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Tech Insiders Split on How Much AI Will Impact Job Force; Delta Regional Jet, B-52 Bomber Nearly Collide in North Dakota; Trump Ratings Drop on Key Campaign Issues Including Immigration; ICE Set to Receive $75 Billion in Cash Infusion to Ramp Up Enforcement; Hearing in Harvard's Funding Fight Against Trump Administration. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 21, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR: ... hearing from industry executives on this.

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Yes, Omar, after that warning from Dario Amadei, I got really curious just how realistic other insiders in the tech space think that that AI jobs apocalypse really is. And I'm not the only one. A lot of Americans are concerned about this.

A Pew research survey earlier this year found that 52 percent of Americans are worried about the impact of AI on the workforce. Another 33 feel overwhelmed, just 36 feel hopeful. So this was a big question about what this technology is going to mean for all of our jobs.

And as I talk to people in the industry, they say that it's really not so black and white. There are certain categories of work that really are ripe for disruption, things like coding or data analysis, where we're already starting to see the tech companies shrink their workforces, lay off software developers.

But if your job involves some creative aspects or relational aspects, it may change. You may use AI to do some of the more rote, repetitive tasks, but those jobs probably aren't going to be eliminated altogether.

I spoke with Gaurab Bansal. He is the executive director of Responsible Innovation Labs. This is a nonprofit that consults with tech startups about how to build technology ethically. And this is how he put it.

He said, I think that there will be some displacement. I think there will be new job categories that emerge. But I think we're entering a decade-ish, maybe more, period of uncertainty.

And I think that's really the key and the reason that a lot of these tech insiders say that policymakers need to start thinking and acting on this, because the transition period could be uncomfortable.

We could see companies laying off workers and then realizing the tech isn't quite there and bringing them back. We could see lower wages as more people compete for those human-centric jobs. And so tech policy -- or tech leaders, policymakers really need to be thinking about how do we manage this transition in a way that lessens the impact on all of our work?

JIMENEZ: Well, stakes are being laid out right now, and we will see what happens moving forward. Clare, appreciate it, as always.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a close call in the skies over North Dakota now under investigation. A passenger jet on a collision course with a B-52 bomber. The pilot's apology to passengers afterward earns him a round of applause from a very relieved plane full of people.

Plus, President Donald Trump is marking six months in office, just as new CNN polling finds that Americans are not too pleased with a key part of his America First agenda right now.

And operations are getting back on track this morning after Alaska Airlines passengers were left stranded for hours. What we're learning right now about the outage that forced that ground stop.

I'm Kate Bolduan with Omar Jimenez. Sara and John are out today. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

JIMENEZ: New this morning, a major scare in the skies. Passengers on a Delta regional jet suddenly felt a jerk, and the pilot had to make a hard turn to avoid hitting a B-52 bomber. The terrifying close call that happened as the SkyWest flight from Minneapolis was about to land in Minot, North Dakota.

The pilot later apologized for what he called an aggressive move, saying the B-52 was coming right at him. One passenger recorded the pilots explaining what happened next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SKYWEST FLIGHT 3788 PILOT: Sorry about the aggressive maneuver. It caught me by surprise. This is not normal at all.

I don't know why they didn't give us a heads up because the airport base does have radar, and nobody said, hey, there's also a B-52 in the pattern. Long story short, it was not fun, but I do apologize for it and thank you for understanding.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: All right, so not fun, as the pilot put it, but fortunately, no one was hurt. In a statement, SkyWest says the pilot had been cleared for approach but performed a go-around when another aircraft became visible in their flight path, the B-52, as we heard from the pilot there. SkyWest is now investigating.

Joining us now is CNN Transportation Analyst Mary Schiavo. So, Mary, I mean, just how unusual is an incident like this in controlled airspace?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: Well, it's supposed to be very unusual. It's supposed to be non-existent, but we've seen more and more of this. I mean, this is very familiar, sadly familiar, because this was the problem also at the midair at Reagan National Airport earlier this year, when you have mixed used airspace and aircraft being controlled by different entities.

You have military aircraft, and there is a military Air Force base just north of this commercial passenger use airport, and this military plane was reportedly participating in a flyover at a fair nearby.

[08:05:00]

At one point -- and this is my research, so it's not confirmed by the FAA -- at one point, this B-52 was visible on a system called ADS-B, Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast System, which allows planes to be seen. And then at the time of the near collision of the, fortunately, the miss, it wasn't.

So we have a situation where military aircraft are mixed in commercial use airspace. They're controlled by different controllers often. The military aircraft is not reported to have talk-to approach, which is controlled out of Minnesota, and the tower, Minot Tower, had cleared the commercial plane to land. And so you have a lot of characters in this very tight airspace, and they clearly weren't coordinated.

For whatever reason, there was no communication with the tower. Allegedly, from the B-52, they might have been headed back to their Air Force base, which was just north of there, but kudos to the pilot. And remember, all the collision avoidance systems in the world won't work if all the aircraft aren't on it, and they aren't broadcasting the signals that allow them to be seen.

So we see this more and more, and we have had, you know, other collisions in the past, so as a civilian.

JIMENEZ: So as you start to investigate, you know, further what went wrong here, I mean, is this more of an air traffic control issue, a military coordination issue, a little bit of all the above? I guess where do you start here?

SCHIAVO: Well, you start with coordination because this civilian aircraft, the commercial passenger plane, was cleared to land. Once you're cleared to land, and he was on final, that means this airplane was coming down, was just about to get down to the runway, make the flare land down. That means you own that runway.

That airplane was cleared. The B-52 had no business being in its path unless there's additional information we don't know.

Like I said, because the Air Force base is near there, north of there, that might have been where it is headed. But coordination is, you know, first and foremost.

This is something called a contract tower. This is very common. There are many of these, which means the FAA doesn't run it, but they have contractors running that tower. They have received the same training. They receive, you know, the same updates. They're supposed to perform just like a regular tower does with the FAA, but that will also be issued.

We have had contract towers for decades. It hasn't usually been a concern in terms of performance, but they will look at their performance.

You know, and then finally, the rules of the road when you're flying up there. If it is really just what we call see and avoid, you're just flying, air traffic control says you've got this visual, see the runway and get on it. In see and avoid, the smaller, slower, and lower plane will have priority, which once again puts the commercial passenger plane in the right and the B-52 in the wrong unless there's additional information, and there always is.

JIMENEZ: Mary Schiavo, always appreciate the insight. Thanks for being here.

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

JIMENEZ: Kate.

BOLDUAN: Also this morning, President Trump is marking six months in office, saying Sunday that the United States is the hottest and most respected country in the world. Now, just as there are new numbers out showing that he is losing ground with Americans on one signature issue of his -- immigration. CNN has new polling out. It reveals a growing majority of Americans surveyed now say that the president's deportation policies has gone too far.

CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House for us this morning. Alayna, tell us more about this, about what we are learning in this new polling, what's inside this polling, and also what the White House is saying about it.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, Kate, I mean, I think it's important to note just off the top here that this is the issue that President Donald Trump ran on. He often, both publicly but also privately on the campaign trail, said that he believed immigration and specifically the deportation of undocumented migrants was even more important than the economy.

And so taking stock of these numbers now six months into his second term, and specifically how Americans more broadly are feeling about this, is so important. And this new polling from CNN shows that, more broadly speaking, Americans are growing more and more dissatisfied with how the president and his administration are handling this.

And I just want to get into some of these numbers. On the key question, and I should note, this poll was conducted July 10th through July 13th.

On the key question of when it comes to deporting undocumented immigrants, has Trump gone too far? 55 percent of Americans now say that he has. That is up 10 percent from 45 percent back in February.

And then when you break it down into some of the specific immigration policies that this White House has enacted. When you look at the ICE budget, them increasing it by billions of dollars, as we saw in his recent, you know, One Big Beautiful Bill, as they like to call it. 31 percent only support increasing the ICE budget by billions. That's compared to 53 percent who oppose it.

That question of trying to end birthright citizenship, something the Trump administration tried to do in his first term, they are now giving renewed focus to it this time around. Only 28 percent of Americans say that they support that, compared with 59 percent who oppose it.

When you look at another question of detaining undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, 23 percent only of Americans support that compared to 59 percent. We have some other numbers that we're showing on the screen.

But look, that is not where this administration wants to be on one of their key issues that helped usher President Donald Trump into the White House.

Now, on your question of what I'm hearing in my conversations with people here at the White House, is that they still believe immigration and their policies on deportations for many of these undocumented immigrants is, they believe it's still a winning issue. Whenever there's a controversy that comes up when it comes to immigration, they argue it's good for them.

But I think the key thing we also saw in these polling numbers is that while a lot of Republicans and specifically the president's base support some of these immigration policies, the general appetite from the American people is waning.

And so yesterday we did see the White House kind of put out a press release celebrating his six months in office. They were highlighting some of these numbers, specifically some of the deportation flights. They said they had a record number of deportation flights in June. They are celebrating this.

But it's unclear, you know, how the Americans are going to continue to feel about this as they ramp up these deportations moving forward.

BOLDUAN: Yes, absolutely. Alayna, thank you so much. Really appreciate it -- Omar.

JIMENEZ: Well, this morning, the White House is preparing to back ICE with a massive cash infusion for the sweeping mass deportation efforts. The agency set to receive $75 billion in funding from President Trump's sweeping agenda bill. The funds are expected to support the expansion of detention centers, removal operations and hiring new agents.

And this comes as ICE continues to face intense scrutiny over some of its practices and ramped up arrests. I want to bring in CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, who joins me now. So,

Priscilla, what more are you learning about this?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, when I talk to sources, Omar, they all tell me they are preparing to supercharge immigration enforcement in the United States, given this new funding that they now have.

To give you a point of context here, ICE will be the most well-funded police force in the federal government over the next four years. So if you break that down, we're looking at $45 billion for detention centers, as well as $30 billion for enforcement removals.

Now, this comes at a critical time for the administration. ICE historically has been underfunded and has had very limited personnel. And when I talked to White House Border Czar Tom Homan about this, he said that they are working to try to solve for all of that.

He has daily calls about contracts with ICE and Customs and Border Protection. He is also talking to officials about how to ramp up the ICE Academy so they can have more classes, so they can train and recruit more people. They've also already started to offer financial incentives in e-mails to retired officers to have them come back on the force. So there is an attempt here to really push forward this agenda in a way that in my years covering this, we just haven't seen.

Now, I'll also note that current and former ICE officials who I've spoken with say that there is deep frustration as well in the agency. Now, there has been frustration in other points in other administrations, but what's happening now is that they are getting immense pressure day in and day out despite what they are doing. And that is what is leading to some of these arrests that we have been seeing videos of and that the public has not taken well to.

Of course, they have had this White House-imposed goal of 3,000 daily arrests. Well, they haven't met that yet. In fact, they have been around 1,000 or 2,000, but they get calls from the White House consistently to ramp that up.

And all of this, too, as you saw those poll numbers, I will note there is one part of this poll that notes, and we should pay attention to, how increasingly people have thought that he has gone too far, he being President Trump, between February to April to now. And I think that speaks, Omar, to the way that people are paying attention to immigration enforcement and the intervening months, the controversy that came up, for example, in March, the sweeping wartime authority and sending hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador. In May, for example, sending migrants to far-flung countries like South Sudan.

So what this poll tells us is that people are paying attention to what the Trump administration is doing, and it appears to be influencing how they think he may be going too far on this signature issue. Back to you.

JIMENEZ: Priscilla Alvarez, appreciate the reporting, as always. Thank you -- Kate. [08:15:00]

BOLDUAN: So this morning, Harvard University and the Trump administration are facing off in court. The fight now over billions of dollars in research funds and what the judge may decide.

And the suspects charged in the murder of an American professor, they were in court this morning, and there's now a leaked confession from the accused shooter.

And a former Louisville police officer convicted in the death of Breonna Taylor will be sentenced today. And now the Justice Department says that he should only be sentenced to one day in jail. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:20:00]

JIMENEZ: All right, everyone, a courtroom short showdown in President Trump's war with America's Ivy League schools. Oral arguments are set to begin just about an hour from now in Harvard University's lawsuit against the Trump administration. More than $2 billion in federal funding for the school hangs in the balance.

That money was frozen, if you remember, after Harvard rejected the federal government demands for major policy changes on DEI, hiring and admissions practices, and its handling of student protests.

The administration has also accused the university of failing to address anti-Semitism on campus.

CNN's Gloria Pazmino joins me now. So what are you expecting to hear -- to get from this hearing? What are we expecting to learn?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Omar, the academics and the faculty members, as well as some academics who have joined briefs in this lawsuit, are going into this hearing with a lot of confidence. They seem to think they are on solid legal ground to prove that the administration's move to freeze so much of Harvard's funding is actually unconstitutional.

They argue that it's in violation of their First Amendment. It violates academic freedom. And more specifically, they argue that there is actually laws in place that would allow an administration to determine whether or not a university is actually engaging in some of the allegations that the Trump administration has made, and that that process was completely ignored. So they're going in there pretty confidently in hopes that they're going to be able to restore many of these funding freezes.

Now, as you said, the administration is arguing that Harvard has failed to protect its Jewish students. They have said they have failed to address anti-Semitism on campus. But in speaking with faculty members and academics, they see this fight as much more than this fight that the administration is picking over the issue of anti- Semitism.

They see it as a move by the administration to try and control what's happening, not just at Harvard, the nation's oldest university, the richest university, but many other higher education institutions. They see it as an attempt by the administration to try and control how the university operates.

Take a listen to one of the academics that's joined the amicus brief in this lawsuit talking about what's at stake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANURIMA BHARGAVA, HARVARD ALUMNA, COUNSEL FOR ALUMNI ON AMICUS BRIEF: What we're seeing here is basically an attack on Harvard, which is at the front line of a much larger attack on higher education.

The goal is to narrow our ability to think, to teach, to voice, to learn in a way that is open, that promotes free inquiry and discussion. And they -- the government not only wants to limit those freedoms, but it wants to be the one who dictates who can actually enjoy those freedoms.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAZMINO: More than $2 billion are at stake. 900 research and scientific projects are also on the line. The White House responded to our question over the weekend, in part saying that they are confident that Harvard is going to eventually come around and support the president's vision. And through good faith conversations and negotiations, a good deal is more than possible.

Omar, we have seen President Trump say that he believes Harvard wants to settle, but we've also seen Harvard take a very aggressive legal approach to try and respond and defend themselves in this lawsuit.

So this hearing today, extremely important, not just for Harvard, but for other higher education institutions.

JIMENEZ: We'll see what happens when this hearing gets going. Gloria Pazmino, appreciate it as always.

All right, more news ahead, including Russia saying this morning it is ready to talk peace again, but that comes after it spent the weekend bombarding Ukraine.

And Texas Republicans gambling they can remove five Democrats from Congress by redrawing congressional maps. Now Democrats want their party to fight back. We'll have more coming up.

[08:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: New this morning, President Trump is celebrating the halfway point of his first year back in the White House, saying in part, Today the U.S. is the hottest and most respected country anywhere in the world.

And the White House is also saying it has been, quote, The most successful first six months in office for any president in modern American history.

One of the key issues that they are touting is the central issue he campaigned on is immigration. And on that, there is new CNN polling that suggests some warning signs ahead, with 55 percent of Americans saying that the president has gone too far when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally. That's up 10 points since February. And that paints a similar picture to other recent polling that we've seen, what just came out from CBS News just this weekend.

Joining us right now is Democratic Congresswoman Susan DelBene of Washington. She's the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats' campaign arm. Congressman, thanks for the time.

The CNN polling showing that Americans largely oppose the Trump administration's scaling up of their deportation program. And the CBS polling shows that most Americans say the administration is deporting more people than they thought it would. And then add into this, CBS also had on another topic, six in 10 disapprove of the Big, Beautiful Bill legislation.

But CNN's polling last week also showed that just 28 percent of Americans view the Democratic Party favorably, the lowest mark for Democrats in the history of CNN's polling. Why haven't Democrats been able to capitalize on what clearly seems to be frustration with the president?

REP. SUSAN DELBENE (D-WA): Well, let's be clear.

[08:30:00]