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Greene Expelled from Freedom Caucus; Twitter Threatens to Sue Meta; Camp for Wagner Fighters in Belarus; Minimum Wage Law Lawsuit. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired July 07, 2023 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:32:52]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, new this morning, OceanGate has suspended all of its exploration and commercial operations in the wake of the Titan submersible tragedy that killed five people, including the company's CEO. The update appeared as a line on the OceanGate website, but a spokesperson says they have no additional information to share about the future of the company.

A stunning twist in the story of a Texas man who was reported missing eight years ago. Last week Rudy Farias, who is now 25, was supposedly found after going missing on a dog walk back in 2015. But now Houston police say he has actually been with his mother the whole time and that she deceived police for years by giving fake names and IDs and insisting he was gone all along. So far no charges have been filed but the investigation is ongoing.

All right, the tourist who was caught on video carving his name into The Coliseum -- The Coliseum, the one in Rome -- has sent a letter of apology to the local prosecutor's office. Ivan Dimitrov's (ph) lawyer says the letter reads in part, I admit with the deepest embarrassment that only after what regrettably happened I learned of the antiquity of the monument. So, in other words, he did not realize that one of the seven wonders of the world was 2,000 years old when he carved Ivan and Haley '23 into it. I want to know where he thought he was going. Did he think he was like at the Astrodome? Did he think he was going to see like a soccer match or a gladiator fight live there? Why was he there.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Wait a second.

BERMAN: He faces a fine of more than $5,000 and 15 days in jail, Kate. Right? I mean, he carved his name, and it's like right there. It's like (INAUDIBLE).

BOLDUAN: Wait. And also I take issue with only one part - one part of this. Caught on camera. He's like, hey, oh, look at me, smiling at the camera while I carve into this just random brick wall I came across.

BERMAN: Yes, random brick wall I came across obviously as I'm taking a tour of this site that he doesn't realize is a site allegedly.

BOLDUAN: I'm trying to leave space, John, for redemption here. I'm leaving space for it.

BERMAN: You're always about redemption.

BOLDUAN: God, sometimes I actually am made speechless by you, which is very hard.

[09:35:02]

Let's move on. I don't know if I can today. All right, here we go.

Voted out. After weeks of speculation and some very not so behind the scenes drama, the far right House Freedom Caucus has taken official steps to remove Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from the group. According to Freedom Caucus member Andy Harris, a vote was taken just before members left town for the July 4th recess. Harris says that the recent beef between Greene and fellow Republican Lauren Boebert that was even caught on House cameras was, quote/unquote, the straw that broke the camel's back.

Let's get more on this. CNN's Melanie Zanona joining me now.

Melanie, get us back on track. Let's talk about the news. What is going on here?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, it's a little surprising at first glance, right, because the House Freedom Caucus is a far- right group that has become very devoted to former President Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene is perhaps one of the biggest Trump supporters on Capitol Hill.

But, Kate, in talking to sources over the last two weeks I can tell you that there has been a lot of frustration bubbling up inside the Freedom Caucus over Greene. And really what it boils down to is the fact that she has actually become a staunch ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and members of the group who are like this runs counter to the founding mission of the Freedom Caucus, which is to be a thorn inside of leadership and to sort of antagonize leadership to get what they want.

And they've also taken issue with the fact that Greene has been publicly critical of a number of her Freedom Caucus colleagues. She criticized them for not supporting Kevin McCarthy for speaker. She criticized them for not falling in line over the bipartisan debt ceiling deal. And the real straw that broke the camel's back, as you alluded to, was Congressman Andy Harris said was this heated confrontation that took place on the House floor between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, another Freedom Caucus member. At the time of the incident, Greene confirmed to CNN that she called Lauren Boebert a little b word on the House floor, I'm not going to say the word, but you can fill in the blanks there.

So, we did reach out to Marjorie Taylor Greene for comment. She did not specifically address her membership status. But she did offer a pretty defiant statement saying, she only serves her constituents. She doesn't serve any groups in Congress. And she's never going to change.

I want to read you part of her statement. She said, I fight every single day in the halls of Congress against the hate America Democrats. I will work with anyone who wants to secure our border, protect our children, end the forever foreign wars and do the work to save this country.

We also reached out to the House Freedom Caucus. They said they do not comment on membership status or internal meetings. But this is a really big deal. They have never voted to eject a member before. Some have voluntarily quit including Justin Amash, who famously quit during the Donald Trump years.

But it also comes amid this broader identity crisis that the Freedom Caucus has been having. They're trying to decide whether they want to just throw up roadblocks to Kevin McCarthy at every turn or if they want to try to now play the inside game to get what they want, which is the strategy that Marjorie Taylor Greene is deploying.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes, there's the atmospherics over membership and then there's real tactical questions of what the group should do with its strength that it has in this moment.

It's great to see you, Melanie. Thank you.

Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you, Kate.

After the blockbuster lunch of Meta's new Twitter rival Threads, Twitter's Elon Musk is threatening to sue. He is accusing Mark Zuckerberg's company of stealing trade secrets and intellectual property because Meta hired former Twitter employees. Meta is firing back saying no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee. That's just not a thing.

With me now is Sara Fischer, CNN media analyst and senior media reporter for "Axios."

All right, first of all, this says a lot. And the question is, does it say that Elon Musk is feeling really threatened by the popularity of Threads, which got, what, 10 million downloads in the first few hours?

SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: Yes, and now we're up to over 40 million signups, Sara.

SIDNER: Wow.

FISCHER: It's a huge success. And I do think that this is an indication that Elon Musk feels threatened. Why? Because over the past year we've seen so many companies try to take on Twitter. Whether it's Mastodon or Bluesky or Spill or Getter or Truth Social. And he's never sent a cease and desist letter like this. He's never seemed worked up or too, too threatened. A little bit with Mastodon but not this level. And I think the reason is that he is facing so much critical backlash

from users who feel as though the service has gotten too spammy, from advertisers who feel as though there's not enough content moderation. And now to have a service overnight pick up 40 million people is a huge threat to the potential success and future of Twitter.

SIDNER: It all makes sense. Now, Elon Musk, you know, fired 80 percent of his employees. He said it himself when he bought Twitter for $44 billion. It would be no surprise that people from Twitter would be looking for a job over at Meta. Does Musk have any case here that, in fact, intellectual property was stolen?

[09:40:06]

FISCHER: Not that I'm aware of but obviously we'll leave it to some legal folks to figure that out. But to Meta's point, they said that there's no one that was working on the Threads engineering team that came from Twitter.

Now, of course Silicon Valley is very transient. I'm sure that there are ex-Twitter employees who have gone over to Meta. But if they're not working on the particular product, I think it's going to be very difficult for him to allege that they were taking trade secrets, et cetera.

The other thing I'd note, Sara, is that this isn't some, you know, heavily guarded engineering genius here. There have been a bajillion apps that have tried to recreate the exact format of Twitter. It's essentially a news feed where you can figure out a following list and a followers list. So, I personally think that he's going to have a hard time trying to, you know, allege that they completely ripped off this deal - or this idea, rather, if he's not going to go after every other type of Twitter competitor out there.

SIDNER: Is it any surprise to you that these two tech billionaire dudes are battling it out this way? Is anything that they've done surprised you so far?

FISCHER: I thought all of those jokes about the cage match was a little bit ridiculous. It didn't shock me that Elon Musk was going there but it did shock me that Mark Zuckerberg was.

But, you know, at the end of the day, the name of the game is how do you capture people's attention and sell ads around it. And so, of course, whatever idea is hot, you're going to see the two biggest internet titans battling it out, that part does surprise me.

SIDNER: All right, Sara Fischer, thank you so much.

John.

BERMAN: All right, searching for the thousands of mercenaries behind the revolt in Russia. CNN on the ground in one place they might be.

The remnants of a nuclear disaster. The new plan to dump the waste into the ocean. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:46:05]

BERMAN: Rescuers in Ecuador have been working through the night to free dozens of people trapped in gondolas on one of the world's highest cable car systems that's more than 12,000 feet above sea level. The cable car system suffered some kind of technical failure with at least 70 people on board various cars. So far 17 people have been rescued.

The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog tells CNN he is convinced it is safe for Japan to release treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima site into the Pacific Ocean. Rafael Grossi says the International Atomic Energy Agency has been examining the plant for more than two years and believes there is no better option to deal with the buildup of wastewater. There is anxiety in nearby countries. Today, customs officials in China announced they would ban food imports from ten Japanese regions, including Fukushima, because of concern over radioactive substances.

Officials in Canada warning that the risk of wildfires throughout the country will remain high for the rest of the summer. There are currently more than 300 wildfires burning out of control there. Authorities say drought conditions and above normal temperatures will continue to drive up the potential for more fires over the next two months. And I suppose, Sara, that means we could have more of those awful air quality days throughout the United States.

SIDNER: They have been really, really dangerous for people's health.

All right, now to Belarus where CNN has visited a site where the country's president says Wagner fighters could take up residence if they were to move to the country. This comes as the president of Belarus has told CNN that the Wagner leader is in Russia now, directly contradicting himself on the terms of the ceasefire that he brokered to end Wagner's rebellion in Russia.

CNN's Matthew Chance gives us a look at what the camps there look like.

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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you join me here in this military base in Belarus, about an hour's drive outside of the capital Minsk. You can see, it's a vast tent city with all these enormous canvasses which we're told can house about 5,000 people that have been erected in the past few weeks. There were satellite photographs of this place before and after. And we all believed that this is the location where Wagner forces, the mercenaries from Russia, would be located if they came to Belarus. That was part of a deal, remember, with the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, inviting Wagner and its leader to come into exile in Belarus as a way of diffusing their military uprising in Russia last month. Well, I mean, at the moment, though, these tents are completely empty.

I mean, have a look inside at one of these here. Completely empty. There's nobody in -- in there. It's too dark for us to show you inside, but I can tell you, it's just wooden platforms. Nobody in there at the moment. But, ultimately, it can house as many as 5,000 people.

The problem is, is, of course, the events of yesterday here with the revelations from Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader, that actually is that that plan is no longer sort of in operation. It's on hold at the moment. And at the moment Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner leader, is not here in Belarus, he's said to be in Russia. And not a single Wagner soldier has so far come here. And so we don't know whether there is going to be a transfer of Wagner to Belarus or not. At the moment all we can tell you is that it hasn't happened yet.

Back to you.

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SIDNER: All right, that is our Matthew Chance, getting us a rare look inside Belarus.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, a food fight over wages. Why some major meal delivery apps are now suing New York City.

Plus, Britney Spears claims that she was hit in the face by the security for an NBA star rookie. What they are now both saying about that incident this morning.

We'll be back.

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[09:53:52]

BOLDUAN: So, major food delivery apps are now suing over New York City's minimum wage law. The new law increases pay for food delivery workers. But DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats are all claiming that this move hurts workers more than it helps.

CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich has more on this. She's been looking into it. She joins us now.

So, Vanessa, what is going on here?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is really about the bottom line.

BOLDUAN: OK.

YURKEVICH: These three food delivery companies, DoorDash, GrubHub, Uber Eats, suing New York City over a minimum wage law that's going to go into effect next week. And essentially these companies are saying that if you raise the minimum wage for their workers, restaurants are going to incur more fees, customers are going to have to pay more, and they won't be able to employ as many workers.

However, I do want to bring the attention to what this law actually looks like. This is a New York City law set to go into effect next week essentially mandating that food delivery service workers get paid a minimum of $17.96 before tips, by 2025 that jumps to $20. And also they have an alternative. They can - these companies can pay their workers 50 cents in addition per minute for every trip that they work.

[09:55:03]

Now, New York City did a study and they found that there are 60,000 food delivery workers in the city, and they get paid on average $7 an hour, and most of them do not get benefits.

Now, food delivery service, and these workers, have been around for many decades, it's just that over the pandemic we saw a dramatic increases, as you and I didn't want to go to restaurants.

BOLDUAN: That's for sure.

YURKEVICH: We stayed home. But we still wanted to order in food. And food delivery services account for about 9 percent of all restaurant sales. So that number has gone up over the pandemic and it's staying there.

The city, for their part, says that they're disappointed by this lawsuit, but they feel like they have enough legal standing for this law to go into effect.

Also interesting that gig workers, food delivery service workers, they're exempt from minimum wage laws. That's why they can get paid on average $7 an hour, not the $15 in New York state.

BOLDUAN: All right. I mean they - clearly multiple sides on this one.

YURKEVICH: Yes.

BOLDUAN: And it's just going to -- first and foremost they're going to have to see if they - this law goes into effect when it's supposed to next week.

YURKEVICH: Right.

BOLDUAN: And then what the fallout is.

YURKEVICH: There's going to be a legal tie-up.

BOLDUAN: Yes, exactly.

YURKEVICH: Legal tie-up.

BOLDUAN: It's good to see you, Vanessa. Thank you.

YURKEVICH: Yes. BOLDUAN: John.

BERMAN: All right, we have a cool down in the jobs report released just minutes ago, but why folks at the Fed might be smiling just a we little bit.

The special council investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election focus on a chaos oval office meeting. This is a CNN exclusive.

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