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Taxpayers are Helping Teach Right-Wing Views, One School at a Time; Reggie Jackson Recalls Chilling Racism as MLB Honors Black History; 100 Million Plus Americans Face Scorching Heat this Weekend; Unsafe E. Coli Found in Seine Ahead of Paris Olympics; Police: 2 Killed, 8 Wounded in Shooting at Arkansas Grocery. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired June 21, 2024 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: A CNN investigation has found that some religious schools in Arizona, including a school that's partnered with a Trump aligned advocacy group, are being partially funded by taxpayer dollars. And some of those funds are going to unregulated private schools that don't face the same standards as public schools or have the same anti-discrimination protections. This move in part has contributed to the closure of public schools in the state and CNN's Rene Marsh has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hello, Phoenix.

RENE MARSH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A Phoenix megachurch, the setting for recent Donald Trump campaign rally.

TRUMP: You have to have a choice also in education. You're going to have choice in education.

MARSH (voice-over): The same megachurch has partnered with the Trump aligned political group, Turning Point USA, to educate students at this private school, Dream City Christian.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dream City Christian School, a Turning Point Academy.

MARSH (voice-over): Its website underscores a far-right Christian viewpoint promising to combat morally bankrupt and liberal ideology, including critical race theory, evolutionism and gender identification, and it's partially funded by taxpayer dollars.

Like many private schools in the U.S., students at Dream City can use state money to pay for private education. A CNN investigation found Dream City Christian received more taxpayer money than 95 percent of the private schools in the state voucher program, a total one point three million dollars last year, according to data CNN obtained. That's despite anti-LGBTQ mandates in the parent handbook, stating faculty must believe and parents must agree to their children being taught that homosexual behavior is sinful and offensive to God and rejection of one's biological sex is a rejection of the image of God.

PROF. SAMUEL E. ABRAMS, NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY CENTER: It's a civil rights issue.

MARSH (voice-over): Professor Samuel Abrams studies school privatization.

ABRAMS: This is no way for any school system to operate, whereby public money is funding such discrimination. And that's reprehensible.

MARSH (voice-over): Two years ago, Arizona was the first of nearly a dozen states to go to a universal voucher system where families can use public funds regardless of income. Red states are leading the charge, fueled by a backlash over covid closures at public schools and a major campaign funded in part by a handful of conservative billionaires pushing for more public dollars for private education.

TOMMY SCHULTZ, CEO, AMERICAN FEDERATION FOR CHILDREN: There's been more gains made in the last few years of the school choice movement than there were in the prior 30.

MARSH (voice-over): The American Federation for Children, founded by former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos, has led the way by opposing anti voucher candidates. Tommy Schultz is CEO.

SCHULTZ: We've been involved in more than 2,000 state legislative races and overall we've got a 75 percent successful win rate. We've utterly changed the narrative. And this issue of school choice has been a deciding factor in so many elections across the country.

MARSH (voice-over): This school year, vouchers cost taxpayers in Arizona hundreds of millions of dollars more than anticipated, funneling public money to unregulated private schools that don't face the same educational standards as public schools.

SCHULTZ: I would submit that school choice is the best government funded anti-poverty program that's out there.

MARSH (voice-over): But although vouchers have long been pitched this way as a means to help disadvantaged students in public schools, a CNN analysis found that Arizona's program is disproportionately benefiting students in richer communities. As the state's private schools like Dream City get a win fall in tax dollars, public schools are seeing declining enrollment and shrinking budgets.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It hurts the neighborhood. People bought into this area. You know, you know, with the fact that we have a school and now we don't have a school.

MARSH (voice-over): Families and teachers said goodbye at Sunset Cannon Elementary, one of three schools shutting down in its district after hundreds of kids moved to vouchers. Those school officials say lack of affordable housing and lower birth rates are also to blame.

FELICIA WHITE, PUBLIC SCHOOL PARENT: Get in the car with us. Is that OK? MARSH (voice-over): Felicia White's 11 year old daughter, Riley,

attends another area school that's closing.

WHITE: Riley has a really hard time with change. She has a lot of anxiety along with having special needs. So for her now to start trusting other people and allowing them into her circle at 12 years old is going to be hard. Really hard.

MARSH (voice-over): Advocates are sounding the alarm that the future of public schools is at stake.

BETH LEWIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SAVE OUR SCHOOLS ARIZONA: Our schools have been so underfunded for so long that there really wasn't any cushion in those school budgets. Even the smallest amount of movement is going to destabilize that. And our public schools simply cannot hold.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[15:35:00]

SANCHEZ: Our thanks to Rene Marsh for that report. We should know that neither Turning Point nor Dream City responded to CNN's requests for comment -- Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Baseball Hall of Famer. Reggie Jackson says he has mixed emotions about going back to Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. Last night, Major League Baseball held a tribute to the accomplishments of Negro League players with a nationally televised game at the historic ballpark.

And during the broadcast, Jackson, who played for the Birmingham A's in 1967, spoke of the racism that was that he says he endured back in those days.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REGGIE JACKSON, BASEBALL HALL OF FAMER: Coming back here is not easy. The racism that I played here when I played here. The difficulty of going through different places where we traveled, I would never want it to do it, want to do it again.

I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and said that (BLEEP) can't eat here. I would go to a hotel and they say that (BLEEP) can't stay here. Had it not been for my white friends, had it not been for a white manager and Rudy Fingers and Duncan and Lee Myers, I would have never made it.

I was too physically violent. I was ready to physically fight some. I'd have got killed here because I'd have beat someone (BLEEP). And you just saw me in an oak tree somewhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The baseball legend also said that he would never want to relive that part of his life. And coming up, the miserably hot weather across the U.S. is stretching

into the weekend. We're going to take a look at who will see the worst of it straight ahead.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: The dangerous heat hovering over much of the U.S. is not going away. While New Englanders are about to get a break from sweltering 90 degree temps, New Yorkers and folks in the DMV should get ready. Some areas could see triple digit temps for days to come.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers is tracking the temperatures from the CNN Weather Center. And Chad, we could see some records too.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, no question about it. And when you add in how much humidity is in the air, you walk outside and it's just air you can wear. That's when you know that it's going to be another hot weekend for D.C., even for New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia.

But right now it is feels like 30 degrees cooler in Boston than it did at this time yesterday because of a little cold front, a little air off the ocean. Things look feel great in New England at this hour. Not so much for the I-95 corridor. And like you said, all the way down to D.C. and BWI. So yes, it's still feeling right now at Newark at 100.

But look at the feels like in Boston. And yes, at this hour yesterday, that number was 103. So we'll take the cool air at least a couple of days where we can get it. It doesn't get all the way down to the south.

It's going to stay from the Midwest all the way down and continue to travel to Memphis and Nashville and even toward Atlanta for the weekend. There's going to be some very desperate high temperatures here. A lot of folks have some plans outside in D.C. this weekend, but it's going to feel like 102. Going to need lots of water. Pets need water. The plants need water. And you need water. It'll certainly be a big help, especially to those pets, because, you know, we take care of those as much as we can, but you forget about them sometimes. They need extra water and shade -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: And protection from their paws on the concrete, right? That's always a problem. And you don't know what's real.

MYERS: Absolutely.

SANCHEZ: Chad Myers, thanks so much for the update -- Brianna.

KEILAR: The Summer Olympics will kick off in Paris in a little over a month. But some of the biggest events hang in the balance because the River Seine is too polluted. The river is said to be the crown jewel of the Olympics, hosting a number of events, like the triathlon, as well as the opening ceremony.

But recent testing results shared with CNN show the Seine is not safe for swimming, and it actually poses some serious health risks to athletes.

We have CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam following this story for us. Derek, you were recently in Paris. And listen, we who live near the Potomac don't like to cast a lot of stones here, but just tell us how dirty the Seine is.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, we were on the scene on the River Seine just earlier this week. And what we saw was quite astounding. But the race is truly on to clean up this iconic river, the crown jewel of the Olympics.

Of course, the triathlon, the swimming section of the triathlon taking place here, or supposed to take place, including the opening ceremonies as well, which is the first time, by the way, that the opening ceremonies will be held outside of an Olympic stadium. So that's saying something. But the river, the concern here is that the river is still too polluted for these events to actually occur, specifically the swimming section of the triathlon.

And you know what, despite their best efforts to try and clean up the river, you can see still some of the visible pollution. That is our footage right there. And what we noticed was a very murky river Seine.

And yes, you know, this is the concern going forward. I mean, regardless of $1.5 billion U.S. dollars being spent to try and clean up the River Seine, they are still seeing E. coli levels that are too dangerous and, according to authorities, not safe for these athletes to compete in their events.

So a lot of this has to do with the weather. And because of upstream from the River Seine, they've had nearly 120 percent to 200 percent above average rainfall over the past three months.

[15:45:00]

And the pollution gets washed down the rivers, the estuaries, and into the River Seine.

And of course, that can create the higher pollution levels within the area where the opening ceremony and the triathlon is supposed to be held.

You know, I walked around, talked to some of the locals on the street right along the Trocadero leading up to the Eiffel Tower just this week, and I asked them if they themselves would swim in the river. Have a listen to what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VAN DAM: So some of the swimming events actually occur on the riverside. Would you swim in that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. Not a chance.

VAN DAM: So that's a hard pass.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's a hard pass. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAN DAM (on camera): All right. So, Brianna, listen. Brianna, listen. Swimming has been banned in the River Seine for over 100 years. So for them to miraculously change that ban, clean up the river, is going to be nothing short of a miracle.

So can they do it? Well, only time will tell. We're all waiting in bated breath, for sure.

KEILAR: OK. Well, when it requires a miracle, I find a plan B is probably a good idea. So do they have one?

VAN DAM: Yes. Listen, as far as I understand, there are no suitable rivers in the General Paris area where the majority of the Olympic Games will be happening. You remember, if it's the triathlon, that includes biking and running section of the triathlon.

So that all needs to be thought through, the exact race route and, of course, where they can end the triathlon with the swimming section. And that's why the plan was the River Seine. but it's just not looking likely with the latest results that were coming in to CNN today.

KEILAR: My goodness. OK, well, we're going to keep watching this because this is going to be really interesting.

VAN DAM: The race is on.

KEILAR: Yes. Derek, thank you so much for that -- Boris.

VAN DAM: OK.

SANCHEZ: We're continuing to follow breaking news out of Fordyce, Arkansas, where police are on the scene of a mass shooting outside a grocery store just about an hour south of Little Rock. Two people there were killed, eight injured in the shooting. One of the managers of the Mad Butcher grocery store, where the shooting took place, tells CNN that a man who came into the store with a shotgun ended up in a shootout with police.

And we just got some new video in. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID RODRIGUEZ, FORDYCE, ARKANSAS: We are live here at Mad Butcher in Fordyce, and there is a shooting going on.

There's somebody lying in the parking lot shot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: You clearly hear the sounds of gunshots and sirens in the background of that video. I want to bring in CNN's Isabel Rosales, who's been tracking the details of the shooting. Isabel, what's the latest you've learned?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Boris, we do have brand new reporting from my colleague Fabiana Chaparro, who spoke with the witness who shot that video. His name is David Rodriguez, and he was coming into a nearby gas station right by that Mad Butcher grocery store when he heard these pops going off. Now, he thought that that was coming over from a firework store that was right next door.

But then after that, he saw people running away and heard this rapid shooting that he quickly realized was actually firing by a gun by the suspect. After seeing the people running away from the grocery store there, that is when he heard sirens and then ambulances start to come in. And shortly after that, officers took control of the scene there and told them to leave, clearly for their own safety.

He did also notice, this was interesting, at the Mad Butcher grocery store, that the front windows were broken, he says, as if they had been shot open by gunfire.

So let me just re-up what we know so far from Arkansas State Police, that this all happened shortly in the afternoon Eastern time at Four Dice. That's in Dallas County, Arkansas.

Again, a very small community of 3,700 people. We know that eight people have been wounded, two have been killed. One law enforcement officer has also been shot in this incident, but we're told that thankfully he or she has non-life-threatening injuries.

The shooter was critically injured and has been taken into custody. So a lot of information we're trying to get through right now and gather details from hospital, from law enforcement, from businesses and put together -- piece together what exactly happened here, Boris. But we know from these images there from our affiliates on the ground, while the situation is contained, it is clearly a very active, busy scene with a lot of law enforcement there making sure the situation is under control.

And their next steps here is gathering that evidence and figuring out what happened -- Boris.

[15:50:02]

SANCHEZ: Yes, and I anticipate that at some point soon we'll hear from law enforcement directly as well. So stay tuned for an update on that. Isabel Rosales, thanks so much for the latest from Fordyce, Arkansas.

Stay with CNN NEWS CENTRAL. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: We're continuing to follow this breaking news. A mass shooting in Arkansas. Police on the scene outside a grocery store there, just about an hour south of Little Rock.

KEILAR: We just got some new information about a police update. We have CNN's Isabel Rosales following this for us. Isabel, what can you tell us?

ROSALES: Hey, Brianna Boris. Right. We do have that Arkansas State Police, they will be holding a press conference here at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. So here, relatively soon, we should be hopefully getting more details into what happened.

[15:55:00]

But here's what we do know so far. This incident, this mass shooting, CNN defines that as four or more people that have been shot, happened around 12:30 Eastern at Four Dice in Dallas County, Arkansas. A small community of 3,700 people. This happened at a grocery store, the Mad Butcher, as it's called, where we know, per state police, that eight people were injured. Two have been killed.

We know that one law enforcement officer, in the midst of all this chaos, has been shot, but has non-life-threatening injuries. The shooter has been critically injured, but has been taken into custody. Now, we do also have reporting from somebody inside of that grocery store.

His name is Matthew Gill. He is the meat manager who was inside when this all happened. And what he saw was that a man came inside the grocery store with a shotgun and ended up in a shootout with police. That is what he saw. He also tells us that the situation has been contained, and we know that the shooter has been taken into custody.

We also have this video from a witness on the ground shortly after this all started. It was a man trying to just fuel up his car at a gas station next to where this happened. And you can hear in this video right now, a popping in the background of this, that David Rodriguez, the witness, and you hear it right there, he thought it was actually fireworks. That is because right next door is a fireworks shop.

Then he started to see people running and screaming and running away. And that's when he heard the sirens coming in, ambulances coming in, and they were told to leave the scene. But Boris, Brianna, hopefully here very soon we'll get more details as police piece together what happened.

SANCHEZ: Yes, we're set to hear from law enforcement at roughly 4:30. Of course, we'll stay on top of that news. Isabel, thank you so much. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: This weekend, CNN delves into the shadowy world of 1980s Cold War espionage with the finale of our original series, "SECRETS AND SPIES, A NUCLEAR GAME."

SANCHEZ: Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The summit in Geneva is a first step on the path to the end of the Cold War. The U.S. and the Soviet Union both agreed to reduce their nuclear stockpiles and diminish the threat that has paralyzed them for decades.

[16:00:00]

SUSAN EISENHOWER, SECURITY EXPERT: If there was anything that the Gorbachev era really produced was the opportunity for people to develop relationships with each other.

At the end of the day, we're going to look back at this period and say, we took a lot of risks, and we were lucky. As a matter of fact, most people today who had anything to do with that part of the world would say, it's just a miracle we got through the Cold War without some terrible incident taking place.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: The finale airs on Sunday night. Stay tuned for that and tune in for "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper, which starts right now.