be right back.

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SIDNER: From the submersible Titans inception, there was controversy surrounding some of the construction materials and design choices for that vessel that includes the use of carbon fiber for the pressure hull, which we now know ultimately imploded. Let's bring in CNN correspondent, Tom Foreman. Tom, in the aftermath of this tragedy, what are we learning about the sub's technology and how it was made and the controversy surrounding that?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're learning that a lot of other experts in the field had raised serious questions about the way this sub had been developed for quite some period of time and some of it swirled around this idea of the carbon fiber, that's the main tube that everyone was sitting in. The carbon fiber tube, look, carbon fibers in everything, it's in your airplanes is in spacecraft, it's in cars, all sorts of things you use rely on carbon fiber.

[11:20:20]

One of the concerns is under tremendous pressure, carbon fiber is too rigid so that hull that you're looking into right there would somehow not be able to hold up because of it start to delaminate. What does that mean? Well, imagine if I took a book and I glued all the pages together, I can make a brick of a book and I could use it to be very strong for many things. But if I had enough pressure in any way that made the pages all separate, boy, you open it up like that. And suddenly, it's not strong at all.

That's part of the concern here. That's what filmmaker and oceanographer James Cameron raised in an interview with CNN talking about his concerns about this. Listen.

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CAMERON: It's completely inappropriate for a vessel that sees external pressure. You know, carbon fiber composites are used very, very successfully for internal pressure, pressure vessels, like let's say, a scuba tank, and you can get two or three times multiple of what you could get out of steel or aluminum for that type of pressure bottle. But for something that's seeing external pressure, all of the advantages of composite materials go away. And all the disadvantages come into play.

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FOREMAN: As the investigation goes on, into all of this, look to hear the word delamination a lot, where they're looking to see if the carbon fiber delaminated. Look at the structure of this thing, look at those caps on either end those titanium caps, look for questions to be raised about the way those were sealed onto that carbon fiber tube, whether there's a weakness there, and particularly look at that viewing port down at the end, the little window down at the end, which is actually kind of a big window for a ship like this.

Look at that. And I will tell you, as much as there's no doubt that the actual implosion was instantaneous. There is increasingly -- there are increasingly questions about whether there was some sense of warning inside this craft, that something was failing, whether that was for a few seconds for one second, it is certainly a fair question to ask if that happened. Sara?

SIDNER: Tom Foreman, you always explained things so simply and comprehensively. We need you in our life, for the complex world that we live in. Appreciate you. All right, Kate?

FOREMAN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Still ahead for us, we're going to speak to a reporter who has been on the Titan sub about what he experienced onboard that vessel.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Didn't know that the ballasts was, you know, used construction pipes. You just -- you get there and then you start seeing this stuff. And now you're moved crashes and you get a little worried like, is this the level of polish and sophistication we're talking about?

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[11:27:43]

SIDNER: On Our Radar for this morning, prosecutors have now charged "Rust" film armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed with tampering with evidence. That's an addition to the involuntary manslaughter charges she's already facing in the shooting death of "Rust" cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Gutierrez-Reed accused of transferring narcotics to another person on the day Hutchins was killed to avoid being arrested for that. Her lawyer calls the new charge shocking. All right, five ex-police officers charged in the death of Tyre Nichols returned to court in Memphis today. The former officers are accused of mercilessly beating and kicking Nichols following a traffic stop. The five are charged with second degree murder. The brutal attack was captured in body camera footage.

And medication abortion remains illegal in Wyoming for now. A district judge has blocked a state ban on abortion pills according to the "Casper Star-Tribune." It would prohibit prescribe bribing, selling or using the pills. The law would be the first of its kind in the nation. And your total abortion ban is also on hold as legal challenges make their way through the courts. Kate?

BOLDUAN: OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush who died aboard the vessel. He spoke in 2017 about how passengers on the Titan were part of the experience isn't of this.

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STOCKTON RUSH, OCEANGATE CEO: Travelers who come out will participate in the dives to operate sonar communication systems photographs, work on data. So it's a very active experience.

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BOLDUAN: We have that. And you'll also have Mike Reiss take for example, one of the original writers for "The Simpsons." He had done multiple voyages with OceanGate. And in an interview this week, he talked about the waiver that they were all required to sign before shipping off.

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MIKE REISS, TRAVELED ON OCEANGATE SUBMERSIBLE: Well, it's not a tour. It's not a fun trip. This is -- they're doing research and inventing the technology as they go. So before you even get on, you sign this long, long waiver that mentioned possible death three times on the first page is just so you know what you're getting into.

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[11:30:03]

BOLDUAN: Raising a lot of questions though still in the aftermath of this tragedy. Let's go to CNN's Veronica Miracle.