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At Least 290 Dead After Air India Crash; Judge to Hear California Lawsuit Against Trump's Troop Deployment; Country Music Artist Bringing Awareness to Veteran Suicide. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired June 12, 2025 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Returning to the breaking news, this deadly Air India crash. Police say at least one passenger survived the world's deadliest air disaster in more than a decade. Local officials say at least 290 people were killed in the plane and on the ground after this Air India jet crashed into a city neighborhood in Ahmedabad, western India.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was carrying 242 passengers and crew members as it was headed to London. The survivor is a British man, and he's now at a local hospital. A senior police officer shared with Reuters, he had been traveling with his brother but does not know if his brother survived.

Let's get the latest from CNN's Tom Foreman. So, Tom, talk to us about what we know regarding this particular flight and this particular aircraft.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We know, first of all, that there is no reason to think that it was not going to successfully make this flight from India to Gatwick Airport. This plane has had a stellar record for the 12 years it's been there. It's been doing very, very well, and yet something went dreadfully wrong.

If you look at what happened during the takeoff from here to the crash site, this is a very fast sequence. In this video, you watch it taxiing down here. We've been talking about it being maybe a minute from this to this to the other.

It actually was in the air for, I think, 30 seconds --

SANCHEZ: Wow.

[13:35:00]

FOREMAN: -- and climbing for maybe 12 or 15 seconds of it, if you watch this here, watch, it starts coming up here, looks more or less normal, not necessarily to aviators, but to the rest of us, it looks more or less normal. It's level. And this is about it. It stops climbing in just a moment here and starts slowly sinking back down to the earth here.

Important clues to look at but also gives you an idea of the incredibly short period of time they had to deal with anything that might have been going wrong. And then, of course, when we go to the wreckage site, you can see where it came down here and all the questions that this raise, Boris. I mean, one of them being -- how did the tail wind up where it was?

SANCHEZ: Right. And seemingly intact. I mean, other than the damage --

FOREMAN: Yes.

SANCHEZ: -- it didn't catch fire.

FOREMAN: Having covered a lot of accidents like that and been to these accident sites, there's a lot of pieces of this plane that seem kind of together, which is unusual.

And that giant firebomb there, and look at this, the main fire over there, that was the tail over there some distance away. How they got there? We don't know.

There are many questions about what went wrong. Was this just a pilot error? Did something else go wrong?

We just don't really know. Again, everyone's cooperating on this. Boeing's cooperating. They're all getting together, but they have to answer these questions.

I do want to bring up the seat map, because it's very interesting.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

FOREMAN: We talk about that one survivor. Look, this is where he was seated. Seat 11A. It's the first row of economy, and you may also notice it's right next to an exit here, right alongside the window.

So whether that all played a role, I mean, who knows? When a plane like this comes completely apart, it could be someone anywhere in here. And yet that is the place where it happened to come out for that gentleman in a positive way.

SANCHEZ: Just stunning considering the wreckage site and the flames and everything that we saw that someone was able to just walk.

FOREMAN: We see it, you know, we see it once in a while, but in my experience, it is very unusual. I mean, there have been even the very rare cases of people and a plane comes apart in air and they fall to the ground and they survive, but incredibly unusual. And of course, a terrifically horrible story for everybody else. But mainly a big, big, big mystery in terms of the plane.

The question is why did this happen? How did it happen so quickly? Because again, the point I keep making and some of our aviation analysts are making, this plane never completed that transition from being on the ground to really being in the air. It was making that transition when something went wrong.

SANCHEZ: Tom Foreman, appreciate the analysis. Thank you so much. Still ahead, we're previewing today's high stakes hearing over

California's lawsuit challenging the president's authority to send National Guard troops into Los Angeles.

CNN NEWS CENTRAL returns in just a moment.

[13:40:00]

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SANCHEZ: We are standing by to hear from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from Los Angeles amid this ongoing battle between the administration and the state of California. Just a few minutes from now, a federal judge is going to hear arguments on whether the administration can use the military to assist federal officials with immigration raids.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Governor Gavin Newsom filed for a temporary restraining order to keep those troops limited to protecting federal buildings in the downtown area that have been the site of many protests.

With us now is Elliott Williams. He's a former federal prosecutor. He served as deputy assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at DOJ and also as assistant director for congressional relations at ICE. So, Elliott, does the state have a case here requesting this temporary restraining order?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I really think they do because they have a few different avenues for attacking what the administration has done. And just a step back, we should just know the military, National Guard, do not have a day-to-day role in law enforcement. Now, the president has some circumstances in which he can activate the National Guard in the event of a rebellion or invasion of the United States, or if he can't enforce the law somehow.

Now, each of those three avenues is a little bit thin. I mean, you can't say that just because someone's waving a Mexican flag at a protest that the United States has been invaded by Mexico. So that's a little bit thin.

And the notion of being unable to enforce the law is also a little bit tricky because the fact these protests started over the fact that the federal government was quite successful at enforcing the law. And then separate from all of that, you know, the state can also attack the fact that the law at issue here says any request to send up the National Guard must come through the governor.

Now, it certainly didn't come through Gavin Newsom here. He's arguing it did not. The president says, well, we sent it to the governor's office. So, again, lots of different avenues that the state of California can have here to attack what's been done.

SANCHEZ: Talk to us about the legal guidelines for the behavior and the protocol for not only the National Guard, but for these Marines --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

SANCHEZ: -- that are expected to be downtown tomorrow.

WILLIAMS: This is a really big sticking point, Boris. And to Gavin Newsom's point that you said in the tease, they can -- these military can support or provide aid to immigration enforcement, but they can't, you know, walk down the street carrying out raids and so on. So what does that mean in the event that immigration officers are out carrying out a raid or something and they carry a bunch of Marines with them who are armed?

If those Marines open fire, have they aided in the enforcement action or are they just providing protection? And that's a gray legal area that I think this lawsuit seeks to work out.

KEILAR: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on The Hill earlier today, and he was asked repeatedly if he would abide by a court decision if it goes against President Trump on his choice to deploy these Marines and the Guard there in L.A. He said, what I can say is we should not have local judges determining foreign policy or national security policy for the country.

WILLIAMS: Now, if you notice from my tease, when you introduced me, it said congressional relations a few times. I've prepped a lot of cabinet secretary to prepare for testimony, and he knew exactly what he was saying there. Now, there is one correct answer to that question, which is, of course, I would obey with the court's order.

[13:45:03]

Now, if the court's wrong, we will take this all the way up to the Supreme Court because we think we have a good legal case. But this whole hemming and hawing over, well, we don't believe that judges, I mean, come on, they're really winking and nodding to their base there.

SANCHEZ: What winds up happening, depending on today's decision, for other states moving forward? Because the administration is making clear that this is kind of a test case for them.

WILLIAMS: Yes, it's national law, you know, and so any decision here all around the country, other jurisdictions ought to keep an eye on. Now certainly nothing's going to be different in Texas or New York or Pennsylvania, depending on what happens in California. That's why it's incumbent on the courts to come to clear decisions about what are the boundaries around presidential authority, what can be done here.

And actually, maybe the president does have some authority here, if American citizens are unsafe or federal buildings might be endangered. But a court needs to say that, and the law is quite vague, it was written, you know, hundreds of years ago. And so I do think we as Americans need some guidance from the courts.

KEILAR: Yes, we do. Elliot, thank you so much, as always.

And still ahead, one country music artist is using his voice for more than just music. Ahead, how he's bringing awareness, trying to combat the crisis of veteran suicide.

[13:50:00]

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KEILAR: On the home front this week, an award-winning country music artist using his music to raise awareness about veteran suicide. Matt Rogers wrote his new single, Camouflage, to honor a close friend of his, a decorated military hero who died by suicide. On average, 17 veterans die by suicide every day, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

And country music star Matt Rogers is with us now. Matt, this is obviously a topic that is so important to so many people, including yourself. Tell us how you decided to write a song about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT ROGERS, COUNTRY MUSIC ARTIST: Bottle everything up. You can keep it deep inside. Everybody knows soldiers ain't allowed to cry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Matt Rogers wrote his new single, Camouflage, to honor a close friend of his, a decorated military hero who died by suicide.

On average, 17 veterans die by suicide every day, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. And country music star Matt Rogers is with us now. Matt, this is obviously a topic that is so important to so many people, including yourself. Tell us how you decided to write a song about it.

ROGERS (on camera): Hey, thank you so much for having me on, for starters, but, you know, I got this news when I was on the road playing shows, knew I was in the middle of a run and was not even going to be able to get home for the services. My long-term guitar player, Nick Reed, is a U.S. Army combat vet, has lost friends the same way. And we more or less wrote this song out of therapy, late one night after a show in the hotel room, kind of venting about a broken system and this epidemic that's running rampant in our veteran community.

And then you fast forward and I have some friends that put some missing pieces together. And we partnered with Brothers Keeper Veteran Foundation to release this song. And one hundred percent of all the revenue from the song, meaning streaming, downloads, everything is going to go right to them to provide critical mental health resources for our veteran community.

KEILAR: Yes, it's really amazing, amazing work that they're doing. And can you tell me a little bit more about those conversations that you had with Nick, sort of the patterns maybe that you were talking about? This is something, obviously, you say he experienced with a number of friends. What were you talking about?

ROGERS: You know, it's so hard, that transition coming back to civilian life and the support system is there, but we can be doing better. Obviously, you know the numbers, some of the statistics are absolutely staggering, you know, in the 22 years in the global war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, we had 7,800 troops killed in action. And that is not to water down people that paid the ultimate price for our country and to fight for our freedom.

However, in that same amount of time, we've lost over 120,000 veterans to suicide in this country. So there's obviously a disconnect. There's there's something that's not happening when these folks are coming home and transitioning back to civilian life.

And we need to embolden that support system there when they get back to kind of help them with that transition and help them keep purpose and and ease into that versus just letting them sign papers and saying, good luck with the rest of your life.

KEILAR: Yes, there's also -- there's a stigma, right, of people saying, hey, I need help. And this is something you're working towards. This is something Brothers Keeper Veteran Foundation is working towards.

Tell us -- tell us a little bit about that work that they're doing and why you were drawn to them.

ROGERS: I'm admittedly so pretty weary of bigger charities and bigger organizations like that. Brothers Keeper Veteran Foundation is just the right size, and I've seen their work firsthand. They do unbelievable work.

They have over 80 veterans in their care right now. Every veteran that they they work with uses on average about six resources, whether that be mental health resources or VA benefits or sober living. They just are that kind of company that is not afraid to get their hands in and get dirty. when they see a problem, they're just looking for the solution. And they don't -- they don't let much red tape get in the way. And that's exactly what I was looking for when I was ready to, you know, use this song to kind of have this conversation was to find a place and to find an organization that was willing to do what was needed.

KEILAR: And through music, Matt, you inevitably touch a lot of people who maybe wouldn't know about this issue. You have such a small percentage in the country who serve, who may, you know, a lot of people are not military connected.

[13:55:02]

What do you want people who haven't served, who maybe don't even know someone who has to take away from the message in your song?

ROGERS: Well, the coolest thing about this is there's so many people that do support the military. You know, recently I went to the Indy 500 and that's on Memorial Day weekend, and I saw just how patriotic of an event that is. So the coolest thing about this particular song is if this is a cause you support and this is a mission that you can get behind, all you have to do is stream it. Streaming the song literally raises revenue for this organization to do work for our veterans. That's all you have to do is stream it.

KEILAR: Yes, easy enough. Well, Matt, the song is great. Thank you so much for talking with us about it and about the cause. We really appreciate it.

ROGERS: Brianna, thank you so much for having me on. God bless America.

KEILAR: Matt Rogers and the song again is Camouflage, and you can, as he said, stream that.

And if you or someone you know needs support, help is available. Text or call 988. Counselors are there to talk 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Or you can visit 988lifeline.org. We'll be right back.

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