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Dangerous Heatwave Continues Out West, Down South; Heat Alert Across Texas For Triple-Digit Heat Index; WHO Links Aspartame To Cancer, But FDA Disagrees; White House Announces $39 Billion In Student Debt Relief. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired July 14, 2023 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The six-week abortion law that Iowa lawmakers just passed in their legislature into law here at this event in front of a crowd that is very supportive of that.

And it mirrors the six-week abortion bill that Governor DeSantis signed into law in Florida earlier this year -- Rahel?

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN HOST: And, Jessica, we'll be talking to an Iowa State Senator about that bill, about that law throughout the show, during the show today.

Jessica Dean, live for us in Des Moines, Iowa. Jessica, thank you.

Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Still ahead, 90 million people are living in dangerous heat conditions right now, with places like Death Valley expected to reach 130 degrees this weekend. You heard that correctly. Look at these numbers. Stay with us for more on this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:35:21]

KEILAR: All right. Make no mistake, it is scorching hot outside. From coast to coast, a dangerous heatwave is just sweeping the country. The south, the southwest, the west coast, all well over 100 degrees and shattering heat records.

And the streak is far from over. Forecasters warn this weekend is going to be extreme.

California bracing for the hottest triple-digit weather of the year. Most of the state is under some kind of heat alert. Death Valley could hit 130 degrees this weekend.

Phoenix hasn't dropped below 110 in two weeks. And the nights are offering little relief. Normally, you get some in the evenings but not so. Cooling centers are a form of refuge but burn centers say they're seeing more patients who have been injured by the sizzling concrete.

CNN's senior national correspondent, Ed Lavandera, sweating it out for us in Dallas.

Actually, you look pretty good. I want to know how you are staying cool there, Ed.

But El Paso is set to top its heat record that was set nearly 30 years ago at 117 degrees. I think when people look at Texas now, they always want to know how the power grid is holding up when you have temperatures like this.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a good question. So far, ERCOT, the organization that essentially manages the Texas power grid, which has spent several years under a great deal of scrutiny, says that the power is expected as to hold, that there's more than sufficient capacity to handle the coming days of heat.

The organization did say that yesterday was a record peak amount of energy use here in the state because of these record hot temperatures.

Here in Texas and Oklahoma were some of the hottest heat indices in the country. And right now, the temperature here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area starting to approach 100 degrees. The heat index well over that, 105, expected to creep a little bit closer to 110 as we get later into the day.

But there's more than 90 million people from Florida to California under these heat alerts. And while, you know, a lot of people brush this off as a typical summer, these are dangerous conditions for many people.

We're hearing reports from emergency EMS units across the country of increased reports and calls for heat-related illnesses and that sort of thing.

And many adults, especially those caring for young children, are concerned about the conditions as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NELSON PODZEMNY, DALLAS-AREA RESIDENT: If it gets hotter next summer -- because it's already raising my heating and air bill, is going up. So I don't want it to get any worse next year. And I don't want it to be hot for when they're in sports, you know, every year. I hope I have --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: Brianna, we have seen 34 days in a row where heat alerts across the southwest United States have been alerted to people here, and residents here in these areas. This has been really unrelenting.

And I have to be honest, in full disclosure, we are cheating here today. Our photographer has set up a little fan below me so we can make through here. But I will cheat the rest of this afternoon to try to make it through -- Brianna?

KEILAR: I was wondering. And look, if you have to do your 3:00 p.m. live shot from that fountain behind you, we're going to allow it, Ed. It's that kind of day. And that is completely acceptable.

So, Ed Lavandera, live for us in Dallas.

LAVANDERA: (INAUDIBLE)

(LAUGHTER)

KEILAR: No, we want to see it.

All right, let's go to Chad Myers. He's in the CNN Weather Center for us.

OK, the next three days here, Chad, they're really going to test a lot of people across the country. So tell us what we are in for.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, people joke, and especially from the northeast or from some place that's not this hot --

KEILAR: Yes.

MYERS: -- that, hey, it's just summer. This is not just summer. This is a heatwave in the middle of summer, putting temperatures 15 to 20 degrees higher than they should be for this time of year. Alerts all way across the southwest.

So here's what's going on. And I know we have addressed this a number of times, but I want to dig down and drill down on what's going on.

It's called a heat dome. What should be going on where Ed is, is that the air should be warm by the surface. The air should be going up here like this, called convection. And then in the afternoon, we should get storms and things should cool down.

But because the entire heat dome is warm, all the way to 20,000, 30,000 feet, these clouds can't build. There's nothing for them to build on. If it's one area, we call it a cap. This is just an entire area where it's just too hot to rain. I know that seems ridiculous.

[13:40:04]

But it would have to get to be 108 temperature-wise in Austin to get those thunderstorms to pop up. And that's just not going to happen.

The heat index is 105, so the humidity is there. It's all there. But the top of the atmosphere is stopping the clouds from happening and stopping that cooling from happening. And it's all the way from California, all the way, even into parts of Texas and Alabama, for that matter.

One thousand heat records have been broken since June 1st across the country. It doesn't change from here. It doesn't get better. Temperatures still go up this weekend. In some spots, 100 new record highs will be broken this weekend alone -- Brianna?

KEILAR: Yes. I grew up in southern California. It used to be we'd have a one week or two because we didn't have air conditioning. There is still not air conditioning in that house. We'd break out the fans. It was OK.

But now there's just more hot days. People get older. They're living in the same houses without air conditioning, and they're paying the price. This is really tough stuff that we're looking at, Chad.

All right, thanks for taking us through that.

Rahel?

SOLOMON: Brianna, thank you.

Coming up for us, it's one of the most widely used artificial sweeteners in the world. But now the World Health Organization is declaring Aspartame as a possible cause of cancer. We'll show you why.

And just a day after Northwestern University fired its football coach, the school has now fired its baseball coach. The allegations against him, that's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:45:54]

SOLOMON: Welcome back. And now to some other headlines we're watching this hour.

Northwestern University is looking for yet another head coach, but this time for the school's baseball team. "The Chicago Tribune" reports that the school fired Coach Jim Foster over allegations that he engaged in bullying and abusive behavior.

But his firing comes just two days after the school fired long-time coach, Pat Fitzgerald, over allegations that surfaced about hazing within the football program.

Also, take a look at this. This is chaos erupting in Kosovo's parliament after an opposition lawmaker threw water on the nation's prime minister. And take a look at this, a brawl right in the middle of his speech. Prime Minister Albin Kurti was speaking about reducing tensions with the minority ethnic Serb population.

And it's blastoff on a new mission to the moon. Today, India launched its third lunar mission, aiming to become just the fourth nation to successfully conduct a controlled landing on the moon's surface.

India's space agency says they are aiming to be the first to land on the unexplored South Pole. Only the U.S., Russia and China have ever landed on the moon's surface.

Brianna?

KEILAR: Pretty cool.

It's a product that many Americans consume every day, maybe without even realizing it. But now the World Health Organization has a new warning about Aspartame and its potential link to cancer. A committee for the WHO says the artificial sweetener should be

categorized as possibly carcinogenic to humans. Aspartame can be found in everything from diet sodas to ice cream to cereal, breath mints, sports drinks. The list really goes on and on.

We have CNN medical correspondent, Meg Tirrell, with us with more on this.

Meg, should people be changing how much Aspartame they're consuming? Should they be trying not to consume any Aspartame? What should they be doing with these new recommendations?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, based on what the WHO has said, it's not changing the recommendations for the daily limit of safe consumption of Aspartame. That's making this whole set of announcements a little bit controversial.

The way the WHO itself is sort of characterizing what it's saying -- its director of the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, says, quote:

"While safety is not a major concern at the doses which are commonly used, potential effects have been described that need to be investigated by more and better studies."

So essentially, they're saying there have been some studies that have suggested a potential link, but that link has not been proven that Aspartame actually causes cancer.

So they put it in this category, which is really the third out of four in terms of potential cancer risks to humans.

Other things in that category include aloe vera, occupational exposure to dry cleaning, gasoline, engine exhaust, and traditional Asian pickled vegetables.

So they're nowhere near the highest groups of cancer-causing agents, like cigarettes and asbestos.

Now the actual recommendations from the WHO in terms of the safe daily limit for the average 180-pound American, they would have to drink 33 cans of 12-ounce diet soda at the level the industry tells us of Aspartame in those cans in order to actually hit that limit.

So almost nobody will probably -- is really actually there.

And the FDA, Brianna, today, just came out saying it disagrees with the WHO's assessment, and said it considers Aspartame safe.

Back over to you.

KEILAR: But just as an aside here, aloe vera? I mean, say what, Meg Tirrell? Aloe vera, huh?

TIRRELL: I had the same reaction.

(CROSSTALK)

TIRRELL: And again, it just kind of shows you not a proven link, possibly a link.

KEILAR: Interesting. All right, Meg Tirrell, thank you so much.

Right, aloe vera?

TIRRELL: Right. I was literally thinking of my aloe vera habits after that.

(CROSSTALK)

TIRRELL: Me, too. Like, what?

SOLOMON: All right, Brianna, thank you.

[13:49:41]

And coming up for us, just weeks after the Supreme Court rejected Biden's student debt forgiveness program, the White House announces a Plan B. We'll tell you what it is when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOLOMON: Welcome back. Hundreds of thousands of people with student loans just got really, really big news. The Biden administration just announced $39 billion worth of student debt will be wiped away under a new plan.

So that money will affect more than 800,000 people as Biden vows to find a new path following that Supreme Court setback.

CNN's Tom Foreman joins me now.

Tom, what do we know about this plan? And I think, critically, for all those people watching, who will be eligible?

[13:55:00]

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, we know that a couple of weeks ago, everybody who thought they might be helped, suddenly the court ruled no chance whatsoever.

Here, the Biden administration has a whole new Plan that basically says, OK, if the court's issue we can't use pandemic rules to do this, let's use the old rules that we've already used for adjusting the parameters here.

Among the things they're going to do is they're going to cut the monthly payments to $0 if you are borrowing -- if you are a borrower and you're making less than $32,800 per year, and for families of four, $67,500.

So basically what they're going to do is push that down and say, look, if you're not making enough money to pay this, nobody benefits by forcing you to do it.

They're also going to protect your credit score by basically saying, if you missed a payment, made late or partial payments, they're not going let you get negative credit reporting.

And they're saying they're doing a better job of keeping track of the payments that have been made. So people who are pushed into forbearance, a system where basically they're never going to get out of it if they keep going that way, they're saying, look, we've got to get people out of this.

The result, they think 804,000 borrowers will have their debt wiped out. And that's going to amount to about $39 million worth of debt going away.

And again, even though some Republicans are immediately jumping on this and saying, oh, another big giveaway program and hate it, you add it all up, it's $116 billion in student debt relief. Republicans are saying this is a problem. I think there will be a court challenge.

But the administration saying, listen to the court, they went to a different program where we think we have every legal right.

And their argument is to say, if you want to help the administration, if you want to help struggling Americans, those who are not making much money anyway, you've got to have a way for them to get out from underneath this debt.

And remember, some of these debts were related to for-profit universities that promised results and

(CROSSTALK)

FOREMAN: -- would never forgive things like that.

SOLOMON: Yes.

FOREMAN: So for a lot of people with loans out there, I think they're going to find this a good day.

SOLOMON: Yes. I think for a lot of people who, as you said, after that Supreme Court setback, which we should say was about the Heroes Act, right, and the president and the administration had the authority in that. Apparently, trying to get around that in a different way.

We'll see if this holds.

FOREMAN: If it works.

SOLOMON: Tom Foreman, thank you.

Brianna?

KEILAR: So it is a case that has baffled investigators for decades. But now an arrest has been made in a series of killings on Long Island. We have new details on the suspect, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)